Rage Against the Dying (The Secret Apocalypse Book 8) Read online

  Rage Against the Dying

  Book 8 in the Secret Apocalypse series

  By J. L. / James Harden

  Contents

  No Sanctuary

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  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 32

  Riches and Ruins.

  Coming Soon…

  Ninja Vs Samurai

  Wasteland Wonderland Part 1 – The Fall of Hector Ramirez…

  No Sanctuary

  Kenji has sprinted ahead to scout the next block, to see if there are any dangers waiting for us.

  He waves us forward. “Keep running!”

  He doesn’t need to tell us twice. Behind us is a horde of infected people that is at least two thousand strong. Most of the town. The Oz virus has taken them all.

  I am not surprised.

  We sprint alongside the black wall, looking for a way in, looking for any weak points.

  There are none.

  Of course there aren’t any weak points, I tell myself. These walls wouldn’t be standing and this place wouldn’t be a viable sanctuary if there were any weak points.

  So we continue running. I try my best to ignore the graffiti on the black wall.

  Who is the Desert King?

  Who will wear the hollow crown?

  I can hear the infected screaming. I can hear them howling.

  They sound hungry and desperate. Like they haven’t eaten in weeks.

  I can hear them running.

  It sounds like a stampede.

  A riot.

  It sounds like this, because that’s exactly what it is. There is a stampede coming for us. A stampede of dead and infected things.

  More graffiti that I can’t ignore…

  All are dead beyond the black walls.

  No sanctuary for the living.

  We run for two blocks.

  Three.

  We aren’t even looking where we’re going anymore. We’re just trying to put distance between us and the horde. But we can’t run forever. Eventually we will need to hide. The messed up thing about this is, once we find a place to hide, we won’t be able to hide there forever. Eventually we will be forced to make a decision. Because the infected people, the dead, they will force us into a corner, they will force us to run once again, to fight once again.

  Kenji slows to a jog and he points to a building. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. He is pointing at a small church. A picturesque church. It is a quaint little chapel with a quaint little steeple. There’s a white picket fence out front.

  I wonder how many people have been married here.

  Not important, Rebecca.

  The only questions that need answering are…

  Is the church safe?

  Can we hide here?

  If so… for how long?

  How long will the church walls last against a barrage of dead things?

  We all jump the fence, even Jack. He jumps it with his one good leg, ignoring the fact that the small gate is wide open. And now we’re all standing in front of the small picturesque church.

  We are all breathing hard.

  We are all panicking.

  We are all exhausted.

  Jack limps forward, helped once again by Kim and Maria. He keeps telling them he is fine. He keeps telling them not to worry and not to wait for him. Sarah is doubled over on the stairs that lead up to the arched doorway. She is once again holding her arm, on the verge of passing out.

  “We need to hide,” Kenji says, stating the obvious because he is out of breath and this is all he can say.

  “I know,” I answer as I struggle to suck down as much oxygen as humanly possible.

  “Right now,” he says.

  “I know.”

  “The church?” Kim asks.

  “As long as we can barricade it and fortify it,” Kenji says. “As long as there’s a rear exit…”

  Kenji is always thinking ahead. Always thinking strategically.

  The church is located on the corner of an intersection. Directly opposite the church, is the towering and impenetrable black wall. In a few short hours, the church will be in its shadow.

  What I wouldn’t give to be on the other side of that wall right now. I crane my neck. The wall towers over the town. It looks so out of place, like it was built by aliens, like a magician conjured it out of thin air and dumped the massive structure in the middle of this desert town, in the middle of nowhere.

  On the other side of the intersection, diagonally across, is a pub. The Kingswood Tavern. The wall cuts right through this building. Again, the wall looks like it was dropped on top of it. Or like the pub was built around it.

  At the very top of the wall I see movement. A shadow. A silhouette of a person. Just their head.

  They disappear…

  Are they watching us?

  “Did anyone else see that?” I ask.

  Maria looks up. “See what?”

  “Could’ve sworn someone was up there.”

  Suddenly, gunshots erupt over the howling screams of the infected.

  The gunshots are unbelievably loud. Unbelievably close.

  Single gunshots at first.

  And then automatic machine gun fire.

  I hear explosions. One after the other.

  “Grenades,” Kenji says. “Someone has grenades.”

  More machine gun fire.

  We take cover, ducking down, pressing ourselves into the small alcove of the church’s entryway. And now I can hear the distinctive sound of a dirt bike’s engine. It is extremely loud and high pitched. The engine is working hard.

  These noises echo and bounce around the streets, off the black wall, off the empty buildings of this mostly empty town.

  We all look back the way we came.

  “What the hell is that?” Maria asks.

  There is confusion in her voice. And anger. It’s as if she’s saying… what now? What the hell else does the world and fate want to throw at us?

