Lost valley extinction s.., p.1
Lost Valley (Extinction Survival Book 1), page 1
© Walt Browning 2019
All Rights Reserved
Originally published by Amazon Kindle Worlds in 2016-2017
Cover Design by Deranged Doctor Design
Edited by Sara Jones
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events locales or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.
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The Extinction Survival Series
Lost Valley
Satan’s Gate
Contents
Dedication
Foreword by Nicholas Sansbury Smith
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Afterword
About the Authors
“Given the continual emergence of new pathogens, the increasing risk of a bioterror attack and how connected our world is through air travel, there is a significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes.” – Bill Gates. April 2018.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the future of humanity and the hope that we are wise enough to avoid its destruction.
Foreword
by Nicholas Sansbury Smith
Dear Reader,
Thank you for picking up a copy of Lost Valley by Walt Browning. This is the first book in a planned series called Extinction Survival. Originally published through Amazon’s Extinction Cycle Kindle World, Lost Valley became a reader favorite in the Extinction Cycle series side stories and transcended to far more than fan fiction. It ranked number one in the Kindle Worlds Horror section for months and a five star review average. Unfortunately, Amazon ended the Kindle Worlds program in July of 2018 with little warning. Authors were given a chance to republish or retire their stories, and I jumped at the chance to republish Lost Valley through my small press, Great Wave Ink. Today, we’re proud to offer Lost Valley in paperback, audio, and to readers outside of the United States for the first time ever.
For those of you that are new to the Extinction Cycle storyline, the series is the award winning, Amazon top-rated, and half a million copy best-selling seven book saga. There are over six thousand five-star reviews on Amazon alone. Critics have called it, “World War Z and The Walking Dead meets the Hot Zone.” Publishers weekly added, “Smith has realized that the way to rekindle interest in zombie apocalypse fiction is to make it louder, longer, and bloodier… Smith intensifies the disaster efficiently as the pages flip by, and readers who enjoy juicy blood-and-guts action will find a lot of it here.”
In creating the Extinction Cycle, my goal was to use authentic military action and real science to take the zombie and post-apocalyptic genres in an exciting new direction. Forget everything you know about zombies. In the Extinction Cycle, they aren’t created by black magic or other supernatural means. The ones found in the Extinction Cycle are created by a military bio-weapon called VX-99, first used in Vietnam. The chemicals reactivate the proteins encoded by the genes that separate humans from wild animals—in other words, the experiment turned men into monsters. For the first time, zombies are explained using real science—science so real there is every possibility of something like the Extinction Cycle actually happening. But these creatures aren’t the unthinking, slow-minded, shuffling monsters we’ve all come to know in other shows, books, and movies. These “variants” are more monster than human. Through the series, the variants become the hunters as they evolve from the epigenetic changes. Scrambling to find a cure and defeat the monsters, humanity is brought to the brink of extinction.
We hope you enjoy Lost Valley and continue on with the rest of the Extinction Survival series, and the main storyline in the Extinction Cycle.
Best wishes,
Nicholas Sansbury Smith, NYT Bestselling Author of the Extinction Cycle
— 1 —
Tuesday, April 14
Shrek
I always win! I have to win! It’s just who I am.
The air is dry. It hasn’t rained in months, so I lift my snout into the air. The gentle wind brings the scents of the low California mountains, laden with the pollen of dozens of bushes, trees, and flowering plants. I let the air waft through my nostrils, passing by my hyper-sensitive olfactory receptors. I didn’t know what they were called, the smelling parts of my nose, until I heard those words from my first drill sergeant. I found out that I have over three hundred million of them inside my head. I heard them say humans only have a few million. I pity them. They don’t know what they are missing.
I can tell by the concentration of the particles in each nostril which way the scent comes from. If it’s stronger in the left nostril, the scent comes from the left. Same thing with the right. I can smell things that haven’t been around for days; a few minor molecules left behind set off my sensitive nose. They called it a false positive when I smelled something that wasn’t there anymore, whatever that means. As far as I am concerned, if it had been there once it was almost the same as if it was still there. They just didn’t get it.
My first drill sergeant, the one who said these things about my nose, was named Williams. The American soldiers called him a trainer, but he was just another person I didn’t find worthy of my time. I did learn a lot about my lineage, about my capabilities, and what they had planned for me. But none of the humans were good enough to swear my loyalty to. None of them, until I met my partner, the man who owns this house. I knew, from the first time we met, that he was the one I was meant to be with. I looked into his eyes and saw another warrior. Another fighter who refused to lose. Yes, I knew right away that he was the one. But I am getting ahead of the story.
