The great dying book 3 s.., p.1
The Great Dying | Book 3 | Species, page 1
part #3 of The Great Dying Series
Species
The Great Dying Book Three
Jack Hunt
Direct Response Publishing
Copyright © 2021 by Jack Hunt
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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SPECIES: The Great Dying Book Three is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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The Great Dying series
Extinct
Primal
Species
A Powerless World series
Escape the Breakdown
Survive the Lawless
Defend the Homestead
Outlive the Darkness
Evade the Ruthless
Outlaws of the Midwest series
Chaos Erupts
Panic Ensues
Havoc Endures
The Cyber Apocalypse series
As Our World Ends
As Our World Falls
As Our World Burns
The Agora Virus series
Phobia
Anxiety
Strain
The War Buds series
War Buds 1
War Buds 2
War Buds 3
Camp Zero series
State of Panic
State of Shock
State of Decay
Renegades series
The Renegades
The Renegades Book 2: Aftermath
The Renegades Book 3: Fortress
The Renegades Book 4: Colony
The Renegades Book 5: United
The Wild Ones Duology
The Wild Ones Book 1
The Wild Ones Book 2
The EMP Survival series
Days of Panic
Days of Chaos
Days of Danger
Days of Terror
Against All Odds Duology
As We Fall
As We Break
The Amygdala Syndrome Duology
Unstable
Unhinged
Survival Rules series
Rules of Survival
Rules of Conflict
Rules of Darkness
Rules of Engagement
Lone Survivor series
All That Remains
All That Survives
All That Escapes
All That Rises
Single Novels
Blackout
Defiant
Darkest Hour
Final Impact
The Year Without Summer
The Last Storm
The Last Magician
The Lookout
Class of 1989
Out of the Wild
The Aging
Mavericks: Hunters Moon
Killing Time
Contents
Prologue
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
A Plea
Readers Team
About the Author
Prologue
One day after escaping Boston
Eden Falls, Vermont
Don Chambers cradled Nate, running a bloodied hand around his face. Thirty-six years old, full of life and promise. This wasn’t how it was meant to end. For all his faults Nate was still his son, his flesh and blood. As he rocked back and forth, unable to calm the raging sea inside him, his anguished cries echoed loudly through the Green Mountain National Forest.
Not far from him lay the bodies of several of Vera’s guys, one was his cousin Janson. A surge of mixed emotion flowed through him, bringing with it questions. How? Why? All of his questions might have remained unanswered if it wasn’t for Harry Jenkins, the local doctor. Like any loyal follower, he’d returned to the tavern with one hell of a story. Don wasn’t there when he came in, but as soon as he got the message he’d left home and headed straight for Nate’s.
At first, he didn’t believe it. Four years had passed without incident, without anyone challenging the setup in Eden Falls. He wasn’t greedy. He hadn’t gone after the county of Bennington, just a few small towns. No, he carved out his own slice of hell and turned it around and made it work.
The tavern was a means of survival not just for him but for many folks. Of course, he wasn’t stupid enough to be the one managing it. Had he done so, maybe it would have been him lying here. No, he had other matters to attend to.
But now this changed everything.
“Don, the doc’s on route,” Rocco said.
He hadn’t spoken to him yet. All he’d been told was that Vera was dead. That’s all he knew. It was Clyde at the bar that had given him the heads-up on where Vera was heading that evening. He shook his head, anger rising in him.
This was the cost of leaving work in the hands of amateurs. Now in his early sixties, he preferred to work in the background, taking on more of a supervisory role than getting his hands dirty. It was a young man’s game. He thought leaving it in the hands of the younger generation and having Vera manage it would have worked. And it had, for years.
Sliding out from underneath Nate, he glanced at his guys. Each of them looked somber. They were all outfitted in hunting camo gear, AR-15s and hunting rifles, keeping watch over the surrounding area.
Waiting for the doctor to arrive, Don strode over to his red F-150 and reached into the back and collected shovels. He dropped them on the ground. “Start digging,” he said. He kept one shovel for himself and crossed to a soft patch of land surrounded by spruce trees. He drove the metal deep.
“Uncle. Let me do that,” Rocco said, placing a hand on his arm.
