Wheels and Zombies (Book 3): Aground Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Part One: Hope Kills

  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

  Part Two: Cheyenne

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Part Three: Outbreak

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  More

  Other books

  AGROUND

  Book Three in the

  Wheels and Zombies series

  By

  M. Van

  AGROUND

  Book Three in the

  Wheels and Zombies series

  By M. Van

  Copyright © 2016 by M. Van. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events or locales is purely coincidental. Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.

  42Links Publishing

  Visit:

  www.42Links.net

  Cover design by Shezaad Sudar

  Edited by Book Helpline

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-90-824472-4-8

  Prologue

  It had hit New York first, and from what I had learned, it might have been deliberate. They had tried to contain it, but the Mortem virus, as it came to be known, swept through the population like a plague. It struck as fast as a bullet and then coursed through the veins with every heartbeat and nestled inside the brain. Once infected, your body became a vessel for an entity forcing you to feed on the flesh of others, unable to stop unless every cell inside had turned to dust. People fled, running for their lives. They ran from a certain death brought on by a virus that wouldn’t take their lives.

  Part One

  Hope Kills

  | 1

  “Come on, Ash. Get your butt up there.” My arms trembled as I felt the dumpster under my feet waver. Ash grunted, and I couldn’t suppress a smile. Fortunately, Ash wasn’t a heavy burden to lift—the scrawny fourteen-year-old kid was still too damn skinny, although I kept giving her all the carb-rich foods we gathered on the road.

  “Push me up some,” Ash said through clenched teeth.

  “Use your arms already.”

  With a groan, her weight lifted from my arms as she pulled herself up onto the roof of a building, and I heard her land with a thud on the other side of the ridge. “You okay?” I called out with a chuckle before I flung my backpack after her. There was another thud followed by an oomph.

  “Hey, watch it.”

  Unable to stop laughing, I gripped the drainpipe to lift myself up onto the roof. Not that long ago, I would never have been able to lift my own bodyweight to climb onto a roof, but it seemed that allowing myself to be bitten by a zombie has significantly improved my physical condition—even though, it wasn't by choice.

  I swung my legs over the ridge and rolled onto the tar roof next to Ash. An army of stars reached out over our heads and lit the night sky as we lay on our backs, panting. Ash gazed up at the sea of shimmering dots, and I embraced this rare moment of her being silent for once. Her blue eyes reflected silver in the gleam of the half-moon.

  “You like that, huh?” I said as I watched her crack a smile.

  “We never got to see that in the city.” Her voice was soft—small even—as if it came from the girl she was supposed to be.

  I got to my feet and looked around. A few lights still illuminated the gas pumps that belonged to the gas station underneath my feet. In the distance, waves crashed on the beach, and the ocean looked brilliant under the starlit sky. The world seemed vast, as if it were endless. The sight reminded me of home and the vacations I had spent with my parents and siblings when I was a little girl. Although the beach in Scheveningen could never match in size what I was seeing here, that didn’t mean I didn’t miss that little speck on the map called the Netherlands. It was still my home.

  I stood over Ash and watched her endless smile for a minute before I grabbed her arms and yanked her up.

  “Hey, watch it,” she said, but I ignored her as I lifted her over my shoulder. Her strength had improved, but she was still a tiny thing, barely five foot two. Her legs hung limp as I held her to grab the pack with my free hand and walked to the other side of the roof.

  I knew she would have kicked my ass if she’d gotten the chance or had legs to use. She didn’t appreciate my ferrying her around like this. If I had learned one thing the past year, it was not to underestimate Ash, but I also knew I could go a long way with her.

  “Don’t do that,” she said as she slammed her fist into my upper arm after I sat her down. I had to bite my lip to contain my smile.

  “Sorry, old habit,” I said and rubbed a hand through her messy blond, almost white, hair. Ash jerked her head and scooted away from me in annoyance, but I had an idea to soften her mood. I pulled the M4 from my backpack—our own personal carbine assault rifle, at least I presumed that was its name. Ash narrowed her blue eyes and grinned at me like a kid on a sugar high. I shook my head, clicked out the magazine from the rifle and started to fill it with the .223-caliber rounds that came with the weapon. Thirty rounds later, the magazine clicked into the rifle.

  Ash nodded as she crawled to the edge—her legs sliding along the tar roof. I took in a deep breath, followed in a crouched position and lay down next to her, the rifle tilted over the edge of the roof. Ash’s grin evaporated after one glance over the parking lot below, and the sight made my stomach turn.

  The lot had been empty when we’d gotten here. It had seemed safe enough to leave Ash’s wheelchair behind, and she’d clung to my back as we’d strolled into what was left of the shop. The place had been gutted, but we’d found a couple of bottles of water, two soda cans, and a box of salted crackers in a plastic bag stuffed underneath the counter as if someone had stashed them there but had never come around to retrieve them for whatever what reason. I had been shoving them in my pack when Ash had spotted our first visitors.

