Rise of the Necrotics (Books 1-4) Read online

  “I’m all for equal pay and being able to vote, but sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if men still opened car doors for ladies.” Holly settled into her seat with a grunt of pain and closed the door.

  “Shit, and here I was thinking women already took over the world and it was about time they started opening doors for me.”

  “Smart ass.”

  “Every day of my life.” Holly glared at me, but I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. “I might not be an ace at opening doors, but a man that will steal a car for you so you don’t have to walk seems pretty chivalrous to me.”

  “A bold action like grand theft auto might give a man a bit of roguish charm, but opening the door would have also made him dashing.”

  “I’m not much for being dashing either. It always seemed to me like it was better to seem less than you are, and then you can surprise people. Even when I heal in my favorite game, I won’t waste the time to heal you if you keep standing in the red. Sometimes you have to look out for yourself. That applies in games and in life.”

  Holly laughed and then clutched at her ribs. “You must be a real hit with the ladies and the gamers then.” She gave me a little snicker at the end to let me know she was pulling my leg.

  I’d never been one to let a good leg pulling go without a little retaliation. “Just because I’m a fan of strong independent women doesn’t mean I can’t open a door for them, it just means they shouldn’t expect it. It feels a bit nicer when it’s a special treat.”

  “Yeah, that or it feels like a trap. If you never do it and all of a sudden start showering your woman with gifts, she’s going to think something’s up. Men don’t hide guilt very well.”

  “Not all of us are guilty when we do something nice. Sometimes it just means we hope you’ll let us eat cookies in bed without worrying about the crumbs.”

  Holly smiled in a way that said she just took my lunch money and was thinking about what to spend it on. “Don’t worry Max, I’ll explain feminism to you in a way you can understand. You just have to do everything right without being told, and to champion all women’s causes as if you were one. In short you just have to cut off your balls.”

  “I knew there was a catch to joining the club.” I laughed right along with her. “Sometimes the meaning gets lost in the translation, huh?”

  I found the whole concept ridiculous. It seemed to me like it was just easier to treat everyone with the same amount of respect until they proved they didn’t deserve it. So to me it didn’t matter if you were a man, woman, black, white, or Hispanic. The only thing that mattered was the content of your character.

  Not everyone is a good person, in fact most people would happily screw you over in an instant if they thought it would help them get ahead. So when you find someone or a group of people that don’t fit in the standard asshole mold you have to relish it. Sometimes it felt good just to spend some time with people that enjoyed the same thing you did, and those were the people you needed to fight to keep around.

  Unfortunately, tonight I was the giant douche. Coming for Holly had been ninety percent self-serving, and the similarities to what Director Chen had done were starting to make me second guess a lot of my actions tonight. Still, I’d seen The Walking Dead, the first thing to go in a crisis was your humanity. If it wasn’t, you were probably going to die, because someone else will have already lost theirs. The last thing I wanted to be at the end of the world was one of the Governor’s lap dogs, or worse yet, find myself joining the Saviors.

  “Holly, I’ve got something to tell you.” I kept my eyes fixed on the road. The thought of looking at her when I told her what I’d been thinking made my stomach turn. Thankfully there wasn’t anything left in there. My tummy let out a rumble, if I weren’t so damn nervous I’d think about getting something to eat.

  “Oh,” she replied not sounding surprised in the least.

  My knuckles turned white as they flexed on the steering wheel. I wasn’t the best at sharing my feelings, and I was even worse at admitting when I made a mistake, but when there was something I didn’t want to do I always found it was best to get it out of the way before the smallest of tasks took a herculean effort to complete. Once the bad was out of the way, the rest of the day seemed like a cake walk. Unless you were still stuck on a map playing The Last Of Us.

  “Holly, I didn’t exactly track down the chopper just to save you. I might have been thinking of using you as a get out a jail free card.” The words almost seemed to stick in my throat as I said them. Funny how I hadn’t felt an ounce of shame when I decided on the plan, but now I was drowning in it.

