Empty World: A Post-Apocalyptic Zombie Thriller (Empty Bodies Book 7) Read online

  Empty World

  A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller

  Zach Bohannon

  Copyright © 2018 by Zach Bohannon

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Edited by Jennifer Collins

  Proofread by Robert Pettigrew

  Cover by Roy Migabon

  zachbohannon.com

  moltenuniversemedia.com

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  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

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Epilogue

  Stay Informed

  Afterword

  Also by Zach Bohannon

  About Zach Bohannon

  Author’s Note

  Just a quick note before you get started…

  Empty World takes place 30 years after the events of my six-book series, Empty Bodies. While longtime fans of that series will find little Easter eggs throughout this novel, you do not have to have read those books to enjoy this. Empty World stands on its own.

  If you would like to read the original series, either before you start this novel or after, you can pick up the first book at http://books2read.com/emptybodies

  So with that, to new readers, and to all the Empties out there… welcome to Empty World.

  -Zach

  For all the Empties out there. This one’s for you.

  1

  Every morning when Shell Langford woke, she gave the honor to the same knife of making a new mark on the wall.

  Flipping the silver blade over in her hand and taking hold of the inscribed, bone handle, Shell carved another notch into the stark-white drywall.

  1,925 days alone.

  She scanned the wall, each cut of the blade representing another day she’d survived. And with some luck, she’d be there to carve a new mark the next day. For now, it was time to go outside and do her day’s chores.

  She walked outside and down her porch steps to make the trek across the yard to the barn. Not a single cloud blocked the sun, and it illuminated the inside of the barn as Shell pulled the doors all the way open. It shone throughout the area, lighting up the faces of the goats. Aside from the chickens in their pen on the other end of the yard, the goats were the only animals she had left.

  At the pen, she put her dark brown hair into a ponytail, then she slid the bolt aside to open the gate.

  “Good morning, friends.”

  The two male goats made their way from their bed of straw and wandered out the large barn doors to go stretch their legs in the fenced-in yard.

  When they were out, Shell took hold of the nanny goat, whom she had named Lisa. She led her to the center of the barn and up onto the milking stand, then placed a bucket under the goat. Then she squatted and pulled at the goat’s teats and milk flowed down into the bucket.

  As she extracted the morning’s supply from Lisa, Shell looked back into the pasture. The other goats grazed in the newly greened grass, picking mostly at weeds. Winter had been one of the most treacherous in Shell’s twenty-three years, or at least in the eighteen or nineteen that she could remember. She hadn’t been sure that all the animals would make it through the cold, but she’d been fortunate—the only loss had been two of her chickens. With Spring now here, she hoped to have a few weeks of decent temperatures before the Mississippi heat began cursing her day in and day out for several months.

  When she finished milking Lisa, she helped the goat off the stand, petting her on the back.

  “You’re a good girl, Lisa.”

  The goat bleated back at her, and Shell smiled. She led the animal out into the field with the others. Shell picked up the bucket of milk, along with her bow and quiver of arrows, then left the barn and made her way back to her house to drop the milk off.

  As she headed across the meadow, she glanced over to the vegetable garden. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something. Shell paused, jerking her head in that direction. She squinted her eyes and focused, but it turned out to only be a rabbit, hopping under the fence at the edge of the yard. Shell smiled and shook her head. Even though it had been a long time since she’d seen a Dead or a person, that didn’t keep her mind from playing tricks on her and leaving her paranoid. But as was usual, it was no threat.

  Shell walked up the porch steps, dropping the bucket of milk off on the patio and picking up an empty basket. Then she made her way over to the chicken coop.

  She arrived and dropped her bow and arrows on the ground, then opened the doors to the shack, the chickens clucking as she entered. Shell moved down the row, collecting eggs into the basket. The seven chickens had produced a total of five eggs—enough for her to eat over the next couple of days.

  When Shell had finished collecting the eggs, she opened the doors to let the chickens out into the vast, caged area so they could move around and get some sun.

  Picking up the basket and her bow and quiver, Shell exited out the front of the coop and headed back toward the house. She needed to get her milk and eggs inside the before she went to tend to the vegetable garden.

  Shell was halfway back to the house and looking down at the ground when she heard a rustling come from the yard. She glanced over and watched as a shirtless young boy stood at her garden some twenty yards away. Shell narrowed her eyes, her jaw slack. The boy staring at her couldn’t have been more than eight years old. He was covered in dirt, his face hardly recognizable under the muck and the ragged mop of hair on top of his head. In one of his hands, he held a bag, and in the other was a potato. Shell’s potato.

