The
Last Flag
Race
the Dead Book 1
by
Wren Cavanagh
Genre:
Dystopian Horror, Thriller
What
would you do to pay the bills; to survive, or to just get rich, would
you compete against other teams in a quarantined town filthy with
zombies wanting to bite out your throat?
Emma
and Lewis sign up for the race, they need the money to save his life.
But they won't just be racing the dead, the surprise blizzard or the
other contestants.
Because
anger and vengeance know no bounds and like everyone in the blighted
town they become pawns in a game of retribution.
The
contestants become nothing more than live entertainment to viewers
who watch and judge their every move in the town of Prideful as they
race each other to arrive alive to a final flag. The team that makes
will get airlifted out alive and go back home richer for it, the
others walk back to a pittance and if they are not careful. They
won't get out at all.
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SHOW
TIME
The
helicopters lifted off from their respective locations at the town’s cardinal
points. For the landings, the pilots made a show of finding a good spot, good
editing would do the rest. It would create the impression of action and urgency
where there wasn’t much of it; for ‘safety’ the pilots hovered close to ground
and let the members of the four teams jump out of the open doors. All a show—a
few ladders and some thick blankets thrown over the barbed wire would have
worked as well. Or cutting a hole in the fence. But cutting through it would
have caused legal issues, worse, the noises might eventually draw out some of
the town’s current inhabitants. And everyone wanted intact fences between them
and the turned.
The
players now had two days to reach as many flags as possible. They would be told
how many flags the other teams had, for added pressure. If they went past two
days the cash pot would drop hourly by hundreds of thousands of dollars. A
million today not being what it used to be, the contestant had better be
hauling ass.
The
video streams from the aerial drones, the helicopters, and the cameramen showed
that most of the teams had gotten quickly organized once they hit the ground,
and trotted off without a hitch. With one exception: The voice of the senior
editor came in through Tom’s headset.
“Tom,
first fuck up.”
“Great,
who is it?”
“Joe
from Striker,” replied the man as he zoomed in on the feed for the team.
Tom
nodded, he looked at the fallen man on his tablet and opened his microphone.
His voice came in over the video feed. “It looks like we have a player down. A
player in danger! And that can put his team mates in danger. Joe Rosling from
team Striker is on the ground and not getting up! Team striker has hit the
ground and is already behind. Joe Rosling! Joe, looks like you got hurt there.”
Joe,
the Army vet, tall and wiry, with wild shoulder length brown hair tied back in
a pony tail and biker mustache, sat grimacing on the ground. He looked
embarrassed and his lips formed a tight white line on a face from which pain
had already drained all color.
“Just
a sprain. I’ll be okay.” He gasped through clenched teeth and killed any
credibility his reply might have had. Joe tried to get up and held his hand out
to Lew for support. With the other man’s help he
struggled
to his feet, but when he tried to put weight on the hurt foot he gave a sharp
cry and fell back on his ass.
The
awkward silence and frustration was palpable as the camera feed streamed on and
minutes passed. Ross Boulez, the team’s assigned cameraman, panned in on the
reaction of the team members.
Embarrassment,
anger and impatience were the predominant emotions.
“Think
you can keep going, Joe?” Tom asked. “Your team is waiting on you. Do you need
to be extracted?”
The
man shook his head. “I'm good.” With a pained, tight lipped expression and Lew’
help, he managed to get back up and started walking. Emma and Lew clapped and
patted him on the back, but they looked doubtful. The team left at a slow trot
that soon turned into a slow walk, and then to a funeral procession pace march
as Joe limped along and kept up as best he could.
----------
“That
guy is done. Right now he’s just looking pathetic.” Said Fats “So far, so
boring. Where are all the dead people? I don’t see dead people.
Our
viewers want to see dead people.”
“They're
there,” Cheryl snapped.
“Hooo!
I see one!” A junior executive whose name no one had yet bothered to remember
pointed excitedly at one of the screens. “I see one!”
