I peeked inside through the lace curtains of the display window. Wood-framed photographs and paintings of old barns, farmhouses, and cowboys decorated the walls. They also sold hammered and painted metal wall hangings shaped like chickens, cows, tractors, ducks, and flowers. The shop was dark, and I couldn’t make out anything past the second aisle. The little store seemed abandoned.
All of the sudden, Val doubled over and threw up by the bales of hay stacked against the wall. “Hey, I’m gonna go lie down in the truck. Everything’s spinning, and I swear, I feel like I’m going to pass out.”
“Let me help you to the truck,” I said.
“Yeah,” Lucas said. “Let us help you.”
“Thanks, but I’ll be fine. I just need a few minutes to get my—get my head straight.”
We respected her wishes. I knew if I were in the same situation, I would probably want some alone time too.
“To be honest, as much as I hate to say it, I’m not feeling so great,” she admitted. “I hope you understand.”
“We’ll be right back,” I said, feeling horrible for her—and for what we’d feel like if we lost her in the end.
“Okay. I’ll hold down the fort,” she said, walking briskly back to the truck.
I motioned to the others to stay alert as I rounded the corner to the back of the store.
Beyond the parking lot, cornstalks grew in neat rows, sprouting high toward the horizon. I cringed. Cornfields tended to freak me out in general, especially now, when zombies were lurking around in at every nook and cranny. I shivered, thinking I must have watched too many horror films about walking scarecrows and possessed little kids.
Jackie looked around. “You think it’s safe?”
“I don’t see anything,” Lucas said. “We’ll keep our eyes open. Shouldn’t take us too long to get some gas. We should be back on the road in no time.”
“Can you and the girls stand guard?” Nick asked me.
“Sure,” I said, glancing around at the old, rusty cars. It seemed like they’d been left there for a reason. Most of them had been stripped down and didn’t even have tires. I wondered if we’d even find gas.
Lucas held up the clear, six-foot hose I’d packed. “So, uh…which car should we try first?”
Running a hand through his hair, Nick glanced around. “The red one.”
Lucas nodded and rushed over to the gas tank. I scanned my surroundings. Everything looked okay, peaceful, and quiet. Birds flew across the blue sky. The girls and I stood guard as gas traveled up the hose and started to flow down the loop toward the ground and into the can.
“We got gas, baby!” Lucas shouted.
“Awesome!” Claire’s voice rang.
“That’s fantastic,” I said. “We should check out all these cars and take as much as we can get our hands on.”
He slapped me on the back. “That’s the plan, buddy.”
Jackie twisted the silver ring on her finger as she stared off into the field. “Hey, guys, uh…”
“What is it?” I asked her.
“There’s something moving over there.” She pointed to some rustling cornstalks, moving around as if something was pushing through them.
My senses were already on full alert, but now my heart began to race even faster. As I whipped out my gun, I felt a wave of anxiety come over me. Breathing slowly to maintain my aim, I said, “She’s right. I see something!”
“You guys are creeping me out,” Claire said. “Let’s hurry up and get outta here.”
I grabbed her shoulder, anxious to prove to her that I wasn’t making it up. “See it?”
Lucas took a few steps forward and scanned the fields ahead. “Don’t go playing Rambo until we know for sure. We sure as heck don’t wanna invite a bunch of zombies to this little siphoning party if we don’t need to. Maybe it’s just an animal—some lost groundhog or something.”
“Right,” I agreed, having fought off enough zombies for one day.
Jackie grabbed my hand and started to lead me away from the car. “Let’s just go. We’ve got enough gas for now.”
I put my gun away, knowing she was right. “Nick, let’s go.”
Nick squinted into the cornfield. “All right. Let’s get outta here. We don’t wanna take any chances.”
Lucas picked up the hose and gas can. “Well, this oughtta be enough gas to get us started.”
“What a cruel world we live in,” Jackie said. “Now all it takes is a shadow to drive us all into a panic.”
