Retribution: Operation Z Book 2 Read online

  Contents

  Free Book

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Before You Go

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  CHAPTER ONE

  MICHAEL CHRISTOPHER

  Michael Christopher proved to be the man who wouldn’t die. For the third (or possibly the fourth?) time, he found himself the lone survivor of another lost group. He didn’t find himself exactly alone, but he was the only being still alive, breathing, and not seeking a snack of human flesh. It appeared the dead would rack up the win this time and finally claim their prize because he saw no avenue of escape. Had the time come for Michael to use of one of his remaining bullets on himself? What’s the point to keep fighting when you’re left all by yourself each time? Life alone isn’t worth living.

  He sat in the second floor control room of the bowling alley across from the airport’s approach, overlooking all the lanes within the building. Michael’s problem was the fact the alleys weren’t full of bowlers, in silly multicolored shoes and tacky league shirts, but with the hungry, rotting dead. The building’s design provided him a direct route outside onto the roof, from the control room, or down into the horde of zombies on the main floor. If he headed out onto the roof, he would become stranded thirty feet above the ground with no safe way down to the parking lot below. There were no ladders leaning up against the building, and he hadn’t mastered human flight. Otherwise, he would have to pass through the middle of the undead horde to make his escape from certain death. Neither choice sounded like a viable option.

  The summer sun warmed his perch like an oven, and the water supply in the control room had run out, so he needed to move soon. If he remained in this smothering furnace any longer without liquids, Michael would end up dead from dehydration, and it didn’t seem like a pleasant way to die. Was there a pleasant way to die these days? His skin turned hot and dry while his stomach churned, so he had his back pressed up against the wall, recognizing the signs of dehydration. Michael needed a plan of action now.

  How had he reached this point of hopelessness after only one year? The ironic thought occurred to Michael that he sat around the corner from the apartment he lived in before the apocalypse started. He longed for the simple days when his only concerns included cutting the grass for the town and writing his beloved Larry the Lighthearted Elf stories. Now pain and death surrounded him, but death still hadn’t claimed him. He only found a repeating loop of pain.

  Only a year passed (it felt like two lifetimes) since he left his menial job to realize his dream of being a full-time author. Michael now held the starring role in a zombie apocalypse story he hadn’t even written. If he had been the author, it would have been a better story than the one he now lived in.

  Michael faced another day like today, where he lacked food and water and needed to restock. He ventured out of his apartment to stock up (OK, call it looting like it was). During this first resupply trip, he came across a young couple trying to survive like him. They teamed up since safety existed in numbers. At least they all thought so at the time.

  Things went well with their small group until the next time they needed to head out for supplies. Consumables disappeared quickly with the increased number of people living in the apartment. The nearby convenience store seemed like a prime target for satisfying their needs. It was located around the corner from Michael’s home and would contain an assortment of food and drinks they needed to live.

  They equipped themselves with found melee weapons, since Michael never owned, or even fired, a gun before the dead started walking the Earth. He carried a baseball bat and a large butcher knife from his kitchen. The couple both carried hunting knives, and the man had found a large piece of metal pipe. It should have been a straightforward mission for the three survivors. In and out, grab the supplies, and return to the safety of their apartment stronghold. No problem.

  The power had winked out a few weeks ago now, so they had to pry the sliding doors apart with the metal pipe to gain entry to the store. Once the doors slid opened, the stench of rotting perishables washed over them. It turned Michael’s stomach, but he fought to keep down what little food he had eaten during breakfast.

  “Grab non-perishable stuff along with any drinks.” Michael said to remind them all of their mission before they entered the building to loot.

  Although the store wasn’t large, the advertisement posters taped across the front windows bathed the far corners of the building in dark shadows. It concerned Michael, but he thought, just a quick in and out. Then they would head back to their home. What could go wrong? They spread out as they entered the store, thinking this would make their task of gathering supplies quicker.

  Michael heard the woman scream while he filled up his own bag with sports drinks. He rushed to her aid. Too late. A zombie sat on top of her, and it ripped her throat out with its teeth. Strings of bloody flesh dangled from its mouth. The man ran over to help, and before he could get there, a second zombie knocked him to the floor. Time was up for the woman because her body went still. So Michael raised his bat to strike the zombie the man wrestled with. Michael never saw the monster who snuck up behind him, but he felt the teeth break through the skin on his arm. Like a coward, Michael forgot the others as he dropped the bat and screamed in pain.