He shrugged it off. “He was my boy. I won’t have someone else bury him.”
Just because he sixty it didn’t mean his youthfulness and vitality was gone. It wasn’t. Sure, he coughed more than he used to but a pack a day could do that. However, that had improved since the shortage of cigarettes and supplies. But he was still as strong as an ox. Around him, his nephews, cousins and closest friends worked diligently to bury the dead.
Thirty minutes later, a truck roared up the driveway and came to a stop twenty feet away. Don stopped and wiped sweat from his brow and looked up. Harry Jenkins got out of the passenger side, his eyes wide in shock at the sight of the carnage. Blood trailing away from bodies, dried like tiny little streams. Don stuck the shovel in the ground next to a six-foot by four-foot-deep grave.
“Did you know about this?”
Harry shook his head as his gaze fell upon Nate.
“Who was responsible?”
“For Vera or this?”
He stared back at him, knowing the question was self-explanatory. These men wouldn’t have been killed by anyone else but the same person who killed Vera.
“Do you know the blonde who runs the Wilson Inn?” Harry asked.
“Steph Wilson did this?”
He nodded.
“Who else?”
“Some stranger. I’ve not seen him before and… the minister.”
“Everett?”
The doc nodded. “I mean they were there with her but it was Steph that squeezed the trigger on Vera. I gather they helped her.” Don balled his fist. He wanted to lash out and give the doc a beating for doing nothing but he knew it wasn’t his fault. He was just a player on the board. A pawn that he moved around and used in exchange for some sweet ass. He wasn’t a foot soldier. And he wouldn’t kill him. He needed him. He was the only known doctor in a twenty-mile radius.
Don turned and crossed the driveway to where his son lay. Rocco rushed in to give him a hand carrying his body to the grave. As they lowered him, Don continued his questioning. “So did she say why she did it?”
“Something about Vera using a broker’s daughter.”
“Which broker?”
“A guy by the name of Micah.”
“Micah.” A pained smile spread. He knew him well. He was a rat with a conscience. He’d turned down multiple offers to bring escaped women to him. He wanted fresh skin in the tavern. They were getting harder to find and the rough handling of the girls by some of the clients was bad for business.
Harry piped up. “Micah is wounded. So is the minister.”
“Huh. Was the minister’s daughter with him?”
“No.”
“And Everett. Where is he now?”
“At the inn, recovering.” There was a pregnant pause. “Are you going to kill them?” the doc asked.
Don had killed people for less than this but no, he needed to be careful. They’d probably be expecting backlash from this and would be prepared. If three of them had taken out this many of Vera’s guys, there was no telling the kind of dent they could put in his crew. He needed to send a message, make it clear. “No, I have something far worse in mind for them.”
He looked down at Nate’s pale face and thought about the worst punishment.
Death was easy but inflicting pain, oh that held all manner of possibilities.
1
One month later
Bennington, Vermont
There is a strong chance you will die within the first six months.
Those encouraging words offered a dangerous challenge, one that Erika Daniels gladly accepted the day she stood alongside a large collection of seasoned police officers inside Boston City. Anything had to be better than the rules. Since the death of Isa Washington, changes were being made but they weren’t happening fast enough. One of the first was establishing law and order in the states of New England.
It was meant to be a step in the right direction.
Rumors were it was a loosening of The Order’s control. Some said the regime feared an uprising, Erika didn’t think it was anything to do with that. The Order didn’t strike her as a government that loosened restrictions, only tightened.
No, this was their way of testing the waters with a few expendables.
That’s exactly what she and two hundred other officers were. An experiment in law and order. They were like scouts being sent ahead to see what lurked in the highways and hidden byways of rural communities.
With sixty-seven counties to cover, each county would only get three officers.
Three. One to man headquarters and two out on the road. That was it. It was crazy. They were told that since billions had died all over the world and many were now in cities throughout the country, the need just wasn’t there for them to supply more.
That’s when she knew it was a suicide mission. Nothing but a test. But, despite the danger, she’d been biting at the bit for something more exciting than Boston City policing. It was a far cry from the policing that Boston had once experienced. With so many guards and rules dictating residents’ behavior and lifestyle, it was rare anyone risked getting into trouble out of fear of being executed. While there hadn’t been as many executions since the vice chancellor replaced Isa, it didn’t offer her much in the way of a challenge.
