ROTD (Book 4): Refuge of The Dead Read online

  Refuge Of The Dead

  Jeremy Dyson

  Copyright © 2020 by Jeremy Dyson

  ISBN: 9780990398462

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For Ben

  Contents

  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

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Jeremy Dyson

  Prologue

  I saw her abandoned car. The blood. Her broken cell phone. Hundreds of dead bodies. I was so sure Amanda was gone forever.

  But my wife is alive.

  Even as I stand here looking at it, I’m afraid to let myself believe it.

  “Blake,” she says. Her voice is soft and hoarse and barely more than a whisper.

  My legs move, carrying me closer to her. I reach out and place my hands lightly on her shoulders. It feels like if I touch her she might just vanish again. All of this is so surreal. My hands hang on to her frail body as if she might slip away again should I let go of her.

  So I don’t.

  I wrap my arms around her and pull her close to me.

  Her parched lips curl into a grimace and she begins to cry.

  Her current condition is heartbreaking. The neglected, greasy hair smells of smoke. The torn and stained clothes that she wears reek of stale sweat. Her face is gaunt and covered with grime. None of that causes me any hesitation as I kiss her on the forehead.

  “I thought you were gone,” I whisper as she cries into my chest.

  Her fingers clench the fabric of my shirt and she clings to me tightly as she continues to sob.

  I am overcome with guilt. My wife was alive all this time. Though I realize the odds of ever finding her, even if I had not given up, were astronomical, I still feel a sharp stab of regret that I did not do more. I should have never assumed anything. But after finding my daughter like I did... I lost hope. I had no choice but force myself to accept that my old life was gone in order to move on.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper to her, over and over again. “I’m so sorry.”

  Everything else is momentarily forgotten.

  The fact that Chase had gone out this morning without me when he knew damn well I was coming. The fact that Danielle is standing right there behind me, watching us. None of that matters right now.

  I clutch Amanda in my arms, still not able to believe she is really there. It had taken months for me to even begin to come to terms with losing everything and everyone that mattered to me. Finally, I had to accept that truth and tried to move on with my life.

  But everything is not gone. I was wrong.

  Apologies keep coming from my lips as I release my wife and look at her, but she just stares without expression at the buttons of my shirt. Something feels so off about her. She seems hollow and even afraid of me for some reason. I search her eyes for some sign of the woman I remember, but something seems so different. I place my hand on her shoulder and she retracts from my touch.

  She must have endured so much outside. It will take time. Of course. She will need some time.

  I try to smile again, but Amanda will not even look me in the eyes. Her head tilts forward and she stares down at the floor.

  Even though it still seems like I’m holding on to the ghost of the woman I married, the sight of her face fills me with hope. I thought I’d lost everything, but I was wrong all along.

  If I can find her again, maybe it means we can try to piece our broken world back together. There might still be hope for all of us. We can still be the people we were before all this. It might take a while to get there, but someday things might be like they used to be again.

  Chapter One

  My brooding eyes stare at the empty shelf before me until the sudden crash of a shattering glass startles me. Ringing bits of the bottle rain down to the tile floor. I abandon the empty shelves in front of me and I glance over my shoulder to see Hawk grab another empty liquor bottle off the counter of the pharmacy and launch it against the shelves along the wall. It crashes against the metal rack and more shards rain down to the floor.

  “Hawkins, would you mind knocking that shit off?” Chase warns him. “Don’t need to let the whole fucking world to know we’re in here.”

  “I’m just getting so fucking sick of this,” Hawkins complains. “We’re out here busting our asses every day, and for what?”

  Hawkins lofts another bottle at the wall. Chase clenches his jaw and shoots him an irritated stare before he returns his focus to searching the shelves.

  Stitch leans his scruffy body against me and lets out a sound that is something between a pathetic snarl and a whimpering groan. I glance down and see his one good ear perked up and listening as he looks around for the source of the sound. The other ear flops to the side in the usual fashion. The mutt senses me staring down at him and looks up at me. He wags his tail and opens his mouth and pants heavily. I’m not really sure if he was trying to protect me or hide behind me.

  “Stupid dog,” I mutter.

  Stitch trots off and resumes sniffing around the floor near the entrance to the store.

  “This is a fucking waste of time,” says Hawk.

  He shakes his head, takes out a towel from his pack, and wipes the layer of sweat off his scalp of blonde stubble. It’s been a long hot summer, and it’s not over yet. Even though it’s almost September, it still feels like this summer, like the dead, just refuses to die.

  “Reapers have picked this whole damn town clean,” Natalie agrees.

