Wheels and Zombies series

That’s a wrap, first series complete and finished. Not sure if I’m feeling happy or sad about that. Some new idea had crept up inside my head and I felt eager to get that new project on the page. I didn’t think it a good idea at the time to have two projects going at once, so I decided to write an end to the Wheels and Zombies series. Now that it is finished, I feel a bit sad. I really enjoyed writing for the characters and I’m going to miss Mags, Mars and especially Ash. In my mind, she is the coolest kid and I hoped I was able to bring that across.

I’m guessing the gang is adapting to their new life near the Dutch coast and for now, it’s goodbye, but who knows what might trigger the next apocalypse.

Check out a preview of Wheels’ End: the final book in the Wheels and Zombies series.

Chapter one

Mags

Snow crunched under my boots as I forced my near-frozen feet forward. My hands were cold, and my finger felt numb as it hovered over the trigger. For a moment, the sun peeked through the deck of clouds, and its beams glinted off the snow before disappearing behind an overcast sky. With ease, I moved the barrel of the M4 carbine over the makeshift houses, alternating my attention between peering through the scope and checking my surroundings.

Angie trailed behind me. Her feet moved in sync with mine, and the sound of the snow crunching under our boots seemed to be the only thing to break the silence around us. She knelt at my side as I stopped behind a crate to survey the narrow street.

“Having fun?” she asked. I shifted my gaze from the street to her and was met by her balaclava-covered face. The glint in her eyes betrayed the mischievous grin that I was sure to be hiding behind the layer of fabric.

“I’m freezing my ass off—again,” I replied, although that wasn’t exactly true.

Both of us were decked out in several layers of clothing made from all kinds of materials. Polypropylene underwear, polyester-fiber pile shirt along with bib overalls, lined field coats and matching trousers. The ensemble was topped off with a water- and windproof layer of camouflage. I felt like a marshmallow, and if we had worn the layer of snow camouflage, I would have looked like a marshmallow.

The layers of clothing gave decent enough protection against the cold, but being a girl from a country where winter might give you about two inches of snow if it weren’t raining all the time, the Alaskan weather meant a whole new challenge for me.

“C’mon,” Angie said, sounding exited, “you have to admit this is kind of fun.”

I glared at her before shaking my head.

She shrugged as she adjusted her helmet without losing the sparkle in her eyes. It was good to see those eyes without the darkness that had lingered there before. Who would have expected that something good could have come from a zombie apocalypse, giving Angie and me a second chance at life?

Angie chuckled as I refocused on the narrow street. Then she tapped my shoulder and said, “Let’s get this over with so we can get you warmed up.”

I got up from behind the crate and continued to move down the narrow street with Angie on my heels. The fake houses lining the street looked like metal boxes stacked on top of each other. Square holes representing windows revealed nothing but blackness. Several cars that had seen better days crowded the street along with Dumpsters and other junk. It made for easy cover.

The crack of a gunshot in the near distance made me flinch, but I didn’t lose my focus as I led us further down the street. The sound of metal on metal, as if something was moving on a pulley, drew my attention to the left, and an image of a disfigured man on a sheet of cardboard appeared behind a square hole of one of the fake houses. I caught the figure in my sight and fired two shots. Seconds later a similar sound came from my right, and I shifted my gaze to find a different cardboard image as it appeared from behind a car—again I fired.

I increased my pace until I reached that same car and crouched next to it. My eyes flickered to the image on the cardboard, and I silently cursed myself. The image of an old lady appeared to be nothing more than that—an old lady. Angie’s weapon fired just before she reached me and knelt by my side. Glancing at the image of the old lady, she excessively cleared her throat.

“Shut up,” I said before she could add anything, and I fired my weapon at a cardboard picture that couldn’t be mistaken as anything but a zombie.

We moved in tandem through the narrow street, picking off cardboard figures as we went along. Weeks of running through these courses had taught us to synchronize our movements, and anticipating each other’s actions had become second nature.

As we reached the end of the street, my weapon clicked empty, and I took cover behind the shell of a burned-out car. I started to reload while Angie fired her weapon from the other side of the street where she sat behind a couple of wooden pallets—pretending to hide from invisible enemies. Our gazes met as a disembodied voice crackled over the speakers mounted on poles along the course.

“Cease fire. Course finished. Repeat, cease fire,” the voice over the speakers said. The voice added a safety confirmation that the firing range was cleared to enter. I blew out a breath as I felt a trickle of sweat roll down the back of my neck. Though I knew this to be a training session and the targets to be fake, running this course didn’t stop my heart rate from nudging up to some uncontrollable level. It felt as if an animal raged inside my chest.

