ONLY THE DEAD DON’T DIE
FINDING HOME
An Apocalyptic Saga – Book 4
A.D. Popovich
ONLY THE DEAD DON’T DIE
FINDING HOME
An Apocalyptic Saga – Book 4
Copyright © January 2021 by A.D. Popovich
All Rights Reserved
First Edition 2021
License Notes
This book or any portion of this publication may not be reproduced or used in any manner without prior written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations, and incidents are a 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.
This book is dedicated to those who lost their lives to the pandemic.
And to the Covid-19 Long-haulers—wishing you a speedy recovery!
Books by A.D. Popovich
ONLY THE DEAD DON’T DIE: An Apocalyptic Saga – Book 1
ONLY THE DEAD DON’T DIE The Hunger’s Howl: An Apocalyptic Saga – Book 2
ONLY THE DEAD DON’T DIE Last State: An Apocalyptic Saga – Book 3
ONLY THE DEAD DON’T DIE Finding Home: An Apocalyptic Saga – Book 4
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
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
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Scarlett Lewis surveilled the plain’s golden grasses from the Stanwyck’s rustic bunkhouse. Ironically, she and her friends had found refuge at the same horse ranch she and Twila had stumbled upon after escaping Last State’s degrading buy-a-wife auction last October. At the time, survival had seemed impossible with a child to protect. But now, they had Ella and Justin’s newborn to safeguard as well.
She found it hard to believe she was once again reunited with her California post-pandemic friends. So much had happened since her vagrant Scarlett-from-Roseville days during the Super Summer flu’s initial onslaught on humanity. Despite their dire circumstances, she could not deny her sense of relief for not having to face this undeadly world on her own.
Regrettably, friends came at a cost—the more the deadlier. The icy-hollow burrowing into her soul from losing Mindy and Starla tortured her still. Had they died because Zac and Luther left the lodge to rescue her?
After the X-strain army had overtaken Zac and Shari’s Ghost Creek Hunting Lodge, Scarlett and her friends had driven across the lower panhandle for hours outrunning hordes and avoiding roadblocks.
With nowhere else to turn, Zac had cashed in a favor with Mr. Stanwyck, explaining his team needed a place to crash until Enforcers sanitized the lodge. Stanwyck had offered them shelter in the vacant bunkhouse on the far west end of the property, unaware Zac harbored women and children in the truck’s camper.
The overwhelming events of the last twelve hours made Scarlett’s head spin. She had gone from the King of the Undead’s bony arms—one death-kiss away from turning creeper—to the loving arms of Zac. Even more astonishing, she and her friends had somehow escaped the X-strains’ Army of the Undead.
They were safe. For now, she kept telling herself. The bunkhouse sat in a plowed area about forty acres from the magnificent Big Valley mansion. The one she had brazenly stolen food from last year. Beyond that, surrounding the building’s perimeter, the wild knee-high grasses of May swayed at the mercy of the restless wind.
In alert-mode, they monitored the windows on each side of the room: she the west, Luther the east, Dean the south, and Zac the north. Oh, Zac. They had found each once again. Would she awaken merely to find her lover a fading remnant of her dreams?
Through the M4’s scope, Zoat’s metal-reinforced embankment glinted in the sunlight. Far too close. But it wasn’t Zoat’s foreboding presence threatening her sanity. No. It was the intermittent flashbacks of her recent abduction that tormented her. At least she had changed out of the medieval burgundy velvet gown, thanks to a pair of Zac’s rather baggy military fatigues.
She must have scrubbed her face raw, erasing every trace of the goth makeup she had adorned herself with for the king’s bizarre tea ceremony. The monatomic tea’s trippy lingering aftereffects had her wondering how it had affected the creepers.
Scarlett shoved away the flashbacks one by one, not ready to confront yesterday’s troubling reality, much less their current predicament. She eyed her ringless hand again to make sure she wasn’t still wearing the garish ruby ring the King of the Undead had so adeptly slipped onto her finger—claiming her.
Zac had assured he had rescued her in time. Before the marriage ceremony. But the king’s callous smile and those fiendishly perfect teeth taunted her beneath closed eyelids.
She preferred dwelling on Zac and Luther’s rather dramatic action-hero-like rescue. What little she remembered. Unfortunately, a grenade explosion had ripped a hole in Zoat. Hundreds, if not thousands of creepers had escaped, roaming the plains. Meanwhile, the western Texan panhandle had been ordered to shelter in place until the hordes were neutralized.
It seemed as if she and her friends hopscotched from one crisis to another. It didn’t take a psychic to see they each battled their own demons of immortality. Since the pandemic had ravaged the earth, the living struggled for day-to-day survival as did the undead. And while life was fleeting, knowing that once one died, one devolved into a flesh-eating cannibal—the eternal nightmare lived on. There was no solace for the living. The dead. Or undead.
A pensive silence settled over the sparsely furnished bunkhouse equipped with