  “Pull over,” Holly growled.

  “Holly, we’re right by the hospital, it’s probably not a good idea to stop here.”

  “I said, pull the fuck over!” Holly shouted sounding almost frantic.

  I didn’t slam on the breaks, but I might as well have for how fast Holly exited the car when it stopped. She got out and started running back the way we had come, back towards Chen’s men. Was I really that horrible of a person, she’d run back to Chen instead of staying with me? I couldn’t just let her run through the streets, if she wanted to go back it was a simple enough thing to drop her off. A few minutes wouldn’t make all that much of a difference in getting to my parents.

  I climbed out of the car. “Holly, get back in the car. If you want to go back to Chen, I’ll take you.”

  There was no way to tell if she heard me with her back turned and her running. This was it, the moment of truth. I could just get back in the car and get the hell out of here. I’d be more than happy to leave this mess behind me. Or I could follow Holly and make sure she was safe until she made it back to Chen’s agents. I owed her that much for my deception, but I left the car running just in case I changed my mind.

  It didn’t take long for me to catch up with Holly. She was stopped outside of a closed Schlotzsky’s Deli. I’d loved their sandwiches as a kid. There was something to be said about having really good bread. Sure meat was the apex of any sandwich, but if the foundation of your sandwich wasn’t lights out, then you might as well not eat it at all. Holly didn’t look like she was hungry though. Instead she was fixated on the broken glass door leading to the lobby and the blood dripping from the jagged shards.

  Running through a glass door or a window always looks super cool in the movies, but it’s not that simple in real life. When filming those scenes, filmmakers use break-away glass. It’s a glass made to shatter into round edges instead of the sharp pokey ones that would gut you if you tried the same stunt at home. The jagged shards of this door clearly showed whoever broke in wasn’t as lucky as a Hollywood stuntman would have been.

  There was a blood trail leading into the store but nobody to be seen. I checked my watch, we were closing in on five am. Whoever our break-in was, I doubted they were alone in there. If your restaurant bakes all its bread from scratch, they have to start working on it pretty early in the morning. Most of the bakers I’ve ever met start their jobs well before sunrise. Plus in Arizona, baking before the sun comes up is the only way to keep your store cool. Every degree you can save on your thermostat might as well be ten dollars out in the desert.

  “How’d you even see that while we were driving by?” It wasn’t much of a conversation starter or an apology, but I was treading on thin ice and didn’t want to end up under the ice instead.

  Holly turned and looked at me. “Max, I would do anything to save my parents if they were in danger, but you only get a free pass once. Try and use me again, and I’ll make sure you pay dearly for it.”

  The hard glint in her eye told me that payment might end with my life. I looked over Holly again reassessing her. She handled that gun in the hospital like a pro. Did I underestimate her because she’s hot and smart? Could she be deadly too?

  “I made the wrong decision giving in to Director Chen, but I thought it was my only way out. Don’t feel sorry for me, I made my bed, and now I’ll live with the consequ
ences.”

  “Yeah,” Holly poked me in the chest. “But those consequences ended up saving both our lives, and I’m rather partial to mine. Hence the free pass.” Holly's eyes turned hard again. “But just this once.”

  She’d made her point. The writing on the wall was clear and concise. This was a woman I didn’t want to fuck with. There was a tough interior under all those pretty features, and I wasn’t going to risk falling on the wrong side of her wrath again. I turned away from Holly and peered back inside of Schlotzsky’s.

  Holly had taken the sting out of what I told her, but I also wanted her to know I hadn’t forgotten what I’d seen in the hospital. “I wouldn’t take any chances, not after seeing how you handled yourself in the hospital.”

  Holly just shrugged as if everyone could kill zombies by the handful with precise headshots. When she spoke, Holly completely ignored what I said or the meaning behind it. “Speaking of which, I seemed to have misplaced mine.” Holly looked at me questioningly as if I could pull a gun out of thin air.

