Draconian Measures
Page 25
No weapons.
I palmed the knife and eyed the two men.
They had guns, two rifles and a pistol.
Did she expect me to take their weapons?
Would she retaliate against the kids if I killed a couple more of her citizens?
My poker face slipped and both stepped back, the taller one putting distance between us.
I grabbed the folded paper instead.
It was instructions.
That started with don’t kill the men.
And an address.
Like I had GPS and could just look it up.
“Go,” I told the men and almost laughed out loud as they sprinted away.
I reread the instructions.
They were simple.
An address and just a few words.
Come back with them all, or your kids die.
I shouldered the pack, and started hoofing it.
I had to find the railroad or a road and get to a town.
The needs were always the same.
Weapons. Shelter. Food.
And now a map.
A map and a mission.
My kids were still in danger and I was cast out.
I let the rage simmer and broke out into a jog.
THE END
Thank you for reading Battlefield Z Bluegrass Zombie. If you liked it leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Authors love word of mouth. I appreciate you having some fun with me on this cross country romp.
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BATTLEFIELD Z OUTCAST
Revenge. Rage. They kidnapped his children and sent him on a mission. Rescue their people and stop a madman, or his kids will pay the ultimate price. They turned him loose with nothing except his anger.
But it’s been enough fuel to drag him across a zombie wasteland before and nothing is going to stop him from saving Bem, the Boy and Bo Bistan. Not a million Z. Not a cult. Nothing.
Abandoned.
Alone.
And ready to hunt, Dad must save another group so he can protect his own before Mags makes good on her promise to turn his kids Z and make him kill them.
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Battlefield Z
Battlefield Z – Children’s Brigade
Battlefield Z – Sweet Home Zombie
Battlefield Z – Zombie Blues Highway
Battlefield Z – Mardi Gras Zombie
Battlefield Z – Bluegrass Zombie
Battlefield Z – Outcast (June 2017)
More adventures in the series
FLYOVER ZOMBIE – a Battlefield Z series
HEADSHOTS – a Battlefield Z series
OVERLAND ZOMBIE – a Battlefield Z series (June 2017)
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Lightning pace, sparse style, fans of Elmore Leonard love the first book in the new series based on the Battlefield Z world.
They built a wall to contain the zombies in the middle of America. But when a powerful man’s daughter gets lost in the beyond, he sends a crack unit of soldiers to rescue her and they find more than they bargained for.
Now the survivors form a ragtag fleet to fight their way across a vast wasteland where zombies aren’t the worst thing to survive.
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Are you a fan of post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi?
A father hunts for his children after the zombie apocalypse. Sci-Fi comedy in 6 book series.
BATTLEFIELD Z
BATTLEFIELD Z-CHILDREN’S BRIGADE
BATTLEFIELD Z-SWEET HOME ZOMBIE
BATTLEFIELD Z-ZOMBIE BLUES HIGHWAY
BATTLEFIELD Z-MARDI GRAS ZOMBIE
More Sci-Fi
HOLY WAR
MOON MEN
SUPER SECRET SPACE MISSION
Westerns
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Do you like smart ass heroes who get in over their head? Need a little more magic in your life? Check out the Marshal of Magic up to his neck in wicked witch troubles.
WIZARD AT WAR
WITCHMAS
WITCHMAS EVE
WITCHMAS DAY
Do you want to start a spy series about the world’s luckiest hitman? Grab conscripted and check out Brill Wingfield’s adventures. Before his codename was Shadowboxer, he was just a boy learning how to survive tragedy and make the world right any way he could.
Start the series today, and get DECREED free when it’s released on June 20, with two more novels released by end of summer.
CONSCRIPTED
MISSION ONE
FLASH BANG
SHADOWBOXER
DECREED
CREDIBLE THREAT
NAZI NUKES
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OUTCAST ZOMBIE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Chris Lowry is an avid adventurer and ultrarunning author. He divides his time between Florida, Arkansas and California where he trains for 100 mile Ultramarathons. He has completed over 68 races, including 18 marathons and 12 Ultramarathons and is planning a Transcontinental Run across the United States from Los Angeles to New York City. He has kayaked the Mississippi River solo, and biked across the state of Florida. When not outdoors, he is producing and directing a documentary film about adventure and writing. His novels include the Battlefield Z series, the Marshal of Magic Series and the Shadowboxer Files. He loves good craft beer and meeting with reading clubs and running clubs, especially if the aforementioned beer is offered.
Are you a fan of Harry Dresden? Like the Iron Druid? You might fall in love with the Marshal of Magic.
