Zed's World (Book 1): The Gathering Horde Read online

  Zed’s World Book One

  The Gathering Horde

  Rich Baker

  Australia United Kingdom United States

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to real events or people, living, dead, or undead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Rich Baker

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author or publisher.

  ISBN:

  Edited by Sara Jones @ www.torchbeareredits.com

  Cover by Angry Chair Designs

  Formatting by Polgarus Studio

  With thanks to my support team: Mom, Dad, Mike, Cookie, and David for feeding my obsession and keeping my creative space filled with both the undead and the tools to fight them, the folks who read the serial on Zedprep.com and seemed to think it has merit (Mick James and Uncle Bob chief among them), and to Wendy for her undying support, proofreading, editing and belief that ‘you can do it!”

  Prologue: All Good Things…

  Sept 29, 2013 – Z-poc plus 135 days

  The compression bandage has stopped the bleeding but twenty-eight-year-old Jason Bowling, forever called “D-Day” because he was born on June 6, knows he will not see twenty-nine. The blood vessels leading away from the wound have turned a dark gray even as the surrounding flesh loses its color. All around the bite, the skin is painful to the touch and getting worse as the minutes pass. He knows he needs to make a decision about what to do next; too much time has passed for amputation to be effective, so either he’s going to have to ask one of the people he’s been staying with, has trained and has bonded with, to kill him, or he’s going to have to punch his own ticket.

  Marc Wallace comes rushing in, out of breath from running. Marc is forty-four years old and is in the best shape of his life. It only took the end of the world—the end of human domination of the world—to get him out from behind his desk. He was a work-from-home web designer before the z-poc and still displays his nerdish leanings, but he’s leaner and tougher now than he was in the spring. Of course, everyone is, D-Day thinks. He redirects his focus to Marc, still panting from his sprint into the room. He’s holding his iPad out in front of him.

  “The Parrot has more bad news!” he gasps, catching his breath.

  On the ten-inch screen, they can see the familiar field, about a third of a mile south of them. Instead of out-of-control alfalfa grown by the former owner so he could claim the tax advantages of being a “farm,” they watch about 2500 zeds loping toward their housing development. Some stagger and fall in the ruts left from the last time the field was plowed, more than a year ago, while some trip over the railroad tracks that run east to west at the edge of the field.

  Some of the zeds that trip find themselves impaled on a length of rebar protruding from the ground … several through the head, thanks to the statistical measurements Marc has provided. Even on this uneven topography for every one that has been auto-speared, there are fifteen more who flow like water, along the path of least resistance, following a single row until they reach the dirt road that borders the acreage. Some have already crossed the road and are stuck at the fence that separates the field from the green space that marks the southern end of their housing development.

  Soon they’ll find the opening where a gate used to be, and once the first zeds make it through the opening, the rest will follow like molecules being dragged by invisible atomic bonds, following the sounds of the battle that just ended. Marc puts to words what everyone is thinking. “We’ve got about fifteen minutes to dig in or bug out.”

  They’re all spellbound for a moment, watching the image being transmitted by the Parrot. The Parrot is Marc’s four-bladed helo-drone, originally bought for having fun in the park, or spying on his neighbor’s property as a virtual neighborhood watch. Now it’s their early warning system. At 150 feet in altitude, the Parrot can see for miles in any direction with the on-board HD camera. It has saved their skins several times, many of them on supply runs, and it gave them the upper hand in the battle that they just finished. Recharging the Parrot’s batteries and the iPad, which controls it, always gets priority on their makeshift electric grid.

  Kyle Puckett, the group’s leader—though he does not like that title—takes about ten seconds to do the math in his head. “Kids, go-bags, now! We’re bugging out!”

  D-Day watches as the five younger members of their crew spring into action, their adrenaline from the battle they just escaped still coursing through their systems. They move with purpose, though; they’ve practiced this before and they each know what to do.

  They’ve forgotten his condition for the moment as well, D-Day thinks. It’s the combat mindset. Since May 17, 2013, there has been little time for mourning the dead or weeping for the dying. In fact, in Zed’s World, dead and dying are the same thing. D-Day knows they all wrote him off the minute he’d been bitten, knowing that when the time came, someone would do what was needed. Afterward, they’d bury him in the vacant lot down the street, next to the last member of the group they’d had to put down.

  Marc goes back to the basement window and climbs into the tunnel that connects the houses. He has to get ready to move as well. At least now, with the images of that horde still fresh in his mind, D-Day knows what he needs to do about his own situation.

  “Kyle, load me up. I’ll need a popper too,” D-Day says, using their colloquialism for a hand grenade, as he struggles to his feet.

  “D-Day …” Kyle starts to say, but D-Day holds up his good hand.

  “I’m done, Kyle, and you know it. But before I go, I’m going to buy you all some time.” He looks at his graying arm. “Time which neither of us have much of, by the way, so stop wasting it and help me get geared up.”

  Kyle looks at D-Day through tired eyes. Eyes that have seen more death, more horror over the last half year than anyone should see in a lifetime. They all have seen the same things, but Kyle bore the burden of leadership, whether he wanted it or not. He had made the hard decisions when other people had not had the desire to do so.

