Anarchy Read online

  Anarchy

  Heroes of the Undead

  Peter Meredith

  Copyright 2021

  Peter Meredith

  Blah, blah, blah, lawyer speak, lawyer speak, blah blah, blah.

  Do we really need to go into this? Here’s the deal. Looky-no touchy.

  It’s as simple as that.

  Fictional works by Peter Meredith:

  A Perfect America

  Infinite Reality: Daggerland Online Novel 1

  Infinite Assassins: Daggerland Online Novel 2

  Generation Z

  Generation Z: The Queen of the Dead

  Generation Z: The Queen of War

  Generation Z: The Queen Unthroned

  Generation Z: The Queen Enslaved

  The Sacrificial Daughter

  The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead: Day One

  The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead: Day Two

  The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead Day Three

  The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead Day Four

  The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead Day Five

  The Horror of the Shade: Trilogy of the Void 1

  An Illusion of Hell: Trilogy of the Void 2

  Hell Blade: Trilogy of the Void 3

  The Punished

  Sprite

  The Blood Lure The Hidden Land Novel 1

  The King’s Trap The Hidden Land Novel 2

  To Ensnare a Queen The Hidden Land Novel 3

  Dead Eye Hunt

  Dead Eye Hunt: Into the Rad Lands

  The Apocalypse: The Undead World Novel 1

  The Apocalypse Survivors: The Undead World Novel 2

  The Apocalypse Outcasts: The Undead World Novel 3

  The Apocalypse Fugitives: The Undead World Novel 4

  The Apocalypse Renegades: The Undead World Novel 5

  The Apocalypse Exile: The Undead World Novel 6

  The Apocalypse War: The Undead World Novel 7

  The Apocalypse Executioner: The Undead World Novel 8

  The Apocalypse Revenge: The Undead World Novel 9

  The Apocalypse Sacrifice: The Undead World 10

  The Edge of Hell: Gods of the Undead Book One

  The Edge of Temptation: Gods of the Undead Book Two

  Tales from the Butcher’s Block

  Chapter 1

  A sensation of warm relief carried Special Agent Plinkett down an almost perfectly black stairwell for fifteen stories. The reason for the relief: over the last ten hours he had lived under the threat of instant annihilation and God, what a weight on him it had been. How many times had he stolen a look out a window, his puffy owl-like eyes searching desperately for the incoming missiles? A thousand times was probably an underestimate. And he had not been alone in this either. Some of the toughest FBI agents he had ever known had spent the greater part of the night staring up into the dark sky, whispering prayers and wondering how much time they had left.

  The very idea of being fried like an ant under a magnifying glass had made Plinkett twitchy and unusually sweaty despite the cold, and as he shuffled down the stairs, he could smell the acrid stench of his own armpits sifting up from beneath his coat, causing his nose to wrinkle. The FBI agent had been described previously as an old-looking baby in a trench coat. He had not lost the trench coat, though it was much muddied from his adventures, and as he smelled his own rank aroma his face bore an even more striking resemblance to an infant’s, one in need of a nap.

  His relief was short-lived and seemed to evaporate into the cold wind that swept him as he burst from the front doors of the building. From fifteen stories up, the new harsh reality they were living through was frightening yes, but distance made it far more palatable. Now, he was once again in the middle of the nightmare. That’s what the city had become. Lit only by the fire of burning buildings, it was unnervingly dark, and the smell of decomposing bodies curdled his stomach, and the sounds of people dying…

  A soft moan of pain cut through his reverie. Plinkett, his thin hair waving over his bald spot like antennae, could hear Agent Griffin Meyers as he slowly died. His partner of the last five years laid in the street fifty yards away, just beyond the pathetic barrier that had been thrown up around the building.

  “God,” Plinkett whispered. The sudden, unexpected chance at salvation had driven Griff’s plight from his mind, but now it came rushing painfully back. One way or another, Griff’s death was a foregone conclusion. The young man that Plinkett had taken under his wing as a mentor was bleeding terribly from gaping wounds, but worse, he was also infected and would soon change into one of the hell-creatures. The only question was, how soon?

