A zombie came at me, and I looked into its blank, dead eyes, sizing my enemy up. It had peeling skin, needle-sharp teeth, and blackened gums. It didn’t make a sound—not a growl or even a hiss—probably because its throat had been torn out, leaving a gaping hole in its windpipe. I aimed straight for its chest and swung my leg up in a powerful roundhouse kick. Its rotting exterior crashed against the tree trunk, sending bark flying everywhere. The smell of death assaulted my nostrils as I held the zombie’s destroyed neck with one hand and smashed its head with the other, it hit the ground hard. The sound of muffled screams, shouts, and whimpering moans echoed through the air as our army of eight valiantly fought for our lives, and I anxiously scanned my surroundings for my next target.
Another zombified monster crashed through the weeds with its jaws snapping. The thing was shirtless, and a wound in its gut exposed its ribcage. It took slow, deliberate steps toward me, holding out its inch-long claws. Getting scratched or bitten wasn’t an option, so I had to get out of its reach. As I took a step, my foot caught on something. I glanced down and bit my lip at the sight of my boot, tangled in roots embedded in the forest floor. I gasped a ragged breath and frantically tried to dislodge my foot. Just as the zombie lunged for my gut, my foot loosened. With a burst of energy, I kicked the front of its deteriorated knee with my steel-toed boot. It fell sideways into the grass, and I stomped on it, crushing its skull with my boot until it stopped moving altogether. “Die!” I yelled, gritting my teeth.
Asia bashed another zombie in the face with a jagged rock, then hit it in the gut with a roundhouse kick. It stumbled back, and I leapt up and hit it in the back with a scissor-kick. It fell facedown in the leaves, its body limp.
I couldn’t help but gasp at the next zombie hobbling toward Kate. It was still wearing glasses. My heart sank as I realized he’d been newly turned. His clothes were clean, without any rips or tears, but he did have a nasty gash that ran from his cheek to his waist. I ran to build momentum, then delivered a roundhouse kick to his back with all the fury I could muster. Down he went, headfirst, and I finished him off. Kate shot me a thankful nod.
Jackie’s scream rang out next to me, and I looked over and saw that a zombie had wrapped its dead fingers around her ankle. Just as I headed over to help her, she brought her rock down over the back of its head. She yanked her leg away and signaled that she was okay, then ran toward the next target.
Lucas lifted a zombie up like some kind of wrestler and slammed it straight down.
I saw five more approaching, and my breath froze in my throat. Shouting, I ran at an uncoordinated zombie and swung my rock toward its skull, then hit the one to the left and the one behind that one. Two more to go. Nick stepped in one’s path and roared as he took it down. The last one approached, lips pulling back from black teeth. Strands of blond hair clung to its rotting head, but it was too decayed for me to tell if it was male or female. It was missing an arm, and the fingers on its remaining hand were twisted in unnatural, sickening contortions.
I could hear myself breathing, my heart jack-hammering in my chest. Just as I was about to strike, gnarly fingers wrapped around my arm; at that exact moment, something began to violently pull and tug on the back of my jacket. In a flash, Asia kicked the zombie that was clutching my coat. The other one gripped my arm tighter, but I managed to twist out of its grip. Nick pounded the thing with his rock, its skeletal arms flailing as he finished it off. The undead freak in front of me snarled, but when I drove my knee into the corpse’s gut, it flew backward. Unfortunately, it gurgled again, hunger driving it forward. I struck, using the rock in my hand to deliver the creature to the same fate as the others before it.
I gave another zombie a good kick in the ribs with the steel toe of my boot. Jackie rushed over and sent the zombie back to its grave, this time for good. Four more infected, hungry corpses stumbled over the uneven terrain, moving ever closer to Nick and Lucas. Just as I took a step in their direction, Claire screamed. Two zombies had their sights on her, and I knew she needed me. I rushed over and gave it a full-throttle kick from behind. The zombie fell headfirst in the dirt, and I lifted my hands high in the air and brought the rock down, smashing the freak’s skull.
