ZK:Falling (Zombie Killers Book 0) Read online

  Zombie Killers: Falling

  Dedicated to my fans, who have shaped the stories, fact checked me, and provided immeasurable support, as well as giving up their names to die gloriously facing the undead, and saving America.

  This one’s for you, guys.

  Prelude

  It was early fall, and I sat watching my son Nate, who was perched up in a tree, himself watching Ziv, Shona and Boz. They were on the other side of a tall fence, giving the two dozen new recruits lessons in hand to hand versus undead. In the old days, I would have yelled at him to be careful. Now, well, it was a tough new world we lived in, and he had to learn lessons on his own. I just hoped he wouldn’t break his neck.

  “Hey you,” said Brit, sitting down next to me on the steps of the porch. “Whatcha thinkin’ about?” I looked over at her, still seeing the college girl under the years of fighting. She idly carved a heart in the wood, using the sharp point of the hook she sometimes wore on the stump of her hand. It would be a while until she would get a decent prosthetic; lots of soldiers lost extremities fighting the Zs.

  “Nate. And Paige. She would have been eleven by now.” We didn’t often talk much of our lives before the plague. It seemed a dream, so long ago, and no one liked to think about it. Our lost paradise.

  “Did she look like you, or Jane?” She knew, because I still had a picture of both in my wallet. It was her way of saying it was OK to talk about them.

  I looked over at her, and she met my gaze with a steady look of her own. Brittany[TR1] O’Neil, my wife, was a beautiful woman, even with her injuries. One ice cold blue eye looked out at me, the other covered by a black patch. Wisps of fiery red hair drifted around her in the summer breeze, highlighting sharp cheekbones, pale skin and a beautiful smile. One that, when directed at me, warmed even the coldest days and drove off the nightmare memories.

  “Like Jane, lucky kid. Blonde hair, blue eyes. She would have been a terror to the boys.”

  She leaned into me, and I slipped my arm around the soft curve of her waist. “Maybe …” she said, then didn’t say anymore.

  “Maybe what?” I asked, silently urging Nate to take a little more risk and climb a bit higher, as I’m sure Brit was silently yelling at him to get down.

  “You’ve written about everything that happened after the Apocalypse. How we met, the scouting down the City, the shit with the President, the second plague…”

  I snorted. I still didn’t like the guy, but he did have a pretty decent punch. Elections were coming up in September, maybe I’d even vote for him.

  “What I’m saying is, maybe it’s time to write about what happened, you[TR2] know, when everything fell apart.”

  I didn’t want to. That nightmare, that hell I went through. “Why should I?” I asked her.

  “Because I love you, and you need to let it out, and I want to know, and if you don’t, I will never give your soul back from redhead Valhalla.”

  I laughed a little at that. “And if I do?”

  She leaned forward and let her breast push up against my arm, whispering into my ear with a husky voice, “I’ll make it worth your while, soldier boy!”

  That got me. We had been together for years now, and she had grown from an awkward college student into a woman who knew what she liked and what I liked, and her voice in my ear sent a thrill down my spine.

  “NATE!” I yelled, “Keep an eye on your sister!” I could see him roll his eyes at us as I lifted Brit up and threw her over my shoulder, carrying her into the house laughing like a madwoman.

  Chapter 1

  “Hey Sarge, how long do we do this? I gotta business to run.”

  I looked away from the traffic backed up down Route 32, across the bridge and into Cohoes. The sun was setting, and people were getting restless.

  “You run a porn site, Ramirez. It‘ll still be there when you get back.”

  “Yeah,” he answered, pausing to pull a drag from one of those Vape things, “I gotta have fresh material or my hit count drops off. No hits, no subscribers, no money.”

  “I’m just curious, PFC Ramirez,” said Sergeant Williams, expression hard to read on her dark skin at sunset, “How much money do you make off exploiting young women?”