  The boy ran.

  Shell set down her basket of eggs and gave chase. Even with his short legs, the boy was fast. Shell thought to drop her bow, but she was worried the boy might not be alone. What if there were others waiting on the road where he was headed? She didn’t want to come across a gang and be weaponless, even though the boy was the first person she had seen in at least two years.

  She ran across the yard to the road, a hundred and fifty feet from the front of the house. The boy was much faster than her, making his head start more of a disadvantage for her.

  The boy reached the road as Shell called out to him.

  “Stop!”

  But the boy ignored her.

/>   He reached a bicycle, adjusting the bag so he could hop on. This delay allowed Shell to catch up to him some. But when she was still several dozen feet away, he took off, pedaling slowly at first, but then coasting down the steep hill that started only fifteen yards from her driveway.

  Shell reached the top of the hill behind him, out of breath, and she watched the boy pick up speed as he moved down it. He glanced over his shoulder every so often to make sure she wasn’t following him. She leaned on her knees, fighting to catch her breath as she watched the boy speed away from her with the stolen crops.

  When the boy had ridden out of her sight and her heart rate had lowered, Shell stood up straight and walked back to the yard, arriving back at the garden. Taking inventory, she realized that the boy had stolen most of what she would’ve been able to harvest that day. From what she could tell, he had even ripped out of the ground some of the premature vegetable plants. Exhaling a heavy sigh, Shell clenched her eyes shut. There was nothing she could do about the stolen vegetables. She could only hope to salvage what was left.

  But she now had to worry about someone knowing where she was. She had dealt with wildlife getting into her garden. Rabbits and the occasional wild dog had been mostly easy to deal with through setting humane traps and making sure she maintained the chicken-wire fence around the garden. She’d even managed to keep the Deads away. But a living, breathing human was a different story.

  The thought that the boy might not be alone returned to her. If he were part of a gang or a family, they would surely return.

  And when that happened, Shell would be ready.

  2

  Shell returned the chickens to the coop and then made her way over to the barn to gather the goats. Typically, she would allow the goats to graze for most of the day, but she was paranoid since that boy had shown up earlier.

  After locking the goats away, Shell jogged back to the house. She went straight to her garage and opened the fishing tackle box sitting on a shelf. She pulled out a spool of fishing line before going back into the house.

  Hurrying up the stairs, she pulled the rope on the ceiling to open the attic and climbed up. She looked around at the dusty cardboard boxes until she found the one she was looking for. It had been marked ‘Xmas’ with a permanent black marker, though the label had faded over time. Opening it, she found an array of Christmas ornaments. The box probably hadn’t been out of the attic since she was six or seven years old.

  Shell shifted through the box until she heard what she was looking for. At the bottom of the box were sleigh bells, as well as some jingle bells on a ribbon.

  She took her finds to the kitchen and set the ornaments on the table. Then, Shell sat down and removed the bells one by one, setting them in a row on the ground. By the time she’d finished, she had thirty-eight silver bells. She gathered them into a plastic bag, threw her bow and quiver over her shoulder, and went back over to her vegetable garden.

  Stretching out the fishing line, she tied one end to a sturdy bush, making sure it was less than a foot off the ground. She then walked backward, stretching the wire across the front of her vegetable garden. She stopped only when she reached a tree, setting the wire on the ground in front of it. Then she spent the next several minutes tying most of the bells onto the wire. When she was done, she tied the other end of the wire around the tree. She retrieved her bag, then headed for the chicken coop.

  The entire walk over she kept a lookout, anticipating that the boy would return. Though she knew he was unlikely to come back the same day, he was a child. And children were unpredictable.

  At the chicken coop, she tied the bells around the handle on the door. Then she went over to the barn and did the same. If he came back, Shell was going to be alerted.

  When she finished rigging the two doors, she went back to the garden and looked at the wire. It was unlikely an invader would miss it during the day, but she hoped that her presence that morning would have inspired the boy to return at night when she was sleeping, if at all. There was no way he would see any of the noisemakers with only the moon’s light to guide him. Hopefully, this would be enough to scare the boy off from coming back again.

  With things as secure as she could make them, Shell retrieved her bow and quiver and walked across the yard to her practice area. She’d painted a target on the largest tree on the property, the same tree she’d climbed so often as a young girl. Occasionally, she’d still climb into the tree now, but it was mostly there to hone her bow skills, and to provide her a shady place to read a book on cooler days.

