Against Zombies Box Set, Vol. 1 | Books 1-4 Read online

  Cooper: Judith has a bullet through her head as proof, and Jack had the password for only one project under his keyboard. I’m certain.

  Martin: Arm yourself. Don’t forget to go to the security room and copy the cameras. Will have someone meet you at prearranged spot in one hour?

  Cooper: Better make it two because of Zombie scare. Take care.

  Martin: Two. Stay safe.

  Now I know we’re screwed. If Martin believes me, then all our backup protocols need to be acted upon immediately.

  The blinds in my office are already closed with the door locked, so I go to the back corner and move the two-drawer filing cabinet. Pulling up the floorboards, I find the large duffle bag I’d hidden for an emergency just like this.

  Opening it, I take out the off-network laptop and power it up. While it’s loading, I take out everything of value to me and put it the duffle bag.

  The small locker type closet where we keep an extra set of clothes holds my go-pack with supplies hidden inside. My ankle holster for the right side and a thigh holster to hold my knife will provide the backup that won’t be arriving anytime soon. I know I’ll need to blend in with the many civilians leaving town, and a man in a suit will draw too much attention, so a T-shirt and jeans with my jacket is what I put on before heading outside.

  As the computer finishes, I plug in the connecting USB cable and proceed to start a download of everything on the system. While it’s transferring all the files, I tentatively open the office door with my gun in hand.

  Nothing stirs as I make my way to the security closet, sandwiched between the restrooms. Most people assume it’s the janitor’s room for cleaning supplies on this floor, but there’s a panel that holds access to the security circuits.

  A few buttons later, everything is sent to my computer.

  Most of the people who work with us are simply civilians working on different and varied pieces of a very large puzzle, but there are some that know a little more, and who might have a gun stashed in their cubicles.

  Donning a pair of gloves in case nothing comes of any of this, I make my way through file drawers and check to see if anything is taped to the undersides of every desk.

  Back at my office, I hold in my hands six guns and ten clips with bullets, three cans of pepper spray, and a smoke bomb.

  How on earth did we overlook this when we searched for listening devices and bombs every month?

  I divide everything between my backpack and the duffle, and glance up when a beep sounds from the computer to signal it’s finished with the download. Quickly unhooking the USB cord, I hit the special key code on my computer to start a full self-destruct of all the computer systems in the building.

  Unfortunately, there’s a mainframe where all information is uploaded daily, but it’s in Nevada so my access is limited. Shutting down the laptop, I place it into my protective case in the duffle.

  Doing a check to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything, I slip the backpack on and throw the duffle over my head, settling it onto my shoulder. With an extra gun in my holster and one in my hand, I proceed to head for the inner staircase most of the building uses for taking a smoke break.

  The roof provides an amazing view of the city, but my goal is to get rid of my last traceable item. My work and private cell phones would be a perfect way to find out not only where I’m heading, but held contact numbers for several important people to the Protection Project. The sim cards aren’t traceable outside of a phone, but I don’t have any way to dispose of them at the moment.

  I haven’t played baseball since my younger days, but I pitch the phones as if I’m about to win a huge game with the bases loaded. They don’t make any noise when they land, so they should be in a few dozen pieces. I stand there soaking up the city skyline for just a second longer before starting my long trek down the fourteen floors to the main lobby.

  Trish

  I hang up the phone after talking to my husband. During our entire marriage, we’ve never had to use the safety measures put into place when he had taken his current job.

  “Kids, come here for a minute.”

  When all three children are standing in front of me, I take a deep breath before diving right in.

  “Remember when we had those drills every so often with Dad?” Joy and Nicole both nod, looking intrigued, but Carson’s face loses all of its color.

  “It’s time to put all that practice to good use. We have to pack the car and be on the road in thirty minutes. Now hurry and grab your stuff, but leave all the electronics on the counter.”

  “Ah, Mom.” The protests begin, but Carson takes up for me.

  “No, listen. If we weren’t in danger, then Dad would never have said to do this. We’ll get them back, they just have to stay here while we go on our trip.” Carson’s eyes meet mine with understanding, and in this moment, I know he’s just taken a step closer toward adulthood.

  “Grab the bags from under the beds and bring me your backpacks while you load them in the car. Please, hurry so we can tell Dad we did it faster than our record.”

  I run to our bedroom and pull the two duffle bags from underneath the bed and the two go-bags from the closet with all our important papers. The last thing I need is in the garage.

  The girls are gathering the food stuff and placing it in the bins, while Carson carries the filled one out to the back of the SUV. I follow him out and place our bags on the ground by the open trunk.

  “Help me get the trunk from the rafters. Dad is always here when we practice and I know it’s too heavy for me by myself.”

  Carson pulls the ladder over and scales it with ease.

  Arms raised to catch the trunk in case it slips, I almost miss his whispered question.

  “Mom, is Dad okay? Will he really meet us later?”

  “Sweetie, the plan is for him to meet us, but anything could happen. All we can do is get to the meet point and hope he shows up.”

  I wait for him to finish climbing down the ladder and help carry the trunk.

