Gone Dark_Battlefield Z Read online

  BATTLEFIELD Z

  GONE DARK

  A Battlefield Z Legends

  By

  Chris Lowry

  Copyright 2018

  Grand Ozarks Media

  All Rights Reserved

  Can I send you FLYOVER ZOMBIE for free?

  CHAPTER ONE

  It wasn’t easy being popular.

  Not that she would know. Emma Dylan walked with an understated grace across the quad, sticking to the fringe of the grass to avoid the popular boys.

  She could see a group of them tormenting one boy in the middle of the courtyard.

  They had separated him from his group of Boy Scout friends, much like lions separated the weak gazelle from a herd.

  Maybe they picked him out because of the yellow scarf, or because he had a curly mane of hair under a blue trucker cap with a yellow bill, familiar scout colors.

  They could have chosen to terrorize him for his weight, which some would call husky, and others would say chubby.

  No matter the reason, they had circled around him, and Emma wished she could intervene.

  She wished she was popular enough to stop them. Strong enough to stand up to them.

  “Screw you, asswipe,” the picked on boy snapped as one of the Lacrosse players swiped at his bandana.

  Emma wanted to call it a neckerchief, but she was sure the Scout would argue the fine point with her.

  “Knob, be reasonable,” said the tallest of the boys in the group, Steve Newton.

  “And I’m telling you to fuck off, quarterback punk,” Bob shot back.

  The group oohed and made small noises among each other at the sheer nerve of the nerd.

  Emma spied the rest of the herd watching from the other side of the quad and swore they were cowering.

  Steve glanced around at the gang of boys. The jocks watched him for a reaction, and the rest of the kids stood frozen, barely breathing for fear of attracting unwanted attention.

  “Stop,” Emma stalked up and yanked the neckerchief from the Lacrosse player. “Just stop.”

  “Get out of here Dylan,” Steve smirked. “Don’t you have a story to write? About me? About the game?”

  “Did you play?” she asked even though she knew the answer.

  As far as quarterback punks went, Steve Newton hit all the checked boxes.

  The problem was he knew it. Some guys had confidence in their abilities. Steve had his, plus extra, probably stolen from all the kid’s he bullied for their lunch money. Stole their confidence too and stuffed it in his back pocket.

  “You saw me,” the smirk got bigger. He leaned in closer. “I saw you taking my pictures on the sideline.”

  “Stop,” she said again and blushed when her voice cracked.

  She had taken his picture for the paper, and she did have to write a story about the game.

  But he didn’t have to know she took more than one. Okay, a lot.

  Besides, he’d be way cuter if he wasn’t such a-

  “Buttcheese!” Bob shouted and shoved Steve away from her.

  He screamed a short high pitched yell, yanked the bandana from Emma’s hand and took off running through his small group of Scouts.

  “Oh Knob!” Steve called after him, laughing. “I’ll talk to you later Dylan.”

  Emma hated that he winked at her. Hated that her cheeks felt flush and hated even more that she thought he was cute.

  Bob had it right, she thought as she watched him jog after the fleeing boy. He was a butt cheese. Whatever that was.

  The final bell rang and she rushed with the rest of the students toward her class.

  CHAPTER

  The lights flickered in the editing room then went out. Emma bit back a small scream.

  Sure, she was alone in a big building all by herself, but Mr. Matthews was just down the hall in the teacher’s lounge.

  She was about to call out for him when the emergency lighting kicked in. Yellow cones of weak light illuminated the doorway, along with the red Exit sign over the frame.

  Emergency lighting, she groaned.

  The computer in front of her stayed dark. Which meant all of the work since the autosave function was lost.

  “Damn,” she grunted. “Damn. Damn.”

  She closed her notebook and jammed it into her backpack. Whatever was lost would have to be redone in the morning, because she wasn’t planning on staying here til midnight. Or later.

  Besides, her parents would be worried.

  “Mr. Matthews?” she called down the hall as she opened the door.

  Emergency lights bathed the linoleum in yellow washes of color, giving everything a sick look.

  Like a horror movie, she shivered.

  “Mr. Matthews!”

  It wasn’t like the teacher not to answer. Maybe he was outside sneaking a breath of fresh air.

  Emma trailed a finger along the metal lockers as she walked toward the exit at the far end of the hall.