I was one of four surviving puppies from my Belgian Malinois mother. Her name was Cassie, and she was the most beautiful of all the mothers in our German kennel. For the first year and a half of my life, I lived with my sister and two brothers. We grew together in play and sport while our bodies filled out and our spirit developed. I was the best. Not just the best of my litter, but the best in the kennel. My first owners recognized my ruthlessness in all competitions and my ability to quickly react and outpace all the other “Mals” I was put up against. Because I was so fast and so quiet, they called me “The Ghost.” I was to be feared.
My German name followed me when I was taken by the Americans over five years ago. They brought me to Texas, where I was put through test after test to find out who was the fastest and who wanted to win the most.
That had almost been my undoing, my fighting spirit. I refused to quit. I thought that was a good thing. When they tried to take my things, I wouldn’t let them. I would run when they approached, never giving up my prized tennis ball. I can tell when the humans are trying to be like me, quiet and quick. They tried to distract me and sneak up behind me. But I always heard them. They move too slowly, and their feet hit the ground so loudly that it would have woken me from my sleep.
They spent weeks trying to get me to give up my ball. But I would never let them. They weren’t worthy of my ball. I won it. I fought the others for it, and I wasn’t going to share it with anyone.
At first, they said my spirit was a good thing, that I had a natural gift for searching out and retrieving their prizes of blankets, balls, and sticks. But once I got them, I wasn’t about to give them up. If the others were too slow to beat me to the prize, then it was their own fault. They should have fought harder.
They put me into competition with other dogs, less worthy breeds. Even the other Mals failed to keep up with me. The German Shepherds were the worst. All of them were too heavy and lacked the fighting spirit I had. All except one. His name was Apollo. He fought as hard as I did, and if it weren’t for his heavier weight and slightly slower gait, he might have been my equal. But I was always a little faster, and he never was able to beat me at anything other than one stupid test. His nose. He could smell things more quickly and react to them a bit sooner than me. He was the only other Military War Dog I respected. Begrudgingly, he and I actually became friends before we were separated.
Looking back, my youthful pride almost kept me from my destiny. I was not going to be bested by anyone, dog or human.
Throughout the competition, I fought and fought, never letting anything get in my way. But then I almost lost my only friend when Apollo and I were in a competition to locate a blanket that
Looking back at it all, I now realize that he was simply better at smelling than me. He can smell like no other dog I have met. But truth be told, I would never admit that to him.
That day, I knew that Apollo was going to best me. I couldn’t stand the thought of losing, so when Apollo reached the hidden blanket first, I did the only thing I could think of to keep from losing. I grabbed the blanket from him, or at least I tried. Of course, the stubborn Shepherd refused to let go.
That’s when the trouble started. We began to fight. It was the fight of all fights because we were the best of the best. I lunged for his shoulder, eager to lock onto his flesh, but he was too fast. I hadn’t seen him move that quickly before. Apollo showed me that he hated to lose as much as I did. That’s when I decided to let him be my friend, I just didn’t realize it at that time. I was too busy trying to latch onto his body to teach him a lesson, and that lesson was that I was always going to win.
As the two of us grappled, the trainers showed up and tried to separate us. Williams wasn’t worth my time, and I easily sidestepped him before lunging again at Apollo. My opponent had stupidly let his trainer take him by the collar. Bad mistake!
But before I could perform my coup de grace, I finally met my match. Looking back now, as I sit on the porch of the house in the California mountains, it still amazes me as to how lucky I was that day. I was fighting mad at Apollo, and trainer Williams couldn’t get close to me. I was going to make the bigger dog pay for humiliating me. Just before I was going to make my final lunge at that stubborn Shepherd, I felt human hands clamp down on my neck.
What? That’s impossible! No human could do that to me.
The man turned me toward him and held me in a vise-like grip. I wanted nothing more than to tear his face off. How dare he stop me from winning!
But no matter how much I struggled, the man refused to let me go. I looked into his eyes and knew immediately I had finally met a human who was worthy to be my match. His eyes bore into mine with confidence and a bit of contempt, like he was saying to me, “You won’t win this.”
He was the first human I had encountered who understood how to talk with his eyes. Dogs understand how to do that, and this man did it as well as any of us. I stopped struggling and let him set me down. I remember being unsure. That was the first time I had ever felt that way. I was always so confident that humans were easy to read and unworthy of my love, my honor, or my protection. Not this one. It was as if we spoke without making a sound. And then, he did the one thing I never would have expected. He gave me the blanket. He let me have the prize.
