Badlands Trilogy (Book 2): Beyond the Badlands Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  About the Author

  Bibliography

  Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  BEYOND THE BADLANDS

  a novel

  Brian J. Jarrett

  Copyright © 2013 Brian J. Jarrett

  Elegy Publishing, LLC

  St. Louis, MO

  Original cover image by Krischam, Dreamstime.com

  All rights reserved by the author. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted by any means without the written consent of the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any names, people, locales, or events are purely a product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to any person (either living or dead), to any event, or to any locale is coincidental or used fictitiously.

  Copy editing and proofreading by Sandi Powell.

  Additional proofreading by Allyson Robben Dowell.

  2013.BTB.1.2

  This one’s for you, Dad.

  Chapter One

  Outside the fence, in the no man’s land surrounding the city by the river, a predator stalked. Many knew it as the carrier, while in other circles it had become known as the deadwalker. No matter what survivors called it, it inspired fear the world over.

  This predator stalking the grounds outside the city carried a virus that decimated his brain and ravaged his body, taking away everything that had once made him human. Now this shell of a man operated on animalistic instinct as he picked his way across the rubble in search of his next kill.

  Visions of a child and a woman sporadically appeared in his damaged mind, though he had no idea he’d once been a father and a husband. These visions didn’t inspire love; they only fed the fire of his rage. He didn’t recognize the people in the visions any more than he recognized his own reflection in a plate glass window. The compulsion to kill overrode everything.

  His blessing, if one could call it that, was that he could perceive virtually none of this sense of loss. Instead, he burned with anger and fury, plagued by hunger and insanity.

  The carrier dragged himself along, maneuvering around a large object he didn’t recognize as a car. Once around the car, a tall, chain-link fence appeared. He didn’t care about the fence; the figure he saw behind the fence caught his eye.

  In an instant, rage overtook what little was left of his mind. Overcome with fury, his limbs moved as if controlled by a sadistic puppet master floating high in the sky. Screaming, he summoned the strength to propel himself toward the source of the movement, dragging his paralyzed left leg along.

  The carrier crossed the distance as quickly as his wasted body would allow, his eyes focused on the figure behind the fence.

  He did not recognize the creature as a human.

  To the carrier, it was prey.

  Covering the space between himself and his victim, the carrier slammed into the fence. He felt no pain, only a mild tingling sensation as the wire gouged and sliced his sunburned flesh. He shrieked in wild frustration as the coarse, wire fence shredded his fingertips.

  On the other side of the fence the man opened his mouth and spoke, but the carrier heard only meaningless sounds. He clawed more violently at the fence, biting the metal with rotting teeth in a futile attempt to satisfy the burning desire to kill.

  The man behind the fence lifted a rifle and fired a single shot, knocking the carrier to the ground. Unable to stand, the carrier touched the wound. His hand came away red, but he could make no connection between the blood on his hands and his own impending death.

  As the carrier lay bleeding on the ground, his vision blurred. Closing his eyes, he exhaled for the last time. His heart beat one last rhythm before becoming still.

  Destroyed in both mind and body, the carrier’s remaining brain cells began dying by the thousands, until his body was nothing more than a cooling mass of organic material.

  * * *

  Doug McReady stood by the fence surrounding the former city of St. Louis, his ears still ringing from the shot fired through the mesh of the fence. The carrier had attacked, no surprise there. Normally he tried to ignore the bastards, but he knew all too well that its screaming would only bring more of them to the fence. And the last thing in the world he wanted to see right then was more deadwalkers.

  He could still feel the effects of the hangover on his body from his binge the night before. Goddamn fucking tequila. Normally Doug didn’t drink, but on the anniversary of his wife’s death he made an exception. Doug never had liked tequila, but it was better than that homemade shit going around the town.

  The carrier struggled to get up again after taking the shot to the gut. Poor bastards. They never gave up. He watched the thing until it stopped moving, blood soaking its tattered clothes and pooling on the concrete around it.

  Doug noticed a wedding band still clinging to the carrier’s bony finger. He wondered who the man might have been before the virus. He thought of his own wife, who in the end had been just like the poor bastard lying on the ground in front of him. Michelle, so tough and resilient for the first couple of years after the outbreak. They’d thought her immune, at least at first. Turned out she’d just been lucky.

  A year ago that luck had run out.

  Often he wondered why he carried on with so much lost. Maybe it came down to simple human nature. Deep inside he still held out hope that the work they did in St. Louis might bring humanity back from the brink of extinction. A cause worth fighting for. Something Michelle also had believed.

