Miranda still held the bat in her right hand, but that shoulder was keeping the door open. She couldn’t swing overhead without Karen being pulled away. An underhand swing would only hit Karen. Then she saw the pistol still tucked inside the waistband of Karen’s jeans.
Miranda dropped the bat. She grabbed Karen’s wrist with both hands and heaved. Karen struggled forward two steps. She let go of Karen’s arm with her right hand and snatched the pistol. Then she pivoted right, swinging her arm up, and fired point-blank in the thing’s face. A thundering boom echoed off the concrete walls. Black vapor misted the air. The noisy moans receded behind a static buzz. The thing crumpled to the ground, and Karen stumbled forward.
As Karen scrambled past her, Miranda fired the pistol at the next one, and the next. She took two steps backward into the doorway.
Faintly she heard, “Miranda! Come on!”
She glanced up. Sam shouted at her from the stairs. So did Karen, but she could barely hear them through the buzz in her ears. She stepped backward, into the doorway. As she pulled the door shut, it caught on the foot of the next thing. She raised the pistol, but then Sam was beside her.
“Leave it.”
She let go of the cool metal bar, felt the shove of Sam’s hand in the small of her back. Side by side they sprinted the stairs to catch up with Karen.
She didn’t know what the next threat would be, but she couldn’t worry about ‘what if’ if she wanted to live. And she did. She wanted to live with a ferocity that frightened her. They reached the door to the roof. Sam pushed it open, slow and cautious. When she followed him through the door, she’d see what came next.
But this time, she would be ready to fight.
Want to know what happens next? Read the first chapter from Love in an Undead Age at the end of this ebook!
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About the Author
A.M. Geever lives in her hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. An avid reader of science fiction and fantasy from an early age, the only job she ever wanted—besides being a writer—was to be a Star Fleet Officer.
When not dreaming up stories of survival in extraordinary circumstances, she spends most of her time with her family and fur babies, and loves to travel to exotic locales.
The Undead Age: Origin Stories consists of mostly previously unpublished material that was originally planned as a prologue for the first book in The Undead Age trilogy. You can find out what happens to Miranda, Father Walter, Connor, Mario, and Emily in the first book of The Undead Age series, Love in an Undead Age.
Love in an Undead Age, Chapter One
Ten years later…
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“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Miranda said, bringing the Range Rover to a halt.
She squinted her eyes against the glare as she watched the stumbling figure near the Secured Expressway’s Tenth Street exit. The clothes of the one-time businessman hung in filthy tatters, fluttering in the breeze. The uneven gait and awkward balance marked it as a shambler, now the most common type of zombie, and its guttural moan carried across the distance.
Miranda twisted around in her seat to look up and down the deserted freeway for more zombies, then inched the Rover closer. A cacophony of snarls and barking erupted behind her, courtesy of Delilah, her caramel-colored pit bull. The fur along Delilah’s spine bristled as she lunged between the front seats. Fifty feet from the shambler, Miranda stopped the Rover. She pulled the handbrake and popped the clutch into neutral but did not turn the engine off.
“Delilah, stay,” she said, then opened the door and stepped out.
The stench of decayed flesh, rank and sweet, wafted toward her. Flies buzzed around the zombie like a dark full-body halo. She ran her hand over her auburn hair to make sure the up-twist was tight. Satisfied that her hair would not give the zombie anything to latch on to, she pulled the .50 caliber Desert Eagle from her shoulder holster and once more looked up and down the Expressway. A lot of people ended up as zombies because they failed to appreciate that while speed was not a shambler’s strong suit, persistence most certainly was.
She walked closer, then spread her feet wide so the kick from the gun did not knock her over. She took her time sighting up, not wanting to waste ammo taking a long shot. Just as she squeezed the trigger, the shambler tripped over its feet and tumbled to the pavement.
“For fuck’s sake.”
A scowl twisted her lips as Miranda walked closer. The zombie rolled onto its back, writhing on the pavement. The fetid reek of rotting meat burned her nostrils. Gray-filmed eyes turned toward her. The shambler’s mouth opened in a lipless grimace, its blackened tongue flicking back and forth. Stiff, bony fingers stretched toward her and still the zombie moaned. Even after all this time, the sound still raised the hairs on the back of Miranda’s neck.
She raised the Desert Eagle again and squeezed the trigger, but the shambler twitched its head at the last moment, like it knew she was trying to kill it. The bullet nicked its jaw but did not hit the zombie’s brain.
“You fucking piece of shit, that’s two bullets!”
She reholstered her gun and unsheathed her machete as she closed the remaining distance between herself and the zombie. Stomping on the zombie’s arm, Miranda swung the machete down like a guillotine. The crunch of bones reverberated up her arm as the head came free of the neck. The head rolled away, the zombie still hissing. When it stopped, Miranda raised her booted foot.
“Fucking.” Her foot descended, smashing into the zombie’s temple.
“Piece of.” Sticky slop splashed on her leg as she pulled her foot free.
“Shit,” she snarled, her foot pounding through the shambler’s skull.
She glared at the gummy pile of bone and brain that stained the pavement black, chest heaving from exertion.
“Unfuckingbelievable,” she muttered.
She walked back to the Rover, stopping to wipe the machete and her boot on a rag tucked into a pocket in the driver’s side door. She retrieved a pair of binoculars from the glove compartment and looked up and down the freeway again. Her mind raced as she searched the walls and fences that lined the road. How had it gotten in?
“Settle down, Delilah. It’s okay now,” she said. She patted the dog’s head and rubbed her batwing ears through the back window. Delilah ceased barking but persisted in growling, only partially appeased that the zombie no longer moved toward them.
Maybe the power around a maintenance entrance gate shorted out, Miranda speculated, a frown twisting her mouth downward. Electrified fences were the weakest link in the Expressway’s security system, but the second set of gates behind them were manned and overengineered. It had never been a problem.
Until now maybe… But this shambler wasn’t coordinated enough to be a good climber, she thought, lowering the binoculars.
Most zombies couldn’t climb. They could stumble over low obstacles, but climbing stairs, fences, or ladders required coordination beyond a typical zombie’s abilities. Even if this one were coordinated enough to climb the Expressway walls, there would need to be an electrical failure at the fence and a failure at the secondary gate including the guard.
“How the hell does that happen and no one notices?”
A zombie on the Expressway in the heart of Zone 1, the safest area in San Jose. Hell, in all of Silicon Valley. The evidence lay crumpled a few feet away, but she could not believe it. There had never been a zombie on the Expressway. Never.
What if it’s an outbreak?
The idea sent an unpleasant shiver skittering down her spine. Miranda climbed into the Rover and turned around to drive back to the Bird Street exit. She looked in the rearview mirror at the slumped form, growing smaller by the second
. It’s not an outbreak, she decided, remembering the condition of its clothes. This was an old zombie, not someone who had missed a dose.
Delilah’s snout nuzzled Miranda’s ear. She nudged the dog away before Delilah could give her a wet willy.
“This is definitely going to liven up some gate operator’s morning, Liley; that’s for sure.”
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The Undead Age Series | Novella | The Undead Age [Origin Stories] Page 4