The Reaper Virus (39 page)

First and foremost, thanks to all the readers for
following me on this journey. I hope you keep following me as I
continue this story in later books. A journey is exactly what I’ve
embarked on over the time it took to get this out of my brain and
into your hands. This story connected me to hundreds of great
people in the never-ending horde of zombie lovers. It would be
impossible to list them all so don’t be offended if I left you out.
Here is the abridged version…

This novel would have never happened if it
wasn’t for my beautiful wife. Thank you, Sarah, for being the most:
supportive, creative, encouraging, persistent and twistedly
imaginative muse that a sleepy husband could
ever
have. Also to my children, Maddox and Calise,
thanks for embracing a childhood in a horror-loving household. You
both showed my imagination the lengths I would go to just to see
you two again. Oh, and I promise to pick up the tab for any therapy
that might be a result from all the zombie talk!

Thanks to my parents for raising me with a
love of both words and imagination. Because of that upbringing,
writing a novel became a lifelong aspiration to me. My parents also
showed me the true meaning of love. From the beginning, I was
blessed with a proper example of how parents should treat their
kids and how spouses should treat each other. I have cemented these
attributes into my own family life. These are also the factors that
served as the core for the novel preceding these thanks.

To my brother Josh and my brother-in-law
Aarash – thank you both for being supportive from the moment I told
you my crazy idea of writing a book. The continuous input and
feedback you both provided throughout the process enabled me to
quell every stubborn fit of writer’s block.

Thanks to the fine men and women of the
police agency this story was based on (you guys know who you are).
It was an honor to share such a ‘thought-provoking’ setting with
you all during many long nights. The random encouragement/
pestering to write that I received every shift served as an
excellent motivator. Special thanks go to Lance and Brad for
allowing me to include their likenesses in my tale. Also thanks to
these specific red-eyed civil servants who helped push me along:
Doug Dawson, Jon McAchren, Randall Fish, Joel Abernathy, Shawn
Kelley and Jennifer Riemann.

I owe a huge debt to Tim Long for opening up
so many doors and for the continuous guidance as I walked through
them. Thanks to the almighty Robert Elrod for originally bringing
my vision to life on the cover of the book’s first printing. I’m
grateful for having talented friends like Michael S. Gardner and
Jeremy Peterson to help develop ideas and hear me gripe about
creative plights. A little while after I started putting the blog
out there I started getting support from an incredible group call
LEGO ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE which brought me tons of new readers and
introduced me to a valued friend, Erik Mudrinich, who also created
the LZA page. Finally thanks to Alfredo Torres for doing my first
interview then becoming a great advocate and friend.

It’s the world wide readers of The Reaper
Virus blog and their global support that have made this a dream
come true. Posting this originally as a blog connected me to people
and fans I’d fight the undead with any day. I’ve also been able to
participate in several online communities of zombie/horror lovers
that always offer support. Special recognition goes to: David
Moody, Jacob Kier, Nicholas Clark, JD Daniels, Ethan Maas, Tyler
Tompkins, Patrick Montcalm, Cat Milton, Donisha Terry,
Monique-Cherie Snyman, Sherry Jensen, S.P. Durnin, Carey
Kussmann-Andersen, Chris Philbrook, Lance Glisson, Sacha Aislabie,
and Rena Ingersoll.

There are no storybook endings during the
apocalypse…

Throughout this tale the character obsesses
over the thought of seeing his family once again. In his mind, the
only end he will accept is the one where he reaches the people he
loves. Even though Nathan is seemingly bitten by one of the
ravenous infected and must be dragged into safety, he still
fulfills that core obsession. The book ends with him happy because
regardless of his physical state the people he loves are there.
However, when the dead rise and life as we know it collapses, is
there really such thing as a
happy
ending
?

No. There are no storybook endings during the
apocalypse. Under this pretense I thought it was necessary to
provide an alternate ending to THE REAPER VIRUS. Even though I’m
happy with the route I took I still couldn’t shake the “what if?”
Please keep in mind that this
is not
the
true ending of this story. The ending you already read is how I
wanted to close this novel and lead into its sequel, THE REAPER
VIRUS: WHAT REMAINS.

