Betrayal

BETRAYAL

A NOVELLA

BY MICHAEL S. GARDNER

“It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.”

~William Blake

BLURBS OF PRAISE

“
What a roller coaster of emotions in this fantastically written tale. Trevor Spencer is one of the main characters, who is a pilot of questionable character. He shocked me on several occasions throughout the book. The first time he shocked me was in the beginning of the book when I kept thinking, he’s not going to leave; he’s not going to leave. Without giving away any spoilers, Gardner takes you on a ride through the desperate need for food and medicine after the outbreak had turned the living into flesh-eating zombies with no other agenda than to attack anything alive. There are heart-pounding moments that keep you on the edge of your seat with smooth transitions into the lives of other characters, during the most desperate of times.”

-April M. Reign, author of The Dhellia Series

“
Of all the many tales of the zombie apocalypse,
Betrayal
is surely in my top ten.”

-S.P. Durnin, author of Keep Your Crowbar Handy

PROLOGUE

T
wo years and thirteen days after the world as it was once known perished, a Bell 210 helicopter—the civilian version of a “Huey”—landed with a soft thump atop the Stryker City Police Department’s roof. On this particular October morning, the sun hid behind a broad knot of cumulus clouds which hung in a pallid yet serene sky. Patches of light blue and golden rays from the sun broke through the haze sporadically, as if the gods waged war against the barrier of ashen overcast to free all life from such a dreary view.

This
was a day that gunnery sergeant Andrew Bell would much rather have been spending with his wife and two daughters in front of the television, watching cartoons and sipping the creamy sweetness of homemade hot chocolate from his porcelain mug. He imagined the warmth of the drink splashing down his throat as he winked at his beautiful wife, Sarah and Calla laughing as they sang along with whoever was on the tube. As fate would have it, though, those days had long since passed. His family, along with nearly all mankind, had succumbed to an infection that toppled the world in less than a year.

Infection
, Bell thought as he scratched at his beard.
More like decimation
.

T
he pilot killed the engines. Turning around with a shit-eating grin, the stubbly-faced, mid-forties “ladies
man” offered a thumbs up and pulled his aviator glasses to the edge of his nose.

“Safe and sound,” he said. “Just like I told you.”

Bell nodded and looked to his men. He gritted his teeth at the two empty seats where Shires and McKinnon should be checking their weapons and awaiting orders. Instead, the two teenage recruits were somewhere down in this godforsaken place, buried beneath the dead bastards that had murdered and devoured them, leaving nothing left to reanimate. Echoes of their pleas and screams briefly crossed his mind. These streets were filled with the shells of men, women, and children who wanted nothing more than to peel you piece by piece until there was nothing more than a twisted heap of blood and bone. The fact that the dead were adapting to their environment and growing smarter at hunting their prey only made the marines’ job that much harder.

On their last outing in July, the dead had managed to surround the entire platoon in a grocery store on Fifth Avenue.
One minute, they were appropriating much needed supplies, the next, throngs of howling corpses broke through every entrance. Only Bell and his second in command had survived by fighting their way to the roof and being extracted by their pilot, who was felled by a fever a few days after.

Pulling his neck to the left until he felt and heard a
pop
, Bell laid his eyes on Gary Wilson and Craig Long, two more recruits from the Colony’s dwindling security force. The two were each chambering rounds into their carbines. A sickly expression morphed their faces into harrowing grimaces, seemingly brought on by the foreboding knowledge that life, for them, could end this very day.

These kids aren’t marines
, Bell thought as he watched each of the men; Long buried his forehead in his hands, scratching the top of his head as if each stroke had the chance of pulling him out of this hellish nightmare, and Wilson held in his grip a faded silver necklace with a cross dangling in front of his twitching hazel eyes. The odds of surviving, Bell knew, were now drastically reduced for him and all in his command
.

“Sir?”

Bell pulled himself out of his thoughts and turned to his immediate left. Staring at him was Corporal Payton, his second in command and personal friend for nearly a decade. Payton wore his usual stony expression as he awaited the order to move out.

