Zombie Attack! Box Set (Books 1-3)

by Devan Sagliani

  The bowman crouched down to reload just as his buddies came tearing in from the darkness of the department store with their guns drawn.

  Arrows are one thing, I thought, but there is no way I’m gonna be able to dodge a bullet.

  I turned and ran toward the exit as fast as I could. The sound of gun shots rang out like loud thunder. I didn’t stop. I couldn’t. My lungs burned as I pumped my legs up and down as fast as they would take me until I reached the others.

  Benji and Felicity were trying desperately to pry open the heavy glass doors, but with no luck. I joined in on Benji’s side, managing to get them open about an inch. Felicity let out a shrill cry of pain and let go, clutching her wounded arm.

  I looked back toward our enemies. They were advancing with their weapons drawn. We were trapped! They fired again and the bullets hit the glass to the left of us. Felicity quivered in fear and slumped down to the floor.

  “Are you hit?” I asked, but she didn’t answer. “I said, are you hit?” She shook her head no, unable to speak. She was quivering from head to toe.

  She’s probably going into shock, I thought, from the wound the arrow made. Hell, it’s still sticking out of her!

  They were less than a hundred feet away now. At this range, their aim was sure to improve.

  “We’re going to die in here,” Benji cried. “Do something!”

  I turned back to the doors and began to pull with everything I had in me. Benji joined me and the door began to slowly roll back. I could feel all the muscles in my arms and chest burning.

  Don’t stop, I told myself. They are depending on you. All of our lives count on it. Pull harder!

  I gave out a cry and yanked the doors open a bit more. My arms felt like stretched rubber left out in the hot sun. The muscles were giving out and I was losing my grip.

  Another shot rang out and hit the glass mere inches from my head. I am not going to die like this. I can’t! Not after everything we have been through. Not without saying goodbye to Moto.

  I stepped between the doors, propping my legs against one side with my back against the other. The doors came open, but the pain in my back and legs was almost unbearable.

  “Go,” I yelled in a hoarse voice. “Go NOW!”

  Felicity crawled through and Benji followed her.

  I turned to see them standing on the sidewalk staring at me.

  “Come on,” Benji yelled, trying to pull me through with both hands.

  I gave the doors one last push and fell through. A chorus of gunfire erupted from inside the mall as the hunters screamed and wailed at our escape. Several of the shots made it out through the small crack before the doors closed and fully shielded us.

  Miraculously, we weren’t hit. My whole body ached and I panted like a wounded animal as I stood back up on trembling, unsteady legs. The hunters pounded on the glass but didn’t try to pull the doors open.

  “That’s odd,” I said. “Why aren’t they following us?”

  Benji frantically tugged at my arm. I turned around to see the reason why we’d been left alone. A small crowd of about a hundred zombies had begun to wander toward us from across the parking lot. The familiar sound of their unearthly moans and horrible stench reached me at the same time. I fought back my desire to vomit as a breeze sent a wave of decomposing stench over us.

  “This is bad,” Felicity said. “We’re trapped. What do we do?”

  “Get behind me,” I said, holding up my blade. “We’re going to cut a path to freedom.”

  “That’s insane,” Benji cried.

  “We’ll never make it,” Felicity added.

  “We’ve got no other choice,” I replied, letting out a war cry and charging at the ones closest to us. With a flash of my blade I took off a fat zombie’s head, kicking his rotting body over. It felt like stepping in putty, but I didn’t slow down. Without missing a beat, I brought the sword back across my body to the right with all the force I could manage and took off another zombie’s head with a clean sweep. The rest of the zombie horde didn’t seem to notice my bloodthirsty rampage. They just stepped over their fallen friends and kept coming at us like the mindless killing machines they were.

  Swinging in a wild circle, I sliced my way through another, then punched a thin zombie out of my way before freeing my blade from the last victims chest. Dark coagulated blood oozed from the tip of my sword like an oily film of dead pulp. I shook it off and drove the weapon back through the neck of a screeching woman who lunged for me, nearly knocking me over. There were more of them than I had realized. They were reaching me too fast and I was taking too long to kill them. Benji and Felicity were right. This wasn’t going to work. There was no way I was going to be able to fight them all off.

  “Xander look out,” Felicity cried as a thickly built male zombie snapped at me teeth first like a rabid dog.

  I leaned back just out of his bite radius and felt the horrible chill of his cold breath on my face. He looked like he had been a body builder before being turned, and I was dismayed to discover that he still had the strength of one as he gripped me by the throat and began to squeeze the life out of me, raising me completely off the ground with my feet kicking at the air. I beat my left fist helplessly into his chest to no avail as stars popped in my field of vision.

  Felicity screamed at the top of her lungs. I prayed the rest of the horde hadn’t already moved past me and gotten to them. My right arm flailed wildly with my sword still in hand, but I wasn’t able to make a dent in the monster even by hacking chunks of flesh from his back. He pulled me forward toward his open mouth, preparing to tear off the front of my face.