When I looked up again, the zombie was twitching in the grass, and Claire’s rock connected with its skull as well. She gasped for air as she threw down the slimy rock, then wiped her hands on the green grass and shot me a triumphant look. “Told you I could do this. I don’t live for it like Nick, but I can defend myself and this group if the need arises.”
I slapped her on the back, my own breath labored. “Look at you! You’re a regular force to be reckoned with!”
She glanced around, blowing a strand of hair out of her face. “I’m getting there, slowly but surely.”
I peered down at the dead zombies littering the forest floor. “Looks like we won this round, team.”
Nick motioned everyone over. “Is everybody okay?”
We all nodded and murmured that we were fine.
Nick smiled. “We showed ‘em who’s boss, huh? Great job, troops.” He wiped his hands on his pants. “It may be hard to see now, but there is life after the zombie apocalypse. We’re gonna take our world back, folks—if only a few zombies at a time.”
We all started clapping and cheering.
“Let’s get moving…and no talking unless it’s absolutely necessary,” Nick said. “Be alert for any sign of danger.”
Jackie gazed up at me and smiled. I gripped her hand as we all followed Nick through the thick vegetation. We hiked in complete silence, killing a straggler zombie or two along the way. Hours passed as we trudged along, and I wondered where we were and what city was close by. We didn’t have time to be lost in the wilderness, and we needed to find that lab. We had lost the scientist who had told us about the lab in the first place, but I was hoping other scientists would be there.
The afternoon sun shone as a breeze blew autumn leaves up in the air. I squinted and thought I saw a building. When I peered closer, hoping it wasn’t just a mirage, I noticed it was a log cabin.
Nick motioned for us to be quiet while he thought of a plan; I knew he’d want a team to secure the perimeter. A layer of dirt was built up by the door, and I didn’t see one single footprint anywhere, so I figured the place was abandoned. Of course, that didn’t mean a thing.
Nick assigned Jackie, Claire, and Asia to act as lookouts in the front, and he sent Val, Kate, and I around back. I paced back and forth on the deck, scanning the whole place for any sign of zombie activity. I could hear Nick knocking, but no one seemed to be home. I walked to the back door to see if it was open, but we had no such luck. When I heard a loud thud echo in the air, I smiled. “How much you wanna bet Lucas and Nick just busted down the door?” I asked.
Val chuckled. “He is our brother. Craziness runs in the family.”
Kate flicked her long, blonde hair out of her face. “This is a great find. We’re in desperate need of supplies. If nobody lives here, I say we raid the place. It’s all about survival now.”
We hurried back around the front, stepped on the porch, and walked into the cabin. The first room was a large kitchen, a dark wooden table with six chairs and a bench, a long, tan-colored sofa, a stone fireplace, and vaulted wooden ceiling and beams.
“Looks all clear,” Lucas said. “I’m gonna go check out the upstairs.”
I started to follow him, but my brother grabbed my arm. “Shut the curtains and start looking for supplies,” he said, then darted up the stairs behind Lucas.
I rushed to the windows and pulled down the shades and closed the curtains. It darkened the room significantly, but we didn’t want anything to see us from out in those dark woods. Once the windows were all blocked, Jackie and I went to the cabinets and started rummaging through them.
Claire found a box and brought it over. “Here. We can fill this with supplies.”
“Great,” Jackie said as she pilfered several cans of lemonade inside.
>
“Look at this! A shotgun!” Asia shouted, slinging it over her shoulder. “Now I just need ammunition.”
“You should see this girl with a gun,” Kate said. “She’s really something.”
“Yeah?” Jackie said. “Well, it’s great to have two sharpshooters on our team. Dean’s the best one around.”
Asia met my gaze and smiled. “Really?” she said, looking me up and down. “Maybe we oughtta have a face-off sometime.”
“You’re on!” I opened a can of lemonade and guzzled half of it down; I’d been dying of thirst for hours.