Angie got to her feet, pulling the fabric masking her face down. She grinned from ear to ear as she walked over and stuck out a hand to help me up. I understood that grin, even though society had come to a halt while zombies claimed the land. Well, they weren’t zombies exactly. To be that they would have to have risen from the dead. In this case, a man-made virus had rendered the brains of the infected effectively useless while they had an unquenchable craving for human flesh. To me, this behavior came pretty close to what I had seen in all those movies over the years. Besides, it didn’t take long for them to start looking like zombies, and so that’s what I called them—zombies. The irony was that the same virus that had killed millions had saved Angie’s life along with my own.

I didn’t understand all the science behind it, but not that long ago, we’d both faced a slow death as cancer ate us up from the inside out. The zombie virus exposed to the cancer in our systems had caused a mutation that rendered us immune to becoming one of those walking dead ourselves.

So instead of being dead, Angie and I were running around this makeshift shooting range at the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson or “J-Bear,” as the men and women stationed here called it—located in Anchorage, Alaska. As it was, we didn’t have too much to complain about, except for the cold weather and the fact that I wished Ash and Mars were here.

“This place is too cold,” I said as I walked at Angie’s side. We crossed a snow-covered open field, heading to one of the bigger buildings lining what was supposed to be a parking lot. A couple of snow mounts with the distinctive features of cars hidden underneath told me as much.

We had relinquished our weapons with the TI, or training instructor. I didn’t even know the man’s real name. After he yelled at us for a while or, more exactly, yelled at me for shooting the old lady’s cardboard image, he had dismissed us. I had to remind myself of the fact that he didn’t have it in for me but was doing everything in his power to teach me the things I needed to know to survive out in the field. Still, I’d had better conversations.

“Just be glad you don’t have to go through basic training like the rest of the recruits,” Angie said, “or else we would have been out here a lot longer.”

I glanced over my shoulder and saw the TI assemble his platoon for what I could only assume to be another round of agonizingly exhausting exercises. Our training sessions were private, but we caught glimpses of what the rest of the troops had to go through. I shoved my hands deeper into my pockets and sighed in relief.

“That I am,” I replied and added, “I don’t understand why Marshall wants us to tag along on some of those excursions anyhow. It’s not as if I was ever cut out to be a soldier, and you already know most of this shit.”

Colonel Lauren Marshall of the United States Air Force and commander of this joint base had been more than welcoming on our arrival. The woman, who I guessed to be in her mid-forties, had made quite a first impression. With her stern expression and her straight posture, she was in no way inferior to the military men in charge that I had met these past few months. Ever since we had arrived, she’d taken an added interest in Angie and me. After our intended three weeks’ stay was extended, she’d insisted that we participate in some of the training and contributed to the community of this base. I had no problem with the latter, and handing out household goods at one of the logistics readiness squadrons wasn’t a problem, but running around in the Alaskan snow was something I wasn’t yet used to. Perhaps if things had been different, I would have been able to appreciate the beauty this place had to offer, but unfortunately there hadn’t been much time for sightseeing. The irony of that hadn’t exactly escaped me.

“I was trained as an FBI agent and not a soldier,” Angie said.

“There’s a difference?” I asked, keeping my tone serious. Her head shifted in my direction with a scowl on her face.

I grinned and said, “Hey don’t blame me, I’m a tourist, remember.”

“You’re a tourist, but I don’t remember ever hearing the Dutch were idiots.”

“Yeah, well, this one got herself stuck in a big foreign country with zombies running wild,” I replied.

“But you’re still alive, right,” she said, “and you kept Ash alive.”

My gaze fell to the ground where my feet plowed through the snow.

“We kept each other alive,” I said under my breath.

I missed the loud-mouthed kid with her thick Brooklyn accent rolling around in her wheelchair. Ever since we had met at that hospital over a year ago, we had been inseparable, and now, except for video calls, I hadn’t seen Ash in over three months. General Whitfield had promised us that it would take about three weeks for the lab to synthesize the serum they needed to inoculate the population and make them impervious to the zombie virus. Unfortunately, things hadn’t gone according to plan, and because Angie and I were the only ones who carried the nonsynthesized version of the Divus serum in our bloodstreams, we had been kindly asked to stay put. Ash also carried the antizombie juice inside her body, but because she was stuck in a wheelchair and fourteen years old at the time, it had been decided that she would stay with Mars’s family in California in a town called Carmel-by-the-Sea.

A sigh escaped me at the thought of Ash followed by thoughts of Mars, which hadn’t gone by unnoticed by Angie.

“Have you heard from them?” she asked.

