EAT, SLAY, LUZT: A sexy wild ride through the dark heart of the zombie apocalypse. Read online

  EAT, SLAY, LUZT

  Make love not war—unless it’s zombies.

  Jillian Stone

  This book is a work of fiction. All the names characters, organizations, locations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  EAT, SLAY, LUZT Copyright © 2016 Jillian Stone All rights reserved.

  First Edition: October, 2016

  Kindle Edition

  For foreign rights information contact: Richard Curtis and Associates, 171 East Seventy-Fourth Street, New York, New York, 10021

  Cover and Interior Design: G.J. Stone

  The uploading, scanning and distribution of this book in any form or any means—including but not limited to electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise—without permission of the copyright holder is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized editions of this work and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  ISBN: 978-0-9963459-0-3

  ASIN: B01M97V91N

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  A Note from the Author

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Dear Readers

  Also by Jillian Stone

  A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  EAT, SLAY, LUZT is meant to be read and enjoyed as entertainment. It’s about finding a badass partner to survive the zombie apocalypse with—in a war zone. As much as possible, I have avoided the political aspects of war and concentrated on its humor and its horror, literally and figuratively.

  That said, a word about Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières/MSF. Since 2011, 4.6 million people have fled over Syria’s borders to escape the bloody internal battle engulfing the country. One million of them are children. Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières/MSF provides medical treatment to those persons in need, both inside Syria and among the refugee population in the surrounding countries.

  This book is dedicated to the men and women who fight for life in the midst of conflict and suffering.

  “Survival tip #1:

  When caught in the middle of the zombie apocalypse,

  get a badass partner.”

  —Lizzy Davis

  Chapter One

  Syrian Desert, Jordan

  190 kilometers SE of Zaatari Refugee Camp

  IT’S HARDER TO kill a zombie than you’d think.

  The range finder on my night vision goggles read 34 meters. Hard to believe I’d survived three minutes let alone three days in the middle of the Syrian Desert armed with a Sniper G8 slingshot and a machete.

  I focused on the pod of skin eaters headed straight for me. One of them appeared hungrier than the rest and broke away from the pack.

  “Zombie man twenty meters and closing.” I inhaled oxygen through one nostril and exhaled slowly out the other. The practice slowed my heart rate and steadied my hand. I fired my slingshot and took off a rotten leg. Now the runner was a crawler.

  “Not bad for a girl, Lizzy.” I was talking to myself again.

  Two more peeled off and picked up the pace. I set a medium-sized stone in the pocket and focused on a ragged, decomposed neck.

  Ready. Aim. Fuck me.

  I reloaded the sling and looked for another weakness to exploit. They all had them—bum legs, loose arms, missing jaws.

  I spied a big gaping hole in the gut, took aim and hit the spinal cord. The lower half of the body spun around and took a step backward before collapsing on the ground.

  I unsheathed my machete.

  It takes a few good blows to finish a zombie off, especially when you’re swinging a dull blade. First slice severs the brain stem from the spinal cord. But not always. Sometimes it takes another cut. Once you’ve separated the stem from the cord, the biter is disabled, but not dead dead. The primitive brain remains excited until you eviscerate the basal ganglia.

  I used to love zombie movies. Couldn’t get enough of The Walking Dead and Z Nation. I even had a Resident Evil 4 app on my smartphone, and I’m not much of a gamer. In the cyber fantasy world of the undead, a baseball bat to the skull or a bullet between the eyes does the trick.

  Not in my Zombieland.

  Seventy-two hours ago, a zombie horde had overrun the compound. Flesh warmed by a beating heart turned out to be a magnet for them. And there were plenty of throbbing pulses in the refugee camp. The military had sent a squad of z-wranglers, but our evac had gone badly. None of my medical team made it out alive. Four nurses, two doctors, and a handful of combat-hardened soldiers were gone in minutes. Ripped to pieces and devoured by a swarm of thousands.

  One of the soldiers had tossed me the keys to the supply truck and shoved me down the alley. Flashes of me zigzagging through tent city, a train of biters running after the truck. Just thinking about the escape makes my pulse race.

  I’m still not sure how I got out alive.

  Survival Tip #2: In the event of an undead apocalypse, arm yourself with a high tech slingshot and a machete, but don’t forget to bring along a knife sharpener. Also, when there’s a horde of cold bodies after you, don’t bother with the kill shot. Just keep moving.

  Moonrise illuminated the last of the biters coming for me. I pushed the night vision goggles up on my forehead and raised the machete.

  My first cut brought the creature down. I centered my foot on his back and swung the blade into the brain stem. I angled low and parallel to the ground to keep the blood spray out of my eyes. Three strikes usually does it, but not always. I’ve had to chop away at some brains, especially when I’m tired. I sucked in oxygen and moved on to the next, and the next, and the one after that.

  Comic book fight sounds come to mind as I hack my way through bodies. Wap! Thwack! Splooge! It helps.

