Zombies On The Block | Book 8 | Better Off Dead

by Evans, Mike

  Adam tore at the side and the front of her neck. Tricia, like anyone today, couldn’t understand what in the hell was going on. She wanted to reach down to pull the kid off, but Matt beat her to it. There wasn’t any reason why the kid would have the reaction to coming to a dentist, this was far more than fucked up.

  Matt, who typically was a sympathetic, loving dentist, used no short amount of anger to get Adam up and off of his mother. Matt didn’t think this out fully, given the fact that he hadn’t had a part two to his plan. Dr. Matt threw Adam backwards, landing him almost sideways up against the wall. Adam hit hard, denting the wall. He then bounced up, locking eyes on his thrower, who was trying to apply pressure to Beverly’s wounds, with little luck. He had stripped off his green scrubs shirt and was trying his best to wrap it in some way that would allow him to stop the bleeding without cutting off her precious air flow.

  Adam raced across the room. He leaped onto his back tearing at the rear of his neck and ears like a rabid dog. He was in the perfect position that when Matt tried to reach back to get him, he couldn’t get a usable grip on him. A wild spider monkey came to mind. Matt thought he could use his size to get him off and ran backwards, slamming the boy into the wall. No sound was made and just when he questioned if he was safe, the little bastard bent down, gripping firmly only the side of Matt's head, not caring about the hairy meal he was about to get. Matt could quite literally feel the pressure from the skin as it slowly gave way and became more Adam's than his own.

  Tricia was feeling like she wanted to pass out but at the same time; killing this little fucker for ruining her day and possibly her life didn’t seem too far-fetched. Tricia hadn’t looked at anyone but Adam in a while. When she looked over at Murray, who had a few needed minutes lead time over Beverly, Tricia realized that whatever had happened to Adam, probably was happening to them.

  She looked around the small waiting room, quickly realizing that those who weren’t bitten yet, were the smallest ones in the room. She didn’t think having Adam’s brother Barry or sister Erica on her side, or as her responsibility to keep alive, was going to do a helluva lot of good for her. As she watched, a motionless Murray come back to life and did exactly what his son had just done. It was not a warm feeling that filled her with hope.

  Any questions of what would happen next were answered in what she thought couldn’t have been in a worse way. Barry and Erica were as focused as she was on watching Adam, as he was the fastest moving thing in the room. They thought their dad was going to be the safest one to run to, because he was always their protector...but today would be a change in pace. Today, he would be their aggressor. They both ran over to him, trying to hide under his arms...arms which usually were protective. That was not the case today. When Murray came back from the dead, the rest of the family would join the parents and Adam. Murray gripped both of his kids by the necks, pulling them in and tearing chunks off from their necks and cheeks.

  Barry screamed, “What the hell, Dad, what the hell are you doing?”

  Erica didn’t say anything; she was paralyzed in fear. She didn’t know what to say or do. It was impossible for her to understand someone who always called her daddy’s little angel could be this...this...this monster. The children both were fighting to get away, but Murray never slowed down in his ultimate pursuit to eat. To gorge like he’d never done before.

  Tricia looked around the room. There were five Goldbergs and one Dr. Matt all racing to see who could make her their next meal. There wasn’t enough room in here for all of them. Tricia had no intentions of being the last living soul in here if it was up to her. Which right now, unless there was some absolute savior, there wouldn’t be anything keeping her alive for much longer.

  Tricia tried moving slowly and to stay unnoticed, but everyone began to lock eyes on her one by one. It was difficult to be the only steak walking around a cage full of lions...or zombie lions. As of now, she only had Adam and Murray to contend with. Barry and Erica were both trembling on the ground. Between them and Dr. Matt, if she didn’t get moving before they changed, it would be too late.

  Tricia grabbed the tank from behind the seat, disconnecting it and getting a firm grip. She watched Beverly turning purple and Matt was writhing around on the ground holding onto the side of his wounds. Moving slower by the second though. Murray got up to his feet, throwing Barry and Erica each in a different direction against the walls. Tricia took a long, deep breath hoping that she had enough aces up her sleeve to beat this hand from hell she had been dealt. She tried to time her next moves just right as Murray seemed to explode off the ground, running straight for her.

  Chapter 5

  Prairie City, Iowa

  Matt Rider

  When Matt heard the door shut behind him, he got an immediate sense that he quite possibly had just made a horrific decision. Unfortunately for him, it really was his only decision. First and foremost, he wanted to get home to his three ladies. Unlike his wife Amber, Matt did not like scary movies, books, podcasts, or TV shows. His thing was fighting, and her thing was scaring the shit out of herself in her free time. Matt was pretty sure from those shows that he had been forced to watch with her that he had just become the stereotypical air-headed blonde who didn't seem capable of running more than two or three feet without tripping and falling flat on her face. The only thing he was missing was a low-cut shirt and a large pair of breasts hanging out.

  Matt had not expected to see a pair of teens waiting impatiently, looking like they were shitting their pants and waiting for him. Instead, what he saw in place of it were broken windows and the hatch up to his SUV.