  In a last ditch effort I jerked my right arm upward, lodging the sword into his head. I felt his grip loosen but he didn’t relent. He was still making every effort to eat me alive. With all the strength I had left in my already sore muscles, I forced the end of the sword handle down until the blade slowly sliced up and through his brain, removing half of his head and exposing rotten gray matter and more oily black blood in the process. He let me go and fell over with an unsatisfying grunt. I fell to one knee, gingerly touching my neck and gulping in air as fast as I could. I was dizzy but I forced myself back to my feet to continue to fight.

  “Come on!” I screamed. “Is that all you’ve got?” Adrenaline pumped through me as I stood back up. I was ready to die fighting but I was going to take down every last one of these creatures before I did.

  “Xander, look,” Felicity said as she pointed to the middle of the horde.

  A flash of light drew my vision off to the right and I turned to see the strangest thing I’d ever witnessed in my whole life. The zombies turned back on a man who was walking among them. He calmly swung two objects that seemed to be made entirely out of reflected light in a blur around his body. The horde seemed so captivated by him, they had forgotten all about us.

  His face was painted like an Indian warrior and he had several crows feathers tucked into his hair. His expression was a mask of calm resolve. He wore a thin layer of chainmail over his upper torso and head and protective metal armor from the waist down to his metallic boots. Light reflected off his mirror polished armor as well as whatever he was using for weapons, giving him the impression that he was glowing almost from head to toe.

  I thought of the pictures Moto had once shown me of Shaolin warrior monks.

  How is he doing that? I wondered to myself. It’s like he’s somehow able to communicate with them.

  The zombies would turn to attack him then stumble back, looking confused and disoriented. Whoever he was, he calmly moved through them like he was taking a stroll through the park on a lazy Sunday afternoon. He might as well have been walking on water as far as I was concerned. He was headed right for us but I didn’t feel any fear. Instead, an indescribable calm began to settle over me at the sight of him, like for the first time in forever everything was going to be all right.

  “On your right,” Benji called out.

  I turned to look at him,
confused by everything that was happening as I felt a sharp pain shoot through my right side. Something cold clamped down onto my skin. Glancing down I saw a small zombie boy in a blue and yellow striped shirt had latched his dirty mouth onto my stomach. With a sharp strike from my elbow I dislodged him, then swung around and took his head clean off. I watched the expression go blank on his kid zombie face as his lifeless head rolled to a stop at the curb and his small corpse fell over flat.

  My hand shook as I touched the wound and saw bright red blood forming. I’d been bitten! I heard Felicity yelling something at me but I couldn’t make out what it was. There was a loud ringing in my ears and I could feel my heart beating hard in my chest. I started to feel woozy. My legs wobbled beneath me as they gave way. The last thing I remembered was the ground rushing up to meet me and then seeing a big burst of light.

  ***

  When I opened my eyes again, I was lying on my back looking up at the inside of a canvass tent with a hole that went straight up into the sky. The brown skinned man with the bird feathers in his hair and black paint on his face worked over a fire nearby, boiling water.

  After rolling my head to the side, I found my sword lying next to his two huge shiny knives. My reflection was clearly visible in them. I could tell I was in deep trouble with a single glance. My skin was already turning a yellowish green to match the bile rising up from my stomach, and my forehead was beaded with feverish sweat as my body tried to fight off the killer infection. I touched my side where I had been bitten and winced with pain.

  “Awake to the dream of reality,” the man said with a smile.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m called many things by many different people. It all depends on how they see me or what they need from me.”

  “I don’t need anything from you.” I tried to sit up but fell over in agony.

  “We all need something from each other. Life is by its very nature interdependent. You can call me Simon if you like. You’ve more than earned the right.

  “Where am I?”

  “Paradise City.”

  “I thought we were in Oxnard.”

  “That’s what it used to be called,” he explained. “Before things fell apart. There isn’t much that remains as it once used to be.” He had a cryptic way of talking, as if everything he said was a riddle or Zen koan waiting to be unraveled. My head throbbed and I tried not to think about it.

  “Who were those people hunting us?” I was already starting to feel feverish.

  “Cannibals. They would have eaten you all if they could have caught you. Turned your organs into soup and your flesh into strips of jerky.”

  “Just like zombies,” I said, attempting an ironic smile.

  “Worse. Zombies don’t have free will, while the cannibals know exactly what they are doing and just don’t care. There aren’t many people left out here. Almost everybody is a zombie. Cannibals track passing traffic on the freeway to trap fresh victims. I saw your car hit that pole in the parking lot from my little hill up here and knew you were in big trouble, so I headed down. I figured if you had any sense at all you’d cut through the mall and head west.”

  Despite my state I took his words as the compliment they were intended to be. It felt good to know I’d been right, even if it had cost me my life. None of that mattered as long as the others were safe.

  Panic shot through me as I realized I didn’t know what had become of them. What if the zombies had eaten them? I couldn’t go to my grave without knowing, and judging from the way I felt I knew I didn’t have long until I changed.

  “Where are my friends?” I asked, confused. I tried to sit up but didn’t have the strength. It felt like a boulder had been dropped on my chest.

  “They are outside, waiting,” he said. “You were very brave. You saved their lives.”

