Zombies! Episode 3.5: Condemnation and Redemption

By Ivan Turner

When Lily met John Arrick, she thought she was in love. Like her, he was a zombie trapped on an island full of zombies. But he was different from the others. She could tell. When he came back to life, though, she saw new possibilities. Back in civilization now, she is separated from Arrick, Marcus' captive with no idea of what he has in store for her. Lily, though, knows what she wants. She wants to be just like John. She wants to live again.

Call it fate, call it happenstance... call it luck, Lily will find her way into the web of a trio of ladies. Mikayla Deigh. Abby Benjamin. Denise Luco. Together, these three will offer her a path that can lead to salvation or a final death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ivan Turner
• Release date: Feb 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370924110

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.

Book preview

Zombies Episode 3.4: Condemnation and Redemption

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.

Table of Contents

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Afterword

Other Books By Ivan Turner

Chapter I

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Lillian Babcock and she had the worst luck.

Lily was a frail child, born to an overprotective mother and a father who worked long hours just to be away from his family. Because of those long hours, he earned a lot of money, which was not truly a lucky thing for Lily because, if you would have asked her, she might have told you without the slightest hesitation that she would have much rather had a father.

While growing up, Lily had few friends in school. She was never allowed to go and play at a friend’s house and the children that came to her house to play were not invited back because, invariably, they exercised the dangerous behavior that is typically associated with being children.

At the park, Lily was not allowed on the Monkey Bars, the Jungle Jim, or Climbing Carl. She was forbidden from sliding down the slide and prohibited from spinning on the child-go-round. She was permitted on the swings if her mother was there to push her. This lasted until she was eight, when she finally understood the embarrassment of being unable to swing yourself no matter how short your legs were.

As she entered her teen years, her mother’s protective instincts heightened. Despite a fabulous singing voice, Lily was not allowed to participate in school productions. She was not allowed to join clubs. She went in for her first class every morning and came home right after her last class every night. She brought her lunch in a plain pink lunch bag.

Because of the restrictions, she excelled in all of her classes. At no time did she consider this lucky. She wasn’t stupid, but neither was she extraordinarily intelligent so luck had nothing to do with it. Instead, her high grades were the result of having nothing better to do than study. It gave her mother a reason to spread her feathers in pride. Her well protected teenaged daughter was clean and safe and a straight A student.

Despite the high grades and the scholarship offers, Lily was not permitted to go to an out of state college. The campus her mother chose was fourteen miles away. With all of the money her father made, they were able to buy her a car so that she could drive back and forth to school. She was not permitted to go anywhere else with the car and she had to text her mother whenever she got where she was going.

Lily carried a heavy course load in college, filling gaps with classes. By twenty one years old, she had more than enough credits to graduate with her political science degree and begin applying to law schools. There were no law schools near where she lived so, for the first time in her life, she would be on her own.

Lily’s mother was angry with her on the day she moved out. There were plenty of jobs nearby. Why did she have to go to law school? Lily hugged her mother tightly and thanked her sincerely for all she had done. She might have hugged her father and offered the same thanks, but he was at work.

As it turns out, Lily’s overprotective mother hadn’t necessarily been doing the wrong thing all of those years by sheltering her little girl from the perils of the world. As mentioned, Lily was extraordinarily unlucky. It could be argued that her poor luck was the result of her having no ability to fend for herself in the wild due to her mother’s helicopter style of parenting. It could also be said that Lily’s poor luck was the result of not really having the role model her father was supposed to be throughout the course of her life. It could also be said that Lily’s poor luck was the result of an ancient Irish curse that was laid upon her as an infant in the cradle when visited on the night of her birth by a malevolent leprechaun.

But Lily wasn’t Irish.

Lily’s first apartment had no heat and she lost her deposit when she moved out. Her mother was too busy trying to get her to move home to provide any real help and her father dropped her an email with some advice that was well outside the bounds of her abilities to follow. Her second apartment was better. She moved in with another girl who took care of all of the hard stuff but exacted a high price in privileges. Lily was used to restrictions so she hardly noticed. Her mother, though, complained to her over the phone about her bitch of a roommate and demanded that she do something about it. Of course, that something included, exclusively, moving home.

Lily was not moving home. Despite her unfortunate experiences, the small taste of freedom she had had meant too much to her to give it up. She tried socializing.

Lily was somewhat inept when it came to the party scene. She drank a little bit of alcohol and got a vicious headache. She took a puff of marijuana and spent the rest of the evening convinced that her mother was watching her through, not a camera, but a crystal ball. At twenty four years old, she had her first sexual encounter which left her unsatisfied and pregnant. Lost and frightened, she finally gave in and moved back home.

No matter how much her mother condemned her for the behavior that had landed her in this situation, she was excited to be a grandmother and promised that they would raise the child together. This terrified Lily, who wanted nothing more than to abort the baby but didn’t quite know how to go about it with her mother fussing over her every second. Her father was, as always, no help.

Ultimately, it didn’t matter. In her second month, Lily miscarried. Under the circumstances, one might consider this a stroke of good luck, but no. Though she hadn’t wanted a child, certainly not one to share with her mother, Lily was physically and emotionally devastated