A Long Walk: World of the Dead, #1

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It's been twenty years since the dead rose to consume the living, and humanity has survived, at least in one small corner of the world. The city of New Hope is growing and running out of space so they send a force out to take back a nearby island from the hordes of zombies that shamble through its streets.

The island is home to another group of survivors though, a cannibal cult that worships the undead and doesn't want to share.

Chad is young, newly trained, he finds himself in the midst of hordes of zombies as the only member of his squad not captured by the cannibal cult. It is up to him to save the rest.

Tamra is an actress on the only TV station left on earth, but she wants to be more, she wants to be a real hero. She throws herself into the middle of the mission, heedless of her own safety. Skills she developed in the early days of the post-apocalyptic period.

Tyson worked construction, trying to reclaim resources from the ruined world. The cult captures him and now he must struggle every moment to survive and to maintain his sanity.

All of these disparate characters are desperate to return to their home, to survive, to defeat religious fanatics and thousands of undead who still wander the world.

You can get Resource Economies (book 2 of the world of the dead series) for free! Just subscribe to my mailing list at http://bit.ly/2K99oBP-resource-economies-free-ebook and I will send it to you. I use my list to keep my readers up to date on what I'm doing and what I'm writing. I will never sell or give away your information.

A Long Walk

Traverse Davies

Acknowledgements

Thanks to my son, Alex. He has always made me proud. I also owe a huge debt of Gratitude to Linda Bowes for editing support above and beyond. Thanks as well to Reddit user JelzooJim (http://jelzoo.com/) help with cover design, and to my cover model Rhena.

There are many others, my Mother for giving me a love of books. Also, the school system for giving me a desire to escape this world and be part of another one, any other one.

And finally, if you are reading this, thank you for deciding to pick up my book.

Meet Jasper

Jasper was running through the pre-dawn light, breath heavy and ragged, heart pounding in his chest. The street lamp up ahead left a pool of light on the ground; it looked like sanctuary, rescue, salvation. An illusion of course; one made stronger by the tunnel of vegetation that he was passing through, the darkness of the hot summer night. At his heels, his dog Snow was just hitting his stride. Jasper's headphones played an old track by Faithless that helped him keep his pace, toes striking pavement with every beat.

His mind wandered on his morning runs, a way to sort out his life, put everything in perspective. His divorce, not a recent pain but recent enough, the more recent pain of Karen taking Taylor to live in Charlottetown, the fact that he was burning out in his career. Not quite forty and already probably gone as far as he could, the fact that he hated his house, hated where he lived. The house was Karen ’s idea. It was in a good school district, but it looked exactly like all the other houses. The area was nice, but it took too long to get anywhere.

Still, when he ran, he could put it in perspective, the pain in his limbs reminding him that he was still human, that at his core he was an animal, a predator, that the world he had so much trouble adapting to wasn’t the real world, just a pale reflection of it.

Snow startled at a shape in the shadows. The dog wasn’t precisely a coward, but he was nervous of the dark. The shape resolved itself, another early morning jogger. Jasper gave a brief nod and kept going. The voice in Jasper's headphones informed him that he had reached the halfway point, two point five kilometres. He turned around and began the run back home.

Traffic was light as he made his way up to the Bedford Highway and then ran south towards his suburb. He thought about how much the area had changed. When he was a young man this was where the wealthy lived. An exclusive area where the police came faster than throughout the city, where people like him weren’t welcome. He used to visit friends here, hassled by those same police for his poor clothing, white trash not appreciated. Back then you rarely saw any non-white faces in Bedford, and his group of friends was mixed race which made them even more of a target. Now it was one of the more diverse areas of the city, boasting a significant Arab population for starters.

He kept a good pace as he ran up the hill to his street. The house loomed, feeling like a trap. Karen wanted to be in a safe area, to give their daughter every chance for a decent start, and Jasper went along. Moving in when Taylor was only five. Eight years later the place was too large for just him and Snow, but he was having trouble getting it to sell. Meanwhile, he felt like a stranger there, because with the threat of having to show the place it was staged to look neutral, devoid of personality. Everything that made it his was hidden or in a storage locker. He went inside and took off his headphones. A quick shower, a smoothie, a cup of coffee, and a couple of caffeine pills and he was ready for work. The thought of going to the office filled him with an existential dread. Sitting there, writing code that he didn’t give a damn about, trying to make small talk with a bunch of people who were every bit as disenfranchised and tired as he was, it was too much. He went outside and started his car; the oversized engine roared to life.

