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

  Silently I prayed that the rain was just the thing to beat back the summer for good. It sounded like we might be in town for a bit, and I hated the summers. Ask around, all the locals hate the summer, we just don’t talk about it. No one likes the asshole who says, “It’s going to be a scorcher today.” Yeah, I know. When I woke up at five a.m., it was already ninety-two degrees outside. The day started hot, and it only gets worse as it goes along. Nothing says hot like crawling into bed when it’s still a hundred and five out after midnight.

  Garfield tapped the screen in front of us to bring my attention back to it. “This is the live satellite feed. Take a look, we’ll be in position shortly.”

  I watched the screen, wondering just what was so special about that particular house. It might as well have been any of the block homes that dominated central Phoenix’s landscape. Nothing about the squat one-story home was spectacular. Maybe that’s why they chose it. No one would notice anything strange going on out of hand. It wasn’t like when a drug dealer bought a mansion even though he hadn’t paid taxes in five years, this was subtle.

  It kind of made you wonder how the Hilltop Initiative found out about things like this. If the house had been on any law enforcement watch list, they would have just sent the new information to them and let the locals handle it. If there really was something going on inside, whoever put the place together was good enough to avoid picking up the notice of the FBI.

  The SUV rolled to a gentle stop. I looked at the screen one last time. Nothing was moving, and this rain wouldn’t give us cover forever, it was time to go. I opened the door bracing for the cool drops of rain, but even the rain was warm. At least with a hat on I could keep most of the moisture from fogging up my lenses.

  Not that fog would be an issue if these were the new and improved version out of the lab. At least that’s what Dr. Kranston told me they were working on next. The glasses were already damn good. Most shooting glasses just flatten the light, but these also acted like night vision goggles. They weren’t exactly full strength. You wouldn’t be able to see shit in pure darkness, but they worked amazingly well at increasing lowlight visibility. As for being in a rainy alley on a stormy Arizona night, it might as well have been high noon on a clear day. Thank God bad guys didn’t have tech like this.

  Garfield caught my attention and pointed down an alley heading south. I always hated this part. I mean, who wanted to be the sacrificial goat. The reason Garfield had to save my ass so much is because he always made me the point man. As if ordering me to be a human shield was my fault. Because we trained together so often, I think he forgot I wasn’t a veteran like him. I wasn’t a battle-hardened super soldier. My superpower consisted of feeling like I had to take a shit right before the bullets started flying.

  Not really much of a super power if you asked me. Might just be that I got nervous when I knew I was walking into danger. Too bad my gut was always right, so I couldn’t dismiss my ability to sense danger out of hand.

  Hell, who knows, in this day of bio-engineering anything was possible. Maybe someone slipped a little special cocktail into my IV while I was in a coma. If I were a writer, I’m sure there would be a story there, but here in the real world I just woke up, and now I sometimes feel a twist in my gut before something bad happens.

  Not that reality stopped the mad scientist types from trying to create something more than human. Three weeks ago in Germany, we raided a lab that was conducting illegal human trials. They were trying to come up with a way to alter someone’s DNA so they could breathe underwater. The experiment didn’t work, but their research was cutting edge, or so I was told. I didn’t ask what our employer did with the intelligence we gathered; it was easier just to move onto the next job.

  Getting out of Germany had been a mess, mostly because Garfield blew up the whole building during our escape. Bribing the media to cover the blast as a gas leak turned unfortunate explosion couldn’t have been cheap. Hopefully, the same thing wouldn’t happen here. I didn’t want to sit down to a family dinner and have to explain how I let the apocalypse start in my parents’ backyard.

  There was always the chance we wouldn’t find anything. It had happened once before. I mean not every source could be perfect, but out of the hundred or so jobs I’d been a part of, we’d only been surprised that way once. With accuracy results like that, I wasn’t holding my breath.

  You had to wonder how our employer did it. I mean who would have thought of taking a lazy, couch locked gamer like myself, and turning him into a secret agent of sorts. Stuff like that just didn’t happen, but then it did.

  A year later, Master Sergeant Garfield had molded me into a semi-capable agent, or as he liked to say, “You won’t die getting out of the car.” I had to give my partner credit, he was always ready to deliver handy motivational speeches like that. My favorite so far is when he compared me to the goat being staked out for the tyrannosaurus to eat.

  The rain was coming down in sheets as I led us further into the alley. I was moving against the left-hand side of the wall, and Garfield was covering the right-hand side about ten steps back from me. Never get too close to the goat.

  The wind picked up, making the rain come down sideways. Any chance of staying remotely dry evaporated instantly. Lightning crackled against the sky, illuminating the deserted alley in front of us. The giant black rubber bins that dotted both sides of the alley were the only things in sight. Granted, they were also big enough to hide four or five people in, so we weren’t exactly safe. None of the trashcans gave me the heebie-jeebies so I kept moving toward the waypoint showing in the upper right-hand corner of my glasses.

  We were two houses away when the feeling hit. It wasn’t so much like a duck or get the hell out of the way feeling, but more of a you better start paying attention real quick type of thing. It was that same feeling I got from eating at the construction site food cart that one time. You know what I’m talking about, just a little twist of the gut was all it took to know you weren’t going to like what happened next.