  He tried to brush the idea aside with a muttered, “Does it matter?” But it did matter, very much. Plinkett was responsible for Griff and if he turned, it would be up to Plinkett to kill him. The weakling in him wanted to draw out Griff’s agony, to wait until the very last moment before he put a bullet in his head. The sober, middle-aged father-figure knew better. The change could happen in a blink. Griff could go from a sad, dying man to a beast without any outward sign.

  “But not yet. It’s too early either way,” the weakling in him pronounced. He knew this was wrong, but as much as he wanted to protest his own statement, the word murder ghosted through his mind. Griff was still very much human and killing him now just felt wrong. It also felt sinful. Although Plinkett had never been religious, his past sins had been haunting him for the last few days, coming up at odd times to lurk in his conscious. It turned out that all it took to make him a believer in Heaven and Hell was the threat of getting his face chewed off in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

  Plinkett willed his feet forward and as he stumbled on, the weak part of him secretly hoped that it was someone else moaning and that Griff had already died of his injuries…or had turned. These thoughts were like tumors swelling green and filthy inside him. But even with them, he felt hollow to the core.

  All too soon he was at the jumble of discarded junk that made up the barrier. “Open it,” he ordered the two guards.

  “You gonna have to go into quarantine,” one informed him over the screech of metal on pavement. “Those are the rules. You okay with that?”

  Hesitation. Quarantine was not for the weak of heart. For one, it was technically outside the perimeter. There was a fence of sorts around the quarantined area, but if it were attacked there would be no help from the rest of the survivors. Then there was the very real chance of catching the disease, of becoming one of them. A shiver racked his shoulders, and it took an effort to mutter, “Yeah, sure.”

  “Don’t risk it,” Maddy Whitmore said in a carrying whisper. “There’s nothing you can do for him out here.”

  Little had changed in the fifteen minutes it had taken Plinkett to run up to the top floor of the Federal Building and plead with the Ambassador. Griffin was still lying in a pool of his own blood and the two others were still with him.

  Once more, he was struck by how different they were.

  Maddy was a hundred pounds lighter and half a foot taller than she had been three days before. And although she still had a little pudge to her, she was pretty. No, she was more than pretty. There was something alluring about her that drew the eye. And this was even with her covered in old blood and filthy, torn rags. What would she look like showered and wearing something nice? His mind snapped to a clean Maddy in a green gown with silver lace.

  Shocked at how quickly he had conjured the image, and that he had conjured it at all, he shook his head and turned to take in Bryce Carter.

  He sat partially propped on her. When all this started, Bryce had been a pale little dweeb, a twerp, a nothing with twig-like arms and dark goofy hair that curled into odd shapes that stuck out from his head. Now he was almost six-foo
t in height, broad-shouldered with a deep chest and a man’s voice. He also bore great gashes along his arms and face, and there was a hole high-up in his chest. It had been bleeding before but now it was scabbed over and seemed old. Strangely old, as if he’d been stabbed days before and the wound was mostly healed. Bryce slept easily and, unlike Griff, whose chest hitched with each breath, he slept quietly. He was at peace.

  Plinkett’s lip curled. There was something distasteful in seeing Bryce so close to Griff. It was almost as if the two had changed places. Griff, the handsome golden boy of the FBI was now shivering and feverish. His eyes were glassy and his tan had faded to fish belly white. If Plinkett didn’t know better, he would’ve thought that Bryce was sucking the life out of Griff.

  As if it would make some difference, Plinkett wanted to pull Griff away from the two. He buried the desire. “Good news,” he said to Maddy, keeping his voice low. Despite this, Bryce’s blue eyes came open, causing Plinkett to hesitate—his eyes gleamed alien, and bright as sapphires. “Uh, the uh, Ambassador talked to the President about the vaccine.”

  Maddy and Bryce shared a long look. To Plinkett, it appeared as though they were either gauging the other’s reactions to the statement or carrying on some sort of telepathic discussion. Bryce gave a shrug, while Maddy seemed uncertain.