  “Sorry, I’ve only got the one.” I patted my thigh holster.

  Holly smiled again, but in a much more mischievous manner. “Then you get to go first.”

  I held out my gun to her butt first, and tried to hide my smile as she shook her head. “No guts, no glory,” I jibbed looking at the blood dripping from the edges of the door. She was right, though, we had to see what happened here. It could have been a simple robbery, but if it wasn’t and one of the necrotics from the hospital got loose, then we had to put them down before they could spread the infection.

  I tried to push the door open, but it was still locked. Trying to slip through necrotic infected glass didn’t seem like such a great idea, so I reached in and clicked the lock open. Once the door was unlocked I shoved it out of the way. I wasn’t going to end up like Garfield, and that meant taking things slow and steady. The door swayed closed behind me, almost making me jump. Damn, I was on edge. Wasn’t there someone else who could handle this? I just wanted to get as far away as possible.

  I looked back through the shattered glass at Holly. “Get in the car, and be ready to go if I come running.”

  Holly smirked at me. “Toughen up, big guy. You’re the one with the gun.”

  Holding two fingers in front of my mouth like they were long teeth I grumbled. “But they have huge sharp pointy teeth.” Holly didn’t seem super impressed, so she must not have been a Monty Python fan. Ignoring her lack of taste in the classics, I pulled the Desert Eagle free and walked further into the deli.

  It was easy enough to follow the smeared blood trail to the back of the restaurant. There the blood started to thin out as it went around the counter. My gut gave a little twist, and I wasn’t sure if my ability was acting up or not, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. Instead of following the trail around the counter and maybe stumbling face to face with a necrotic walking, I used a nearby chair to climb on top of the counter so I could see what was behind it. The area behind the register was clear so I hopped down and started moving deeper into the building.

  The smell of baking bread filled the air. I’m not sure about you, but outside of a pot of chili left to cook overnight, the smell of fresh baked sourdough is one of my favorite things. My belly started to grumble, and I wondered if any of the bread was done. I’d already stolen a car so grabbing a loaf to choke down on the way to my folks didn’t seem like such a big crime. Once you crossed the line it sure seemed like stealing became an increasingly slippery slope.

  The blood on the floor dwindled into just a few latent drops by the time I reached the kitchen. With the amount left on the floor behind me it was no surprise, a person couldn’t bleed indefinitely after all. Now that I could see the man who had broken in, it all made a sad kind of sense. He was wearing normal clothes, but that didn’t mean he didn’t come from the hospital.

  He might not have come from the hospital, but the man in front of me was certainly dead. Blood saturated his clothing from the neck down, and he hadn’t heard me yet. The necrotic was too busy pawing at the walk-in refrigerator doors. Kind of reminded me of a dog that wanted to get a bone that had been left outside. Open the door, stupid human the necrotic seemed to say as it moaned and slapped at the steel door.

  Now I just had to be sure it was one of them before I blew his head off. Grabbing an iron pot off the rack, I tossed it at the back of the man’s legs. The pot hit the ground about a foot away and bounced harmlessly off his calf. The man in front of me moaned as he turned, and the truth was paling to see. The front half of his clothing was burned to cinders, as if he’d been facing the hospital when the bomb went off. The right half of his face looked like melted putty, and his entire chest was covered in blisters, but only in the places were the fabric hadn’t been burned into his skin. If someone survived a burn like that, it would have been one hell of an accomplishment, but this man wasn’t alive.

  The burnt man lumbered forward, his hands outstretched, skin sagging off his fingers, at least where he had skin left. He moaned again and his teeth clacked together making a chittering sound. He took one shuffling step towards me, and then another. His foot came down to the ground for his third step, and I blew his brains all over the fridge.

