Battlefield Z The Collected Adventures Volume 3 (Battlefield Z Collected Adventures) Read online

  I shook my head.

  "It's not like something you would think you'd need, you know. Shooting dead people who aren't really dead."

  "Tough to prep for that in school."

  He snorted.

  "Yeah, I read a book before that said it takes ten thousand hours to master something, and I thought, who has that kind of time. Now, there's nothing but."

  "In between the hunting, and fishing and trying to survive."

  "There is that. But you didn't spend ten thousand hours learning to shoot?"

  “I know what you’re doing,” I said.

  “You’re smart enough to figure it out,” he shot back. “Answer the question.”

  Another shrug as I tried to think about it.

  "I grew up with guns. Most country boys do. We get a .22 rifle with the bottle in the South. So maybe I had it that much if you add it all up."

  "My parents were pacifists," he said by way of excuse.

  "Mine too. Dad was a war hating hippie. Mom was a peacenik. But my Papaw was a poor dirt farmer and raised my brother and I with what he thought were good skills."

  Brian nodded toward the dead bodies lying in front of the gate.

  "Pretty good skills."

  "But now we have to clean it up."

  He followed me down the road, our feet crunching in the gravel as we trekked toward the fallen zombies.

  The stench hit us first, a sickly sweet malaise of rotting flesh and spilled gore. Like a run over skunk baking in a noonday sun.

  He gagged first.

  I just didn't want a leg to slick off in my hands when I reached down to drag it back to the pile.

  "You think if people spent those ten thousand hours practicing kindness the world would be different?"

  It was tough to understand him through the dry heaves, but I got his point.

  "That's a campfire question," I told him.

  "We need a couple of cold beers to ponder the possibilities of a better world."

  The leg didn't come off, though the shoes were squishy with unnamed juices.

  It's just dew, I told myself. Walked through a puddle, stood in a creek.

  I was going to wash my hands for ten thousand hours after this.

  Brian let me drag the first body back and return.

  "A million people," he retched. "Doing one act of kindness each day. You think that kind of thing would resonate with the universe. Maybe we should be practicing that."

  I pondered it as another zombie let me have his leg in a wet pop.

  I adjusted my grip onto the frayed and tattered pants and pulled harder.

  Lucky for me, they weighed practically nothing.

  Just skin over bones, ripped and flayed flesh, and a virus that made them walking dead.

  We stacked the bodies in the fire and kept going back for more.

  I froze.

  Brian saw me and glanced around, dropping the arms of the dead he was hauling.

  He reached for his gun.

  I pointed.

  “It’s a sign,” he said. “What does it mean?”

  “Get the kids.”

  He stared at me for a moment but the look on my face must have given him pause.

  He ran toward the bus and five minutes later, ran back with Bem and the Boy.

  They stopped next to me and stared. Bem couldn’t keep the tears from her eyes.

  “It couldn’t be,” said the Boy.

  “What does NSB mean?” asked Brian.

  “New Smyrna Beach,” Bem sobbed. “Our beach.”

  The letters were spray painted black on a piece of plywood nailed to a tree, the script blocky and tight.

  Tiny drips of paint drizzled down the wood from the initials to touch on a big bold DAD sprayed on the bottom.

  “NSB DAD,” said the Boy. “She is smarter than the average bear.”

  I threw my arms around their shoulders and drew them in, zombie pyres forgotten.

  “I’m reading it right?”

  They nodded.

  I couldn’t stand up and fell to my knees. No tears this time. No wails or yells.

  Just gratitude.

  I wanted a sign. I begged for a sign, something to let me know she was alive.

  Sometimes the universe gives you exactly what you ask for.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Everyone pitched in to finish burning the bodies.

  We made short work of it, until just Brian and I were left.

  The others went back to the bus to prepare for our departure.

  If we were going to clean up and reboot the world, we'd need to get rid of a lot of corpses.

  Maybe ten thousand hours of fires.

  Brian worked next to me, perhaps afraid I’d run off toward our new destination without telling anyone.

  A mad race down the Eastern seaboard toward a place he knew was crawling with Z.

  “It’s a kindness for the ones who come here after us,” said Brian.

  "I don't know if we can be kind anymore," I said to him. "Look at the people who are left. Look at the world around us. There's no place for kindness."

  He stopped and stared at the woods surrounding us.

  I paused after a couple more steps and watched him.

