Death Squad Box Set | Books 1-4 Read online

  DEATH SQUAD

  THE COMPLETE SERIES

  ZOMBIE CITY

  ZOMBIE STATE

  ZOMBIE NATION

  ZOMBIE WORLD

  CHARLIE DALTON

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  ZOMBIE CITY

  DEATH SQUAD | BOOK ONE

  1.

  TODAY WAS the day, the day Giles was finally going to ask her on a date. He’d been eying her over the coffee shop counter for the past month but his courage always failed him.

  Her smile was gorgeous, infectious, the kind every man wanted to see in the mornings. Preferably first thing in the morning, but Giles wouldn’t count his chickens. He couldn’t help but smile back whenever she smiled at him like that. Her chestnut brown eyes locked on and drew him in. She never did that with any of the other customers. At least, not so far as Giles could tell. And he’d been looking pretty damn hard.

  She had long black hair, tied back into a pigtail, and a strong square chin that he wanted to run his finger along. Things like this always had a shrinking window of opportunity. If he didn’t say something soon, the window would close forever.

  He dressed in his best suit, checked himself in the mirror, and promised to start going to the gym again. He headed out, mumbling to himself as he went through what he was going to say when he saw her. He’d order his usual and then, as he reached for his coffee, he would ask for her number. Clean and simple. That was the way to go.

  He reached the bus stop. Two minutes later, his number pulled up. He got on, bleeping his card on the machine, and found a seat. Not too busy today.

  He looked out the window as Austin slid past. A man waited patiently as his brown labrador cocked his leg up a tree. A paperboy turned down a quiet cul-de-sac delivering papers. A woman struggled to start her car. The world began its business.

  Twenty minutes later, Giles’ bus pulled up at his stop. He thanked the bus driver as he stepped off. He walked down the street. It was called Oasis Coffee, a small local coffee shop with hand-me-down furniture, designed to look rustic. Giles’ software company was located five minutes behind it. His heart pounded in his chest and he felt sick. He’d already started sweating. He wondered if this was what having a heart attack felt like.

  He put a hand to the wall, feeling a little unsteady, before taking a few deep breaths. You can do this, he told himself. You can ask a girl out.

  He smoothed his suit and raised a hand to the door. It burst open before he reached it. A man in a brown raincoat and black fedora stepped out. He carried an umbrella under one arm and a suitcase in the other. He wasn’t looking where he was going—he probably couldn’t see much beneath the hat’s broad brim—and knocked hard into Giles.

  “Excuse me,” the man said, not slowing or stopping.

  Asshole!

  The collision with Giles’ shoulder knocked him sideways. There was a soft noise, like broken glass. Giles looked down and spotted something lying on the sidewalk. Cylindrical with the top and bottom made of metal and a glass spiral tube inside. It’d been filled with some kind of dark green liquid, now spilled over the sidewalk.

  “Hey, you dropped something,” Giles said.

  The man didn’t stop. He hustled across the street, ignoring the blare of a car’s horn.

  Ahead of Giles and approaching fast, was a little girl holding her mother’s hand. She might try to pick the glass up and hurt herself. Giles slid the shards of glass aside with his foot.

  On the plus side, he no longer felt nervous about asking the girl out on a date anymore. He could thank the raincoat man for that much. He turned to peer inside the coffee shop, through a glazed window, at the girl who worked behind the counter. The same gorgeous brown eyes, the same black hair tied back on her head, the same mesmerizing smile—

  Giles coughed. Damn. He must have caught a cold. He coughed again and again, thick and voluminous, a hacking fit that shook his lungs and head. He bent over, coughing so hard he could barely breathe. And then, he couldn’t breathe.

  His eyes grew wide and he opened his mouth to shout, but the words got lodged in his throat. He collapsed on the ground, scrabbling at the top button of his shirt. He was beginning to get a crowd now.

  “Hey man, are you all right?” a passerby said.

  Giles collapsed. A gasp went up as a small crowd gathered around him. Through his blurry vision, he saw a girl standing over him—the girl—and he thought he saw concern on her face.

  It was the last thought that ever passed through his mind.

  2.

  AT ABOUT the time Giles was finding a seat on his bus, Emin was preparing another latte.

  The first time she’d started working as a barista she thought she’d never get the hang of it. There were just too many buttons and knobs and dials on the machines. After a few weeks of rote repetition, she soon learned most of it was unnecessary and she could content herself with drawing awesome artwork in coffee’s foam. She knew her art diploma would come in handy one day.

  She placed the coffee on the tabletop and called out the order. Emin was short but strong and her voice carried easily to all four corners of the shop. The customer stood to one side and grinned at her when he scooped up his coffee. He leered at her like a wolf with a newborn lamb. Emin smiled back perfunctorily and kept her eyes down. Move on, loverboy. You can’t handle me.