  Matt took that as a positive sign. From what he’d pieced together so far, unless by some dumb luck they accidentally hit the handle, these purple zombies were not intelligent enough to make such a coordinated move like that. He walked quietly heel to toe trying to make damn sure he didn't step on anything that could remotely make a sound. He was especially trying to be delicate with the glass scattered beneath his feet.

  Matt almost felt guilty for a moment, thinking that if the kids left on their own that they probably either had a plan or more likely and unfortunately didn't have a choice. He knew the decent thing would be to at least do a lap around the block in his truck to try and find the kids, but it didn't seem like the right priority. He had already done more for those kids than anyone else at their school that day and felt like he would be risking his life to try and find them. Which seemed wrong or selfish, given the fact his sole purpose in life was to take care of his ladies. Matt checked the back seat, making sure nothing had gotten stuck back there and was waiting to jump and murder him.

  Matt brushed the seat off, not wanting to sit in a bed of glass, when screams began erupting from a few houses down. It took Matt a moment to realize it was Susan screaming and his hopes shrunk given the fact that he was going to have to save them after all. Matt turned the truck over; happy those things didn't screw up anything on the inside mechanically. He was not a wrench turner and had no interest in it. On top of that, he knew damn well there weren't going to be any mechanics around to be fixing anything for quite a while. If they by some chance pulled off the steering wheel, they would definitely be up shit’s creek.

  Matt put it in gear, taking the SUV back down the street, away from Leslie's house. Towards the sound of the screams. When he got around the edge of a corner to the house, he could see Troy and Susan. Both were hanging by their feet and arms to a tree branch that was just barely a foot over where the dead could reach.

  Matt could only shake his head thinking if it was him, he probably would have tried climbing up just a little bit higher. More than likely he would have made a better attempt at trying to get a much better grip if that was how he was going to hang there. He figured Susan probably had a better chance than Troy of holding on for longer. But both did not seem to have success at what they needed to do right now.

  Matt knew there was only one way this could work and hoped that hitting purple
zombies wouldn’t be as bad as what he’d seen some of his neighbors do to their cars when they struck a deer. Matt saw Susan first losing her hand grip. She held on with her legs but there wasn’t enough strength to continue going on like this.

  Matt floored his SUV, hoping he was timing this right and that she didn’t break any bones. Matt raced through the yard, and just as a handful of the dead were jumping and coming within inches of getting ahold of her hair, Matt struck them, sending them five feet back. When Susan saw the truck beneath her it was a good omen for her and Troy both to let go.

  Matt jumped a foot in his seat when the loud bang from both of them hit the roof. He was pretty sure it felt like there was something warm in his pants and didn’t really want to know at the moment what that was. Matt reached for the pistol, trying to remember if he’d fired his last round, or if one of the kids had. When a face came into view, he pulled the trigger not thinking about it. Matt realized the moment that he squeezed the trigger and the hammer fired home that he should have been just a bit more responsible. He knew he needed to get home. However, he didn't need to take out innocent bystanders in his travels. Which so far had consisted of staying in the same city for the entire start of a damn zombie apocalypse because his morals were too high, and he didn't have the heart to actually leave any of the kids behind.

  It wasn't their fault that they were stuck in a shitty situation without any help. The look on Susan's face when she saw the barrel pointed directly at her forehead made her face turn green. Matt figured it would be best if he apologized later because they needed to get the fuck out of Dodge. He looked up, gripping on to the teen and pulled her headfirst into the SUV. She landed in the backseat, awkward and uncomfortably but alive. Matt realized his gun hand was shaking and when he set it down that did not make anything any better.

  Troy had heard the click of the gun and didn't need to get pulled in headfirst and slid down through the sunroof unassisted. He sat in the back seat helping Susan sit up in place and said, “Good thing that gun was on empty, huh?”

  Matt didn't answer. It seemed like it was a rhetorical question. Everyone in the vehicle knew that it was a good thing. Matt put the SUV in reverse, punching the gas, propelling them backwards. This sent the teens up against the back seats that had kid proof plastic protection on them. It was not ideal for their faces. Matt hadn’t thought about that because when Sydney and her friends from softball sat in their seats they knew to put on their belts.

  Matt was going to tell them to hold on, but it seemed about as useful as telling someone with a fire on their hands to be careful with matches. Matt watched as the dead that he'd knocked backwards quickly righted themselves and were up and sprinting full-bore back towards him. Matt really wished he had some rounds for the gun. At the same time, when he looked at Susan's pale face in the back seat, he realized it was probably for the best that he didn't. It didn't take the three long to get out of the yard and into the street. One thing that he realized was they were very quickly becoming the minority in town. He figured if that was not the case, then he was the only one stupid enough to be outside. He wondered how many people were inside watching and not doing anything to provide any assistance.

  Unfortunately, when they got to the street, there was no shortage of the dead. He could only assume he hadn’t been quiet when he had driven through the backyard. He was sure the sounds of ripping up the yard, crashing into the zombies, and the two kids falling on the roof had been a crazy dinner bell going off. Matt really wished these things were deaf at least that would mean they could move freely so long as they weren't seen. Of course, that wasn't the case. They seemed perfectly capable and they never got tired. As a parent of two, with one of them being a newborn, he absolutely knew the meaning of tired like he had never known before.