“It’ll be different when we get back to the island, I swear,” I said, hoping it was true. “We’ll be able to walk around freely, without fear.”
She let out a long sigh. “It sounds like heaven.”
“I’ve always taken the place for granted,” I admitted shamefully. “I’ve even been going around calling it a prison cell for a year, but now that I’ve been out here, I’ve come to realize that I had a pretty carefree life back there. Everyone out here struggles just to live another day, always having to be on constant guard. This has sure been a reality check for me! I love my island now because I know nothing is guaranteed anymore. I’m done taking things for granted.”
“Yeah,” Nick said. “I thought the island was a slice of heaven, but I had to listen to you gripe and complain about how you were stuck on that rock and wanted nothing more than to get off of it.”
“I know,” Lucas said, “and now he just wants to get back as soon as possible.”
“I guess I was just…naïve,” I said.
“And stubborn,” Nick chimed in.
“Fine. And stubborn. You happy now? I admit it. I was completely clueless and stubborn as a jackass, okay?”
He clapped my back, and a wide grin grew across his face. “I think this little reality check will make you appreciate the Erie islands a whole lot more, and now maybe you’ll understand why they had all those security precautions in place. They were just trying to protect us.”
“Well, now I know,” I replied smartly.
“And knowing is half the battle!” Nick quickly replied, and everyone shook with laughter as he struck a rigid military salute.
Nick was right, and everything made perfect sense. I actually understood why they felt compelled to kill the infected. There was little else they could do since there was no cure, and now I couldn’t blame them.
As we made our way around the store to get back to our Jeep, a deep, throaty growl snapped me back into reality. Zombies in tattered flesh and ripped clothing lumbered toward us. I turned and was greeted by more of the shuffling ghouls from behind. With the barn to the left of us and the store to the right, the zombies had us pinned in from both sides. Everything had happened so fast that I could barely take one breath.
Claire clutched at my arm. “Where did they all come from?”
I didn’t know the answer to that question. What I did know was that we had to get back to Val and drive to safety. I aimed and began pulling the trigger again and again. The recoil sent shuddering vibrations through my arm, and with each wave of force, another zombie fell to the ground in a bloody, slimy heap. In total, four zombies fell, but more still came.
“Dean!” my brother yelled. “Get any coming from the right! Girls, cover the left! Lucas and I will take center stage.”
Bullets started flying, and within a flurry of seconds that felt like hours, I’d already emptied an entire clip. Like true battle-hardened warriors, Jackie and Claire fired again and again, dropping the undead one by one.
I looked over to the cornfield and saw dozens more of the decomposing bodies pushing through the dried stalks of corn, immediately joining the mob surrounding us. There were too many of them. It was a growing army, worse than any horror film I’d ever seen. Some had missing arms, some no faces, and one zombie had been impaled right through the midsection with a giant sword that jiggled when he walked and stumbled.
An endless wave of bullets sprayed into the zombies from all of us, but still, they just kept coming.
“We’re gonna be out of ammo in no time!” I yelled.
“Yeah, that’s a given!” my brother shouted.
But none of us knew what to do but keep firing.
Chapter 6
The grunts, hisses, and moans of the oncoming horde sent chills down my spine as they moved ever closer. I scanned my surroundings. I thought maybe we could break into the store or the barn, but we didn’t want to get trapped inside like we had at the glass house.
Lucas yelled my name and dragged over a ladder. He propped it up against the store by a second-floor window. As he clambered up, he shouted, “I’ll go first so I can secure the area.”
Nick fired at a shirtless man with nearly no skin remaining over his now-broken and exposed ribcage. The monster’s head exploded like a melon, spattering a fine mist of blood and bits of brain matter just inches from my brother’s face. Nick wiped his sleeve across his face, then motioned toward the ladder. “Go, Dean!”
I tucked my gun into the waistband of my pants and started to climb after Claire and Jackie. Shots echoed from above, and I knew Lucas was taking down any zombies who’d managed to find their way inside. He suddenly peered his head out the window, frantically helping Claire into the room.
