Battlefield Z Everglades Zombie_the Battlefield Z series Read online

I tried not to gag as I reached for the gun. Checked the rounds. Two gone, four more for the pumping.

  I jacked a new round in the chamber and aimed at the front door as I backed toward the slider.

  My foot slipped in sticky goo and I fell over on my ass.

  As the front door shredded. Bullet tore through the hollow metal panels and buzzed over my head, angry hornets of death.

  I scooted, aimed from my back and waited.

  They kicked in the front door and two rushed in as it bounced back on them. The door hit number two and shoved him slightly sideways.

  The shotgun went off like a cannon in the enclosed space and pounded a slug into each of them.

  It made the others hesitate.

  Just enough for me to hit the slider and fight it open. It was stuck. Wouldn’t budge.

  I slammed the butt of the shotgun into the glass, ducked as it sparkled in shards around me and crawled out as the second wave of bandits screwed up their courage and came in shooting.

  The back yard was shallow, narrow, surrounded by a fence. Two shots against how many men and how many bullets, I wasn’t sure.

  No way to know.

  I ran for the fence as fast as I could, expecting shots from the side of the house. But whoever was in charge of this boondoggle didn’t flank the house.

  Just sent the men through the front.

  I hit the fence, jumped, hopped and plopped on the other side.

  The gray spots from the crash came back and blossomed black, like an eclipse on the Florida sun.

  I could hear the men pounding through the back door on the other side, boots slapping the concrete of the patio.

  I rolled over and crawled, scrambled in the dry brown grass and sand.

  A dead dog’s body was chained to a red doghouse. I curled up on the far side of the doghouse and waited.

  I could see the shadow of the fence and a round head pop over it, the voice shouting.

  “Clear!”

  Then it moved on. I held still. Trying to breath. Trying not to pass out.

  I lost that fight.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I woke up later.

  How much later, I wasn’t sure. Hours, maybe.

  Long enough that it would matter. People might come looking for me. My people.

  And I didn’t want them out there for the bandits to find.

  Another thing about a car crash that no one talks about is the ache. It hurts.

  The trauma makes every muscle sore and add to it other injuries from dumb moves in my cross country romp and I’m sad to say it took a few moments to get up and limber.

  Before the Z, I would schedule a massage and imagine a happy ending while they worked on the knots, and pounded out the pain.

  Now I couldn’t imagine such a luxury.

  I listened before I moved too much. It was quiet enough to stand, stretch, wait for the blood to restore feeling.

  The body of the dog and almost melted into the earth and I sent a curse after the people who just left it chained up to die. Maybe they met a similar fate.

  They did.

  The sliding glass door opened to my pull, released a noxious cloud of dead fumes, two bodies laid out on the floor, tiny holes in the back of their heads, shot execution style.

  Maybe they didn’t mean to kill their dog, I thought as I looked at the cabinets. Empty, doors open.

  Someone took everything.

  The bandits, I suspected. Killed these people. Took their food. Didn’t free their dog.

  I let a surge of hate gurgle in my gut. Kids and dogs. Anyone who would hurt either had a special place in hell and I wanted to help them get there.

  But I had to get to my people first.

  The road in front of the house was empty. The two transport trucks gone.

  I could see the twin skid marks of burned rubber leading across the asphalt to the house next door, but that was the only damage visible from this angle.

  The front door unlocked with a click and I opened it to a gust of salty tinged wind slipping in from the ocean side of the island as I stepped out onto the porch.

  The cold steel of a barrel poked against the side of my head and bounced.

  “Got you,” a young thin reedy voice said.

  I slowly lifted my hands in surrender, glanced out of the side of my eyes.

  It was a kid, little more than at least. Byron’s age. All elbows and knock knees and a bad case of acne that dotted his cheeks like blush.

  “Don’t move,” he warned and took a deep breath.

  He was going to shout for help. Scream maybe.

  The glance showed me his finger wasn’t on the trigger. Me walking out of the door must have surprised him as much as he surprised me.

  I kept my hands moving up and whipped them up and twisted. The move knocked his gun up, toward the house, and I had enough time to glimpse his wide eyes before I jammed the heel of may palm into his nose.

  Blood splotched across the sand drizzled porch as he plopped over backwards, yanked the rifle with him as he fell and hauled on the strap.

  The hit was enough to blast starbursts in his eyes, but the kid was tough. I had to give that to him.

