by Alex Apostol
“Yes!” she cheered herself on.
Zack drove his sword between the eyes of the second one and drew it out quickly. It fell to the ground with a thud. Silence followed as they started forward again, closely knit together with their weapons raised.
They came up to where the fence had been trampled down the night before. Several corpses lay on the ground with their heads smashed to mush, their arms and legs broken and bent in different directions. Zack followed the trail of mangled bodies to where they’d been headed and stopped at a section of the pavement that was stained with a ring of dark blood. There were pieces of flesh and carnage scattered, but no body.
Zack’s stomach sank. He knew what a fresh kill looked like. He’d seen those things take down a guy in the woods not too long ago on one of his searches for…
Anita’s face popped into his head. He gave a quick shake until it dissipated.
“Not now,” he told himself.
“What?” Olivia asked from behind him.
“Nothing. It’s that one right there.” He pointed to building six.
“And there’s three of them you said?” Rowan asked from the back of the group.
“Should be.”
More dead loitered around the parking lot, barely moving their feet as they swayed back and forth. But when they spotted the group, they snapped out of their catatonic state and closed in from all sides. Their frenzied moans called more out of hiding as others limped and staggered out of the buildings.
“Everyone, get ready,” Zack ordered. “Form a circle and be quick. And don’t shoot. It’ll only draw more out. Hit them in the temple with your gun if you have to.” He took a deep breath as the gap between him and the two dead shambling forward grew smaller.
Olivia jumped up and down. She tossed her elbows out to make sure there was enough room between her and Lee on her right and Gretchen on her left.
Rowan looked over at Zack, who stood readily next to him, and tried to emulate his poised stance. He turned his gun backwards so he would be able to thrust it into the first head that came close to him.
Three more putrid corpses, two bulky males and one petite female, picked up their pace the closer they got, grabbing at the air for momentum to pull them forward quicker.
Gale tried to ignore everyone else around her as she zeroed in on the two males closest to her. She played out in her mind how she was going to take them down with her knife.
The gaps had been closed and the zombies were practically on top of the group. “Now!” Zack yelled. Everyone lunged forward and away from each other.
Gretchen cringed as the sounds of multiple skulls being smashed in hit her ears. She drove her Bowie knife into the ear of the decaying female that reached out for her neck. It fell to the ground at her feet, creating a small obstacle for the others.
The largest of the corpses that headed her way tripped over the body on the ground and lunged forward, grasping one of Gretchen’s arms in its hands. It pulled closer to its mouth, already working its jaw into a frantic chewing motion.
Zack brought his sword down on the back of the thing’s neck and then quickly turned again to his own target in a matter of seconds. Its neck was severed so deeply that the head hung forward against its chest, its red teeth still snapping. Gretchen gave it a quick shove to the ground and then squatted down over it. She drove her knife through the temple.
Within minutes the relentless undead were nothing more than a pile of disfigured bodies in the parking lot. The group stepped over them carefully and continued toward building six. In the far off distance, more glazed eyes turned from the sound of pattering feet.
Zack stopped at Jerry’s place and turned the doorknob to see if it was unlocked. It was and that made his stomach twist into knots and then sink down into a bottomless black pit inside him. The one bedroom apartment was silent and dark. He called out, but no one answered. Jerry wasn’t out on his patio either. He closed the door and banged on it with both his fists. They hung in the air as the image of the large bloodstain he’d seen flashed in his mind.
“Come on,” he said as he ran for the stairs. “I need to check on my friends.”
He ran up, taking two steps at a time as his arms pumped vigorously. He stopped in front of apartment 624. His hand was on the doorknob, but he stopped. He held his breath as he turned it. When the door opened his stomach gave a lurch. He swallowed the lump in his dry throat and stuck one foot out into the apartment.
There was no one in the kitchen or the living room. Zack moved further in and craned his neck to look around and make sure there wasn’t anything, or anyone, hidden in the corners of the rooms. Everything was silent.
“Sit here,” he whispered to the others as he pointed to the couch.
With his sword clutched in his hand, he crept over to the bedroom door. He took a quick peek inside the darkened bathroom adjacent to it. He pulled back the shower curtain. The tub was also empty. He stood in front of the closed bedroom door and took a deep breath in through his nose and let the air exhale out through his mouth.
