A Thousand Miles To Nowhere: An Apocalypse Thriller Read online

  A Thousand Miles to Nowhere

  An Apocalypse Thriller

  David Curfiss

  Gripping Press

  Contents

  Part I

  1. Dead Strangers

  2. Always When I Sleep

  3. Broken Silence

  4. Worlds Collide

  5. To Let Go

  6. It’s All Yours

  7. Mistakes Were Made

  8. Your Everyday Disaster

  9. Names Carved into Granite

  10. Primal Urges

  11. Young Hearts and Wild Feelings

  12. Zero Visibility

  13. Your Future Ends Here

  14. No Heroes Today

  Part II

  15. The Memories Will Remain

  16. A Cold Day in Hell

  17. Wolf Bites, Whiskey, and Withered

  18. Comfort Betrayed

  19. Suffering Bastard

  20. You’re Never Alone

  21. Fear, Emptiness, Despair—Now, Please Kill Me

  22. Holding Death in My Arms

  23. After the Thaw

  24. Last Breath

  25. Before I Go

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by David Curfiss

  Copyright © 2019 by David Curfiss

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Author Website

  www.davidcurfiss.com

  Author on Facebook

  Facebook.com/davidcurfiss

  Cover Art by Daniel J. Peters

  www.instagram.com/danieljpeters

  Edited by The Persnickety Proofer

  www.facebook.com/persnicketyproofer

  This book is dedicated to SO1 Matthew Leathers

  KIT 02/19/2013

  And, as always, for my wife and kids.

  Special Thank You to Matthew Wright

  Special Thank You to Evan Armstrong @ Viking Coffee Co.

  Part I

  1

  Dead Strangers

  The banshee-like screams of the newly turned dead combined with the wails of the living they ripped apart echoed throughout Camp Oliver. The once-thriving camp for the survivors of the zombie apocalypse fifteen years prior was tucked away deep in the Laguna Mountains of San Diego, California.

  On this dreadful day, Camp Oliver was filled with the screams of scared women and children as they fled hopelessly for their lives, and the war cries of the brave who attempted to fend off the attack from the dead.

  But these weren’t zombies that shambled around after being raised from the grave, slow-moving and easy to escape. These were rage-fueled demons who, upon turning, became blood-thirsty psychopaths that would stop at nothing to reach their meals. They had powerful grips with bites to match. Yes, they were dead. Science made sure of that. But their minds became lifeless engines fueled by the uncontrollable urge to feed on the living. Their brains rewired, sending signals to the muscles and flooding the body with chemicals that heightened only the necessary senses needed to eat and repeat. Some were lucky and died after being bitten and fed on. Others turned and became the never-dying beasts that became known as ragers.

  To make matters worse, the ragers didn’t rot away as their bodies roamed the earth. Instead, the chemical compound that transformed humanity into these creatures also ensured their bodies never decomposed. That was the purpose of the drug that big pharma produced—everlasting life. Or, as they called it, “The Fountain of Youth.” One injection, and the body’s aging process would begin to slow indefinitely.

  The ragers went on raging until they stopped feeding. Then, they went dormant and began to wither. The dead mummified, their bodies slowed, and although their senses were still heightened, they no longer raged. Their bites were still deadly, and if bitten, the victim began the process of reanimation from dead human to rager and eventually they became the withered.

  The living might have stood a chance against the withered. But on the day of the attack at Camp Oliver, it was a feast for the newborn ragers. They were faster than their aged counterparts. They destroyed and consumed at a pace the living simply could not keep up with. As it had been proven fifteen years before, all it took was one rager to turn the rest.

  It was the end all over again. Death seized the day. And there was nothing anyone living could do about it.

  The memory of it all bore a hole through Matt Tanner’s head as he stood on the cement helicopter landing pad of the abandoned FEMA station’s evacuation site. He was soaked in sweat, stained with blood, and barely able to hold himself up from fatigue.

  Matt had been the first of many to make Camp Oliver home. He had founded the camp with his father’s best friend Greg and another buddy named Jody.

  At the time, Matt had been a young boy in his early teens. Now, as he stood on the helo pad, he was a man in his thirties. He stood at a solid six feet with wide shoulders. He had the chiseled face of a warrior. He had been through his share of trauma and tragedy, and it showed in the deep worry lines carved into his forehead and the creases in his mouth on the rare occasions he smiled. He did his best to keep the truth of how bad he was beaten to himself, but as the days passed, the pain always reminded him.

  He swayed sickly as the springtime desert sun floated at the highest point of sky directly above his head. The heat seared the earth below his feet as he stood with the horrible realization life was all for nothing, and no matter how hard one tried, everyone died in the end.

  This is it, he thought. This is how it all ends.

  He dropped his pack and laid his achy, joint-swollen body down on the cement slab that had “FEMA” painted on it in big red letters. He closed his eyes. The heat soaked through to his core as he processed all the events that led him to where he was.

