Elixr Plague (Episode 1): Vector Read online

  Elixr Plague Episode 1: Vector

  A Zombie Apocalypse Serial

  Marcus Richardson

  Copyright © 2019 by Marcus Richardson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Books by Marcus Richardson

  VECTOR

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  To Be Continued…

  What’s Next?

  Author Contact

  About the Author

  Books by Marcus Richardson

  Books by Marcus Richardson

  THE ELIXR PLAGUE

  Book 1: Vector

  Book 2: Infection (Pre-order)

  OTHER SERIES

  The Future History of America

  The Wildfire Saga

  Solar Storm

  For my complete catalog, please see:

  marcusrichardsonauthor.com

  VECTOR

  The Elixr Plague: Episode 1

  Author’s Note

  THIS IS A SERIALIZED STORY

  I’ll say that again: this is a serialized story. I mean, I certainly hope the shit I write about isn’t real.

  What is real is the choice I made on how to publish the story. This tale of the zombie apocalypse will be ongoing and there’s so much taking place that I didn’t want to try and cram it all into a single book, or even a series of books.

  From the first inkling of an idea that formed in my head, Elixr Plague felt better handled with a broad cast of characters in bite-sized installments.

  I realize this isn’t going to make everyone happy. Those of you who enjoy reading on phones and smaller devices may appreciate being able to finish an episode in one sitting rather than trying to hunt down the bigger device or e-reader and pick up where you left off when you were standing in line at the grocery store. If so, great! This story is for you.

  If you don’t like the serialized format, I may, depending on what feedback I receive, compile the episodes when they reach a certain to-be-ascertained critical mass into books with several episodes, or one big box set. That’s a decision for later.

  For now, I want to focus on the story. And the fastest way to get that story to you is break it up into smaller pieces and publish more frequently. This story is in Kindle Unlimited, so unless you actually buy a copy, I make the same amount of money whether it’s broken up or in one big book.

  When you’re knee deep in the zompoc boogaloo, speed is life.

  To that end, I plan to release the episodes of Elixr Plague every few weeks, to give me time to edit to something approaching professional standards. I’d love to just write an episode and fling it out into the wild, but y’all would take one look at all the typos and walk away. Fast.

  So I’m going to temper my need for speed with a good dose of editorial stoicism and see if I can’t maintain a decent release schedule right from the get go. Hey, if I find it too easy, I reserve the right to speed up.

  Right. Enough shop talk, let’s get to that boogaloo…

  1

  Retribution

  Southeastern Iraq

  Seven years ago…

  Rashid Ahmadi climbed out of the dusty white Toyota Hilux and turned his face skyward, feeling the brutal heat of the afternoon sun warm his skin. He could live without the constant dust in the air—and the dried, musty smell of sand and sweat—but one thing he missed while living in the West was the heat of his native Iraq. The Americans, addicted to air-conditioning as they were, had know knowledge of what real heat was—perhaps in Arizona or New Mexico, but no where else in that great slobbering, vice-ridden cesspool did they feel heat like this. It was natural, healthy.

  It was home.

  His assistant, Samir, the scion of a powerful family in Baghdad, handed him his bag from the back, then hopped down into the dust. He shut the squeaky passenger door for Rashid with a crump. Samir slapped the roof of the truck, and the driver pulled away, grinding gears and throwing up a fresh cloud of fine grit.

  The door to Rashid’s squat house the color of sand opened and a small boy rushed out, wearing the latest kit from his favorite football team, Al-Bahri SC. "Pappa!" he squealed in delight, his dusty, sandaled feet carrying him as fast as little legs could manage.

  Rashid dropped his bags and took a knee to embrace his youngest child. He held onto the squirming bundle in his arms and stood, closing his eyes at the sheer bliss of his child’s absolute love. When he opened his eyes, his beautiful wife stood in the doorway, one hand over her mouth, her eyes glistening, as she watched the tender scene unfold.

  Rashid left his bags in the courtyard for Samir to fetch and rushed to his wife. "Mira," he whispered, touching his forehead to hers.

  "Welcome home, my love," she whispered, her voice tight.

  Inside, the air was noticeably cooler and carried with it the refreshing moisture of home. He put his son down to embrace his older children, daughters Aleea and Nahir, both nearly teenagers. He closed his eyes again as they hugged him, and wrapped one arm around each. In his line of work, living the next day to see a smile on his child’s face was never guaranteed. How his children grew!

  A shout from the room down the darkened hallway drew Rashid’s attention from his family. His wife rolled her eyes but smiled, then motioned him to investigate. "Go on, your father will be surprised. He watches that infernal thing all day. Go," she said playfully, pushing him down the hallway. "I will bring tea and food." She turned to the children. "Come, let us leave pappa to speak with grandfather. Away now," she shooed.