Check out the first chapters below
CHAPTER ONE
A trio of witches gathered on the edge of a parking lot at an abandoned warehouse between the airport and downtown. The property had once housed a furniture supply store in the fifties, but was derelict for the past forty years. The time had not been kind.
Teenage vandals broke the windows with chunks of concrete and rock, which let in the elements. Rain, ice, snow and storms had worked their way through the wooden interior so that all that remained was the brick shell, and the occasional still standing wooden floor in the five story building.
The homeless population of Memphis had scurried through the windows seeking any form of shelter from the harsh winds that roared down the Mississippi River. Some died in collapses, others were killed during infighting, and gang initiation rituals. It was a dead place, a dead building haunted by faded memories.
"Can you feel it?" whispered Hilda.
She was taller than average, beautiful in a cold ice queen manner, and stood in front of her two compatriots at a point of a triangle drizzled in blood on the cracked concrete.
"The ghosts are calling," answered the shorter one on the left.
She had long curly red hair that cascaded down to the small of her back and delicate features that made her look like the youngest, and a small silver necklace made of letters that read Cassidy, her name.
"This is going to be fantastic," growled Hilda in a husky rumble.
The third witch pulled a grimoire, a book of magic, from a messenger bag on her hip.
"This should be enough."
"It will be enough," said Hilda.
She bent down and scratched another symbol onto the ground in front of the triangle. She pulled a small penknife from a pocket on her dress and pricked her finger to infuse the rune with her lifeblood.
A breeze whistled across the lot, stirring up dust and debris.
"Now," she said.
Carla opened the grimoire to a marked page and ran her finger over the text. It was in Latin, written in a faded calligraphy in splotchy brown ink that barely stood out on the parchment.
"We call on thee."
Cassidy mouthed the words with her.
"Again," ordered Hilda.
"We call on thee," they said together.
<
br /> It flowed into a chant, slow and melodic. Their voices blended in a vibrating harmony that echoed against the pockmarked brick and bounced back toward them.
Wind stirred again, and ghostly apparitions began to gather on the edge of the lot, leaking through the cracked windows in the building, surrounding the trio.
Carla set the grimoire down behind them and pulled a white rabbit out of her pouch.
It squirmed in her hands and she clenched down tighter.
Hilda reached back with one hand and Carla passed the rabbit to her.
She held up the passive bunny and sliced open it's throat with the penknife. She dripped the blood across the rune. Her voice joined the others as she drew a line from the rune to the tip of the triangle.
"We call on thee, we call on thee, we call on thee."
The blood reached the triangle and red light erupted from the rune to burn against the brick wall. Ghostly figures were drawn toward the light and sucked into it.
A black clawed hand reached through the portal and gripped an edge. It pulled the opening a little wider, enough for a second hand to jab through. Now it had two hands on the portal and ripped it open. A sound like fabric tearing accompanied by ghostly moans roared through the air.
A giant head emerged from the dark hole. A massive red face framed by ram's horns and a hyper muscular body, like a caricature of a comic book hero slid through the opening and rolled into a wary stance.
It flexed massive shoulders and turned it's head to the wind to sniff. It was nine feet tall, shoulders broad and defined, with a hairy pelt that ran down it's spiny back.
"Sullamaie," Hilda smiled.
She dropped the rabbit and unfastened her dress. It fell to the ground and puddled around her feet.
"Sullamaie," she said again.
The creature turned to face her and leered.
Hilda settled back on the concrete, her feet still at the point of the triangle. She opened her knees and invited the demon to take her.
"Sullamaie," Cassidy and Carla said with her.
The demon rumbled toward them. It kneeled in front of Hilda, planted a hand on the ground and jammed into her.
She bit back a scream.
The demon tilted back its head and roared.
It finished in a moment and rose.
Cassidy dropped her dress and kneeled on all fours into the triangle. The demon sniffed and moved to her next.
Her hair fell across Hilda's face as they stared at each other, eyes locked. Cassidy wasn't as strong and shrieked as the monster took her.
"Sullamaie," Hilda reached up and caressed the young witch's face.
"Sullamaie," said Carla.
The demon growled again and leered at Carla with bloodshot bulbous eyes.
She dropped her dress and fell forward on her hands and knees.
All three witches were in the triangle.
The beast moved to Carla and grabbed her waist with massive hands. She screamed too.
Cassidy and Hilda put their hands on top of hers as they chanted.
It finished again with a roar that split the night air. Carla collapsed beside her fallen coven. The witches stopped their chant.
The beast dug clawed fingertips into the ground gouging claw marks into the concrete as it was slowly drawn back into the portal. It bellowed in defiance.
A shadow darted across the parking lot and scooped up the Grimoire. Cassidy reached for the book thief.