The car was his big indulgence. An impractical vehicle if such a thing had ever existed. It was something Karen would never have tolerated, which may have been why he bought it. A right-hand drive 1990 Nissan 300 ZX. It was fast, crazy fast. Terrible on gas, way too low to the ground for practical considerations. He was trying to figure out how he was going to get through the winter with it. He’d bought it after the snow stopped, after Karen left the province with Taylor, bought it really on a whim. The problem was he bought it without really thinking it through, and he didn’t have enough money left over to get something practical. At least it made his one weekend a month trip to PEI more fun. Expensive as hell, but a fun drive.

Snow started barking from inside the house. This was unheard of. Snow had been his companion for three years and rarely barked. Jasper looked up from his phone and saw his neighbour, Mrs Tillman, heading towards him. She was wearing a nightgown, torn open, barely hanging off of one shoulder. Her neck was bleeding, and she looked like she was in shock... pale, moving with a slightly drunken gait. Mrs Tillman was in her mid-seventies and had been a widow for a decade already. Jasper helped her out around the house from time to time, and they often joked about how if it weren’t for their partners they never would have lived there. She had moved into one of the first houses in the subdivision when it was brand new. She was funny, in an earthy sort of way, and not a stereotypical little old lady, but Jasper was pretty sure that she wouldn’t usually be walking down the street with one breast hanging out of her flannel nightgown. She was quietly mouthing Help me. Please way.

Jasper ran to her side, sprinting despite the pain in his legs from his morning run. She collapsed just as he reached her, falling into his arms. Slowly he lowered her to the ground. Are you alright? Mrs Tillman? Abigail?. She didn't respond. Her neck wound was bleeding, a lot. Jasper knew from first aid training that people bled a lot more than what you see on TV, but this seemed to be a lot more than was safe. He pulled out his phone and dialled 911. He got a no circuits available tone. Something was seriously wrong - much more than an old woman bleeding in the street. His heartbeat sped up, the edges of fear setting in. What the hell was going on? He checked her pulse. It was there, faint, so very, very faint. Mrs Tillman, stay with me. I got you. Just stay with me. I'm getting help. That was when he heard it. A low growling, animalistic, but somehow human at the same time. He looked towards Mrs Tillman’s house and saw it, a child walking towards him, growling, head cocked at an impossible angle. It looked like the girl from two doors over, the far side of Mrs Tillman, Becky maybe? He thought Taylor had babysat her once. It couldn't be though, the way she was moving, stick like and stiff, shuffling. The child was covered in blood, the worst of it was around her mouth, running down her chin.

Jasper was a nerd, a huge one. His favourite show was The Walking Dead. He owned virtually every movie with of the Dead in the title. Half of his t-shirts had references to zombies on them. It still took him a minute to process. It’s one thing to watch TV shows and movies about the dead coming back to life, and another to have an eight-year-old dead girl walking towards you on a quiet suburban street. That was what she was, of course, a zombie. Still, he got himself together well before she reached him and sprinted for his front door, leaving Mrs Tillman where she lay. Snow stopped barking as soon as he made it inside, satisfied that he had done his canine duty in warning his master. He stood ready, muscles tensed and waiting. Jasper slammed the door behind him, blocking the nightmare of a little girl walking his way. He shut out the chaos, took a minute to figure out his course of action. One thing was clear; he needed to get out of there.

Jasper had moved most of the survival gear into storage to make the place more acceptable to potential buyers, but he still had a few things hidden away in the house. It wasn’t the full bug out bag that Karen had made so much fun of him for, but it was a start. His bow was first, a fifty-five pound recurve. A compound would have made more sense, but the recurve was what he had. Then he clipped the quiver to his belt. He considered leaving the bow behind; all his arrows had target heads on them, so they would be pretty limited but if he got a chance to get new arrows he would regret not having the bow that he had always trained with in his hands. Learning a new bow would take time, and he might not get any. He also strapped on the one real sword he had with him. A traditional European longsword, designed to be a hand and a half weapon. Finally, he grabbed his survival knife and put that on the other side of his belt, right next to his Leatherman. It wasn’t much, but again, it was what he had. Usually, his bag would contain rations, potable water, all the essentials, but with the sale of the house pending his real estate agent had talked him into putting the survival rations in storage just for a little while. She seemed to think it might be off putting to potential buyers.

He knew exactly where he was going. He had to make it to Charlottetown, to Taylor. He needed to find his little girl.

