Beyond the Barriers Read online

  “News of the world?” A female voice that sounded familiar to me. Deep, but still female.

  “Hey. If it ain’t the mysterious Lizabeth,” Scott said. “You can’t believe how happy I am to hear you. It’s been a while.”

  “Well if it isn’t the smartass. I thought maybe they got you.”

  “They did, but we escaped. Are you still in town?”

  “Nope. We left a few weeks ago. We’re camped on the outskirts of Portland.”

  “That’s where we’re headed.”

  Lizabeth. Liz. It had to be her. So they had made it out of town after our distraction. They were safe. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

  “Liz, it’s Tragger.” There was a long pause from the other end of the line.

  “You.” She laughed.

  “Me.”

  “You got us out, you know that? We made it out of town thanks to you. Are Pat and Katherine okay?”

  I closed my eyes for a few seconds then spoke.

  “Pat didn’t make it. He sacrificed himself so Katherine and I could escape. Katherine’s with another group of survivors. They left for Portland about a week ago. They’re in a huge convoy of trucks. You can’t miss them.”

  “I hope it’s not the sorry group of burned out vehicles we found a few days ago. Some of the guys were on a sortie to find some food. It looked like the convoy had been attacked at night. We found bodies but not many. Some may have escaped.”

  I clenched my fist in fury, slamming it into the hard ground and ignoring the pain.

  “She has to be alright,” I muttered. “Everyone else is gone. I need her to be okay.”

  “Maybe she is. We’ll send out a party in the morning. Maybe they’re hiding in the woods. No guarantees, but we will do our best. It’s the least we can do. I didn’t care for you much, Tragger. But you done good,” Liz said over the airwaves.

  “We’re coming to you. We’ll be on the road first thing in the morning.” I wanted to leave right then and there, but what about the other survivors with us? Some might want to return to whatever home they had occupied. I would wait to broach the subject after some rest. We all needed it before making any hasty decisions.

  “Lizabeth. If you find them, ask for Lisa. She runs the outfit. Tell her you are a friend of Scott and Erik’s. Just tell her that and bring her in. Bring them all in.”

  “I will. Hey I have to go. We have some activity here.”

  “Wait!” I yelled at the radio, but it went dead.

  The End of Book One

  About the Author

  Timothy W. Long has been writing tales and stories since he could hold a crayon and has also read enough books to choke a landfill. He has a fascination with all things zombies, a predilection for weird literature, and a deep-seated need to jot words on paper and thrust them at people.

  Tim is the author of the horror novel Among the Living and the forthcoming sequel Among the Dead. His other works include the deserted island ‘zombedy’, The Zombie Wilson Diaries. He also co-wrote the post-apocalyptic novel Wacktards of the Apocalypse which was recently named the preferred version of the end of the world by a consortium of rapture survivors.

  Tim can be found tooling around his website: TimothyWLong.com.