  No one said it out loud, but it was easier to follow an order than to decide it was necessary. They have all been glad to have him make these choices since it absolved them of being the ones responsible, but that weight has taken a toll on Kyle these long five months. Here at the end of D-Day’s time on this planet, someone other than Kyle is making the decision about how to end a life. D-Day has decided to go out on his terms, and Kyle respects his choice. He knows if the roles were reversed, he would do the same thing.

  “Okay,” he says as he reaches for the well-used rifle D-Day brought with him to their sanctuary. It was all he could say, but nothing more was needed.

  Chapter 1: Doubt

  May 3, 2013 AD – Z-poc minus 14

  Khaleed Farouk is dying. It’s more painful than he thought it would be. Maybe he thought it would be like going to sleep; he can’t remember now, but if he did think that, he could not have been more wrong.

  It feels like having razor blades drawn across his skin followed by gasoline being sprayed in the wounds. The brown flesh at the injection site where the pale green serum had been introduced to his body has faded to a pale gray, and the pain which began there radiates throughout his body. His heart, which beats WAY too fast, feels like it’s pushing broken glass through his arteries. It wasn’t until the virus reached his brain that he knew what the torment of Jahannum must feel like. For a moment, he feels pity for the kafir and their fate, then, as his heart goes thro
ugh its final spasms and his synapses begin to shut down, he feels nothing. Khaleed Farouk is dead, martyred for the Jihad. He has died the honorable death of a true believer making the ultimate sacrifice for the cause.

  In the raised antechamber, Almahdi Maloof and Najm al Din Abdul-Malik look through a large window of inch-thick polycarbonate ballistic glass at the prone figure of Khaleed on the stainless steel table. Both men have been in America for more than twenty years, waiting for the time when they would be called to support the Jihad. In the corner of the room below them, the man they simply call “The Scientist”—Asad Sajjad Bitar—packs up his gear. They’ve just watched him set up an IV drip into Farouk’s arm and inject a pale green serum into the line. Farouk lies on the stainless steel table with his arms, legs, and waist restrained.

  Even from this distance, they could see the effects of the serum when it hit his system. He started struggling against the restraints and screaming in pain. They could see the blood vessels closest to the skin turn grey as the drug worked its way into his system, followed by the skin draining of its color. The entire process, from injection to Farouk lying still, took about two minutes.

  The Scientist checks Farouk for a pulse and looks up at the window where Maloof and Abdul-Malik stand watching. He shakes his head to indicate there is no pulse, takes the restraints off of the body, then grabs his bag and exits the room, taking care to turn the key in the deadbolt behind him.

  Maloof and Abdul-Malik hear the clicking of The Scientist’s shoes on the tile in the hallway as he approaches the room, the steady spacing becoming more staccato as he climbs the ten stairs to the elevated level, from which they view the dead man on the table. The doorknob jingles, and The Scientist enters the observation room.

  “He is dead,” The Scientist says. “Now we wait and, Allah willing, he will rise and be a vector of death for America and the West.”

  “How long will it take?” Maloof asks him.

  “It depends,” The Scientist says, going into lecture mode. Old habits die hard for the one-time professor. “The virus takes over the blood cells, using them as nourishment as it multiplies and moves to the brain. It reaches a critical mass and invades the nerves themselves, ultimately giving the illusion of life to the dead. They arise, not as their host reborn, but as something else. A predator. Their saliva has become an infectious venom; the viral waste that fills their circulatory system is a weapon of mass destruction. How long does the transition take? Many factors affect it. Age—younger people turn faster. Gender—men turn before women. Health. Those who are already ill succumb to the virus faster but take longer to reanimate. The longest we’ve recorded was eight minutes. The fastest was less than two. With regard to our hero below, I gave him a large bolus of pure serum straight into his venous system, so it should not be too long. Patience, patience,” he replies as he starts typing into his iPhone, no doubt sending a coded status to someone up the chain, someone Maloof would never meet.

  While they are waiting, Maloof can’t stop thinking about what they are doing. He knows he was sent here to be a sleeper agent for the Jihad; it’s what he was trained for, but he has grown fond of his adopted country. And he never in his wildest dreams thought he would be unleashing a plague of this nature upon the world. They have been assured that all the faithful will receive a vaccine, but given their timetable, he doesn’t see how they can immunize a billion people unless they started long ago.

  He knows he can never give voice to his thoughts, but the fire and anger he felt toward America in the early 90s, after Osama’s failed attempt to bring down the World Trade Center from below, has ebbed. After the Towers fell on 9/11, all of the stealth mujahedeen like himself and Abdul-Malik had been instructed to express outrage and grief like all other Americans were doing, and for Maloof, it had not been hard to do. Living here, in picturesque Fort Collins, Colorado, has been the most pleasant time of his life.