  This brought the fourth zombie to the fight, who leapt onto the man and sunk its teeth into his flesh. Blood poured from the three humans, and Michael accepted the fact he had reached the end. In one last desperate move, he pulled the butcher's knife from his belt and jabbed at his attacker. To his surprise, the knife hit the target, entering through the zombie's left eye, and it dropped like a switch in its brain, tripped to the off position.

  He thought about trying to help the fallen couple, but Michael determined it was too late for both of them. They both laid in pools of their own blood. The three remaining zombies enjoyed the all they could eat buffet of Michael’s former friends. Michael grabbed his bag and slipped quietly out of the store.

  With the bite on his arm, Michael knew this meant the end for him. A fever would start and then delirium would follow. A painful death and reanimation would become his ultimate destiny. If he had a gun, he would have used it on himself. Instead, he cleaned up the wound on his arm and took some antibiotics he had in his medicine cabinet. Sleep claimed him.
He dreamed of better days while he waited to die.

  When he awoke, his arm throbbed with every beat of his heart, but he still hadn’t developed a fever. Michael ate, redressed the wound, took some more antibiotics, and rested again. He repeated this for several more days, and no fever ever came. Was he immune to the zombie virus? Maybe he was just plain lucky? It might all be only a dream? If so, he couldn’t wait to wake from this nightmare to his safe life.

  ###

  The sports drinks from the previous supply run and the medication ran out, so he needed to make another trip to the store. Michael left his bat in the convenience store and he remained alone, so he would have to be extra careful. No one would be there to watch his back this time. Not that it worked out well the first time. He thought about visiting the same convenience store again. It stood right outside the driveway to his apartment complex, but he couldn’t face returning there. His two friends wandered the aisles as part of the undead army now. It would have to be the grocery store or the big box store farther down the road this time.

  During his supply run to the grocery store, he met survivor group number two. This gang had five members, two women, one man, and two kids. They were staying in a retirement community apartment complex they had cleared around the corner from the store. Working together, they filled Michael’s pickup truck, and he drove them to their apartment building.

  Things went well for their first few weeks together. Michael told the kids stories about a magical elf and they treated him like their long lost favorite uncle.

  Problem was, this group had been sloppy. They cleared the floor they were staying on and the floors below them, but they never cleared the last floor above them. Michael kept watch in the building's lobby one night while zombies from the fourth floor flooded the third. A fire door finally gave way to their incessant pushing. The man on guard upstairs fell asleep, and the group became zombie chow, while Michael impotently watched the front entrance. He found their reanimated remains in the morning at the end of his patrol when he returned to the third floor.

  ###

  This second group’s loss almost broke Michael. These people became family to him, and he felt like he had failed them somehow. Michael wasn’t the one who fell asleep, nor was he the one ignoring a floor filled with zombies above them. He wandered around aimlessly for weeks afterward with no purpose left to his life anymore. Two different groups of survivors, seven people dead, and only Michael remained alive.

  Winter came, and it got cold, so he moved into a small home in the same neighborhood as the two apartment buildings. It had a working fireplace, along with an ample supply of firewood stored in a shed behind the house. The occasional zombie would wander by in the frigid weather, but Michael hadn’t seen another living person for weeks.

  One winter day, he stumbled upon a family while out scavenging supplies. The couple traveled with their two children. Michael welcomed them into his warm home to become the family he’d been looking for. Finally, a purpose for his life again.

  They warmed up by his fire, ate his food, and gave him someone to talk to. Michael felt some of his sanity return each day he spent with them. It was a tight fit in his small house, but comfortable enough for the apocalypse. Plus, the tight squeeze helped with heating the home during the long, frosty winter.

  After they stayed with him for a few weeks, Michael agreed to let them take the overnight watch by themselves. He looked forward to getting his first good night’s sleep in months. Total exhaustion delivered him into a deep slumber for the entire night.

  When the morning’s light streamed through his window, he woke to find the house freezing. Odd, since whoever took the night guard duty fed the fire to keep the place warm. Michael walked into the living room and confirmed the roaring fire had become cold ash in the fireplace. He lit a new fire to warm the house up before he investigated any further. Someone else should be awake by now, but the house appeared as quiet as a tomb. It wasn’t a good sign.

  After the flames engulfed the logs and the warmth returned, Michael explored the rest of the house to determine what had happened. He looked in the first bedroom and found it empty. A quick check of the next bedroom showed the same. Michael shambled into the kitchen, knowing what he would find even before he got there. The kitchen was empty. No people and no supplies left in any of the cabinets. Looking out through the kitchen window, he discovered his pickup truck had disappeared too. Fresh snow had covered the ground overnight, obscuring the truck’s ruts as they headed down the road and away from the house.