  “The girls don’t need to know what’s going on, and I’ll make sure to protect them. We can do this, Mom.”

  Smiling slightly at him, I give him a quick hug. “Where’s your pack?”

  “In the front seat. Why?” Carson frowns, not following my train of thought.

  “Take your dad’s pack. It has two guns and several clips. Put one of them in your pack, then put his back here with mine.”

  “Mom, thanks for believing in me. I’ll be safe with it.”

  “Just know that your Dad and I are proud of you. Hopefully, all those mornings at the gun range with him will pay off in the next few days. Let’s finish this and get on the road.” Carson shakes off the moment and goes to help his sisters with the pantry.

  Since I don’t want anyone helping themselves to our stuff, I wait until he’s on his way out before I go back in to bring another load out.

  “All finished, girls?” Seeing heads nod, I continue. “Good. Run use the bathroom, and then get in the car. Got it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Taking the seriousness of the situation to be obedient for a change, they both run off to do as I’ve asked.

  The last tub makes it outside and I wait until the girls are back before going in to wake up a very tired little boy.

  Trevor is asleep on his side with his thumb stuck in his mouth, clutching his blankie in the other hand. I collect his stuff and get a new Pull-Up out to change him while he’s still asleep, if that’s possible.

  He must have been out because he simply rolls over and lets out a snore.

  I suppress a giggle and have him changed in record time. Leaving him there while I do the walk through, I use the potty myself. I want to make sure we haven’t left anything on or forgotten any of the stuff we’re supposed to take.

  As I lift the sleeping baby, I glance at the clock. We’d made it in twenty minutes from start to finish. I pull the door shut behind me and set the alarms.

  Carson hits the garage d
oor button as I buckle Trevor into his seat.

  Sliding into my seat, I glance behind me to make sure we’re all in place and I haven’t forgotten anyone. The neighborhood is a little busier than normal, almost like it’s was five p.m. instead of three in the afternoon.

  “I guess the word is out that the zombies are here,” Joy observes from the back seat.

  “Seriously, Joy, everyone knows there has to be an outbreak somewhere and we’ve been watching the news. They didn’t say anything about a disease that could cause this. There has to be another explanation,” Carson patiently explains to his sister.

  “Joy, your father might be able to shed some light on this when he meets us. If you want to call them zombies for your own piece of mind until he tells us otherwise, I’m fine with that. Just don’t be scaring everyone with stories you’ve read or seen on TV, okay?”

  Shooting Carson a gleeful look, Joy agrees. “Yes, ma’am. Zombies,” she whispers in amazement.

  “The kind they have on Scooby-Doo?” Nicole questions her older sister.

  “Yeah. Where’s the mystery fighting gang when you need them?” Joy sighs in frustration as she goes back to looking out the window.

  Fighting back a grin, I slide the kids’ music CD in and head for the highway into town, hoping we weren’t followed as we go against traffic.

  Our safe house isn’t actually in the country as I’d led the children to believe, but on the other side of town.

  Thirty minutes later, we pull up to a small dilapidated house. While it isn’t in a wonderful neighborhood, the house was cheap, and the back faces a wooded park.

  Every six months or so, I come over and clean the house and make sure there aren’t any unwelcome furry friends who had managed to find us.

  Cooper had bought the house for next to nothing and had updated the security so the outside looked as rundown as the other houses, but the inside was a safe place for our family to stay. Now it was only missing him to complete it.

  There’s no garage but a carport on the side, meaning we would have to carry everything around the front to the door.

  “All right, kids, everyone out. Grab your own bags and I’ll help Trevor. Once we get inside, nobody comes back out again. In case the house is being watched, we don’t want anyone to get hurt or lost.”

  “Roger that, Mom.” Carson gives a mini salute as I put the SUV in park.

  Once everyone is safely inside, I lock the door and with Carson’s help, unload the tubs and trunk into the small storage shed at the back of the property.

  It’s almost five p.m., but there’s not a soul to be seen anywhere on the street. Evidently, people are taking the threat of zombies very seriously.

  The door shuts behind us and I use all three dead bolts and the cross bar to make sure anyone trying to get in would have a real problem. There’s a special knob that Cooper could turn that releases the board, but if you don’t know it’s there, then you’d never find it.

  The kids are huddled nervously on the couch. Even Trevor is just sitting still, watching everything.

  “We’re safe for the moment. If you hear anything, I want you to come into the bedroom right away. Come on.”

  The solemn little troop follows me into a room with four bunk beds.

  Their faces light up, but turn back toward me to see if they’re actually going to sleep here.

  “Yes, you girls can have the top bunks. Carson, you can have the other bottom bunk.” I lift Trevor into my arms. “And you, mister, are going to sleep with Mommy until Daddy gets here, okay?”

  “Tay.” Trevor snuggles his head into the crook of my neck.

  “If there are any problems, pull up this rug. Carson, or Joy, lift the door and scoot underneath the floor. You can’t make any noise or the bad guys will hear you so put the plug in Trevor’s mouth.”

  They crowd around, looking into the hole at the bottom of the floor.

  “Crawl to the edge of the house and follow the bushes out to the shed. Carson, you know what to do from there.”

