Signs of Life: A Post-Apocalyptic Pandemic Survival Thriller (Signs of the Apocalypse Book 1) Read online

  Signs of Life

  A Post Apocalyptic Zombie Thriller

  L.L. Akers

  Danny Brown

  Scorched Earth Publishing, LLC

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  Acknowledgments

  Also by L.L. Akers

  About the Author

  About the Author

  Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

  Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality…

  ~Bohemian Rhapsody, Freddy Mercury

  Introduction

  Signs of Life: A Post-Apocalyptic Pandemic Thriller

  When America is hit with a pandemic—soon finding out it was a viral and biochemical attack from terrorists—the population is both shocked and relieved to quickly have a vaccine on hand to save them. Untested and rushed to market, the people don’t care. In droves they line up, hoping to avoid the deadly virus.

  But when a new variant strikes the vaxxed population, chaos and mayhem soon follow. Too late, they discover there is something much worse than the virus unleashed on the United States; something so hideous and terrifying, it will make the virus look like a bad case of the flu.

  Lilly and Pepper are twins. While Pepper, an Atlanta police officer, tries to hold the blue line in a world gone mad, Lilly, a deaf Medical Research Assistant at the CDC struggles through the apocalypse—along with her best friend, Bo, and her dog, Moses—in search of her son. Together, they’ll have to part the red sea of death and find safety and deliverance from the evil that has pervaded America.

  DISCLAIMER: The book contains a few wordy-dirds. Mostly in Chapter 36—Grandpa’s Last Stand—the content of which may trigger veterans with PTSD. The language is essential for this chapter, especially.

  Let’s be real…in the apocalypse, language might get a bit colorful; if you’re okay with the author(s) killing folks, please disregard the few shits, fucks and damns you’ll find amongst the other 91,000 words.

  1

  Patient Zero

  “I swear to God, I have no idea,” the young man stuttered through chattering teeth. “We were only camping. She wasn’t feeling well when we got here.”

  The doctor and his assistant stared at the young man as he nervously wrung his hands. His eyes were wide, rimmed in an alarming blood-red—much worse than if he’d only been crying. A sheen of sweat covered his face, as he stood shivering in front of the suited-up men.

  The chills were a ‘tell.’ It was fall, and at 2pm the temperature was a balmy 75 degrees, unusually warm for this area. The men in the white Tyvek suits were clearly suffering from the heat themselves, especially inside the tent that was baking in the sun. They wore elbow-length rubber gloves, taped tight against the suit, with tight-fitting goggles and a surgical mask.

  Their goggles nearly disguised their startled eyes, as fog dripped inside with condensed sweat.

  “What’s your name, young man?” the doctor asked.

  The young man plucked at his own sweaty shirt, trying to pull it away from his skin. “Adam.”

  “Okay, Adam. Calm down. Why didn’t you call for help before she got this sick?” the doctor asked, his voice muffled through his protective gear.

  “I tried. We couldn’t… get… a signal and then my phone died,” he forced out. “I had no way to charge my phone. I wanted to hike down and try to find help—I begged her to let me go. But she just kept getting sicker and she didn’t want me to leave her.” He paused and looked toward the tent flap, swallowing hard. “When I finally left anyway, it took hours to get down the mountain. And I called emergency services. They said they’d send help. Why didn’t they send someone right away? It’s been hours...why’d it take you so long to get here?”

  He wrapped his arms around himself and looked accusingly at the men, his gaze flitting again to the open door, glancing at the helicopter parked nearby within view. Neither of the men replied.

  Adam ran his hands through his hair and sucked in a huge breath. When he exhaled, sobs came with it and he bent over in the cramped tent with his hands on his knees, his body heaving with grief and shock. “I tried. I tried to tell her we didn’t have to come on this trip. She was already feeling unwell when she came home from an overseas trip. But she wanted to see West Virginia. Then she just kept getting worse and then this morning…” He paused, shaking off a shudder. “The bleeding started. I went for help as soon as I saw it. Is she going to be okay?”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Georgia.” He sucked in another huge breath and brought his head up, looking from one of the doctors to the other. “Can you help her? Please?”

  The doctor placed his gloved hand on the young man’s shoulder and squeezed, and then gave him a quick nod toward the door-flap. The young man stumbled in his hurry to escape the small space that reeked of urine, vomit and feces.

  The doctor squatted down to look closer at the girl. He shuddered. There was no help for her; it was too late.

