The Zombie Chronicles - Book 2 (Apocalypse Infection Unleashed Series) (5 page)

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, t
hat’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, tool
boxes, 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 boot 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.

Seizing the opportunity, I swung the axe down with immense force into the skull of a zombie who stood directly in front of me. Clutching the axe handle for dear life, I kicked him with everything I had, prying loose the axe from the split skull, sending the monster tumbling backward, down the stairs. It was something of a domino effect, for his lifeless body collided with others behind him and then into other infected further down the stairs. Soon, most were writhing in a grotesque, squirming pile at the foot of the stairwell.

Claire tried
to open the closest doors. “They’re all locked!”

“
Run!” Lucas shouted.

I could hear the zombies clawing their way back up the stairs and the shuffling of their feet stumbling along the hallway corridor. My brain screamed for me to go faster, but I was at the tail end of the group and could only go as fast as the person in front of me. The awful moans and growls got closer by the second.

After what seemed like an eternity, we finally turned the corner, and I slammed the door on the hissing zombies. I was the last to hurl myself back into the unfinished room and fumbled with the lock. With a trembling breath, I leaned against the shuddering doorframe and tried to produce enough resistance from that side to keep them from pushing in if they somehow managed, with their klutzy, skinless hands, to break the flimsy lock.

Jackie pushed against the door, panting hard as she tried to catch her breath. “Wh-what…what’re we…gonna do? We need to think of something else.”