Poor Apollo was mortified but too obedient to make a fuss. The man just stood there, staring at me as if to say, “Well, you have it now, but did you earn it?” I knew I hadn’t, so when he put his hand out for the blanket, I gave it back. He understood me, and I understood him.
From that day, I wouldn’t let any other man handle me. Only he was worth it.
“I’m telling you,” Williams started. “He’s not trainable. He never lets up. We can’t get him to do what we want.”
“I’ve seen your training,” the other man said. “You can’t beat the spirit out of these animals. They need to be rewarded for the good, not just punished for the bad.”
“That’s how the Germans do it. The SEAL War Dog training program just started, and we’re all learning as we go.”
“Your training isn’t working with this one,” the man said. “Anyone can see that.”
“He’s not trainable!” Williams complained. “He won’t listen.”
“Oh, I think he’s very trainable; he just doesn’t quit until he gets what he wants. He refuses to lose. That’s exactly what they want in a SEAL, and that’s what I want in my dog,” the man replied.
“Hey, if you want to waste your time on him, be my guest. But I’ll bet you a hundred bucks that you’ll leave here in two weeks empty-handed.”
The man smiled at Williams, and they shook hands. Humans do that too much, shaking their hands. I guess they don’t have the nose to tell what the other one has been up to like us dogs do. Their loss, again.
The new man walked up to me and stood, looking down. He was smart. He didn’t crouch next to me to make friends. That showed weakness. Instead, he stood over me and bent his head down, boring his eyes into mine.
“Good dog,” he said. “What do you say we spend some time together?”
I stared back at him and smiled a dog smile. My tongue lolled out, and my lips lifted ever so slightly. My eyes said yes and so did his.
“My name is Carver,” he said.
He reached out and rubbed between my ears. My black face scrunched in response, and I leaned into him slightly to let him continue.
“My name is Ghost,” my eyes said back.
After a few more seconds of head rubbing, he said, “Looks like we’re going to be partners. Carver and Shrek. I like it.”
The Americans spell it wrong. In my native Germany, Ghost is spelled “Schreck,” but if they want to spell it that way, who am I to care?
— 2 —
Wednesday, April 15
Carver
Shrek was sitting on the front porch of Carver’s single-story ranch house. The white adobe building topped by a barrel-tile roof was the former SEAL’s retirement home, purchased when he opted out of the Navy almost two years ago. After nineteen years in the service and three tours of Afghanistan and Iraq, he had decided to muster out while he still could. His last foray into Afghanistan had nearly been his undoing, a roadside bomb detonating less than a hundred meters away. The five-hundred-pound bomb, buried under the Afghanistan dirt, had demolished the mountainside pass on which the platoon had been travelling. But thanks to his canine companion, they had avoided any fatalities. Still, the concussive force of the explosion had ruptured his eardrums and broken blood vessels in his eyes.
Carver and Shrek had been running up front with the platoon’s point man when the dog suddenly stopped in his tracks and pointed at the ground nearly a football field away. Shrek’s warning was all it had taken to halt the SEAL team’s advance. The area where the dog had sensed the explosives was a narrowing of the mountain pass, creating a perfect “fatal funnel” that would have amplified the bomb’s destructive power.
When the SEALs had begun to spread out, searching for a way around the ambush, the Taliban sapper detonated his bomb in the hopes of killing some of Carver’s fifteen-man team. Because of Shrek, the only wounds had been some shrapnel injuries to the point man and the hearing damage suffered by Carver and Shrek.
The dog had saved their lives that day, just one of many times that Shrek had foiled death’s plans.
How Carver became a dog handler for the SEALs was, like many significant events, a pure accident. After his first tour in Iraq, Carver had stumbled on a new SEAL program to incorporate highly trained Military War Dogs into the service. The Army had been using dogs for centuries, primarily as patrol animals and, more recently, as drug interdiction tools. The dogs’ ability to smell and identify chemical substances had become legendary.
With the skyrocketing use of IEDs by the Middle East insurgents, the Navy quickly recognized the value of having their own war dog program. But the Navy had no experience training dogs, and they were looking for volunteers for the new program. It had been a time of learning for all involved, with novice trainers educating novice handlers and their canine partners.
John Eric Carver had always enjoyed being around dogs and felt that he could make a difference to his fellow SEALs. Born and raised in a small town in northeast Iowa, he had grown up around farms and the animals that went with them. Like many communities that relied on farming to keep them on the map, Oelwein was a small town surrounded by miles of corn. The downtown area, if you could call it that, was a throwback to an earlier era of America. Many of the brick buildings that once housed small businesses had been abandoned when a Walmart opened. As a teenager, Carver had seen the little town as a backwater he couldn’t wait to escape.
