A Place Called Hope (Z-Day Book 2) Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  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

  Author's Note

  Author's Note II

  About The Author

  Shameless Plugs

  Reanimated Writers

  A PLACE CALLED HOPE

  DANIEL HUMPHREYS

  Copyright © 2017 Daniel Humphreys

  Twitter: @NerdKing52

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  ISBN: 1977702805

  ISBN-13: 978-1977702807

  Cover art by coversbychristian.com

  First Printing October 2017 V1.0

  To all those who serve, or have served.

  But most especially —

  For TEC4 Carl Humphreys, US Army, Pacific Theater, World War II.

  I’m still trying to pick myself up with both hands, Grandpa.

  Prologue

  The end of human civilization began mid-afternoon Eastern Standard Time, Wednesday, October 18, 2017.

  Those lucky enough to survive the sudden worldwide calamity had many names for what happened. The outbreak, the wave, the rise. Over the years that followed, the term that won out was a much simpler one.

  Z-Day.

  Zombies were so prevalent in popular culture before the collapse that they were a well-worn staple of late-night comedy routines. The reality of cannibalistic undead wasn’t quite so funny. Many died or succumbed to the infection after freezing in confusion, thinking the entire thing an elaborate prank.

  By a combination of luck, leadership, and serendipity, a small group of survivors assembled outside of Lewisville, Indiana. They held out against the hordes. Over time, they built walls, homes, and farmed the land surrounding their compound to supplement scavenged food supplies. The community they built took on a new name—Hope.

  For eight years, they endured as the packs of undead dwindled away. The infection inhibited the process of decay, but it didn’t stop it entirely. It was a simple matter of waiting for the infection to burn out before reclaiming the world.

  Little did they know that not only was the infection not burning out, but they had no time left at all.

  Chapter 1

  March 11, 2026

  Southeastern Indiana

  Z-Day + 3,066

  The owners of the cabin survived the apocalypse by sheer luck of location. If their realtor had known beforehand, it would have made a great selling point.

  The two-story building nestled in the inner curve of a kidney-shaped lake at the bottom of a shallow valley. The only way to get onto the property was via a graveled drive that crested over a low spot in the surrounding ridges. Even then, the downward angle of the road would make for a nerve-wracking experience in bad weather. Short of blasting a hole through the high ground, it was the only place to put it. The interior of the bowl-shaped valley descended in a uniform fashion, but the drops on the outer edges came close to vertical in some spots.

  The occupants of the cabin had opted for defense in depth at the road’s crest. Rusting cars and trucks with the wheels removed bristled with sharpened wooden stakes. Plenty of time and effort had gone into digging a six-foot trench in front of the vehicles. Stakes lined the outer edge of that, as well, though they'd left an opening in the center to install a primitive bridge platform.

  Infected could never take the ridges, and they would have found the walk up the driveway to be difficult even without the obstacles at the top. Of course, no place was impregnable, but this one was better than most.

  For Master Sergeant Ainsley McFarlane and the rest of his Marines, gaining access to the valley was a walk in the park, especially after the noise of the helicopter insertion drew most of the area’s infected away from the valley. He and his men had inserted a few miles away the morning before. They’d scaled the ridges and set up several camouflaged observation posts in time for lunch. Twenty hours later, the senior NCO and his men had completed their reconnaissance and were ready to swoop down on the oblivious camp.

  McFarlane doubted the current occupants were the same folks who’d ridden out the initial spread of the infection. For one, the group was too motley in both appearance and behavior. More telling was the fact that every member noted during their surveillance had been an adult male. McFarlane was quite certain that none of them had interest in the swing-set or faded play shed in the backyard. The overgrowth that choked both pieces testified to the lack of recent use.

  Eight plus years of survival in the post-apocalyptic world had burned away most of his desire to wonder after the fate of the children.

  Most, but not all.

  Jaw clenched with slow-simmering anger, McFarlane eyed the moonless sky and pulled the sleeve of his uniform jacket up to take a peek at his watch. Coming up on 0300. The occupants of the cabin had dimmed the interior lanterns five hours before. The Marines had been dozing in alternate shifts throughout the day in preparation for this moment. The master sergeant suppressed a wicked grin and tapped the transmit button on his MBITR—multi-band inter/intra team radio—twice.

  It was go time.

  McFarlane had divided his squad into a trio of four-man fireteams. The observation posts formed a rough triangle with the lake at the bottom. At his command, his men moved out of their places of concealment and picked their way down the slope. The crucible of the years-long fight for survival had been Darwinian, and the loud Marines hadn’t lived long against the infected. The handful of former civilians who’d made it through the same tribulation and joined the cause were almost as good. And, of course, the hardware tipped the scales—the night-vision goggles each Marine wore helped guide them down the hill and avoid fallen branches.

