Kate Brokenshire, Zombie Slayer (Book 1): Stand and Deliver

  STAND AND DELIVER

  A Kate Brokenshire Zombie Slayer Adventure, Book 1

  By

  Garth Ono

  * * * * *

  Copyright 2016 by Garth Ono

  Cover by Jessica Allain

  This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and locations within either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All characters in this story are 18 years old or older.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  The End

  About the author

  Stand and Deliver

  A Kate Brokenshire Zombie Slayer Adventure, Book #1

  "Just lovely," Kate said, frowning at the three figures stumbling towards her through the early morning fog. Brown eyes narrowed as she tossed a long dark braid over her shoulder. She stood next to a twenty year old, battered Land Rover Defender, two years her senior, as she pulled on black leather, fingerless driving gloves. Work gloves for a machete-wielding zombie slayer. "An easy hundred and fifty dollars."

  One of the zombies wailed at her. She arched a brow at him. The gentle breeze brought the stench of rotting flesh to her.

  Her parents didn't think it was a real job, but the state of Illinois still paid $50 a head for any undead that wander out of the Zombie Lands to the west. Her hometown wasn't too far from the Mississippi River, so the county got thirty to forty zombies a month on average. Someone had to kill them. Adjacent counties called her, too.

  Kate looked left and right. Zombies weren't very bright, but they could setup a simple trap. Kate didn't see any others sneaking up on her, so she pulled her latest zombie killing purchase, a Schrader Kukri Machete, out of the truck and strapped it across her back. It was a larger, heavier version of the kukri knife the legendary Nepalese Gurkha soldiers carried. The zombie slayer considered it the best $35 she'd spent. Last, but not least, she pulled out a double-barreled, sawed off 12-gauge shotgun. It was her late maternal grandfather's, and he named it "Lupara."

  "Stupid rotters!" she cried when they broke into a run, attacking with grasping hands extended. She shot from the hip, legs wide to brace against the shotgun's kick. "Eat lead."

  Boom!

  The undead monster to her far right was knocked off his feet with a buckshot blast to the chest. She swung Lupara to the left and shot the zombie to her far left. Boom!

  Kate dropped the shotgun and pulled her kukri machete. The middle rotter charged her with a wail. She hated it when they sounded off like that. Stepping into his attack, she slashed across his belly and spilled his guts. The zombie tripped over his intestines, dropping to all fours.

  "Hai!" she cried, bringing the heavy-duty, inwardly-curved machete down on his neck.

  The head rolled under her dark green Land Rover. She turned back to the other two. The shotgun didn't kill either of them. Kate shot the rotters to slow them down. The rotter to her left regained his feet first, lunging at her knees. That was unexpected.

  "Yikes!"

  She fell to her back, with the zombie's arms around her knees and his bloody face in her crotch. And he bit her between the legs. Cursing like a sailor, she grabbed his hair, yanked his head back, and sliced his throat to the bone with her keen blade. Then she dropped the machete, grabbed his jaw, and snapped his neck.

  The zombie stilled, fully dead. The last zombie was on his feet and charging. She barely rolled away in time. He stumbled and crashed head first into the side of her truck.

  "You dented my door, you stupid, brain-dead rotter!"

  Kate snatched up her kukri machete as she charged him. The zombie stumbled back from the truck and turned toward her just in time to lose his head. After examining the rather large dent, she stomped over to the second kill and finished cutting off his head. Then she got a black plastic bag and placed all three heads in it.

  "I can't believe that bastard bit my crotch," she said, rubbing the spot. It still ached.

  Despite popular myth, zombie bites didn't turn you into the undead. It just hurt. She'd heal, but the Defender's dent was permanent. It was too old and battered to fix. Besides, the two-door four-wheel drive was her work vehicle. Okay, her only transportation at the moment.

  "It'll cost me at least $500 to get the Defender's dent fixed," she muttered, stuffing the bag of heads in back. Insurance made her pay the first $500. Money she didn't have. "Sorry, old girl."

  She loved that old four-wheel drive truck. Her Uncle Elliot gave it to her for a graduation present. It was his, but he moved back to the UK permanently. Uncle Elliot had purchased it new twenty years earlier, and when she checked its blue book value online it was still worth at least forty to fifty thousand. If she fixed all the dents it would be worth a lot more.

  After moving the headless bodies to the side of the road, she got the GPS coordinates for the authorities. No one wanted dead bodies on the side of the road rotting and stinking up the place. She took a photo with her smartphone, added the GPS coordinates, and e-mailed it to the County Coroner's office retrieval team. And once that was done, she changed into another black Got Zombies? t-shirt and pair of jeans. The black hid the blood stains.

  Can't show up on a job all covered in blood. So she always carried multiple changes of clothes in her truck. She also went through a lot of Wet-Naps.

  Kate jumped back behind the wheel, started her truck up, and hit the road. Those three zombies had her hopes up the job would end up paying pretty well. She followed the single lane paved road through the trees until she reached the Wilson farm. Stopping in the middle of the white gravel farmyard, she hit the horn twice and got out.