  She’d long since discovered she preferred shyer, quieter guys. She was surprised she got so much attention when she first arrived in the United States. Back in her hometown of Tijuana, she was a regular, plain girl. Here in the US, with her darker skin, she was exotic. She’d also been surprised by how direct American guys were. They didn’t hesitate to ask for her number. She never gave it out, instead preferring to take theirs. That way, she had control.

  There was one guy she liked, a shy guy who came in every day. She’d seen him looking at her. She didn’t feel threatened the way she did with other guys. She hoped he would eventually get around to asking her on a date. It’d taken a month already and he still hadn’t gotten around to it.

  He would come in soon, she knew, glancing at the clock on the wall. He followed the same routine each and every day, another trait she liked. It reminded her of her father. She wondered how many girls went for men like their fathers. Probably most, she thought.

  Emin liked to people watch. She liked to imagine their personality type and what they were doing in the coffee shop that day. That couple over there, huddled together, hunched over a piece of paper that looked like something important. A bill? A notice? She had no idea, but it looked serious enough for them to have a very frank conversation about it.

  Over there, a girl typing at her laptop. She came every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning. She never ordered the same drink twice in a row. Emin had glanced at her screen once and noticed she was working on what looked suspiciously like a novel. Emin loved reading and often wanted to ask about her story but it was against company rules to bother customers.

  And then there were the one-offs, the ones who passed through like ships in the night. One that caught her eye was a middle-aged man in a brown raincoat. He’d removed his hat and placed it on the small circular table beside his coffee cup. His umbrella was balanced across his knees and his brief
case was perched on the seat opposite him. Every few seconds he glanced up as if he were engaged in conversation with it. His lips moved, mumbling, before shaking his head and injecting sips from his coffee cup as punctuation.

  He glanced about the room, shifting his focus from one person to another. Emin supposed he liked to watch people too. He reached over and pulled on the strap that held his briefcase shut and unbuckled it. He removed something, holding it flat across his palm. It looked like some kind of container.

  Emin didn’t know why but simply seeing it brought a shiver up her spine. It looked like something she’d seen in a movie once but for the life of her couldn’t recall which one.

  Then the man nodded his head and came to a decision. He donned his hat, hooked his arm around the briefcase, and clasped the umbrella in his free hand. He left his coffee—barely touched—as he got to his feet, turned, and pushed the door open. Emin had been trained to say, “Thank you, come again,” but she wasn’t sure she wanted him to come again.

  Someone shouted something outside. Through the small square windows, Emin made out the man in the raincoat take off at a jog. Emin was distracted as she placed the next coffee on the countertop and called out the order.

  The couple who sat hunched over the letter turned their heads in the direction of the door, apparently noticing something happening outside. The woman got up and moved through the door. As she did, Emin glimpsed a crowd forming.

  She lifted the little partition table and moved to the door. She joined the crowd huddled around a man who had collapsed on the sidewalk.

  It was the man she’d hoped would ask her on a date. He was clutching at his throat, struggling to breathe.

  “I’m a nurse,” the letter woman said. “Let me through.”

  The crowd parted. The entire street’s attention was focused on the scene taking place. All but one figure.

  Across the road, standing at a zebra crossing, was the man in the raincoat. He had an odd look on his face, blank and devoid of emotion. Emin didn’t know if he’d noticed her looking at him or not, but he turned and walked away.

  “Hello?” the nurse said. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

  She gently nudged the guy, turning his face to her. His eyes were far away and distant. Emin could tell by the man’s slouched posture that he was already gone.

  “Does anyone know his name?” the nurse said. “Does anyone know who he is?”

  “No,” Emin said in a voice that didn’t sound like her own. But I’d been hoping to find out.

  “Can you call an ambulance?” the nurse said. “We need to get him to—”

  The man took a long, deep breath through his still-clenched throat. Emin’s heart hitched. The man had, miraculously, come back to them.

  Emin’s hope faded as she realized it hadn’t been a breath of air at all but an exhale, the last of the oxygen in his body evacuating his lungs.

  Emin’s blood turned to ice in her veins at the sight of the man. It wasn’t the warm expression of the young man she’d hoped to court, it was the grizzled eyes of a beast, his eyes bloodshot and red, filmy and glassy with distance. He took a moment to look at the crowd that had massed around him. There was no expression on that face. No relief, no gratitude.

  The nurse must have noticed something was wrong too, as she said: “Everybody, get back—”

  She didn’t get another word out as Giles reared up from the ground like a marionette on strings and buried his teeth in the woman’s throat.

  Maybe the quiet ones weren’t so caring after all.

  3.

  MARNIE HAD been one of the first to reach for her phone. She didn’t think or consider why she did it. She did it because it was what she always did in a situation that looked even remotely interesting.

  The whole world was a stage and it was a shame for something beautiful to only be viewed once. Or something horrific. She’d been listening to music when a man began to clutch at his throat and fell to the ground, a crowd gathering around. That meant this was going to be really good. She might even break her Like record.