  The girl had been dead for hours. The space around her was covered in bloody vomit—a brown and blackish-red thick liquid. He glanced around and found a can of ginger-ale with a straw stuck in it. He plucked the straw out, using a metal hemostatic clamp, and poked around the vomit, shaking his head as he briefly examined the tarry, black lumps mixed within. He leaned out of the way to let his assistant snap some pictures.

  He turned back to the girl. The reeking vomit was on her face, down her neck and onto her clothes. It covered the sleeping bag that she lay upon, which was directly on the ground, with only the thin tent-floor beneath her. A small cooler, normally used to store cold items, sat nearby. It was filled to the rim with more vomit. He unzipped the sleeping bag using his hemostats, and pulled the top aside. He shook his head as he looked at the once-light-blue fabric under her pelvic area, stained with the hemorrhaging that had spewed out of every orifice in her body. She was covered in an array of colorful bruises and red rash, each competing for space on the young woman’s small frame.

  The girl’s face was hideous to look upon. Slack bloody jaw, with dried blood trail
ing in smears coming from both of her doll-like eyes, following a path down both cheeks. She was lying on her back, and blood had trickled out of both ears and her nose, pooling around her head in a darkened cloud of red death.

  “Look at this,” his assistant said, pointing to a tattoo on the girl’s forearm—a red heart, pierced with a sword. The words, ‘No Peace,’ was written in script underneath the heart.

  The doctor shrugged his shoulders.

  The assistant pointed at her again, dramatically jabbing his gloved finger in the air. “Don’t you see? This is that girl. Did you see The Confused Kisser all over the news and social media?”

  The doctor leaned in further for a better look. “Oh, yeah. That is her.”

  She’d been caught on video at the airport. A sexy, young girl with long black waves of hair hanging half-way down her back, topped off with a ball cap. She’d worn a tight, black T-shirt with no sleeves, a pair of very tiny running shorts, and obnoxiously bright Cross Trainer sneakers.

  She’d run, practically bouncing with bliss, to over a dozen young men—all in camouflage fatigues and obviously soldiers returning home—over the course of a few hours, squealing with unbridled joy and throwing her arms around them, then kissing them, long and deep.

  As she’d pulled away from her sensual kiss, leaving each young man speechless, she would tilt her head, squint, then take a hard look at his face. Then she’d laugh and apologize for forgetting her contacts; explaining her eyesight was so bad without them, that she’d mistakenly thought that the dazed young men were her boyfriend. She’d walk back to the chairs and sit down, innocently looking all around with owl-wide eyes, until she’d thought she’d spotted him once again. This happened repeatedly. Security had watched, chuckling each time and eventually placing bets on which one would indeed be the ‘right’ boyfriend.

  She hadn’t been arrested, or detained, because no one had complained. Who would? Young, hot girl, welcoming home lonely young soldiers? If anything, they’d all looked disappointed to hear she already had a boyfriend.

  Eventually, her real boyfriend did show up, and airport security—almost sorry to see their entertainment end—watched her greet him the same way, and then leave with him. But regular travelers had caught many of the stolen kisses on their phones, and social media had sent it out into the virtual universe where she’d gone viral across several platforms.

  It’d been tweeted, shared and re-posted repeatedly, thousands of times everywhere. They’d tagged her with #ConfusedKisser and it had trended. The videos made their way around the world, giving the confused kisser instant fame.

  And then she’d disappeared.

  The only distinguishing mark on all the videos had been the tattoo. The girl that lay here now couldn’t possibly look any different from the beautiful, vibrant, happy girl the world had seen a week ago, bravely brandishing her heart and sword tattoo, and leaving her victims starry-eyed. Other than her hair and the tattoo, she was unrecognizable now.

  Another tattoo peeked out from the other sleeve. Using the straw, the doctor raised the fabric. The word ‘Allahu Akbar’ screamed from the pale flesh in red ink. The doctor shook his head and stood up. “No doubt. You’re right. That’s her. I’m sure of it. They might have called her The Confused Kisser—but now I’m not sure she was confused. Looks to me like she was purposely delivering the kiss of death. She left her calling sign on her arm.”

  He stepped back, giving up his space to his assistant. They finished with pictures, then took out a sterile sample cup with a built-in strip test. When he was done, he turned and grimly faced the doctor. The assistant nodded to the unspoken question, and they both stepped out of the tent, sucking in as much clean air as their masks would allow.

  The young man was crouched on the ground in front of a nearby tree, holding his head in his hands. He looked up as they approached him, hope in his eyes.

