Dead Life (Book 4)

Copyright 2014 D Harrison Schleicher

              No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the copyright holder, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser.

              Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All characters and events, unless those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, without the express written consent of the individual, is purely coincidental.

              There, I think that covers it.

              I would hope so.

              Just get on with it.

              Mind your own business.

              Alright then here we go.

              As always I would like to take this opportunity to thank my wife, Gina for all her hard work in editing and proof reading my books. My grammar and punctuation are atrocious. The hours and hours she spends cleaning up the mess I make deserve more than a mere thank you but that's all I can do on paper. Perhaps she'll help me think of something more fitting when I'm done writing this. Then again the thank you I have in mind is probably something I will enjoy just as much, if not more, than her.

              Most of you suffer through the months of Facebook posting I do along with every book I publish. Blame my daughter Chloe for that. I just write the posts she splays them all across the internet, not me. Olivia, my youngest daughter, does my cover art. Amazing isn't she. My son Noah does his best to stay away from all of it but I drag him into the mix whenever the mood strikes me. It just doesn't seem fair that he gets to stay in his room playing video games when I make everybody else do so much work on my books. He did the cover for the three book box set. Yes writing e-books brings a family together. If you hear that I die suddenly in my sleep you'll know the truth. They all finally got together and did me in. Can't say as I blame them as I am a task master and can be quite the bastard. Thanks for all the help kids. No, I don't want to learn how to do all these things for myself.

              Now time to get serious. Book 4 took way too long to get out. For this I apologize. The reason for such a long delay......I wrote a book, The Second Reality: Gateway City, in between books 3 and 4.

You say you knew that? You must be one of the twenty or so people that read it. I wrote this book, the second in a series, with my good friend RR Haywood. His sold mine didn't. Go figure. I worked really hard on Gateway City so if you are reading this and have already read RR Haywood's book for god sakes read mine!

              Enough of that. I'll let you get to it. Hope you enjoy Dead Life Book 4. One last thing............... Dead Life, a story of survival. That's my catch phrase. Nice isn't it?

Chapter 1

              “We're not going down there are we?”

              “We don't have much of a choice Lily. You two should stay here. This is my deal. You guys got me this far I'll take it from here.” I said it but I didn't mean it. Under no circumstances did I want to go down there by myself. I may be crazy but I'm not stupid. Most of my time in the service has been spent riding a desk. I was with two seasoned veterans and I was going to need all the help I could get.

              “I didn't come to the dance to sit this one out sir. I'm coming with you. Tell you what, I'll hold him down while you torture him for a while. Then you can kill him,” Sergeant Adams said with a smile on his face.

              “If we get on that elevator we're as good as dead. There has to be another way down there,” Lily looked to both of us as she said this.

              “You're right. Let's find the stairwell. There has to be one,” I started toward the other side of the room. There were two doors on the far wall. One of them had to be the stairs.

              The speaker crackled to life. “What's the hold up? I need to get back to work. If you don't start down now I'll disable the elevator. Then you can go home empty handed. I don't think the General will like that. Ten seconds, that's all you've got.”

              Dr. Jeffery Parks waited for us deep within the de-commisioned missile silo. The army had him held here working to find a cure for the virus he had created and then spread throughout the world. When they lost touch with the unit holding him captive General Simmons sent a chopper pilot to find out what had happened and to bring the Doctor out to his location at sea. I was tagging along because I wanted to be the one to kill the good doctor. There was no way this man was going to do anything to help the world he had destroyed. I couldn't believe how fucking stupid our government was. I was volunteering to rectify that situation.

              The unit that had been holding Dr. Parks in the missile silo was done for. All or most of them had attacked us when we first arrived. They had been infected with the zombie virus, crammed into an elevator, and released on us. Now we were going down to get the man that had started all of this.    

              Sergeant Adams stepped onto the elevator, pulled his sidearm and shot out the camera that was on the elevator. Then he drug the dead zombie away from the door, stepped back in, and pushed the button.

              “Find those stairs.”  he shouted as the door closed.

              “Get off that elevator! That's an order!”

              It was too late. The elevator was headed down. I could hear him yell up at me, “I thought rank didn't matter anymore.”

              “God damn him! Lily we have to find those stairs.”