  Ramirez grinned. He knew that Naomi couldn’t stand him, but this scratch platoon from the Division Headquarters, well, we all had to work with people we didn’t like sometimes. “Yo, Sarge, I cleared eleven thousand last month. Any weekend we ain’t drilling you’re welcome to chat online with some of the guys. Make you some good money.”

  “Jesus Christ, Ramirez, are you trying to get ME in trouble? Just listen to the effing radio, and do your job.”

  “You got it, Nick.”

  “It’s Sergeant First Class Agostine on duty, and I ain’t your buddy off duty, either, so let’s keep it that way.” Sergeant Williams made a sound of disgust and walked on past us, back to the traffic control point, coming from the latrines set up on the north side of the bridge.

  “Gimme that radio, dipshit,” I said, and took the mic out of his hands, squeezing the push to talk.

  “Why you gotta be like that?” he answered, wounded. I ignored him, and rang up the company commander’s RTO.

  “Headhunter Six, this is Headhunter Three Two, let me talk to your actual, over.”

  “Three Two, he’s taking a dump, over.” The Company CP was actually on the far side of the Erie Canal Bridge, about a mile back, but they had put themselves up in an office building that the owner had been glad to rent out.

  Third Platoon, Forty Third Infantry Division Headquarters Company, had been thrown together from various clerks and miscellaneous personnel to allow for more traffic control points when the Emergency had started two days ago. My small Fire Support Cell, usually assigned to work directly with the Division Commander, had been broken up and I had been given twenty enlisted guys and one pretty seasoned LT to act as platoon commander. Lieutenant Harris was currently racked out on the bench of a soft cover HUMVEE; she had been working the night while I ran things during the day. Which meant, in reality, that neither one of us got very much sleep.

  The Division HQ had deployed to Iraq early in the war, and had cut out a lot of dead wood, but that had been years ago. Less than half the people running things had combat experience, and this was a tough mission. We were supposed to be trained for civilian unrest, the traditional mission of the Guard, but that had fallen by the wayside in the interests of “terrorism” and “Homeland Security”.

  “Have him give me a call if he can when he can, over.”

  “Little busy up here, Nick. Staff meeting in five,” he answered, forgetting radio protocol.

  “Roger that, well, just want to know when we’re going to get some non-lethal weapons in case this goes to shit, over.”

  “Show, shout, shove, shoot, over.” I could almost hear him laughing at our idiotic rules of engagement.

  “Roger, out.” I handed the mic back to Ramirez, shouldered my rifle, and walked over to where portable floodlights had started illuminating the Traffic Control Point. Like I said, it had been two days since the Emergency started, whatever the hell it was, and a little more than twenty-four hours since we had mobilized.

  “What’s the word, chief?” asked Staff Sergeant Jones. He was leaning on the hood of one of our three up-armored HUMVEES. I looked up and noted that there was no one manning the fifty caliber in the turret. No need to panic anyone.

  “How’s the traffic moving?” I asked.

  “Slow and steady, but people are starting to get pissed off.”

  “It’s because of the zombies!” exclaimed Specialist Hanebury, who was providing over watch with his hands resting on his slung SA
W. I noted too that his weapon didn’t have a belt in the tray. Good deal. A negligent discharge into a civilian, well, that would suck.

  “Would you shut the fuck up about that shit? You’re freaking people out, Hanebury.”

  “But Sarge, this is how it always starts. Weird shit happening someplace else, government freaking out, Guard called up, news shut down. I’m telling you, every damn time.”

  “It ain’t every damn time,” said Jones, “because Zombies don’t exist.”

  “I’m just saying!” answered Hanebury. I’m pretty sure this argument had been going on since his squad leader had called him and told the personnel clerk to report to the armory.

  “So what is going on?” asked Jones. As we talked, horns started blaring when a car tried to go around the traffic. We weren’t really stopping cars, which seemed to be the normal commuter traffic, but I had begun to notice that more and more of them were packed with luggage and seemed to have whole families in them, not just single drivers.