She’d been gunning for a position within the secret police but that hadn’t happened. Their selection process was stringent and few knew what was required to be chosen.
With her parents unable to enter the city and cops being scooped up like cattle in that first year, she was hoping to get back to Vermont to check in on them but it just never happened.
So, this was it.
Now that she was assigned as sheriff of Bennington County, her job not only involved getting the community on board and hiring a few more reputable people but working alongside Ava Richards, a woman who was more brawn than brains, and Myles Baker, a man who felt he should have been made sheriff.
He tried to dispute the decision but facts were facts.
Before The Great Dying, he’d only been on the job two years, and little more than a month outside of his probationary period. Hell, Ava had more years than him whereas Erika had six years under her belt. Not that it mattered. Without real manpower, years of wearing the badge meant very little now.
Tomorrow was to be the first day on the job. An assessment of the situation. A real boots on the ground, hard look at what they had to work with. No one from the community knew they were there. It wasn’t like The Order could announce it. The only information came by way of hunters who’d been sent out to collect those that had escaped.
But that was back when Isa was alive.
The rumor mill had it that hunters were no longer being used. Instead of deeming them unessential, they simply put them to work in the city and informed the residents that once law and order had been established by the police, they would allow more people to leave if they so wished. It was a complete turnaround from the harsh laws, leading some to believe that Boston had the right leadership now, while others, the religious die-hards, felt it was undermining everything The Order had worked to achieve.
She didn’t care now that she was out.
They’d arrived in the dead of night. Erika made a beeline for her parents’ home in Eden Falls, half an hour outside of the town of Bennington. It would be their home base for the night until they could decide how to proceed.
From the get-go, the two-story home didn’t look the same. As the headlights from the two SUV cruisers lit up the white picket fence that surrounded the property, her stomach dropped. Her mother was an avid gardener. And apocalypse or not, she wouldn’t have allowed her yard to look this way.
Plants had grown out of control, climbing and twisting up around the doorway, the walls, and covering most of the windows. What had once been a well-manicured lawn now resembled a jungle. Erika paused, the engine idling.
“You’re burning gas,” Myles said.
“What?”
“Gas? They didn’t give us much.”
“Right,” she said, lost in thought, peering out the windshield. Erika killed the engine and climbed out. She opened up the back and fished into the supplies for a machete. They’d been given enough sustenance for a month, mostly dried, lab-grown meat, vegetables, canned goods and bottles of water. They had a stockpile of ammo, multiple rifles, shotguns and more firepower to last them long beyond that. One of the higher-ups joked with them that if they got hungry and they ran out of food, they could always chew on bullets. That didn’t exactly boost their confidence in the promise of more supplies in a month. Heading out of the city felt more like being given a one-way ticket to a destination they didn’t think they would return from.
After four years of not seeing it, the world outside was quite a shock — to see the main roads cleared, and a few vehicles passing them on their way west. For so long they’d been told a different story about the dead zone — that it was an uninhabitable, harsh place that only hunters were capable of traversing.
It was a partial truth.
Still, they were right about the plant life. Without a government body in each state, town or city, more specifically people willing to work, it had overgrown, covering school playgrounds, homes, buildings, rusted-out vehicles, lampposts and sidewalks.
“It’s in the second box back there,” Myles said, twisting around in his seat.
While she was doing that, Ava parked her SUV and got out, cradling an M4 and scanning the perimeter. She was certain they would come under attack, as reports of attacks on police in the first year had been rampant, but that was when they were trying to keep law and order. Years had passed since then. Billions had died. Whatever existed now out there, had better things to do than chase after cops. And as far as Bennington County knew it, there was no law and order.
That would all change tomorrow.
“You good?” Ava asked. Ava had pixie-cut blonde hair. She was the kind of officer that took her job seriously even when she was working for The Order in the city. Everything had to be by the book. Her uniform was immaculate. Boots polished to glass-like perfection.
“Lower your weapon. I hardly think we’re going to encounter hostiles here. It’s the suburbs,” Erika said.