  “Tell me you’re feeling something and didn’t just stop to enjoy the wet garbage smell coming off those bins?” Garfield said into the comm.

  I motioned for him to stay quiet, not that anyone could hear us over the wind and rain. Lightning danced across the clouds, and the rolling claps of thunder shook the houses around us. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. Someone back at Hilltop was probably watching the weather and knew it’d be a great cover. Those guys were on top of everything.

  The back windows of our target house were brightly lit from inside. No shadows moved across the window coverings, but that didn’t mean much. I motioned over my shoulder for Garfield to move up and take position on the other side of the gate. The big bastard didn’t even have to get up on his tippy toes to peak over the fence. He took a good long look and then signaled that the outside was clear.

  “Time to earn your paycheck,” Garfield’s voice came through the commline.

  “Didn’t it get signed the second I gave up my courtside seats?” I jumped and started to pull myself up onto the wall. No point in arguing about it, we both knew the eventual outcome was the sacrificial goat goes over the wall first.

  I landed in a small puddle and let out a curse as the water crept into my socks. Tennis shoes weren’t the ideal footwear for a combat mission in the rain. They were ideal for watching a basketball game, though, which was exactly where I should have been. Yeah, I was still a little bitter about it.

  The knot in my belly twisted again, and I held up a hand and waved for Garfield to get back. He managed to duck behind the wall just as a man walked out onto the patio and lit a cigarette. The raging storm carried the smoke away, and the man wiped a few splatters of rain from his cheek. He looked back inside and shook his head before continuing to enjoy his smoke.

  I started looking through my vest for my taser. I was pretty sure I could get him before he made it back inside. Just as my hand closed around the grip, the smoking m
an reached up and grabbed his neck. He plucked something from it and tossed it to the ground before slumping over. Just like that, the twist in my gut was gone.

  Tranq darts worked every time and were a hell of a lot nicer to wake up from than being shocked into unconsciousness. Slipping a pair of flex cuffs from my vest, I ran forward and cuffed sleeping beauty’s hands behind his back. The last thing we needed was for him to wake up and attack us from behind. With that thought in mind, I grabbed another pair and fit them around his ankles. Better to be sure than to be dead was something that came across very clearly in my training.

  Garfield gave me a curt nod as he moved past me toward the door and slid it open. No one started shooting, so at least we had that going for us. So things were already off to a better start than normal. I don’t know what it was about our squad, but bad guys liked to greet us with a hail of bullets every time. Now that we’d been broken out of the norm, I didn’t know if I should be relieved or scared shitless. Garfield stepped inside, and I followed. When my gut didn’t rebel, I knew everything was going to be just fine.

  It was my job to back him up, so I gave sleeping beauty a quick tap on the head to make sure he was really out, and then pulled my sidearm free. The weight of the Desert Eagle in my hand was reassuring. Something about the gun always made me feel at peace. It wasn’t that I was a great shot or all that jazzed up about shooting the bad guys. In fact, I’d prefer for them not to start shooting so I didn’t have to use the gun at all. I’d kind of always liked shooting things in video games more than in real life. The monsters in games tended to scream less, and I didn’t get any blood on me.

  The sliding door led to an overlarge living room and what must have been the main living area of the house. From where we were standing, I could see the front door, one hallway to the left, and a door to my right. At first I thought it was a pocket door, but a quick tap revealed it was just a swinging door. Probably leading to a kitchen.

  The room we were in only had a couch and two chairs in it. No TV, no pictures, no anything. Frankly, it wasn’t the best place to stand. It left us completely exposed. And while my gut wasn’t twitching yet, it wouldn’t be long before something bad happened, I was sure of it. Garfield gave both hallways a cursory look, and motioned that he was going left. I motioned that I understood and turned to the right, covering my half of the house.

  I cleared the door, and there wasn’t much to look at. The kitchen was outdated but had new appliances. You know, the shiny kind that aren’t exactly black but also aren’t exactly stainless steel. There was a TV in the room tuned to the local news, but it was muted. A highlight of the dunk I watched just before halftime crossed the screen just as something made a thunking sound to my right.

  Spinning was too kind of a word for what I did. Sure, the end result was about the same, but anyone watching probably thought I had a seizure instead. The first thing that happened was my hands came up like I just got punched in the gut, then I dropped to my knees and turned, bringing up my gun in one smooth motion.

  The thunk sounded again, but this time I knew exactly what it was. I heard the same sound often enough when I had to help my mom do the laundry. I almost just blew five holes into an unsuspecting washing machine.

  My flashlight dispelled the shadows of the laundry room. The ground was slightly uneven, so every time the machine cycled it made a gentle thunk. Now that the washing machine wasn’t a direct threat, I could finish clearing this side of the house and meet up with Garfield. Being in an evil lair alone with unaccounted for bad guys wasn’t exactly something I enjoyed. I scanned the kitchen again on my way out of the laundry room and poked my head into the dining area or sitting room. There was one rickety table with an ashtray, but other than that, the room was empty.