  Rashid let his fingers trail against the smooth, cool sandstone walls that lined the arched hallway. Several pictures in cheap frames adorned the plain, empty space. His children smiled at him in their school uniforms, next to a picture of his wife on their first trip to Baghdad after their marriage. She was still beautiful all these years later, but in the picture she looked so young.

  Rashid paused, smiling at the picture, and closed his eyes. He remembered the way the air smelled twelve years ago, heavy with jasmine and the aromatic cacophony from the spice merchants, as he held up his camera and took the picture of his new wife. Her face had been lightly shadowed by the delicate fabric of the lacy, hand stitched scarf wrapped over her lustrous hair, a wedding gift from her mother. Her perfect skin had been without the tiny laugh lines around her eyes that he loved so much now…

  The corner of his mouth twitched. Has it been so long?

  "A pox on all of you!" his father barked from the sitting room.

  Rashid sighed. His old man was watching the news again. Al Jazeera never failed to get his father riled up over things he could not hope—nor want—to understand.

  “Who gets the pox this time, father?" Rashid asked, stepping quiet as a cat into the room.

  The “entertainment center” looked just like he’d left it so many months ago, a simple wooden stand—quaintly handmade by one of the local artisans in gratitude for Rashid’s protection—on top of a ratty, faded Persian rug that once belonged to his mother. A simple, low couch with threadbare cushions not fit for a Syrian, let alone the patriarch of a proud Iraqi family with roots that went back to ancient Mesopotamia—according to his father. A small, grimy window in t
he far corner let in just enough light to see without burning candles or wasting precious, expensive electricity…and in the center of the main wall, the damnable television itself.

  Rashid was a wealthy man in the village, perhaps the wealthiest, but compared to the glittering monstrosities he’d been using free of charge in America for so long, the grainy little box of a TV his father so adored looked...pathetic. He grimaced. If only he could bring home one of the newer 60" flatscreens, how his father would enjoy it!

  Abasid Ahmadi turned in his chair and narrowed his eyes under bushy gray eyebrows at his son. "This," he said, gesturing one arthritic, wrinkled hand at the glowing screen, "is your work?" he demanded.

  Rashid forced a smile. "I’ve missed you too, father. What’s that you ask? How am I?" He moved to the couch and collapsed, frowning as one of the wooden supports jabbed his hip. He’d have to get the damn thing repaired again. He couldn’t let his wife sit on it much longer without fear of her getting hurt. He had standards to uphold, after all. “It is so kind of you to ask, oh father of mine.”

  His desert-weathered sire didn’t rise to the bait. "The bombing, the fighting in the east…you had a hand in this—or your people did?" his father demanded, never taking those accusing, piercing eyes off Rashid. “Tell me true.”

  "I know you don’t approve of my—"

  "I do not approve of death," the elder Ahmadi said softly, holding a hand up to forestall his son’s argument. "My time draws near, son…I will one day soon stand before the Prophet and Allah—"

  "Allah hu ackbar," Ahmadi intoned automatically.

  "Yes, yes," his father said impatiently, flipping a claw-like hand. "Do you really think He approves of this senseless killing?"

  Rashid focused on the television to cool the rising fury in his chest at his father’s careless attitude toward blasphemy.

  The picture on the screen made him smile, though. Shaky footage, taken by some terrified goatherd with an iPhone, depicted a convoy of American and British vehicles immediately after a roadside bombing.

  Bodies—and parts of bodies—peppered the ground around the twisted remains of the convoy’s lead vehicles. Soldiers carrying rifles rushed to and fro, panicked and waiting for an attack that never came. Dust and residual smoke swirled around and in between the surviving vehicles, and thick black plumes rose in twin columns from the wreckage of two MRAPs, blackened and twisted.

  Rashid grinned. The explosions set off when the lead trucks hit his buried IEDs had been worthy of the Prophet himself. It was as if the earth itself had risen up a hand to smite the invading infidels and crush their vehicles of war like a child’s toy. It had been glorious.

  The scrolling words at the bottom of the screen announced that the convoy had suffered twelve dead and another fifteen wounded. They had been airlifted out by armed helicopters moments after the video had been taken. Soldiers scoured the area for information on who was behind the attack, but they were doubtful—as usual—of finding out who had pulled it off.

  "What makes you think I had something to do with this?" Rashid asked in a neutral voice, watching the screen.

  "Because of the way you smile at it," his father whispered, his eyes sad. "My son…you cannot continue to do these things…"

  "Why? Why should I stop?" Rashid demanded, his words sharp as knives. "Am I to stand by and watch as our land, our people, our very lives are ground under the boots of these infidels, these...Westerners...” he spat the word, “...they are conquerors in all but name, father—they bring nothing but fire and death! It is right that someone should resist them, and if not me, then who?“

  "They will bring fire and death here, you fool!" his father hissed, surprising Rashid with the vehemence behind the words.

  He stared at his father for a long moment. "If you were anyone but my father, I would kill you where you sit…" he said softly.

