Renegade Z: a Battlefield Z series Read online

  RENEGADE ZOMBIE

  BATTLEFIELD Z SERIES

  Book 8

  By

  Chris Lowry

  Copyright 2017 Grand Ozarks Media

  Orlando FL

  All Rights Reserved

  Direct all inquiries to [email protected]

  Get great tips on Twitter @Lowrychris

  Have you joined the adventure?

  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

  Get your Free Copy of FLYOVER ZOMBIE here

  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.

  Grab your Free Copy Here

  RENEGADE ZOMBIE

  CHAPTER TWO

  I'm pissed.

  I'm not worried about my kids, at least not my two oldest.

  Scattered to the wind again by another crazy survivor.

  She sent my boy to a depot in Nashville, and his older sister abandoned the township in the company of a scout I trust, another kid I'd crossed half the country with.

  Everyone was scattered to the wind, but it gave me purpose.

  And anger.

  What should have been a simple drive across the country, pick up my two oldest, drive back to grab my youngest and find someplace to hide out the end of the world had turned into a cluster.

  Most of it wasn't even my fault.

  I just piss people off. I guess it's my face.

  Granted, before the zombie apocalypse I was only considered marginally handsome by a select group of genius women.

  Even as my hairline receded, they blamed it on excess testosterone and told me I looked like my father.

  Since the end of the world, I'd been shot, blown up, grazed, beaten, bullied, made fun of and even hanged.

  Those tend to leave scars and now, though I could not often see my reflection, I looked more like Frankenstein's monster than I did the C-suite ladder climbing salesman I was before it all started.

  Or maybe just a really unlucky boxer, one who wasn't that great at fighting, but was tenacious.

  A real life Rocky fist fighting for life against Z, mad militias, religious nutters and assorted maniacs that gravitated to power after the Armageddon stole almost all the good people.

  Which made me wonder why I was so good at surviving if all the good ones were gone.

  Philosophy would come later.

  First, find the boy.

  Save the boy.

  Second, find Bis.

  Save the world.

  My world at least.

  And yes, those were nicknames for the kids, which stuck.

  The girl's based on the banana fana song, and the Boy by the fact of being the only one in the mix.

  I thought I'd have to do it alone.

  Find and save my kids.

  But after I used some samurai logic on the madwoman in Kentucky and her group of Colonel's that sent the boy to Nashville, a yellow bus popped up on my horizon.

  I planned for another fight and got a pleasant surprise.

  It was more people from my second family, there to help.

  CHAPTER TWO

  "My kids are gone," I said to Brian.

  "We'll find them," Anna rubbed the small of my back.

  She knew touch was going to keep me grounded, something instinctual.

  I imagined they could hear my heart pounding against my chest, breath constricted in fear.

  The Boy, lost, sent away by Mags on a fool’s errand.

  Bem and Tyler missing, gone after him perhaps.

  Or killed and hidden.

  Bis somewhere on the East Coast.

  Every turn, someone trying to stop me from reaching my kids, someone trying to keep me from making them safe.

  How many men had I killed who stood in my way?

  I lost count.

  A thousand zombies. Maybe more.

  I'd kill a million more if that's what it took.

  The rubbing on my back stopped.

  "Something in the woods," Anna breathed.

  Her brown eyes were pools of darkness as she stared through the afternoon shadows trying to pick out what it was.

  I ran my hand along the back of her waist, pulled a pistol she had tucked there and stalked to the front of the yellow bus.

  My look shut everyone up.

  Brian's hands waved them down to make smaller targets or get ready to run.

  I leaned against the edge of the hood to use as cover, scanning the tree line, trying to look for patterns, searching for whatever didn't fit.

  The shadows under an oak shifted, moved.

  Bodies.

  Lumbering through the trees, slow.

  I lifted the pistol, aimed and got ready to fire.

  The body moved under the darkest part of the tree, half hidden by the trunk.

  Coming this way.

  I took a quick look over my shoulder, did a head count.

  If it was Z, I could get it before it got too close.

  A spiked gumball bounced off the hood of the bus with a loud clang. I looked back and saw the shadow Z launch a sidearm pitch.

  Another gumball whizzed by my head, and I lowered the pistol.

  Z don't pitch. Z don't throw.

  Then Tyler stepped out of the woods.

  "Thought you were going to shoot me," he called out.

  Bem stepped out behind him, bundled up in his jacket.

  "Us," she called.

  I don't remember running. I don't recall scooping her up or spinning her around, and those weren't my tears leaking all over the place.

  I set her down and grabbed Tyler's outstretched forearm, pulled the slight boy into a hard hug.

  "We know where they sent him," Bem said.

  "I was going to track," Tyler confessed. "But it's a straight highway shot."

  "How far behind are we?"

  I led them back to the group.

  “Days,” said Tyler.

  “They could have gone off track,” I said, thinking to myself.

  “Not with the guy they have leading,” said Tyler. “I eavesdropped on him. He’s a by the book dude.”

  By the book.

  Words that would never apply to me.

  Throw the book, sure, or crack open a book, always.

  But my life up until the Z had not been lived by any set of rules.

  Which is how I ended up mid-level management in a cube farm, nursing rage daily at the constraints of a life I hadn’t chosen.

  Or I guess a life my choices led me to live.

  Two kids in one state, a third in another. Two ex-wives. Money coming in, because that’s all their moms told me I was good for.

  Other men raising my children.

  Other men hearing about boy problems and dealing with pre-teen angst, learning their favorite songs and how often it shifted.

  Other me
n playing at Dad.

  I got the visits.

  Long weekends and holidays.

  It still wasn’t enough.