  “It’s Marko,” I say, pointing back down the road. “Look! He’s herding the infected again.”

  And it sounds like he’s brought an entire arsenal of weapons with him.

  Marko rides his dirt bike right through the middle of the horde. Dodging infected people left, right and center. Swerving and zig zagging so he can get in front of them and cut them off. Before he leads the infected away, before he speeds off, he looks over at us. He smiles. He waves. And then he makes a gun with his hand and pretends to shoot us. And then he disappears down one of the main streets, away from the wall, back towards the desert. The infected, the entire horde, what looks like damn near two thousand people, follow him. With single minded determination and unimaginable ferocity, they follow him.

  We are now alone.

  Jack walks over to the small picket fence to get a better look, satisfied that we’re not being shot at, s
atisfied that we are no longer being chased. He puts his hands on his head as he tries to catch his breath. “Why would he do that? Why would he help us?”

  “I don’t think he’s doing it to help us,” I say.

  “So, he’s leading them away from us?” Maria asks, struggling to believe what she just saw with her own eyes.

  I nod my head.

  “What the hell for?”

  “Just like he did at the Boneyard,” Kenji says.

  “Yeah, he’s leading them away because he wants us all to himself,” I explain. “No fun if he has to share us with the infected.”

  “And by the sounds of it he’s packing some serious weaponry,” Jack says.

  Sniper rifles.

  Machine guns.

  Grenades.

  I look up at the church. A cold shiver runs down my neck, down my spine.

  “We need to hide,” Kim says. “And then we need to prepare for war.”

  Prepare to fight.

  To live.

  Die.

  This is the new world. This is the new normal.

  And my heart is beating and my heart is racing…

  My mind is racing.

  I think about what we’ll need to do in order to survive. Because the way I see it, no matter what happens next, we will need a home.

  Without a home, we have no future.

  And I want a future.

  And I want a home.

  We will need to take these things by force if necessary.

  Deadly force.

  This is the world we live in now.

  And I don’t know why I’ve been so slow to accept this, to learn this hard fact. But I must learn it. I must memorize it. Rebecca, I say to myself, the old world and your old life is gone, it has ended.

  It’s over.

  It’s done.

  We can never go back.

  We will need to live in this new world.

  We will need to make a future.

  We will need to find a home.

  We will need to make a home, build it with our own hands. And most importantly, we will need to protect this home with single minded determination and unimaginable ferocity. We will need to protect our home and our loved ones with brutal violence, with absolute savagery. We will need to kill people like Marko the Maniac and anyone else who threatens our lives and our future.

  The sound of the dirt bike can still be heard. Somewhere off in the distance. The sound is fading quickly. And I think it’s at this point it slowly dawns on everyone that apart from the ravenous horde of infected people that will not stop chasing us, that will never stop chasing us, we are also being hunted. We are being hunted by a psychopath, a serial killer, a cannibal.

  “How long do you think we have?” Sarah asks weakly.

  “Not long,” I answer. “We better get a move on.”

  We turn our attention back to the church. Right now we are on the front steps, right now we are literally standing in the arched doorway of this place of worship. And it seems like the logical place to hide…

  The front door is big and solid.

  The walls are solid.

  The windows are high enough off the ground.

  And beggars can’t be choosers. We’re on the run and we have no idea where to hide. No one is familiar with this town. I don’t even think Sarah is familiar with this town. So this church is the obvious choice.

  And we’re on the threshold, but I hesitate. I stop.

  My mind flashes back to the town of Hope.

  A small desert town just like this.

  I still can’t get the image of Father Damon out of my head, of what big Ben did to him. I will never get this image out of my head. Ben had hung him up, eviscerated him, skinned him… dead? Alive? Does it matter? I guess maybe it does. His skin had been flayed and spread out like angel wings. And this image will be forever burned into my mind and my soul and I can’t step foot in this church.

  I can’t.

  I won’t.

  Diagonally opposite the church, on the other side of the intersection is a pub. The Kingswood Tavern.

  “I think we should hide over there,” I say, pointing at the Kingswood Tavern.

  “What’s wrong with this place?” Maria asks.

  I don’t tell them about the image in my mind. I don’t tell them about a priest who was supposed to be the best of us. I don’t tell him how he was tortured and crucified.

  And then I can’t help but wonder if he is still hanging there like that.

  He probably is.

  “Let’s just check this place out,” Kenji says. “We’re here. We might as well inspect it. It might come in handy as a hiding place. Or as a place to make a final stand.”

  This makes perfect sense, so I ignore the gruesome image in my mind. I get behind Kenji. I get behind Kim. I let them lead the way.

  We open the door and move inside.

