The roar of the zombies was instantaneous. Cassie screamed and leaped back from the door as the first of them smashed into it. The wooden screen cracked under the assault. The back door shook in its frame.
She tripped over her own feet when she tried to turn and run. She knocked her knee painfully against the coffee table, but caught herself.
Should have joined the basketball team. The thought skittered through her mind as she bolted away.
She dashed around the chair as the roaring behind her crescendoed. Her foot hit the chipped linoleum of the kitchen when she heard the back door snap off its hinges.
She was so scared her brain stopped working. She didn’t turn to see if her obstacles truly functioned as such. All she could do was run in blind panic.
She barreled past Mr. and Mrs. Nielson’s bedroom. Mrs. Nielson was frenzied, beating so hard at the door that she’d managed to knock a hole through the wood.
Cassie screamed at the sight but didn’t slow. She hit Amanda’s bedroom and leaped onto the bed. The ladder-back chair still rested precariously against the wall and mattress. What the hell had she been thinking? That was worst plan on the planet.
The chair bobbed as she leaped onto the bed. Her heart hammered painfully in her chest. The zombies howled outside in the hall. She’d never been so scared in her life.
Or at least, that’s what she thought as her Vans found purchase on the edge of the chair. Then the first of the zombies burst into the room.
Nope. Ten seconds ago had been kitten’s play. This was officially the scariest moment ever.
The infected was a plain-looking man in blue jeans and a jean shirt. His feathered blond hair was encrusted with blood splatter. There was blood smeared all over his mouth.
At the sight of Cassie, his lips pulled back from his teeth. Balanced precariously on the ladder-back chair, she had a perfect view of teeth and gums laced with blood and chunks of skin.
The zombie shrieked. So did Cassie.
She leaped, pushing off the chair with both feet just as the infected lunged across the bed. The chair scraped against the wall, tearing out the kitty-cat wallpaper and a chunk of sheetrock. Cassie grabbed the exposed rafter just as the zombie tackled the chair out from under her.
Cassie had done exactly one pull-up in her entire life. It had been in gym class under the duress of getting a B in the class if she couldn’t get her body to do the impossible. She remembered dangling from the bar, an impatient Mrs. Fink tapping the eraser of her number-two pencil against the clipboard.
Cassie had spent weeks doing arm curls in her bedroom with a pair of weights she’d picked up at the second-hand store. Jennifer had given her a workout routine. She even did push-ups with Cassie.
And somehow, miraculously, Cassie had pulled a single pull-up out of her ass on exam day. She thought she would be free of pull-ups for the rest of her life.
She’d been dead wrong. As the zombie tackled the chair out from under her, she was left dangling from the roof rafter.
Pure adrenaline shot through her arms. Cassie knocked out the best pull-up ever, yanking herself straight up. She would have declared the feat radical, had her brain been functioning on a level that allowed speech.
She swung her Vans to the side just as a second infected leaped onto the bed. Cassie rolled sideways away from the opening, panting as she landed in a pile of fluffy pink insulation.
Crap. She was going to be covered in fiberglass cuts. If she didn’t fall through the ceiling. Already she could feel the panel bowing beneath her weight.
She grabbed the nearest support beam and dragged her body onto it. A hand with bloody fingernails reached through the opening in the ceiling, swiping. She could tell by the noise that all four zombies were in the room below her.
“Cassie!”
She turned. Amanda and Stephenson were at the far end of the attic. The vent had been removed, exposing a small circle of open air.
“Cassie, hurry up!” Amanda cried.
Cassie scrambled to her feet. Holding her arms out for balance, she scurried down the beam to her friends. Stephenson was halfway out the opening by the time she got there.
“You did it.” Amanda threw her arms around Cassie. “I was so afraid you’d die.”
Cassie returned the hug. “Me, too.”
“I heard you screaming and thought for sure you were a gonner.”
Cassie glanced back in the direction of the hole in the ceiling. There were now several hands in the opening, searching the empty air. “Come on, guys. We gotta go.” Before one of those zombies figured out it could climb on its buddies to get into the attic.
