Warpath: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Read online

  Warpath:

  Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

  By

  Shawn Chesser

  KINDLE EDITION

  ***

  Warpath:

  Surviving the Zombie

  Apocalypse

  Copyright 2014

  Shawn Chesser

  Kindle Edition

  Kindle Edition, License

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real persons, events, or places are purely coincidental; any references to actual places, people, or brands are fictitious. All rights reserved.

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  ***

  Acknowledgements

  For Mo, Raven, and Caden, you three mean the world to me ... love you. And thanks, Maureen Chesser, for all of the support you’ve given me through this incredible journey called life. Love you. Thanks to all LE and first responders for your service. To the people in the U.K. who have been in touch, thanks for reading! Lieutenant Colonel Michael Offe, thanks for your service as well as your friendship. Larry Eckels, thank you for helping me with some of the military technical stuff in Warpath. Any missing facts or errors are solely my fault. Beta readers, you rock, and you know who you are. Thanks George Romero for introducing me to zombies. Steve H., thanks for listening. All of my friends and fellows at S@N and Monday Old St. David’s, thanks as well. Lastly, thanks to Bill W. and Dr. Bob … you helped make this possible. I am going to sign up for another 24.

  Special thanks to John O’Brien, Mark Tufo, Joe McKinney, and Craig DiLouie. I truly appreciate your continued friendship and always invaluable advice. Thanks to Jason Swarr and Straight 8 Custom Photography for the awesome cover. Thanks to George Stickler at Extreme Supertruck for providing the F-650 image on the cover. Beta readers ... you all rock!! Once again, extra special thanks to Monique Happy for her work editing “Warpath.” Mo, as always, you came through like a champ! Working with you has been a seamless experience and nothing but a pleasure. If I have accidentally left anyone out ... I am truly sorry.

  ***

  Edited by Monique Happy Editorial Services

  http://www.indiebookauthors.com

  Table of Contents

  Warpath:

  Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

  KINDLE EDITION

  Copyright 2014

  Kindle Edition, License

  Shawn Chesser on Facebook

  Acknowledgements

  Edited by Monique Happy Editorial Services

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  Outbreak - Day 18

  Eden Compound, Utah

  Like a makeshift guillotine, the shovel’s blade cut a silent flat arc through the cool morning air before burying inches deep into the rasping creature’s temple. As the rotted corpse crumpled to earth, Duncan squared his shoulders, squinted against the driving rain, and poked the V-shaped cutting edge into the next rotter’s sternum. Having gained a precious yard of separation from the handful of attackers, he backpedaled blindly uphill—in the direction of the white Toyota Land Cruiser which, at the moment, was keeping his two-way radio, the short barreled combat shotgun, and a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels dry.

  Hell of a lot of good they’re doing ya in there, old man, he thought glumly, his equilibrium failing him. In the next instant his legs buckled, and suddenly the gloomy overcast sky was all that he saw.

  “Fuck happened?” he muttered, shaking his head vigorously and spraying droplets of water in all directions. But the action had no effect on his vision, which, from the combination of alcohol, sleep deprivation, and the fine mist clinging to his aviator glasses, remained clouded and fuzzy around the edges.

  Now, flat on his back, two things registered at once. To his right, wrapped in a rain-drenched sheet, was his brother Logan’s corpse that he’d just tripped over. He walked his gaze along the contours of the young man’s lifeless shell. Regarded the facial profile which had slackened in death, but was still unmistakably Oops—handlebar mustache and all. He noted the crimson blossoms of blood that had dried to black but had reconstituted and now ran in all directions, turning the once-white death shroud into some kind of macabre tie dye.

  A half beat later he recognized that the pickle he’d gotten himself into, both figuratively and literally—the former because he’d gone ahead and left the heavy artillery in the truck, the latter because he was more than half in the bag—was about to get exponentially worse.

  He flicked his gaze sixty yards downhill at the spot where he’d removed the triple-strand barbed wire from the fence paralleling SR-39 so that he could drive the Cruiser through. There, three disheveled first turns were heading his way, fighting against gravity, their feet slipping on the slick grass. Then his heart skipped a beat as he looked pa
st the struggling trio and noticed another dozen flesh eaters leaving the blacktop. Slow and clumsy, they negotiated the shallow ditch and, jostling shoulder to shoulder, exploited the newly created breach.

  The new arrivals to the party were deadly for sure, but it was the half dozen to his fore— spread out in a phalanx line, jaws working in eager anticipation of fresh meat—that were the clear and present danger. Knowing that he was turtled on his back with Logan and Gus lying in state nearby, one hissing monster looming over him, and another in the half-dug grave less than two feet away, sent a cold wave of dread coursing through Duncan’s body.