  The first thing I see is more graffiti. Written on the walls. This time it is written in blood.

  Heavy is the head that wears the hollow crown.

  The next thing I see is a guy climbing up on to the altar with a rope around his neck.

  He seems completely unfazed by the fact that a whole group of strange people have barged into the church, he doesn’t seem to care that we have caught him in the act of committing suicide.

  “They call him the Desert King,” the man says like he was expecting us. “He was born again. Born and forged in the heat of the inferno, in the heat of battle, from the pressure that comes with the dead and undead alike. Here, in this town, behind those walls, he is a King. He is a tyrant.”

  “Stop,” Maria says. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I was exiled,” he explains. “They threw me over the wall. But the fall didn’t kill me.”

  He points to his ankle. I see bone and blood.

  He is limping, barely able to stand up straight. He is hobbled.

  “I tried to stop the King. Tried to stop the madness. I was punished. I have been sentenced to death. You’ll do as he says if you know what’s good for you. If you’re ever privileged enough to be ruled by the King of the Desert.”

  There’s no way we can save this guy. He’s already dead.

  Dead and gone.

  He’s made up his mind.

  He says, “Heavy is the head that wears the hollow crown.”

  And the man hangs himself.

  There’s a crack. A crunch. He flails around.

  For a minute…

  For way longer than I thought he would’ve.

  And then he dies, and again the image of the priest flashes before my eyes and we can’t stay here.

  This is bad.

  This is a bad omen.

  It is a sign. A sign that is telling us to get out. To get the hell away from here. I’m not a superstitious person, but I am convinced this is a bad, bad, very bad omen.

  I say, “The pub is a bigger building. It has brick walls. Brick is better than wood, right? And I’m pretty sure there’s a hotel attached to the pub, above it, on the second floor. There’ll be more hiding places inside. Probably a basement as well. And more supplies. Probably more food.”

  Luckily Kenji agrees with me. And now that the infected have stopped their pursuit of us, we have more time.

  Just enough.

  And really, no one wants to hide out with a dead body. So we slowly back away, back towards the entrance of the church. Kim looks up and down the road, looking left and right, looking back the way we came. Apart from the spiked heads, the road is empty.

  The sounds of the infected, the noise of the motorbike are fading into the distance. Marko is definitely herding them away.

  Just like he did at the Boneyard.

  He is running them out of town because he wants us all to himself. This is both a blessing and a curse.

  A blessing because at least our number of enemies is down to one. It’s just one guy instead of a horde of infected. A horde of thousands.

  A cu
rse because this particular enemy is Marko the Maniac. He is a killer and a hunter. A butcher and a cannibal. And I wouldn’t wish this psychopath on my worst enemy.

  “Let’s go,” Kenji says.

  We make our way over to the pub, to the Kingswood Tavern. There are two main entry doors. They are both broken. All the windows are smashed.

  “I don’t know if this is such a good idea,” Jack says. “This place is wrecked.”

  “We won’t be able to hide in here,” Maria says. “It’s way too exposed.”

  “We can,” I say, not wanting to go back to the church. “We make our way to the second floor, up to the hotel. We’ll be much more hidden up there. Plus, we’ll have better views of these two streets.

  The pub was located on the corner of what used to be a four-way intersection, but thanks to the wall, it was now a ‘T intersection’. One street ran parallel to the wall. The other leads back out into the desert, away from the town. The town appears to be laid out on a grid, with streets crisscrossing and intersecting at right angles. And the wall appears to cut right through the building that the pub is located in, almost severing it in half. Or maybe the wall ran through an alleyway out the back.

  “Come on,” Kim says. “No point wasting any more time. Let’s get inside. We’ll need to get to work immediately.”

  “Work?” Jack says with his head tilted to the side.

  “Barricading. Planning. Like I said, we need to prepare for war.”

  “Oh. Right. For some reason, I thought maybe we were going to clean this place up and get it ready for the five o’clock rush. For happy hour.”

  “Are you feeling all right?”

  “No. Not really. Lost a lot of blood.”

  Jack leans against the wall for support, his good leg taking all of his weight, his bad leg is a mess. He has definitely lost a lot of blood.

  “We should also barricade these stairs when we get a chance,” Maria says.

  “As long as we can come and go as we please,” Kenji adds. “We don’t want to trap ourselves up there.” He then moves over to the stairs. “Stay behind me. Stay alert. We don’t know if it’s safe here. We don’t know if we’re alone.”

  Chapter 1

  The ground floor of the Kingswood Tavern is way too exposed, so we make our way past the main bar to a staircase that leads to the hotel on the second floor. The staircase is nice and narrow. This means it will be easy to barricade. The hotel section of the pub does not contain many rooms. We pick the biggest room, the corner room, so we have good views of the streets below.