  The school was quiet, a creepy sensation to her. She was used to the shouts, banters and just noise of a hundred teenagers co-mingling between classes, bitching about homework or asking questions about pop quizzes.

  The noise filled the hall, bounced off the walls and made the day to day of school life just plain loud.

  Now, there was nothing.

  No noise at all.

  Not even the hum of electrical systems or air conditioning. Even the battery operated emergency lights were quiet, the efficient LED bulbs a silent alternative to their incandescent ancestors.

  “Mr. Matthews?” she tried one more time.

  But her teacher was as silent as the halls.

  She opened the door to the outside and heard a siren in the distance.

  “At least I haven’t gone deaf,” she said as she crossed the empty quad to the parking lot.

  She was glad she parked close because the streetlights were out. She wasn’t scared. There was nothing to be scared of, she thought.

  But she ran anyway, fumbled her keys out of her pack and jumbled them into the lock.

  Emma dropped into the seat behind the steering wheel, slammed her hand against the locks and sat there, trying to catch her breath.

  It wasn’t reasonable, she said to herself. No reason to be scared. Just a black out. Just a power outage. She had been through plenty before.

  Two years ago, a snowstorm hit and the ice on the power lines took out the electricity for four days. No power then.

  Then why was the hair on the back of her neck standing up and why was she so scared now, she wondered.

  She cranked up the car and dropped it in gear. The headlights were a welcome relief across the dark expanse of the school.

  She turned the wheel as she pulled out and saw a shadow on the ground next to a door. It looked like a body.

  Emma rolled the window down halfway.

  “Mr. Matthews?!” she called.

  But it didn’t move. Whatever it was.

  Just garbage, she thought. A jacket left by some jock on the ground. Just a mistake, a trick of her eyes.

  She shook her head and didn’t back up for a second look. She rolled up the window and drove away.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The road was blocked.

  A lone cop sat in the front seat of his patrol black and white. The lights from Emma's car washed over his pale face. He climbed out, reached back in and lifted a short barreled shotgun from the seat and racked it while she watched.

  He held up a hand to stop her.

  Emma rolled to a grinding halt short of the orange and white striped barricade and stared from the cop to the dark streets behind her.

  There were no streetlights as far as she could see.

  Just a pumpkin colored glow
from three buildings burning in their tiny downtown area.

  "A lady is attacking a man back there," she rolled her window halfway down and yelled through it. "Where are the firetrucks!"

  "You need to go home and stay inside," the Cop licked his lips. "It's not safe out here."

  Emma gulped as she stared at the road past him.

  "What's happening?"

  "Just go home, kid. Now."

  Emma sighed and cranked the wheel on her car.

  She popped it in reverse and pulled back into the dark street. When she was a few dozen yards from the barricade, she curled the tires to one side to turn around, and only had to stop and reverse once to straighten it out.

  She watched the lights in the far distance wink out block by block, chasing the dark streetlights until there was nothing to see but the cones of her headlights.

  It was almost beautiful. If she hadn't been so spooked.

  And alone, she thought.

  It wouldn't seem so bad if she wasn't alone.

  A car slid around the corner of a side street behind her, headlights bouncing as it careened off the curb and raced toward her.

  She clenched her shoulders, gripped the wheel and braced for impact.

  The engine roared as the car slipped around her, scraping her door and fender.

  "Hey!" she squealed.

  The car hit the next intersection and wavered. The front end slid one way, the back end the other and the car plowed into the corner of a building. Bricks crashed across the hood in a cascade of dust and steam.

  Emma slowed her car to a crawl.

  She could see people now, running up the street and crossing the intersection.

  The driver's door opened and a lady in a bathrobe flinched out. Her chest and chin were covered in blood and she stumbled across the sidewalk, tripping on crushed brick.

  One of the first men reached her, tried to help her stand and balance.

  "Lady! Are you okay?" Emma heard him shout.

  The robe flared out like broken wings as the woman lunged toward him with a moan.

  Her would be rescuer screamed as she latched onto his arms and yanked him off balance, her teeth chomping and biting his neck.

  They fell in a writhing heap. The rest of the people, more shadows than faces, kept running past them. No one stopped to help.

  Emma fought back a gag as the woman lifted her head, stretching skin from the man's cheek like rubber until snapped off in a shredded gobbet.