  He crab crawled backwards, mouth working through a sheet of blood that fountained from his misshapen nose, fingers discovering how to reach the trigger, how to aim.

  I planted one foot on the porch and the other between his spread legs before he could get too far.

  He forgot about the gun, forgot his name even as both hands cupped his smashed groin. He opened his mouth to howl. I dropped down and punched him in the stomach.

  His diaphragm spasmed as he struggled to breath, the two hits curling him over on his side, so painful he couldn’t even moan. That kind of hurt is intense agony, the only relief is in freezing and remaining still.

  Still and silent.

  I looked around.

  There was a guy at the house on the other side of the car crash, waiting by the door. His back to us as he leaned against the rail, waiting.

  They left two to stand watch, maybe more that I couldn’t see. I was too exposed out here, to vulnerable.

  What I needed was more information.

  I grabbed my guard by the ankle and hauled him through the front door, into the house and clicked it closed behind us.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  There is something to be said for the resiliency of youth. I’d been kicked in the nuts before not too long ago and it felt like it took me a lot longer to recover than the kid.

  By the time I had him in a chair and used shoelaces from the two dead bodies to tie him up, he was breathing and glaring.

  But he hadn’t started talking yet. Or screaming, so maybe he wasn’t recovering as fast as I thought.

  He just showed it better than I did.

  "Are you going to shoot me?" he grunted.

  “Too loud,” I told him.

  He seemed to consider this and nodded.

  “You want me to talk,” he said.

  He knew. Smart kid. He didn’t need me to tell him. He squared his jaw anyway.

  “I’m not telling you shit.”

  I stared at him. Let the silence stretch for a few moments until it got uncomfortable. Most people can’t stand the quiet. Nature abhors a vacuum and human nature wants to fill it with noise.

  Before the Z, it was radios and television, mindless chatter. We called it small talk because it signified nothing. Small talk from scared minds afraid of what might happen in the void.

  Silence is boring, the Boy had told me once when he heard I drove sixteen hours from Florida with the radio off. Nothing but the hum of the tires on the road and the wind against the windshield in my ears, and the thoughts that bubbled up in silence such as that.

  I told him that the only way to hear something was to listen. I tried to make it sound deep and meaningful, wise words from his old man he could repeat to his own children one day.

  But I think he thought me a fool.

  Wh
y listen to the quiet when there is such a thing as a guitar solo.

  Still, my ability to just be served me well in the long runs, and long drives and served me still even now as the pimple faced boy stared up at me and began to babble.

  Just to fill the void.

  I was glad he decided to talk instead of scream, but his rifle in my hands may have helped him make that choice. No need to threaten someone who can conjure up worse things in their mind.

  His name was Jamie and he was nineteen, though folks thought he looked younger. He worked at a gas station before the Z, and he was part of a group of hard chargers and bad asses that owned the island now.

  They were going to kill me and my friends for trespassing, and take all of our stuff.

  I didn’t bother to correct him that we had no stuff, and in fact, were looking to get supplies on this side of the island, just to tide us over in a house to house hunt for clues or answers.

  The sign that led us here didn’t exactly put an X on the spot we needed to find.

  Jamie kept talking. His family was gone, the group the only people he had left. He was from south of Daytona, and it was lost to the Z, just like Orlando and the rest of Florida. Probably.

  I didn’t ask questions. Just kept watching him. I watched him talk, shift, twitch and squirm as he filled the silence with information.

  But it wasn’t good information.

  I didn’t care about his name, or his history. I wanted to know how many men were still hunting out there. What their resources were. And most importantly, how to avoid them while I did a hunt of my own.

  His eyes flicked over my shoulder and I ducked to one side as the front door popped in and two bodies slammed through shooting.

  They shot Jamie. They shot the spot where I had been standing. The slider shattered as a third bandit crashed through in a hail of bullets and shards of glass.

  A firefight is chaos. Smoke fills the air, the acrid scent of powder assaults the sinuses. Explosions and noise rip at the eardrums, and death is imminent. A second and a centimeter away.

  The person who can survive a firefight is the one who can keep their head when all about them are losing theirs.

  I kept my head low. Covered with my forearms and elbows while I cowered on the floor next to the island bar that separated the living space from the kitchen.

  Bullets ripped through walls. Pounded through glass and chipped the counter, spraying the floor with sharp splinters of wood and tile.

  Jamie pitched over backwards, blood leaking from holes in his chest and stomach.

  His wide gray eyes stared at me as he died.