  It had all started with that scavenger, that strange man who came from the unknown. Bobby had found him at the creek during his roving perimeter patrol. That scavenger should never have been allowed through the gates. Bobby should have left him there to die. Instead, he carried the scavenger’s death-ridden, bite-marked body into the camp, brought him to Doc’s office, and laid him out for examination.

  Matt’s memories were clear. Doc had reached over and grabbed his stethoscope. His elbow hit a glass jar filled with alcohol and scalpels. The glass jar broke, and Bobby bent over to grab the mess. Doc had bent down at the same time. Their heads collided. Susan had walked into Doc’s office, slamming the door against the wall with a loud, booming thud that caused everyone to look all at once. And at that moment with all their attention diverted, the scavenger lifted his head off the table and bit Bobby in his neck.

  It had been like a scene in those old, low-budget zombie movies Matt used to watch as a kid, back before big pharma’s drug backfired, ripped through the world, and turned everybody into flesh-eating lunatics that didn’t seem to die of natural causes—ever. Blood had squirted from Bobby’s carotid artery. He’d only screamed for a half-second. Then his scream turned into a death gurgle, the last sounds a dying man made as he choked to death on his own blood. Doc hadn’t been able to react fast enough to avoid being bitten by the scavenger next. Susan had run out and left the door open. Matt had barely escaped.

  Now, his stomach turned with nausea. A rush of nervousness made little pinpricks of pain erupt on his skin. His heart pounded. Failure—he was feeling his defeat, and it hit
him all at once. The anxiety was going to eat at him until his death. How many more would die because of it, he wondered. How many more would suffer because of bad decisions and ignorance?

  From somewhere inside the FEMA station, Matt heard the muffled sounds of Steve Warswick and Tara Sills as they rummaged the remains of the vacant lot. The pair sounded like a pack of coyotes searching for leftovers. Surrounded by nothing more than torn canopies, rusted fifty-gallon drums, and pockmarked Conex boxes with rust holes that ate through the three-inch-thick metal exteriors, Matt listened as his friends wasted their time. If there had been any supplies at that FEMA site, they would have long been looted, the site stripped clean of anything useful. It was becoming clear they were still too reliant on old-world supplies.

  Oh, how he wished he could turn back time and undo it all. He would punch that sentry in the face for being ignorant, then carry that strange man far enough away from the camp that no one would have ever known. He might have even put a bullet in him for good measure. And then nothing would have ever happened. That stranger could have turned and wandered off into the woods to chase deer for all he cared, and the rest of them could have all lived happily ever after in the apocalypse.

  Greg Mills and Jody Hall the camp’s delegated leadership, would probably have had an issue with him knocking out a young sentry. But in reality, knowing what he knew now, it would have been worth it. Besides, Greg was like a father to Matt and Jody was a lifelong friend. Neither of them would have done much to him in the way of punishment.

  As he considered this alternate ending, he sensed a presence over his body. When Matt opened his eyes, he found both Steve and Tara standing over him. He blinked a few times. At first, they were just dark silhouettes with no distinct features, but after his vision cleared, Matt could make out who was who. Steve with his six-foot-two, two-hundred-pound body and dark hair he kept parted to one side. And a distinct nose powerful in presence but not overwhelming. But it was his best friend’s smile that stood out the most. An unmistakable row of pearly whites in a perfect line. How in any apocalyptic scenario a man could have such perfect features was a mystery.

  As for Tara, Matt wasn’t surprised to see she looked agitated, all five feet of her. She was small, but feisty. Out of all the men who had been on their team of wasteland scavengers, Tara outshot them, performed better tactically, and was smarter than any of them. She was smarter than both Steve and Matt himself. But she also had an attitude. Her witty banter and blunt speech drove Matt mad at times.

  She stood over Matt, her auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail and her blue eyes full of disapproval as she stared down at him. It was the kind of face a parent would make after they found their child in bed napping when they were supposed to be doing chores.

  She kicked his boot as his legs dangled over the edge of the cement pad. “You comfortable?”

  Matt smirked, then sat up and grimaced at the aches in his body. His nausea had gone away, but there was nothing he could do to help the displaced bones, strained tendons, and knotted muscles. That was just the wear and tear from years of scavenging and sleeping on thin sleeping pads with no cushion.

  “This place has been picked clean, brother,” Steve said. “What’s the plan?”

  Matt stared back at them. He was at a loss for words. He didn’t want to turn back so defeated with literally nothing to show for their trip except lost hope and fewer supplies than when they’d left. But what choice did he have? The FEMA camp was a failed mission. It was time to go back and figure out what was next. No home. No supplies.

  “Nothing at all, huh?” Matt asked.

  “Yeah, that’s what we said, nothing. You would have seen that for yourself if you had actually gotten up and looked some,” Tara retorted.

  Matt let the snide comment pass. It was pointless to engage her in an argument.

