Roads Less Traveled (Book 3): Shades of Gray Read online

  Shades of Gray (Roads Less Traveled Book 3)

  Title Page

  Part One:

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Part Two:

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Part Three:

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Epilogue

  A PERMUTED PRESS book

  published at Smashwords

  ISBN (trade paperback): 978-1-61868-044-0

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-045-7

  Roads Less Traveled: Shades of Gray copyright © 2013

  by C. Dulaney.

  All Rights Reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

  We hope you enjoy this release from

  Permuted Press

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  To every action there is always an

  equal and opposite reaction.

  —Newton’s Third Law of Motion

  Part One:

  Everything Happens in Threes

  Prologue

  Through the nighttime woods he ran, gradually slowing, gradually giving up. The harsh sound of his labored breathing could be heard over the noise his boots made stomping through the dry leaves. He’d been running for almost an hour, and while he was in good physical shape, no living body could sustain such a hectic pace for long. Dead bodies, on the other hand, were a different story. His pursuers knew nothing of fatigue; they would hunt him until he dropped dead on his feet. They were easy to outrun over short distances. The problem arose when the living hit physical limits that the dead would not. Then it was only a matter of time, and time was always on the dead’s side.

  The man was middle-aged but well-built. He had to be, considering his previous line of work. He once thought his job had been the best thing that had ever happened to him. Then the world ended, and he realized that the death of civilization was even better. He’d mistakenly thought his purpose in life was “rehabilitating” convicts. Now he knew it was killing things.

  Hell on earth for everyone else had been his own personal heaven.

  Right up until a pack of runners had ambushed him in the last town. Each time he stopped to rest, the pack caught up, forcing him to continue on. They ran him like mad dogs run sheep; chaotic, careless of direction, nothing but the thirst for blood driving them, until the sheep fall dead from exhaustion and fright.

  Of course he had weapons; he’d escaped his previous place of employment with a rifle and handgun. The noise of the shots would only draw more to him, though he would use a single bullet to end his life before ever giving the runners the satisfaction.

  “To hell with that,” he gasped, casting the thought of suicide from his mind. He wouldn’t give up, he never gave up, and he’d be damned if he was going to start now.

  He glanced over his shoulder for a second, trying to judge the distance between himself and the pack, and didn’t notice the abrupt change in scenery or the difference in the ground beneath his feet until he heard a gruff voice barking an order directly in front of him.

  “On the ground! Now!”

  He whipped his head around and saw he was running directly into a line of soldiers. Instinct took over. His knees buckled, his hands went down, and he dropped to his belly on the pavement. He’d run onto a highway. At least a dozen men, all armed, were aiming their weapons on the tree line behind him.

  “Fire!”

  He flinched when the soldiers opened up on the runners emerging from the trees. His hands slid from the asphalt to cover his ears and his mind screamed for him to escape. In a matter of seconds it was over. The lead soldier issued a few orders, then walked over and helped him to his feet.

  “You’re coming with us. We’re headed back to Command, you’ll be safe there.”

  At a loss for words, and so exhausted he could barely talk, he merely nodded his thanks and let the soldier lead him to the tarp-covered truck idling in the middle of the road. He wasn’t happy about handing control of his life over to someone else, but at the moment he’d take whatever assistance he could get. Before climbing into the back of the truck, the soldier clasped his hand and shook it.

  “Where you from, sir?”

  He smirked and hitched his thumb to the north. “Blueville Correctional. Used to work there.”

  The soldier looked at him sideways. “Blueville? That place was overrun a month ago.” His hand inched closer to his sidearm.

  “No shit,” the man replied. “I barely escaped. Been on the road ever since.”

  “So you haven’t been to Blueville recently?”

  “Why would I go back to that hell hole?”

  The soldier’s hand moved from his sidearm to the man’s shoulder. “Come on. You can ride with us. You’d eventually end up at Command anyway.”

  Chapter One

  20 years before Z-day

  I shot my first deer when I was nine years old. So I guess you could say I’m a professional killer, though I’m not sure how long a person has to do something before they’re considered a “professional.” A lifetime?

  I understand the difference between deer and zombies. One you eat, one you decidedly do not. One is tracked and pursued with purpose, and that purpose is generally to feed you and your family. The other is avoided because they want to feed on you and your family. My rational mind truly understands the difference. After fighting for so long, killing so many, everything blurs together into one massive homicidal tendency.

  I remember it like it was yesterday. Dad had pestered our mother for weeks, trying to convince her that her oldest child was, in fact, ready to hunt with him. These conversations always turned into arguments, a few into full-blown fights. I knew Dad would wear her down eventually.

  “No, she’s too young.”