Stephenson scrunched up his eyes and let go. To his credit, he didn’t yell or shout as he dropped to the porch below.
“Go,” Cassie urged, pushing Amanda to the opening.
“But—”
“Go! I’ll keep their attention occupied.” Cassie illustrated this point by calling, “Here, zombie zombie zombie!” across the attic.
Amanda hissed between her teeth. The infected snarled, several of them making a disturbing barking sound. Amanda dropped out of sight.
“Come and get us!” Cassie called one last time before following Stephenson and Amanda out the air vent.
After the run through the house with infected on her heels, the short drop to the top of the porch was practically a cake walk. She landed lightly on the balls of her feet, then turned to scan the area.
The Gremlin was parked just below the front porch. Stephenson and Amanda crouched on the end of the roof, staring nervously at the downspout. There was no immediate sign of zombies, but they had to get the heck out of here before the monsters realized they were no longer in the attic.
Cassie hustled over to the gutter. “Come on, guys.” She grabbed the edge and swung out over the ground.
Stephenson gasped with worry. “Be careful, Cas!”
“We have to hurry.” She wrapped her ankles around the downspout. She transferred her hands from the gutter to the drain.
Less than a month ago, Mrs. Fink’s PE class gave her nightmares. Today, she was damn grateful that sadistic woman had made them shimmy up and down ropes in the gym. Cassie slid down the downspout, using her feet to control her descent, just as Mrs. Fink had taught them.
She hit the ground and looked up at her friends. “Hurry up!” She made sweeping gestures with her arms in the direction of the Gremlin. “We have to go!”
Stephenson and Amanda exchanged looks. Cassie thought her head might explode. “Stephenson, come on!”
He had grit. She knew that for a fact. She’d seen Stephenson roll up his sleeves and take on chess players of higher rank. She’d seen him narrow his eyes and kick ass on the black-and-white board. Stephenson could dig deep with knights and pawns.
But Cassie saw none of that grit now as he timidly gripped the edge of the gutter and dropped over the edge. He let out a shout of fear as his feet floundered for purchase on the downspout. The rubber soles of his tennis shoes made squeaking noises against the metal.
“Stephenson,” Cassie hissed, “stop making noise!” She licked her lips, looking nervously toward the house. The zombies snarled and growled inside.
Stephenson half slid, half fell to the ground. He grunted as he hit the dirt and landed on his butt.
Cassie yanked on the car door. It was locked.
“Stephen, we need the keys!”
Stephenson fumbled in his pocket for them. He had just fitted the key into the lock when Cassie saw an infected rip down the blanket that covered the kitchen window. Their eyes met through the glass above the sink. It was the same man with feathered blond hair and denim shirt.
“Amanda, hurry!”
The monster leaped onto the counter and slammed both fists against the glass. A long crack spidered across it.
Stephen finally managed to get the car unlocked. He dove inside and slammed the door.
Amanda now hung from the gutter and was in the process of wrapping her a
nkles around the drain. Cassie saw the rest of the infected charge the front window.
“Amanda!” Cassie shot a single look at Stephenson, who sat wide-eyed behind the driver’s seat. “Start the car.”
“But—!”
“Start the car,” she screamed, just as the front window exploded outward.
Chapter 6
Jock Face
TWO ZOMBIES HIT THE window opening simultaneously. It was the feather-haired man and a chubby woman in a cherry print sundress.
The expanded midsection of the woman slowed their process. She and the guy with feathered hair got stuck in the broken window. They pushed and shoved at each other, trying to claw their way free. Blood spurted as they cut themselves on glass. The feather-haired man gained ground on the fat woman, quickly squeezing past her wriggling form.
Cassie didn’t have time to think her way out of the escalating situation. Amanda was halfway down the drain. She’d drop right onto the zombies if Cassie didn’t do something.
There wasn’t a lot of light around the Nielson house due to the towering trees, but that didn’t stop the Nielsons from attempting to cultivate a tiny garden. Their five tomato plants were just starting to ripen, even though it was late in the season. Stakes of rebar kept the tomatoes from falling over.