So if you’re like me and tend to think about
the ways things could have gone differently then please enjoy this
piece which was written as a short story originally for an
unpublished anthology. It’s not how my tale ends, but it so easily
could have gone this way…

Biting wind brought awareness to my battered face.
Confusion was second only to exhaustion. I had reached a point
where factoring pain into my state of being was an exercise in
futility. This place was so familiar. Yet, as I looked around I
couldn’t help but see the blurred landscape as a twisted
doppelganger of the area I knew.

I furrowed my brow attempting to process a
tidal onslaught of memory. The contortion of my facial muscles was
met with searing pain. Instinctively, I raised my hand to my
forehead. I glanced down to see why my extremities were ignoring
orders barked out by my brain. Each hand was covered by a soiled
work glove, both tightened in a white-knuckled grip. My left hand
was clasped tightly around the bike handlebars. I held onto this
unfamiliar bicycle like it was a rope dangling me over an abyss. My
right hand was attached to something completely foreign feeling: a
pistol.

This was madness. There wasn’t time to
contemplate how I got there. The wind nipping at my tear-choked
eyes reminded me that I was moving. In fact, I wasn’t just moving I
was rocketing over the pavement like a kamikaze. Traveling that
stretch felt like second nature. Even beyond the confusion I had a
sense of déjà vu, as if I’d crossed this place countless times. I
gazed up through the growing veil of nightfall. At the end of the
road I saw a wall of twisted figures. This sight brought about a
tsunami of dreaded recollection. Not seconds earlier I was
desperate for answers, but I was sickened by the realization that
the dead were waiting for me ahead.

I picked up the pace and plummeted down my
neighborhood street. Beyond the wall of undead my house was
shrouded in darkness. Everything came back to me in a rush. I
remembered fighting my way out of the city. The palpable dread I
felt from every human shape cut down during my hellish trek felt
anew. In spite of it all, I remembered that my reason for surviving
this road to perdition was to reach what lay past those demons.
Barely a soul remained on this earth or within me. If I didn’t
reach Sarah, Maddox, and Calise, then every sin I’d committed would
undoubtedly crush whatever remained inside my heart. They were my
reason for being…
they
were now so
close.

My right hand rose to a parallel angle with
the road. The group of undead noticed a meal barreling towards
them. They twitched and pulsed with unnatural fury like a worm
tossed into a campfire. Shrieks emanated from the wall of hungry
dead. A burning sensation tickled my throat. I had become so
separated from reality that it didn’t even dawn on me that the
burning originated from my bloodcurdling battle cry.

Thunder boomed from my elevated fist. The
pilfered weapon belched explosions of fire towards the now
advancing ghouls. Time slowed to a crawl under the oppressive hand
of chaos. During the strobe-like flashes of muzzle fire I could
discern every horrid detail. I suddenly saw it all, from the
spiraling striations in the bullets to the bits of glass and gore
peppering the pavement. Logic pecked inside my brain telling me
that everything I was witnessing was too insane to be real. Then a
shell casing was expelled upward at my forehead. I couldn’t tell if
the pain came from it burning my skin or the wound that was there
already. My attention was refocused by the immediate reminder of
injury.

One of closest monsters took a round of lead
to his shoulder. He flipped around and dropped to the ground. Two
of his undead colleagues tripped over the flopping corpse and
joined it on the ground, creating a gateway for me. My thoughts
screamed with worry that the gun would be empty from so much
frantic trigger pulling. A final bullet burst forth and punched
through the eye of a woman lunging for my tire. This collision
course had reached its end. Recognizing this, I braced for impact,
flanked by creatures on both sides.

I’m going to make it. I’m
going to make it. I’m going to make it
, repeated my
thoughts.

By the grace of God, I cleared enough room to
make it through. The shape of my waiting house revealed itself deep
in the cul-de-sac. Panic kept the empty weapon cemented into my
right hand. I pushed my gun fist against the bicycle grip to brace
for the punch past the dead.