  George Wilson and his two pre-teen sons came out of the barn. She went around back to arm up. A pistol belt went around her hips, with the holster tied down around her right thigh. A Browning 9mm rested snugly within. She strapped her machete across her back again, with a bandolier of shotgun shells over the other shoulder, and then she reloaded Lupara.

  "Good morning, Miss Brokenshire," the farmer said.

  "Hi, Mr. Wilson," she said, stuffing a new trash bag in her back pocket. While the farmer looked her in the eye, his two sons were soaking in the rest of her. She shook her head. Her body was lean, more athletic than shapely. She was not exactly dressed to impress. "Your wife called and said you have some rotters running amok."

  It occurred to her the aforementioned zombies could be the three she'd already killed. That would suck. She needed the additional fee to pay the rent.

  "Yeah, well, she's a bit over-dramatic," he said. The farmer turned to point at a metal gate in the fencing. "But there are four chasing our livestock around over in that field. I'd appreciate it if you got rid of them for us."

  "Splendid, sir," she said with a b
ig smile. She didn't lose her service call fee!

  Kate was the only "official" zombie slayer within a hundred miles. She started Got Zombies even before she graduated high school, so she'd just finished her ninth month in business.

  "Why do you talk with that English accent?" one of the sons asked.

  "I'm English," she said.

  Technically, she was both English and American, and had citizenship in both countries. Her father was the English half. Her mother's ancestry was anything but English, being an all American woman and all. Still, Kate did live half of her life in Cornwall, UK, and the other half in Illinois, USA. Thing was, whenever she lived in England, she always claimed to be American. Drove her parents crazy.

  "She looks like the tomb raider," the other kid said.

  "That's what I get for braiding my hair," Kate said, looking at the grinning farmer and sighing. "You know I charge $25 a head, Mr. Wilson? Half in advance. It's extra if you can't wait for the county to come pick up the headless bodies."

  She had body bags in the Defender, with a rack on top of the truck. Only a few ever paid the extra removal fee.

  The farmer handed her five twenties. "We're going into town for the day while you take care of them, so here's the full price. Try to get the county to pick them up before we come home."

  Kate just nodded, but was thrilled. Four more heads! $450 in her pocket when all was said and done. And it was still early morning.

  Mrs. Wilson came out of the house carrying a toddler. An adorable little girl that Kate cooed over a moment. After they piled into their SUV and left, Kate took Lupara off safety as she headed for the gate. She spotted the rotters before she reached the fence.

  "Our lives would be a nightmare if they weren't so anal attentive."

  The four zombies were running all around and chasing sheep. There was little chance they'd actually catch one. At best, they could outlast a sheep and catch it once exhaustion set in. She doubted that was possible.

  "Hey, zombie, zombie, zombie!" she called. "Here I am."

  All four stopped and turned toward her. She could see the crazy in their eyes. One of them was nightmarish, her face all torn up, flaps of skin hanging off. Her lower lip was completely gone. Kate grimaced at the sight of bare bone and teeth. All were ghoulishly pale and wearing filthy, gore splatter formal wear.

  "How lovely," she said. "I adore a well-dressed zombie."

  Some people didn't like her sense of humor. It was the only thing keeping her grounded in that insane world. Sometimes it was hard to remember what it was like before the Zombie Apocalypse. At least they were contained to specific places in the world. The states between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains were America's Zombie Lands. Back in the UK it was the Cotswolds.

  Fortunately, enough escaped the Zombie Lands to keep her employed.

  "Come and get me, you butt-ugly rotters," she called. They seemed torn between her and the constantly moving sheep. Movement was irresistible to their simple brains. She climbed up on the white-painted, three rail fence, standing on the bottom rail. Kate shook her boobs at them. She didn't even have to pull her shirt up because they didn't care about sex, just mindless slaughter. "I'm delicious. Everyone knows zombies prefer human to mutton anyway."

  She knew zombies didn't eat. They were dead. Undead. Still, they killed people so their victims would become zombies, too. Only, to become a zombie you had to be within the Zombie Lands when you died. So in her mind, they were killing for no reason at all now.

  They started toward her rather slowly. The undead could be quite fast, but they didn't have the best balance. They bumped into things and fell down quite often. But once you had their attention, they fixated on you.

  And zombies could put up a pretty good fight.

  They burst into a run just twenty feet away. Kate waited until the last second before jumping back off the fence. All four of them slammed into the fence. She thrust the barrel into the lone female's throat and pulled the trigger. Her spinal column was blown away and she collapsed bonelessly, completely dead again.

  None of the zombies cared about or even looked back at the dead one. They began climbing over the fence. Kate pressed the barrel to the forehead of another, and blew his brains away. He fell back off the fence, but started getting back up.

  It gave her time. Kate reloaded, and shot the next one in the chest just before he crested the fence, sending him falling straight back. The fourth one made it over.

  She dropped the shotgun, pulled her kukri machete, and chopped off the hand reaching for her. Ducking under the other hand, she stepped past him. Kate swung the heavy-duty machete as she turned, and took off a leg just above the knee. He went down. But before she could lob off his head, another zombie came over the fence.

