The Zombie Awakening (Complete 6 Volume Series, plus prologue)

by Melton, Cynthia

  “A really good thing.” Chalice cried with him, taking both his hands in hers. “I’m really glad you’re with us.”

  “Sissy’s scared.”

  Chalice was, too. Very scared. “That’s okay. We’ll all take care of each other.”

  “We have a problem!” Colton slowed the vehicle.

  Chalice made her way to the front passenger seat and stared out the window. The Arkansas State line was blocked with every type of vehicle imaginable, and wandering in a nearby pasture was at least twenty zombies, stumbling around like blind cattle.

  Chapter 8

  “What do we do?” Chalice plopped in the passenger seat. “We can’t walk around that herd and barreling through all these cars might do more damage to the motor home than we can afford.”

  “We don’t have a choice but to go through.” Colton glanced over his shoulder. “Tell everyone to buckle their seatbelts. Those things have seen us, and they’re coming.”

  Hanna screamed and lay flat on one of the benches beside the table. Sissy dove under the bed covers. Junior was the only one who followed directions by sitting and buckling himself in. Mychal stood at the window, bow ready.

  “Don’t waste your arrows,” Chalice told him. “We can’t retrieve them.”

  “Gun?” He asked.

  “Not unless we have to. Bullets are precious.” Chalice buckled her belt. “Get something to stab them in the head with.”

  The ride was about to get bumpy. Already the chilling groans of the zombies were drifting through the window Mychal had rolled down an inch. Soon, they’d be pounding on the sides of the motor home with their dead hands.

  “Are zombies smart enough to open doors?” She had no idea how much of their brain remained intact after infection.

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” Colton pressed the gas pedal taking them on a slow crawl through a metal hell.

  The motor home struck one car and a body tumbled out, its stomach ripped open and its head bashed in. More vehicles showed blood splatters and body parts, others sat empty, doors hanging open as if their occupants had fled in a hurry.

  By the time they pushed through the first few cars, the zombies had reached the motor home. The groans and growls increased. Chalice felt as if she traveled through a herd of rabid lions, every one of them focused on her throat. They banged with amazing force on the windows and side of the motor home, leaving smeared hand prints.

  One bloated man tried to bite through the glass, leaving his saliva dripping down the window. Chalice wanted to throw up, but to do so she would have to open a window. That wasn’t going to happen.

  “We’re going to run over some them.” Colton increased the speed a little. “They’re darting out between the cars. I don’t think they’re very intelligent.”

  If they didn’t travel in such large numbers, their stupidity would be a good thing. As it was, their lack of coherent thought and their insatiable appetite for blood, made them as dangerous, if not more so, than a pride of lions.

  Chalice yanked a pistol from the glove box. If a zombie broke through her window, it would get a bullet right between the eyes. Hopefully, before it took a bite out of her arm.

  The dogs’ barks echoed in the camper, making her ears hurt. Between their frantic barks and the eery groans, she wanted to put her hands over her ears and hide under the seat. “Mychal, shut those dogs up!”

  Lady and Buster snapped at zombie fingers coming through the slightly open windows. Occasionally, they’d bite one off, letting the offending appendage drop to the floor.

  The motor home lurched. Bile rose in Chalice’s stomach at the realization they’d ran over a body.

  Colton continued forcing the motor home down Interstate 40. “We have to come up with a plan. There has to be a safe zone, somewhere, right?”

  “I don’t know. We haven’t seen any people other than the gas station and the bikers.” Hope leaped in her chest. “Do you really think there might be a place full of survivors?”

  “There has to be. We survived, didn’t we?” He shrugged. “I’m thinking that we’re spread far and thin though. The cities were probably hit the worse. I dread going through Oklahoma City. Could you see whether we have a map somewhere?”

  Anything to take her mind off the grisly scene outside.

  “Five!” Mychal shouted and held up a bloody barbeque skewer.