Cassie grabbed one of the rusty pieces of rebar and yanked it free.
Amanda hit the ground just as the feather-haired zombie tumbled free. She landed on her butt. The zombie cracked his head on the cement slab of the porch and smeared blood all down the front of the house. He rolled sideways and bounded to his feet, blood-shot eyes fixated on Amanda as she scrambled up
“Amanda!” Cassie raced to get between her best friend and the zombie. She wielded the rebar like a spear.
She didn’t think beyond protecting her friend. She aimed for the zombie’s sternum, thinking to shove him back. It didn’t even qualify as a plan; it was more of a half-formed idea.
Cassie braced her feet against the ground, knees bent for leverage as the zombie hurled himself at her. What she didn’t factor in was the sheer momentum of the charging monster. The metal stake tore down the front of his chest and plunged right into his gut.
She felt the vibration of the tearing flesh and organs all the way up the length of the rebar. Cassie squealed in terror.
The zombie let out a moan of protest before collapsing at her feet. Blood gushed out of his body, wicking across the front of Cassie’s black-and-white checkered Vans.
The chubby zombie in the sundress had finally wormed her way free of the window. She scuttled across the porch on all fours, blood dripping from the torn skin on her torso. She was like a giant, bleeding beetle in cherry print.
Right behind her were the rest of the zombies
Cassie was out of ideas. Her rebar was under the body of the dead zombie. There was more rebar in the small garden, but she was only one girl. No way could she stand against all three infected. Her only hope was to get to the car, which rumbled to life with Stephenson behind the wheel.
Cassie took two stumbling steps backward as the sundress zombie launched herself off the ground. She flew straight at Cassie, teeth bared in a rictus. Cassie saw her death in those bloodshot eyes.
A shot rang out. Cassie jumped as a bullet slammed into the forehead of the sundress zombie. The infected let out a pained cry before dropping to the ground in a flabby puddle.
Two men charged out of the trees on horseback, rifles raised.
It was like the scene out of a movie. The men were tall and well-muscled, both of them with dark wavy hair. They wielded their rifles like Wild West gun slingers, firing with deadly precision at the three remaining zombies that rushed Cassie. They aimed at the heads of the infected and were damn good shots.
In less than thirty seconds, they were all dead.
Every. Single. One.
These guys weren’t gun slingers. Cassie had it all wrong. They were ninjas. Ninjas with guns.
“Cassie?” One of the horse riders dismounted and hurried toward her. He grabbed her by the elbows, looking her up and down. “Cassie, is that you? Are you okay?”
Cassie’s brain worked in overtime. She knew the guy in front of her. She recognized the handsome angle of his jaw and his dark, serious eyes. He looked like Leo Cecchino, though he was different from when she’d last seen him.
Dark stubble covered the bottom half of his face. There was a hardness to him she didn’t recognize. It didn’t coincide with the love-sick teenage boy she remembered.
“Jock Face?” She used her old nickname as she squinted at him, trying to cess out if he was a hallucination.
Sometimes, people hallucinated when they were stressed. She’d read about it in her biology class. She was definitely stressed. Like, super stressed. She’d almost died. That definitely qualified as stress. She could be the official poster girl for stress.
“Squirt.” Leo seized her in a bear hug. “Thank God you’re okay.”
It was Leo. Leo Cecchino. She wasn’t hallucinating.
This was disturbing only because Leo had always been radically hot. What made it even worse was the fact that he was nice. Cassie had never even dreamed of being looked at by a guy as hot as Leo, let alone rescued by him like a damsel in distress.
“Jock Face?” She said the name again, just to be sure. She always got tongue tied around Leo, even when she’d been fourteen and he’d been head over heels for Jennifer. The only way she could talk to him was to be a smart ass, hence her adolescent nickname for him.