  “All clear,” I called into my comm.

  “I’ve got a door down here I can’t open,” Garfield replied.

  “Well, unless they stashed a very well preserved Amelia Earhart in there, you might as well call in red and blue teams to start recovery.”

  “How about you come help me with this door, and let me worry about when to call in backup?”

  “Whatever you say, man who killed my courtside dream.” I gave the rickety card table and two folding chairs one last look before turning back toward the kitchen. On my way through, my flashlight caught some white dust on the ground in front of the fridge. I glanced at it and wondered why it was there. The rest of the house was old and sparsely furnished, but seemed to be clean.

  “Are you really still moaning about the damn game? Just get over here before I lose my temper.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Asshole,” Garfield muttered between grunts.

  I let my flashlight sit on the dust for a moment and then started jogging through the house to help the strongest man I knew open a door. Next thing you know the guy’s going to be handing me condiments and whining, “Can you open this for me?” What did he suspect I was going to be able to do? If he couldn’t budge the door, I had zero chance of moving it.

  The main room was still empty, and sleeping beauty hadn’t moved from where we left him on the back porch. Garfield was making a fair bit of noise, but the rest of the house was clear so it wasn’t like anyone was going to hear him.

  Just as I rounded the corner I saw Garfield fall head first into the room as the door gave away. He hit the ground with a crash, and the door slammed into the wall hard enough to leave a dent. If anyone was hiding in the attached bathroom, they knew we were here now. I walked into the room, offering my partner a hand, but he knocked it away before flipping back to his feet on his own.

  “Show off.”

  “Don’t be jealous, Max, it’s not becoming on you.”

  I was about to retort when the smell hit me. Garfield let out a little gag as he shined his flashlight across the room. He tried the switch on the wall, but nothing happened. He had his light on the door to the bathroom or closet freeing me to look around the room. My light revealed a few of the plug-in air fresheners in the wall. Either they stopped working, or the smell was just that bad.

  If you asked me now, I wouldn’t have been able to describe it for you in a way that accurately portrayed how awful it was. It was like someone started composting inside of their home, with rancid meat as the base. I held back a gag and turned my light back on the door Garfield was moving closer to. Some kind of brownish-black substance had leaked under the bottom of the door.

  “Tell me this is something we can let our backup handle?”

  “It can’t be that bad,” Garfield declared and then coughed loudly.

  “Right, I’m sure whoever locked themselves in the smelliest room in the world is totally sane. Come out, come out, wherever you are.” I singsonged.

  “Jesus, Max. Now you’re just asking for trouble. Crap like that makes the hair on my forearms stand up.” He turned away from the door to glare at me. “You do know we want them to come out so we can take them in for questioning right?”

  I nodded.

  “So let’s not try and make them think we’re serial killers by saying creepy shit.”

  “Hey, next time we go into a room that smells like six people died in it, I’ll try to keep the creep comments to myself.”

  “That’s all I’m asking.” Garfield said with a smile. “Time to get your head back in the game, Max. Cover me while I open the door.” Garfield slid his pistol back into the holster under his arm and moved toward the door. He reached out, wrapping his hand around the handle and then held up three fingers.

  When his third finger came down, he turned the knob and yanked open the door. The stench coming out hit me like a freight train. It was a million times worse with the door open. I wretched a few times, but managed to keep the beers I enjoyed at the game down.

  Shining the flashlight in the room showed hundreds of air fresheners and flytraps hanging from the ceiling. It was like we walked into Kevin Spacey’s house of horrors.

  “Remind me to not to as
k the guy outside for bathroom remodeling tips.” I shined my light lower at the pile of rotting bodies on the floor. “Looks like we found the rest of our bad guys, though, I’m counting at least six bodies.”

  Not that all of them were just bodies anymore. It was kind of like looking at people soup, or one of those paintings that made it look like half of the person’s face was melting. This wasn’t like seeing a body at a funeral. This was much worse.

  “You think that guy on the patio did this?” Garfield almost snarled as he added his flashlight to mine.

  “He hasn’t been in here recently. We would have smelled it on him.” I looked over the bodies again. “My best guess is these,” I pointed at the bodies, “have been here for days.”

  A groan sounded from deeper in the room, and a hand reached out of the pile of bodies into the air.

  “We’ve got a survivor!” Garfield shouted as he climbed over the mass of rotting flesh and ran into the room.

  Chapter Three

  Max Meridious

  Garfield continued speaking into his comm as he reached the hand sticking in the air. “The house is clear, we need emergency medical assistance at our location.”

  I had to give him credit; my partner waded into the pile of rotting bodies without hesitation. Me, all I wanted to do was turn around and wait for Red and Blue teams to deal with this crap. I didn’t make enough money for wading through piles of gooey corpses.

  “Get over here, Max. I need your help.” Garfield reached out clasping the extended hand and started trying to pull whoever it was free.

  The moaning continued, but I swear it changed in pitch almost to a tone of longing. Screw it, my mind was playing tricks on me because I didn’t want to be here. Never let your circumstances dictate the scope of your life. If I had to be here I might as well do the job right.