  “Hanebury, stop that dipshit before he causes an accident,” said Jones. The big blonde kid stepped out in front of the car, which came to a screeching halt. I heard the driver shouting at Hanebury, so I motioned to Sergeant Williams, manning the other side of the street, to come over. She was great at calming people down, and I walked over myself.

  “Sir, you’re going to have to get back in the line. Cars are moving pretty well, and you’ll be on your way in a few minutes. We’re just trying to keep things moving along nicely. “

  The guy was having none of it, and he started screaming back at her, which was the wrong thing to do. His wife was in the seat next to him, and a screaming kid in the back seat. The rest of the car was piled high with cans of food and camping equipment.

  “Sir,” I said, “you’re just making things worse. Calm down, get back in line, and you’ll be on your way.”

  “Or what?” he glared at me.

  “Or, as a member of the Armed Forces of the State of New York, acting under the authority of the Governor, I’ll have you detained until a Saratoga County Sheriff's Deputy shows up and takes you off to jail.”

  His wife, a pretty young woman, shook his arm and tried to calm him down. He turned to her and yelled, “You SAW what the hell was in the street! We’ve got to get the fuck out of here!”

  “Sir…” Sergeant Williams started to say again, but his hand came up from between the seats, holding a nickel-plated revolver. The wife screamed, and my mind went into overdrive.

  Before I joined the Guard, before I met my wife and decided to settle down, I had done two tours in Afghanistan and one in Iraq, first as infantry with the 82nd Airborne, then as a Forward Observer. I was intimately familiar with Traffic Control Points and how they could go bad, and I had been on edge all day. We might have physically been in America, but as the day wore on, my mind had slipped further and further back into combat mode.

  So, against regs, I had a round in the chamber of my M-9, and I had unconsciously loosened it in my leg holster, hand resting subconsciously on the grip. As the man’s gun came up, and the hammer came back, cylinder rotating to bring the next round under the hammer, my own pistol leveled itself at his head and I squeezed the trigger. All in super slow motion, a deafening CRACK CRACK as my gun discharged first, a microsecond before the other hammer fell, and a jet of flame leapt out of his, the bullet whipping past Naomi’s face.

  My own shot entered his head and then exited, spraying the dashboard with blood and pieces of brain. I never forgot it, ever, the piercing scream of his wife, the brain and blood spraying out. Not in all the years afterward, the thousands of undead that I shot in the head, the dozens of live enemies I cut down. I still regret it to this day.

  “JESUS CHRIST!” yelled Hanebury, and time started up again. The man’s body slumped at the wheel and the car started to roll forward, his mouth opening and closing, shaking violently as his wife continued to scream. With my free hand, I jerked open the door and shoved my boot down on the brake.

  “Sergeant Williams, go around the other side and get that woman out of the car, and get someone to take care of the kid!” I yelled. “Hanebury, call an ambulance! NOW!

  The car stopped. Ignoring the blood, I grabbed at the shifter and put it in park, then unbuckled the man’s body. It slid bonelessly out of the driver’s seat to collapse on the pavement. Reaching over, careful not to touch the hot barrel or the grips, I removed the pistol and laid it on the ground next to him.

  That was how it started. The long nightmare.

  Chapter 2

  “Nick, go home, get some rest,” said the LT. She had just come back from dealing with the Saratoga County Sheriff. An ambulance had taken the man’s body away, and I was still wired.

  “What did they say?” I asked.

  She ran her hand through her hair, making it stick up. None of us had been able to take any showers for two days.

  “So much shit is going on right now, they just took some witness statements and called it justified. Their radios are going crazy, and looting has started in Albany.”

  “Jesus. What the hell is going on?” I was a bit sleep deprived, hyped up on coffee and adrenaline, and maybe not thinking straight.

  She sat down next to me and started eating a sandwich from Subway. “I’ve got no clue. Neither does anyone else higher. ‘Stand fast and wait for further orders’ is all they say.”