  “We head back,” he said. “We find Greg and Jody and tell them this was a waste of time, and then we figure out what’s next.”

  Tara took in a deep breath before she turned and walked away. Steve reached out and offered Matt a hand. He accepted.

  The two interlocked hands, and with a grunt of enthusiastic effort, Steve yanked his friend up and off the ground. Matt was no small guy, but Steve’s tug lifted his feet off the ground a good inch before he reconnected to the hard-packed sand.

  “There ya go, brother. How you feeling?” Steve asked.

  “I’ve felt better,” Matt said as he cracked the bones in his back and neck. “I swear you get stronger and bigger every time we come out here.”

  “Nah, you’re just getting smaller.” Steve laughed. “But seriously, brother, you don’t eat because all you do is stress. I can see it on your face.”

  Matt smirked. “Nah, I’m just reflecting.”

  “If that’s what you want to call it. Either way, stop eating like a bird.”

  Matt ignored Steve’s concerns and watched as Tara stormed off. When she was angry, there was nothing anyone could do. She just had to be left alone to vent off her frustration. It was never personal. It was just how she did things.

  “What do you say we head back?” Matt asked.

  “Sounds good, brother.”

  “There was an RV resort and lodge a day’s hike east of here. We passed it on the way down. Should make for a good overnight camp.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  Matt grabbed his pack and pulled out a water bladder. It was small but durable. He gripped the filter tip with his teeth and pulled it open to take a large gulp. The warm water went down with ease, almost choking him in the process. He wiped some spillage off his lips and offered some to Steve, who took a similar pull then passed it back to Matt for safekeeping. In his other pocket, Matt rifled around blindly for a pack of gummy energy blocks. It was the last pack leftover from a previous scavenging trip. He found them quickly and pulled out a large, rectangular package with small, red cubes in it. He pulled the bag open, took out a few cubes, then shoved them in his mouth.

  “Here, you happy? I’m eating,” Matt grumbled.

  Steve smiled back, his lips barely raised and eyes narrowed. Then he pushed Matt’s shoulder to move ahead. In a few steps, he jogged past Tara to take point.

  “Let’s go,” Matt said as he passed her.

  He didn’t need to turn around to know she flipped him the bird.

  With their backs to the FEMA camp, they walked east down an old, sun-beaten road that stretched endlessly through the desert wasteland. They passed trees and shrubs, herbs, and other natural elements that if appropriately harnessed, could have been of great value. But they were the product of a generation of humans who’d grown up in a modern world and failed to find the value in natural elements. Instead, they still relied on advanced technology, pharmaceuticals, and other luxuries that should have died with society.

  Matt walked with a blind eye toward the ridges lining the eastern landscape and hoped to make his checkpoint before nightfall. With the sun just a few fingers over the ridge ahead, he felt confident that would not be an issue.

  Matt maintained his distance a few feet ahead of Steve and Tara. Far enough ahead to detect a threat, close enough to hear their flirty banter over his rambling thoughts. He drifted in and out of old memories, always wondering what had become of his family. His dad was dead. Or at least, that was what he’d been told by Greg. His mother and brother were the big unknowns. He should have been back with them when the world turned, but his mother’s abandonment created a void between them. And the reality was, he couldn’t have cared less about his mother had it not been for her being his younger brother Michael’s only caretaker. Even though she was only semi-reliable.

  As he tried to rationalize and focus, the RV park and lodge came into view. It was still about half a mile ahead, but if he could see it, that meant anyone in there could see them. He stopped and dropped to a knee.

  From behind, Matt heard the small bits of gravel and glass mixed with blown-over sand grind under their feet as St
eve and Tara came to an equally abrupt stop. Matt looked over his shoulder and waved them both up.

  They approached Matt quickly in a low-crouch movement Greg had taught them to use. Greg’s prior military experience helped train the survivors of Camp O over the years. Some of the skills seemed more practical than others; this was one of those movements. Matt wasn’t sure how effective it would be out in the open, but for whatever reason, they all decided it the best way to approach.

  “What’s up?” Tara asked.

  She was almost whispering, which seemed as pointless as the crouched run.

  “The RV park and lodge are just ahead.” Matt pointed toward the only building. “Can you get a better view from behind cover and see if anything’s moving around in there?”

  “Sure. Looks pretty empty from here, but I can get a better view with optics up ahead.”

  She and Matt looked around for decent cover. For the most part, there were low shrubs and some small trees not big enough to conceal a child.

  “I’ll use that junker up there for cover.” She unslung her .308 long rifle and ran for it.

  Tara had spotted a rusted-out Volkswagen van. It was completely hollowed out and riddled with bullet holes. It had been in place for so long, trees had grown through the floorboard and out the windows. It was nothing more than a large planter, which was good for Tara. She flipped the lens cover off her rifle’s mounted scope, then used the window frame to steady the rifle and looked around.