Zombies! Episode 3.9: Pandora's Box

By Ivan Turner

The time of reckoning has arrived. Armed with the information she needs to shut down August Reuter and all that he has wrought over the past year, Mikayla Deigh makes a push to end the conflict. While confronting Marcus, Kraemer, Shannon, and Reuter himself, Deigh is tireless, determined to see the last of the discrimination that has tainted society as a whole.

While Deigh is working hard at saving humanity, John Arrick is risking everything by bringing his clones back to the streets. Settled in the middle of Central Park, Arrick waits with no demands until the police send the one person who may have some effect on him. Lily, who loves him. But will even her experience and understanding of what it's like to die and become a zombie and be brought back to life once again help pull Arrick back from the brink of destruction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ivan Turner
• Release date: Jun 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370689866

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 3.9: Pandora’s Box

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

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Epilogue

Afterword

Other Books By Ivan Turner

Chapter I

Alan Forsythe stood on street in the sweltering heat of July wondering why he felt the need to be there when his team went on raids. He supposed it had to do with the likes of Anthony Heron and Lance Naughton. As someone coming up within the ranks of the police force, he had aimed to emulate the careers of those two men. He’d studied the development of the Undead Unit, reading report after report by officers like Culph and Smith and Rollins. It had been his aim to get himself into the Unit, to become one of the heroes fighting wave after wave of undead hordes. He’d have had his assignment, too, if the D.I.D. hadn’t come along.

Most people thought that the Department of Infectious Defense had come about in a day at the whim of August Reuter, but that simply wasn’t the case. You couldn’t just launch a division of the New York City Police Force. It had, in fact, been in the planning stages for more than a year. Originally, Reuter had earmarked the head of the department for Mikayla Deigh. When circumstances had led her to take over the Undead Unit, the powers up above had started shifting things around. That was when the position and the promotion had opened up for Forsythe. He wasn’t in charge of the division, but he held singular authority. Originally, Forsythe was going to turn down the job. There was no glory in it. He wanted to fight zombies. Over time, though, he came to realize that the fight had, in fact shifted. There were no more waves of zombies. Olexynil had made that particular fight obsolete. The D.I.D., however, was preempting the disease. They were to be the first line of defense. The heroes of the century. That was what Forsythe had signed up for.

Inside the building was a group of infected. The information had come in that morning and Forsythe had gotten a team together within the hour. With the failure of the islands, the government had realized the real nature of the hazard sitting right underneath them. Every single island had met the same fate. The sick had begun to die and turn. The zombies had swallowed up everything. Now there was nowhere to send those who were infected with the plague. The thousands who had avoided the quarantine order hid out in groups all across the country and the world. In some countries, the military were rounding them up and sending them to camps. In the States, police divisions like the D.I.D. were responsible for capturing them. Forsythe relished his job. In those early days, he'd had to fight for respect. Now, though, the D.I.D. had surpassed the Undead Unit. With the number of infected dwindling, the number of zombies was also dwindling. They were making the Undead Unit obsolete.

Forsythe smiled.

We're ready, Reade said, coming up next to him.

Forsythe nodded. His squads were comprised of four instead of the eight that Rollins used. His people rarely needed to fight. The sick were not yet like the zombies. They were cowering and afraid, hiding in the shadows. Zombies were predators.

Tullen, Joon, and Stanton fell in behind Reade and moved inside.

Forsythe leaned back against the car and affixed an earpiece to his ear. He tested the connection and Reade’s voice came back crystal clear. Despite the summer sun beating down on him, Forsythe was at peace. It might take five years or ten, but he was contributing toward making the world a better, safer place for humanity.

Reade relayed their position as they moved through the building. Each officer carried a rifle and wore a vest. Sometimes the infected armed themselves. There were guns everywhere. Sometimes they even had the audacity to take a shot at an officer. That was rare, though. Their best defense was to stay hidden. Once ferreted out, there was little they could put up in the form of resistance.

Intelligence reports thirteen infected holed up in a third floor apartment.

Yes, sir, Reade answered. We're moving up the stairs now.

Infected was the word applied to people who had contracted the zombie plague now. There was no more talk of them being sick. Instead, they were the disease, infiltrating society, making it sick. With the general public now starting to fall into line with government policies regarding the infected, zombie crimes across the nation had fallen dramatically. People weren't making money off of it anymore. The only thing Forsythe had to worry about was whether or not he was doing his job too well. When all of the infected were gone, what would become of the D.I.D.?

A gunshot startled him. It had come from inside the building, high up.

Reade?

There was no answer.

Reade, report.

There was a second gunshot. Then a series of four more.

A second squad waited nearby and Forsythe didn't hesitate in sending them inside. That was another thing he’d learned from Anthony Heron. Caution is the better part of valor.

Lieutenant, this is Tullen, came a different voice over the radio.

Forsythe was about to answer when one of the third floor windows blew out in an explosion of flame and debris. Forsythe spun away from the blast, plastering the front of his body to the car and exposing his back. Tiny projectiles bounced off of his suit jacket. He could feel the stings of glass and wood shards through the fabric. The barrage lasted only a second or two.

Tullen? he said into his head piece. Ignoring the pain in his back, knowing that his jacket had been torn in six places and the blood was beginning to soak through his shirt, he ran up to check on his second squad. Reade?

Stanton, sir, she sounded weak, in pain. We were ambushed.

Running back to the car, he grabbed the radio and ordered backup and two ambulances.

The second squad went inside. He wanted to shout at them to be careful, but he didn't. All the caution in the world would not have saved them from the second explosion, which took out almost the whole of the third floor.

Chapter II

Deigh stood uncomfortably in the park, waiting for her meeting to begin. What she was doing was dangerous, stupid. Marcus had warned her against it. They had the evidence they needed. Why risk it all by warning the enemy? He was right, she knew. She didn't like to admit it. Even after almost four months of working with him, she still didn't trust him or his cronies. His motives were questionable and his methods even more so. But Deigh wasn't spiteful in that way. She had not called the meeting with Reuter because Marcus didn't want her to. She called the meeting so that she could see the guilty look on his face. What would Reuter look like when confronted with what he had wrought?

The wait was stretching out. He was delaying on purpose, allowing her to gather her impatience so that he could negotiate from a position of strength. Even as she was thinking that it was she who should have made him wait, she remembered that this was not a negotiation. She was there to talk and he would be there to listen. Period.

She noticed him sitting on a bench about twenty feet away. It was on the jogging path, but in full view of the playground. Reuter was watching the children play. That was going to be a thing. It was all about the children. Deigh could have burst out laughing. He really was going to try to plead his case. Did he intend on attempting to win her back?

Consigned to the new location, Deigh marched over to where he sat and planted herself directly between him and the playground.

This isn't a very secure spot, Mikayla.

No, she agreed. Not for either of us.

He shook his head. "Are you planning on assassinating