“Tenth House is meticulously detailed in both setting and character depth. The story will pull you in, shake you about, disturb you, keep you guessing and always wanting more. It delivers!” —Keith Rommel, BookReview

“Tenth House is a brilliant concoction of suspense, thrills, action, and love all mixed into a book you won’t want to put down!” —Amanda Mueller, MyRochester.com

“Phillip Tomasso’s supernatural tale develops three-dimensional characters for a different style of detective series … where the unexpected prevails.” —N.B. Leake, Write Time Write Place

“Fast-paced and deftly told—Tomasso knows his craft.” —Olivia Boler, author of Year of the Smoke Girl and The Flower Bowl Spell

“…I look forward to more by this talented author in the future.” —Tracy Farnsworth, The Romance Readers Connection.com

“Prologue”

The land stretching from Cornwall to the south of England and running all the way to the Orkney Islands lying to the north of Scotland belonged mainly to the tainted. They roamed free, hunting down the remaining humans, following a three-year feeding frenzy that had spread the contamination throughout the population of 61,000,000 people in Britain. Ireland was almost completely lost to the Walking Dead, as was much of Europe.

All continents, the Americas, Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe and Antarctica had fallen. Bands of survivors throughout the planet had formed strongholds, creating modern day fortresses. Behind those high walls, they lived an existence of constant fear that the tainted would find a way in and devour them.

In London, which was the old capital before the plague, walls of sheer steel over five metres high contained an area bordered by the Thames on one side, running from the famous Tower Bridge.  It extended up to the A1211, turned East as far as the A1, along to the A503, north on the A10 to the A406, and then followed that all the way down to the Thames at North Woolwich. Within North Woolwich were crammed over a million souls, the Pure, which co-existed spending each day doing just that, existing. Numerous other smaller groups had dug in and created less sophisticated strongholds throughout the city and also further afield, across the south of England. Craig Anderson, the Ex-SAS Captain and now the head of security at Fort London had offered those people sanctuary at the capital’s stronghold whenever he came across such a group. Some had accepted and others for reason of religion, stubbornness or idealistic views, had chosen not to take refuge there.

Anderson had even come across a group of Hell’s Angels in Peckham who had named themselves "The Zombie Chapter.” The Angels had turned a large warehouse into a fortress run by a man called “Hog”, named after the distinctive Harley Davidson motorbike he rode as he led his followers on gathering forays throughout the outer lands on their powerful choppers.

Craig Anderson played a major part in setting up the London fortress, and during the last year had led a snatch squad made up of mostly SAS trained troops into what they now called the outer land.  He led this squad on countless forays to scavenge, and also to gather up and bring in the stragglers of the Pure who were still playing hide and seek with the roaming hordes of WDs. This however, had all but stopped now. There were so few roamers left that the risk could not be justified and his main duty now was to maintain order and security within Fort London, a mini country.   He patrolled and kept the route open with Fort Warwick, a much bigger fortress a hundred miles to the north run by a former drug baron, Karl Bruger.  A man Craig despised, but a man he had little choice but to deal with, for Bruger controlled the new currency and food, not only over Fort London, but also over most of the smaller strongholds to the north. This gave him power over those who were forced to make perilous trips to Fort Warwick. To the south, his control was through Fort London, as many of the strongholds would turn to the larger fort to trade for food supplies bartered from Bruger.

Just less than two million of the Pure lived within the steel and concrete walls of Fort Warwick, all working under Bruger´s control through his army of thugs, many of whom were ex-service men and a number of ex-SAS troops. Anderson swore that one day he would take Bruger down, take him down and feed him to the tainted. Anderson knew in his heart the time would come.

However, as much as Anderson yearned for the day to arrive, he had to set that mission aside, for in the gloom and despair of what had become everyday life came a beacon. Suddenly, there was a thin light at the end of the endless Zombie tunnel and the prospect of a future free of the tainted and the living dead, was a possibility. A messiah had come forward, a zombie messiah.

However, not everyone wanted change. Not everyone wanted the old world order back and one of those was Karl Bruger. He was king of all he surveyed and beyond, and he wanted it to stay that way. Bruger and Anderson were set on a collision course, and the messiah was the Holy Grail of their chosen futures. One wished to drink from it, the other wanted to crush it. Therein follows a running battle through the outer lands where many of the smaller strongholds, including the zombie chapter, were caught up in the war for the messiah. Inevitably, there would be a winner and a loser. For in all battles, there could be only one.

Chapter One

"We Need To Kill Him"

'We've got a bleed on the north wall. Go into lock down,' shouted Craig Anderson sprinting to the modified Land Rover Discovery, his four most trusted men in his team close behind.

'What sector?' checked Tom Parfitt, slamming the vehicle into first gear. The huge tyres complained, sending up a plume of smoke as the rubber heated, melted, and smeared another set of black track marks across the garage floor of one of the mobile bases of Bravo Two Zombie Squad, its blaring siren warning of its approach.

'Sector 14,' snapped Pump from the back seat.

'Put out the warning, Pump,' ordered Anderson.

Pump was his comms man and got his name from his choice of weapon, an 870 Magnum pump action shot gun.

Pressing a series of keys on the on-board communications laptop, he linked into the Fort London BWS (Bleed Warning System) and sent out an automated warning. Within two seconds, a pre-recorded message boomed out through the numerous tannoys set around the fort, warning the populace to keep away from Sector 14, an area taking in part of Tottenham. Immediately, there was a stampede, as men, women, and children, panicked within the sector. Emergency steel walls, which divided the fort into small containment areas, had already slammed up into position from underground, separating Sector 14 from the rest of Fort London.

Any of the populace in a sector at the time of a bleed would be trapped by the hydraulically operated automated walls, which would be activated at the first warning call. There, the unlucky ones would stay until the clearance units had filtered through the isolated zone.  Each member of the populace would be screened for bites and infection.  Each person at the fort knew every one of the 100 sectors in Fort London. It was part of their conditioning to memorise them like the alphabet, and automatically react at the first warning call of a zombie break-in. Despite regulations not to, many of the populace would try to escape the sector before the steel walls were activated. However, the CCTV network would pick them up, or other members of the fort would point them out as needing screening, as the only way the fort could stay un-infected by the plague and remain Pure.