  Gross. He kept poking the skewer through the window and into the eyes of any zombie that got to close. With each stab, the dogs barked shriller and Hanna screamed louder.

  “Seven!”

  “Stop counting.” Chalice pulled a map from the glove compartment. “It’s disgusting.”

  “With every one I kill, that’s one less to kill someone else.” He jabbed another, the eyeball bursting like an overripe grape. His arm dripped with thick slime. “I can get to them, but they can’t get to me. You’d think they’d see their friends dying around them and back off.”

  Did zombies even have friends? Chalice turned away from the carnage, wishing she could also shut out the sounds, and started to unfold the map. Instead, smoke rising in the distance caught her attention. “What’s that?”

  “Might as well go see.” Colton wrenched the steering wheel, taking them down an access road and into a thick stand of trees. “It looks like it’s a couple of miles away. Hopefully, we can lose the dead following us. Most of the time, where there’s fire, there’s people.”

  Chalice prayed the smoke was signs of survivors and not a burning building. She sat straighter in her seat, her gaze glued on the smoke column while her brother and the dogs finally settled down from lack of zombies to attack. The three younger kids huddled around the table as silent as night.

  “I have no idea what’s out this direction,” she told Colton. “But have you noticed the absence of living people? I was underground for a month, how long were you hidden?”

  “About that.” Paved road turned to dirt, and he put both hands on the wheel. “Maybe the living were able to clear out before then.”

  “Or were all killed.” Chalice wrapped her arms around her middle. “There might be so few of the breathers left that we could travel for weeks without seeing anyone.”

  He grinned at her. “Breathers. I like that. It sounds better than non-dead.”

  “We need some adults. We can’t take care of these kids by ourselves.”

  “Why not?” He glanced sideways at her. “We’re doing fine so far. People are going to grow up fast in this new world. What makes you think someone over the age of eighteen will be better equipped to survive than we are? We have food, water, a roof over our heads, and the ability to move across the country without walking.”

  “Gas will eventually run out. How long until you can’t find a long enough hose to siphon with? Or what about when we run out of food and bullets?” A cloud of doom hung over Chalice’s head. She had no idea how to shake free. The future loomed without hope or promise.

  If they could find survivors, a place to keep the zombies away, they could plant food and grow animals. Sure, electricity was out for the most part with no one around to run the equipment, but people managed in the olden days without powered lights and television. They could again.

  She bent forward and put her arms around her knees, blinking to keep the tears from falling. Crying wouldn’t solve anything. She needed to be strong now and not emotional.

  “Hey.” Colton squeezed her shoulder. “We’re going to be fine. I know it.”

  ###

  The words were easy to say, not so easy to believe. Colton transferred his attention to driving. Over the last month or so, Mother Nature had tried to take back the dirt road they now traveled on, filling the grooves with weeds, and he couldn’t drive faster than five or ten miles per hour. They were probably wasting their time, anyway. What could possibly be this far out in the boonies? Probably nothing but a horde of zombies.

  Hanna hung out one of the open windows. Colton shook his head, watching her through
the rearview mirror. He understood her reasoning, the motor home was stifling, but hanging outside was like ringing the dinner bell. “Back inside.”

  She scrunched up her face and plopped into a seat. “This is so boring!”

  “Would you rather we were fighting zombies?” Mychal sat across from her, examining his arrows. “That’s exciting, but it’s also a fight to death. Someone has to lose., and I’d rather it weren’t me.”

  “Oh, shut up.” She flounced to one of the beds and threw herself across it.

  Colton grinned and transferred his full attention to the road ahead of them. A couple of non-breathers shuffled in the ditch, but didn’t pay overly much attention to the motor home. They actually looked as if they were deteriorating.

  Was it possible that zombies could die out if unable to feed? He wished there were some way of testing that theory. Even without his medical books, Colton knew the body needed nourishment in order to thrive. Regardless of whether the brain refused to admit death, the body would eventually rot, right?