  Nicole looks ready to burst into tears. “Oh, sweetie. This is just in case something happens, but we won’t let anything happen to you.”

  I pull my scared group into a one-armed hug. “Always remember, even when Mommy and Daddy aren’t around, we love you. Now, enough of this sad business. Let’s go see what’s in the refrigerator because I’m hungry, and I did promise a treat tonight, right?”

  I stand and head back to the kitchen, hoping my little angels won’t have to grow up too fast.

  We spent the rest of the evening unplugged from the world on the couch watching DVDs, waiting for word that it was safe to return to normal.

  I had the kids sleep in their clothes, simply because things happened in the middle of the night in the movies.

  When morning arrived and Cooper hadn’t, I put on a cheerful smile, knowing his chances of survival had been cut in half.

  “Mom, when is Dad going to get here?” Nicole asks innocently around the breakfast I had thawed from the freezer.

  “I’m sure he’ll be here as soon as possible. We’re going on an adventure later this afternoon,” I say, trying to stay positive.

  There’s no way I can call him since it could compromise the position he might be in. I have to be patient, and I’m horrible at it.

  Thankfully, I have four distractions to keep me busy and not focused on what the outside world looks like at the moment.

  At noon on the dot, I round everyone up and we make sure there’s nothing to show that we’d been in the house.

  The children are super excited because we’re going to use the underground tunnel to get to the shed.

  Carson goes in first, then Nicole, followed by Trevor. As Joy is climbing in the hole, I go to un-barricade the front door, just in case we need to come back in a hurry.

  The door closes over my head and the short crawl with only a light shining to show the way is very claustrophobic. I make it to the end and find all four children watching the entrance worriedly.

  A huge grin lights Carson’s face as some of the responsibility rolls off his young shoulders.

  “Now what, Mom?” Nicole asks, looking around at the tight quarters.

  “This way.” Carson walks to the back wall and pushes a button.

  All the boxes in one stack are moved, revealing a staircase down into a well-lit area.

  “Cool.” Joy and Nicole say at the same time. “Jinx, you owe me a coke.” Giggling, they almost scream it. “Double Jinx.” Then they realize we’re just watching them in horror at the noise they’re making.

  “Girls that can never happen again. It could have gotten us killed. We can’t make noise. It should be all whispers unless I give you the all clear.”

  Nicole bursts into tears and Trevor, sensing his sister’s distress, begins to whimper.

  “Hey, now. It’s okay. Nothing happened this time, but we have to be more careful.” Kneeling in the dirt, I hug her tightly until Trevor, not to be outdone, squeezes his head up between us so that he’s sandwiched in the hug, making us both laugh.

  “All right, everyone. We can keep going. Shh.” I hold my finger to my lips and they copy it. Carson takes the lead again, only this time, we walk for what seems like forever until we reach another staircase leading upward.

  The door at the top opens up to a broken-down garage with a large, super cab truck waiting for us.

  This might all seem like a lot of overkill for an event that might never really happen, but the stuff my husband has been working on for the past fifteen years or so is top secret. Only a few people have access to the information he has in his brain. Not to mention, the computer files he backs up religiously.

  Carson and I had loaded most of the stuff into the truck this morning, but I double check to make sure it’s all tied down under the tarp in the bed of the truck.

  We keep two gas cans full and ready in the back of the truck, just in case we have to drive a long time without stopping.

 
; The truck starts perfectly, but I quickly realize we haven’t prepared as well as we thought when the first question is voiced.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Crud.” There are no CDs or electronics to take the kids’ minds off their current trip.

  “Well, we’re going to your Aunt Jessica’s.” Then comes the next set of questions in rapid fire from their astonished little minds.

  “We have an aunt? Where does she live?”

  “Does she have children?”

  “Why haven’t we heard of her before?” Carson asks cautiously.

  “She’s my sister, and I didn’t know she was alive until a few years ago. My grandmother gave her up for adoption when she realized she couldn’t take care of two children by herself, much less three when my mom got pregnant again.” I meet their gazes in the rearview mirror.

  “She’s younger than me and has two children. They live on a farm about two hours from here, and I think we should be safe there until Daddy catches up to us. He knows where we’ll be,” I answer their unspoken question.

  Trevor’s already trying to keep his eyes open as we hit the outskirts of Charlotte, NC, but that’s where the traffic starts.

  I’d avoided the highway, choosing the less traveled back roads, but it seems that the less panicked people are taking the same path. The road filled with cars continues to move steadily, but slowly until the true county roads give more options for travel.

  Even though they’re trying to be really good, I still hear one question that I never want to hear again.

  “When are we going to be there?”

  Thankfully, the three in the back seat finally drifted off, and that’s probably the only reason I kept my sanity. Because what should have been a short two-hour drive, wound up taking close to four hours.

  One pit stop at a country store, where we were able to empty our bladders and refill the tank with gas easily, thus proving the panic hadn’t hit the rural countryside yet.

  The further out we drove, the fewer cars and people that were around us. I made sure to come to my sister’s farm from the back direction so no one in town knew we were there.