The gunnery sergeant flicked his eyes down to his carbine and gave the command.
Wilson slowly slid open the door and slipped out, Long right behind. As Payton hopped out, Bell looked back to the pilot, Trevor Spencer.

“Your orders,
sir
?” Spencer inquired with a flare of sarcasm.

Bell’s
lips peeled into a grin as he pulled a cigar from his breast pocket. “You get to stay here, Spence. Don’t want our only pilot losing his load once he sees what we’re up against.”

Trevor matched
the marine’s expression and said, “Better you than me.”

“Just keep your radio on.
We might need extraction from a different location.”

Trevor waved a hand, turned around, and wrapp
ed his hands around the back of his head while he reclined in his seat.

Bell
wanted to grab the bastard by his throat and squeeze the smartass out of him. What he wouldn’t give to have April Saunders sitting in front of him instead of this asshole who had zero appreciation for what he and his men—all of them—had sacrificed to keep him and the others alive. But April’s remains were tossed over the wall like every other colonist who’d succumbed to the sickness over the last two years; bathing the hungering dead that enveloped their walls in ashes.

He settled for a brief glare and stepped out. T
he familiar odor of decomposing flesh stung his nostrils like this was the first time he’d smelled the atrocious scent. Biting the butt of the cigar, he pulled out his Zippo, lit the stick, and puffed. His men were positioned at the edge of the roof, all looking down to the street. From here, as the helicopter’s blades wound down, the shouts and screams of the dead echoed up and encompassed the marine like phantoms from a child’s nightmare. Bell stepped to the edge, in between Long and Payton, and laid eyes on the innumerable corpses as they desperately reached up, teeth gnashing and vacant eyes wide.

“Looks like we got our w
ork cut out for us, sir.” Payton glanced to his CO and then the helo.

When he met the stares of Long and Wilson, Bell had to force away the pity. No longer could he look at these two as someone’s children; he had to treat them like maggots and lead them into the mouth of hell. The End changed things—it changed
him
. Ever since normal life had been turned upside down, the gunnery sergeant had to remove care and sympathy, a transformation that now gave him the air of someone callous and cold. The world was a battlefield, and he was the commanding officer of the smallest army of the living.

“Deploy the bait,
” he said after a long drag on the stogie.

Payton
repeated the order. Long and Wilson sprinted to the chopper and dragged out a red cooler. Both men wrapped their hands around the handles and hefted the container to the ledge.

“You ready for this, sir?”
Payton’s lips curled into a slight grin.

Bell
puffed on his cigar and placed a hand on Payton’s shoulder, greatly valuing the fact that the hardened marine had seen fit to not let the festering cadavers deter his confidence in the slightest.

“Does it really matter?
” he answered. “We need supplies, whether we’re ready or not.”

Payton
scanned the crowd below. “Well, we might as well give ourselves a grand entrance.”

Long and Wilson
rotated glances between the two superiors, the horde, and the bucket.

“What are you two waiting for?” Bell said. “Quit actin’ like we’re back on the block and drench those rotters!”

Payton leaned over the edge and spat on a creature that held a resemblance to a character called The Dude from a movie he couldn’t remember the name of. “I sense a blanket party for our dead friends coming on, Sarge.”

Bell laughed.

The two civvies-turned-soldiers yanked back the top and spilled the contents over, watching as the remains from some of the last of their livestock splattered on the street and the ravenous dead. The horde shifted, pushing forward with unabashed fervor as their greedy brethren lapped up the offered fare.

“Molotovs,”
Bell ordered.

As Long and Wilson
proceeded to set the dead bastards afire, Bell pulled out the map of Stryker City and located their position. He found it in the center of the paper.

“Where
are we gonna hit first?” asked Payton.

Bell
pointed to the only red circle without an X striking through.