  A round face appeared in the window of the fridge for a flash, and then the door slammed open. Before the person could run out I shouted. “Don’t get any of his blood on you.”

  The woman hurried from the fridge dancing delicately around the man on the floor. “I fucking quit. I don’t get paid enough to deal with this shit.”

  “Tell me about it,” I replied casually as she moved past me. “Watch the blood on the front door.”

  “Whatever. I’m just getting the hell out of here.” She didn’t even pause as she rounded the corner and headed for the door.

  I grabbed two large loaves of sourdough, and then said screw it and picked up a third before stuffing them all in a to go bag. I flipped the switches of the gas range on but made sure not to light them. The smell of sour eggs started filling the room, and I started to head back towards the door. What’s a little arson compared to blowing people’s brains out because they’ve been infected. All I knew for sure was that leaving the body behind to be discovered was a major no-no. I didn’t have the time to clean it, so this was the fastest solution. Hope this particular franchise owner was up to date on his insurance payments.

  It wouldn’t take long for the gas to reach the bread oven so I had to hurry. I leaped back over the counter and avoided the blood on the ground as I moved through the deli. I made it past the front door without an incident and was sitting in the passenger side of the car a moment later. I almost hadn’t expected Holly to be there when I came out, but she was, and I appreciated it. Stealing another car now would have been a huge waste of time. We had to be on the road heading north in less than an hour or the whole damn city would be awake.

  “I take it you weren’t just shooting civilians to stock up on bread?” Holly asked as she pulled back out on the road.

  “Nope, we’ve got bigger problems than someone on a murderous bread rampage.”

  “That bad, huh?” Holly said, moving us around some of the slower moving traffic.

  “If one got out, the chances are it wasn’t a lone survivor. Containing the spread of the infection isn’t an option anymore, not with the Hilltop distancing itself from the situation.” The front of Schlotzsky’s Deli exploded into the street behind us. I tore a chunk from one of the loaves and bit into it with relish. “I wish I had some soup.”

  “I don’t know how you can eat at a time like this,” Holly muttered as I pointed for her to take a left turn between bites.

  “Chances are we’re going to be doing a lot of running and fighting later. I don’t want to have an empty stomach when the chaos starts.”

  I held out a hunk of bread for her and Holly wrinkled her nose in disgust. “I’m counting on the fact that your mom is going to have better options when we get there.”
r />   I popped another bite into my mouth and shrugged my shoulders. “Sure, if you’re into no gluten, no sugar, and no red meat, then you’ll love the leftovers. I’m just hoping they have some nonperishables in stock. Otherwise I’ll be doomed to the no sugar muffins of the past.”

  Holly licked her lips. “Then let’s go meet the parents.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Max Meridious

  Is there anything more stressful than bringing a new woman home to meet your parents? I highly doubted it. The experience never seemed to go exactly how you hoped. Once you were inside it felt like the walls were closing in, and when you were seated at the dinner table and completely trapped, well, that’s when the questions started. Is it serious? Where did you meet? When can we expect grandchildren? You know, the kind of questions that make you want to fall to your knees and scream at the heavens, why me?

  Thankfully this time we’d be avoiding all of the terrifying relationship questions, but my parents were sure to have plenty more once I dropped the necrotic bombshell on them. They’d probably start by asking why I had a bullet proof vest on and a big ass handgun strapped to my thigh. Guys that worked in call centers didn’t normally dress like swat personnel, at least not if they wanted to keep their jobs. So, I’d have to tell them what I’d really been up to for the last five years, and hope they understood why I lied to them.

  It wasn’t like the Hilltop Initiative was the CIA or anything, but they were twice as secretive and didn’t take well to people spreading rumors about them. In fact, you had to sign a pretty crazy NDA just to go through the initial screening. It only got worse from there. With the work we did, loose lips sink ships. Right now the Initiative was probably doing their damnedest to batten down the hatches. If anyone asked a question, they’d duck their heads in the sand like an ostrich.