Tanked
TANKED
A Brother’s Creed Prequel
JOSHUA C. CHADD
Copyright © 2018 Joshua C. Chadd
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by
Blade of Truth Publishing Company
Cover art by Covers by Christian
This is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and events portrayed in these stories are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Contact the author via email at: joshuacchadd@outlook.com
Contents
Copyright
Part 1
Part 2
Author’s Note
About the Author
The Brother’s Creed Series
Outbreak
Battleborn
Wolf Pack
Bad Company (Coming Soon)
Book 5 (TBA)
Part 1
The Beginning of the End
Allen sat at his desk playing World of Warcraft on his Alienware computer while watching Family Guy and listening to Demon Hunter. Most people would be overwhelmed with all the noise and distractions, but not him. He’d always been able to focus better with a lot going on around him, even when he was doing homework back in high school.
He cursed, slamming a fist on his desk. One of his guildmates, xXxFairyKillerxXx, had just Leeroy Jenkin’d their entire raid.
“What a dick,” he mumbled to himself then turned his mic on. “AFK.”
He rose from his chair and walked into the kitchen of his small, one-bedroom apartment in Fort Collins, Colorado. Most of the walls were covered in video game and movie posters, rock music paraphernalia, ornamental weapons, and other random crap. One whole side of the apartment, the one with the large window, was covered in a variety of plants—from an eight-foot-tall Money Tree named Dolla Dolla Billz to a Wandering Jew, aptly named Moses. Most of the people who came over were surprised by how homey the whole place felt. He’d taken this small, slightly rundown apartment and transformed it into his own little corner of the world.
He opened a kitchen cabinet, pulled out a tortilla, smothered peanut butter on it, added a handful of jalapeno cheddar chips, and grabbed a Guinness from the fridge. Returning to his desk, he sat down, put his headset on, bit into his concoction, and took a sip of beer. He leaned forward and got back into the game. He and his guild still had a long night ahead of them. The quest to reforge Val’anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Gods, was anything but quick and hopefully would end with Yogg-Saron giving them a nice long, deafening roar. The hours passed, and the later the night became, the more awake he felt. It was just another Wednesday night in the never-changing life of a twenty-year-old bachelor.
His two days off passed quickly, and come Friday night, he found himself behind the bar in the hellhole that was the Blue Crab, a seafood restaurant catering to the old and usually annoying. Why a restaurant such as this even had a bar and full-time bartender was beyond him. It was probably just to allow everyone else the ease of not having to make the ridiculous drinks this place served. But it was a job, and after taking a hiatus from college two years ago, it’d been the only one he could land that even remotely interested him. So instead of studying biochemistry, he went there five or six nights a week, made just enough money to get by and left, hating it more and more every time. Something needed to change, soon.
This night was going horrendously slowly as it usually did before that one customer came in right before closing and ordered the fruitiest drink that would make him have to dirty all the dishes he’d just cleaned. Sure enough, at five minutes to closing, the bell on the door rang and he didn’t even look up from cleaning the sink. There always had to be that one guy.
A scream brought Allen’s head snapping toward the entrance. Leslie, that night’s hostess, had her hand to her mouth as her wide eyes regarded the man leaning against the doorframe.
“Oh, shit,” Allen said.
The man standing there was covered in blood and seemed like he was about to collapse. His clothing was torn, making it look as though he’d been mugged.
“Help me…” the man said weakly as he sank into a sitting position.
Leslie stood there, completely shocked.
“Leslie,” Allen said, then louder when she didn’t respond. “Leslie!”
She looked over at him, eyes still wide.
“Call 9-1-1 and get ‘em to send an ambulance!”
“Okay,” she said in a shaky voice as she picked up the phone at the host stand.
Allen grabbed a few clean rags and a first aid kit from under the sink and then rushed over to the man. He had some knowledge of what needed to be done; he just hoped he could recall it. Stopping a few feet away, he watched the man, trying to assess him and make sure he didn’t have a weapon. Deeming him low on the threat level, he closed the distance. Allen knelt down, checking the man’s injuries more closely. His left arm was hanging awkwardly and had a wicked tear in it. Blood from the wound soaked his plaid shirt.
That’s a lot of blood for one man, Allen thought.
“Sir, can you tell me your name?” he asked.
“John,” the man gasped.
“May I check your wounds?”
John nodded, closing his eyes against the pain. Allen pulled the scissors out of the first aid kit and cut the man’s shirt down the middle and up both sleeves, allowing it to fall off. John’s arm was missing a large chunk from the bicep and there was a similar wound on his left shoulder that leaked blood at an alarming rate.
“I need more towels and water,” Allen said to his coworkers who were gathering around him. No one responded. “Now!”
A few of them scrambled off to the back room.
“What happened?” Allen asked.
“This crazy couple just grabbed me and started chewing on my damn arm! I pushed them off and ran in here.”
