The Dead And The Wasted: A Post-Apocalyptic Virus Thriller (Cannibal Warfare Book 3) Read online

  Copyright © 2022 by Jordan Vezina

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover by Deranged Doctor Design

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Interlude 1

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Interlude 2

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  The Fulbright Building

  Houston, Texas

  It was perfect. Colonel Maxim Lebedev of Alpha Group Command opted not to follow the next logical thought, which was that it was too perfect. Yes, it was important to make smart tactical decisions, particularly in what could only be considered a non-permissive environment, but it was also important not to look a gift horse in the mouth for too long. That was how a fool was most likely to lose his head.

  The helicopter pad on the roof of the Fulbright Building was large enough to accept the bulk of the Mi-17 helicopter, and the landing lights were even lit. He wondered about that for a moment. Supposedly the entire Texas power grid had experienced a catastrophic failure quite some time ago, yet it appeared that every light in the Fulbright building was still on. The rest of the city was dark, but this one tower was lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree.

  There was already one helo on the small auxiliary pad beside the main one, but that was not unusual. A building like this was expected to have a helicopter on stand-by, particularly during times like these.

  Lebedev reached down and triggered the emergency relay that would burst transmit his coordinates to the nearest receiving station, but he knew it was to no avail. The nearest division that could have received his signal and decrypted it was the Third Motor Rifles, and at that specific moment in time, those soldiers were wandering Central Texas with black eyes seeking human flesh.

  He thought about that for a moment and wondered if Warrant Officer Balakin had died in his final defense of the hill top, or if he too was now one of those black-eyed things.

  Lebedev snapped himself back to reality and began the process of deploying his landing gear and maneuvering the helicopter toward the rooftop. Landing one of the big helos wasn’t exactly a one-man task, but he also had no other option. He had been in tighter spots before and had even had to perform a solo landing much like this, so he knew that he was capable of doing it.

  He also understood that it was important to get the intelligence they had uncovered at the Third Motor Rifles encampment to someone who could use it. But before he did that, he needed one last piece of the puzzle. Specifically, he needed to find out if this Doctor Gregory Wilson person was still residing in the Fulbright Building. If he was there, and if he was a part of what General Zhukov had thought was happening, there was no time to waste in securing him.

  Colonel Lebedev allowed himself a smile as he touched down on the helipad. The landing could not have been smoother if it had been a simulation.

  Despite the dire nature of the situation and the need for brevity, he still followed proper procedures in shutting down the aircraft and waited patiently for the rotors to stop spinning. It was quiet. This high up there was no sound other than the gentle blowing of the wind across the rooftop. It was peaceful—peaceful in a way he had not experienced in quite a long time.

  A couple dozen feet away was what appeared to almost be a small building on top of the Fulbright, and he could see large double doors in the relative darkness. Lebedev walked back to the rear of the helicopter, reached inside, and retrieved his gear. For a moment, he thought about going in slick, but then decided against it. He kitted up completely with his plate carrier, ballistic helmet with NODs, and then stuffed loaded magazines and fragmentation grenades into any pouch or pocket that would accept them. He wasn’t as big as many men in the Russian Special Operations community, standing only five foot ten, but he was built like a fire hydrant and had carried much more weight than this through much less forgiving terrain.

  Finally, he checked his rifle and did a quick function check of his night vision device and the aiming laser on his weapon.

  He listened again, but still heard nothing. He turned to where the second helicopter sat on the auxiliary helipad and moved toward it. The aircraft was secured, and there was nothing to indicate it was something he should be concerned about. Still, he peered in the windows but again saw nothing. For a moment he thought about putting his NODs down and performing a closer inspection, but he was also aware that time was not on his side.

  The inside of the building was well-lit, but clearly by emergency lighting. It was running off of a generator and Lebedev wondered how long that could last. He moved silently down the stairwell until he reached a heavy door that looked like it would bring him into the main building. He pulled the stock of his suppressed AK-74 into his shoulder, reached out, and opened the door.

  There was no hesitation in the seasoned special forces officer. He pulled the trigger of his rifle as the first black-eyed cannibal pushed towards him, teeth snapping and saliva flying. From there, he took three steps back and continued firing, not bothering to bring his eyes to his optic, as it was impossible to miss at this point-blank range.

  There was no adrenaline, no panic, no jerky movements. It was all business for the Russian commando as he moved from target-to-target, taking clean headshots that dropped the cannibals in their tracks. No one had told him that shooting these things anywhere other than the head or the heart was futile, it was simply the mark of a consummate professional. Why would he aim anywhere other than the head or center mass?

