Children's Brigade - Battlefield Z: The Battlefield Z Series

By Chris Lowry

What would you do to save your kids?

 

A desperate father leads a ragtag group of survivors on a hunt for his children through a zombie filled wasteland where the dead walking aren't the worst thing to survive.

 

Who will he become to find his kids and keep them safe?

 

How far would you go?

 

Find out in book two in this 18 book series that fans of The Walking Dead and Reacher stay up all night swiping.

 

Get your copy today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris Lowry
• Release date: Feb 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9798215638057

Chris Lowry

Chris Lowry is an author and adventure seeker who has traveled the globe exploring new worlds and writing about his thrilling experiences. With over one hundred thrillers, science fiction, and urban fantasy novels to his name, as well as more than a thousand articles published across various publications, Chris has established himself as a master storyteller and a leading voice in the world of action and adventure. Whether he's fighting off hordes of undead in a post-apocalyptic wasteland or braving the depths of outer space, Chris is always ready for his next thrilling adventure. Follow his journey as he battles against impossible odds and becomes the hero that the world needs.

Book preview

Chapter 1

BATTLEFIELD Z – CHILDREN’S BRIGADE

Georgia is a big state. When I drove this direction to go visit my children, it was a straight shot up 75 to Atlanta, just six hours or more depending on traffic. From Atlanta, I’d take the bypass around the south side of the city and hook up with Interstate 20 to roll into Alabama and points west. Atlanta was only forty something miles from the Alabama border, so when I travelled to Arkansas the trip seemed shorter when we flipped over into Central Standard Time. The clocks reset to an hour back and it felt like you gained something, even if the trip was nine hundred fifty six miles no matter which way you drove it.

We stayed west of I-75 as we crossed into Georgia. There was a brown sign on the side of the road in a pine forest that told us one minute we were in Florida and the next second it was Georgia. No change in the landscape, no change in the atmosphere, nothing to let you know it was anything different except for a sign.

A half mile down the road we found another sign. This one made us stop. It said GO BACK. Written in red that ran down the whiteboard looking for all of the world like bloodstains.

Brian pulled the car over to the side of the road. We could have stopped in the middle of the two lane highway without much worry because we hadn’t seen anyone or anything since our last encounter at the Church. After rescuing Hannah from religious nuts determined to sacrifice her to God, we were attacked by a militia General bent on revenge. He wanted me dead for killing his best man. One of our group, Julie, blew herself and several of his soldiers up with a hand grenade to buy our freedom.

We stopped just enough to clean up and get some supplies, and a second time to change cars when the first one started to run low on gas. But no one spoke.

Brian kept the speedometer locked at twenty five, just fast enough to keep us making good time and still be able to stop if something popped up.

Like a sign on the side of the road telling us to turn back.

What do you think? he glanced over his shoulder to where I sat in the rear passenger seat.

Anna had been sleeping on my shoulder, with Hannah sprawled against hers, but both stirred when Brian shut off the engine.

I shrugged, checked the rifle by my side one more time to make sure it was loaded and stepped out of the car.

The air smelled like rotten meat.

Not a good omen, I thought. But then most of the places smelled like that now. Towns were full of rotting corpses walking around. I called them Z. Some may refer to them as the walking dead, or zombies, but I was linguistically lazy and just trying to act cool when I came up with Z.

Z’s stink.

So the odor I was smelling could be coming from the woods, or carried up the road on what might otherwise be a pleasant breeze. It could be dead bodies of people, caught in an ambush, their blood used to make the sign. It could even be in my imagination, the stench of this new world just stuck in my nose and no way to get it out. Not enough water in the world to shower it off, like a skunk spray that clings to you until a long bath in tomato juice cleanses the pores.

But I had smelled Anna in the car. Fresh soap and water made her smell clean, nice, and stolen deodorant from the medicine cabinet added a powder scent to her as she slept against me.

I was sure the stench was coming from outside.

How’s it look? Brian called through the open window.