  “Same as everywhere,” adds Scout as she pushes aside a collection of empty allergy medicine packages only to find the desolate shelf behind them.

  “This is pointless,” Lana says.

  “I second that,” Hawkins agrees.

  Staff Sergeant Matthew Hawkins and Officer Lana Gomez are the last two members sent from Cheyenne Mountain to accompany our team. Initially, there were about a dozen volunteers, but these two are the only ones left that are still alive.

  Even though most of the personnel inside Cheyenne Mountain served in the Air Force, the vast majority of them primarily handled administrative or technical aspects. Their tactical experience and training are minimal. They are great if you need a satellite image of a location or want to launch a missile strike, but not so experienced with close-quarters combat.

  The Chair Force. That’s what Chase calls them. They don’t appreciate too much, but I have to admit it is pretty accurate.

  They’ve been locked inside since the beginning. Most of them prefer to keep it that way for as long as possible.

  I can’t really say I blame them.

  It must be easier to watch it all happe
n on the screen of a monitor. You can imagine it is something that doesn’t impact you... pretend you aren’t a part it at all.

  If I’m being honest, I wish I could have done that, too. It’s a hell of lot easier.

  Once you’ve witnessed this kind of horror, you can never forget it, though. I can’t sit inside and act like they do. Like everything is normal. I’ve tried. The nightmare is all that feels real anymore.

  Most of the volunteers that we had initially came from the site security unit. Prior to this, their biggest job was check name badges or guard entrances, but they were mostly young and, at the very least, their roles required them to use a rifle on a regular basis.

  Well, carry a rifle.

  Still, the security teams weren’t prepared for the kind of situations we encountered out there. After a pair of conflicts with the Reapers in which we sustained some heavy losses, no one volunteered to leave the base anymore.

  Chase says it was for the best. Too many people out there just increases the odds that someone will fuck up. Statistically speaking, he might be on to something.

  Aside from the military personnel, the rest of the people that reside inside the bunker are either scientists that worked for NASA or part of the site support staff. Janitors, cooks, and medical staff. That sort of thing.

  Except for Lana.

  Officer Lana Gomez was a Colorado Spring police officer. She helped the secret service to escort Senator McGrath to Cheyenne Mountain when this whole nightmare began. McGrath is the man that eventually became the new president of our devastated country. All thanks to Lana. If it hadn’t been for her and her partner that died, we wouldn’t have a president at all.

  So here we are. Together, our six-person team is tasked with scavenging essential supplies so that perhaps Claire and Doctor Schoenheim can still find a way to save us all. The Cheyenne Mountain Complex has a lot of facilities, but it’s still not that same as a laboratory. We also have to acquire a supply of Donepezil for the doctor. It’s a dementia medication. Without it, he can hardly remember to put on his pants let alone do his research.

  It’s hard to believe that the fate of humanity may hinge on our success or failure, but that seems to be the reality of it. That thought is what keeps us going on days like this when luck is not on our side. We don’t have much of a choice.

  I make eye contact with Scout and she lets out a frustrated sigh and shakes her head to tell me that she has not found anything of use here either.

  “What time is it, Nat?” Chase wonders.

  Natalie stretches her arm to reveal the wristwatch beneath her sleeve. Her eyes glance down at the numbers and then she shrugs the sleeve back into place.

  “Almost o-fifteen hundred,” Natalie tells him as she readjusts her grip on the rifle.

  Ever since we met Chase, Natalie has emulated him as much as possible. Her attitude changed completely in the past month, and I can’t say for sure that it is an improvement. Maybe she thinks if she can be hard and cold enough that nothing will get to her anymore. But I’m not so sure. There is only so long a person can avoid dealing with things before it becomes too much to handle.

  “Let’s move out,” Chase says. “We can still make it to the next town and get back to base before dark.”

  “What’s the point?” Hawk sighs. “We been out here for days and what do we have to show for it? Nothing.”

  If I hadn’t known Hawkins for a couple of weeks now, some of his complaints might make me think he is just a jaded asshole. Except I know the reason for it. He used to be a pretty nice guy, but his attitude changed after he watched every soldier under his command die brutally at the hands of the undead. That kind of thing is bound to weigh on a man, no matter if he is as tough as Hawkins or not.

  “We can’t give up,” I say. “Not if we want to survive.”

  Stitch lets out a whimper and then a low growl as he stares out the windows at the front of the store. I turn my head to see him watching the street through the cloudy glass.

  Must be corpses.

  Scout walks by me while I grab up my pack and rifle from the floor and get ready to move.

  “How many?” Chase asks Scout as she swipes a hand to clear the glass and peeks outside.