  Virtually nothing he was told about America, or Americans for that matter, has proven true. They are not all selfish, intolerant crusaders who want to rule the world. They are giving, kind people for the most part. They value and protect their families and they keep close friendships with their neighbors. They had kept his cover business, a furniture outlet, swimming in cash and his adopted community had opened its arms to him and his family. His neighbors brought him gifts when his children were born and looked after them when he and his wife had been in an auto accident. In fact, were it not for his regular attendance at the local Islamic center where his handler met with him, he may have completely assimilated in to this lovely town and the American culture.

  Yes, on the inside, he struggles with grave doubts about what they’re about to do. He knows in his heart that the conflict between Islam and the West is not necessary, but he also feels like there’s nothing he can do to stop the machine that is currently in motion, and there is no way he can bow out now, not after everything the heads of the program have invested in him. He knows they would never allow him to leave alive.

  He’s brought back to the present by movement in the room below. A pair of microphones hanging from the ceiling of the room below feeds a set of speakers in the observation room. Abdul-Malik flips a switch on the wall next to the window to turn on the speakers, and a low, guttural growl fills the room.

  Less than two minutes after dying, the figure who used to be Khaleed Farouk tries to sit up on the table. Free from the restraints, the arms swing loosely. All at once, the figure rolls off of the table and lands on the floor with a loud thud, but if the body has been injured, the figure does not register it. He (IT?!) draws upright. The shaven head turns and pivots, the dilated pupils making the sunken eyes appear black and evil. It doesn’t move, just sways where it stands.

  “Success!” shouts Abdul-Malik. He grabs Maloof by the shoulders and shakes him. “And it happened so quickly! Do you know what this means? We are about to destroy America!” He is jubilant.

  “Not so fast,” says The Scientist. “Not all of the infections will be this clean.” At this, he holds up his phone and displays a message neither of them are able to read. “There is another test that must be performed before we can celebrate.”

  “Well then, let’s do it! No waiting!” Abbul-Malik exclaims, grinning like he just won the Lotto.

  A smile—more of a sneer—spreads across The Scientist’s face. “Your enthusiasm strengthens my heart, Najm.” Here he pauses and looks at the figure swaying in place in the room below. “Please, come with me. As you say, let’s do it!” he turns on his heel and leaves the room.

  The grin fades from Najm al Din Abdul-Malik’s face as it dawns on him what the next test is. He looks at the graying flesh that until a few minutes ago was Khaleed Farouk, and he swallows hard.

  From the hallway, The Scientist calls out, “Come now, Najm! Time to play your role. Greatness awaits you!”

  His shoulders slump and his jubilation is gone, but he knows he has no choice. If he refuses, he will be killed anyway. He thinks about the martyrs who blow themselves to pieces and take a few dozen kafir with them. At least I will claim more than that, he thinks. Ten times, a hundred times more! Besides, I cannot let Khaleed Farouk do what I could not. I cannot bring that shame to my family. Resigned to his fate, he walks into the hall without looking at Maloof and follows The Scientist down the stairs.

  Maloof watches in horror as the door to the room below opens. The Scientist shoves Najm al Din Abdul-Malik inside and shuts the door, again locking it. The thing that was Khaleed Farouk turns its focus to Abdul Malik, who has lost his nascent nerve and is trying in vain to open the door. The creature springs at Abdul-Malik and begins tearing at him furiously, biting and pulling flesh from his body.

  Maloof reaches over and switches the speaker switch off, but the screams still echo in his mind.

  Yes, Ahlmadi Maloof has massive doubts about what they are doing.

  Chapter 2: The Last Hurrah

  Saturday, May 11, 2013 – Z-poc minus 6

&nb
sp; “Do you think he’s okay?”

  The question hangs in the air for a minute as Kyle Puckett and his wife, Naomi, watch their neighbor, Marc Wallace, messing around with his iPad in the alley behind his house. Up and down the alley, garage doors are open. Music plays from a number of different stereos, people laugh, and the entire area is hazed with smoke from a dozen different barbeques.

  The Sunny Meadow neighborhood’s annual First Barbeque of the Year features some people just offering basic hot dogs and hamburgers, others grilling ears of corn and turkey legs, or their family secret recipe ribs or shish-ke-babs. Each house has a cooler with sodas out for the kids, and while most have some bottled beer, at least three of them have their home brewed beer and wine out for the adults. All except for Marc’s house.

  Marc plays with his iPad, oblivious to the commotion around him. Everyone else is content to let him be. Other than the few dinners Naomi has demanded he come over for, he’s been disconnected from people since his wife was killed in a car crash at the end of the previous summer. He’s a web designer by trade and has always been somewhat socially awkward, but after the accident, people don’t quite know how to approach him, so they mostly leave him alone.

  Kyle turns to Naomi. “He’s going to be fine, babe. He’s just dealing with things his own way. At least he’s outside while the rest of the neighborhood is. It’s been a while since he’s stayed out this long with people around. It’s only been what, nine months? He just needs time.”

  “Baby steps, I guess,” she replies.

  A man walks up and hits the back of Kyle’s knee, almost making him fall. The man laughs.

  “Man, your situational awareness is for shit!” he says.