I looked up to face her but noticed we had reached the steps that would lead us inside the building where the mess hall was located. Angie led the way, hopping up the few steps and opened the door for us both. The mess hall for this part of the base was located in a building that looked like a hangar—all metal with an oval roof. The interior was as nice, with a wooden finish and huge windows that gave an excellent view of the mountains. The foyer held an enormous amount of coatracks, which were mostly empty now. We had arrived early, and it would be a while before the famished recruits piled in looking for their chow. A hallway veered right where a bunch of offices were located, and straight ahead a set of doors led to the mess itself.

Angie had already relinquished her coat and stared at me, waiting for my reply.

“Not since the last time we all talked, about two weeks ago,” I said. “You were there—remember.”

“Yeah, but I thought, Mars might have …” She started to say and then wiggled her eyebrows as she paused. “You know,” she added with a sly smile.

“And what?” I said, unable to keep a grin off my face. “Indulge in some R-rated steamy, hot phone sex?” I shrugged out of my coat as I entertained the thought and felt the heat rise in my cheeks. “I’m sure that would have gone over quite well in the com-room.”

Angie chuckled, and from the expression on her face, I could tell she was imagining the reactions of the people working behind their computer stations inside the communications room where we needed to go to make our secure video calls. Because the knowledge we had obtained concerning the Mortem virus that had created the zombies and, of course, its potential cure, we weren’t allowed to use unsanctioned lines of communication. In fact, we weren’t allowed to talk to anyone outside the appointed circle.

Fortunately, Ash and Mars were included inside that circle. Even with Angie, who I’d come to see as part of my extended family, by my side, I would have gone mad if I hadn’t been allowed to talk to those two for over three months.

Ash had become closer to me than my siblings ever had, and although I never had any children and probably never would, it almost felt as if I had found that kind of love with her. Mars, however, had turned into a story of his own.

I had met Angie’s partner with the FBI while escaping JFK airport in New York. Of course at the time, I hadn’t known he’d been working undercover, trying to catch the bad guy who had set the zombie virus loose on the population.

I had tried to keep my distance. When you’re dying of cancer, diving into a relationship was the furthest thing from my mind. Besides, zombies were chasing us. Still, it was hard to ignore his beautiful dark skin with that brilliant smile and those pale jade eyes that made me wonder if he could read my soul. Fortunately for me, Mars turned out to be a persistent man who wouldn’t allow himself to be pushed away and whose presence would make my heart jump in all kinds of ways. He had opened me up to a range of feelings that no one could truly believe in unless they had experienced it at least once.

Angie was staring at me again.

“What?” I asked.

“You were so far gone that I doubt even the Enterprise would have been able to locate you,” she said with a grin.

“Shut up,” I replied and opened the door to the mess hall.

Chapter two

Ash

“Come on, Ash. Again, again,” Rowdy called out and followed it by a squeal. I sighed and internally cursed for letting myself being used like that. Ever since I had arrived, this forty-inch-tall midget had started to use me as his own private taxi. If it weren’t for those big brown eyes and that million-dollar smile, I might have chucked him from my lap.

But that was just it; this four-year-old kid had the ability to wrap me around his chubby little fingers, with his frizzy hair and dimpled cheeks. Except for the eyes and a slightly darker skin tone, he looked exactly like his dad. He even had Mars’s charm, the little bastard. “Just one more time, Ash—please.”

He drew out the last word, and I was sold—again.

“All right, all right,” I replied, “just give me a sec to line up.” I pushed my wheels until I reached the middle of the sidewalk and started to balance on my rear tires. The sun had already started its descent at the end of the ocean, and the cooler temperatures had left the beaches mostly empty. It wasn’t exactly cold and nothing like the winters I had experienced in Brooklyn, but it wasn’t beach weather either. I inhaled deeply, smelling the salt on the air as the waves crashed on the beach. From Rowdy’s smile, I could tell he was getting excited. “Hang on, okay.”

“Okay,” he said. It wasn’t necessary for him to hang on, because I had extended the belt that kept me seated in the chair and had looped it around him too. He was basically strapped to me and with his little skateboard helmet, I figured he’d be safe enough. Besides, I knew what I was doing. That didn’t mean I didn’t like to mess with him.

“Are you really hangin’ on?” I said in an exaggerated voice.

“Yep,” he said, undeterred.

“Okay then, keep your tiny hands inside the vehicle at all times,” I replied and started to spin. I started slowly first, but gradually picked up speed. The excited wheeeeee that followed had me thinking I was doing good. As dizziness set in, I slowed us down. Rowdy’s giggling as he held on to my shirt was infectious, and a grin tugged at the corners of my mouth. I hated to admit it, but this kid was kind of fun to hang around with, especially since I had nothing better to do.