  Unwilling to face them, we’d decided to exit the shop at the back and had figured the roof to be our safest bet. Although our conditions kept us from being touched by the virus that had swept the country, facing the people who had contracted the disease felt threatening. It’s strange to think that the cancer we both suffered from, and that would have surely killed us, had saved us from turning into zombies. More than that, it had saved our lives. It also meant that if we had wanted to, we could walk out of here without the zombies being bothered with us, but what I saw on the street and the parking lot below made my blood run cold.

  In any other point in time, it would have sounded weird and shameful, but I had grown accustomed to the decrepit bodies drained of life. The sheer mass of this group wasn’t anything I hadn't seen before. Other than the army of infected we had to plo
w through during our escape from the lab in Florida, we had been fortunate enough to avoid the masses. We knew these giant parades of zombies existed, and had once brushed the edge of a big group, but we’d kept our distance because even though they couldn't infect us, that didn't mean they couldn't cause us harm. I had seen zombies in agitated states that didn’t seem to care about what they caught between their teeth.

  Body after body lumbered down the street. The moans rose in unison to a chilling hum. I stopped counting after I reached twenty-five. There must have been over a hundred of them. Shoulder-to-shoulder, creatures that used to be human beings filled the parking lot in slow, steady stream. Dirt and blood coated mutilated bodies that pressed against our Knight. The armor-plated truck, our trusted vehicle, had aided our escape from a lab located inside a US military base in Florida and had since become our home. The tank-like vehicle, known as a Knight XV, was a force to be reckoned with, constructed with fiberglass, ballistic steel, and armored glass all around. It weighed tons, and had we been in it, I don’t think we would have had any trouble mowing our way out of this place.

  Broken fingers clawed at the truck as the zombies pushed each other in a continuing flow. I started breathing through my mouth when the foul smell of decaying bodies wafted up to where we lay on the roof. In a sideways glance, I noticed Ash’s mouth stood open as well. She seemed fascinated by the march of the walking dead.

  I figured the amount of zombies didn’t have to spoil my plan to get some target practice and placed the stock of the rifle to my shoulder. Peering through the scope, some of the distinctive features of the zombies became clearer. In their filthy clothes, most of the zombies looked alike from a distance, but through the rifle’s scope, a flowery dress or a red baseball cap returned some humanity to them. They shuffled their zombie shuffles and moaned with their heads raised to the sky, sniffing out their next victim.

  Set to single shot, I aimed the rifle and pulled the trigger. My body flinched as the bullet left the barrel. It wasn’t the forehead shot I had been going for, but a bullet through a zombie’s ear gave the same desired effect. The other side of its head splashed open, and the body fell limply to the ground. Some of the zombies reacted to the sound, flailing their arms and releasing those guttural sounds.

  Ash gave me a nudge and looked at me with an eagerness that made me a bit nervous. Though she wouldn’t allow me to call her a kid, she very much was, and this probably wasn’t good parenting, but then I wasn’t her mother. I was just a tourist from the Netherlands who got stuck in the United States during a zombie apocalypse. After our chance meeting, I’d promised myself to take care of her, although I was aware of the fact I might suck at it. Shooting guns might not be a proper upbringing for a fourteen-year-old girl, but then it wasn’t as if these were conventional times, and she needed to be able to take care of herself. I passed her the rifle.

  “Keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to fire,” I said in a low voice. She rolled her eyes at me and scowled. I raised my eyebrows and edged back in defeat.

  “I’m just saying.”

  I followed her line of sight as she picked her target. My mouth opened to warn her, but I was too late, and a metal clank followed the loud shot into the night sky. With my mouth open, I glared at her. The sight of her cheeks going crimson made my day.

  “You shot the Knight,” I said in disbelief. “You actually shot the Knight.” She nervously glanced at the truck and then at me. At that point, I wished I was someone who could hold a straight face, but I lost it and snorted out, laughing. She punched me in the shoulder, and I rolled onto my side, still laughing.

  “I think the armored vehicle will survive,” I said.

  Ash frowned, but I could tell she tried to hide a smile.

  “Ass,” she said, raising the weapon to her shoulder again. Attracted to the shot and probably our laughter, the zombies had moved closer to the side of the building and glared up at us. Ash aimed and fired. A zombie struck in its shoulder fell backward on its ass.

  About half a dozen shots later, she started to get the hang of it. I fired off a couple of rounds myself before I emptied the chamber and clicked on the safety.

  I yawned and rubbed a hand over the aching muscles in my neck but kept my eyes on the shuffling parade of zombies. The few that had stood gawking at us from the ground had long since rejoined the larger group and resumed their shuffle once we’d stopped firing the weapon.