  The sun peeked over the treetops, still early enough to be considered morning and burning off a layer of clouds that made the day an explosion of reds, purples and oranges.

  Brian closed his eyes and let the sun wash over his face, just breathing.

  I could hear the insects buzzing, the birds waking in the trees.

  The warming air on the skin of my arms, and a breeze tickling the hair around my ears.

  "Alright smart ass," I called back to him. "I get it."

  He opened his eyes and locked in on mine but didn't move.

  "Do you though? This. This is what we're trying to save."

  I could hear the murmur of conversation from our camp beside the bus, the tittering laugh of my son and daughter as they teased each other, Tyler and Karen snickering with them.

  I looked in their direction and saw Byron hug Hannah from behind as they watched the coffee boil on the fire.

  It was just one place clean now. There were probably a hundred more Z in the woods meandering in this direction, attracted by the bullets, by the smoke, by the butterflies they saw winging by.

  This crisis was over.

  I knew another one was coming.

  Not sure when, but it was out there.

  It had to be.

  But Brian was right.

  "This isn't what we're trying to save," I told him as he stepped up next to me. "But it's close. We're getting there."

  "One act of kindness at a time," he told me. “Sometimes you have to set it up so people can be kind to you."

  I punched him in the shoulder and sent him stumbling a few feet ahead.

  "All clear?" the Boy called out as we got closer.

  "For now,” I answered.

  "Let's mount up," he said.

  I looked at Brian.

  "We've got time," I said. "Let's enjoy the coffee first."

  It wasn't much as far as kindness went.

  But it was a moment.

  And that simple act got me the first cup.

  What happens next? Find out in EVERGLADES ZOMBIE

  The next adventure in Battlefield Z

  BATTLEFIELD Z

  EVERGLADES ZOMBIE

  By

  Chris Lowry

  Copyright 2018

  Grand Ozarks Media

  All Rights Reserved

  EVERGLADE ZOMBIE

  "I need a hero," she sang under her breath as she wiped the gunk off his face.

  "You should probably hold out for the morning light," he said to her.

  She felt like laughing but held it in. He could tell. He could always tell with her.

  He reached up with a grungy hand and held the side of her face. She leaned into it.

  Her mother had held her cheek like that, just the pres
ence of it made her feel calm.

  "You need a bath," she said.

  She took his hand away from her face and fought down the reluctance, missed the soothing feel of his warmth next to hers.

  She bathed it in the bloody water in the pan, wiping the crimson rag up and down the wrinkles, scars and bruises.

  There were more of them. Always more of them.

  "Are you going out again?"

  She couldn't look at him when she asked. She knew the answer. They hadn't found his daughter yet, his youngest. He would keep going.

  She was afraid that one time, he wouldn't come back.

  "In the morning," he groaned.

  She pushed him back into the rough pillow made from a folded comforter in the back of the bus.

  "Sleep," she told him. "I'm going to help Peg."

  He closed his eyes and laid back on the simple white sheet folded over their bag. He would sleep, then later, after he woke, she would burn it.

  It wouldn't be the first one. She suspected nor the last either.

  She left him the bus and stepped into the afternoon. The heat and mugginess was growing thick, a sign they were getting further South.

  They had found her in the panhandle of Florida, so she was familiar with the feeling, but she had never been much further South than Jacksonville.

  "How is he?" Brian looked up from the fire.

  "He'll live," she smirked.

  It was a private joke among them. He, of all of them, probably would live.

  They had called him Z-proof, behind his back, as well as other choice names. Asshole. Stubborn. Jackass. They were all favorites.

  Sometimes they were said with an underlying current of love.

  Peg looked over at the three people huddled on the far side of the fire.

  "Think they were worth it?" she said in a low voice.

  "Were we?" Brian asked.

  She picked up a stick and poked the embers around a pot of boiling beans.

  "We're running low on food," said Peg. "Water. He was supposed to bring those back."

  Brian patted her knee.

  "We'll stretch it," he said and patted his thin stomach. "I've been meaning to drop a few lbs anyway."

  She didn't smile back at him. Being back in Florida made her nervous. Hell, it made them all nervous.

  Orlando had almost five million people before the zombie apocalypse wiped out the population. But instead of leaving dead bodies to quickly decay in the fetid heat, they turned Z and roamed the countryside.

  Anna imagined them bouncing back and forth between the Atlantic and the Gulf, a wide swath of herding Z forever walking between the two sides of the peninsula.