  First things first, he told himself.

  Only a second and a half elapsed between him tripping over Logan’s corpse and his fingers finding the knurled grip of the .45 riding high in the paddle holster on his hip. Another half-second ticked by and he had depressed the palm safety, thumbed back the hammer, and his index finger hovered near the trigger guard. By the time the weapon was clear of leather and tracking swiftly right, he had already found the trigger and drawn off a few pounds of pull, the hammer poised and ready to fall.

  Flooded with adrenaline and running mainly on muscle memory, he didn’t recall caressing the trigger, but the two reports crashing the still morning air confirmed it and set his ears to ringing. The noise, like tearing paper, bounced off the Toyota’s metal skin and toured the nearby trees before the shock wave rolled back over top his prostrate body. It was awakening and cathartic at once, a substance he could almost feel.

  One down, too many to go.

  As he watched the flesh eater he’d just blessed with a second death roll towards the Toyota, spilling brains and viscous blood from its cratered face, the female first turn he’d just poked between the breasts with the shovel point was crawling out of the freshly dug grave where it had fallen.

  Over the pattering rain, the grating rasp of its clawlike hands grappling for purchase, combined with the wet rattle escaping its working maw, sent an icy jolt through his body. Shivering profusely from a combination of fear-induced adrenaline, his already lowered core temperature, and the desire for another belt of Jack Black, he dug his left boot heel in and pushed uphill. Feeling a tug slow his progress as splintered nails tore into the blue denim just below his right knee, and with a new wave of shivers wracking his body and the stink of death and decay thick in his throat, he spread his legs, a kind of half-assed mud angel, aimed between his boot tips, and pumped a round between the zombie’s beady eyes.

  Two down, too many to go.

  He kicked free from the dead thing’s grasp, rolled over onto his stomach, and clawed his way towards the SUV; his ultimate goal: getting inside and radioing for help. And then shortly thereafter, making bubbles in the whiskey.

  But those things weren’t happening without a fight because a pair of rotters had inexplicably looped around the passenger’s side of the Toyota, flanked him, and were now doggedly lurching his way.

  “Where’d y'all learn that trick?” he muttered, bracketing the one nearest him in his sights. As he drew back on the trigger, a sudden flash of reddish-orange, like a .50 caliber round fired at night, minus the sparkle and pop, entered his side vision. Momentarily convinced he was seeing ill-timed tracers—a flood of chemicals to the brain brought on by the stress of a dozen dead things wanting to eat him, or perhaps a byproduct of the Jack Daniels in his system—he held his fire, blinked his eyes, and kept them closed for half a beat. Upon reopening them the thought that he’d had too much of the latter won out because now only one rotter stood between him and the SUV.

  With the throaty rasps of the dead advancing on his six, he wasted no more precious time processing what had just happened. Instead, he fixed his gaze on the flesh eater at his twelve o’clock, rose from the ground, and with the .45 extended at arm’s length, took a tentative step towards the SUV.

  Chapter 2

  Outskirts of Mack, Colorado

  Two hundred miles southeast of the Eden Compound, former-Delta operator Cade Grayson was awakened by a sustained ten-second fusillade of automatic rifle fire. Not quite fast and furious enough to be classified as a Mad Minute—a short but sustained volley of automatic rifle fire helpful in breaking contact during an enemy ambush—but still long enough in duration to garner his full attention.

  Ears perked and listening hard, he tried to discern any out-of-place sounds he could attribute to the wire being breached. But, thankfully, he detected none of the telltale moaning of the dead or the shrill animalistic screams of the dying, and as soon as the sharp reports were swallowed by the surrounding tree-covered hillocks, the (Forward Operating Base) FOB Bastion—or “Last” as he’d heard a soldier call it—regained all of the calm of a State Park campground at first light.

  While Cade pondered whether mankind had collectively produced the ammunition necessary to put down all of the walking dead, he peered into the gloom and took stock of his surroundings.

  After arriving at the FOB the previous night with his family, twenty-one-year-old Wilson, his teenaged sister Sasha, and nineteen-year-old Taryn, he was immediately spirited away from the Chinook helicopter by his old friend, newly promoted to Full Bird Colonel, Greg Beeson.

  Then, utilizing what little daylight that was left, he boarded a Humvee with Beeson behind the wheel and, with a heavily armored MRAP—Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected fighting vehicle—bristling with weapons and communications gear shadowing them, received the “nickel-tour” of the base and lay of the land outside the wire.

