Zombies! Episode 3.0: Deigh of the Dead

By Ivan Turner

There's a new sheriff in town. After five years and one too many tragic incidents, it's time to shake up the NYPD Undead Unit. Captain Mikayla Deigh, a veteran of the police force, steps in to fill that role. When she gets there, however, she finds that the Unit is not what she expected it to be. It's current commanding officer, a zombie cop from the old days, is less concerned about losing his seat than he is about who is taking it over.

On the other side of the bridge, Doctor Denise Luco is finally content. She has a comfortable home that she shares with her son and has escaped the political maneuverings of the government environment. Still, life is not so simple. The research she wants to conduct is blocked at every turn and it seems that her escape from her past is fleeting, if not a complete illusion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ivan Turner
• Release date: Sep 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370005826

Ivan Turner

A child of the movies, I was always consumed by fantastic stories told by others and translated into adventures to be retold by me through the action figure medium. As I grew older, I put the action figures away and moved into the realm of role playing. Though I never outgrew role playing, I certainly don't have the time for it anymore. Since I was eleven years old, I've been pouring almost every ounce of creative energy I have into writing.I graduated college in 1993 with a degree in computer science. I tried my hand at programming for a couple of years and found it pretty unsatisfying. I later became a partner at a comic book store, where I spent several years. Though it wasn't a financial success, the experience I gained from running the store and the people that I met (many of whom I'm still in touch with today) was priceless. After leaving the store, I settled into a career of teaching. I still teach at a public high school in New York. Ironically, I've picked up computer programming again, which is what I mostly teach.I've been writing the whole time.I released my first book electronically in 2010. Forty Leap was a turning point for me in both style and story building. The Book of Revelations, which was written earlier but released later, was sort of a midway point between the writer I was and the writer I've become. I experimented with a very odd style and a story that employed diverse characters and controversial situations.In September 2010, I released the first installment of Zombies! Zombies! has been a tremendous success for me that came very close to being made into a television series. Since Zombies!, I have written a five part miniseries called Castes and have been working on developing tabletops games, the first of which, ApocalypZe, was published in early 2014.Now, 6 years later, a 3rd Zombies! series is due to be released in September of 2016.

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Zombies Episode 3.0: Deigh of the Dead

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2016 by Ivan Turner

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

The people and events in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental.

Special thanks to Chris Hanson for his brilliant cover artwork.

Shoutout to Meathook. A true survivor.

Prologue

Out in the distance, the cruise line ship looked as serene as a summer day. It was dark and quiet, with only the running lights showing any life at all. Behind it, the bustling city of New York sparkled in contrast to its utterly sublime existence. Of course, it wasn’t supposed to look like that. It was supposed to be bright and loud and rocking so hard with the motion of its dancing passengers that it battled the waves of the river itself. When Cortez had been on cruise lines, he’d spent three hours drinking and shouting on deck while the boat chugged its way around the island of Manhattan. He’d been focused entirely on the girls and the booze and had experienced a level of fun the alcohol had erased the next morning. This was no cruise line. It was a tomb.

What the hell took so long? the lieutenant was saying to Coast Guard officer in charge, a slender man by the name of Willings. The officer wasn’t taking the reprimand well.

I told you, the captain radioed in a disturbance about an hour ago. How the hell were we supposed to know it wasn’t just some drunken teenagers getting rowdy?

You couldn’t know, thought Cortez. The question really was, how did you find out?

Three Coast Guard officers had boarded the ship twenty minutes before. Their little boat was hidden behind the much bigger cruise liner, completely invisible from their vantage point on the pier. All in all, three officers should have been more than enough to put down whatever nonsense some drunken teenagers had raised. Instead, those three officers were dead. The fourth one, the one who had remained on the boat, had had just enough time to radio in the true nature of the disturbance.

Zombies!

And so, the NYPD Undead Unit had been called in to handle the situation. Cortez, himself, had been just about to go off duty, but it was his squad going into the field and Lieutenant Rollins had insisted he lead them. Even if he hadn’t, Cortez would have suited up and gone. It wasn’t like him to shirk his responsibilities. After almost two years on the unit, he wasn’t about to throw away the respect and position he’d worked so hard to earn.

As always, his officers were armored from head to toe in riot gear. Getting bitten by a zombie may not have meant a death sentence anymore, but it was no walk in the park either. The medication, Olexynil, saved you from death unless the infection spread too fast or you waited too long. That was rarely the case with a Unit member. They carried ample supplies on missions. They had the stuff in needles and jokingly called them Cooties Shots. Once you were medicated you were safe, but it didn’t completely eradicate the bacteria. Those little buggers died off in droves at the beginning, but there were always some strong ones that lingered and hid in the darkest parts of your body. They were harmless as long as they weren’t allowed to reproduce, but if you went off your meds for too long, you died and you turned.

While Cortez was doing a mental analysis, Rollins was handing out orders to the other squad leader on site. There were ten officers in each squad, but Cortez didn’t think the lieutenant would send them both in. Twenty zombie cops with rifles and riot gear would be tripping over each other in the confined space.

Mike, he said and Cortez turned to acknowledge him. "I’m sending you in first. I want the best assessment for neutralizing it that doesn’t include scuttling the boat. For all we know there are survivors on there who need medication."

Cortez nodded, glancing over at Steubens, the other squad leader. Steubens was a short and stocky woman who had clawed her way up from the beat. She had fought and scrapped for every ounce of respect she’d earned and every promotion that had come her way. No one liked her and Cortez was in the majority. But he respected her. He’d fought side by side with her enough times to understand that she knew her stuff. Her squad was lucky to have her as their leader.

Not that he wasn’t better. Rollins had just said so himself.

Cortez was just twenty six years old, the middle child of three. His brother was just two years older than he was but they had a nineteen year old sister. Baby Shannon, they still called her, and she hated them for it. Of course, Shannon hated almost everyone and everything. She was a nasty bitch who took out her frustrations on the world around her. Their mother was her favorite target.

They boarded a larger Coast Guard Vessel, packing into the boat’s stern as the pilot got into the box and started them moving. It was ten minutes out to the liner, with the chilly October wind blowing against their faces. Cortez could smell the water. It reminded him of the beach, laced with something undefinable. Something disgusting.

We’ll go on deck and disperse outside, Cortez said, addressing his squad. "Jacoby and Graye will go on first with the rest