  "What's so funny?" Peg snapped.

  "Us," she said.

  "Funny in the head," Brian said.

  Anna nodded. She picked up two bowls of beans, meager portions carefully measured into fifteen almost equal servings and took them to the huddled trio.

  "Hi," she said. "I'm Anna."

  "Raymer," the oldest said.

  He held out a callused black hand and took the food from her.

  "Thank you," he passed one to the woman and the other to the teen.

  Anna grabbed two more bowls and returned to join them.

  "Julie," he introduced the woman as he accepted his food from her. "And Louise."

  "Lou," said the girl with large black eyes that glimmered in the firelight. "I like to be called Lou."

  "Lou," Raymer stuttered. "I forget."

  Anna spooned up a couple of beans at a time, stretching it out to make it last.

  The canned white beans were mostly flavorless, but the salt and pepper Peg added competed to dominate the soupy mess.

  It didn't last long enough, and Anna wondered if it was just enough food to keep her hungry.

  "What happened out there?" she asked, setting aside her empt bowl.

  They would clean it later. All of them, and pack them away for breakfast tomorrow. The last of the oatmeal.

  Raymer stared into his empty dish as if wishing would make it full again. He had saggy skin and baggy eyes, the look of a man who lost weight too fast.

  His gray pallor told her he was either sick or starving, and for a moment, she wondered if it was both.

  "Are you bit?" she asked.

  He shook his head.

  "None of us," he said. "But we haven't eaten in days. I'm lightheaded."

  He rocked next to the woman in front of the fire, Julie, who ate in silence and never looked up.

  Lou, on the other hand, finished her food fast, and watched the others eat like a puppy ready to beg. Or ready to dart in to snatch any scraps that might fall.

  "We had a house," Raymer said.

  He stared into the fire as Brian fed branches into the flames, building it against the growing darkness.

  "It wasn't our house, but we were making it home. At first, there were more of us. Eight," he said with pride.

  "The house was empty of people when we found it, and the others joined us. That's how we met Louise."

  "Lou," the girl corrected.

  "Lou. We had some food, we had a garden in back, a couple of weapons. Most of all, we had a fence. The fence kept us safe."

  Julie stared in the flames with him, as if the fire was a televisions screen casting back an image of their new found home.

  "Routine," said Raymer. "We settled into one pretty quick. Two people hunting, three to scavenge, and the rest tended the house."

  He motioned to the tiny campsite. There were two tents set up on the roof of the bus, a couple of folding chairs by the fire, but the majority of their sleeping and living space was inside the grimy yellow bus.

  "We made it work," he said.

  "Much like we do," Anna told him and he nodded.

  "It's the way now."

  "But you're not home now," said Peg.

  Anna noticed she hand sharpened the end of the stick, scraping it on one of the rocks that ringed the fire. She lifted the point and examined it, set it back in the coals to harden the tip.

  "One of our people got bit. He knew what was going to happen, but he hid it from us."

  "You didn't notice him get sick?" Brian said.

  Julie sniffled and hid her face. Raymer patted her on the shoulder and drew her close.

  "We had a cold run through the house," he said. "Something so simple before all of this began. A fever. The sniffles. We used to call it a twenty four hour bug, though every time I caught it, it lasted for about three days. This one was no exception."

  "We thought he got it last," said Lou. "He went to his room and laid down with a fever. We thought he had a cold."

  Raymer sighed.

  "Like I said, there were eight of us in the house. The three bedrooms were like dorms. He bit the two in the room with him while they slept. When we opened the door to check on him the next morning, he bit another. We got out and ran."

  "Into?"

  "Him," Raymer nodded toward the bus. "Lou tripped and one was about to grab her. I ran back to help, but I was too slow."

  "He saved me," said Lou. "Came sprinting in like a marathon runner."

  She slapped her hands together.

  "Whack. Whack. Splat," she demonstrated. "He got the four of them in like three seconds."

  "He does that," said Brian. "Saved all of us."

  "A lot of practice," Anna added.

  "So he killed the four people from your house," she pointed as she counted. "But I'm only counting three."

  "Our man who was bit."

  "His name was Jonathan," said Lou.

  "Jonathan," Raymer rubbed his face. "Jonathan must have forgotten to cover his tracks, or maybe he was in a haze when he was bitten. He led a big group of them right to us."