  “Sweetheart, I was her age when the old man first took me out.”

  “Well that was different!” Mom’s voice always had an edge to it. When she raised it, the sound felt like a razor blade sliding down the back of my neck.

  “The only difference is this is your baby girl we’re talkin’ about.”

  Mom fell silent and pouted for several minutes. Dad sighed and took her in his arms.

  “You know she’ll be fine with me. I’ll look after her, she’ll never leave my side.”

  I kept my mouth shut and never intervened on my own behalf. If I had, the dance would’ve been over. I stayed out of the way, either leaving the room once “the discussion” started, or slinking around the corner so I could listen in. Dad would always catch me, though he never gave away my location. He’d simply shoot a subtle wink my way and carry on as though I wasn’t there.

  The night before the first day of doe season, he finally got his way. Mom, of course, had a list of cond
itions. It didn’t matter. I was going hunting with my Dad. No amount of fussing from her could dampen my excitement.

  He woke me up before daylight, helped me dress in the new hunting camo he’d secretly bought for me before even broaching the topic with Mom, and gave me yet another refresher on my rifle. What to do, what not to do, how to load it, where the safety was, all that. I rolled my eyes but bit my tongue. He’d been teaching me everything he knew about guns since I was old enough to hold one, yet I remained patient with his fatherly fretting.

  “Stop fidgeting.”

  “Sorry.”

  We’d been in the tree stand for only thirty minutes. I was nine. A half an hour was like three days in kid-time. I watched him closely, mimicking his actions. I wanted to be just like him. Quiet, calm, enduring. That only lasted another ten minutes.

  Two hours later, I had fallen asleep and was drooling down Dad’s coat sleeve. He shook me awake as gently as he could, covering my mouth with one hand and pointing into the trees with his other.

  “There. See it?”

  I gasped. Sixty yards to our right stood a doe.

  I didn’t think much of it at the time. Why would I, I was nine? Later in life I would look back on this exact moment and wonder what it said about me that my first reaction was to kill, instead of being awestruck or some other such nonsense by the beauty of the animal. The excitement of an upcoming kill, that’s what I felt.

  My rifle lay across my lap. As soon as my eyes found the big brown beast, I jerked it up, making a fair amount of noise in the process.

  “Shhh, easy does it. Slow movements, remember?” Dad whispered. My nod was barely perceptible. “Just like we practiced. You can do it.”

  My little hands gripped the rifle, one on the stock, one around the grip. I ran over our lessons in my head and pulled the butt against my shoulder. Dad talked me through it, his mouth pressed to my toboggan-covered ear. The doe still hadn’t moved. She was standing broadside with her head turned, watching us.

  “Can you find her in the scope?”

  “Yeah.” My voice dropped to the same excited hush as his.

  “Steady. Put your crosshairs behind her shoulder, remember?”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  Then he said something that would stick with me the rest of my life. “Exhale slowly. At the end, squeeze your trigger. Squeeze, don’t pull.”

  What we learn young, we never forget. I killed that doe with a single shot. Dad was very proud. I was so happy I nearly peed my nine-year-old pants. It was a good day. Even now, years later, most of the details of that day are fuzzy, having faded with age. But I’ve never forgotten Dad’s advice.

  Exhale slowly. Squeeze the trigger.

  * * *

  November 16th: thirteen months after Z-day

  The town of Laurel Grove glistened like diamonds in the early morning sun. A storm the night before had blanketed the area with three inches of fresh snow, giving everything a surreal, dreamlike appearance. The roofs sparkled, the streets shimmered, and the lawns gleamed. Smoke drifted from a few chimneys in the center of town, the smell of burning wood faint in the air. Overnight the valley had taken on the form of a Christmas snow globe.

  Only one thing seemed out of place.

  “How long ‘til they break in ya think?” Jake asked from the saddle of his new mount.

  “Not long,” I answered.

  Kneeling down on one knee at the edge of a rocky outcropping, I’d been surveying the situation through a set of binoculars as Mia and Jake sat quietly on their horses behind me. A distress call from the survivors here a week ago had led us to this particular location; a wide valley between two mountains, roughly seventy-six miles from the Winchester, the former country club we’d been living in since the previous spring. We’d only arrived an hour before dawn and set up a cold camp halfway down the mountain closest to Laurel Grove. It served as a safe location to study the town while we planned our next move.

  “Well whatever the plan is, we better do it now. That fence is starting to break,” Mia noted.