Ever since Mags and Angie had left me behind in Colorado, life had become a lot less exiting. Not that this lack of excitement was a bad thing, but I missed them both. They had become my family, and I hadn’t experienced that in a long time. Of course, Mars came to visit Rowdy, and Mr. and Mrs. Marsden were really nice people, and I was grateful to them for letting me stay. The fact that they lived in the cutest blue house by the beach was a plus, but I didn’t know them as well as I did Mags or Angie. It’s kind of nice to know what to expect from a person in certain situations, and I had that—especially with Mags. I missed our banter.

General Whitfield had promised us that the trip would only take a couple of weeks—three at the most—but Mags, and Angie had been stuck in Alaska for months now, and I didn’t think any of us were happy with it.

“C’mon, little man,” I said as I made the last turn, “it’s time to go home or else your grandma will leave me to do the dishes all on my own.”

“Awww,” Rowdy replied, but I ignored him. We were only a couple of houses down from where the Marsdens lived, but the elderly couple was very protective of their grandson. I couldn’t blame them for that—they had almost lost him in the same car crash as that had killed their daughter-in-law.

I’d seen pictures of Lisa on a side table in the living room and in Rowdy’s room. The Marsdens did their best to keep the memory of Rowdy’s mom alive and talked about her a lot—well.

Mars hadn’t spoken about her with me, but I figured that might have something to do with him being with Mags and all. I did know that Lisa had died in a car crash when Rowdy had been a year old. The little man had been with her inside the wreck, but had thankfully come out unscathed. As a family they’d gone through a rough time, but at least they’ve had each other.

I rolled down the sidewalk while Rowdy stuck his hands out and pretended to be a plane. He was making engine noises as I spotted a man at the front door of the blue house. Mrs. Marsden stood in the doorway, talking to the man, who was wearing black pants, a yellow jacket, and a red baseball cap. He seemed to be delivering something. I rolled up the pathway that led up to the house. Mrs. Marsden waved as I stopped at the steps of the small porch.

“Thank you,” she said in a warm voice as she accepted the package.

After I undid the clip to release him, Rowdy wriggled down my lap and climbed the porch to meet his grandmother. I turned to roll around the back where it was easier for me to get inside. Mr. Marsden had offered to make me a ramp, but I had declined his generous offer. This was supposed to be a temporary arrangement, and I didn’t want to be any trouble.

“Here you go,” Mrs. Marsden said as she signed the tablet that the man held out to her. I was about to push off when my chair started to move on its own. Of course, it hadn’t moved on its own, but the friendly delivery guy probably thought I needed help.

“Hey,” I said, sounding not so friendly and instantly the pushing stopped. I turned to face my wannabe do-gooder. Tablet in hand, the man had raised his hand apologetically, but the expression on his face told me it wasn’t sincere.

“My apologies, Miss,” he said in a tone that added smugness to his condescending look.

“How’d you like it if I pushed your around?” I said with a sneer. Lots of people had a tendency to be helpful when it wasn’t called for, but annoying as it was, I usually managed to maintain some form of politeness. With this guy, that didn’t seem possible. With that nasty smirk on his face, it felt as if he were looking down on me for no reason and it wasn’t just the fact that I was sitting.

“Ash,” Mrs. Marsden said. She sounded a bit annoyed. I glanced past the deliveryman, who stood with his back to Mrs. Marsden, so she couldn’t see his expression. A frown added to the creases on her wrinkled face.

“It’s quite all right, ma’am,” the deliveryman said. His voice was friendly as he spoke with Mrs. Marsden, but he sneered at me as if he’d found me sticking under his shoe.

“Ass,” I called after him as he walked down the path.

“Ash,” Mrs. Marsden said, and this time she sounded really appalled. “You get inside right this minute, young lady, and I think tonight’s dishes belong wholly to you.”

“Great,” I muttered under my breath as I watched the deliveryman get into an unmarked white van. Which I might have noted as being odd if it weren’t for Mrs. Marsden calling out my name again. I turned to face the porch and saw Rowdy sitting on the top step as he watched me with wide eyes.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said as I started to make my way around back.

“I said I was sorry,” I said as grabbed a plate from the dry rack and started to run a towel over it.

“I would just appreciate it if you’d check your attitude, especially in Rowdy’s presence,” Mrs. Marsden said. “I thought we had passed that stage.”

I placed the dried plate on my lap, and as I rolled to the proper cabinet, I caught Mrs. Marsden eyeing her husband as if in search of his support.