  Similar to the group we had encountered before, this parade seemed to be heading northwest, but it looked as if it would be a while before they all got on their way. Some, like the ones that had been watching us, strayed from the pack like curious children exploring their surroundings.

  “I think we should stay up here for the night,” I said as I watched a zombie’s leg snap in half. Its dilapidated body, which, from the looks of it, had endured a number of assaults, crashed to the ground, and I shuddered at the sight. The thing, dragging a dead dog on a leash, didn’t seem fazed and struggled on by clawing at the pavement.

  Ash released a long breath and eyed me sideways.

  “Do we have to?” she said. I ignored the whining in her voice.

  “Well, I for one don’t want to go down and disturb them,” I replied.

  “You’re such a wuss,” she said and huffed in frustration as she scooted back from the edge. I knew Ash well enough to not take the bait if I didn’t want to get into a lengthy debate; besides, if she didn’t argue the point on her own, she probably agreed. The fact Mortem didn’t affect us and the fact that the infected rejected our smell didn’t mean the zombies wouldn’t attack us. If they became upset or agitated, it was possible they’d confuse us for a meal.

  I watched the slow-moving parade for a moment. It seemed as if these large groups of zombies had some sense to follow the fleeing population. From a group of travelers on the run, we had learned that heading west would be our best bet to survive. They had told us that the military had attempted to keep the Mortem virus isolated on the eastern side of the country and had set up a border along the Mississippi River.

  Although we hadn’t made a definite decision on what our plan would be, we had followed the traveler’s advice. Because of our special ability to avoid becoming zombies, we weren’t much on the run from them. This had led us to travel between waves for a while, stuck between a throng of people fleeing the carnage and the growing number of infected that followed. It led us through abandoned towns or, in some cases, towns where folk had dug in to defend their homes. Most people, though, tended to flee west or north, probably unaware of the zombies following their meals. I guessed the zombies weren’t that eager to let their food source get away.

  Scooting from the edge, I grabbed my pack and removed a sweater. We were somewhere on the Gulf coast and, if I wasn't mistaken, not that far from New Orleans in midsummer, and it was still hot outside, even though the sun had set hours ago, but the sweater would work as a pillow, and I handed it to Ash. I lay down next to her and used the pack as a pillow for my own head.

  “This isn’t too bad,” I said as I watched the remaining light of a long burned-out star.

  “I guess so,” Ash said under her breath. “Wow, did you see that!” Her arm shot up pointing a finger at the sky.

  “Make a wish,” I said, smiling.

  | 2

  I woke to the sound of birds and felt grateful it wasn’t the growls of the walking dead. A pinkish-red light spread across the sky, warming up the air, although it hadn’t lost much heat during the night.

  My eyes fell on Ash’s wild mop of hair that seemed to have a life of its own, and I subconsciously rubbed my own wild mop of hair. My hair had grown longer than it had in a long time. It probably wasn’t wise to let it grow much longer, for it gave the zombies something to grab, but chemotherapy had kept it short for long periods of my life, and it felt nice to have it back.

  Ash had settled herself in the crook of my arm, still peacefully asleep. It made me smile, becaus
e this was one of the rare moments I got to see the kid she was, so eager to hide from me at other times. When we’d first met, Ash had told me she was sixteen, but I had found out that she had actually been thirteen back then. She hadn’t looked a year over twelve, so I hadn’t believed her for even one moment. She always gave me this tough-chick routine and could barely hold up the wall she had built around her. I knew Ash’s mom and dad had blamed her for her sister’s suicide, and I knew her sister had done it to save Ash from a life as a guinea pig, but I wondered if Ash believed that. I wouldn’t want to think of the burden she carried around with her if she believed anything else than that her sister loved her so much she didn’t want Ash to become the lifesaving vessel to her sister’s disease-ridden body.

  I kissed the top of her head and whispered near her ear, “Wake up, sunshine.”

  Ash growled and dug her head deeper into the crook of my arm. “One more minute,” she said.

  I grinned at her reaction, but my back ached, and the backpack wasn’t much of a pillow. I scooted out from under her, replaced my shoulder with the pack and got to my feet.

  At the edge of the roof, the moans of a few undead that hadn’t left with the procession from the night before greeted me. There weren’t a lot, but enough to make a stroll to the car unpleasant, and I picked up the M4. I had reloaded it last night for good measure and placed the stock against my shoulder.

  “Ash,” I said in a raised voice as I clicked off the safety, “you better wake up, or you’ll regret it.”

  She waved a hand and rolled to her side. With a grin, I took aim and caught sight of a short, stubby guy with a bald head in a blue polo shirt. I focused on my breathing, placed my index finger on the trigger, released my breath, and pulled the trigger. The gun crackled, shocking birds and other animal-life around awake, including Ash. The bald head in my sight exploded at the back. In the same moment, Ash shot up and glared at me. Her eyes were wide, and I was pretty sure I had gotten her attention.