I’m finally here
,
ran through my mind in that eternal second.

Then I was thrown off my steed. One of the
monsters lunged towards me as I passed. The collision was a perfect
combination of misfortunes. Any slower and he would have sacked me
like a quarterback; any faster and he would have missed the bike
entirely. His dive sent a rotting arm into the spokes of my rear
wheel.

Repulsive sounds from consequences to the
undead man echoed in my ears and painted a vivid picture of his
fate. My imagination showed a man looking just like me torn from
this illogical apocalyptic place. The ground floated beneath my
numbed body hurtling through the air. For a split second I knew my
house was approaching at an unsafe rate. Somehow I felt able to
control my velocity at the last moment. I went from a catapulted
rag doll to a cannonball tucking in for impact. Then the pavement
met me.

I came to a stop in the ditch bordering my
property after tumbling several feet. While in mid-somersault I
felt a sharp pain radiate as something pushed between my shoulder
blades. Lying in the wet ditch leaves I saw what it was that caused
the oddly placed pain: a shiny silver blade. How could I have
forgotten about my Kukri? The life-saving weapon was all that had
allowed me to reach that point. The crooked scabbard was taped to
my jacket to allow easy over the shoulder access. Force from impact
had launched the precious blade out and javelined it into the
ground.

Thrumming from my pulse drowned out all
sounds. I remained on my back in the ditch inspecting myself for
new injuries. Silhouettes quickly hobbled up to the property. I was
lying there like a buffet. Injured or not, I had to move. After
everything I’d been through I couldn’t allow myself to just be
eaten on my own doorstep. I hoisted myself up onto unsteady feet,
pain throbbing from every inch of my person. Warmth from spots
where life leaked out of me broke the monotony of debilitation. My
hearing began to return enough to recognize the sound of my
clattering pursuers.

I yanked the Kukri from the ground and looked
around for my discarded pistol. The gun was nowhere to be found. It
may have been out of ammunition but there were more rounds packed
with my bike. My thoughts raced through what else I was abandoning
in my supplies. There was a shotgun tucked onto my backpack with a
small number of shells. I looked back and couldn’t even see the
crashed bicycle. Whatever life savers may be there still, I
couldn’t even consider retrieving them at that point.

The front of the house was completely boarded
up.

“Good,” I muttered to myself, “at least they
are locked up tight.”

Hopefully my family had heard the shots and
would be ready for me. Within seconds I was at the gate to our
privacy fence. I pushed on the wooden wall and heard the rattle of
a chained padlock on the other side. There wasn’t any way to open
it from the outside while it was secured that way. Peering over my
shoulder sent waves of pain through my neck. At least four undead
were nearly upon me. I let out a deep sigh of dread knowing that
I’d have to climb over the fence.

I placed the blade back into its scabbard.
Even with the zombies closing on me I’d need both hands to get over
the six foot privacy fence. The Kukri voiced a grinding objection
to being re-sheathed in such a dirty state. I forced it onto my
back and leapt up to grab hold. For a moment I just hung there
pathetically. Every ounce of strength went into my muscles and I
barely moved. The first pursuer was now at least ten feet away from
me. I jumped again and got an arm over the wooden ledge.

“Climb you fat fuck!” I screamed at myself
desperately. The insulting self-motivation further excited the
predators behind me. They moaned and shrieked like I was the
dangling cure for world hunger. More altitude was gained within
seconds. The wood pressed into my cracked ribcage. Pain flooded out
from the area with ferocity equivalent to the infected desire to
feed. My grunting noises sent the leading undead member into a
frenzy. It lunged towards me, clearing the last several feet with
concerning ease. I crested the fence right as the beast reached me.
My foot shot out and the filthy police-grade boot that had carried
me through hell connected with the zombie’s nose. While the
creature fell I was pushed away and over the fence. I fell flat on
my back inside the backyard. A root protruding from the ground met
my skull, robbing me of my fragile consciousness.