  Part of Michael wanted to lie down and die after enduring this betrayal, but his survival instinct proved too strong. He grabbed his weapons, parka, and snowshoes so he could head out for some supplies. When he reached the highway overpass, he found the family. The truck had slid on the fresh snow covered road and plowed into the bridge supports, killing the family. All four came back from the dead, so Michael’s heart broke again as he put down the zombie family who stole all his stuff and his heart on the same winter day.

  ###

  The long, cold winter marched on and looked like it would never end. Michael burned all the wood from the shed and resorted to scavenge more from other homes in the neighborhood. Toward the end of the never ending frigid winter, he burned the wood furniture from the surrounding houses so he could stay warm. What happened to good old-fashioned global warming?

  For the rest of winter, not one living being passed by Michael’s home. Only a scattered few zombies ambled by. Perhaps all the zombies went to Florida during the winter? Michael chuckled at the thought of zombies chasing after snow birds on the golf course like some demented gator. But then he remembered the last newscast he watched before everyone stopped broadcasting. A hurricane they called the storm of the millennium attempted to wipe Florida off the map, so no one headed there anymore. No snowbirds or zombies would visit the sunshine state again.

  ###

  A warm wet spring followed the long glacial winter, and he welcomed the change of weather. Michael could finally venture outside of the neighborhood to scavenge for more supplies without worrying about frostbite. The local stores were getting picked over, so he wasn’t sure how he would continue to survive on his own. He thought it was odd that the stores had emptied when he had seen no people for almost six months.

  One day while out scavenging, Michael came across his next group of survivors. He was careful and knew how to move through the shadows, so Michael saw them long before they saw him. They moved with purpose but without stealth as they emptied the contents of the store into a large box truck with a rental insignia on its side. Five or six people carried supplies into the back of the truck while four other armed folks watched their backs for any threats.

  Michael followed them on his scavenged motorcycle as they departed the store and found them heading to the town’s only bowling alley. He recognized their genius of picking this location and wondered why he hadn’t thought of it first. A large building constructed of cinder blocks big enough to hold a large group of people, with only one main entrance to guard and no windows. The block walls were strong and provided security against any attack. Plus, there would be a kitchen inside the alley’s restaurant, allowing them to prepare any food they scavenged.

  Without appearing to be a threat, Michael approached them and they welcomed him into their group of survivors. He didn’t recognize the bad omen then. When he asked how many survivors there were in their camp, he was told he made number twenty-six. Now he realized twenty-six was just two number thirteens, and that proved to be doubly unlucky for them all.

  Like each failed association before it, things flourished the first three months they were together. Michael told stories about a lighthearted elf named Larry to the kids, and he helped with the farming and guard patrols. The group had set up solar panels along with backup batteries, so they had electricity around the clock. They jury-rigged the plumbing, so they had flush toilets and used the vacant lot next to the building as farmlan
d. It was a real treat for Michael to be a part of such a well-organized group of survivors.

  Then the zombie horde arrived in town and ruined everything they worked so hard to build in a few brief hours.

  A team, like the one Michael originally encountered, left the building that morning to scavenge for supplies. The search party had to go farther out from their camp each trip, so they left early in the morning as the sun cleared the horizon. Michael’s role would be part of the group left behind to guard the camp. He’ll never knew for sure the fate of the scavenge team because Michael saw none of them again. However, the fall of the camp, and the death of everyone left behind, occurred while he watched.

  They had left Michael and four other adults behind, along with all the children. Large groups of zombies and other survivors became a rare sight for months now, so they had grown a little lax with their normal security practices.

  The roof of the bowling alley was flat, so they used it as an elevated watchtower. Michael’s assignment had been to man the watchtower during the morning and sound the alarm if he saw anything out of the ordinary. During the third hour of his watch, they approached from the distance. Not one or two zombies, but hundreds, or maybe even thousands, marched straight for their home. They trampled everything in their path.

  Michael couldn’t believe his eyes, but he performed his duty by sounding the alarm. Why the other four adults didn’t close and barricade the doors, Michael will never know, because none of the four are talking anymore. Instead of acting, the four adults strolled outside to see what all the commotion was about. His bird's-eye view allowed Michael to watch the others being ripped to shreds by the horde of incoming zombies. Even worse, zombies shuffled through the open doors of the building and ripped the kids left inside to pieces, too.

  That’s why Michael Christopher sat in the control room of the bowling alley watching zombies wander aimlessly around the inside of the building. Most of the horde passed by, leaving only a few stragglers behind. By a few, Michael counts thirty seven zombies. Once they got inside, they were too stupid to figure out how to get back out.