  Once they found a place to settle, he’d build a cage or something and catch a zombie. If he could prove his theory correct, then all they had to do was stay alive long enough for the zombies to be unable to find a food source.

  Hope rushed through him. He had a plan. Something other than just trying to stay alive and protect the others. He’d talk to Chalice about it all when they stopped for the night.

  He glanced at her profile, amazed at how pretty yet tough she was. Admiration welled in him, surprising, since he couldn’t admit to ever admiring anyone before. He’d felt affection for one of his foster mothers, but other than that, people tended to disappoint him. When Chalice met him at gunpoint on that first day, she’d taken a piece of him he could never get back. He liked it.

  They drove into a clearing. A chain link fence surrounded a brick building next to a substation. Clawing at the fence was at least thirty zombies. “Chalice.”

  Colton wanted to cut the engine, knowing noise attracted the undead, but wasn’t sure whether to go or stay. Night was falling, and the gas gauge showed a quarter of a tank. He didn’t want to find a gas station in the dark. Not with these things wandering around.

  “What do we do?” Chalice leaned on his seat and stared through the window. “It doesn’t seem wise to stay here, but driving this back road at night doesn’t seem much safer.”

  “You’re the captain.” Colton cut the head lights, leaving the zombies as eerie shadows.

  “No, I’m not.” She sounded shocked.

  “I’m just the tagalong.” Colton sighed. They couldn’t stay there. The zombies were starting to get nosey and several headed their way. “We have to go. Folks, hold on, I’m backing out on a very long road.”

  A zombie growled at his window. Broken teeth and blackened gums bared and pressed against the glass. Colton shouted and stepped on the gas. The motor home raced down the roadway. He fought to keep control of the wheel.

  “Go left.” Mychal lurched down the area between the table and the front seats. “There’s a tree.”

  Colton fought to serve and scraped the side of the motorhome along the rough park of a pine. Lights came to life in the substation.

  The gate rolled open, and an armored truck roared onto the road. Immediately, bullets riddled the zombies, dropping some and pissing off others. While most of the undead lumbered toward the armored truck, a few stayed behind to pound on the still motor home with enough force to set the vehicle rocking.

  “Crap!” Chalice grabbed her gun and fired out the window, splattering the brains of an undead across the glass and on the front of her shirt.

  Mychal immediately started stabbing again with the skewer. If they kept up this type of pace at slaughtering the monsters, the motor home would soon be covered in zombie guts. Already the smell, a cross between spoiled meat and rotten vegetables, was enough to gag a person.

  Colton grabbed his gun and shot through a slit in his window. Maybe with the other shooters, they could clear the area and have a safe place to spend the night behind a locked gate.

  The truck pulled alongside them. A heavily bearded man yelled through his barely opened window. “Get inside the gate. We’ll cover you.”

  Colton didn’t waste any time following the man’s orders. He set his gun on the floor and pressed the gas pedal, scraping the motor home again against the tree, then roared into the enclosure. After turning off the ignition, he grabbed his rifle and bolted from the vehicle. Chalice and Mychal did the same.

  They could at least cover the retreat of those who had helped them. Raising his rifle to his shoulder, Colton stepped against the fence and pulled the trigger. A zombie fell, a bullet between its eyes. The next one, a little girl in a stained ruffled dress was harder.

  She growled and stuck her skinny, graying arm through the links of the fence. Colton hesitated. This was someone’s little sister once. A child more interested in playing than wandering the world as an undead.

  Chalice didn’t have the same hesitation. She grabbed a sharp stick and shoved it through the zombie’s left eye. The girl fell in a heap of pink fabric and black blood.

  “You can’t stop to think about it.” Chalice left the stick in the zombie and aimed her rifle. “It’ll kill you if you do. Both physically and mentally.”

  She was right. Colton could have made a fatal mistake. Yes, a fence separated him from the zombies, but from the way the fence bowed under the little girl’s pounding, he suspected they possessed an almost inhuman strength when presented with the opportunity to get food. He sighed. She might have made the perfect experiment.