  He had dropped the first wave of cannibals with little effort and watched a second wave of perhaps a dozen storming toward him from the other end of a long hallway. With little fanfare, Colonel Maxim Lebedev performed what amounted to an administrative reload of his rifle, then brought it back into alignment and took smooth, controlled shots, executing what remained of the horde.

  Lebedev kept his rifle at the ready and scanned the hallway. There was nothing. He walked forward and gently kicked the bodies, making sure to also hit a few in the groin. Finally, he took a knee and thumped one in the eyeball. In the unlikely event they were not completely dead, the eye thump was likely to shock them enough to move.

  He looked forward to the door at the end of the hallway. There would almost certainly be more of them beyond it, but there was no other option. He knew that he may have to fight his way through a building of these things, but it had to be done.

  In a strange moment of clarity, Doctor Gregory Wilson realized that he should not have gotten down on his knees when Ralph Finley told him to. After all, what was the Fluid Dynamics security chief going to do if he didn’t comply? Shoot him?

  He had only done it because that’s what everyone did in the movies when they were about to be executed.

  Executed. He thought about that for a moment. They were going to execute him. Was this really happening? He had four PhD’s, dammit! They were just going to put a bullet in his head?

  “Why are you doing this?” Gregory asked.

  “It’s not personal,” Ralph replied. “It’s business. I know that sounds like something a movie villain would say, but it’s the truth. There’s a lot at stake here.”

  “What did he tell you I would do?” Gregory implored. “Mister Rampart told you to do this, didn’t he?”

  “That’s not important.”

  “Did he tell you about the antidote for the vaccine?” Gregory asked. “I’m betting he didn’t!”

  There was a brief look of curiosity on Ralph’s face, but then he over-rode it.

  “That’s above my pay grade,” Ralph replied as he flicked the selector switch on his M4 to “semi.”

  “I saw a flare!” Gregory blurted. “On the edge of the city before you arrived.”

  “What?” Ralph asked.

  “A flare!” Gregory insisted. “It could be important. I know where it was, but you don’t. I can take you to it.”

  “It’s not important,” Ralph said flatly and put the suppressor of his rifle to Gregory’s forehead.

  Gregory closed his eyes, then felt a thump beside him on the floor. His eyes snapped open and he saw Ralph lying beside him with a hole in his head. The scientist looked up and saw glass shattering and other security men firing at something across the room, but one-by-one they were also dropping to gunshot wounds.

  Again, it was like something out of a movie. He watched as a man in some sort of foreign uniform crossed the large open floor with his rifle up, scanning for any further threats. The man finally lowered his rifle and turned to where Gregory was kneeling on the floor.

  “Doctor Gregory Wilson, I presume?” Lebedev asked in his accented English.

  “Russian?” Gregory asked.

  “Stand up,” Lebedev ordered. “I’m getting you out of here.”


  “Where are we going?” Gregory asked, switching to Russian.

  This took Lebedev by surprise, but he quickly recovered and also switched to Russian.

  “Would you prefer to stay here?” Lebedev asked. “I ran into several of your countrymen upstairs. I’m sure they would be happy to make your acquaintance.”

  Behind him, Lebedev could hear the fast, labored breathing of one of the men he had shot. He turned and saw the man’s hand sliding into a pouch mounted on his chest rig. The Russian had no idea what this man was doing, but his reflexes took over. He turned, brought his rifle up, and put a round through the man’s head.

  Too late.

  The building shook and Lebedev knew what had happened. It was the same thing he would have done, and he did indeed have an identical failsafe on his helicopter. He turned and watched the wreckage raining down the side of the building in the darkness. With his last breath, this man had detonated the helicopter that Lebedev had seen on the auxiliary helipad when he flew in. Of course it had been theirs.

  “I’m guessing we’re not flying out of here,” Gregory said quietly.

  Lebedev turned to him.

  “I heard you were a genius,” he said. “Apparently the rumors were true.”

  “What do we do?” Gregory asked.

  “I heard what you said,” Lebedev said. “When I was coming in. About the flare and then about the antidote to the vaccine. What was that?”

  Gregory opened his mouth to answer and then stopped.

  “I know things,” he said. “Important things. Things that your people would want to know.”

  “So, tell me.”

  “First you have to get me out of here.”

  “I’m not even sure I can get myself out of here,” Lebedev replied. “Tell me about the flare.”

  Gregory walked to the window and pointed into the distance.

  “It was out there,” he said. “It was a green flare. Do you think it was your people?”

  Lebedev shook his head.

  “No, they aren’t this far out yet.”

  “Chinese deep recon?” Gregory probed.

  “Unlikely. No, it was someone else, but whoever it was, they may be our only option.” He scanned the city beneath them. “In a place like this, in circumstances such as these, whoever it is, we will have a common ground. We may be able to work together.”

  “Common ground?”

