Another very fine book in this series. This book will be particularly sad because of the circumstances that Rob will face on his journey south. As you’ll recall, Rob, Obi and Ruiz got separated from the rest of the operators at Enclave One where the President and military leaders were hold up. Sad to say, both Obi and Ruiz didn’t live through the last attack, but Gator did. Just before he died, Obi told Gator to follow Rob which he is now doing. Obi also told Rob to take care of his dog, Gator. Rob promised the do that with his life.
Meanwhile, Bec, the former CIA analyst that thought she had a secret that needed to get to the President, found out that nobody cared. They already knew that the President and his top military leaders were responsible for the terrible virus that has struck the world and was not turning people into zombies (Zekes). So, she had teamed up with the remaining operators at Enclave One. They knew that the enclave wouldn’t hold what was coming. Apparently, the zombies were gathering in large numbers. When they went through an area, nothing was left alive. If they found humans in their path, they stopped just long enough to eat them or turn those unfortunately humans into zombies. It seems that the zombies are not all heading north for some unknown reason. One of the special operators named Johannsen has gather his forces and they plan to leave Enclave One right now.
They have a train already loaded with supplies and they were heading south. There weren’t that many operators left on the train, but most of those left were very capable at killing zombies. A few, like Bec, the former CIA analyst managed to get on the train and they didn’t have any reason to kick her off. As the train headed south, it had to pass through some towns which were either infested with zombies or other humans who wanted the train for themselves. This was the situation as they passed through Las Animas. Colorado.
There was a surprisingly large number of well armed civilians at Las Animas that saw the train as a way for them to escape the coming hordes of zombies. This required Johannsen and his operators to fight a pretty hairy battle just to keep the train moving. Not everyone made it through this particular ordeal safely. One operator nicknamed “Moose” got shot and was now lying in one of the train cars. Bec took it upon herself to start tying to save his life. There was an operator that had some medical training and he comes along to help Bec, but he says he can only do so much. He patches Moose up and then tells them that he’s probably going to need some blood but Moose’s blood type is B-Neg and that’s pretty rare, except of course, Bec has the same blood type. So Bec does what she can to help keep Moose alive. That will eventually include taking a weapon and killing a few zombies that somehow board the train and just about kill the engineer.
Back to Rob and Gator. They are now on foot heading south as far away from Enclave One as they can get. Rob has a map and he knows of the rendezvous point down south in Texas and that’s where he plans to head. The TacSat radio Obi and now he was carrying was a casualty of the latest battle and besides the others were well out of range by now. Johannsen had tried to contact Obi or Rob via that handset but had also been unable to make the connection. Rob knew that Obi had told Johannsen to take the other operators and head south. He also told him that he, Ruiz and Rob would join them later. That wasn’t going to happen for two of them, but Rob was certainly planning on getting back with Bec if at all possible.
As I said, Rob and Gator are walking. It’s going to take them forever to get down to Texas at that pace all the while they need to hold up at night and only travel during daylight. Gator is real good at spotting or smelling zombies so Rob knows to follow his lead when that time comes. The first thing Rob needs to do is get some supplies. He’s going to need food and water for both himself and Gator. This he finds in small amount along the way. The next thing would be some transportation to move them along south at a better pace.
It takes awhile, but Rob finally stumbles on some kind of transportation, if you want to call it that. Most all the other vehicles he encounters are pretty much picked over. Yet he does find this little tiny car sitting in a dealers showroom and it runs. There’s not much storage space and he’s kind of embarrassed to be driving the thing, but it gets him and Gator on the road heading south a lot quicker.
Then he comes upon a stronghold where a man named Ezra is living with is daughter. This is like an oasis in the desert. Rob can’t believe that such a place exists. He and Gator get to spend some downtime here, get to eat some good food and rest, but not everything is as it appears. Rob and Gator will move on, but it’s a sad day when they have to do so.
I really like these stories. I’m not sure what happened at the end. It seems that Rob and Gator get south to where they were planning on going but they don’t find what they expected. I guess there’s a lot more to come, but book 4 hasn’t been identified on Amazon just yet. I assure you, it will be on my reading list when it becomes available.
==[Note 1 (12/23/2025): I’m no longer associated with Amazon and will no longer provide any links to books from that website. You can usually find books that you like at your usual source.]==
==[Note 2: As of 12/03/2023, this will not be posted on Amazon since I have been banned from posting reviews for some unknown reason. ]==