  Hanna screamed.

  Colton turned to see the hem of her shirt clutched in the hands of an old man zombie. Inch by inch, the creature pulled her closer to the fence. Saliva dripped from its chin.

  Before Colton could reach her, Junior dashed from the motor home, clutching one of the axes. With two hard whacks, he chopped the zombie’s hand, freeing Hanna. The younger ones should never have come outside, but this moment of disobedience could have been what saved Hanna’s life. “Get inside.”

  Fifteen minutes later, all the zombies lie dead, and the truck returned to the inside of the enclosure. Colton turned to welcome his saviors.

  9

  “Damn, you’re just a bunch of kids.” The bearded man leaned against his truck.

  “I’m almost eighteen.” Colton squared his shoulders. “Old enough.”

  The man shook his head. “Well, you proved yourself today. I’m Bill Colman. This is Fred Williams and Sarah Harper. We’re all that’s left of our group. We had ten originally. We’ve built a bunker under this abandoned substation. You’re welcome to come rest a spell, but I got to warn you, we’re getting low on food.”

  “We have food.” Chalice stepped forward. “I’m Chalice Hart, sixteen. My brother is Mychal, my sister, Hanna. We found Junior and Sissy about 80 miles back.” She motioned her head at Colton. “He’s Colton Morgan. We’re happy to share what we have.”

  “Can we come inside?” Bill asked, craning his neck to see in the motor home.

  “No, sir.” Colton stepped between him and the vehicle. “We’ll bring the food out to you but we’re not excited about letting strangers into our home.”

  Bill laughed. “Suit yourself, son, but if we wanted your supplies, we would’ve just waited for the zombies to kill you then we could’ve taken it.”

  “True.” Colton stepped aside. He wouldn’t be an ass to the folks who’d risked their necks for them. If they planned on robbing them, there wasn’t much any of them could do.

  The motor home seemed claustrophobic once three full-sized people climbed aboard. Colton took the seat farthest away from their guests, the driver’s seat, and kept his eyes peeled. Especially on the tall, skinny man. Colton didn’t like the way the man watched Chalice.

  She opened and dumped cans of stew into a pot while the younger kids sat and stared at the newcomers. Clearly Chalice felt relief at the pres
ence of adults. Despite his reservation at letting them onboard, Colton had to admit to a degree of relief, too. They might be strangers, but they’d taken care of a large herd of undead that would have quickly overwhelmed the motor home.

  Maybe they’d consider joining the younger group. Wouldn’t there be safety in numbers? Or would a larger group just make them a more visible target?

  Bill glanced in the closet of a bathroom. “Looks like you need to empty your tank. There’s a KOA not too far from here. We could show you in the morning.”

  “That would be wonderful.” Chalice smiled as she stirred. “It’s nice having a toilet but with a bunch of kids, it filled up fast.”

  The man took the liberty of looking in cupboards and under beds. Colton stared him down. “What are you looking for?”

  “Actually, I’m impressed at how prepared you are.” Bill straightened. “How long y’all been on the road together?”

  “About a month.” Colton crossed his arms. What was the guy getting at?

  “I’m thinking if we pool our supplies, we might do all right. We’ve ammunition and little else. You’ve food and little ammunition. It’s time for us to move on. We heard tell there’s a safe zone at the army base in Colorado Springs. Interested?”

  “Nothing closer?” Colton’s shoulders sagged. “I was hoping for Tyndall. We can’t be but a hundred miles from there.”

  “Last I heard, Tyndall was the first place over run by these things. I reckon Colorado will be the same, but we’ve got to chance it.” Bill took a bowl of stew from Chalice. “The more populated the area, the more zombies, of course. We wouldn’t ride in here with you kids. We could still take the truck.” He grinned. “From the blood splatters on the front of this box, I’d say y’all have seen some action.”

  “Yeah,” Mychal said. “It’s good for running over zombies.”