  So he got up every morning and instead of shooting himself in the head, he strapped on his rifle and manned the fences, on the lookout for anything that might compromise the city’s de
licate borders.

  Tonight, however, he would fail in that mission. As he walked away from the carrier’s lifeless body, he didn’t notice the bomb placed near one of the fence’s support poles some twenty feet away. A bomb designed to take out the load-bearing pipe and allow an entry point for as many carriers as could make it through.

  The following morning he’d be dead and the safe haven that had been St. Louis would be forever changed.

  Chapter Two

  “Brothers, what we are about to embark upon today is nothing short of the good Lord’s work here on Earth,” Joshua said to his group of nine soldiers congregated in the basement of an old Catholic church.

  Joshua’s birth name, his secular name, had been Clarence Fish, but no one had called him that for nearly four years now. Not since the beginning of the outbreak and definitely not since God had spoken to Clarence and told him about His plans for mankind.

  Of all the people alive in the world before the outbreak, God had chosen Clarence Fish to represent His holiness on Earth. Clarence Fish, an unemployed factory worker with an unhealthy addiction to gin and pornography. Clarence Fish, twice-divorced deadbeat dad with a rocky past and a shady future. Before the outbreak, before the words of his Heavenly Father drifted down from above and landed softly upon Clarence’s consciousness, he’d been just another lost soul in a roiling sea of sin.

  But then everything changed.

  Joshua became the chosen one.

  He wondered how many others could claim such a wonderful and incredible blessing. There wasn’t a day that went by that Joshua didn’t weep with unparalleled joy.

  But this bliss came with a heavy burden. Now, after all this time, all this preparation, all this waiting, the day of reckoning had finally come. Now it was time for Joshua and his army of martyrs to unleash God’s fury upon the city of St. Louis.

  Joshua gazed upon his army. Nine men — nine martyrs — stood shoulder to shoulder, facing him with focused expressions. Men who had willingly accepted their true calling and the mortal fate which came with it. In mere hours they would all be dead, their bodies destroyed. Their spirits however, would ascend. Joshua and his men would be seeing each other again very soon, sitting beside the Heavenly Father Himself.

  Though they met in an abandoned Catholic church, Joshua wasn’t Catholic. Denominations meant nothing to him; they were merely the result of childish human squabbles. Reformations, derivatives, cults or any other split in Christianity only served to distract Man from the truths that God offered freely. Rather than face these truths wide-eyed and open-armed, religious leaders had for centuries buried themselves and their churches in layer upon layer of political distraction.

  Joshua, on the other hand, worshiped the simple and singular God of Abraham, without the hindrance and obfuscation of man-made dogma.

  It was God from whom he took his orders.

  From the pulpit, Joshua gazed upon his most faithful on the happiest day of his life. He cleared his throat, stifling the emotions that threatened to overtake him. He had to remain strong until the end. He was a leader of men, after all.

  “Nearly four years ago, the good Lord unleashed upon this Earth a plague like none that had ever been seen before,” he began, his voice gradually finding its steadiness. “The wicked have paid with their bodies and their minds. Those who had lost their faith have now lost their humanity. They are but decrepit and pitiful creatures, existing as animals in the bodies of God’s children.”

  “Amen,” a voice called out from the room. More joined in until the room sang out like a choir.

  Joshua allowed them to finish before continuing. “The Bible speaks of this plague that the good Lord has beset upon the Earth.” He opened his Bible, flipping to a tattered and dog-eared page. With his finger he scanned the verses until he found the passage he needed.

  “Zechariah 14:12 tells us: ’This is the plague with which the Lord will strike all the nations that fought against Jerusalem: Their flesh will rot while they are still standing on their feet, their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths.’”

  Another chorus of ‘amen’ resounded from the room. “Brothers,” Joshua continued, “we are the chosen ones. We are immune to the plague. There are others like us, here in this city, others who also bear this Godly mark of immunity.”

  He closed his Bible and lifted a finger, his voice rising. “But some living inside this fence are not immune. They do not share our mark of divinity. These sad and damned creatures bear no resistance to God’s holy plague. They are sinners in our midst, protected and comforted by those who erected these fences. Rather than allowing them their rightful, Godly fate, our worldly leaders have chosen to protect the unworthy.”

  Joshua paused. All eyes upon him, held in rapt attention. He continued, his voice lower. “As you all know, I have pleaded with these military men to comply with God’s plans. But these arrogant men, like Pharaoh before them, have chosen to ignore God’s message.”

