Pox Americana 3

by Zack Archer

  “Nothing sexier than a woman who knows her way around a gun!”

  She turned back and screamed. “LOOK OUT!”

  A pile of floating debris appeared and I yanked the wheel and headed to the left, shooting down a straightaway that hemmed us in between a series of buildings to the left and a section of overpass to the right that was heavy with zombies. The ghouls were everywhere, screaming, clawing at the air. Some of them jumped into the water as I navigated down through a stretch of shallow water.

  Something stirred out of the corner of my eye and I saw one of the pursuing boats through a gap between the buildings. It was accompanied by three jet skis. The bastards were following us closely.

  “What’s the best defense?” Hollis asked.

  “Running really, really fast?”

  “Besides that?”

  “A good offense?”

  She nodded and pointed at the other boat. “Let’s hit the fuckers head on.”

  I angled the boat around and Hollis stood next to me as we cut down a gap between the buildings, picking up speed. The only thing in front of us was the boat. The jet skis had disappeared.

  The other boat slow and turned, but we were already on it.

  Hollis fired her rifle, willing several shots into the front of the boat, cutting down the driver and the woman standing next to him. I unfastened my useless cannon so that I could better control the boat.

  We nearly rammed the other craft, but managed to roar right past it as Hollis placed a few more shots in the side of it. The fighters spilled overboard, diving for cover.

  Gunfire stitched the side of the building next to us. We braved the fire and vroomed down under a series of large street signs on metal struts that were obliterated by rocket propelled grenades.

  Hollis told me there were more boats coming after us.

  “How many?” I shouted.

  “Four that I can see!” Hollis replied.

  “How many bullets do you have left?”

  “Not enough!”

  Our only chance was to make for the open water and so I opened the boat up, the engine whining, the boat shuddering.

  We cruised past a cluster of luxury apartment buildings, arcing around to face another section of overpass that teemed with zombies.

  I spotted a burst of smoke off to the right.

  “ROCKET!” Hollis yelled.

  I grabbed the antidote case. Hollis pulled me over the side of the boat seconds before the rocket slammed into the side, vaporizing the vessel.

  We splashed into the water and I lost the signal for my HUD and Slade. We were on our own again.

  The water was up to our hips. I clutched at Hollis while holding up the case.

  “We need to take shelter,” I said, hobbling, dragging Hollis back toward a nearby window on one of the apartment buildings. The zombies on the overpass dove into the water and began swimming towards us. Beyond them, I spotted the outline of the other boats approaching.

  There was no way we’d ever reach the building. The distance was too great and our enemies too many.

  “No retreat, no surrender,” I said.

  Hollis held up a hand and I took it. “This reminds me of when we first met,” she said.

  “Just the two of us.”

  “Sucks then and it sucks now,” she replied.

  I smiled and kissed me on the cheek. Then she aimed her rifle.

  The first boat slowed eighty feet away from us. The Turk was visible, rising up on the deck. He had short-barreled grenade launcher in his hands.

  “Hand it over!” he screamed.

  I stared at the antidote case.

  “Don’t,” Hollis said under her breath. “Don’t do you dare do it.”

  “What else am I supposed to do?”

  “Draw them in,” Hollis said.

  “Come and get it!” I said to the Turk.

  The Turk signaled for his men to come and get the case. Two of his fighters, a tall man and a thickly-muscled woman, jumped out of the boat. They waded forward as I kept an eye on the zombies who were several hundred yards off and closing.

  “Gimme the goddamn case,” the thickly-muscled woman growled.

  I held it out and Hollis tensed, ready to shoot the woman down as—

  THUNK!

  An arrow harpooned in the woman’s neck!

  Another arrow caught the tall man in the upper chest.

  A shadowy form drifted into sight peripherally. It was a boat with forms silhouetted against the sun. The boat cranked to life and the people on it jumped into the water.

  One of them was Sadie and she was wielding her crossbow!

