Winchester Undead (Book 2): Winchester: Prey (2 page)

CHAPTER 2

Cortez, CO

December 26, Year 1

Jake and Sara relaxed in their home on the south end of town, a fire burning fiercely in their living room fireplace. Both sat on the couch in thick cotton robes with mugs of coffee steaming on the tray table between them. Sara intently read a book on her iPad, feet curled under her body. Christmas was always the best time of year. Although they didn’t have any children to build the Christmas spirit with, Sara was able to enjoy her break from her middle school students. Science and teaching were her passions, although she was often frustrated by the fifth graders she taught. Jake typed on the MacBook perched in his lap. He had no Christmas break, but he also had no
real
job. He worked as an independent journalist, author and photographer. That meant he had the opportunity to be sent to the far-flung reaches of the world for an assignment, but that also meant his working hours were much less defined than most people’s. While not on assignment, at least, he worked from home. Though Sara enjoyed the arrangement, she often wished she could reclaim the formal dining room of their home from the stacks of Pelican cases holding tens of thousands of dollars in professional photography equipment.

The lights flickered once and went off, leaving Jake and Sara to the light of the fireplace. Losing power in Colorado in the winter wasn’t all that uncommon, except that Jake’s MacBook and Sara’s iPad both went dark at the same time.

“What the hell? My iPad died; your MacBook too? Why would that happen when the power went out?”

Jake sat silent for a moment and watched the orange flames dance in the fireplace.

“Honey, look outside and see if anyone has any lights on. I have a bad feeling. I’m going to unlock
the
room and get the shortwave radio out of the faraday cage.”

“No. You don’t think … that?”

“I don’t know yet, but why else would our electronics go dark along with the electricity? Sort of an odd coincidence, isn’t it? I think we should probably get dressed and G.O.O.D. ready.”

Jake stood and walked towards the back of the house. Sara looked out the front window and across their snow-covered lawn. A couple of her neighbors stood in their front yards looking a little bewildered.

“Jake, looks like everyone’s power is out.”

“OK.”

Jake sat back on the couch twenty minutes later, fully dressed and holding a hand-cranked shortwave radio in his hands. “Time to see if the cages worked if it was an EMP.”

Jake turned the shortwave on and dialed in the first FEMA emergency broadcast channel to be met with a computer-generated voice: “… remain indoors and avoid contact with any other persons. If a person or family member becomes ill or begins to act strangely, immediately leave the area or quarantine the individual and contact local emergency responders. If unable to reach emergency personal, hang a sheet or large towel on a front-facing exterior door and passing patrols will stop to render aid. This is not a test …”

The broadcast repeated.

Sara looked up from the radio Jake held. “What do you think they meant by ‘acting strangely’?”

“I don’t know, babe, but sounds like a contagion outbreak, and I think we might have had an EMP even though they didn’t say anything about it.”

Jake tuned the shortwave radio into the BBC’s frequency and found a distressed voice—a real voice, not a computer—reading a broadcast:

“… Reports have been sparse but initial reports indicate that a wide-scale attack has been carried out against the United States, the UK and other nations of the European Union. Some reports have spoken of a strange oil-like substance falling from the sky, trailing from large aircraft formations. These reports have been coming to us across most of Western Europe and the UK. Contact with the States has failed and a Ministry official confided to the BBC on the basis of anonymity that there has been a possible nuclear strike against the United States or that multiple nuclear warheads were detonated high in the atmosphere above North America. We have not been able to confirm those reports but will bring you updates as we can gather them. Stand by, I’m being handed a new report … It reads ‘Remain indoors and avoid contact with all other persons. If a person or family member becomes ill …”

The transmission faded into static.

Jake looked at Sara, his brow furrowed. “EMP and some sort of biological or chemical attack. Finish getting dressed while I get the plastic and duct tape. We need to seal up until we can find out more of what’s going on.”

Sara left for the bedroom to finish getting dressed, while Jake went to their spare bedroom. The locked door was a heavy exterior door with a numeric punch lock. Jake pushed the five-digit key and entered the dark room. The room was lined with shelves of supplies. In the corner sat a large maroon gun safe. Jake spun the dial, quickly unlocked the safe and opened the heavy door. He took a deep breath and let it out with a heavy sigh. He and Sara had prepared for society to collapse, for some natural disaster or attack to disrupt their lives, but if he was honest with himself, deep down he never thought it would actually happen.

Already on his thick nylon belt was a holster, and in it went the Glock 17 after he loaded it and made ready with a round in the chamber. Jake retrieved his AR-15, loaded it and propped it against the wall next to the safe. He wanted it ready and nearby, but he and his wife needed to tape up and seal the home’s windows and doors.