“Well?” she said, confirming my suspicion. Mr. Marsden raised his eyes from the paper he sat reading at the kitchen table.

Avoiding his gaze, I turned to fetch another plate and exhaled. I wasn’t sure how to feel about this parenting stuff. These people weren’t my parents, and besides, I had turned fifteen last September, and it wouldn’t be as if they could bring about big changes. Mags never seemed to have any problem with my behavior.

Still, I understood that they were helping to raise a small kid and that they needed me to use a little finesse once in a while. I was really trying not to ruin his upbringing.

“I didn’t even use a bad word,” I said, feeling the need to defend myself.

“I think that three-letter word you called after that poor man definitely counted as a bad word,” Mrs. Marsden said. I shook my head in defeat and conceded to the fact that I had gotten myself stuck in the Twilight Zone.

“Have you considered asking Ash about her reason for lashing out at the man?” Mr. Marsden said. His calm deep voice always made me smile. He sounded like that actor who played God in that Jim Carrey movie. Mrs. Marsden sighed, and I took that as my cue to turn and face them both.

“Because he looked at me like I was dirt,” I said. I flicked a nervous glance between the two of them, but I couldn’t hold their gazes and glanced down at the tiled floor.

“He did not,” Mrs. Marsden said. My head shot up, and I guessed my glare spoke volumes, because Mrs. Marsden’s eyes widened.

“I think Ash might see that differently.” Mr. Marsden stood from the kitchen table and nodded in the direction of the living room. “Why don’t you relax a little?” he said to his wife. “And I’ll help Ash finish up.” He came up behind me and grabbed the dish towel from my shoulder.

He waited for Mrs. Marsden to leave the kitchen before he spoke.

“It’s not always easy,” he said, “being different.”

I didn’t know what to say to that because I wasn’t different—was I? I shrugged instead.

He paused drying the plate and stared out the window for a moment. “My old man, he was a proud man who had worked hard all his life—”

“Wait,” I said. “I remind you of your dad.”

Mr. Marsden raised an eyebrow as he looked down at me and slowly quirked a smile. “You wanna hear the story or not?”

I grinned and nodded. I always liked it when Mr. Marsden started telling me his stories. It kind of reminded me of Chuck, an elderly gentleman I had met at the hospital where I had been staying before all hell broke out. The two men looked nothing alike of course. Mr. Marsden was a big man, tall, with broad shoulders. He must have been a catch in his day with his dark skin and muscular arms. Now, the gray hair and the belly that had started to hang over his belt began to abate his dashing appearance a little, but there were still enough ladies who turned around as he passed. I had seen it at the grocery store. Chuck, however, had been ill at the time I had met him, with skin as gray as the ash of the cigarettes that he smoked and his face a wrinkled mess. He had taken a liking to me, though, and treated me like a normal person and not as a disabled kid in a wheelchair.

“Like I said, my daddy was a proud man, and even after he had lost his leg,” Mr. Marsden said before stopping himself. “I told you about my daddy’s leg, right?” He glanced down, and I nodded emphatically yes. In fact, he had told me several times how his dad’s leg got caught underneath the wheel of a tractor and had to be amputated. As Mr. Marsden continued, he fortunately skipped that part of the story.

“Even after he lost his leg, he was a proud man. It hadn’t changed him, because that was the kind of man my daddy was,” he continued, “but that didn’t mean that others didn’t see him in a different light—or treated him differently.”

Mr. Marsden handed me another plate, and I rolled to the cupboard. To help me out, most of the essentials like glasses and plates along with the Twinkies and other snacks had been moved to lower shelves and cupboards to make them easier for me to access.

“How did he deal with it?” I asked as I closed the little door. Mr. Marsden glanced at me with a half-smile and a look that seemed as if he had been in a faraway place.

“Pretty much like you did,” he said as that half-smile turned into a grin. “With a shrug and by staying the person he had always been.”

We finished the last of the cups and utensils. After I had cleared them all away, Mr. Marsden threw the towel in the sink and leaned against the counter.

“I almost forgot,” he said, giving me a curious glance, “what did the guy bring?”

I shifted my gaze and gestured at a small brown box that rested on a shelf mounted on the wall next to the pantry.

“Hmmm,” he said as he walked over to the box and picked it up to inspect it. He gazed at it a little while until I saw his eyes widen. “Must be the spark plugs I ordered. Jack from the auto shop must have been kind enough to send them over. I’ll have to thank him for that.” He placed the box back where he had found it and then headed in the direction of the living room.

“I’ll take them to the garage tomorrow morning,” he added before he left the room.