  “I talked to the man myself,” Plinkett said, stiffly. “He said that if you two don’t change in the next couple of hours, he’ll see if they can send a helicopter back.” He turned to the guards. “You hear that?”

  They shared a look that was something of a mutual eyeroll. In the last few hours, they had heard a great many stories from desperate refugees. Most of these stories had been stuffed full of outrageous lies, and when the lies didn’t get the people inside, they resorted to pitiful begging and useless bribery.

  “We believe you,” Maddy assured him as he started to fume. “It’s just something feels a bit off. To me, at least.” She glanced once more at Bryce, who shrugged again and then grimaced.

  Working his shoulder around in slow circles, Bryce said, “I’m not feeling whatever you got going on, Maddy. I don’t think I’m as in tune that way as you are. Besides, I don’t think we can do any more. It’s out of our hands. The missiles will come or they won’t. The same is true of any helicopter.” Just then, he was too exhausted and beat down to care either way. He was just happy that his part was over. It felt as though he had been carrying the fate of mankind on his shoulders and although those shoulders might seem broad and strong now, underneath he was still pretty much the same old twerpy Bryce Carter.

  “I suppose,” Maddy said, without conviction. She still had that feeling of impending doom with her. It had toned down a good deal since making it to the Federal Building but hadn’t disappeared entirely. Her mind, or rather that strange new part of her that “knew” things, wanted to dissect the feeling at greater length, but just then Griff cracked an eye.

  “They buy it?” he asked, his voice little better than a croak.

  Plinkett started forward only to have Maddy hold out a hand. She shook her head warning him not to get too close and he took a step back onto the curb. “I think so. The Ambassador talked to the President about the, you know.”

  “The cure?” Griff grunted out a derisive laugh. Derisive because there would be no cure for Griff and they all knew it. Plinkett couldn’t look him in the eye when he shrugged and nodded.

  Maddy watched them both, her lip slowly curling. “I wonder,” she said and paused. She had a partial feeling of knowing again. Something wasn’t right about the cure, and nothing was right about Magnus. “Cure is an odd term.” She glanced over at Bryce. “That person or uh, man you spoke to said there was a vaccine, right?”

  Bryce nodded slowly, remembering his conversation with Grae-zier. With his fantastic silver eyes and his off-putting perfection, it was hard to describe Grae-zier as simply a man. “Yes, he had used the word vaccine. And I agree, it’s a strange word since this can hardly be viral.” He gazed down at Griff, his mind kicking into gear. No virus had done this. For one, no virus could replicate so quickly. And Grae-zier had mentioned a genetic liberation of sorts. But unlocking a person’s genetic code...

  Plinkett broke in on his thoughts. “You don’t think Magnus has a cure? But you said, you and…” Maddy looked so little like her former self that he had trouble even using her name. His eyes shot to hers. Like Bryce’s, they gleamed in the night as if there were a light behind them. They had been grey at one time. Now there was a faint shimmer of silver to them. He found himself staring.

  “Maddy and I are both immune,” Bryce said, answering the unfinished question. “Whatever he did to us counteracts…this.” He gestured to Griff. “It would suggest that the two processes are closely related.”

  “The presence of those demons makes it a certainty,” Maddy put in. At the thought of the demons, it was her turn to shudder. Zombies were horrifying enough, but at least they were mere mindless, evil versions of their old selves. On the other hand, the two creatures that had hounded her and Bryce throughout the city had seemed to be the very definition of the word demon. They had been cruel and intensely evil; fantastically strong, frighteningly fast, and devilishly cunning.

  Of course, if they were true demons what would that make her and Bryce?

  She turned to Bryce, who was staring hard at Griff, as if the agent were a book and the answers could be read on his sweating face. Although his eyes were focused elsewhere, he seemed to read her thoughts. “Are we two sides of the same coin? Sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? But how? How did Magnus do it? What is the vector? Okay we know the vector but what is the transmittal source?”

  “I want to say blood,” Maddy answered, “but red blood cells do not carry DNA material and white blood cells take too long to replicate.”