  The Turk’s fighters reacted, turning, firing their weapons as Sadie and the others did likewise. I saw Deb, Raven, Lexie, and the others clutching rifles and gripping pistols, ready to do battle.

  A wicked crossfire ensued that damaged the Turk’s boat as Hollis and I crabbed back. The Turk looked for me and fired as we dove into the water. A grenade from his weapon corkscrewed through the air, landing nearby, creating a backblast that shunted us sideways.

  We surfaced as the Turk’s boat roared to life, slicing through the water towards us. Several bullets from Deb and Raven struck the Turk and his men. I handed Hollis the case and shoved her back into the relative safety of one of the buildings as the Turk’s boat headed straight for me.

  The Turk released the controls and aimed his grenade launcher. Another arrow scythed through the air and slammed into his leg. He screamed and dropped the grenade launcher and that’s when I made my move.

  Wading forward, I lunged up, grabbing the side of the boat. I pulled myself onboard, intent on wrestling the Turk from the boat. His back was matted red and slick from the bloody wound I’d given him with my knife, so I lost my grip. He shrugged me aside and moved to snatch up his grenade launcher. Before he could do that, I buried my fist in his side.

  He stumbled back over another machine positioned near the rear of the boat, one of the Flyrides I’d seen people using back near the Turk’s hideout.

  The Turk quickly recovered from my punch and rampaged forward. He jump-kicked me onto the controls. I landed on the throttle as the boat powered up again, in reverse, cutting through the water, leaving Hollis and the others behind.

  The Turk whipped out a concealed knife and sliced the air near my head as the boat rocked and bumped without someone to steer it.

  “I knew I should have killed you when I had the chance!” the Turk shrieked.

  I held up my stump and he jabbed his knife into the welted flesh. The pain was minimal and the blade was stuck which allowed me to punt him in the balls.

  He grabbed his groin and I unleashed an uppercut that caught him in the nose. Blood fountained, sheeting his face. I grabbed the wheel of the boat that was headed directly toward the overpass and the nest of zombies.

  The water was increasingly shallow and so after planting my feet on the gunwale, I dove from the boat seconds before the propeller struck asphalt. The propeller shattered into a hundred pieces.

  Landing in the water, I muscled myself up, watching the Turk ride the boat into the overpass. The boat folded up like a card table, the craft coming to a jarring stop as the Turk was catapulted into the overpass. His body smacked against the concrete and he slid down into the water.

  I began backing up, not knowing what to expect. The Turk’s body vanished underwater, obscured by the debris from the wrecked boat. The zombies up on the overpass gimped down to investigate, looking from me to the water. The others who’d been in the water before, began dog-paddling toward us.

  Where is he? I thought, staring at the water, searching for the Turk. Where did the bastard go?

  Suddenly, an engine hummed to life.

  The water out near what remained of the boat began to bubble and churn and then—

  WHOOSH!

  An object lifted up ten feet in the air.

  It was the Flyride I’d seen at the back of the Turk’s boat, the personal, flying wate
rcraft that was propelled by jets of water driven through hoses.

  The Turk, bruised, bloody, and running on empty was behind the controls. The metal and plastic machine that had the shell of a quad bike, soared up into the air, doing a barrel roll before speeding toward me.

  I crabbed back and the guns bolted to either side of the Flyride opened fire.

  “TIME TO SEND YOU ON TO YOUR REWARD, NICK!” the Turk screamed.

  Bullets pelted the water and one slashed just above my right kneecap, drawing a cord of blood that ran down my leg.

  Swinging my legs and chopping my arms, I dove sideways as the Flyride flew at me. Before I could duck, the nose of the machine hit me hard in the chest and I rolled up over the front of the thing, grabbing onto what amounted to the Flyride’s windshield.

  The Turk laughed, punching a button on the machine that sent it into a series of increasingly violent barrel-rolls. I fought to hold on as the Turk fired the Flyride’s guns again, the bullets barely missing my legs and torso.