Once I tumbled inside, I jumped to my feet and looked for Nick. He climbed up the ladder as zombies began to shake it. I put down a few more, but there were just too many of them. “Hurry, Nick!” I yelled to the others for help, then tried to hold onto the ladder as it teetered.
Claire and Jackie rushed to try and help steady it, but Nick was almost up when the ladder wobbled too far to the right, sliding out from under him and falling to the ground. I grabbed my brother’s hands, squeezing them tightly. For such a macho guy, his eyes were wide with fear as his legs swung in the air. Zombies reached out, dozens of bloody, mutilated hands trying to grab him, but Lucas and I wrenched him up and inside to safety.
My heart raced, and I hugged him tight. “Whoa! That was close.”
He tried to pretend it hadn’t fazed him one bit, even though I knew better. “Yeah. Thanks.”
I glanced around at the dead zombies on the floor. The door was shut, and I assumed Lucas had locked it after he secured the room. We were standing in a giant, empty room. Hammers, toolboxes, timber, paint cans, saws, cracked plaster, and boxes of nails were scattered everywhere. It looked like they’d been remodeling when the world fell apart.
I thought about Val, sleeping in the truck. Catching Nick’s gaze, I said, “Val has their scent. She’ll be okay, right?”
“She’ll be fine,” Nick said. “Let’s try to yell for her.”
“Yeah,” I said. “If she could bring the truck closer…”
All of us yelled out the window, to no avail. I was sure she was sleeping, as the zombie virus was taking quite a toll on her body.
A sudden pounding coming from the door nearly made me jump out of my skin. My gaze landed on the doorknob, which slowly began to turn. We knew there were zombies on the other side of the door, and they wanted to get to where the food was. Nothing freaked me out more than that.
“What’re we going to do?” Claire asked, shaking Jackie’s shoulder. “They’re bound to get that door open eventually. For goodness sakes, they busted through glass walls back at that mansion.”
Jackie let out a long breath as she reloaded her gun. “I dunno, but we can’t stay here.”
I ran a hand through my hair and glanced at Nick for an answer, but he had none yet.
“I’m thinking,” he said.
“Zombies are everywhere!” Claire’s voice echoed. “All we did was stop for some gas. Is this a messed-up world or what? The minute you stop, even for a second, you end up fighting for your life.”
She couldn’t have been more right, and I’d learned my lesson the hard way: We should never have ventured outside of a secured city. Leaving my safe island was a dumb idea. If only I’d known firsthand how horrible it was out here. Then again, I had no idea we’d crash either.
The moans and hissing sent goosebumps up my arms. We had boxed ourselves in again, but this time, we didn’t have a choice. If we’d have stayed outside, we’d have ended up being a zombie smorgasbord, and I was in no mood to be anyone’s main course.
Jackie wrapped her arm around me for comfort.
I gazed into her terror-filled eyes. This isn’t good—not good at all, I realized. I pulled her close and placed a quick kiss high on her forehead. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure this out.”
“I’m not worried,” she said, her eyes wide, but she was a horrible liar.
“We could probably shoot our way out of here,” Nick said. “We can open the door and take down whatever stands in our way, then make it downstairs and out a side door where there are less of them.”
“Hmm. I kind of like it,” Jackie said. “We could lose them in the cornstalks. You know how clumsy they’d be trying to maneuver through that kind of labyrinth.”
“Well, if we’re gonna go, it had better be now, before this place floods with them,” Claire said. “I’m sure they can smell us in here, and it’s like somebody rang the dinner bell.”
I glanced up. “She’s right. How much ammo does everyone have left? I’ve already reloaded, but still, I have about six shots left.”
“I’ve got about five,” Lucas said, “but I also brought some extra ammo.”
“I’m good,” Jackie said.
Claire sighed. “Me too.”
“I have a little extra ammo too,” Nick said. “I should’ve brought more with me though.”
I squinted through a small peephole in the door. A few of our deathly adversaries stumbled around, groaning. “Looks like there’re only two or three.”