----------
Once
pointed out and seen, the dead man could not be unseen. It was at the
south-most point of the town, as the She Devils progressed past a tire retailer
where the haggard apparition came out of one of the open bays. So well had the
lack of life, the dust and grime camouflaged the man, that he had seemed
invisible as he stood by a grimy and scuffed wall, unnoticed until he finally
moved.
The
gray man incongruously dressed in a disheveled gray three piece suit, covered
in dirt and dust, had blended perfectly with the gray cement walls of the bay.
He staggered out like a careful drunk and made his way toward the women like a
man in no hurry, a man with nowhere special to go.
Cho,
the team leader and weapon bearer, passed him by blithely, without noticing as
did Kate Keller,they were both gazing straight ahead as if already locking on
the final goal. Both women were oblivious to the threat and it was Xhiu Lee,
the shy one who carried the food and first aid kits and already dragged behind,
who saw him.
“Hey!
Everyone! Look to your left!”
The
two women up front stopped in their jog and turned their attention to where
Xhiu was pointing. The expressionless man continued his approach but now seemed
to be struggling to hasten his pace. They all looked unsure on how to proceed.
They had seen the Turned on the news and in the movies. But most people had yet
run into them one on one. In the movies they were zombies, gory, noisy
semi-dismembered corpses whose most prominent features were their teeth. You
popped them in the head and that was it. Show business always made killing look
easy.
“He
looks...” Xhiu hesitated, “…normal.”
“From
a distance maybe, look at his eyes,” Kate whispered.
Now
a few feet away, the man’s eyes were easily visible. Opaque, cloudy pupils, the
left eye was rotted and blown, visibly larger than the right.
“Okay,”
conceded Xhiu, “not even close to normal.”
The
forlorn figure staggered faster toward them.
“Wow.
It’s like he’s getting desperate to reach us. Sad. C’mon, let's go people,” Cho
said.
The
three women looked at each other, shrugged and resumed their run with none of
the arrogance and levity they displayed at the start of the race. The dead man
began to follow them, but slow and unsteady, he was soon left behind.
After reading the summary for The Last Flag and seeing that it had zombies was all it took for me to know that I wanted to read it as I love me some zombies. I love TV shows like The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead and Z Nation or anything with zombies and the new twists on the plot and the zombie world and racing with zombies. Oh yeah I was hooked.
The Last Flag grabbed me from the summary, the first page, the first word and never let go. Once it had me in its grasp the race was on and I was left flipping the pages as fast as I could rooting for each contestant as they fought the zombies for the flags to see who would make it out alive. I say this because it is a zombie apocalypse and in a zombie infected world someone always dies.
Amongst a zombie infested world someone came up with the idea to have a reality show where people race through a town filled with zombies hunting flags. The show consists of different teams of people racing against each other while fighting zombies for their lives while looking for flags. The contestants enter the race for different reasons but the main one is for the grand prize at the end that will make them rich. Oh the thrill of the hunt, or race that is.
I loved the new twists on the zombie world where contestants enter a race with zombies on a reality TV show. I would love to see The Last Flag on the big screen. It would make a great movie or an apocalyptic TV show or even a reality show. I would watch either if it contained zombies.
If you like zombies, an apocalyptic world or a great race then I would like to suggest that you give The Last Flag a try as I do believe you will fall in love with it just as I have. The Last Flag is one story that will stick with me for a long time to come. I can't wait to read more in this zombie infested world of Race the Dead.
Wren
Cavanagh, that would be me. Also writes under the pen name Junior
Sokolov.
An
artist and writer from great North West.
I
am grateful that I have this opportunity to share my work and
imagination with you. Growing up my head was always stuck in a book
or a comic book (before they got fancy and got the moniker "graphic
novels").
More
often than not those books were filled with monsters, werewolves and
vampires.
Then
the likes of Godzilla showed up along with their brethren, born from
the very justified fear of the atomic bomb and its consequences.
And
that is what I love. Escaping into worlds of monsters and heroes, and
sometimes they are one and the same!
Letting
my imagination run along and bring into the narrative what I see
around me everyday.
I
hope that you will enjoy my stories. Find in them a temporary and
enjoyable escape of your own.
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1 comments:
No questions - the cover is nice
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