“We’re
here: right in the middle of Hell.” He took a drag from his cigar and continued. “Everywhere else in the city has been raided. We are to expect a heavy influx of Whiskey Deltas. They’re just as hungry as we are, I’m betting.” Bell moved his eyes from the map and watched as the two recruits lit another pair of cocktails and sent them flying out of sight.

“This is it,”
Bell continued. “Every other part of the city has been tapped dry or deemed unfit for infiltration. After this,” he locked eyes with Payton, “we’ll need to find a new tit to suck.”

Payton
nodded hesitantly.

“We are the best,”
Bell added. “And we are all that’s left.”

“Oorah,” Wilson
said as he and Long walked up.

“Crowd’s contained, for the time being,” Long said.

Bell glanced back to Trevor, who was now reading a magazine, and then approached the edge of the roof. He pulled out his 1911 .45 ACP and fired four shots, downing four of the infected.

“Gather the gear,” he ordered, looking back to the others. “We’re hitting the Seven Day Store first.”

***

“Fucking prick.” Trevor scowled as the Gunnery Sergeant and his goons rappelled down the building
like they were some commandos in a Schwarzenegger flick. Chewing over the thought while he glanced to the rooftops of local shops and abandoned apartment buildings, he surmised that they were indeed such a troop. They were the modern day heroes for those at the Colony.

“I
still hope you all meet your end down there,” he said, and felt a grin form on his face. Trevor reached down into his jacket’s hidden pocket, retrieving his flask. “And I’ll drink to that.”

He toasted to fate
and downed a mouthful of vodka, wincing as his favorite poison warmed his insides. He’d never asked to be in this position, didn’t like it, and didn’t give a rat’s ass for those military bastards. Too many times since the infection reached the U.S. had the ex-flying instructor seen Bell and his kind abuse their authority for “the greater good.”

“Innocent lives wasted in o
rder to pacify hostile forces.” Trevor took another sip and twisted the cap. He set the flask on the seat beside him and picked up his magazine.

He turned to the article he’d been reading: “Iran Threatens Nuclear War.” Trevor snickered at the ima
ge of a fiery mushroom cloud beneath the title and then felt his brows pucker. The first mushroom cloud he’d seen came to mind; it had been the third domestic nuclear strike ordered by whoever was left in charge of the government at the time. Seeing them in the movies or on the internet in some documentary was one thing, but witnessing firsthand the blinding devastation and all the rising mutagens was enough to make your heart stop cold. Knowing that such atrocities weren’t confined to just to the United States was enough to ruin any plans of escape, which had led Trevor to right where he was sitting. Instead of a life of luxury on a deserted island sipping tequila, Trevor Spencer found his home at a fortified farm occupied by close to a hundred people. A colony of survivors that now relied on him to bring back precious cargo.

Assuming the cargo can get back in one piece
.
Trevor sighed, thinking of the hot sun, big waves, and bouncing tits.
Why the hell did Saunders have to kick the bucket?

“
She was a good fuck,” he said, stealing a glance at the flask.

Another swig couldn’t hurt.

***

Bell
signaled for Long and Wilson to cover the perimeter; the two marines readied their rifles and eyed the apocalyptic canvas through enhanced scopes, scanning for any hostiles. The only things in sight moving were the vultures circling overhead. He couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched; it didn’t help that the avian squawking wasn’t the only noise issuing from this once bustling metropolis. Occasionally a window would break, a hail of broken glass twinkling to the ground within earshot, yet not once had they discovered a single Whiskey Delta.

Payton
silently counted down: “Three… Two… One,” then yanked open the glass door and fell in, his eyes following the sights of his pistol.

The reek of rotting food and mold hit them like a kick in
the genitals; Payton leaned down as if the rush of tainted air had done just that. Bell tapped his shoulder.

“Pull it together, marine,” he said, tossing his cigar. He activated the flashlight on his assault rifle and swept the store.
He pointed. “You take the left.”

Payton
, eyes closed tight and nose shoved into his shoulder, nodded. “Would be nice if we could find some fucking dust masks or respirators. There ain’t no gettin’ used to the smell of this shit.”