  Matt wanted to drive forward but there were at least ten standing in their path. They wasted no time jumping onto the hood of his car and began finishing off what was left of the windshield. Matt put it in reverse, ready to peel off when a slew of gunfire began to come from somewhere - nobody knew where it was coming from. He realized he had a hard decision now. If he went forward, he risked getting one of the kids shot. If he went in reverse he’d have to deal with these things. Then the man or woman who was their savior at the moment would have to shoot at moving targets.

  Matt looked around and saw an old man sitting on an outdoor second story deck. He was smoking a cigar and looked as if he might be having the time of his life. Matt could only assume if you didn’t have that long to live and had already put your better years behind you then it didn’t make much difference on the outcome from something like this.

  When the last shot echoed, Matt waved to the man. He noticed he had a small arsenal out on his deck and the man yelled, “Why in the hell ain’t you shooting them?”

  Matt saw the gun resting on the dashboard. He was going to say something, but Susan beat him to it. She yelled, “We don’t have any bullets for the stupid gun.”

  The old man of course didn’t know that he’d stolen it from a pedophile and just shook his head. He yelled, “What’cha got in there?”

  Matt looked at the barrel knowing at least that much that they were always stamped on the barrel. Matt yelled the caliber and the man tossed down a small grocery bag that fell quickly. Matt hoped that was a helluva lot of bullets. Matt drove over, grabbing the bag and seeing a gun in it. He didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth but yelled up, “Hey are you sure about this, sir, and thank you for saving us!”

  “Hell, I can only shoot one at a time...unless I wanna scare the shit out of someone and not hit nothin’. You go ahead, get those kids somewhere safe, and yourself as well. If you don’t know nothing about them types of guns, which I guess you might not have, given the pussy caliber you got there, all you do is fill that mag up, then pull the slide back, it don’t have a safety nor a hammer, so point and shoot. Make them there little white dots line up. You got any questions?”

  Matt had a million questions but most of them had to do with how in the fuck he ended up racing around Prairie City with a car full of kids, running away from zombies. Matt gave the guy a thumbs up and said, “I think we are set. Thank you for doing that, you didn’t have to.”

  “I want to sleep at night and seeing a car full of people getting eaten outside of my house wouldn’t be too good for my soul.”

  Matt knew the time was of the essence and that it probably should not be wasted. He gave an awkward smile saying, “Thanks again, sir. I have a feeling this gun is going to be the difference between life and death if I get in any shitty situations again.”

  The old man gave a thumbs up, sitting back down on his seat and reloading his lever action rifle.

  Chapter 6

  Harry couldn’t stand it any longer and finally said, “Would you two go find a truck and take a damn nap? I can bring you something to eat if we do takeout. Maybe we can do the diner in town and get you two some soup or something. How does that sound?”

  Both men looked like they were nodding but all they really were doing was taking their last few seconds on Earth as they fell forward, bouncing their faces off of the table before they fell down to the ground, lifeless. The men weren’t medically trained and didn’t have a clue what to do with them. Harry pointed at him saying, “Hey Dean, why don’t you go and give them mouth to mouth?”

  Dean, who would rather have them die said, “I'm not sticking my mouth on either of them. You realize that is exactly how I am going to get sick, right? Besides, I don’t have a clue what I need to do.”

  “But you’re certified!” Harry yelled.

  “Yeah, like twenty years ago and that wasn’t for doing CPR I don’t even know what it was, that’s how long it has been. They probably don’t have anything still relevant to what I had learned.”

  “Well, what are we going to do?” Harry yelled, trying to grasp the situation. This wasn’t something that he did. It would definitely be a day of things that were out of t
he norm for many.

  Travis knew someone needed to do something. If Harry and Dean weren’t going to do anything it would have to be up to him. He knelt down next to Joe and Phil. Travis didn’t know why in the hell he was doing this out of all of them he wasn’t any more certified than anyone else was. Travis saw their faces going pale and veins that he didn’t even know people had were painting their way across their faces. Just as quickly as they did that, it seemed like they had vanished into a purple that consumed them. Both men took one last gasp before they violently shook on the ground. They laid at rest for a few seconds before the oompa loompa effect took place.

  Travis took a step back. He wasn’t a doctor, but even an idiot knew what it meant when someone stopped breathing. Harry, not really thinking about it said, “What are we going to do with them?”

  Travis looked up at him shaking his head. He said, “Really, are you an idiot?”

  “I don’t know, Travis. Do you feel like getting your head kicked in?”

  “Harry...it isn’t our fault, what do you think will happen to us? Christ, did you want to put them in the incinerator for used oil in the back so there’s no evidence that they died?”

  Harry was walking forward, ready to follow through with his promise. His hot-headed Irish attitude was going to say and definitely do something that he might regret later if he wasn’t stopped. Dean, who was a towering man, stepped in front of him, putting a peaceful but firm hand on his shoulder and said, “Now everyone is just going to settle down and take it easy."