  Joshua placed his Bible on a small table beside him. He clasped his hands in a symbol of prayer, lowering his voice and looking into the eyes of his martyrs. “These men have left us no choice, brothers. They have angered God and they will feel His holy wrath. We are but instruments of His will, carrying out what He has intended for the sinners here on Earth.” He paused, taking a deep breath. “We are the chosen ones.”

  “Amen!” the men shouted. “Praise Him!”

  Joshua smiled. “The day of reckoning is here, my brothers. Our work is nearly complete.”

  “Hallelujah!” they cried. “Praise His holy name!”

  Joshua slammed his fist on the pulpit as the men erupted into a frenzy. “Onward we march, brothers, and upon our last breath let the Lord’s holy name resonate!”

  Joshua turned and exited the room, the enthusiastic sound of the faithful voicing their commitment behind him. He would allow them time for fellowship before their duty to the Lord took them all on their separate ways to Heaven.

  Standing in what had once served as the church’s children’s nursery, Joshua gazed out the window toward the darkened land beyond the boundary of the fence. Out there the wicked lurked, bearing their sin upon their very flesh for all the world to see.

  In only hours, the Lord’s judgment would be known to all those within the confines of the city’s fence. Not only to the men who ran St. Louis, but the men from Kansas City who’d given Joshua the bombs by which to damage the fence as well.

  So arrogant they all were in their pride. The men from Kansas City thought their bombs would be only a distraction, providing them an opportunity to seize the city. But they weren’t the only men who could provide bombs.

  And Joshua didn’t mean to merely damage the fence.

  He meant to take the entire thing down.

  Chapter Three

  “Zach, hand that box to your brother,” Ed Brady said to his oldest son as he pointed toward a slightly crushed cardboard box. It sat on a flatcar, held together by yellowing packing tape.

  “Sure thing, Dad,” Zach replied. “What’s in it?”

  “Creamed corn,” Ed said. “And lots of it. Guess nobody would touch the stuff before the outbreak.”

  Zach smiled as he passed the box off to his younger brother, Jeremy. Ed watched the exchange, viscerally aware that he’d almost lost his oldest son to the virus. Only after Zach was bitten did they learn of his immunity.

  Ed stood up straight, his back stiff from overuse. Being nearly forty years old made lifting boxes more difficult, but it beat the hell out of struggling for survival and living off scraps on the other side of the fence. He and both of his sons had done that for three years before arriving at the gates of a fenced-in St. Louis, Missouri.

  Ed’s younger son handed the box to Trish.

  She gave him a grin. “Thanks, little man.”

  The boy smiled in return. Three years into the pandemic, Ed and his boys had stumbled upon Trish in an abandoned department store, lying si
ck with fever among the desiccated corpses. They nursed her back to health and she became their traveling companion. Though eighteen years his junior, Ed and Trish fell in love. They lived together now, along with the boys, within the confines of St. Louis.

  A group of former military personnel and armed civilians, collectively known as “The Guard”, founded and now ran the city. But St. Louis didn’t exist as a lone oasis in the proverbial desert of the Badlands; an outpost existed in Kansas City, Missouri, as well. There the residence hall of the former state university served a new purpose as The Guard’s second base of operations.

  “Is this train a steamie or a diesel?” Jeremy asked.

  Even after all these years, Jeremy still used Thomas the Tank Engine lingo. In so many ways he was still just a child. “Steam powered,” Ed said. “It burns coal. The diesel doesn’t hold up so well after it sits for awhile, but the coal stays good. And a little bit of coal goes a long way.”

  “What’s on the train?” Zach asked.

  “Tools, food, some clothes, stuff like that.”

  Ed took inventory of his family from the train platform. Zach, growing taller each day. Jeremy, so smart and savvy. And Trish, young and beautiful, strong-willed and wise well beyond her own youth.

  After nearly a year inside the city walls, he allowed himself to imagine a world much like the old world, before the virus. A world where he and so many others lived like kings and took everything for granted.

  This time around, there would be nothing taken for granted.

  Zach stood on the flatcar, box in hand. “Dad, you okay?”

  Ed realized he was staring. He smiled and winked at the boys. Jeremy returned the wink, closing both eyes, unable to favor one over the other. Maybe when he grows up, Ed thought, finally able to entertain the notion of his children reaching adulthood.

  He felt good. They had survived the virus and they had survived the Badlands. They’d made it to their fabled city by the river. For the first time in a very long time, Ed felt hope.