  The FOB had sprouted up on the grounds of the Mack Mesa airport, 4,500 feet above sea level and less than a mile north of Interstate 70. Equidistant to Mack to the west and Loma to the east, the base amounted to little more than a small control tower, a spartanly appointed terminal, and a handful of maintenance buildings being crowded upon by two dozen mobile homes, which, judging by the bright residential-type colors, had presumably been brought in and placed there after the outbreak. West of the living quarters was a large parking lot usually reserved for airport customers but was now being utilized as a motor pool for the U.S. Army. Running away east to west from the tower and clustered buildings was a single 2,600-foot-long airstrip, numbered 07/25. And parked next to the airstrip was a smattering of aircraft, olive drab-painted Army Black Hawks and Chinooks, and sitting static near the helos were a half-dozen colorfully painted private aircraft.

  At each corner of the FOB, rising thirty feet from the desert floor, made of plywood and offering unobstructed views and uninhibited fields of fire to all points of the compass, stood four newly constructed watchtowers. Using heavy equipment liberated from an excavation company near Loma, and building from the hard lessons learned from the fall of Camp Williams in Utah, Colonel Beeson had made certain that his men supersized all of their defenses. Outside of the razor-wire-topped fencing encircling the base were trenches carved wide and deep enough into the ochre dirt to fully conceal an eighteen-wheel semi-truck. On the far side of the trench, soldiers had strung concentric rings of concertina wire complete with dangling aluminum can noisemakers—a poor man’s early warning system. And when all was said and done, FOB Bastion was serving its purpose as the President’s eyes-and-ears, as well as a sort of buffer between Colorado Springs, the new United States Capitol to the southeast, and the millions of dead south by west in Salt Lake City. A veritable, but very vulnerable, first line of defense responsible for interdicting and destroying anything—short of a full blown mega horde—that moved on the nearby Interstate.

  Once the impromptu tour was over and they had returned to Beeson’s quarters—a single-wide trailer—Cade wolfed down a quick meal consisting of cold MREs and warm beer and listened while his friend and mentor brought him up to speed on what to expect once outside the wire. Finally, after a couple of hours reminiscing about days gone by, and ruminating over the bleak outlook the small pockets of survivors scattered about the United States yet faced, Beeson had gone to a file cabinet and produced a pair of laminated topo-maps that de
tailed the countryside that lay north by west between FOB “Last” Bastion and the compound outside of Eden, Utah. Then, with a forlorn look, Beeson had handed the maps over and issued a stern warning that made painfully clear that, though they were friends, now that Cade was no longer wearing the uniform, under no circumstances would Beeson be able to legally mount a rescue should anyone find themselves, as the salty colonel had worded it, ‘Up shit creek without a paddle.’ Then the colonel had added, in black sharpie on the bottom of the map, a string of numbers followed by three capital letters: SAT. At the time Cade had smiled, knowing that it was an unspoken insurance policy and left it at that, saying nothing more. Finally sometime between 0100 and 0200, with FOB Bastion under full blackout restrictions, Beeson shuttled Cade to his temporary quarters in the Humvee, running with the lights off.

  Once there, Cade had said his good byes and, resisting the urge to salute, turned on his crutches and made his way to the door.

  After watching the colonel’s ride crunch out a U-turn and wheel away to the west under the moon’s soft glow, Cade knocked lightly on the locked door to the single-story double-wide, inside of which he guessed Brook and Raven and the others were already fast asleep. Nothing. Nonplussed, he conceded that a sustained and continued pounding on the door was needed before someone stirred inside. The response started as a subtle vibration on the floor that resonated all the way to the aluminum sill near his feet. Finally, footsteps, getting louder as they approached, stopped at the door and it creaked open. An unsmiling Wilson poked his head out and inexplicably let him enter without a query nor challenge to his identity.

  So much for operational security, Cade had thought at the time.

  But now, hours later, with the first rays of daylight probing the curtain’s periphery and a considerable chill hanging in the air, he shivered under the thin sheet and looked around the cramped quarters. Noting that the accommodations were nothing more than a rectangular living room housing two rows of cots instead of the obligatory sofa and coffee table, he realized why Wilson had given him the cold shoulder when he’d come knocking. The poor kid had been trapped in the makeshift barracks for several long hours with the four females, with only Max as his wingman. Suddenly the hardened soldier felt a little sorry for leaving Wilson to fend for himself. Hell, he thought, from his experience, two against one was hard enough—to be sequestered with four of the fairer sex, in what amounted to a jail cell minus the bars, was nothing less than cruel and unusual punishment. At the very least, man-to-man, he owed Wilson an apology.