The Legendary: Volume 1 is now live on Amazon as an ebook for $2.99. [link]

If you want to know whether this story is for you, here’s how it starts. This is chapter one, the ambush that kicks off everything. No false advertising, no bait-and-switch. This is what you’re getting.

Chapter 1: The Truck Driver

Darkness holds the loading dock in its grip, broken only by the urgent choreography of workers moving through the shadows. The aggressive hum of refrigeration units working overtime creates a mechanical symphony, underscored by the metallic percussion of specialized locks and the muffled urgency of masked voices.

“Keep it cold, or it spoils fast,” a voice comes through the fabric, distorted by the hazmat protection the speaker wears over the cargo they’re handling.

“Roll out!” The foreman’s command cuts through the industrial clamor.

Inside the semi-truck cab, the digital clock on a weathered 1990s radio blinks its perpetual midnight 12:00 AM in glowing red numbers, pulsing with quiet uncertainty. A calloused hand, yellow-stained from years of nicotine, reaches for the cassette player. The fingers brush aside a shipping manifest labeled “APEX MEATS: REFRIGERATED FREIGHT” as if the document were nothing more than a mundane grocery list.

🎵▶️Bad Moon Rising – Creedence Clearwater Revival

The opening notes of “Bad Moon Rising” spill from the speakers, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s prophecy filling the cab just as the CB radio crackles to life.

“…health department checkpoint at mile marker seventeen…”

Static devours the transmission. The driver reaches over, irritation tight in his jaw, and twists the CB volume down to nothing before cranking the cassette music loud enough to drown out whatever clanks around in the trailer behind him. The contrast feels deliberate. John Fogerty’s warning about bad moons and trouble on the rise clashes with the driver’s willful denial of his cargo’s true nature.

Outside, the refrigerated trailer pulled away from the Boston docks like a mechanical whale surfacing from the depths. Its specialized locks caught what little light filtered through the Boston night. Biohazard symbols lurked in the shadows like hieroglyphs, barely visible on containers that shouldn’t be part of routine commerce. A hastily applied “BIOLOGICAL TRANSPORT” decal looked like the kind of official-looking lie that fools anyone who doesn’t look too closely.

Excessive refrigeration vapor pours from the vents, far more than any normal cargo would require. The trailer’s red and yellow lights glow against the empty street like the eyes of a technological beast, and the truck holds a perfectly straight path down the asphalt, symmetrical, eerie.

Behind the wheel, the driver hums along to the music with the unconscious rhythm of a man who’s done this route too many times to worry about the details. His cowboy hat sits pulled low, casting shadows that obscure most of his features in the dim cabin light. Nervous energy shows in the anxious tap of his fingers against the steering wheel and the quick, darting glances he casts toward his mirrors. He pops an antacid from a nearly empty bottle on the dashboard, a ritual of a man whose stomach knows things his mind refuses to acknowledge.

Out of sight, further down the street, on opposite sidewalks, two hulking figures in black latex flank the semi-truck’s route. Each grips a chain leash attached to something that was once human, decomposing zombies lurching forward unnaturally, their movements a grotesque parody of masters and pets.

In the center of the street, one of the latex-clad handlers has dropped fresh meat where shadows pool beneath the streetlights, but this isn’t ordinary butcher-shop fare. The flesh bears an unnatural reddish-purple hue, its strange marbling seeming to shift in the dim light, arranged like the bait of a trap.

The driver’s voice rises in off-key harmony with Fogerty’s vocals, blissfully unaware of the ambush that awaits: “Hope you are quite prepared to d

His words cut off as his eyes widen in genuine shock. Through the windshield, he sees the zombies converging in front of his truck, like a closing gate made of rotting flesh. His foot slams down on the brake pedal with all the force he can muster.

The collision hits with horrific violence. The truck plows into the two zombies, their bodies erupting in a grotesque spray of blackish-green ichor that moves unnaturally. The truck skids violently, the trailer jackknifing but somehow staying upright, while the specialized refrigeration systems hiss and scream.

“SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!” The driver’s panic comes in ragged gasps, his breath fogging in the cold cab air, manifestations of this nightmare scenario.

Steam rises from overheated brakes, curling into the frigid winter night. The semi sits at an unnatural angle, its trailer twisted sharply away from the cab. Only the soft hissing of damaged machinery breaks the eerie silence.

The driver leans forward, staring at his windshield, now smeared with what was once blood. Shock and confusion ripple across his face as his mind struggles to process what just happened.

The latex-clad figures approach. With a horrific screech of tearing metal, one rips the driver’s door from its hinges, steel and aluminum twisting like paper in hands that possess strength no human should have.

Desperation drives the driver’s hand under the dashboard, fingers closing around the grip of a sawed-off shotgun. Old track marks on his arm tell the story of past walks on the wrong side of the law, but nothing has prepared him for this moment. His hands shake as he points the weapon at the massive, hulking figure now filling his doorway.

The BOOM of the shotgun echoes through the quiet night like a cannon. Buckshot tears through the latex suit, but the flesh beneath remains unharmed as if the laws of physics are optional.

The henchman reaches into the cab, grabbing the driver by the arm that holds the now-useless shotgun. The driver is yanked from his seat like a child’s toy, his gun clattering uselessly to the street.

Terror and disbelief twist across the driver’s face as he struggles against a grip that might as well be made of steel. His free hand claws at the henchman’s arm in desperation, a human fighting a monster that once was a man.

The driver vanishes into the shadows, dragged from his truck by forces that shouldn’t exist. Behind them, the vehicle looms, its headlights casting long, eerie shapes across the ground. Shadowy figures slip from the night to gather the spilled biological cargo. This isn’t random violence. This is resource acquisition planned, precise, and ruthlessly effective. Silence falls like a curtain, broken only by the faint echo of scuffling feet fading into the Boston night. Even that fades, leaving only the mechanical hiss of damaged refrigeration and the distant hum of a city that has no idea what just happened in its shadows.

The Legendary: Volume 1 is now available on Amazon with the Kickstarter campaign opening on March 8th.