A Zombie Survival Series (Book 1): Infestation Iowa

Infestation

Iowa

By: Nathan A. Smith

Copyright © 2014 Nathan Smith

All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-1496195692

ISBN-10: 1496195698

Dedication

Dedicated to my good friend David, who was taken from us at an early age in a car accident.

R.I.P. my friend, you are missed

Disclaimer

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are  the product of the author's imagination, or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Contents

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge all of my family and give thanks to all of you for the never ending support. Special thanks to my wife Vivian and her daughter Amanda for without them this book would never have been possible.

To my mother Cathy, thank you for the inspiration you instilled in me and to Jerry for being the rock of my life.

To my father Allan, thank you for a childhood filled with stories and Tracey for a life of trust and love.

Chapter 1 – The End of the Beginning

              David leaned back against the rock breathing heavily, his white shirt in shambles and blue jeans badly charred with soot. The crackling of fire all around him was so loud that it was all he could hear. The light of the fire flickered in the dark while dancing shadows bounced off of the nearby log cabin. He started to hear movement around him in the forest, but he could not see through the ring of flames. Blood poured from his forehead filling his brow and it steadily dripped onto the ground. He closed his eyes and began to pass out from exhaustion knowing this is how it would end for him. The cold night air howled as he slowly lost consciousness. His short black hair slightly moved with the breeze.

A sudden loud snap of wood and an enormous thud caused him to whip his head to the side. A massive tree had fallen, severing the ring of fire that surrounded him. It had landed just beside the rock he leaned against, missing him by only inches. With his blue eyes wide open and heart pounding, he could barely raise his massive pistol with his arm towards the opening. The gun was bulky, awkward, and he had been through so much already. It was heavy compared to other pistols. He was fairly muscular and the gun’s weight was usually handled by him easily, but now he was struggling with it. He groaned loudly and was shaking from both the fear and the pain from the wound on his forehead. He knew what came next; he had seen it too much. The first couple fall down easily, but it all ends the same. You get surrounded and scream in pain wishing you ate one of your own bullets before they were through with you. He saw a figure climb onto the tree on the other side of the fire. It began slowly walking towards him from the darkness. As it got closer, the fire around it lit it up, making it light enough so David could see what it was. His pain subsided. His fear turned to anger and sadness at what he saw. His eyes narrowed and he fired.

Three Days Earlier

              David’s house was probably the largest he had ever been in. It was two stories tall, bright white paneling all around the outside and a massive yard all around it stretching towards empty corn fields. Living just outside of Lone Tree Iowa, he didn’t see many people and he was sort of a loner. He didn’t mind, he had friends in town and knew a lot of people. He just preferred to be alone with his thoughts. The house used to belong to his parents but when they died in a car accident he inherited it four years ago. He planned on leaving Lone Tree and seeing the world but never got around to it. The house got especially cold even during the hot months. The only warm spot in the entire house was his bedroom on the second floor, so not surprisingly, when David went to bed, it was the best part of his entire day. One night, after a long hard day working odd jobs around town, he curled up in his bed for what would be the last time. On just a regular night, with no cares in the world except for a minor headache, he started to finally fall asleep just after midnight.

Shortly after he had curled up into his comforter David ended up springing from his bed startled by a noise. He threw off the comforter and ran to the window. He peered out to see what had woken him up but the filth on the window pane was hard to see through. He had cleaned up the house a lot since he owned it, but his fear of heights has caused the upstairs to suffer on the outside. The roof was badly missing shingles; and the upstairs windows were never cleaned on the outside.

He opened the window and the night time cool air chilled him to the bone. The sound that awakened him and the fast movement of jumping out of bed made his headache much worse. Holding his head and leaning out the window into the cold, he saw what had caused the sound of glass shattering and metal clanging outside. A black car had driven into the only tree in his front yard. With wide open grass surrounding his house and empty fields all around, the only thing the car could have hit was that tree. David thought to himself, “Whoever that is must have been driving down my long driveway on purpose before crashing. There is nothing down here except for my house.”  The car had apparently hit with intense speed because it was wrapped around the tree like a cloth on a towel rack, severely mangled and steam billowing out of it.

David backed away from his window, and searched the floor for his blue jeans and white t-shirt. He found them and quickly threw them on while briefly flashing back to the car accident that killed his parents. Trying to think about what to do he looked around frantically before he realized there was only one thing he could do. He ran through the old wooden doorway of his bedroom and headed to the paint peeled stairs. The house he lived in was old and creaky which seemed to make his head hurt more and more while he rushed toward the stairs. The pressure in his head made him nearly stumble into a piano that sat strangely at the top of the stairs. He noticed the piano rolled a little as he ran past it heading down the stairs. It was on wheels and David had been meaning to move it but it hadn’t been a priority. It once belonged to his mother and sat in his parents’ bedroom where she taught him to play when he was younger. He moved it out to the stairs after his parents died and he moved into the bedroom. As long as he didn’t pound on the stairs and he warned everyone who came up them, then it could stay there a little longer until he got around to moving it downstairs.

The stairs creaked loudly as he stepped on each of them. He rushed down them, skipping a few steps at the bottom to save his head some agony from the creaking. When he got to the bottom he looked over his shoulder to check on the piano. It sat firmly where it was earlier and he could now pay attention to the issue outside. He stood, looking grimly, at the wide front door to his house.

He slapped the switch beside the door, turning the outside light on. The outside light was a rigged up spotlight he had salvaged from a bar in town the week before. He saved it from the dumpster and fixed it up like he did with most of the things around his house. It was so bright, the spotlight illuminated the front of his house as if it was daytime. He stood there for a moment looking at the car and the area around it. It reminded him of his parent’s accident. Except for the flames that killed his parents, it was nearly the same sight. He opened his screen door dismissing his thoughts; the squeak was loud and caused him to grab his head with pain. He shook it off, slightly annoyed that a minor headache had progressed so much and then he jogged outside towards the vehicle. About half way towards it he regretted not putting on his shoes, or even just socks. The cold wet grass chilled his bare feet as the bumpy land around his house made it even more awkward to walk on. He paused and thought about going back for his shoes, and then he realized that there had been an accident right in front of his house and there wasn’t time. He needed to focus.

He looked towards the wreck and saw a man crawling out of the front window on his stomach. David was partly in confusion that anyone could live through such a bad accident but continued forward. Mostly he was feeling terror about what he might see.

The man was missing a leg; long strings of muscle and flesh dragged behind him as he crawled out of the car shaking in pain. His whole body was covered almost entirely in thick red and black blood. The man groaned in pain loudly as he struggled to move. David, stunned in a moment of terror, started wondering what to do. ‘Should I go to the phone and call for help? Go to the man and stop him from making himself worse?’