  Marnie turned her music off and activated the video camera—one of the very best on the market—and aimed it at the man lying on the street. She was a little annoyed she wasn’t the only one to record this. They’d be stealing her views. She didn’t know CPR, so couldn’t help the man even if she wanted to.

  Sure, she could have called the emergency services but she knew someone else would do that. Then the man became still. Bummer. A death video rarely did well online. Someone got in her way. She hissed through her teeth and moved around the obstructor to see clearer. The woman beside the man was speaking, but Marnie wasn’t paying any attention to her. She was focused entirely on the man.

  He looked so calm and serene. His lips had turned purple-blue and his skin was pale white. White drool seeped from the corner of his mouth and ran down his chin. He looked totally calm and at ease.

  Then, paydirt.

  The man began to shake, a shivering movement as if he was cold. If this video had a happy ending, her viewers would lap it up. His eyes opened and a groan escaped his lips. Marnie felt her skin prickle with goosebumps when she heard that sound. It was so sad and depressed and, somehow, final like it never should have been expressed from a healthy man’s mouth.

  His eyes were bloodshot and red, dazed as if he didn’t know where he was. He turned his head side to side, becoming oriented. The scene didn’t look real. Then Marnie did something she’d never done before. She peered out from behind her phone to look the man directly in the eye.

  Marnie loved the grace and beauty of lions and wolves. Her computer wallpapers were festooned with them. The man had a similar look in his eye, a raw rage that had been airbrushed away for public consumption. No, not rage. Hunger.

  His eyes focused on the woman in front of him. She’d turned away to ask for help. Her jugular vein was fully exposed and the man intended on taking full advantage of it. He bared his teeth.

  Marnie could see what was going to happen but the words of warning didn’t come. She doubted it would have made much difference as the man moved so fast, lurching forward, leading with his teeth as he wrapped them around the woman’s exposed neck.

  The woman, in shock, stepped back like an innocent deer at a watering hole. Too late. The man had already buried his teeth in the thick flesh of her neck. The onlookers, in shock, leaped back, stepping into the street. A car honked its horn, swerving and hitting the brakes to avoid them.

  The crowd stood dazed, fearful and unsure, as the man ripped his head back and tore an enormous chunk from her neck. Her blood sprayed over the man with the energy of a burst fire hydrant. The woman screamed as she clutched her throat, already losing consciousness as her blood puddled across the sidewalk. She lay still as her life rapidly seeped out of her.

  Half the crowd found their feet and turned to run. Marnie wasn’t one of them.

  She felt the warm tickle escape between her legs and run down the pants she’d spent half her paycheck on this month. She stared, transfixed, on her screen, as if she were a third person, one of her viewers watching far away, as the man—the murderer—got to his feet and approached her.

  Marnie watched him chew the meat and swallow, eyes rolled back like he was enjoying a fine wine. His eyes fixed directly on the camera. Marnie gibbered, arm shaking violently. She still couldn’t move as the man opened his jaws wide and fell on her.

  The video did go viral, not that Marnie was there to enjoy it.

  4.

  JACOB CRANKED his music up loud. It helped him to think. He didn’t have any classes that morning and had slept in. A paper was due that afternoon that he hadn’t even started yet. He’d been given two weeks to work on it. With each assignment, he vowed he would begin earlier but he was too set in his ways to change.

  First, he’d conduct some research. He booted up Messenger and shot his friends a message, asking what they’d written. He’d harvest them for ideas. At the same time, he p
ulled up Google and began searching first the question the teacher had set, then alternate forms it might take.

  Bingo. He found a Facebook page where someone had been kind enough to post every essay they’d written from when they took the same class. Different school, different state, but similar questions. He scanned through them and picked out the good ideas. He entered them into his Word document and began to brainstorm the structure of the argument. He had his audience in mind—his teacher—and tailored the argument to his beliefs and opinions. Liberal, Democrat, Green supporter.

  He leaned back, pleased with his work so far. He had the for and against argument planned out. Now he just needed to write the damn thing. Out the corner of his eye, he noticed a flashing light. Messages on Messenger. It would have to wait, he thought, before noticing how many there were.

  A dozen. He would glance at it, he told himself. It’ll only take a second. It’ll probably be rubbish anyway. When he clicked on it, he realized it was a bunch of people, all sharing the same link. What the hell?

  It’d been posted by someone called Marnie. Jacob knew a Marnie in his English class. To call them friends wasn’t quite right as they rarely spoke, but he was aware of her. She was one of those empty-headed types who inhabited the corners of each class at school, too busy typing and messaging to focus on the lesson.

  It was a video, something happening live on Facebook. He hovered the mouse over it but couldn’t stop himself from clicking on it. With this many people linking to it, he knew that it would be something everyone would be talking about.

  Being left out of things that the rest of your class or, even worse, your entire school, was informed on was not a wise move in the modern era. He clicked on it and immediately thought it was fake.