  He bellowed in rage and agony as he tried to push her off, his feet beating helplessly against the dark sidewalk.

  The other two men froze as they tried to decide what to do to help.

  A child slipped from the open car door and wrapped her arms around the shorter on closest to the car.

  He twisted around, tried to dislodge her. His feet got twisted in hers, twined like stiff vines, and they pitched forward across the other woman and the man on the ground.

  He added his screams to the other as the little girl ripped into his exposed flesh.

  The third man turned and ran.

  He sprinted toward Emma’s car, pounded on the hood to make her stop.

  She slammed on the brakes and tried to breath.

  He glared through the window in panicked rage, and whipped around toward her door.

  She spun to lock it with her hand, but he cracked the handle as she slammed the lock.

  The door ripped open.

  “No!” she screamed.

  He yanked her out of the driver’s seat, fighting with the belt to get her loose.

  The strap cinched around her neck, as her tiny hands beat against his arm. He pulled once, twice.

  Blue stars flashed in front of her eyes. She could feel the blood pounding in her ears.

  He flipped open a lockblade knife. Emma couldn’t draw a breath to scream.

  The man sliced the webbing, dragged her out of her car and flung her to the asphalt.

  She gasped and sobbed as jumped behind the wheel and peeled out in a cloud of smoke and rubber.

  The taillights of her car grew dim as he raced away, leaving her in the street.

  The fleeing driver blew through a stop sign.

  A car roared into the intersection and plowed into the side of her car.

  Emma screamed in disbelief as her car twirled around in a shrieking cloud of oily smoke. The rear end hit the curb and popped both tires.

  The driver of her car limped out of the wreckage.

  "Hey!" Emma yelled as she stood up. "That's my car."

  The man held his head as he turned toward her.

  "Was my car," she muttered.

  A second car never slowed as it plowed through the intersection.

  Her car thief flipped ass over tea kettle and smashed to the ground neck first. She could hear it snap over the sound of the receding car that never slowed.

  Emma stared in open mouthed horror.

  A moan caught her attention. She whipped around.

  A small group of people shuffled up the street toward her. They were sheathed in blood and viscera, dead lifeless eyes trained on her.

  She opened her mouth to scream but changed her mind and ran instead.

  CHAPTER

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  She knew most of the people in town but didn’t recognize these guys. There were five of them. Bunched together in a loose formation that stretched across the street, a few feet between each of them.

  Except on the left. Emma thought that guy looked twitchy. Looked scared. He was cheated in closer to his buddy, which left a gap between him and the lot beside him.

  “Don’t you have bigger things to worry about?” she jammed her thumb over her shoulder to the conflagration on the street behind her.

  They couldn’t see whatever it was chasing her.

  If it could even be called a chase. A group of people moving that slow. Relentless.

  “It’s the end of the world, babe,” said one of the men.

  He had a beard, dark eyes and a camo vest. It looked like it was stained with chocolate, and Emma realized less than a second later that blood dried like that on fabric.

  She faked to the right, then sprinted left, toward the open gap on the side of the road.

  “Grab her!” the bearded man in camo yelled.

  The young guy on the left darted for her, arms outstretched.

  Emma ducked under, slipped past and twisted as he made a desperate grab for her coat.

  He snagged it, drew her up short. Her feet slid on the concrete.

  She dropped out of the coat, gained her footing and sprinted even harder.

  She could hear them pounding after her, grunting as they ran.

  Emma reached the end of the block, turned left and put a building between them.

  Not much. Not near fast enough.

  But there was a park on the right just ahead, one of those reclaimed downtown lots turned into a green space to give people a place to eat lunch in nature.

  It wasn’t much more than a fountain, and a walking path, benches and flowers that ran for the rest of the city block.

  And it was wide open.

  She thought she could dodge through the trees, put something, anything between them and her.

  Emma cut across the road, the footsteps behind her growing louder.

  Then she was in the park, her feet on the grass and she couldn’t hear them anymore.

  Until something plowed into her back and tackled her.

  She slid across the ground, a heavy body on top of her. She couldn’t catch her breath. Rough hands rolled her over, jerked her up.

  “Did you think you’d get away?” the beard breathed on her.

  Emma balled up her fist and socked him across the chin. His mouth was open and she heard it clack against his tongue.

  He squealed and stepped back. Emma drew back her foot and kicked him in the groin.