  Target practice gave her the opportunity to clear her mind. She focused on her breathing, letting arrow after arrow fly from her bow to the tree trunk. Today it was much harder to clear her mind, though. She kept thinking of the boy, wondering if and when he’d come back. After only about ten minutes shooting and unable to ease her racing mind, she decided to go back into the house and rest for a while.

  As she reached the two-story farmhouse, Shell’s attention turned to the small cemetery on the other side of it. She hesitated before dropping her bow and quiver on the porch steps. She picked three freshly bloomed flowers she’d planted in front of the house, then walked over to the graves.

  Shell had done her best to keep up the maintenance around the graves. With Spring just arriving again, she knew she would have much work to do in order to keep the cemetery neat. Shell had fashioned the grave markers out of wood, knowing it was all she’d had, and had carved the names into them with a knife. She walked amongst the graves now, running her hand along the top of several of the wooden markers as she read the names. Remembered the faces.

  There were over a dozen graves in all, belonging to the people who had once lived in all the surrounding houses, and in hers.

  After looking at several of the grave markings, she stopped at a particular plot.

  LEWIS ROBINSON

  DIED MAY 2, 2038

  FRIEND AND MENTOR

  Shell smiled, setting one of the flowers down in front of the grave.

  “Thank you for all you taught me. I have only survived as long as I have because of you.”

  She kissed two of her fingers and then touched the wooden marker, just above the name. Then she stood.

  Stepping around more graves, Shell arrived at the other two she visited when she made it to this side of the house.

  MICHELLE LANGFORD

  BORN DECEMBER 20, 1995

  DIED MAY 15, 2021

  BELOVED MOTHER AND WIFE

  ROBERT “BOBBY” LANGFORD

  BORN AUGUST 8, 1993

  DIED AUGUST 3, 2027

  BELOVED FATHER AND HUSBAND

  She kneeled down between the graves of her parents. She did not—could not—speak. She instead remained silent, running her hand over the grass. Tears formed in her eyes and she sniffled, raising her arm to her face to wipe away the tears. With glassy eyes, she looked up and stared at the two names. This was the first time in several visits she had cried. Perhaps it was the sight of the boy earlier in the day that was getting to her. It had been so long since she’d seen another living human that she had almost forgotten what others looked like, especially children.

  After several minutes of reflection and prayer, Shell lay the other two flowers on her mother’s and father’s graves respectively, then stood. A breeze blew through the air, cooling her skin as she turned her back to the graves. She walked back around to the front and picked up her bow and arrows as she headed up the porch stairs and into the house.

  Shell spent the rest of the morning and afternoon relaxing inside, reading a book and occasionally glancing out the window to see if anyone was there. Her paranoia was real, and nothing she did could keep her mind off of the boy.

  It wasn’t until later in the afternoon that she went back outside to feed the chickens and goats and to milk Lisa a second time. On her way back inside, she checked the wires once more to make sure they were tight, then headed back to the house. The sun was in the horizon now, the sky
painted in shades of purple and orange. She appreciated the beauty in it, and as she walked back to the house and looked over at the grave markers at the side of the house, she wondered if her parents and Lewis were watching over her. She smiled, then went back into the house.

  Though it was one of Spring’s first days, the inside of the farmhouse was chilly that night. This was fine by Shell, as she could simply start a fire to provide both heat and light. She could save the candles she had for warmer evenings when a fire would be unnecessary. With months of humid nights ahead, she’d gladly enjoy the Spring temperatures while she could.

  She kept a small stack of firewood next to the fireplace, and she threw a couple of logs inside. While getting the wood required the labor of chopping, starting the fire once the logs were inside was easy. Between all the houses in the small Mississippi Delta town, Shell had gathered enough matches and lighters to last her probably another ten years. Her father had often joked how this stockpile was the only thing that had ever made him thankful so many people had smoked cigarettes.

  Shell lit the fire, then went to the kitchen to grab a glass of milk, two carrots, and a potato which would be her dinner. Then she plopped down onto the couch to relax and eat. Physically, the day had been less taxing on her body than many others. Taking care of the animals and her garden were everyday tasks she was used to, but this had mentally been one of the hardest days she’d had in a while. Over and over in her mind, Shell saw that boy’s grime-covered face. She replayed the scene of him cruising down the hill on the bike, looking back at her as she worked to catch her breath.