"No," shouted Hilda.
Too late.
Cassidy's foot scuffed through the blood and broke the plane of the triangle.
The portal collapsed with the demon still on this side.
It roared and bounded toward the witches.
Hilda scrambled up.
"Fortress," she screamed and crossed her arms in an X in front of her naked chest.
The demon bounced off an invisible field. It roared again and ran for the edge of the parking lot.
"Damn," Hilda muttered.
She glanced at the thief as he disappeared through a hole in the fence on the opposite side of the parking lot.
"What do we do?" Cassidy asked.
She held her head down and refused to meet Hilda's burning gaze.
"The thief of course," she spat. "He has our property."
Carla held out their dirt encrusted dresses and they donned them.
"We can't summon Sullamaie without the grimoire," she said.
Cassidy nodded.
"He's going to do some damage."
Hilda caressed her stomach.
"Damage was the plan all along," she smiled.
CHAPTER TWO
He paused at the edge of the fence to look back over his shoulder. The witches were getting dressed. At least that's what he thought they were, witches or some other type of supernatural villain.
They had to be villains because what type of person summons a demon and then does that with them.
It couldn't be for any good purpose that was for damn sure.
Tyrone took off through the brush and bounded up on a railroad track.
He was less than a mile from downtown and the small pub where he was supposed to meet the man who hired him.
After the meeting, he had one plan.
Get the hell out of Dodge, because that giant bullheaded demon didn't make it back to the underworld or wherever else it had come from. It was currently running loose in Memphis, and the direction it was headed in took it straight to St. Jude's.
He wondered if he should call the police.
Wouldn't that be an ironic little kick?
A thief calling the cops to ask for help.
Technically it wouldn't be help. Tyrone would be warning them about a disaster in the making, though he wasn't sure they would believe him.
He wasn't quite ready to believe it himself even though he had watched the ritual and summoning with his own eyes.
"Damn," he said and scrambled down the railway embankment to cut across a ditch.
He could see the baseball stadium up the road several blocks away. There were cars lined on either side of the road which meant people, but he didn't slow or relax.
The streetlights on this side of town were still subject to being shot out or knocked out, and the streets were bathed in darkness.
The man who hired him had warned of supernatural AND mortal bad guys and Tyrone was a man of caution.
His erstwhile employer and predicted the ritual, and advised the best time to grab the book, and had paid in cash with a promise of more to follow on delivery.
He was accurate in prediction, so Tyrone thought he would listen when it came to the warnings as well.
He could smell a wind blowing off the muddy waters of the Mississippi River, the sickly-sweet stench of dirt and decay that carried laughter and strains of blues guitar off Beale Street.
The bar wasn't far now.
He heard a roar from the east, something that sounded like a cross between a lion and Godzilla.
Even though he was running fast, he ratcheted it up a notch or two to go even faster.
CHAPTER THREE
Before that movie came out, you could have called magic the fifth element. I hesitate to even use the word magic because it conjures (see what I did there?!) up images straight out of Vegas.
Damn illusionists.
They fool everyone into thinking that has something to do with magic, or the tricksters who roam around in cheap tuxedo's pulling rabbits from hats. They're pale imitations of what Magic is really about.
I was nervous and taking it out on poor mildly talented hacks. Be glad there weren't any around, although a street performer on the corner up from Beale was using sleight of hand and misdirection to entertain the pre-ball game crowd.
It was a Tuesday night in Memphis, the Snowbirds were getting ready to play and I was on my first blind date in eighteen years. Nineteen years. It had been so long, I couldn't remember.
How I fooled someone into setting me up on a blind date
is a whole story in itself, as was the reason I haven't been on one in practically forever.
I selected the bar because of its proximity to her neighborhood, which was on the river and just North of 240. Downtown crowds would be thick, but during the game, the bars and pubs tended to empty out as people wandered to the stadium.
There would be plenty of people watching as the game let out, just in case the conversation was running light, and of course the pub since libation is the best social lubricant ever created outside of a love potion.
Love potions are illegal by the way and if I catch you using one, I'm legally obligated to arrest, detain or even kill you depending on the severity of the offense.
If you're a wizard, that is.
The badge on my belt lets me do that.
The power in my will lets me enforce it.
Marshal of Magic.
That's my title, and job, and even though I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a calling, I'm pretty darn good at it.
Most of the time.
That's because I'm lucky.
Very lucky.
At least at magic.
Right now, I didn't feel very lucky as I stared at the clock above the bar for what must have been the hundredth time.
I did it enough to make the bartender notice and she shot a dimpled smile my way.
"You need another hon?"
I tilted up the brown bottle and swirled around the two sips of brew inside.