  My stomach clenched as we rose up into the air. The spinning made me dizzy and the punches from the Turk that battered my face weren’t helping either. I punched him back, opening up a cut under his left eye and then I lost my grip, falling back down into the water.

  Surfacing, I stood, back facing the overpass, watching the Flyride roar out and away from me, exposing the high-pressure hoses connected to the bottom of the machine. Before the Turk can swing around and gun me down, I jumped and grabbed one of the hoses, tugging back as hard as I could.

  By some stroke of luck, the hose snapped free.

  The Flyride spun out of control, spiraling back toward me, guns blazing. A bullet thudded into my stump, knocking me back. The machine clipped just over my head, headed back toward the overpass, gripped in a terminal dive.

  At the last second, the Turk dove from the Flyride, belly-flopping into the murky water under the overpass. The zombies saw this and dropped down onto him. The Turk rose up, pistol in hand. He got off one shot before a teenage zombie landed on him.

  The kid crashed onto the Turk, knocking the gun out of his hand. Then four more zombies did the same thing, then a half-dozen more.

  In seconds, there were upwards of twenty zombies massing around the Turk. He tried to beat them back with his fists, but their numbers were too great.

  One of them, a teenage girl with alabaster-colored skin tented over sharp cheekbones, squared up on the Turk. Her mouth distended, almost like a snake’s, and then she bit the Turk in the neck.

  A look of unnatural terror filled the Turk’s face. He grabbed at the wound and then two more of the Woken took chomps out of his legs. He continued to fight and the flesh eaters simply rolled right over him until I could no longer see his body. I watched the zombies stab their hands down, moaning like they did when feeding, literally pulling the Turk apart. All that was left was a slick of blood and gore that began coloring the water.

  The zombies looked up from their fresh kill and began moving with menacing purpose toward me when a hail of gunfire rang out.

  The zombies were ripped to shreds. Hands over my ears, I watched as the gunfire continued for another thirty or forty seconds until every last zombie in sight had been put down.

  Turning, I spotted a boat with the ladies on board, puttering along out in front of me. Sadie was behind the controls and flanking her were Deb, Raven, Lexie, Layla, Scarlett and Lucy.

  All of them were alive, holding up the weapons they’d used to save our asses.

  Sadie twirled her crossbow and set it down as the boat drifted toward me. They picked Hollis up first, then reached me as I climbed aboard.

  “I see you’ve been making friends with the Turk,” Sadie said.

  I nodded, weary. “We’re BFFs now.”

  “You were,” Raven replied, pointing at what was left of the Turk, red and white chunks bobbing in the water.

  Lexie was the first one to spot the wounds on my face from the grenade back up on the Turk’s building, along with my newly-mangled stump.

  “What happened?”

  “Well, besides battling the Turk and his people, I also found time to fight an alligator.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” Hollis said.

  She produced the antidote case as I slumped in a rear seat and handed her the bear from back on the roof. The sound of boats and jet skis echoed in the distance.

  “The Turk’s dead,” I said. “Long live the fucking Turk.”

  “He’s dead, but his people aren’t,” Sadie said. “Someone else will take his place which means we need to bolt.”

  She swung the boat around as we jetted off, heading away from the overpass.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “We’re heading back to base to protect the antidote,” Sadie said. “Then we’ll let the others in Wyoming know we have it. I’m sure they’ll send a team down to pick it up.”

  “And then?”

  Deb smiled. “And then we do whatever the hell we want to do.”

  Raven nodded. “After all, we are fifteen percent of four billion dollars richer after finishing this mission.”

  “And we’ve also got this,” Lucy said, holding up the antidote case. “We literally have the fate of the world in our hands.”

  “With great power comes great responsibility,” Deb said.

  “Maybe we can make the future less fucked-up,” Lexie said.

  “The future never was fucked-up,” Lucy said, “because it was never real. The future’s always imaginary because it always changes, it’s always fluid. The plague was never our destiny, but simply a technical problem to overcome.”