  Surrounding four houses almost in the center of town was a privacy fence, just like the ones used to separate backyards from nosy neighbors. From the information Michael had gathered from these survivors, they’d moved into these four homes a few weeks after Z-day because they were very close together, and had erected the fence shortly afterward. How they had survived this long was anybody’s guess. I suppose from raiding all the other houses and scavenging what they could from the store in town. There were fourteen people in total living in those houses, including five kids and an 82-year-old man.

  Outside the failing fence were thirteen and a half runners. I say half because one dumb bastard had somehow become separated from his legs. Most likely that one wouldn’t be a problem, unless it was just as fast on two hands as the others were on their feet.

  “We’ll have to be quick. No way we can get them all out on horseback, so if they don’t have transportation, we’ll have to call for an Evac,” I said, rubbing a hand over my face.

  We’d been working closely with the National Guard the past eight months, searching for other survivors and sniping deadheads when we could. Mostly we killed zombies; living people were in short supply. Our leader, Michael and his right-hand man, John, had set up a long-range radio back at the club, thanks to the good Captain Waters, and had so far located twenty pockets of survivors. We’d been working in groups of three, going down the list, traveling to their locations by riding through the back country, and trying to bring them all back to the prison. That’s where an Evac might come in. If the survivors didn’t have vehicles or horses, the National Guard flew in and picked them up.

  We were left to clean up afterwards.

  And yes, that is as messy as it sounds.

  So far, we’d saved about half the dwindling population. The other half had either been killed before we arrived, or shortly afterward during evacuation. It all depended on how many runners had beaten us to the punch; how well we could hold the runners off once the helicopter landed. We thought their appetites were ravenous before? Now that their food supply was becoming increasingly limited, their appetites had become hideously insatiable.

  “There’s only a dozen or so, shouldn’t be a problem,” Jake said as he attached the suppressor to the end of his barrel.

  I snorted and looked over my shoulder. “How many times do I have to tell you? Stop saying that.”

  “’Bout 375 more times oughta do it.”

  “Alright, ladies, let’s get this done and get down there.” Mia dismounted, her suppressor already attached.

  I pulled mine from inside my coat and screwed it into position. Thank you, West Virginia National Guard. After repositioning myself on the cold outcropping, and making room for the other two, I set my bipods to the correct height and found the runners in my scope. The fence was about to give way. Thankfully it was still upright. Basically.

  “Take out the ones on the fence first, then work your way out. No sudden movements,” I whispered.

  Mia and Jake were nodding on either side of me, both dead-steady and looking through their scopes. Small puffs of white came from our nostrils as we exhaled, the bitter cold air turning our cheeks red and making our noses run. We were bundled up ridiculously; Jake’s grandmother, Nancy, wouldn’t have let us leave the house otherwise. Lying on my belly against a frozen rock reminded me to thank her later for her incessant nagging and worrying.

  After hearing Jake and Mia flip their safeties off, I flipped mine and found the first zombie with my scope. It was a guy about my age, wearing a WVU sweatshirt and jeans with a hole in the knee. He looked fresh and intact, except he was missing a boot. Other than that, and the way he was screaming and throwing himself against the wooden fence, he could have been just another college guy coming home for the weekend. This was, and would probably always be, the hardest part. Killing the first one. After that, a cold numbness settled in and you were no longer aware of what or who you were k
illing.

  I sometimes thought we were turning into the very things we had come to hate. Mindless killers. The only difference being the deadheads didn’t have a choice in what they were. A year was all it had taken. A year of running, fighting, and killing. Some would argue it wasn’t murder if you were protecting yourself or those around you. Hell, I’d be the first to defend that. But we struggled with the decisions that had to be made. Are the zombies still people? Do they think? Do they feel pain or fear? They’re the walking dead; don’t they deserve the same respect we have always paid our dead?

  After a year of this shit, we no longer cared about any of these questions. Hardened and cynical, we moved ever forward, never looking back, never considering the morality of what we were doing…what we were forced to do.

  Eliminate the enemy.

  These things that had once been people simply became targets.

  “Get this train movin’, Kase. My nuts are crawlin’ up inside me,” Jake whispered.

  This interruption distracted me and I flinched just as I was about to squeeze the trigger. I exhaled sharply and snapped my head to the side to stare at Jake.

  “Shut. Up.”

  “I’m just sayin’…it’s fuckin’ cold, dude, hurry up.”

  I couldn’t help but notice his grin, crooked as usual, while his body and head remained frozen in place, one eye shut while the other looked through his scope. I bit my tongue and returned my attention to the runners below. I found WVU guy again and took the shot. I watched him pitch to the right and fall against another runner as Mia and Jake opened fire. The runners didn’t show any sign of hearing us; our shots were beautifully muffled by the sound suppressors. And they didn’t seem to notice their brothers and sisters dropping like flies all around them.