Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile
Read Day by Day Armageddon: Beyond Exile Online
Authors: J.L. Bourne
Praise for J.L. Bourne’s
DAY BY DAY ARMAGEDDON
“There is zombie fiction and then there is crawl-out-of-the-grave-and-drag-you-to-hell zombie fiction.
Day by Day Armageddon
is hands down the best zombie book I have
ever
read. J.L. Bourne blows all other zombie writers away.
Dawn of the Dead
meets
28 Days Later
doesn’t even come close to describing how fantastic this thriller is. It is so real, so terrifying, and so well written that I slept with not one, but two loaded Glocks under my pillow for weeks afterward. J.L. Bourne is the new king of hardcore zombie action!”
—Brad Thor, #1
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Last Patriot
and
The First Commandment
“Day by Day Armageddon
is a dramatic spin on the zombie story. It has depth, a heart, and compelling characters.”
—Jonathan Maberry, Bram Stoker Award–winning author of
Ghost Road Blues
“Day by Day Armageddon
claws at the reader’s mind. Bourne’s journal is a visceral insight into the psyche of a skilled survivor.”
—Gregory Solis, author of
Rise and Walk
Also by J.L. Bourne
Day by Day Armageddon
| A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. |
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by J.L. Bourne.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Gallery Books trade paperback edition July 2010.
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Illustrations by Jason Snyder
Manufactured in the United States of America.
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ISBN 978-1-4391-7752-5
ISBN 978-1-4391-7753-2 (ebook)
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Author’s Note
The first volume of
Day by Day Armageddon
took us deep into the mind of a military officer and survivor as he made a New Year’s resolution to start keeping a journal. The man kept his resolution and brought to us the fall of humanity,
day by day.
We see the man transition from the life that you and I live to the prospect of fighting for his very survival against the overwhelming hordes of the dead. We see him bleed, we see him make mistakes, we witness him evolve.
After surviving numerous trials and travails in the first volume of
Day by Day Armageddon,
the protagonist and his neighbor John escape the government-sanctioned nuclear annihilation of San Antonio, Texas. They eventually find themselves holing up in an abandoned strategic nuclear missile base known by the former occupants as Hotel 23. After their arrival they receive a weak radio transmission: A family of survivors are taking refuge in an attic, with untold numbers of undead below. A man named William, his wife, Janet, and their young daughter, Laura, are all that remain of their former community. After a miraculous rescue, this family joins forces with our protagonist to stay alive. But that may not be enough in a dead world, an unforgiving postapocalyptic place in which a simple infected cut, not to mention the millions of undead, can easily kill them, adding them to the overwhelming undead population.
The situation brought out the worst in some . . .
Without warning a band of brigands, seeing targets of opportunity, mercilessly assault our survivors inside Hotel 23, planning to kill them for the shelter and the vast supplies inside. Narrowly pushed back at the end of the novel, the survivors fear these men might return in much greater numbers—unless the countless millions of unrelenting undead close in around them first.
This novel begins where the first novel left off, with our narrator and a few survivors of an unimaginable worldwide cataclysm taking refuge inside Hotel 23. Follow them as they continue their journey into the apocalypse and just imagine for one moment that any one of them could be
you.
Welcome back and lock your doors . . .
J. L. Bourne
23 May
0057
I started feeling physically better the day of the twenty-first. The attack from the raiders had really busted me up. I got out of bed, drank a gallon of water (over the course of a few hours) and stretched a bit. I asked John what it looked like topside. He didn’t want to say much of anything so I followed him up to the control room to look for myself. The previous night John had rushed out in the darkness and pulled the bag off one of the cameras and dashed back inside. There were undead about and he didn’t wish to be out for long amongst them.
More undead inhabit the area around where the fence was damaged. They are like water, flowing to the point of least resistance. My painful burns are healing, but they were not that awful to begin with. Just a few blisters on my face and other places. Our victory in the last encounter with the insurgents was largely due to chance. What if they hadn’t been convoying cross-country with a fuel truck? We would have probably been executed, unable to overcome their numbers. Outnumbered not only by the undead but by those who wished us dead. I feared the insurgents nearly as much as the creatures. In theory they could at least outstrategize us by putting their heads together and brainstorming on ways to force us from this compound. We do not know how many tangos remain; however, I am sure they still dwarf our numbers.
• • •
On camera number three I could see the charred bodies of men walking about the wreckage of the diesel truck and trailer . . .
Men that I had killed.
That night we went outside and put them down. To avoid muzzle flash, I snuck up on them from behind in the darkness with NVGs, selected single fire on my carbine and popped them in the back of the head with the barrel almost touching the skull. After every depression of the trigger I saw them react to the noise and start moving toward the sound, blind in the darkness. They could still hear, even though many of them had nothing that resembled ears. I repeated this seventeen times before they were all laid to rest.
We noticed that three vehicles had not been harmed badly in the fuel blast from the other night. There was a Land Rover, a Jeep and a late model Ford Bronco a hundred yards from the charred grass zone. John and I approached with caution. Upon closer inspection I discovered that both of the Jeep’s front tires were blown and the window glass was spiderwebbed and concave.
Fifty meters farther were the Land Rover and the Ford. As I approached the Land Rover, I noticed that it appeared to be in very good condition and had no previous owners inhabiting the interior. Bonus. John and I walked up to the door; I opened it and checked the interior more closely. It smelled like pine, probably from the tree hanging on the rearview mirror. We got in and carefully shut the doors just enough for the latch to catch. I reached down to the ignition and turned. It roared to life. I suppose I would leave the keys in it too in a world like this. I looked down at the flimsy plastic tag on the key. It read: Nelm’s Land Rover of Texas.
I suppose the marauders had acquired this vehicle after everything collapsed. The gas tank was three-quarters of the way full and it had three thousand miles on the odometer. Not even broken in. I put the vehicle in gear and sped off back toward the perimeter fence of the compound. When we neared the raider-covered cameras we got out and took turns pulling the bags off them while the other covered.
The hole in the fence was about the same size as the length of the Land Rover. I didn’t feel like doing any fence repair tonight so I brushed up on my parallel parking skills and maneuvered her in front of the fence gap to discourage any of our cold-blooded amigos from getting inside the perimeter.
John climbed out the passenger side; I climbed over the console and also climbed out the passenger side. I hit the lock in the door and slammed it shut, putting the key in my pocket. Who was I kidding? I’m still not leaving the keys in it.
1248
I woke up a couple of hours ago after another painful, sleepless night. My blisters are starting to pop, causing some respectable pain. I have a few blisters around my eyes where my skin was unprotected by my nomex gear. The lump on the back of my head is starting to shrink, and more recently I am noticeably sorer than I was right after my little incident with the tanker. This is a good sign. I am healing.
I have given up on the internet. It is down for the count. The websites that I had been checking to test things out are down, i.e., military bases in the four corners of the United States. No internet activity. It is probably safe to assume that if anyone is out there to log on to the net, it won’t matter. The backbone is shot and it looks like all the IT guys are out to lunch for the next hundred years. The Land Rover has GPS navigation. I went out to check things over and it appears the GPS is only acquiring three satellites for purposes of position finding. I don’t know how long those satellites will remain in orbit without ground control station support as well as the birds we are using to take photographs. We are fast approaching the Iron Age. I keep fighting off the mental urge of self-destructive behavior. I don’t mean this in a “wrist-slitting” way; I suppose I’m just feeling the need to take more risks because I’m tired of being in this predicament . . . but so is everyone else, so I remain. Heading out in a bit with John to attempt to quietly repair the downed fence.