You can see what I see, right?

Yeah, but you know, your eyes might be more practiced.

At what?

Seeing Z.

If I see a Z I’m getting back in the car.

What about Marauders.

Do you see any?

He peered through the bug crusty windshield and then craned his neck out of the window to double check the road behind us.

I don’t see any.

Then we’re both looking at the same thing.

What about an ambush? Peg called over him.

Peg was Brian’s partner, though I don’t know what they were to each other before the Zombie apocalypse. I think they got together at a house where a group was hiding until a kid got sick and died in his sleep. He went Z and killed a couple more and their hiding spot was no more. I ran into them on Hwy 1792 when they were running from a herd of Z.

I was hiding in between rows of stuck cars from my own herd, and when the two merged I thought we were in trouble.

But we worked together and stopped them.

Blew them up actually, though I can’t recall exactly whose fault it was blowing up a couple hundred cars to kill a couple of hundred zombies. It really seemed like overkill, even if it was accidental.

The woods looked safe to me. Or the same, if not safe.

If someone was hiding there, the camo they were using was effective. I gave a moment’s thought to another militia and recalled that Valdosta was near by and home to a military base.

I don’t see anything, I returned to the car after walking around and watering the ground past the trunk. I really hoped no one shot me while my pants were unzipped. I mean give a guy a little bit of dignity.

Besides, I had already been shot in the head. Technically it was a deep graze, stitched up now with Frankenstein stitches courtesy of Anna who I learned after got all of her medical training from binge watching Scrubs on Netflix. But a bullet wound along the skull is still being shot in the head no matter how you want to get technical about it, so I was going to wear that particular badge of honor with distinction.

I climbed back in the car.

Well?

Did you see any other roads back there?

The last one I recalled was thirty or forty miles ago and it was pointed southwest. If we turned around now we’d lose daylight, lose gas and lose miles, and that thought alone made me anxious. I was trying to get to Arkansas to reach my kids, and going backwards was not in my plan. A sixteen hour drive had already taken five days, mixed with walking, running and fighting with militia and religious groups. I wasn’t ready to add turning back to find another route to the list.

It’s probably safer to go back.

A Z lumbered out of the woods and began to slip and slide up the side of the road toward the car. A second followed from the tree line and lumbered our direction.

I don’t think anywhere is safe anymore, said Harriet.

Brian cranked up the car and dropped it in gear.

We’re going to have to change rides soon, he said as he pulled back onto the road and sent up a twirling whirlwind of leaves in our wake.

I nodded as we kept going forward and wondered what exactly we were driving ourselves into.

Chapter 2

Are you sure? Brian stared at the scuffed toes of his boots. We were standing outside the moat, a literal twelve foot wide creek that circled a Queen Anne style home in the middle of a pasture. The house had two large sheds between it and what he hoped was a large stocked pond, so it was surrounded by water on all sides. The long winding drive was paved, but crossed over a deep culvert onto the island. As far as forts went, he could do worse.

The sheds were stocked with food, some from the previous owner, and the rest from a raid we made into the neighboring towns, which set me back three more days. It did give them enough provisions for months, and with the protection of the moat, it was as safe a place as could be found in this new Z infested world.

Brian of course wanted me to stay.

I’ve got to know, I said and checked my pistol. We had only known each other less than a week, but war makes strange bonds, and strong bonds at that. We had been through a couple of battles together, and that was making the goodbye harder than it had to be.

If I didn’t need to keep going to Arkansas I would have stayed.

He still had plenty to do.

Board up the windows, I told him. I’d see if I could fix the motor in the shed so in case you get overrun by the front, you have a way to bolt across the pond.

Lake.

We had this debate before, and neither of us had Google to ask about the difference between a pond and a lake. My experience with lakes were the reservoirs built by the Corp of Engineers that stretched for miles and created a couple of hundred miles of shoreline. Brian was from Florida so a lake was any body of water big enough to hold a gator or three and a pond was what held storm runoff. It