  I liked her. LT Brown had been a good NCO who had gone over to the Dark Side, getting her commission through OCS. She and I were the same age, but she lacked the combat tours I had. Still, she dealt much better with the higher ups than I did, and left me to run the troops.

  “Maybe it’s the Zombie Apocalypse, like Hanebury keeps babbling about.”

  She snorted and said, “Yeah, riiiiight. Go home, Nick, rush hour is almost over, and you need some rest.”

  “I suppose you’re right. Are you rotating the guys home?”

  “Did any of them just shoot a civilian?” she asked in return.

  “Good point. I could use a shower.” Even though I couldn’t see it, I knew that splatters of blood that had blown back from the gunshot dotted my face.

  “I’ll see you back at midnight. Then I can grab some shuteye.” She rubbed her eyes and stood back up. “Go on, git!”

  I staggered to my feet and walked over to one of the government issued Cherokees that we were using to run food back and forth. My home was only two miles away, over another bridge into Waterford, and it took me only a few minutes to make my way up Route 4 and then into the suburbs. I parked my car behind my wife’s and went inside.

  She sat on the couch, eyes glued to the TV. On it, scenes of rioting were flickering across the widescreen, and I leaned over and kissed her forehead. “Hi, honey, how was your day?” I asked her.

  “Nick,” she said distractedly. “What is going on? What is happening?” She didn’t even look at me, just kept watching the TV.

  “Look, here it comes again,” and she turned the volume up.

  “… and there are unconfirmed reports that government officials have been seen leaving the Capital before the end of the work day. Gunfire has been reported in the outskirts of Alexandria, but there has been no official commentary. We do have this video taken from a news helicopter. Warning, the following scenes are graphic and may be triggering.”

  I snorted at that, but she put her arm around me. The scene shifted to an overhead shot, and I could see a line of Bradleys blocking one of those major roads that lead into some subdivisions, smaller streets feeding into it. There was a line of cars, and I realized that it was a traffic control point, similar to ours but much heavier, and none of the traffic was moving. Even as we watched, a crowd of people surged forward down the length of cars, and at a line of troops blocking the road.

  “This footage was taken just ten minutes ago, and delivered directly to the station,” the news caster added in over the sound of the rotor blades. Just as he stopped speaking, the crowd surged backwards
. The footage stopped, and the news shifted over to some international incident.

  “Nick,” my wife asked, “what was that? Does it have anything to do with what your unit is doing?”

  “I think so. Listen, honey,” I said, turning to face her. “I want you to take the baby and as much food as you can pack, fill up the car, and head north to your mother’s. I’ll meet you up there when this blows over.”

  “That’s blood on your face!” she exclaimed, finally catching sight of me. “Are you OK? What happened?”

  “Some civilian pulled gun on me. I shot him.”

  “Oh my God, Nick, what happened? What the hell is going on?”

  “I don’t know, but just take the baby, and as soon as this is over, probably by the end of the next news cycle, something else will distract them, and life will go on.”

  She didn’t say anything, just nodded. It was why I loved her; she was sensible and didn’t ask me why, or for any further explanation. I didn’t want to explain to her what I had just seen; those troops had opened fire on American civilians. I had to get back to the TCP.

  First, though, I did need a shower and some sleep. I went into the bathroom and took off my uniform and body armor, knowing that I had a clean set of ACUs hanging in the closet. The hot water felt great, and I stood there until it ran out, letting it wash over me.

  By the time I got out, Jane had the kitchen table stacked high with every consumable we had in the house. Alongside of it, on the counter she had stacked all of our ammunition, and she had her 9mm Glock on her hip. My own AR-15, completely illegal in New York, leaned against a cabinet.

  “Call me as soon as you get to your parents. I think I might be on duty for at least a week.”

  “What about your company?” I ran a small home improvement contracting business, and summer was our busy time, but I knew that my two employees could carry on without me for a bit.

  “I’ll call the guys in the morning. I just want to go see the baby, then I’ve got to go.” She came over and hugged me, then I kissed her very deeply.