James Cook

COPYRIGHT

 

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

 

SURVIVING THE DEAD BOOK ONE: NO EASY HOPE. Copyright © 2011 By James N. Cook. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the author and Amazon.com.

 

FIRST EDITION

 

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

 

Epub Edition © NOVEMBER 2011

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prologue

 

 

 

 

 

Gabriel raised the stock of the Belgian P90 assault rifle to his shoulder, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. The weapon’s silencer muffled most of the noise from the shot. I heard a dull crack, similar to what an empty box dropped on a concrete floor sounds like, and the metallic clang of the next round going into the chamber. Gabriel moved the barrel a few inches to the left and fired another shot. Crack-clang.

 

“You are way too good with that thing.” I said. “Scary good.”

 

Gabriel lowered his rifle and grinned as he looked at his handy work. Two dead bodies lay face down on the ground about forty yards ahead of us on the other side of the perimeter fence. Both had gaping exit wounds visible on the backs of their heads. A rust colored sludge began to ooze from their broken skulls, staining the snow beneath. The cold mountain air stung my nostrils with the acrid scent of cordite. Gabriel turned to face me, still smiling. His white teeth stood out in contrast to his dark black beard, and his bright gray eyes twinkled with humor.

 

“You didn’t think it was too scary last week when I saved your ass from being a meatball on the dead-guy buffet.” His breath rose around his face in a thick fog as he spoke.

 

It was a cold late December morning, and the sun was just beginning to crest the peaks in the distance. Reddish-gold shafts of light pierced the gloom, their reflections sparkling against the snow and frozen tree limbs. I looked into the distance for a moment before responding.

 

“First of all, you didn’t save me from anything. I knew those two geeks were behind me, and I would have put them down right after I finished dealing with the bastard crawling under the fence. Second, those shots went by close enough to tickle my whiskers. You know how to say ‘duck’, right? Maybe you should give that a try next time.”

 

Gabriel laughed as he replied, “Hey, you needed a shave. I was just trying to help you out.”

 

I shook my head. “Whatever, fur face.”

 

We made our way down to the fence line, snow crunching under our boots as we walked. The incident Gabe referred to happened a little over a week ago, as he and I were coming back from an unsuccessful scouting trip. We were making a circuit of the ten-foot steel fence that encircles the mountaintop. As we approached the main gate, we spotted a crawler trying to pull itself under the fence line. It heard us coming, and started dragging itself across the ground with its one working arm.