  “I was very stupid. I’m paying the price for it now.” The realization that I was going to become one of those flesh eating monsters wasn’t fully kicking in. It was just more than I could handle at the moment.

  “I don’t think so,” he countered. “Your brother will be very proud of you.”

  “How do you know my brother?” I lifted my head, straining to look at him.

  “Moto is a friend. That’s more than I can say for the rest of his tribe. He will be pleased to learn his little brother has become a fierce warrior. He’s been looking for you since news reached him about Vandenberg. He left me a walkie to contact him if you came this way. He said you would make it. That you were strong and would find your way to the base. Turns out he was right.”

  “It’s too late,” I said. “I’ve been bitten.”

  “Don’t worry,” Simon said. “He will be here soon. He was very excited to hear you were still alive.”

  “I’m dying.” I fought to stay awake. “By the time he gets here he’ll more than likely have to chop off my head.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure. Things are not always as they appear in this world. Nor are they otherwise.”

  “I saw you,” I said, ignoring his brain twister. “You were walking right through a crowd of zombies but they moved out of your way. It was a miracle, like parting water with your bare hands. How did you do that?”

  “It’s a long story,” he said with a pleasant smile that made me feel calm and at ease. “The short answer is by controlling my breathing. I’ve spent years learning how to lower my heart rate through meditation. It helps me to move calmly among them without drawing attention to myself. Usually I don’t have to raise my weapons at all. Today required I move with greater speed than normal, hence the light display. Forgive me if it seemed vain. It was not without purpose, I assure you.”

  “I thought zombies were attracted to movement,” I said.

  “If that is true, then why don’t they attack each other?”

  “I don’t know. I always assumed they came after us because we smelled alive, like food.”

  “They are driven by hunger. Like all predators, they use their senses to search out victims. Most people panic when they see them, causing their heart rates to skyrocket and their skin to sweat. Just like a dog can smell fear, so too can the undead sense our repulsion of them. Add to that the fact that most people scream or wave their arms and run around like chickens with their heads cut off, and it’s no wonder they zero in on us as if they had heat seeking technology.”

  “So you’re saying if I stood perfectly still in the middle of a zombie horde I wouldn’t have been bitten?”

  I thought about Joel and Tom’s story of hiding under the dead soldiers as the zombies passed by them.

  “I can’t say that for sure,” he admitted. “What I can tell you is that I have been walking with them in a trance-like state on many occasions and have not been attacked.”

  “How do you remain calm when you know they can turn on you at any moment and rip you to shreds? How is that possible?”

  “You have to learn to change the way you see the world. When you view them with compassion, your fear is transformed into sympathy. These were people once, just like you and me. They had hopes and dreams, families, loved ones. Just like you and me they wanted more happiness and less suffering in their lives. They had plans for the future. Now they are eternally damned to wander the earth with a terrible hunger that cannot be fulfilled, reviled as monsters. It’s heartbreaking in every way imaginable.”

  “I’m glad you are so sympathetic,” I said. “Considering I will shortly be one of them. But I still think you should cut my head off the minute I change. I don’t want to be responsible for killing anyone.”

  “You’re going to be just fine.” He opened his hand and revealed two blue pills. “Your friend Felicity told me to give you these. She said she took them from your pocket in Ojai. She told me to tell you not to be mad at her.”

  So she stole the pills back from me! I wasn’t mad at her. A pang of sadness shot through me knowing that I would never get to kiss her again, that the moment we shared up on the hill was the be
st we would ever have together.

  I raised my head and he placed them in my mouth. He took a bottle of water from the ground and placed it to my lips. It felt cool and refreshing. I gulped down as much as I could.

  “How is she?” I asked. “How is her arm?”

  “I managed to take the arrow out and clean the wound,” he told me. “She’s going to be just fine. The shaft went almost clean through. She is very lucky it only hit her arm.”

  The pain in my body was growing. It spread across my entire chest, radiating out from the wound in my side and even ran down my legs. I panted steadily to relieve some of the agony, trying to breathe it away.

  “I’m going to need you to listen to me,” Simon said. “An antidote is on its way, but for now we’re going to want to slow down the spread of the virus. The pills will help calm you but I want you to work on your breathing with me. Got it?”

  “Yes,” I managed. The pain was growing exponentially now. I could feel it in my toes and finger tips.

  “Remember what I told you about controlling my heart rate with meditation?”

  I nodded in reply, too sick to answer. My throat felt dry like hot sand at the beach.

  “We’re going to slow yours down now too. I want you to close your eyes but concentrate on the sound of my voice.”

  I closed my eyes without argument.

  “That’s good. Now I want you to focus on your breath as it moves in and out of your body. Don’t try to control it. Just become aware of it. When thoughts arise, resist the temptation to follow them. Instead, gently push them aside and return your concentration to the breath.”

  I did as he said and immediately began to relax. The pain was still there, but I wasn’t fighting against it now so its effect on me didn’t seem as overwhelming.

  “Think of your mind as a vast blue sky without end and your thoughts like white, fluffy clouds. They don’t come from anywhere and they don’t go anywhere. When the causes and conditions are right, clouds appear. Don’t follow the clouds but return to the calm, peaceful blue of your mind.”