She shot me a flirty grin and walked into the next room. For a second, I couldn’t stop staring at her. Asia was African American and one of the smartest, toughest, and most gorgeous women I ever laid eyes on. I loved her dark skin; black, shoulder-length hair; dark, exotic, beautiful eyes; and an athletic body bulging with muscles. If I didn’t have a girlfriend, she was exactly who I’d want to date. Nick belonged with somebody like her, not Claire. Not that I didn’t like Claire, I did. But she was definitely not my brother’s type. She didn’t have that tough edge to her that Nick always looked for in a girl. Asia did.
Lucas came in with his shirt off and a bandage on his shoulder, rather than my sister’s shirt.
“I guess Val found the medical supplies,” I said.
“That sister of yours is something else. She’s tough like a cop, but she’s also a dang good nurse.”
“That’s Val for ya.”
Lucas arched an eyebrow. “Find any guns or bullets?”
I folded my arms and shook my head. “I didn’t, but Asia found a shotgun. No ammo though.”
“We’d better keep looking. We rocked out there today, but we can’t expect zombies to be stoned forever,” he said, then laughed at himself. “Ha! I’m so punny!”
“Yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Very, very punny. I’m gonna go check upstairs again.”
“Yeah, go ahead. I didn’t see anything, but a second set of eyes never hurts. There are four bedrooms and a bathroom, and that’s good.”
“Why?”
“Look out there, man. It’s getting dark, and I’m not about to go on a moonlight stroll with those things lurking around out in the woods.
I bit my lip and looked away.
Lucas shot me a concerned look. “What’s up, bro? Nervous about spending the night with the girls? They can all sleep in my room if it scares ya,” he joked.
My mind raced, and I was too worried to laugh at his jokes. “I’m worried about the gang who ran us over the bridge. What if they coming looking for us?”
“Not likely,” Lucas assured me. “They’re too dumb to know they don’t really have the cure. Besides, how would they find us? They have no idea if we’re even alive, let alone where we got out of the river. For all they know, we could be dead or anywhere in those woods. It’d take ‘em months to find us, and we’ll be gone by tomorrow anyway. If you want to worry about something, worry about those undead freaks. The live idiots are not gonna be a problem.”
“Good point,” I said, nodding. “Just tryin’ to make sure all my bases are covered.”
He playfully slugged my shoulder. “Just like I taught you, huh?”
“Right,” I said, smiling back at him.
Upstairs, we found no guns or ammo, but there were plenty of kerosene lanterns. The girls placed them all over the rooms; it was almost like having electricity, and that was nice, because with all the drapes closed and the sun going down, the place was as dark as a dungeon.
I sat back on the couch to relax for a few minutes. Hurrying from place to place, fighting for our lives every step of the way, was wearing on me. I was tired, weary, and emotionally distraught, and the thought of half of our group turning into hybrids was constantly on my mind, making me nauseous. No matter how much progress we made, I always felt like we were running out of time. I still remembered what one guy had warned as we packed up to leave the nursing home: “You can’t take anyone with you who took that serum, because they’re all gonna change eventually, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it!” But we didn’t listen; we refused to leave Val, Claire, Asia, and Jackie behind. When I argued with the man, telling him that not everyone would necessarily change, he jumped into his car with his wife and sped down the street, screeching the wheels to get as far away as he could from us.
Another woman made sure to tell us how horrible the cure was, that it delivered hope for a short time, only to leave the person worse off in the end. “At least in a zombified state, a person didn’t know what was happening,” she’d told us, “but now they have the ability to think and reason and stalk their prey, and nothing can be more cruel than that.” We didn’t count on that happening. The cure was supposed to heal people, not turn them into monsters, and we had to have some shred of hope.
I sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to free the thoughts from my head. I tried to think about the cabin we were staying in, a pretty nice and cozy place. Part of me wished we could just stay there. It was so peaceful and relaxing. We laughed and talked, and I even enjoyed Lucas’s lame jokes. Being there like that, in the warm safety of four walls, surrounded by family and friends and the soft glow of lantern light, made me long for my island home, for a permanent place to stay.
“Ew. I hate warm lemonade from a can,” Lucas complained, making a face as he took a sip. “I bet lemons aren’t even listed on the ingredients.”