“It’s me, Squirt. I mean, Cassie.” He released her. Resting both hands on her shoulders, he looked in her eyes. She was so tall that he didn’t even have to bend down or crane his neck. “I almost didn’t recognize you. Are you okay?”
She struggled to come up with a proper response. All that came out was, “I killed a zombie with the rebar.”
“I saw. Nice move. Jennifer will be impressed.”
“Jennifer?” Cassie blinked, looking around expectantly. “She’s here? She’s okay?”
“She’s back at our family cabin.” The second man dismounted, slinging his rifle over one shoulder. “She’s safe.”
Cassie did a double take. “Dal?” She should have guessed. Leo and Dal were practically blood bothers. Dal had even moved in with the Cecchino family his freshmen year.
“She sent us to find you,” Leo said. “She’s been worried sick about you. She was on her way to pick you up when the invasion happened.”
Cassie’s heart lifted with the knowledge that Jennifer was alive. Alive, and safe.
“You guys have the best timing.” Stephenson poked his head out of the open driver’s side window. “Thank God. I almost had to drive a car.” He flushed as soon as the words were out of his mouth, realizing how idiotic he sounded.
“Don’t mind him,” Cassie said. “He’s scared out of his mind.” That wasn’t fair. “Actally, we’re all scared.”
“Yeah.” Amanda picked herself up from the ground. She had dirt on her face and all over her clothes. Dirt, and blood. “Yep, scared. Really scared. That’s me. I love guys with guns.”
“I think I love guys with guns, too,” Stephenson said a bit breathlessly.
Everyone looked at him. Stephenson flushed and tucked himself back into the car. He busied himself shutting off the engine.
Cassie attempted to take control of the situation. There was too much babbling going on. They all looked like idiots.
“Jennifer sent you to get me?” she asked.
“Yeah. Dal and I are going to take you back to the cabin where we’re staying.” Leo’s dark eyes flicked to Stephenson and Amanda. “You guys are welcome to come. It’s safe. The Russians won’t find us there. We have food and weapons.”
“I’ll work for room and board,” Stephenson said. “I can cook. I always help my dad in the kitchen. Just don’t ask me to fight. I don’t fight.”
“I’m smart,” Amanda said. “I scored a 1560 on my SATs. I can pull
my weight.”
Leo gave them both a kind smile. “Everyone pulls their weight. Don’t worry, my grandmother will find a way for everyone to pitch in.” He glanced around. “Is there anyone else here? Amanda, where are your parents?”
The silence following this question was humongous. Leo’s mouth tightened. Cassie could still hear Mrs. Nielson battering away at the bedroom door inside.
“I’m sorry,” Leo said. “Do you have any bikes? We don’t have enough horses for three people. The car will draw too much attention.”
“Yeah, we have a few bikes in the shed,” Amanda said. “I’ll grab them if someone with a gun comes with me.”
“I’ll go.” Dal stepped forward, rifle resting easily in his hands. “Come on.” He and Amanda disappeared around the side of the house.
Cassie did her best not to stare at Leo. This turned out to be an impossible feat. First of all, he was the most gorgeous guy on the planet. Second of all, he was staring at her.
“Are you and my sister back together?” she blurted, mostly because she was nervous.
A dent appeared between his eyebrows. She immediately regretted the question.
“No,” he said simply.
She resolved not to talk until she turned twenty-eight. A decade of silence might be good for her. It worked well for monks.
She flicked her eyes over the forest that surrounded the Nielson house. It was late in the day. They had, at most, two hours before dark. Would they make it back to her sister before nightfall? The idea of being outside in the dark made her skin crawl.
Leo was still looking at her. Like, really looking at her. His eyes traveled up and down her body in a slow blink.
“You—got tall,” he said.
She flinched. He would have noticed that. She’d grown a full eight inches since her sophomore year. It was her mom’s fault. She’d given her the tall genes.
She tried to come up with a witty comeback and completely failed. It was like her mouth was stuffed full of cotton balls. She needed her chessboard.
Amanda and Dal returned with a pair of mountain bikes.
Zommunist Invasion | Book 2 | Snipers Page 4