Scattered
Zommunist Invasion, Book 3
Camille Picott
Copyright © 2021 by Camille Picott
www.camillepicott.com
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.
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This book is dedicated to all the awesome members of my Zombie Recon Team on Patreon. Your support means the world to me!
Linda Huggins
Amanda Pratt
Larry Guevara
Jenn Miola
Julie Wyatt
Jessica Stephenson
Tanya Griggs
Lisa Unciano
Brian Spillane
Nanciann Lamontange
Lisa Lewis
Jenyfer Conaway
Contents
I. Mission to Rossi
1. Riders
2. Damn Good
3. Into Rossi
4. Bodies
5. Trap Run
6. Bars
7. Cigarettes
8. Darkness
9. Broken
10. Family
11. Alarm
12. Doctor
13. Tank
14. Outbound
II. Fifteen Miles
15. Plan
16. Mrs. Fink
17. Bird of Prey
18. Sample
19. Log
20. Boulder
21. Ants
22. Slog
23. Possibility
24. Trap
25. New Zombie
26. Home
III. Survivors
27. Snow
28. Pink
29. Practice
30. Princess of Power
31. The Boy with the Painted Face
32. Shoes
33. Absence
34. A Brother Like You
35. Footprints
36. Exposed
37. Memory
38. Waiting
39. Attack
40. Apocalyptic Princess of Power
41. Engines
IV. Family
42. Grandson
43. Mirror
44. Toughest Girl in the Village
45. Microscope
46. Weird
Epilogue
Author’s Note
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Part I
Mission to Rossi
1
Riders
While Leo and his team embarked on their mission to Luma Bridge, the rest of the Snipers had missions of their own…
Anger boiled in Anton’s blood as he leaned low over the back of his horse. In his mind’s eye, he kept seeing Mr. and Mrs. Craig in the back of the open-top jeep with the KGB and Russian soldiers. The memory made him want to simultaneously vomit and burn shit down.
He could hardly believe his big brother had turned his back on the Craigs. Leo was so focused on blowing up a fucking bridge, he was willing to sell out friends in the name of the mission. Well, Leo could have his fucking bridge. Anton wasn’t turning his back on the Craigs.
Anton was an orphan now. He, Leo, and Lena had lost their mom to cancer before the Soviet invasion. They’d lost their dad to the fucking Russians. Hell if he was going to let his friend Tate Craig end up an orphan, too.
Beside him, Tate gripped the black mane of his horse. Stealth and Thunder were both retired stallions from the junior college. They galloped down the hand-picked dirt road that led away from Pole Mountain.
The Cecchinos had been family friends with the Craigs forever. They’d grown up having sleepovers together. Mrs. Craig made the best pumpkin bread in all of West County and always gave them several loaves every Thanksgiving.
They’d already lost Jim Craig—the oldest of the Craig brothers—to the communist bastards less than a week ago. They weren’t going to lose any more Craigs to this damn war. Not if Anton had anything to say about it.
The horses hit the bottom of Pole Mountain and raced through the Cecchino apple orchard, heading toward the two-lane highway that bordered the family farm.
“What are we going to do now?” Tate yelled over the thunder of the horse hooves.
Anton had secretly been wondering the same thing. They wouldn’t be able to catch the KGB jeep. It had too much of a head start. That was the main reason Leo put the kibosh on the rescue mission to begin with; there was no way to catch the Craigs before their captors got them to Rossi.
But football games weren’t always won with muscle. Strategy could trump muscle. He and Tate were going to have to outthink the Russians if they wanted any chance of rescuing Mr. and Mrs. Craig.
Anton hadn’t been an ace at football strategy, but he wasn’t terrible. He sure as shit was smarter than Russian assholes. That much he knew for sure.
“We find a Russian patrol and ambush them,” Anton said. “We steal their uniforms and use them to sneak into Rossi and find your parents.” That shit worked all the time in the movies.
“Good idea.” Tate’s grip on the Stealth’s mane was white-knuckled. His expression was a stony mask of determination. “We’re bound to come across a patrol between here and Rossi.”
Tate had changed since losing his brother to the Russians. The fun-loving guy who blew vodka fireballs after football games was gone. He was hard in ways Anton could hardly comprehend.
The horses’ gait opened up along the highway. These animals were bred to run. This was probably the best time they’d had since retiring to the junior college.
The countryside blurred by on either side of them. The apple orchards all sagged with fruit, much of it rotting on the ground. The ripe scent of the over-ripe fruit filled his nose.
It was a normal smell that may have transported Anton back to the happy days of his childhood if not for the underlying scent of death. When the Russians invaded, they’d brought the nezhit virus with them. They’d infected hundreds of people all over West County, then sent them home to turn into zombies and spread the virus.
Most of the zombies from the first wave of the attack had died. There were a fair number of people who lived out here in the countryside. They galloped by more bodies than Anton cared to count. Some had died on the side of the road. Others had died around their homes, their bodies rotting in front yards or near their cars.
It was some fucked-up shit.
“There.” Tate raised a hand. Less than a mile ahead of them was a freeway onramp. A tangle of cars dotted the top of the overpass. “We need higher ground. We can’t see anything from down here.”
He was right. Anton wasn’t fond of exposing themselves on the overpass, but they couldn’t see shit down here.
They let the horses trot to the onramp, pausing when they reached it. They sat for a minute, listening. Other than the whine of insects and the soft whisper of the wind, there was no sound.
They rode onto the overpass.