  "Oh, you're a fast one, aren't you?"

  He was on her in a flash. The zombie slayer slashed his eyes. She noticed he was the one she blew the brains out. Apparently she didn't blow enough brains out. In truth, it did surprise her he was still alive. Before she could finish him off the last zombie came over the fence.

  "Either they are getting faster or I'm getting slower," she grumbled.

  She smashed a roundhouse into the side of his head. The zombie stumbled away and fell. She wagged her brows. Kate wasn't sure if it was the martial arts training or all those years of playing soccer that made her legs such potent weapons.

  Kate rushed the last zombie as he struggled to his feet. She swung at his neck from behind, but he ducked and she took off the back third of his head instead. He probably didn't even feel it.

  "Ugh!" she grunted when he backhanded her. She stumbled back into the arms of the blinded rotter, who promptly clamped his teeth down on her shoulder. She lost the kukri machete. "Aaaiiee. Bastard."

  She dropped all of her weight, slipping out of his grasp. The other one was charging her, so she scrambled through the blind one's legs. Both zombies followed her as she headed for the sawed off shotgun.

  One hand snatched up her weapon, even as she turned and braced her legs.

  "Meet my little friend, Lupara!" she cried, shooting the rotter in the face.

  That dropped him, but didn't kill him. Now she was facing two scramble-brained zombies. She ducked under the arms of the following zombie. He was blind, so not that hard to avoid, and he continued forward until he slammed into the fence.

  The double-barrel broke open and both spent shells ejected. She quickly pushed two more in and snapped it shut. Picking up the machete, she thrust the tip into the soft earth.

  "Hey, zombie, zombie, zombie, come over here and DIE!"

  Both of them came running. She concentrated on the zombie who could see. And then she blasted both barrels into his heart. That sent him stumbling backwards. Kate dropped Lupara and took the machete as she advanced. His arms were thrown wide for balance. She smiled and swung.

  "Fifty dollars!" she cried as his head came off. Kate spun to the right, as she brought the keen edge of that machete around to cleave off the blind zombie's head. "Make that a hundred."

  The female on the other side of the fence pushed it to $150. That left the crippled rotter to finish off. She turned to regard him a long second. It was a little unnerving how little they bled. The older the corpse, the less blood in the zombie. The last one wasn't bleeding a drop.

  "I bet you had to claw your way out of the grave," Kate said.

  He was crawling toward her on that gory stump. Okay, he was leaving a little smear on the ground. Disgusting. He also reeked of rotting flesh the worst of them all.

  Kate began circling him. That confused his undead brain. It kind of made him a little more crazy homicidal. Whenever she drew closer, he lunged at her. She was feeling more than a little battered, so took him on more cautiously. Her opening came quickly enough, and she lunged at him as she brought the inwardly-curved machete down on his neck.

  "And there's another fifty in my pocket," she said, pausing to catch her breath. "Mr. Rose doesn't get to evict me
for at least another month now."

  She leased the carriage house, along with half of the four-car garage underneath, for $550 a month. It even had a window AC in each bedroom. Everything was fine until he figured out she was running a zombie slaying business out of her home.

  The slayer dragged the three headless bodies to the fence, lining them up. Then she took a picture of them, and leaned over the fence to snap a photo of the female. Those two pictures were sent to the County Coroner with the GPS info. They could get both sets on the same run.

  Her phone rang before Kate pushed it back into her pocket.

  "Got Zombies? Kate Brokenshire speaking," she said. "How can I help you?"

  "Hi, Kate, it's Sheriff Coleman," he said. "We have a problem. You ever slay a vampire?"

  Chapter 2

  "Are you out of your bleeding mind? I'm not touching a drac."

  "Don't give me that English accent crap. You grew up next door to me and played with my daughter," Sheriff Coleman said. She scowled. He should know it wasn't fake. "Besides, vamps are just zombies who are still sentient. Should be easy for you."

  Kate paused. Daphne remained her best friend. Her parents still lived next door to the Colemans, though at the moment they were spending the year in the UK. She couldn't imagine him sending her into a dangerous situation, yet even regular zombies were quite dangerous. They proved that to her more often than she cared to admit, like just that morning.

  "The vamp's in our county?"

  "Yes, and I even have a pretty good idea where the vamp is holed up. You shouldn't have to do more than a little hunting around."

  "Is it a he or she?"

  "His name is Alexander Cray," Sheriff Coleman replied, sounding like he thought she'd already agreed. "Next time you come in to collect your bounties, I'll give you his folder."

  "Is he controlling any zombies or minions?"

  Sentient zombies, called dracs, vamps, vampires, were the only ones able to control regular zombies. No one's figured out why, but vamps could make a zombie do anything. Also, any living person bitten by a vampire became his minion, and was just as slavishly devoted to the vamp as the zombies. Worse, when a minion died he became a vampire, too, and he didn't have to be inside the Zombie Lands, either.