  "And if I were but a little younger, I would slap some sense into you with my sandal." The old man shook his head as the blood drained from Rashid’s face following such a grave insult. "Can you not see, son of mine? This is a fight you cannot hope to win."

  "Why can we not win?" asked Rashid, standing with fists clenched at his sides, his arms trembling with the need to hit something. He moved to the tiny window and peered out the cloudy, amateurish glass—no more than a hole in the wall, really—about a foot across. Outside, Samir stood talking with Mina, his bags over one shoulder. He said something and they shared a quiet laugh as they watched the children play, kicking up dust as they ran, their voices ringing off the baked ground.

  "The Americans…they will find you,” Abasid moaned. “Eventually. They always do. Look at that fool Bin Laden—for years he lurked about in caves and still they found him and killed him. You cannot compete against—"

  "I have lived among them, father,” Rashid interrupted, chopping his hand in the air. “They are weak. Their own people have no taste for the fight—or any fighting They concern themselves with people who believe they are not male or female and..I cannot even describe it. They cry at the drop of a hat and become distracted by the tiniest of annoyances—and they are ready to tear each other’s throats out over the smallest slight or perceived offense. If we but push a little longer, they will leave, the better to destroy their own homeland.” He turned from the window and looked at his father. “We are so close from driving them from our lands, so close."

  Abasid shook his head sadly, looking down at the floor. "Blood brings blood."

  Rashid rolled his eyes and turned away, then looked at the house across the dusty path they called a street. It was nothing like the area he’d lived in back in Los Angeles. Over there, across the world in the belly of the Beast, his neighborhood had been considered a slum, unfit for decent folk. Yet here, that same neighborhood with the cracked pavement and bars on the windows of even the rudest of houses would be considered palatial.

  He didn’t know why he kept arguing, but something deep inside required his father’s approval, even if grudgingly given. "They don’t know who I am, father, nor where—"

  As he spoke, the hovel across the way disappeared in a ball of light and smoke. Chunks of sandstone and wood hurtled through the air. Rashid saw the shockwave race across the sand and lift his wife, her robes flowing around her like a cape, and send her flying across the courtyard alongside his assistant.

  He watched, in the space between heartbeats, that same shockwave hit his own house. The overpressure shattered his tiny window and ruptured the wall, flinging him back onto his father, his face stinging from a hundred cuts, skin burning from the sudden heat of the blast, glass and rocks raining down on them both.

  Rashid got to his knees with some effort in the smoke-filled room, coughing, sputtering his wife’s name, and blinking in the hazy, clouded air. His father wheezed and moaned from the floor, hidden in shadows and smoke. Down the hall a high thin voice wailed in pain or fear, the voice muffled and distant.

  "You fool!" his father yelled from the floor. “You did this to us,” he cried, holding an accusatory finger in the air, aimed in Rashid’s general direction.

  “No,” Rashid croaked, his throat dry as the sand outside. He looked down at his father, wreathed by an expanding pool of wine dark blood on the dusty floor. The Persian rug greedily soaked up the old man’s life.

  "You’ve killed us all…” his father whispered.

  “No...” It wasn’t possible. The Americans had no idea who he was, let alone that he’d masterminded the convoy attack. Rashid pushed the doubt from his mind as he clambered over bits of broken sandstone and dusty rubble. There was a hole in the wall big enough for him to climb through—he had to find his wife. She had been flung toward the house…

  Ahmadi screamed in pain as a jagged rock tore at his side when he squeezed through the hole. He fell to the ground outside his home and got up on all fours, panting from the pain coursing through his face and hands. Across the way, what was left of his neighbor’s house collapsed into the missile�
�s crater.

  He peered up at the late afternoon sky. There wasn’t a cloud up there and no planes roared overheard. Not even the silent killers, seen only by their contrails, were flying today. Where had the missile come from?

  Fear gripped Rashid’s heart and squeezed until he thought it might burst. It had to be one of the cursed drones—ghosts that prowled the sky day and night, raining death upon his people whenever the Americans wanted a little fun.

  He used the cracked wall of his house to lean on as he got to his feet, swirling dust clouding his vision again. Lightheaded, Rashid clenched his teeth as warmth trickled down the side of his face and chest. He was bleeding, but he had to find Mira.

  If it was indeed an American drone, he’d only have seconds before they struck again. Surely they wouldn’t stop with just one house—his compound was far enough out from the nearest village that if they traced someone back here, they’d—

  His mind slowed to a crawl and the thoughts flitted away like birds before a storm. As he rounded the corner of his damaged house, he found Samir, kneeling over the form of his wife, her bloodied face cradled in the younger man’s lap. The anguish on Samir’s bloodied, dirt-smeared face when he looked up told Rashid all he needed to know.

  His beloved wife was dead.

  "No…" he started to say, not recognizing his own voice. He took a step forward, reaching out to her with dusty, bloody hands, but his world went white and a heat he’d never experienced before washed over him.