  I waded into the z-pod and reduced the injured to body parts. Arms flailed, torsos squirmed in pools of blood. A gory scene, even for me. I swung the machete into a zombie skull and listened to the creature’s last gasp, a faint hiss and a gurgle.

  I’m used to blood pouring out of ears, mouths, noses—flooding body cavities, dripping out of plastic bags, smeared over floors. I’m a surgeon. And I should be saving lives, not hacking into the primitive brain to make sure the patient stays dead.

  It took less than six weeks to turn seventy-five percent of the population of the Middle East into the walking dead. Another fifteen percent or so ended their lives before contracting the pathogen. That left the rest of us hanging on by our fingernails. Radio reports from the region called us survivors. Like we were a bloody fucking reality TV show.

  BZ—before zombies—I was a fellow at Grace New Haven Memorial Hospital, and part of a volunteer surgical team sent to the war front. We’d just arrived at the refugee camp on the outskirts of Amman when a strain of s
ome new pathogenic virus struck the compound. The infection spread fast, and when the virus invaded bodies whose chromosomes had been damaged by Saran gas poisoning, that’s when the streams crossed. At least, that was our working hypothesis.

  The disease spread like a wildfire through Syria, and then from camp to camp. We’d kept the walking dead in a caged yard near the hospital. Sadly, we called the enclosure the Z-Gulag. Within days, our attempt to manage the problem became impossible. Infected refugees turned faster than we could keep up. It’s shocking how quickly a person’s sensitivity training can evaporate when confronted with the rapid and terrifying collapse of civilization. As the situation deteriorated, we began to refer to the infected population as biters, or skin eaters.

  Northern Iraq, parts of Jordan, and all of Syria immediately came under quarantine. The U.S. military set up a perimeter patrolled by hundreds of drones. They called this virtual barricade the DMZ, short for Dead Meat Zone. Real funny until you’re stuck inside zombie-occupied territory. Anything that moved in the DMZ was destroyed. No warning, just—kaboom! You, or an unattractive undead version of yourself, obliterated from the planet.

  Roughly, here’s where the region stood three days ago: Zombies 95%. Survivors 5%. Even though the last seventy-two hours had been as much about saving my sanity as my life, I had no reason to believe those numbers had changed much.

  Graaaagh-hisss. This time, the biters came at me from behind the supply truck.

  There’s a zone you get in when you’re fighting zombies. Survival instincts ramp up as the adrenalin takes effect. Your stomach stops growling. Your muscles forget to ache. Your attention narrows to each swing of the machete. You’re in the kill zone, and nothing penetrates, not even the tortured growls of the undead.

  Vurrrrrooom-boom-boom-boom.

  Between swings of the machete, I glanced north. A dust cloud raced along the ridge in the moonlight. Too fast for zombies and the wrong decibel level. A large z-herd, running at top speed sounded more like an F5 tornado as the funnel touched ground. Whatever that noisemaker was out there, it was different enough to roust me from my blood lust.

  A well-placed machete strike to an undead lizard brain bought me a few seconds. “Where are you?” I scanned the horizon for the elusive dust cloud. My stomach roiled, a sure sign of danger. Put another way…

  Get the fuck out of here, Lizzy.

  I backed into a gnarly, bony hand that grabbed the heel of my boot. And before I could hack into the crawler, a violent sting of air ripped through the sleeve of my T-shirt.

  Bullets are eerie that way. There’s a displacement of atmosphere and then a nanosecond later—psss-zing! The bullet buried itself in the wriggling carcass behind me.

  I kicked the biter off and spun around.

  A dust cloud in human form returned my curious gaze.

  Male. U.S. military. Possibly attractive, hard to tell, a faded bandana covered his lower face. Between the scarf and the helmet, watery eyes smudged with road grime, narrowed.

  He raised his M4 and fired a blast of bullets. What was left of the z-pod fell to the ground.

  I stared fixedly at the intruder with the gun. It was too dark for him to see my cheeks turn red. But that didn’t stop me from suffering a moment of extreme self-consciousness. I wore a cut-off T-shirt with a bullet hole in the sleeve, skivvies, and combat boots. And oh yeah, a military issue utility belt straddled my hips. Without a mirror check, my guess was more Wrecking Ball Miley Cyrus than Tomb Raider Lara Croft.

  Zombies didn’t give a shit about me in my underwear, but this guy was a far cry from undead. Blood dripped from the tip of my machete.

  I pointed the blade at him. “Stay the fuck away from me.”

  His grip tightened on the smoking carbine, and I steeled myself. “If you’re going to shoot me, make sure you penetrate the cerebrum and corpus callosum; at least one of the bullets has to hit the basal ganglia.”

  Nicely muscled and well fed, he appeared to be an accomplished hunter-gatherer-warrior. He raised both arms and slowly lowered himself onto his haunches, a sign of surrender.

  I made sure there was plenty of distance between us before I angled sideways and squatted across from him. He rested the gun on his knee and pulled the bandana off his face. Jeezus, of course, he’d be dusty, grimy, and great looking.

  “Water?” he croaked.

