Lockey vs. the Apocalypse | Book 1 | No More Heroes [Adrian's Undead Diary Novel] Meadows, Carl (book recommendations for teens TXT) 📖

not risking anyone to come and get me out of this hellhole, plus where I am, there’s nowhere they can safely put down and if I try to move now, my chances are less than favourable.”

Always with the understatement, thought Dean. “Less than favourable,” to John Walsh was, “no fucking chance in this reality,” to anyone else.

“I’ll get Sarah, John,” said Dean finally, his heart like a lead weight in his chest. “I’ll go to Crenshaw, get Sarah, then Maria, and we’ll keep her safe. Like she was our own.”

 “Bless you, Dean,” he said in a breathy exhale. The relief in John’s voice was palpable. There was a pause for a moment, and Dean heard John nervously licking at dry lips. “Tell her I love her,” he said finally. “And that I’m sorry.”

“Piss off,” said Dean. “I’ll tell her you love her, no doubt, but I’ll tell her you did everything you could to get back to her, that you’re still doing everything you can. Losing Andrea hurt you both, John, so don’t take this on... John?” The line had gone dead. “John?”

Dean looked at his phone. No service. He looked up at the chaos of the dispatch room from the window of his office, seeing the looks of confusion on everyone’s face as they hammered at switchboards, fingers pressed to headsets as though pushing at them would magically restore the sound from deadened lines. Picking up the phone on his desk, he put it to his ear.

Silence. Not even a tone.

“Shit,” he huffed, wiping the tears that had been welling with the cuff of his shirt.

He hoped Maria would be watching the news, or listening to the radio, and lock herself in. He uttered a word of thanks to whatever powers might be listening that today was her second day of leave, and she had not been at work. The hospitals were the first to start hammering the emergency lines for police support when the clock ticked past midnight. Had Maria been working last night, she would have been at ground zero for the start of this whirlwind of violence and havoc, as the medical centres seemed to be hit hard and early. If the dead were indeed rising, then it made perfect sense that hospitals were hit with the most ferocity.

He huffed, rubbing fingers at tired, scratchy eyes. The dead were rising; what kind of madness was this? He almost laughed at his thought; it made perfect sense that the hospitals were hit the hardest? Nothing about this whole debacle made any sense.

Dean stood from behind his desk and inhaled a long, deep breath to calm his frayed and exhausted nerves, then stepped into the open control area, put his fingers in his mouth, and unleashed a shrill whistle that cut across the clamour. Wide and wild eyes turned towards him, fear hanging like an angry cloud above the officers and clerks who were still here, still trying to do their job in the face of unprecedented anarchy.

“I’m proud of every one of you,” he said. “And thank you all for your hard work, diligence, and commitment so far today, but it’s time to go home and look after your own.”

“What’s going on, Sarge?” called one woman.

“Honestly, I don’t know, so I’ll tell you what I do know, and please try not to laugh, as I’m being deadly fucking serious.” He stared back at them in silence for a moment, allowing them to register the severity and gravitas of his demeanour. “The dead are rising to attack the living, only trauma to the brain will put them down, and anyone bitten by the dead will die, no exceptions. Go home, get your loved ones, get supplies, and try to find somewhere safe away from all the chaos.”

He stepped back into his office, sweeping his uniform jacket from the back of his chair and putting both keys and phone into his pocket, before stepping back out into the open control area.

“Are you being serious, Sarge?” called one voice from the clamour that had arisen in the wake of his shocking statement. “You’re talking about a zombie apocalypse, right? This is some sort of joke, right?”

“I wouldn’t call the last fourteen hours anything like a joke, would you, Mike?” He shrugged. “That’s what I know, so I’m going to get my wife, my friend’s daughter, and I’m going to get them to safety. I suggest you do the same, as we’ve done our last response. God speed, everyone.”

Without another word or single glance back, Sergeant Dean Williams walked out of dispatch, and headed for the armoury.

Prior to his planned step up to Station Sergeant, Dean had served for eight years as an Authorised Firearms Officer, taking the step up after five of those years to a Specialist Firearms Officer, receiving further training in skills such as advanced firearms, CQB, intervention tactics, advanced driving, and further medical training, adding extra strings to his bow as he sought to climb the career ladder in the force. In his mid-forties now, he had been sitting behind the desk for just over two years, and in truth, had preferred it. The camaraderie in the firearms units had been great, though none of them had ever shot a single bullet in anger at a criminal, as the SFO units were intelligence-led prepared assaults on criminals or situations where firearms were likely. Their meticulous planning and violence of action on assault of such criminals was usually so overpowering and well timed that no live rounds ever had to be fired. There was a lot of training, a lot of show at important events, but firefights in the county of Cheshire were non-existent. Every move he made had been planned stages on Dean’s career ladder, expecting a more difficult climb as a black man through the ranks. He had detailed every step of his intended ascension by taking every shred of training and putting his foot on every rung of the ladder he