Zombies! Episode 3.7: Job Insecurity

By Ivan Turner

Ed has been working for Albert Chatham a long time. He's one of those employees who does the kinds of jobs no one else will do and is rewarded with money and access to all kinds of information. When it comes time to move the most precious of inventory out of the headquarters, Ed and his team are the men for the job. But the job goes wrong. Now, with John Arrick clones loose in the sub-levels of ZCF headquarters, it's only a matter of time before everyone in the building is put in danger.

As an employee of ZCF, Denise Luco finds herself right in the thick of the infestation. It seems her time with ZCF is finally coming to an end. But it's bittersweet with the danger all around her and the fact that the most powerful zombies seem to resemble her primary medical subject. John Arrick. When she sees what these clones can do, she understands that the danger to her and her companions is only a fraction of the danger to world should even one of the clones escape the facility.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ivan Turner
• Release date: Apr 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370950065

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 3.6: Job Insecurity

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

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Afterword

Other Books By Ivan Turner

Chapter I

Ed had been working for Albert Chatham for what seemed like his entire life. When they were kids, he had done Albert’s dirty work in the playground. As adults, he was doing his dirty work in the business world. They say that there's a woman behind every great man. Ed was pretty sure there was also some loser who was willing to stick his hands into the filth and root around for the rich stuff. That was Ed.

Never particularly good in school or personable enough to develop strong relationships of his own, Ed had been pretty smart hitching his wagon to Albert Chatham. When they'd graduated high school, Albert with high marks and plenty of awards, Ed had worried that his money train had dried up. With Albert going off to college and Ed staring at a life of stocking shelves or cleaning toilets, the fear had set in. Make no mistake. Even Ed knew there was more honor in cleaning toilets than in most of what he did. He didn't care, though. There were certain kinds of dirt he could tolerate and others he could not. When the brilliant plan to pick himself up and follow Albert Chatham to college had come to him, he had embraced it with the giddiness of a child on Christmas. What had surprised him was Albert’s excitement. He hadn't realized that Albert was just as worried about losing Ed as Ed was about losing Albert.

Albert spent four years in Massachusetts, studying business and making money through the stock market. He paid Ed to do all sorts of things ranging from dropping off his laundry to procuring recreational drugs and women. He once paid Ed a large sum to scare someone, but the someone wouldn't be scared. That was one job Ed remembered well. It was the job that taught him that he wasn't the only thing out there that was scary. Though his ultimate solution had earned him bonus pay, its results still popped up in his dreams every once in awhile.

Now there were zombies. Well, there had been zombies for about five years. They were freakin’ scary. Ed found them scary. It wasn't the fact that they were walking corpses. He could deal with that. He could deal with the injuries and the decomposition and the smell. Things did not look scary to Ed. Things did not sound or smell scary either. The only way something became scary was based on what it could do to you and how easily it could do it. A zombie could kill you with just a bite or a scratch. Worse yet, a zombie could convert you into one of them. That was scary. Ed, for all of his wrongdoings, was a God fearing man who believed that the soul rented the body from the Almighty for a brief period of time and was then held accountable for the damage. Ed was prepared to pay for his sins. He would confess on his deathbed and face his maker ready to atone. But if the zombie devil stole his body, then he didn't know what would happen to the soul. He was not prepared for that.

Ed had been extremely unhappy when Albert had chosen to go into the zombie industry, so much so that he had almost left Albert’s employ. Apparently, though, theirs was a symbiotic relationship. It was easy enough to say that Ed needed Albert more because cheap thugs were a dime a dozen and Ed had no other marketable job skills. And, while cheap thugs were, in fact, a dime a dozen, trustworthy men who would do just about anything were few and far between. The history between them made Ed virtually indispensable as far as Albert was concerned. He paid Ed a good deal more than he paid all his other dirty workers. He paid Ed for his service, his concerns, and his loyalty. On more than one occasion, Ed’s observant nature had shed some light on a potential threat to the company. Without Ed, Albert Chatham would likely have been in prison long before.

Ed had two bosses on the team while really not having any bosses at all. He was as much a company spy as he was a thug. No one knew about his history or relationship with Albert Chatham. Not even Ms. Huang. And there were few secrets Albert kept from that icy witch. Ed kept a sharp eye on his bosses, taking their instruction without any authority to countermand them, but with every ability to have them removed on a moment’s notice. It was real power, knowing that there were very, very few people above him in the company. He had abused that power several times, taking out people he didn't like. Sometimes his gripes appeared legitimate to Albert. Other times, Albert knew what was going on. He mostly went along with it. Keeping Ed happy was a priority, but Ed also needed to know his place. When he had tried to get Patrick fired, Albert had overridden him. Ed did not like working with the privileged white kids. Patrick came from a rich family and had squandered every opportunity that the United States had laid on his doorstep. Now he was a low end hauler, pushing boxes around the office and shuffling zombies from cage to lab and lab to cage. Too bad that, as stupid and useless as he was, he still had that sense of entitlement. He looked at Ed as if he was a piece of