  Chapter Two

  Z GROWLS GURGLED up from the rotten pool of stench surrounding us. Incapacitated biters crawled at the rate of about one meter per hour. But at this exact moment, the armed stranger concerned me more than the undead.

  I studied the man hunkered down in the sand. A male survivor in good health could be worse than a horde of zombies. Men raped women like me—more than once—then they ate all your food. Worst of all, they wouldn’t hesitate to pimp you out for a meal, ammo, or gasoline.

  Like I said, worse than a shitload of zombies.

  I scanned the raised bank that bordered the road. The silhouette of something lean, mean, and fast rested on a kickstand. The zombie slayer’s dust cloud-maker. And my ticket out of here. I unsnapped the plastic travel bottle from my utility belt and handed over the water.

  He didn’t drink. He guzzled.

  “Hey, leave some for me.”

  He released the water bottle with a gasp. “Got more?”

  I narrowed my gaze. “Got food?”

  He hesitated long enough to be manufacturing a lie. “In the saddlebag on my bike.”

  “There’s a couple of gallons in the truck.” I nodded toward the transport vehicle behind me. “I’ll trade you a share of my water for a share of your food.”

  The ends of his mouth curled upward, and he ogled my thighs as high as the boy shorts allowed. Pretty sure he was thinking about a different kind of trade.

  I met his gaze and held it. “Deal?”

  Piercing eyes shifted to my truck. He could grab both gallons and make a run for it.

  I squinted. “Don’t even try it.”

  His cute lip curl turned cynical. “Awww. She doesn’t trust me.” He rose up and took long strides toward the transport. Midway, he stopped to shoot a crawler in the back of the neck. One of the most annoying things about killing zombies is the having to kill them over and over.

  Cursing under my breath, I raced ahead and beat him to the truck. I guarded the door and watched his simple, unhurried style. One by one he made sure the crawlers were dead.

  He removed his helmet and scratched his head. He was tall, a bit over six feet with nice hair—short and scruffy. Hard to tell exactly what shade of brown in the moonlight. He slung the M4 under his shoulder and approached the truck slowly. That gaze of his caused tingles in places I didn’t want to think about right now.

  I did a quick evaluation of my situation. Out of gas in the middle of the Syrian desert—bad luck. Woke up to a pod of rotters surrounding the truck—welcome to my bad town. Running into this zombie slayer? For now, it was safe to assume that every badass inch of his badass dick was trouble.

  He set his helmet down on the hood of the truck.

  “Food?” I reminded him, arms crossed over my chest.

  “Let’s see the water.” He reached out, and I slid over, blocking his attempt to open the door.

  “What are you? Special Forces Z-Wrangler?”

  He tried to get around me and I angled the machete outward.

  He exhaled a parched sigh. “United States Army Airborne, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.”

  “Ranger?”

  Long eyelashes shaded his eyes. “Night Stalker. Pilot. Sikorsky Stealth UH-60 Black Hawk. Spec ops insertions and extractions,” he explained in the sexy staccato of military-speak.

  “Get in and get out quickly and quietly.” I added.

  He grabbed hold of the handle and yanked the door—and me—toward him. “That’s the idea.” He was machete stabbing close, but he didn’t appear worried. He drew his lips back, all smirky and arrogant. “Don’t worry, baby, you�
��re not my type.”

  I raised a brow. “Smart?” Wedged between the door and his body armor, things were pretty cozy.

  “Smart-mouthed.” He pressed into my knife. “All I want is your water.”

  I held his gaze and squinted. “You’re sure about that?’

  A corner of his mouth tilted upward. “I said you’re not my type, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to fuck you.” He stared for a long time before he backed off. “Help me out here, and put some clothes on.”

  Call me stubborn. I still didn’t trust him. “Where’s the chopper?”

  “Hit by an RPG.”

  Hard to believe the war on terror was still going strong. Zombies headed up the axis of evil now, and they recruited from every faction of the conflict. Kurd, ISIS, al-Qaeda, the Syrian Army, and the great Satan—any U.S. forces in the region.

  “And what’s that up there?” I nodded toward the ridge.

  “Modified Ducati 1199 Superleggera. Belonged to our unit commander. He won it in a poker game in Qatar. We use it for extractions, like a single high-value hostage.”

  I widened my stance, even as I formulated a plan. “Water for food—that’s the deal.”

  His gaze moved from my crotch to my breasts to my mouth. “Fine.” He turned and hiked up the embankment.

  I jumped inside the truck and shoved two pistols into a utility box behind the seat. Not sure why I was hiding them. I’d run out of ammo days ago.

  “This should keep you alive.” He tossed a spent munitions bag inside the truck and climbed into the driver’s seat.

  I dug into the pouch and found a package of Ho Hos. “You didn’t get these from the local haji mart.” I ripped off the wrapper and stuffed one in my mouth.

  He stared at me. “Mess hall outside of Safawi.”

  My eyes rolled back in my head and I moaned. “I’d forgotten how good these are.” I sneaked a glance at him. “So I guess we’re both on the run.”

  He nodded. “Water?”