Claire pushed a strand of red hair behind her ears. “Hush. We were lucky to find it.”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Jackie said.
Nick looked at me. “Remember Grams’s lemonade? That was the best ever.”
“Yeah. We’d sit on the porch and listen to Dad tell us all those crazy stories, and Grams would just linger on his every word.” My lips pressed into a grim line as I thought about how worried my parents and my grandmother probably were.
“It’s gonna be all right, Dean,” Nick said, noticing the strain in my voice. “Deep down, I know they’re fine.”
I nodded as emotion consumed me.
“Besides,” he said, “Grandma is too stubborn to die. I can totally see her giving some poor, unsuspecting zombie what-for.”
Val laughed. “You’re right about that. I know I haven’t known her as long as you two, but she doesn’t seem like the knitting kind of grandma. She showed me pictures of her skydiving.”
Nick laughed. “That’s Grams for you. I guess tenacity and adventure are part of our DNA.”
I met Nick’s gaze. “Stubbornness too.”
Nick smirked, easily catching on to my deeper meaning, since we both knew he was the most stubborn person in the world.
I watched Claire fumble around with a Polaroid camera. “What an antique,” I said. “That thing can’t possibly work.”
Claire turned on the power and wound up the film. “It does, and there’re lots of film cartridges and batteries in that desk drawer. Would you mind taking a picture of me and my cousin?”
Jackie rushed over and threw an arm around Claire, and the two of them smiled as I snapped the photo. After the picture exited the slot on the camera, I laid it flat on the coffee table to give it time to develop.
“Okay, now I want one with Dean!” Jackie said.
I got in position and wrapped my arms around Jackie.
“Smile,” Claire said.
“Yeah, man, but don’t say, ‘Cheese’, or you’ll make me hungry,” Lucas piped in.
I grinned as Claire snapped and the flash lit up the room.
“Can I see it?” Jackie said.
“Takes a minute,” Claire said, putting the picture on the table next to the others.
When I kissed Jackie, Claire unexpectedly snapped again, and we all laughed. We began playing around and goofing off. Everyone made funny faces for the camera, and when I whirled Jackie around and dipped her in some crazy kind of waltz, Claire snapped another. We had such a blast, and Claire continued taking picture
s of everyone till the film ran out completely. I even managed to convince Nick to get in a snapshot with her, and we were all surprised how well the photos came out.
***
We all surrounded Nick as he laid a map out on the kitchen table and flattened it. Asia found a flashlight and shined her bright beam over the map, and Kate pointed to the place where she thought we were.
“Uh…looks like we were a little off base about the location of that lab,” Nick said, squinting his eyes at the map and using his thumb and forefinger to measure the miles by inches.
“A little off base, huh? How far is a little?” I asked, afraid to hear the answer.
“Well, quite a bit farther than Jonathon, that scientist, told us.”
Lucas shook his head. “That guy woulda said anything to get us to go to his lab with his team. He couldn’t stop talking about that serum, so it doesn’t surprise me that he exaggerated about how close we were. He was just trying to get us to go with him.”
“How far, Nick?” Asia asked.
“Well, if we run into no more problems and we can find a car, I’d say two days.”
“I say we go,” Val said. “I need to know what’s in that serum I took, to know if I’m going to change like the others.”
There was complete silence as we all exchanged pained glances. We took a vote and it was decided it was in everyone’s best interest to head for the lab, one way or another.
***
Lucas, Nick, and Jackie went outside to guard the perimeter of the cabin, and the rest of us chatted among ourselves. Our newest members to the group, Asia and Kate, asked how we met Claire and Jackie, and I briefly filled them in.
“Val hated me when we first met,” Claire said.
“Hate’s a strong word,” Val said.
Claire looked at her and rolled her eyes. “Just admit it. You weren’t happy with me.”
Val tried not to laugh. “Well, I’ve never been too much of a fan of damsels in distress, those princess types who sit around waiting for knights to slay their dragons for them.”
The Zombie Chronicles - Book 5 - Undead Nightmare (Apocalypse Infection Unleashed Series) Page 3