Zombies! Episode 3.1: Island of the Dead

By Ivan Turner

On a remote island in the middle of the sea, a corporate community has been abandoned so that the large company that owns it could deposit its huge inventory of zombies. Karen Weston is a mercenary who’s been hired to go to this island and burn away every last shred of the plague. When she gets there, though, her team will discover something they never expected. One living human who seems to possess an incredible power. The only question is whether he makes their job that much easier or that much harder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ivan Turner
• Release date: Oct 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370176892

Ivan Turner

A child of the movies, I was always consumed by fantastic stories told by others and translated into adventures to be retold by me through the action figure medium. As I grew older, I put the action figures away and moved into the realm of role playing. Though I never outgrew role playing, I certainly don't have the time for it anymore. Since I was eleven years old, I've been pouring almost every ounce of creative energy I have into writing.I graduated college in 1993 with a degree in computer science. I tried my hand at programming for a couple of years and found it pretty unsatisfying. I later became a partner at a comic book store, where I spent several years. Though it wasn't a financial success, the experience I gained from running the store and the people that I met (many of whom I'm still in touch with today) was priceless. After leaving the store, I settled into a career of teaching. I still teach at a public high school in New York. Ironically, I've picked up computer programming again, which is what I mostly teach.I've been writing the whole time.I released my first book electronically in 2010. Forty Leap was a turning point for me in both style and story building. The Book of Revelations, which was written earlier but released later, was sort of a midway point between the writer I was and the writer I've become. I experimented with a very odd style and a story that employed diverse characters and controversial situations.In September 2010, I released the first installment of Zombies! Zombies! has been a tremendous success for me that came very close to being made into a television series. Since Zombies!, I have written a five part miniseries called Castes and have been working on developing tabletops games, the first of which, ApocalypZe, was published in early 2014.Now, 6 years later, a 3rd Zombies! series is due to be released in September of 2016.

Book preview

Zombies Episode 3.1:

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2016 by Ivan Turner

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

The people and events in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental.

Special thanks to Chris Hanson for his brilliant cover artwork.

Table of Contents

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Afterword

Chapter I

The world is filled with tiny little islands that, before the invention of Google Earth, could have been categorized as uncharted. Between the time zombies first came into the world and the time that the treatment for the plague, Olexynil, was invented and released, a number of these islands became the property of myriad entrepreneurs who sought to create research facilities or training yards or private resorts. To date, there has been no correlation between the appearance of zombies and the sudden interest in buying islands. There can, however, be made a correlation between the abundance of zombies and the sudden failure of so many of the entrepreneurs. All at once, about two years before, their construction budgets ran out or their resources dried up. Many of them packed their things and left the islands to rot in the sun. Others were fortunate enough to sell their properties for a fraction of what they were worth to an enterprising company called ZCF. Under the direction, and subsidization, of several world governments, ZCF acquired four such islands and populated them with their vast assortment of researchers and scientists and zombies. As zombie rights activists gained ground in their endeavors, the need for a place to put the undead became vital. ZCF was glad to help.

One such island at latitude unknown, longitude unknown, had drawn the particular attention of a small steel ship with slate grey panels, a warped deck, a tiny pilot box, and the words Crawler spray painted onto the bow. By all accounts, it was registered as a deep sea passenger vessel for hire. It had no passengers now, though. Only its captain. The first mate and the hired hands, mercenaries every one of them, had gone ashore in a small boat. The captain sat alone in the pilot box, staring at the satellite images of the island and the digital red markings she and the first mate had made to indicate their sweep pattern. She was anxious, but she would never show it.

We’re on the ground, Karen, came the first mate’s voice through the headphones over her ears.

Any sign of trouble?

The beach is quiet.

Good.

I don’t know what’s so good about it, he said. It’d be a lot safer if they all came at us while we were on the beach.

Karen Weston was young, only thirty two years old. She’d spent most of her life at sea with her father, who was a fisherman. She hated fish, but she loved the ocean. There was never any doubt that she would have her own boat one day. What she’d do with it had always been the question. Karen had completed her schooling at sea, taking classes on board with hired certified tutors. She’d accumulated enough credits to graduate high school at sixteen and had elected to do so. After all, she wasn’t ever going to go to prom. After that she’d taken a year off to work and to understand the things about boating that schooling and childhood had prevented her from learning. Then, abruptly, she’d left her father to join the Navy and get herself a bachelor’s degree in mechanical (mostly nautical) engineering. When her degree was done and her tour was up, she’d gone back to her father to help him into retirement. He was an older man. At the age of seventy, when she’d been only twenty six, he’d given up fishing and settled into a riverside community in Louisiana where he still lived happily with his new wife.

Physically, Karen was fit as could be. Working on the boat was demanding. She didn’t have the opportunity to eat a lot of the junk food that might have made her overweight and maintaining the Crawler kept her trim and strong. Her skin was pale, not a great complexion for working out at sea all day. Her father had always said that Karen’s skin color was her mother’s way of trying to pull her back to land. Well, Karen wasn’t having any of that. She put sunscreen on her face, arms, and legs at the beginning of every day and tucked her blond hair into a big floppy hat that made her look as if she was a Southern maid in a civil war film. Cedric, her first mate, hated the smell of the lotion, but he liked the hats. The rest of her outfit was pretty standard. She wore loose fitting jeans almost all the time and t-shirts or tank tops that let her body breathe. She was a fan of green.

On the beach, Cedric took stock of their surroundings while Michaels and Cree secured the boat. He could just make out the tops of buildings beyond the tree line. It looked like a miniature city had been built which, he supposed, had been the goal. The island itself was twelve miles east to west and only four north to south. It was still a lot of ground to cover on foot, but there wasn’t room for a vehicle on the Crawler. It would take them close to two weeks to clear the island completely and be sure that they had. That is, if their intel was right and it had, in fact, been overrun.

Physically, Cedric Black was the complete opposite of Karen Weston. He wasn’t a tall man, but he had broad shoulders and muscles that had developed well as a result of hauling equipment through various types of terrain. He was an islander from deep into his family’s history, with deep dark skin and wide facial features. He spoke with just the slightest tinge of an accent, but Karen suspected that he did so more for effect than for anything else. After all, he’d grown up in New Mexico.

Cedric, said Carver from over his shoulder. When Cedric turned, the older mercenary motioned with his chin.

There was a figure coming toward them across the sand. It was dressed in dark clothing, maybe the remains of a suit. It seemed to stumble on the uneven ground, but its direction and intent were clear. Carver raised his gun. A zombie out for a stroll was a good sign.

Don’t shoot it, said Cedric. We’re not ready to make any noise yet.

Nodding, Carver lowered his gun and pulled out a knife.