  The doctor’s lips squeezed together in a thin line, and he gave the kid a firm shake of his head. The kid collapsed in a heap, sobs wracking his too-skinny body. The doctor stepped away, giving him a moment to accept her death.

  A moment later—there was no time to waste now—he walked back and squatted down to the kid’s eye level. “You said she just came back from an overseas trip. Where? Where did she go?” the doctor asked through his mask.

  “Syria. Somewhere… in Syria,” the kid answered through his sobs. “She belongs to some group there. Some religious group. I don’t know… She refused to talk about it with me. Everybody has something that’s off-limits. That was hers. I let her do her thing and didn’t ask too many questions. Live and let live, man… that was our motto.”

  The two men walked around to the rear of the tent, away from the smell and Adam, who had stopped crying, but was now cursing the world, swinging his fist in the air, and pacing in small circles of anger and frustration.

  “Call it in,” the doctor said.

  The assistant respectfully shook his head. “You’re the doctor.”

  The doctor shrugged. “You go ahead. It was you who raised the flag and made the decision to check it out ourselves, instead of letting emergency services handle it. It was you who caught the tattoo and put it together. Call it in.”

  The assistant nodded in answer. While it was a feather in his cap, he didn’t want to be the bearer of bad news. Not news this bad anyway. He regretted being right. Heavily sighing, he pulled out his satellite phone from a long pocket on his leg. He carefully punched one speed-dial number and poked the SEND button. Dialing was already difficult enough with the gloves, but his hands were shaking too. The phone rang across the line once.

  The other party picked up.

  “It’s here. In West Virginia,” the assistant said, then paused while the other party responded. “Yeah, that’s right. And we think we’ve got Patient Zero plus One.”

  As he listened to the other party bark instructions that he already knew, he shuffled around toward the chopper, throwing a wave at the bored pilot—also geared up in hazmat—who was leaning against the aircraft. Finally, he spoke again, “Affirmative. And look, you need to send the team in now, but you also need to call NSA, CIA, DHS, FEMA, and every other government alphabet you can think of. Tell them to google #ConfusedKisser. This appears to be a terrorist attack. This girl unleashed this virus on about a dozen young soldiers at the airport last week. It’s all over social media.”

  He hung up the phone and rejoined the doctor. They briefly rummaged through a pile of supplies that had been unloaded from the helicopter. The doctor grabbed two tightly wrapped packages and handed one to his assistant, then turned to a serious-looking man in Level 4 MOPP ensemble who’d been standing unnoticed near the edge of the tree-line. He gave him a slight nod. The masked man returned the nod, then slipped away like a ghost into the undergrowth, his mottled suit instantly disappearing into the green shadows.

  They made their way back to the young man, their heads hung low. “What was her name, son?” the doctor gently asked him.

  “Eve. Her name was Eve,” he said, nearly choking on the words.

  The doctor and his assistant shared a look. Adam and Eve? The doctor didn’t believe in coincidences. A possible epidemic in the United States was big. But this was something bigger. Something they couldn’t yet wrap their heads around, and they both knew it.

  The doctor ripped the plastic from the package he carried, removed the item inside and gave it a heavy shake. A matte-black body-bag unfolded in the air, and the young man stared at it with wide eyes as the doctor let it fall to the ground.

  The young man gasped, his hand flying up to cover his mouth. “For Eve?” he mumbled. He raised his face to them, swiping at the tears and snot indignantly. “Jesus…do you have to stuff her in a bag right here? Now? Like she’s some kind of trash?”

  The assistant swallowed hard, and looked at the doctor, awaiting a response. The doctor looked away. Neither had the words… silently, they turned and made their way back to the tent, one packag
e still in hand.

  The man in the woods moved stealthily, well-trained in avoiding the snap of a dry stick, the rustling of undergrowth, or the errant whisper of disturbed leaves. His presence was nothing more than the usual whisper on the wind as he silently sidled up behind Adam. The flat slap of the suppressed .45 shot rang out, the sound rapidly fading into the breeze as the young man toppled forward beside the body bag, spilling his life onto the cool forest floor.

  As the doctor and assistant peeled off their protective clothing, the helicopter lifted off, the rotor wash a blessed relief from the stifling heat of their suits. The craft gained altitude and banked away from the clearing, and from the vantage point of the open bay doors the doctor could see clouds of greasy black smoke rising from the campsite, bright spurts of orange fire illuminating the new team that had arrived with flamethrowers. Climbing into the clouds, he watched the men grow smaller and smaller as the flames grew, until it was all completely lost from view. He turned back in his seat, saying a prayer for himself, his assistant, his family and his country.