The fireplace would remain open for now, as the fire’s heat would most likely destroy any airborne pathogens falling down the fireplace. At least Jake hoped it would, and hoped there wasn’t any nuclear fallout. However, if the attack was a high-altitude detonation to generate an EMP, there shouldn’t be any fallout. An hour after the lights went out in the Sells’ home, they were secure and sheltered in place.

Little Rock, AR

Amanda slowly opened her eyes. She blinked hard and couldn’t remember where she was. She turned to look out her window and saw it was missing with grass and dirt in its place. Slowly her mind caught up to her surroundings and the nightmare crash started to regain focus. Over the sound of her heartbeat booming in her ears, she began to be become aware of someone else talking.

She looked left and saw Agent Smith leaning into the Tahoe’s interior. “Ma’am, unlatch your seatbelt and take my hand.”

Complying, she unlatched her seatbelt and stood upright to reach Smith’s hand hanging through the shattered side window. Amanda stood on the inside of the door, the Tahoe having come to a rest on its side. Once outside of the ruined SUV, after having climbed off the top of the upturned Tahoe, she remembered seeing the airplane falling out of the sky just before the crash. Amanda turned to look behind her and saw thick black smoke billowing into the sky a few hundred yards away.

Smith and Johnson wrestled the rear doors of the Tahoe open and retrieved two large Pelican cases before stripping out of their ruined dark suits. Amanda stood silently, too confused to protest and too uninformed to ask any questions. Everything had happened too fast. Only fifteen minutes ago she was lying comfortably in her warm bed, and now she stood next to a ruined SUV in a ditch watching two men she didn’t know strip to their underwear. Smith and Johnson both began pulling clothing and gear out of the heavy plastic cases. Soon they were dressed in black tactical clothing and began strapping on body armor and holstering weapons. Smith handed Amanda a military-looking backpack that felt like it weighed at least thirty pounds.

“You’ll need this. Please put it over your shoulders.”

Smith and Johnson retrieved similar-looking bags from the back of the Tahoe, but both of their bags were considerably larger and appeared to weigh much more than Amanda’s bag.

Amanda, still in shock although her thoughts were starting to catch up with what she’d just seen, finally spoke. “What … what happened?”

Smith released the charging handle on his M4 rifle with a loud metallic thunk. “EMP, ma’am.”

“EMP? What is an E-M-P?”

“Electromagnetic pulse. It’s from a nuclear detonation, which releases a strong magnetic wave that pretty much destroys anything electronic that isn’t shielded.”

Amanda looked nervously towards the sky and back to Smith. “What about nuclear fallout?”

Smith shook his head. “If the devices were detonated high enough in the atmosphere, then we won’t have to worry about that.”

Smith walked up the embankment and out of the ditch to the roadway, where he paused and scanned the area before waving Johnson and Amanda to follow. Once she climbed out of the ditch and back onto the roadway, Amanda tried to take in the scene before her. Large fires and thick black smoke could be seen in every direction.

“What happened to all the planes?”

“Just like how the EMP fried the computer in the Tahoe and it quit running, so with the aircraft. Everything from the engines to the flight systems are computer controlled. Basically, the planes stopped flying.”

Amanda looked around her at the pillars of thick smoke that now filled the sky. “What are we going to do?”

Johnson smiled. “We have a plane to catch.” Before Amanda could ask how that was possible, he answered her question. “Military plane. It’s shielded against an EMP. Or at least it is supposed to be.”

The three of them walked briskly towards the terminal in the distance, which also appeared to be on fire. The damage had been caused by another aircraft crashing into it, and the parking lot was marred by the obvious path of destruction of the downed plane. Smith walked with a slight limp. Amanda couldn’t remember if he had the limp before the crash or not, but she hadn’t seen him walk very far before now.

Johnson climbed on top of the large “Bill & Hillary Clinton National Airport” sign, removed a large pair of binoculars from his bag and scanned the area.

“The G-Five is hard bent.”

Smith cursed.

Amanda waited for an explanation, but Johnson gave none and continued to scan the area with his binoculars.

“Agent Smith, what is a
G-Five
and what is
hard bent
?”

“It means something is broken beyond immediate repair. We were to meet a Gulfstream V over at the General Aviation side of the airport. With it we were to escort you to Denver to the secure facility there. Looks like we’re going to need alternate transportation now.”

Johnson pointed towards the airport’s control tower. “Looks like an old Bronco parked by that tower. It might be serviceable.”

Johnson jumped off the sign and placed the binoculars back into his heavy pack. “We better hurry before the owner or someone else decides to use it to bug out.”