Finally, he grabbed Snow’s leash and headed out the door, calling the big husky mix to follow him. Becky was still coming, walking her stiff, jerky way over to him. He knew that moment, the one in the movie where the zombie closes in and the hero recoils in shock and horror, aghast at what he has to do. Jasper wasn't a hero though, he was too practical for that. He had trained for survival and had been through enough as a teenager to act without hesitation. Instead, he pulled his sword and swung, not taking the time to think about what he was doing. The sword cleaved into her skull, splitting it. She dropped, whatever had been animating her suddenly gone. Apparently, the movies had gotten more than a few things right. He knew that later when he had a chance to process this would mess with his head, but in the moment, it was what he had to do, and nothing more. There were a couple more problems though. Mrs Tillman was getting up and more figures were shuffling down the hill towards them, moving in the same jerky was as Becky had.

Jasper opened the car door. Snow jumped in, taking up his customary spot in the tiny rear seat. Jasper sheathed his sword and tried to get in the vehicle, but the sword kept getting caught up. Finally, he pulled it back out and dropped in the passenger seat, the flexible sheath folding up out of his way.

He slammed the powerful V6 engine into reverse, backing out of the driveway at nearly full speed, spinning as he went so he was facing down the hill. The ground clearance being what it was, the bottom of the car scraped the road, throwing up a shower of sparks.

Jasper accelerated down the hill as fast as he could. It felt like being punched in the chest. An average car would never have been able to take the winding cul-de-sac at that speed, but the Z handled the turns without issue, staying glued to the pavement. He rounded the corner onto the Bedford Highway, and barely managed to avoid slamming into the large pickup truck that was stopped almost directly in front of him. He was trapped between the truck and the ocean, nowhere to go. Fuck. Both directions were full of cars, stopped. That was normal in the morning; the Bedford Highway was a major artery, and at rush hour it got pretty bad. On this morning though figures were shambling through the traffic, grabbing at people who dared to leave their vehicles. The car wasn’t going to work, not here, there was no way he could get through. Come on Snow; we have to ditch. Let's move it, buddy. Talking to the dog was an ingrained habit, starting when Karen and Taylor moved out. He climbed out of the car quickly, grabbing his sword, and once again began to run. Snow followed, his long legs far fresher than his masters. He headed through the grocery store parking lot, trying to get to the boardwalk behind it. He sprinted, feet pounding the pavement, adrenaline making up for his tired, sore legs. There was a crowd already in front of the grocery store, trying to get in. Better to skip it, play it safe, get supplies when he had a chance.

There was a small gap in the fence behind the grocery store, low to the ground. Jasper slipped under it, to the nearly empty boardwalk and started running with his steady long distance stride. Five K, his typical morning run, wasn’t nearly enough to get him out of the city, and he had already done it once today, but he needed to manage some distance. He knew he had to cover miles, get out of the crowds, find a place that was secure to hole up and recover his strength. His mind started ticking off a checklist. The rule of threes, three hours without shelter, three days without water, three weeks without food. The practical nature of the list kept him from focusing on the larger problem. At least the route was familiar; he was running almost the same way he ran every morning. He passed the high-end condos, some of which had groaning, shuffling zombies trying to get at him through the privacy fences that surrounded all of them. Here the undead were kept behind barriers for the most part. One of them was on the path ahead of him though, an older man, in good shape, wearing jogging gear. He was a regular; someone Jasper would nod to most mornings. Jasper didn’t even slow, drawing his sword as he ran. He swung while ducking right around the man. His blade didn’t hit solid, catching the creature’s left arm, way off target. The shock of the steel biting bone almost wrenched the sword from his hand, but he held it, turning as he pulled the blade free. The creature reached out for him with its one remaining arm, so Jasper took that one too, cutting it off at the elbow with a single hard swing. Nothing but a dark ichor came from the wound, almost black. He threw a push kick into the creature's hip, sending it back a pace. As it approached again, he took its head off, putting his back and shoulders behind the blade. Thankful for all the hours spent practising swordplay he turned and ran on.

The path, earlier so dark and threatening with its rows of trees that almost met overhead was now a beacon of hope. Out of sight of any houses, it was unlikely to be populated this time of day. He kept pace though, knowing that there was a limit to what he could do, that eventually his legs would stop moving, and that he was close that point. He moved onto the deserted path and finally stopped running. Snow stayed close, a half pace behind him as always.

Shore Drive was just ahead. He had to move on, out of the safety of