  In the depths of the night, McFarlane’s men were ghosts.

  Since making landfall two weeks ago, the Marines had secured a base of operations and fought an hours-long pitched battle against swarms of infected in defense of that beachhead at Camp Perry, Ohio.

  This mission was different, a return to their roots as a special operations unit—swift, silent, deadly.

  Drone searches and examination of the site of an atrocity had traced an obvious route back to this cabin. The occupants seemed normal enough as they went about their business during the observation period, but the evidence was crystal clear. The men inside the cabin were parasites, pillaging their way through the countryside and surviving off the efforts of their betters.

  The scene
of their most recent raid had chilled even McFarlane’s hardened heart. He could forgive the infected to some extent. They weren’t human after all, not anymore. This was different, and the fact the elderly man that the cabin-dwellers had butchered had gotten his grandchildren to safety made the entire effort a bit on the personal side.

  While the primary mission was capture and intelligence gathering, command had emphasized to McFarlane that if the marauders resisted, they were to be terminated with extreme prejudice.

  He doubted that would be an issue.

  He reached the bottom of the hill and went prone. He trained his suppressed rifle on the cabin and waited for the rest of the fire teams to acknowledge they’d reached their first way-point. A pair of clicks in his ear told him the other teams were in place. McFarlane hit the transmit button on his own MBITR. He sub-vocalized in a soft Jamaican patois that was the only thing remaining of his maternal grandmother save for fond memories. “Mebane, go.”

  The marauders were confident in their security and stupid in its execution. They rotated a two-man watch every few hours, but the sentries all exhibited rookie tendencies that would soon prove to be their undoing. The sentry on McFarlane’s side leaned against the side of the cabin. The glowing tip of his cigarette danced in the night, ruining any chance he had at retaining natural night vision. The sentry on the opposite side at least got up and walked around every once in a while.

  In the end, it didn’t matter. On a team full of stealthy, hard-core killers, Sergeant Aidan Mebane was one of the best of the best. The other sentry was out of the game.

  He just didn’t know it yet.

  McFarlane kept his eyes on the glow of the cigarette. He didn’t have the right angle to take the shot without risking his bullet hitting the side of the cabin, but he wasn’t letting his guard down, either. He led the fire team closest to the access road. Mebane led the team at the tip of the triangle, and their angle meant any wayward shots would go out over the lake rather than into the cabin.

  “Sergeant, call the ball. We move on your shots. Del Arroz, you ready?”

  “Roger,” acknowledged the man leading the third and final fire team. Del Arroz was the squad’s only other sergeant. Promotions had slowed during the long slog of the war, and the remnants of the Corps were bottom-heavy with enlisted personnel. The senior NCOs who showed any sort of capability tended to get their own squads to run. As for the rest? Well, terminal lance had taken on an even greater meaning since the beginning of the outbreak.

  McFarlane didn’t realize he was holding his breath until the subsonic thumps broke the stillness of the night. The two shots were so close together that they blurred into one extended sound. The suppressors weren’t perfect, but they did their job well enough that it would have been difficult to identify the sound from inside the thick, timber walls of the cabin. “Targets down,” Mebane murmured.

  The dancing ember of the cigarette tumbled to the ground. McFarlane was on his feet and running before it landed in the grass. He made a cursory check of the guard—dead and down—and snuffed the burning ember out under his boot.

  “Down,” he reported. “Nice shooting. Cover our six and provide backup. Del Arroz, watch for any squirters. We’re going in.”

  The others confirmed over the MBITR. McFarlane turned to his own fire team and said, “Stack up,” but as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realized it was a redundant order. His men had already slid out of their packs and taken up position beside the entryway. Lance Corporal Fetu Ropati tested the doorknob and gave him a thumbs-up. The last man in the stack stood in front of a window, but it was moot. Everything on the lower floors was boarded over.

  A grin flashed across McFarlane’s face as he switched channels on his radio and keyed the transmit button. It’s so nice having competent subordinates. Considering that Ropati had been a sun-burnt and starving refugee on a boat in the Pacific Ocean five years ago, he’d made longer strides than most.

  “Eagle Eye, this is Witch Doctor. Status report, over.”

  The drone operator sat in a command trailer forty miles away, but her reply was prompt and crystal clear—the ever-present drone acting as a communication relay. “Ground activity still minimal in your immediate area.” The infected weren’t much warmer than the ambient air, rendering them almost invisible on thermal. The high-definition cameras in the Avenger drone orbiting above them were good enough to pick out some semblance of movement, though the necessity for night ops made that more challenging.

  “Going loud. Keep an eye out.”

  “Roger that, Witch Doctor.”