The group of wanderers watched him from a few feet away. Gretchen held her breath as he reached for the knob. He turned it and rushed inside, disappearing behind the doorframe. And then there was silence.
XXI.
Christine Moore sat on the edge of the bed, her hands clasped together and her head turned down. She looked up when the door opened, but that was the only movement she made. Tears streaked her cheeks and neck.
“Zack?” she said softly as her eyes opened wide.
His gaze drifted to Liam, who was tied to the bed with his head slumped over. Blood oozed from where he’d been stabbed. Zack’s eyes clouded over. He squeezed his eyes shut and let the tears run down his face. He was too late.
Zack ran to Christine and threw his arms around her as he knelt down at her feet. He cried into her lap as she let her arm drape loosely around the back of his neck.
In the next room, the others listened in. “I’m going to see what’s going on,” Gretchen said as she stood up.
“Just let him be,” Dan said. “Obviously something bad happened.”
“Yeah, if he needed help he would have hollered,” Olivia said as she ran a cloth from her back pocket over her bat to clean it.
“I don’t care,” Gretchen said. “I’m going to make sure he’s OK.” She walked over to the bedroom and stopped in the doorway as her hand rested on the frame.
Christine looked up and removed her hands slowly from Zack. He sniffed and wiped at his face and then turned around on his knee to see what she was looking at.
“Gretchen?” Christine said with her face scrunched in disbelief.
Gretchen’s hand fell away from the doorframe. As her eyes widened, her mouth parted slowly. “Christine!” Tears filled her eyes as she ran to embrace her.
“You know her?” Zack’s eyes shifted from one to the other. He hadn’t noticed when he saw Gretchen alone, but now that they stood closely together, he saw the resemblance.
Christine pulled away from Gretchen and looked over her shoulder at him. “She’s my sister.”
Gretchen laughed as the tears ran down her face. She squeezed Christine tightly. Soon, everyone was crowded in the doorway to see what was going on. Gretchen turned to the group and wiped the wetness from under her eyes. “This is my sister!” she introduced with tearful enthusiasm. “This is the group I’ve been with,” she said to Christine. “That’s Dan, Lee, Rowan, Gale, Olivia…”
“Oh my God!” Christine yelled. “Carolyn! Luke told us you were dead, that you’d been bitten!”
Carolyn Bock puffed air out from her mouth and rolled her eyes. “That stupid dick chaired me into my apartment when he saw a little scratch on my ankle. But I got out,” she smiled with a sense of pride. “I would’ve loved to have seen the look on his face when he found the place empty. Where is the bastard?”
“Probably dead,” Christine said with a tight, unsympathetic voice. “He left and never came
back.”
Carolyn blinked slowly as she stared. Revenge had been served. She should’ve been happy. Her back slackened as she bit her lip. Something heavy grew in her stomach and weighed it down.
“Holy shit,” Rowan said under his breath. It snapped Carolyn back from her thoughts.
Gale grinned ear to ear and clapped her hands together once loudly. “Well, I’ll be damned! Little Gretchen’s sister! I didn’t even know you had a sister.”
“Yup,” Gretchen said as she turned back to Christine with the biggest grin any of them had ever seen on her face. “My sister’s alive!”
XXII.
They all left the bedroom and Christine closed the door shut quietly behind them. She didn’t know why she handled the door with such delicacy. She didn’t have to worry about waking Liam up anymore. He was dead, gone forever.
She walked over to the bay window, but her legs wouldn’t bend to sit down. There was too much energy that coursed through her veins. Gretchen stood close by her side, unable to stop looking at her and smiling. Christine eyed her and then looked away.
“What happened?” Zack asked.
Christine looked down at the ground. She wasn’t sure how she was supposed to talk about it when she’d come so close to letting Liam bite her. She looked at Zack with her head rested to the side and gave in to a morbid grin. “The fence came down when they were trying to prop it up. They ran, but Jerry…” She sighed and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she continued. “Liam was bit on the leg,” she said quickly and left it at that.
Zack let out a grief stricken sigh. “I should have been here.”
Christine shook her head. “It wouldn’t have mattered. There were so many. We were overrun.”
Silence filled the room and hung heavily in the air. Christine replayed in her head what she’d done to Liam only moments ago. The tears started to well up in her eyes again. She shook them off as she remembered something. She disappeared into the bedroom and returned with a brown leather journal, which she handed to Zack. He turned it over in his hands.