As John finished, he took deeper and deeper breaths. Allen was concerned at the amount of blood that was soaking into the towel he was holding to the damaged shoulder.
“Someone come hold this!” Allen said.
Derek—one of the few people in this place he actually liked—rushed over and took the towel from him, keeping pressure on the wound. Searching through the first aid kit, Allen came up with the clotting agent and ripped open the bag.
“This may hurt a little,” Allen told John.
John nodded weakly. Allen poured the packet onto his shoulder and biceps. John gasped and then his head lulled to the side.
“Is he dead?” Leslie asked from behind Allen.
He checked for a pulse. It was weak but there.
“No. You called 9-1-1, right?”
“Yes, they said it might take awhile with all the traffic tonight.”
“Damn, I don’t think he has awhile.”
“There has to be something we can do!” said Ceana, his worthless manager.
“We have to clean the wound before we can dress it, but first we need to stop the bleedin’ or that doesn’t even matter!”
She shut up. The wait was horrendous, and as the minutes ticked by, Allen became more and more worried. Any second now this man would die and there was nothing he could do about it. Five minutes passed and he went to check John’s pulse as he’d been doing every thirty seconds. Pressing his fingers to John’s neck, he searched for a heartbeat.
There wasn’t one.
“Keep pressure on his wounds!” Allen yelled as he grabbed John and laid him on his back.
He started CPR. Five minutes passed. Then ten. Still, Allen continued to try and resuscitate the man, switching with his coworkers every two minutes. Flashing lights outside told him that the ambulance had finally arrived, but it didn’t matter. After this long, the chance that they could bring him back was slim. Two paramedics burst through the doors, pushing a stretcher, and stopped just inside with a slight look of confusion on their faces. Allen glanced at the nametags clipped onto their dark blue shirts—J. Weber and P. Schnabel.
“What happened here?” Schnabel asked.
“He came through the door like this,” Allen replied. “He said a couple bit him, but his wounds look a lot worse than just a bite.”
“Damn dispatchers,” Weber said. “They gave us the wrong info again. The fire department hasn’t shown up yet?”
“No,” Allen said.
“Must be too busy on all the other calls. How is he?” asked Schnabel, kneeling down.
“He’s had no pulse for ten minutes, but we’ve kept up CPR,” Allen replied.
“Okay,” Weber said. “We’ll step in now.”
Allen swapped with Schnabel, who started CPR immediately while Weber went to the stretcher and retrieved a bag. He pulled out the EKG, wiped the blood from John’s chest, and hooked him up. Pulling out a weird-looking tube, he inserted it into John’s throat and attached a clear hollow bag mask, which he began to squeeze. The whole process took only a minute.
“Help us get him on the stretcher,” Weber said.
“Got it,” Allen said.
Allen and Derek helped, and the two paramedics took John through the doors to the waiting ambulance. Allen followed them outside, not knowing what else to do and feeling hollow inside. For all of his efforts, the man had still died. He might as well not have even done anything. But he’d tried, and that amounted to something. Didn’t it?
The two paramedics loaded the stretcher into the back of the ambulance.
“I think I got somethin’ here!” Weber exclaimed.
“Let’s hit him,” Schnabel said.
John’s body jerked from the defibrillator shock, but nothing happened. They tried again.
Suddenly, John sat bolt upright, his eyes popping open, and Allen’s heart rose in his chest. He’d been able to help after all. He stared at John’s face, a smile on his own. But then that smile faltered. The veins in John’s cheeks and under his chest had burst, creating bruising all over his exposed skin. His eyes were no longer brown, but dull gray, and lifeless. Something was wrong. Allen glanced at the screen of the EKG.
There was no pulse.
“What the hell?” Schnabel said.
John turned to the paramedic with a snarl, grabbing ahold of the man and biting into his neck. Schnabel screamed and Weber attempted to pull the man off. John turned and tried to bite into Weber’s arm, and Weber stepped back, grabbing an oxygen tank.
“Don’t make me hurt you!” Weber yelled.
John stepped off the stretcher, arms outstretched towards Weber. He brought the oxygen tank down on John’s head and he collapsed.
“What the hell?” Allen said, taking a step back.
Weber went over to Schnabel who was still lying on the floor, his body limp as blood pooled from his neck. Weber reached down and felt for a pulse. He cursed, rushing up to the driver’s seat. The ambulance sped out of the parking lot, back door swinging as it jumped the curb. The siren came on and it headed back towards the hospital.
“What was that?” Derek asked, coming over to stand by Allen.
His mind was a jumble of thoughts. Those eyes were wrong. They looked glazed over, like John was dead and then he’d bitten those men. Like… The pieces fell into place.
“Ah, hell,” Allen whispered, shaking his head.
“What?” Derek asked.
“I’m goin’ home,” Allen said, looking at his coworker, “and you should, too.”
“What do you mean?”