  “Just a couple so far,” Scout says as she pushes open the door at the front of the pharmacy and turns her head to check up and down the block. She turns and looks back into the dark interior of the store and jerks her head toward the street.

  “Come on,” she urges us. “Let’s get the hell out of here while it’s still clear.”

  We follow her outside toward the pair of bullet-riddled black Tahoes. Nearby corpses trudge toward us through the overgrown grasses and wildflowers that surround the small parking lot. Rotting grey flesh clings to their vacant faces. Their moans are now hoarse and raspy, a symptom of the decomposition of their vocal cords over the last several months.

  Stitch runs out to the middle of the road and bares his teeth and snarls at the corpses as they approach us.

  “Come on, you idiot,” I call to the dog. After a corpse lunges at him, Stitch stops acting tougher than he is and lets out a high-pitched yelp before he retreats to the vehicle. He jumps into the backseat with Lana and squeezes by her legs to get to the other side of the seat while she slams the door.

  Natalie raises her rifle and fires a carefully aimed shot. One of the corpses falls to the dirt.

  “Don’t waste the bullets,” I remind her. “They’re not close enough to be a threat to us.”

  Natalie lowers the rifle slightly and squints her eyes at me as I climb behind the wheel of the second vehicle.

  “She needs the practice anyway,” Chase disagrees. He gives her a slight nod and she raises the rifle back up and aims at the other walking corpse and fires. The head of the things snaps back, its legs buckle, and it collapses. Its head smacks against the pavement and spills putrid brain matter onto the pavement.

  “That a girl,” Chase says. “Good shot.”

  He glances back at me once more before he slides behind the wheel of the lead vehicle and fires up the engine.

  I let out a sigh as Scout climbs into the passenger seat beside me. She can probably tell I’m frustrated, but she just pulls the aviator sunglasses off the collar of her shirt and puts them on. She just wants to stay out of it. Can’t really say I blame her for that.

  After Stevie lost his father, no one thought Scout would consider coming out with us and leaving him behind. I guess she realizes we aren’t finished yet. This isn’t the kind of world she wants to leave for the kid.

  But it’s not so easy for her to leave him behind either. Every minute she is away from him out here it visibly weighs on her.

  Once everyone is in both vehicles, I turn the key and crank the ignition. I wait a few seconds until the lead vehicle begins to move and then I shift the engine into drive and follow Chase as he leads us out of town.

  “He just has to disagree with everything I say,” I mumble.

  I hadn’t realized I was talking out loud until after I said it, but everyone in the car ignores me anyway. They know how I had nearly pulled the trigger and shot Chase. Some days I still wonder if I should have. I wanted to, but I was afraid of the kind of person that would make me.

  Things like that don’t just go away. They’re like infected wounds that fester just beneath the surface of the skin. Eventually, they might kill you unless you deal with them. After I let out another frustrated sigh, I try my best to forget it for now.

  This isn’t the time or the place.

  Our convoy zigs and zags through the abandoned cars along the mountain roads. The late August sun hangs in the distance in cloudless Colorado sky and the heat waves emanating from the blacktop melt the hazy horizon.

  A massive bug splatters against the windshield, leaving another starburst of slime across the filthy glass. I try the wipers but the washer fluid tank is bone dry and the blade smears the insect guts. Figures. Lately, it seems like trying to fix anything is
a surefire way to make the problem worse.

  “That’s great,” I sigh and shut the wipers off.

  The brake lights ahead of us glow red. Chase slows the lead vehicle down when we approach the next community. The tires crunch through broken glass on the ground as we squeeze the pair of trucks between two smashed vehicles. As soon as we emerge from the wreck, a pair of ragged corpses moan and toss their bodies against my door. I recoil from the hideous faces crashing against the glass and chomping their teeth.

  “Shit,” I curse. But I resist the urge to stomp on the gas. Instead, I ease the pedal down and pull away from them. I watch the things stumbling along behind us for a moment then focus on the road ahead of me once again.

  The sight of the dead is welcome these days. At least we know this town might not have been cleaned out already. We may even salvage what we need.

  We can only hope.

  That’s the only that keeps us going these days.

  Chapter Two

  The bodies of the dead run into the road and throw themselves against the lead vehicle. They bounce off and collapse on the pavement, right in my path. I swerve to try and avoid the disfigured bodies and am mostly successful.

  Chase skids to a stop on the dusty road in the center of town. Behind him, I slam the brakes as well.

  Corpses shamble toward our vehicles. Some of the recently departed show only slight decomposition, while several others are in such bad shape they crawl along the ground. Fresh or not, the dead are all still extremely dangerous, though. Anyone that forgets that, even for a moment, does not have long to live.