  “To not become dinner,” Lebedev replied coldly. “This flare, do you know where it came from? Can you estimate the distance?”

  “I can’t be sure, but I think it came from City Hall. If it did, it’s only ten blocks away.”

  “Only ten blocks?” Lebedev said with a laugh. “It might as well be a hundred miles. If we’re going to get there, you will have to fight.”

  He picked up one of the rifles the dead men had been carrying and pushed it into Gregory’s hands. The scientist looked at it as if it were some sort of foreign object that had fallen from space.

  “I— I don’t know the first thing about how to use one of these,” he stuttered.

  Lebedev took it back, checked that there was a round in the chamber and flicked the safety selector back and forth, then pointed to the trigger.

  “This makes the boom,” he said and shoved it back at Gregory. “Not a perfect tutorial, but it’s an imperfect world.”

  “I don’t kill people!” Gregory insisted.

  “That’s good,” Lebedev said with a nod. “Because those things out there aren’t people.”

  “I won’t do it!”

  “Do or do not as you please, but I’m going to city hall.”

  Lebedev walked away toward the door to the stairwell.

  Gregory sensed that the Russian was serious and jogged to catch up.

  “Wait, you can’t leave me!”

  Lebedev turned back to him. “My curiosity compels me,” he said. “Where did you learn Russian?”

  “YouTube.”

  “That explains your shitty accent.”

  Harris County Hospital

  Houston, Texas

  Doctor Adelaide Freer dropped the casing from the flare he had just set off and watched as the green illumination lit up the night sky above him. He looked out from the roof of the Harris County hospital and saw only the same darkness covering the city that had enshrouded it the night before, when it all started happening.

  He hadn’t taken the Gen 2 Pandemify because he thought he was doing the right thing, perhaps even the noble thing by making sure all of his patients and the everyday people of the City State of Houston received access to it first. That was part of his oath, at least as he understood it.

  Instead, it had been the reverse. Without knowing it, he had doomed everyone else to become these mindless, black-eyed things that now rampaged through Houston, killing everyone in their path, while he survived.

  Had it not been for his access to the infectious disease ward with its heightened security measures, he would have been one of the many casualties that now littered the streets below.

  No, that wasn’t correct. It wasn’t the casualties that were strewn about the streets of Houston. It was their bones. That was all that remained. Even those bones were not quite whole. He had observed this from his vantage point on the rooftop, that some of these black-eyed cannibals took pause and actively chewed upon the bones of the dead, while others did not. He wondered why that was.

  He looked back to the sky as the green flare arched back downward and the light dimmed.

  “Where are you?” he asked himself.

  Nothing. Once again, there was no response. He was following emergency protocol, yet no one was following up. Deep down, even if he didn’t want to admit it to himself, he knew why no one was responding.

  Because there was no one left to respond.

  Freer turned and walked to the access door. He reached into his pocket and retrieved the small flashlight he kept there. He had wrapped scotch tape over the lens, which served to dim the light quite a bit, at least enough that it would not be seen from far away. He was fairly certain that the stairwell was free of the black-eyed cannibals, but he couldn’t be sure. Going to the roof had been a necessity, but he understood that it was not without risk.

  He opened the door and quietly closed it behind him, then began navigating downward to the fifth floor. As he did this, his thoughts wandered back to just the week prior. He had really thought that things were going to get back to normal somehow. He’d thought the vaccine would be the final step they needed.

  The reality was that he had grown complacent, just like everyone else had. The City State-run copies of Youtube and Facebook had been a big part of that, lulling everyone into a false sense of security. After all, if they still had social media, how bad could things really be? People were doing all of the silly things online they had done before, and the fact that all of the original pre-apocalypse videos had been copied along with the Youtube architecture made it even easier to slip into a warm bath of “normalcy.” Just as long as you didn’t try to venture beyond the boundaries of the city.

  If he hadn’t let his guard down, if he’d been living in the real world, he would have known something like this could happen. He might have been ready for it.

  Doctor Freer turned and pushed open the door to the fifth floor. Then he stopped. He turned back to the darkness. He had heard something. He knew he had. What was it? Some kind of murmuring. Was it voices? Were there other people alive in the hospital? It couldn’t be. After the slaughter in the Emergency Room, the black-eyed cannibals had left looking for a new food source. He had locked himself and his patients in the infectious disease ward. That was the only reason they were still alive. No one else could have survived that onslaught. Yes, there may have been something below him in the stairwell, but it was not a someone. Whatever it was, it was no longer human. All the more reason to get back to the ward.

  Freer secured the door behind him and walked down the dimly lit hallway. The emergency lights were still on from when the power had failed the day before, but he knew they wouldn’t last. The generators had kicked in, but at best they would sustain basic functions for only ninety-six hours.