“It’s Dr. Hyde’s journal, Liam’s boss. He started this. He created the virus, accidentally, in his lab,” she said, talking excitedly as she gestured wildly to the journal. She tapped her finger on the cover as Zack grasped onto it. “He wrote everything down in here!” She looked up at him with her large, blue eyes wide with hope.
Zack opened the journal and saw the small scribblings. “Did Liam know what he was doing?” He didn’t want to think his friend had helped someone destroy the world. Liam wouldn’t have done that.
“Of course not,” Christine said, pulling her eyebrows together. “Dr. Hyde didn’t even know what he was doing. They were working together to try and stop that horrible flu, remember?”
Zack’s memory jogged back and he nodded his head. “Right. I forgot about that.”
Christine tapped the journal again to keep his attention focused. “If we can get this in the right hands,” she said looking up into his heavily bearded face, “they might be able to stop this.”
Zack lowered the journal and gazed at her. Everyone else in the room stood perfectly still. Christine took a few steps back so she could see them all at once. They waited, ready to cling for dear life to her next words.
“We need to take this to a lab, or someone who can put an end to this.”
Olivia was the first to roll her eyes and look away. “And where exactly is this fantasy lab?”
Zack whipped around and tightened his lips. Olivia straightened up and snapped her mouth shut.
“Chris…I haven’t found a single place out there with living people in it, let alone a fully functioning lab with scientists and a team. I don’t think it’s out there.”
“Oh, it’s out there,” Christine said through her teeth. “And we’re going to find it. We have to.”
“Where should we start looking?” Gretchen asked as she placed a soft hand on her sister’s arm.
Christine recoiled. “Chicago.”
There was a grumble from several people in the room.
“That’s almost forty miles away,” Carolyn whined as her shoulders slumped.
“Why Chicago?” Olivia asked with a wrinkled nose.
“I remember a while back, Liam had to go to this huge research facility there for some test. He said it was the biggest lab he’d ever seen. It’s our best shot.” As Christine looked out at the group, one by one their eyes turned away.
“Or we could just wait here to die,” Christine said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Because those are our options right now. Attempt to get this journal into the right hands and possibly save the world, or die.” She let the words sink in before she spoke again. “I don’t know about you, but I still think this world is worth saving.”
“My sister’s right. We should at least try.” Gretchen smiled at Christine.
Everyone else in the room looked to Zack, as if he had the final say. He shrugged his shoulders. “I mean, what else do we have to do?”
“I’m in,” Gale said.
Olivia picked up her bat and swung it around to rest on her shoulders as her arms draped lazily over it. “Well, Chicago can’t be any worse than here.”
Everyone turned to look at Rowan, who leaned against the patio door. He had one ankle crossed over the other as he rested his head back. He felt the pressure of their eyes on him as they waited for him to join in on their mission. He pushed off the door and stood tall. “Fine. Let’s do this. Let’s go to Chicago.”
Christine’s eyes lit up briefly before they clouded over with tears. She hugged Zack. Even though Liam was dead, she would carry on. She would be the one to save the world, if it was at all possible. She stepped forward to talk with the others, ready to start making a plan for the best way to get into the city. Chatter filled the room as they talked it over with each other.
Zack looked down at the journal in his hands and gave it a squeeze. A smile spread across his weary face. They might not have the key to ending the zombie plague. There was no guarantee they would even make it to Chicago. Some of them could die trying to get there. They could all die. But they going to try.
Look for
Dead Beginnings: Lonnie Lands
The first in a series of short novellas from the Dead Soil world that reveal what the characters were doing when the plague took over and how they survived their first night in a zombie infested world.
Coming December 2015
Also by Alex Apostol
Earth Angel (Book 1 of The Kamlyn Paige Novels)
Hunted Angel (Book 2 of The Kamlyn Paige Novels)
Girls Like Us
Novel Notes: A Writing Journal
Visit
authoralexapostol.com
for more books from the author
Paperbacks and eBooks available
ISBN 978-1518681943
Text Copyright © 2015 by Alex Apostol
http://authoralexapostol.com
Cover Design Copyright © 2015 The Cover Collection
www.thecovercollection.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means- electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other- except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of Alex Apostol.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.
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