              I ran to the first of the doors and threw it open. It was a closet. On the floor was the nearly completely devoured body of a soldier. Hunched over it was the zombie that had most likely killed him. The zombie looked up at me and growled. Realizing there was a better food source to be had the creature made an attempt to get to it's feet. Lily stepped forward and stabbed the zombie in it's eye socket before I could get my rifle up.

              “You have to be more careful Tim,” she said as she pulled her knife out of the zombies eye. “And you might want to hold off on using that rifle. Element of surprise and all that. Try your radio, call Sarge.”

              I needed to start thinking clearly. She was right. I was going to get us all killed if I couldn't get my head out of my ass.

              “Sergeant, are you there? Over.”

              “I hope like hell you're headed down some stairs. I've got this thing stopped between floors. Hang on, someone is calling me on the intercom.”

              We tried the next door. I opened the door slowly and this time found the stairs. They were steep and seemed to go on forever. I started running down with Lily right behind me.

              “That was the doctor on the elevator's intercom. Wants to know what the hold up is. I yelled back at him to quit fucking with the elevator and we'd be right down. He's buying it for now. He's trying to figure out what's wrong with the electrical system. You know for a doctor he's not too smart.”

              “It's a long stairway Sergeant. Try to buy us as much time as you can.”

              “As soon as he figures out it's me that's got this elevator stopped I'll have to get it started again.”

I could hear the doctor's voice over the radio. I couldn't tell what he was saying, but I knew it couldn't be good. We'd already gone down five flights of stairs and I still couldn't see the bottom.

              “That's it, he figured it out. The good doctor overrode the emergency stop. I'll see you at the bottom.”

              I pushed as hard as I could. Thank God we were running down instead of up. My lungs were bursting for oxygen. I hoped I wouldn't have to run back up these stairs. As I rounded the corner to the eighth flight I ran headlong into a soldier dressed in full riot gear. The force of me running into him  knocked him back and down the steps. Someone was still alive in here. I got to him and stopped to help him to his feet. He grabbed me and pulled me down on top of him. I realized I was being attacked by a zombie wearing a helmet with a face shield. His teeth were inches from my face. A thin sheet of plexiglass was all that was between his deadly incisors and my nose. Infected saliva and blood were all over the face guard. His dead eyes stared out at me. He rolled over and now was on top of me. The pungent mixture smeared across the inside of the face protector was about to drip off and into my face. I had to turn my head to keep it from getting into my mouth. The goo dripped off the bottom of the face protector. I could feel it coating the side of my face. Soon it would be on my mouth or in my eyes. I felt the zombie fly backwards off of me. Lily had stepped up and given the zombie a mighty kick to the head. She followed the creature as it came to a rest up against the wall. She shoved her knife under it's chin and up into the brain. She'd saved me again.

              “Come on Tim I see a door. Here wipe your face on this.”

              I got to my feet and took the handkerchief she offered me. “You called me by my name.”

              “Did you get any of that shit in your mouth?”

              “No I'm good.”

              “I thought I'd lost you for a minute there.”

              We started back down. Going at a normal pace. The end was near and we hadn't heard any gunfire yet. Hopefully that was a good sign. I wanted to open the door we were approaching, find the Sergeant, kick him in the ass, go kill Dr. Parks, and get the hell out of here. This was a bad idea coming to this place. What did I hope to accomplish? All I'd succeeded in doing was risking the lives of my friends. And for what? Revenge? No revenge could never be sufficient for what this man had done. There was nothing that could make this right. We needed to get out of here. We were on a fool's errand and I was the fool.

              “This can't be the bottom of this facility. Missile silo's are deeper than this. Aren't they?”

              “Honestly Lily I don't know. I would think they would be. We'll check it out. By the way we're even now.”

              “How's that?”             

              “We've saved each other. I don't think anybody owes anyone anything.”

              “Let's just get out of here alive. That happens, then believe me sir, I'm going to burn you down.”

              “We'll see who burns who down.”

              Lily reached for the lever to the door and I got ready to go through. She looked me in eye and stopped.

              “Go in slow.”