  “And now maybe we have the means to do it,” Deb said.

  Everyone was silent, pondering the enormity of the situation. Hollis sat down next to me and I wrapped my arm around her. I kissed her deeply, hugging her, never wanting to let her go.

  “We did it,” I whispered, my voice husky with emotion.

  “We did, Nicholas,” she replied, leaning her head against mine. I tried to mentally power up Slade, but still couldn’t reach him or reboot my HUD.

  We drifted through the city and then Sadie took what she said was the long route, a circuitous course that ran past what had once been the most southern reaches of South Beach. Out in the ocean there were boats, large ones, small ones, and clusters of buildings rising up out of the water.

  “Seasteaders,” Sadie said, looking back.

  “Looks like they’re building a city out there,” Deb said, hand shielding her eyes from the sun.

  “Like I said before, they’re trying to rebuild the world,” Sadie offered.

  Lexie scrunched up her nose. “Question is, are they good guys or bad?”

  “I imagine they’re just like everyone else,” Sadie replied with a wisp of a smile. “A little bit of both.”

  “Maybe we can join them,” Raven mused.

  Maybe, I thought. Maybe.

  THE END

  The End Of Book Three

  Thanks for picking up a copy of the third book in this series. If you liked what you read, please leave a review on Amazon!

  Author Notes

  I hope everyone enjoyed Book 3. I’ve been working on some cool ideas involving Nick and the ladies joining up with the seasteaders or perhaps following them on further adventures (either domestically or internationally) after they get their huge payment for completing the mission, so keep checking back to see what I’ve come up with. It’s simply a matter of finding the time and the right way into a possible Book 4 so things don’t get stale. Thanks again for reading the first three books in the series!

  [ON THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE THE FIRST THREE CHAPTERS TO MY BOOK, “FIASCO HEIGHTS,” A SUPERHERO FANTASY HAREM ADVENTURE]

  FIASCO HEIGHTS Book Summary

  Defeat supervillains, develop a harem, and save the universe.

  It’s all in a day’s work for Quincy Fletcher, a down-on-his luck security guard whose life is
turned upside down after he accidentally kills one of the galaxy’s worst bad guys.

  Confronted by a mysterious woman named Aurora, Quincy learns that he’s now a marked man. Going on the run to escape the associates of the villain he killed, he accompanies Aurora to Fiasco Heights, a sexy-dangerous city on a parallel world dominated by the good, the bad, and the pleasure-seeking.

  Once there, Quincy’s recruited into an underground team called “The Shadow Catchers,” a group of superheroes who’ve dedicated their lives to saving the city. Quincy soon discovers that he possesses superhuman abilities which he’ll need as he battles supervillains, dragons, synthetic warriors, and the Harbinger, Fiasco Height’s most dangerous bad guy, who’s hellbent on destroying the universe.

  Warning: this is a cinematic harem book that shares much in common with a comic book or graphic novel. Do not buy this book if the idea of reading a thrilling story bulging with frenetic high-action, heroes, villains, boobs, explosions, and a harem of lovely ladies turns you off. For everyone else—yes this means you—what are you waiting for? Buy the book and enjoy!

  Copyright

  Copyright 2019 by the House of Archer

  Thanks to all the indie authors who’ve blazed a trail for the rest of us, particularly when it comes to harem books. Folks like Michael-Scott Earle, J.A. Cipriano, William D. Arand, Jamie Hawke, Harmon Cooper, and all the other great authors out there, not to mention film-makers like the late, great Andy Sidaris, who basically invented a subset of harem-like movies back in the day – many thanks! And a shout-out to all the amazing fans who enjoy reading adrenaline-fueled stories of guys and gals thrust into impossible situations, who somehow find a way to cultivate a harem, discover their inner powers, and save the universe. This book is for all of you. Hope you enjoy it!

  Editor

  The great team at Ascension E&P.

  Archer’s Army/Beta Readers/Wannabe Editors