  Imagine spending a decade of your adult life just sad. Miserable.

  Waiting for the weekends to show up.

  But I’m not sad by nature. Never had been.

  So, it mixed in me.

  All that sadness, all the dreams of a future that didn’t happen, of a present out of my control turned into a singular emotion.

  Rage.

  I got pissed.

  Which as it turned out, was the perfect emotion to have in a zombie apocalypse.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “What’s the plan?” Brian asked.

  “You’re in charge,” I told him.

  Brian wanted to lead a group since we first met in a traffic jam in Orlando.

  He was running from a zombie herd with his friend Peg, I was running from the other direction with an undead herd of my own.

  We met literally on top of cars smashed together creating a roadblock and Brian blew them all up to cover our escape.

  He told people I did it, but I don’t remember it that way.

  “You’re going to run off and rescue him,” Brian told me.

  I hate it when someone knows me or can read me. I feel like they’re going to sell me something.

  “We’re going with you,” he said.

  I didn’t want to buy that. But I didn’t know if I had a choice.

  “What about the town?” I asked.

  They had left the safety of a small pocket community in Kentucky to follow after me.

  I couldn’t aske them to keep going.

  Turns out, I didn’t have to.

  “We’re going to be chased too,” Peg explained. “Better to have you with us when it happens.”

  “What happens?”

  “When her husband shows up,” Peg pointed to Anna.

  He’s not my husband.

  “It’s what he calls himself,” Peg explained in the dry sort of way she had of talking. “It’s easier for us to refer to him that way.”

  “I don’t like it,” said Anna and she glanced at me with a look in her eye.

  A look that begged for help.

  “I don’t like it either,” I said and tried not to sound distracted.

  “Good,” said Peg. “We need that. To keep us safe.”

  She looked at me too and it hit me.

  Who said I can’t appreciate the subtle approach, so long as I could see it coming.

  And have it explained to me in small words.

  They were scared and wanted me around to protect them.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I went back to Pine Bluff once.

  This is the small southern town in Arkansas where I grew up.

  I don't remember it being so poor so decrepit so destitute.

  But it was or is still.

  Driving around, twenty years after I left just to visit the graves of my grandparents and look at the places where I spent time as a child.

  I saw so much potential in the place.

  Driving by homes built in the late 1800’s still standing period brick structures that looked worn and dirty and tired.

  I could see the potential of the place the possibility of a future.

  Or maybe it was the ghosts of the past I saw the lingering spirit of what might have been or what once was a bustling township.

  Because even though I grew up in the poor part of town and even though I was poor there was money in Pine Bluff.

  Smart men who made lots of dollars.

  My grandfather was one of them.

  A smart man when it came to building his skills and portfolio.

  I wish I would have listened to his advice growing up.

  But like many young people I only came to know how smart he was once I was older.

  What I remembered about him was, he built a city.

  Not all of it, and certainly not enough to even have a street named after him.

  But he built a reputation for being someone solid, dependable.

  Reliable.

  And he was good at what he did.

  At least I inherited that much from him.

  Blue collar zombie killer. That’s me.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I could hear the screaming and shouting from the building.

  We stood on a small hill several hundred yards away just arise in the neighborhood that gave us a clear view of what was going on below.

  Hundreds of zombies surrounded the building and it looked like the squad was making an Alamo of it.

  “We can't let you go alone,” said Brian.

  “You came this far,” I told him. “This is close enough for you.”

  I looked around at the group of people that followed me to find my son. Anna. Peg. Brian. Byron. Hannah. Tyler and Bem.

  They all watched me, waiting for orders.

  I looked down at the mass of writhing zombies below and knew I couldn't ask them to go.

  “Give me your ammo,” I told them.

  I laid out two of the rifles and collected magazines for each of them.

  There were one hundred sixteen shots.

  I took two pistols and four magazines each.

  Then I looked at the pike in Brian's hand.

  It might be a good last-minute resort tool but for close-quarter work with that many Z's I didn't think it would be as effective as I wanted it to be.

  Not alone.

  “Dad,” said Bem, her voice soft with fear.

  I pointed at the hunting rifle that Tyler carried.

  “Are you ready to earn your Southern boy hunting stripes?”

  He laid down on the hill and sighted in on the zombies below.

  Brian fell next to him

  “This is how you help me,” I said. “Keep the path clear. Watch my back.”

  I leaned over and kissed Anna quickly.

  She wrapped her arms around my shoulders and drew my head down and held it, our lips pressed together tightly.

  She pulled back and her eyes flashed a promise.

  “I'll drive,” she said.

  I started to protest.

  It wasn't going to be safe for her.

  But she climbed into the truck before I could say anything rolled up the driver's window reached over and locked the passenger door.

  She dropped it into gear.

  I grabbed the rifles and jumped in the bed of the truck.

  “This is stupid,” Peg called out. “There has to be a smarter way.”

  But she dropped on the berm next to Brian and lined up her rifle too, ready to cover my six.

  Or shoot me in the back.

  Anna jammed the accelerator and we raced down the road towards the crowd of zombies.

  She reached the edge and started to turn around as they noticed us.

  She backed the truck in plowing through four or five with the tailgate.

  She stopped before she got stuck.

  I lifted a rifle in each hand, started firing and jumped over into the fray.

  Growing up I watched war movies like Rambo and Commando, about

  superhuman soldiers who are able to take on entire armies by themselves.

  Heck, even Karate Kid got to take on the Cobra Kai dojo all by himself until Mr. Miyagi jumped in to save his ass.

  Each of those guys had a montage where they were able to prepare their weapons, prepare their themselves for battle.