Amanda fell in behind Smith, who walked towards the tower at a very brisk pace, although limping. Johnson walked a few yards behind Amanda and held rear security for their designated person, only stopping when they saw several large aircraft fly overhead in a wide formation. Dark trails followed their path, and moments later the three of them were covered in an oily substance that fell from the sky like rain.

Lampton wiped the oil off her face and rubbed it between her fingers. “What is this?”

Johnson tersely replied that he didn’t know and exchanged a concerned look with his partner.

CHAPTER 3

Cortez, CO

January 25, Year 1

“Jake, we have three more families requesting shelter with us.”

“Thank you, Sara. Have Mike do a weapons check and inspect the men for any bites. If you wouldn’t mind taking care of the women and children, I would appreciate it. Oh, and make sure they completely understand the rules.”

“Will do, baby.” Sara kissed Jake on the forehead, the notebook ledger of supplies open on the desk in front of him for the daily inventory. Candlelight flickered across the smudged pages. Jake never meant to be a leader; in fact, with the exception of his articles, he preferred to be seldom seen and heard, but his good nature and kind heart became his downfall. Jake and Sara were well prepared for the end of the world as they knew it, their spare bedroom stocked with supplies, food, and water. They planned for society to collapse, for the loss of electrical power and the absolute need to survive on their own without any assistance from the government, but they had not planned for the dead to rise to hunt the living. They also didn’t expect that other survivors would somehow find their home and come in desperate need of help. Jake should have locked the door and turned away everyone that came calling, but the first to arrive was a young husband and wife that Jake knew from his local volunteer work. The teenagers, Jason and Jamie, were married a week before they graduated high school and eight months later they’d confided that they were trying to start a family. Jake knew they needed help. They weren’t prepared for life, much less the end of the world. But those two loved each other more deeply than Jake and Sara had seen in many others, and they couldn’t turn away such good-hearted people.

The next family was another married couple in their mid-thirties with three young children. The children tugged at Jake’s heart. Already in the past month, Jake had been forced to put down a handful of undead children who’d ventured into his yard, and he just couldn’t stomach the thought of seeing any more. In the coming weeks the number of survivors, most of them families, reached thirty-eight, and quickly the expanding group was well out of room in Jake and Sara’s home.

The middle school became the next logical location. The classrooms were divided among the families with areas for central meeting locations, supply storage and in-processing facilities. The group now had the ability to accept many more refugees, more survivors.

“Jake, could you come out here please?” Sara called from the hallway. That was odd, but Jake didn’t question Sara, especially when she asked for help. He simply obeyed her request and carried his candle into the hallway.

“There are three men wearing matching button-down shirts and ties asking us to repent and convert to their church.”

Jake looked surprised. “Convert? Like missionaries? You’re kidding.”

“Yes, missionaries, and I’m not kidding.”

Jake sighed. “OK, well, let’s see what they’re really after.”

Jake walked through the hall, shielding his candle from the movement, and entered the old middle school gym, which had been converted into the group’s secure processing area. The metal doors closed behind him with a heavy click.

Jake tried to take in the scene before him. Standing side by side were three men dressed in matching white shirts with red ties. The men stood calmly, each of them holding a small book that looked like a Bible in his left hand. The hair on the back of Jake’s neck stood. These men felt dangerous, but he couldn’t figure out why.

“Hello, my name is Jake. Sara said you wanted to ask me some questions.”

“Yes, good morning. I’m Brother Chris. This is Brother Matt and this is Brother William. We’re with The Chosen Tribe of God and we’ve come to call your group to repent your sins and join us under the teachings of The Prophet.”

Jake stole a glance at Sara. “Thank you, gentlemen, but I think we’re full up on religion here.”

“Can we pray to The Prophet with you for your safety and conversion?”

“No. No, I don’t want you to pray for me or to pray with me, and quite frankly I have a hard time believing that God still cares for us down here on Earth anymore after everything we’ve been through.”

“Could we speak to the others who reside here? They may be willing to open their hearts to the truth so they won’t be damned like you are.”

Jake’s heart rate quickened and his eyebrow raised in surprise.
Damned like we are
? His right hand thumbed open the locking snap of his holster.

“No, you may not. And if you would be kind enough to leave, I would appreciate it.”

The three men from The Tribe looked at Jake like his hair was on fire, a look both quizzical and judging, and walked out of the gym back into the cold morning air.

“Sara, those guys are going to be a problem. I think they were serious. Group meeting in the cafeteria in twenty minutes. Please pass the word. I’ve got to sit down for a minute and try to figure this out.”

Sara stood on her tippy toes and kissed her husband on the cheek before unlocking the metal gym door and disappearing into the dark interior of the school.