Allen looked back inside to see the rest of his coworkers cleaning the blood off the floor. None of them had seen it. Only he had.
“I mean get the hell out of here and lock yourself away. Shit is about to hit the fan.”
Allen strode to his truck in a daze. This couldn’t be happening. He’d just walked out on his job and he didn’t care. If he was right, he wouldn’t need a job anymore.
The drive home confirmed that something was seriously wrong. Emergency vehicles were parked on the streets and in driveways all throughout town. He couldn’t go thirty seconds without seeing lights flashing in the night, painting the city red and blue. It took an extra fifteen minutes to reach his apartment with all the traffic.
Bursting through the door, he immediately turned his TV on to the local news station, but a commercial for Geico was playing so he got on his computer and looked up the local news. There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. He looked up national news—still nothing. On Facebook, he found what he was looking for—an article from that day about a small town in Texas. The town had gone dark and now crazy stories were circulating about the dead coming back to life. There was nothing on any of the major networks and nothing official had been announced, but it was enough to confirm it for him. This was the beginning of the end.
He grabbed his phone and tried calling his two best friends in eastern Montana. No one answered. They were either off the grid doing some crazy stuff or they’d been killed already, although he didn’t think that was the case because they were more prepared than most. They even had a plan for this.
Next, he tried calling his dad but got no answer there, either. It was midnight and he would probably be asleep. Now what should he do? He needed to get out of town, that much was for sure. But should he go south to his dad or north to his friends? His dad had a sufficient supply of weapons and the whole town only had a population of three hundred in the winter, but now, in the summer, that number would be pushing three thousand.
“Damn tourists,” Allen muttered.
His friends would have just as many guns and they lived out in the sticks, but they’d be on the move soon, heading north. At least, that was their plan.
Thinking about his mom, he knew what decision he would’ve made if she was still alive, but she wasn’t. He was almost glad of that—better for her to miss what was coming next than have to live through it. He still would’ve given anything to have her back with him though. She’d been gone for over a year now, but the pain and hollowness inside of him was still there, although it had dulled somewhat. The alcohol helped with that, too.
It was time to make a decision, and sitting here thinking about the past wouldn’t do any good. He had to act. His dad had friends and would be staying in the mountains. He’d be safe on his own. For now, Allen would try and head north. His friends would need him.
Inside his bedroom, he pulled open the drawer to his nightstand. Lying at the bottom was a Colt .45 1911 with textured rosewood grips and a skeletal dragon painted on the slide. He stared at the handgun. He’d never used it on anything other than targets and never imagined he might have to kill with it. In fact, he’d never even killed an animal before, not that he was opposed to it. He’d just never had the opportunity. Now, if he left the relative safety of his apartment, he would have to kill. Maybe not tonight or even tomorrow, but at some point in the near future he would have to kill to survive. He was under no delusions. There were evil people beyond his door. The apocalypse would bring out the worst in some and drive others to kill out of necessity, and he would be one of them.
As he took the handgun from the nightstand, he made a conscious decision then and there. He would do what was necessary to survive, to protect himself and his friends. He would be ready for what was to come and the choices that had to be made. The consequences could be dealt with after the fact. In the moment, he would survive at all costs.
An hour later, Allen was sitting in his truck outside his apartment, making sure he had everything. His backpack was in the back seat with some clothes, food, water, and other items he might need in a hurry. In the bed of his truck, under the cover, he had all his nonperishable food, clothes, and a few of his more durable ornamental swords.
“Oh, damn!” he said, running back inside.
He’d almost forgotten the mother of all weapons. Taking the sword off the wall, he turned to exit his apartment but stopped. It was strange to be leaving his place like this, with all his stuff still inside. He almost felt bad about abandoning his plants, but then he remembered they were just plants. Snatching his black trench coat off a hook by the door, he threw it on and exited his apartment for the last time. He walked down to the parking lot and stood next to his truck, looking back up at the place that had been his home for the last few years. His huge sword with a dragon skull on the hilt that had its horns wrapped around the crossguard—Frostmourne, Bane of Arthas—rested on his shoulder and his 1911 handgun sat in a holster on his hip. Allen felt like just maybe he would make it out of the city tonight, alive and unharmed.
Pulling out of his apartment complex and onto Drake Road, he quickly realized that he had been highly mistaken. He might never make it out of the city at all. Traffic was even worse than before and was practically at a standstill. After an entire thirty minutes of driving, he’d only made it a mile and a half toward the interstate. This was going to be one hell of a long night. The good news was that apart from the multitude of emergency vehicles and everyone deciding they had somewhere to be, he’d yet to see any undead.
“Maybe it isn’t as bad as I thought,” he said.
With the windows down, the cool night air blew the smells of summer into the cab, and he felt himself relaxing. At least he was in his truck with his music playing. There could be a lot worse places to be.
Like back at work, he thought.