  Then the bullets stopped. The bodies of the men who made the assault stood up, surveyed the scene.

  I assumed their eyes were drawn to the dead kid on the floor. His blood pooling in a widening circle of crimson.

  They could tell he was dead. They may have assumed the same about me, my back against the shattered wood, curled up on the floor too.

  I don’t know if they relaxed. Or if they were in shock at killing one of their own.

  It didn’t matter.

  I flinched the rifle around, aimed center mass at the biggest one and pulled the trigger. Pulled it again at the second guy next to him at the front door.

  Twirled it on the third guy. Too late.

  He grinned at me over the barrel of his gun aimed at my face.

  The top of his head erupted in a geyser of goo that splatted onto the tile floor. He crumpled on top of it.

  Tyler’s boots crunched in the glass as he stepped through, gun at the ready. Byron and the Boy followed.

  “Are you hit?” Tyler asked as he stood over me.

  “Not my blood,” I said.

  He reached down and helped me up. I held on to the bar for a moment as the blood pounded in my head.

  Byron moved past and scooped up weapons and ammunition. He tossed a couple of magazines to the Boy who slid them into pockets.

  “We kicked over the beehive, Dad.”

  “You were supposed to stay with the others,” I said.

  I was talking to him, but it was meant for them all.

  “You’re welcome,” said Bryon.

  He toed the corpse of the guy who would have shot me as he stepped past it.

  “There are more out there,” said Tyler. “We need to get moving.”

  I took a breath, held it for a four count, then let it out slow for another four count. Then did it again.

  They were right. We needed to move.

  I checked Jaimie’s rifle for ammunition and motioned to Tyler to lead the way.

  CHAPTER NINE

  They led me through the back door and across the yard to the fence at the rear.

  Tyler stood guard while Byron hopped over. The Boy followed, then I pulled myself up and managed not to fall on the other side. Tyler landed gracefully next to me.

  Youth is wasted on the young.

  We crept on the edge of the fence down an alleyway that separated the houses on this block.

  The grid spit us out on a feeder road that led to the river in one direction and the ocean in the other.

  We could hear the ocean surf pounding the shore, a relentless reminder that despite all we were going through, mother nature stayed the same.

  Tyler motioned Byron forward and took rear point. They kept the Boy and I in the middle. I almost didn’t let them.

  Danger was still out there, still hunting, and it could strike at any moment.

  But I wanted to be near my son, to protect him if things went bad.

  They didn’t.

  Byron pushed open a wrought iron gate and latched it closed when the other three were all through.

  It was a mini-mansion on the beach, a Mediterranean style construction that looked indestructible. Marble columns bracketed the solid oak door that opened as we approached.

  Bem and Anna stood aside to let us pass and closed the door behind us with a solid thunk.

  “At least you hide in style,” I said.

  Anna shook her head.

  Bem was more diplomatic.

  “You look like crap, Dad.”

  “Who me?”

  “I didn’t want to say anything,” said the Boy.

  I let Anna direct me into the giant living room that overlooked a wall of glass facing the beachfront. A pool full of green water marred the view, but the blue ocean beyond looked serene.

  Brian and the others huddled around a small smokeless fire in the marble fireplace.

  “You like?” he said as he moved to help Anna.

  There was no need to clean off the pristine granite counters. She laid out rags and medical supplies, what few there were and went to work on the cuts and scrapes.

  The bruising and swelling would go away on their own. Given time.

  I wasn’t sure how much of that we had.

  “We found a boat,” said Brian. “It can ferry us back in the morning.”

  “This place has been picked clean,” Peg said from her spot next to the fireplace.

  “I’m not leaving yet,” I groaned as Anna wiped a particularly deep gash I didn’t know I had.

  “We found a note Dad,” Bem said. “It’s from her.”

  “I want to see it.”

  “We don’t think you should go back out there,” said Anna.

  “It was hers,” said the Boy. “She said she’s going home.”

  Home. Crap.

  Home was Oviedo, a small community just north of Orlando. Thoughts of the sea of cars we blew up on our way out flickered in my mind.

  There were five million people in Central Florida. Five million more on the Tampa side of the peninsula, and a couple of million more on the coast where we were.

  “That’s a hell of a lot of Z,” I sighed.

  “She’s smart,” said Bem. “She’ll leave another note for us to find her.”

  I nodded, more to flinch away from the sting than agreeing.

  “Tell me,” I said.