  The cabin was in the middle of the woods, but as the crow flew, those woods were less than twenty miles from one of the largest cities in the state of Indiana. Before the end, Bloomington had boasted a population around 90,000. Given that the outbreak had kicked off in the middle of the fall semester the total population had probably been well over a hundred thousand. Who knew how many of those were well and truly dead and how many still walked, but the drone reconnaissance had shown an alarming number of shambling infected. More than a few wore the faded and tattered remnants of Indiana University logo wear.

  The insertion helicopters had flown in convoluted serpentine routes intended to slow up any attention their noise might attract and to give the Marines plenty of time to clear the LZ and reach the observation point. Refueled and ready for pickup, the choppers orbited a bit further away from their initial insertion point. Extraction would require close coordination. Show up too soon, and they took the chance of alerting the men in the cabin. Show up too late, and every infected around would be piling up to get them.

  If the infected were slow, the Marines had plenty of time. If they were the evolved ones that had been showing up as of late, well, things were liable to get a bit sporty.

  McFarlane keyed his radio one last time, “Extraction, go. Breach, go.”

  Ropati was first on entry due to sheer size. With his bulk emphasized even more by his body armor, he was an intimidating sight. He was also nimble enough to get out of the way of the Marines behind him, which was even more important.

  The big Samoan twisted the doorknob and heaved the door open. He slid along the inner wall, shouting as he swept the interior of the cabin with his M1014 shotgun.

  “United States Marines! Hands in the air!”

  McFarlane spun inside behind the point man, and then things got chaotic.

  As he cleared the door and took the alternate wall to Ropati, McFarlane could see that the scavengers had stripped the furniture from the bottom floor of the cabin. Stacks of supplies ranging from bottled water to canned food lined the walls. The dying light of the fireplace cast conflicting shadows as the men who’d been sleeping in front of it lurched to their feet in confusion.

  “Hands in the air!” Ropati bellowed again, and one of the cabin-dwellers lurched to the side. He snatched something from the floor, and the M1014 boomed as the Marine got a bead on him before he could bring a bolt-action rifle into line.

  Idiots, McFarlane raged as the man crumpled to the floor in a heap. Surprised and outgunned, they should have given up. The fact that they didn’t was an even greater sign they were up to no good. He pivoted and stroked the trigger of his MK18. Something fast and hard whizzed by his ear, but the NCO’s shots were true. The second cabin-dweller clutched his chest, dropped the revolver he’d aimed at McFarlane, and fell backward into the fireplace. The fire flared up and coals rolled out from under the dying man. Where Ropati’s shotgun hadn’t been authoritative enough to cow the others sleeping on the floor, that seemed to do the trick. They knelt and reached toward the ceiling.

  McFarlane sensed rather than saw the movement above and to his right, and he ducked out of pure instinct. His move was unnecessary. The other two men in the stack—Osborne and Ewald—were inside and had the stairs and landing above covered. A pair of closely-spaced shots later and the fifth attacker slid down the staircase face-first.

  Ropati secured the survi
vors. The rest bustled through the lower level, and multiple calls of, “Clear!” filled the radio.

  With the two outside, that made seven. They’d identified eight—where was the last one?

  A feminine shriek filled the now-still cabin. “Ewald, on me,” McFarlane snapped, bounding up the stairs. Goods of all description packed the rooms upstairs to overflowing. A post-apocalyptic cornucopia overflowed with weapons, food, clothing, and ammunition. He gritted his teeth and tried to push down his anger at the sight. The scavengers could have looted most of the stuff from long-abandoned businesses. Only God knew how much of it had been paid for in blood and pain.

  He caught movement in the room at the end of the landing, at the back of the house, and he led Ewald forward. The beginnings of another scream started but cut off.

  The final marauder was dark-haired and wiry with muscle. Barefoot, clad only in a pair of patched blue jeans, he stood at the side of a four-poster bed. He leaned over and held the blade of an overlarge Bowie knife to the neck of the half-naked woman handcuffed to the bed.

  McFarlane’s eyes scanned the woman and returned to the man with the knife. The tapestry of fresh and faded bruises told him all he needed to know. The woman had been a prisoner for a long time.

  “I’ll cut the bitch,” he snapped. “Turn around and get to steppin’, or she dies.”

  McFarlane studied him. Despite the standoff, he was outwardly calm. His shaved head gleamed in the light from a lantern near the bed. With that light and the amplification of his goggles, the master sergeant identified the three parallel lines trailing down his right cheek. “Nice scars,” he observed.

  “Got `em on day one.” The marauder sneered. “You got any scars, soldier boy?”

  McFarlane ignored the insult. He waited a moment to ensure the other man was listening, then said, “Little girl told us about your scars. She said you were the one who gutted her grandfather.”

  The marauder’s eyes widened. He opened his mouth to speak, but his final words were lost to the ages as McFarlane fired a single shot through his open mouth. A decade of war against the infected had made that sort of accuracy de rigueur.