  “Does it matter?” Plinkett snapped. “I don’t think Griff wants to hear you two nattering on about blood cells and cures when…” When it’s already too late for him.

  “Maybe it’s not too late,” Maddy said, absently. She didn’t realize she had picked up on his unspoken thought as if he had screamed it aloud. “The serum Bryce and I were given clearly dominates the pathogen which causes people to become zombies. If blood is how it’s transmitted, perhaps a transfusion from one of us would counter the disease.”

  Now they all stared at Griff who frowned as he tried to work out what all this meant. Slowly his glassy eyes rolled Maddy’s way. “I would be like you guys?” The frown deepened. It had bothered him the way the pair had changed so quickly, but now he was even more repulsed by them, this time on a visceral, perhaps even a primordial level. “That’s sick. You and your blood is sick. And it’s unnatural. I can smell it.”

  A wave of nausea broke over him and he gagged which quickly turned into dry-heaving, causing his wounds to tear open further. After a minute he lay back, moaning softly, and didn’t notice that the others had moved away, Bryce limping badly and stifling his own moans.

  “Do it,” Plinkett said. “Give him the blood. He doesn’t stand a chance otherwise.” And I won’t have to kill him.

  “It’s not that simple,” Bryce answered, guilt causing his eyes to shift away. “There’s something I should’ve mentioned before, and I would have but there were demons to fight and a million zombies, and…” Maddy’s glare killed his excuses. “That Grae-zier guy let it slip that the serum we received should’ve killed us. We were test subjects sixty-one and sixty-two. We were the only two who made it.”

  Maddy leaned back, her mouth coming open. “Magnus poisoned us? He wanted us dead? Just because we wouldn’t join his fucking cult? That sick bastard!” Furiously, she stomped away but didn’t go far. The destruction of the city in every direction stopped her. There was nowhere to storm off to that wasn’t burning, overrun with the dead, or teetering on the verge of collapse.

  “We don’t have a choice,” Plinkett declared. “We all know what will happen if we don’t do anything. He’ll become o
ne of them. Do it. Do it, before he turns.”

  Chapter 2

  “I’ll do it,” Bryce said, rolling up one sleeve. Despite the cold front that held the remains of New York City in its grip, Bryce wore only a tattered shirt. Beneath the blood, both old and new, the grime and the ash, its original color could only be guessed at. It seemed to have been tie-dyed in filth. After two attempts at the sleeve, he decided it would be easier simply to tear the sleeve off completely. In this he was wrong. He had given everything in his battle with the black demon and, with one yank, he ended up pulling himself over.

  Plinkett caught him before he could crack his head on the sidewalk. Bryce was like over-cooked linguini and slithered out of Plinkett’s grasp, to puddle on the pavement at his feet. “I’m okay,” Bryce said in a whisper, staring up at the night sky where there were so many stars the Milky Way appeared like a white haze. They were pleasant to look upon and if Griff wasn’t in need of his help, he might have laid there all night looking at them. With a sigh he tried to stand.

  Plinkett stood back watching the far from epic struggle of man against gravity. Bryce’s head was swimming and resembled a drunk that might have been run over by a car. Plinkett considered helping him; however it seemed like way too much work. He was desperately in need of sleep and he decided that if Bryce wanted to risk another fall that was on him.

  Maddy ended the sad display by putting a boot on Bryce’s chest and holding him down. “You’ve lost too much blood already. I’ll do it.” To Plinkett she asked, “Is there a medical crew on site?”

  “No. Doctors and first responders were among the hardest hit. We don’t even have anything in the way of supplies, though I remember passing some hospitals, or what was left of them, on the way here.” His owl-eyes took on a haunted faraway look. “But I don’t know if I’d try any of them. They were horrible. Horrible.”

  “We could find something around here that might do,” Bryce suggested. “Wire sheathing could do in a pinch for IV tubing, but what’ll act as a catheter?” He stared blankly at a Mercedes across the street. It was upside down and had brown fluid leaking from both the engine compartment as well as what was left of the passenger side door. Nothing came to him concerning a catheter and he spat out the genius idea, “Maybe we can just sort of bleed on him.”