“We can handle that,” Lucas said. “Save ammunition if you can. Plus, we don’t wanna alert the others with gunfire.”
Jackie and Clare grabbed screwdrivers out of the metal toolbox while Nick grabbed a hammer. Lucas found a very hefty pipe wrench that he bounced in his hand a couple times to get a feel for the weight. Under a pile of rags in the corner, I saw a wooden handle sticking out. Picking it up, I was happy to discover that it was an axe.
Nick touched the knob and unlocked the door. “On the count of three, Lucas and I will charge. One…two…”
Chapter 7
“Three!”
My heart felt like it would explode in my chest as Nick’s hand turned the knob and swung the door open. As soon as the door unlatched, the infected on the other side immediately shoved the heavy oak door inward. As it crashed open, I saw a lot more than the three we’d seen through the peephole. Pushing through were four unhappy and very mutilated people, and I could hear more stumbling down the hallway.
The first zombie through the frame was a sweet old grandmother type in a blood-drenched Christmas sweater. Of course, only one side was her sweet side; the other side of her face was nothing but shredded scraps of muscle dangling from her skull. Nick brought the claw-end of his hammer down hard on the head of the snarling granny, dropping her in one quick motion.
He wasn’t as lucky with the second undead, who quickly grabbed his hammer and held his arm by the wrist, trying to pull him into the small mob of gnashing teeth. The monster stood on two legs, even though one had been gnawed to the bone. Nick kicked his attacker square in the chest, sending it reeling into the rest of the pack, pushing them all back into the hallway.
Lucas decided to take advantage of the pile of fallen zombies. He gripped the heavy metal pipe wrench with both hands and brought it down hard on the skull of the one on top. The zombie’s head collapsed inward like a rotten piece of fruit. One of the remaining flesh-eaters tried to crawl out from under the weight of the now motionless zombie with the inverted skull, but with only one arm, he didn’t get very far before Lucas bashed his head in as well. The zombie at the bottom of the rot pile was a man with no skin anywhere on his head—just a blood-covered skull. Lucas shuddered and simply brought down the heel of his hefty combat bo
ot on the gnashing skull, smashing it to pieces.
Nick motioned for us to move, and I took the hint. Moving quickly into the hall, I tripped on the foot of one of the destroyed corpses, landing facedown. As I lifted my head, I saw I was face to face with a drooling, biting, undead freak. As I started to crawl backward away from its menacing, snapping jaws, my axe came whistling through the air and split the thing’s head in two. Gasping for breath, I jumped to my feet to get a look at the thing that had crawled toward me. It was crawling because it had nothing left below the ribcage—nothing at all. How is that even possible? I wondered.
I took my time and slowly walked down the hallway and turned left, down a dark corridor, to look for a staircase. We were all on our tiptoes, trying to remain as silent as possible as we inched forward. My ears pricked up at the muffled moans that echoed down the hall, and I knew there had to be more of them downstairs. I strained to listen, hoping there were only a few and not a whole army of those rotting freaks.
Suddenly, a zombie with thinning blonde hair and deep, ragged claw marks that laid open her once-attractive face came from down the hall and charged right toward Jackie. I held my breath, but the ugly zombie dropped like a sack of potatoes as Jackie nailed it between the eyes with a screwdriver. The thing fell backward and crashed into the wall. My own personal warrior princess reached over, wrapped her fingers tightly around the handle, now protruding from the pierced skull, and snatched her weapon back.
We kept walking along a corridor with a multitude of closed doors. At the end of the hall, we found the main staircase, but our dream of escape was promptly dashed as a dozen or so mutilated zombies filled the stairwell, blocking our path. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I’d expected a few, but this was far worse than even my most pessimistic fear. My stomach clenched and churned beneath my sweat-soaked shirt. Crowds of them were piling up behind one another. As they met our gaze, they hissed and lurched in our direction.
The Zombie Chronicles - Book 2 (Apocalypse Infection Unleashed Series) Page 3