              She slowly opened the door and I eased in. I checked to my left saw it was clear and went to the right. Lily followed me in. We were in a hallway that appeared to go around in a circle. It made sense. The silo was round and the hallway skirted the perimeter. We worked our way around and headed in the direction I thought the elevator would be. The walls were smeared with blood and we didn't go far before coming to the first dead body. I shouldn't say body. There were body parts and not many of them. As we went around the circular hallway I could finally see the elevator. There was a boot in the door preventing it from closing. Correction there was a foot in the boot. Sarge must have crept out and grabbed the foot and stuck it there in an attempt to keep an avenue of escape open. Very resourceful. I'd have to put him up for a promotion if we got out of here alive.

              “We haven't come to a door yet. He must be in front of us,” Lily said as she reached out and touched me on the shoulder. “Why don't we try calling his name. We could keep walking around in circles all day otherwise.”

              “Do you know his first name?”

              “Yeah it's John.”

              “John Adams? What's his middle name, Quincy?” I couldn't help but smile. And people don't think I have a sense of humor.

              “I think so. But don't tease him about it. He doesn't think it's funny. I heard he's got into lots of fights because of it.”

              “Wouldn't think of it,” I did my best to wipe the smile from my face. I guess maybe people were right. My sense of humor did suck. “Get ready. This might draw some unwanted attention.”

              “John, are you down here?” I called out. “We're by the elevator.”

              We stood as quietly as possible waiting for a response, either from the Sarge or a zombie. After a few seconds I decided to try something different.

              “Mr.  President have you seen Sergeant Adams?” This time I called a little louder. “We seem to have lost him.”

              “I told you he didn't like that,” Lily glared at me as she said this.

              “He either isn't on this level or he's in trouble. Maybe we should split up. Go in different directions and meet back here.”

              “That won't be necessary. The Sergeant is here with me. I haven't seen the President though. If you'd send him my way I might consider letting your friend go.”

              There was a speaker on the wall beside the elevator. Dr. Parks had heard every word we had said. Lily signaled for me to go one way down the hall and gestured that she would go the other way. I nodded to her and pointed to my watch and held up two fingers. Then mouthed the word stairs at her. Hoping she would understand that no matter what I wanted to meet back at the stairs in two minutes. She gave me a thumbs up and we turned away from each other and started to move out.

              “Stop all that gesturing and get on the elevator.”

              “Where's the fucking camera? I don't see one,” Lily said. She turned back and stormed into the elevator.

              “That's the whole idea young lady. Now you join her Captain. Put your guns on the wall furthest from the control panel. After you do that put you hands against the opposite wall. Feet back and spread apart.”

              Lily and I put our rifles against the wall and went straight to the opposite wall. I put both hands against the wall and stood there looking around.  Nothing happened. I was waited for someone to come frisk us.

              “Get your feet back. I want you leaning into that wall. Someone is coming out to pat you down. I know you still have your side arms. So don't try anything.”

              I moved my feet further back so that I was leaning into the wall of the elevator. Lily did the same thing. We stood like this for a few minutes and no one came out.  I got tired of standing there like that and stood up.

              “What the fuck is going on here?” I said while I looked around for the camera.

              “I said hands against the wall. You want me me to kill your friend?”

              “Alright, alright I'm sorry,” I said placing my hands against the wall and putting my feet back.              

              As soon as my weight settled into the wall it came crashing down. Lily and I fell through the hidden door. I threw my hands out to try and catch myself on the way down but hit my head on the ground. Lily fared a little better than I did. She was able to catch herself but I knocked her over when I fell her way. Dazed and confused I tried to get to my feet only to go back down when something hit me hard on the back of my head. I could feel myself losing consciousness. I rolled onto my back and looked up. A zombie had a hold of the back of Lily's hair and was dragging her to her feet. She was trying to fight him off of her. The last thing I saw was the zombie hitting Lily in the head with a pistol. I thought to myself as I was blacking out how strange that was. “Zombies don't use weapons, do they?” “No they don't” I thought to myself. “They eat you.” Then the darkness took me.

              When I came to I couldn't move. I was strapped down to a table. I could feel a strap across my forehead but was able to move my head far enough to see Lily from the corner of my eye. She was chained to the wall beside me. Still unconscious she slouched to the ground. She was held in place by her wrists. I tried to move my head to get a better look around the room but was unable to see anything else.