desolation free sample
DESCRIPTION
First three sample chapters of the zombie meet necromancer post-apocalyptic novel by Travis Simmons.TRANSCRIPT
Part One: Infernal
Chapter One Nothing could have prepared me for this moment, on my knees cradling Conner’s head in
my lap. I count the seconds, knowing any breath might be his last. The light is fading from him,
leaving behind mere whispers of the clear blue eyes I love so much. I used to tell him his eyes
reminded me of the sky at sunrise. That was another lifetime, before the virus came, when we
were afforded lazy Saturday mornings.
I brush a strand of brown hair from his eyes as I have done countless times, during happier
moments when his life wasn’t leaking out of a throat wound, around my desperate grasp. I try
not to let the grief show. I try not to think that at any moment he will be nothing but a husk of my
lover, gnashing his teeth and moaning at my throat with a hunger only my flesh will sate.
“Asher,” Conner’s raspy voice, so weak, and hopeless calls my attention from his blood
throbbing around my clasped fingers. I try to put on a cheerful face for him despite the blood in
his mouth, bubbling through his parted lips with his efforts to speak. He has always been able to
see through my façade. “You will make it,” he tells me, as if his mere saying it will manifest the
desired outcome. “You are my strong hero,” his voice dissolves into painful, wet coughs causing
more blood to flow.
It was supposed to be a happy time, our last summer before college. The year we got to
break away and forge a life of our own. But it had all changed in that defining moment. The
virus started in Georgia, a small town in the suburbs of Atlanta. At first people laughed when
they heard the story of the naked woman who attacked the mailman when he came to her drive.
Laughter quickly turned to fear, though, when the attacks continued in Washington, Alabama
and New York. When they found their way to Pennsylvania, we were in the grips of a zombie
infestation no one was prepared for.
And how could you prepare for it? Conner and I had watched countless zombie movies and
we weren’t prepared. Sure, you have your normal zombies that shamble around and can’t catch a
turtle in a wooden box. Those aren’t the scary ones, but the “speeders” who are much faster and
less clumsy, are worse. Speeders are more abundant than regular zombies, unfortunately, but at
least they are better than the infernals. I have only seen an infernal once on the road. They are
fierce hunters capable of tracking and trapping their prey. They can think, which is terrifying,
because if you have an “undead” out after your flesh, the last thing you want is a smart one.
I want to say something, but as often happen words fail me when I need them most. I lean
forward and kiss his lips one last time, remembering nights spent under the full moon, planning
our future. Never had we thought our future would end like this. I remember holidays, and how
Conner loved them as much as any child, laughing and kicking his feet when he found just the
gift he wanted under the Christmas tree.
My whiskers scratch against his face and I’m reminded how he hates facial hair, but I didn’t
want to shave this morning. If I knew this would have been my last day with him, I would have
done anything he wanted.
His lips taste of the fruit juice he had been drinking before the attack and blood. His last
shuddering breath passes into my mouth and some morbid part of me inhales, wondering if one
breath shared between two people can bind them together. Tears cloud my eyes and I can’t help
hoping his last breath will keep him with me.
What’s life worth now when all I want to do is die with him?
I don’t want to leave him, but I know I must. I should kill him now, before he becomes one
of them, one of the shambling hordes, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. It isn’t surviving his
undoubted transformation that bothers me. I have been bitten sixteen times, chewed on twice,
and even gotten zombie gore in my mouth and eyes and have never turned, never been infected.
Any of those things should have been enough to do it.
I know I can survive his attack, but the one thing I can’t survive is killing him, even if it
isn’t him any longer, even if it’s just something else controlling his body.
I dare one last kiss, no matter how gross I have always found last kisses at funerals to be.
The transformation can take up to seventy-two hours, but I have seen it happen in as little as
half an hour.
I can’t be here when he transforms, but I can stay just a moment longer.
I remember thinking the same thing when the light left my sister Sara’s eyes like a
whispering exhale. I had clutched her, screaming something at the ceiling I can’t remember now.
The rest of my family was already lying dead all around me at that point. I had stayed too long
with them, and all at once they began shivering, jittering on the floor as the virus overtook them.
Their feet beat in time on the wooden floors, my fathers booted feet making much louder
hammering sounds upstairs above my head.
All at once they stopped, and I looked at Sara bewildered. At some point her mouth had
started working. Her eyes opened and they were glassy, like they belonged to a creature mocking
my sister. That’s how I got my first seven bites.
It may be stupid for me to dare fate again, but I curl up beside Conner, laying my head on
his still chest and close my eyes. I already miss him so terribly, and my brain is trying to make
sense of it, trying to figure out how I function when it feels I’m missing half of my body. A part
of my past is dead on the floor, and I don’t know how to get it back. It’s like I’m waking from a
coma filled with dreams and plunging into a nightmare of desolation. I try to push all those
thoughts from my head and imagine that it is any weekend morning, and I’ve awakened before
him. I try to imagine birds singing outside, but with the battle that happened in the abandoned
house moments ago they have all been scared away, and I know that all manner of undead are
being drawn to the sound. Loud noises are like dinner bells for them.
It isn’t working. I can’t imagine Conner is still alive because I can smell death in the air, and
his chest isn’t rising and falling in peaceful slumber. There is no air filling his lungs anymore.
One thing we learned fast is the sound of an approaching zombie: their dead moans, their
shuffling gait, and sometimes the smell that goes along with them. You can always tell the smell
of the old ones: they smell like road kill baking in the hot sun. They only smell like that before
they rejoin the earth and their bodies can no longer function due to decay.
This one was arriving late to the party.
I know I can’t be turned, but I’m still terrified of them because they can still overwhelm me
and eat me alive, and come on, they are the walking freaking dead!
I backpedal away from the unhinged front door as the dead girl ambles through it. My back
is pressed against a door jamb and I use my legs to stand. My gun is on the floor beside Conner
and out of bullets; the other magazines are in the truck. We hadn’t expected an attack when we
came in here looking for food, but the zombies had found us. At all times I carry my gun, an
extra clip and my machete. The machete was the only thing left for me to use.
I reach for the blade on the ground, gripping the hilt in my blood-slick hand. I watch the
zombie girl, trying to figure out if she is intelligent, if she is an infernal. She appears not to be
because it takes her several moments shuffling around in the front room to stumble into the hall
and see me standing in the doorway to the living room. It takes her a moment longer before she
starts groaning in the throes of hunger. She comes for me, and I am aware of Conner shuddering
and flailing on the floor. Ten minutes is a new record.
The zombie girl might not be smart, but she is fast. With near human speed she is on me,
biting my neck despite the machete being buried in her midsection. I kick at her knee, which
doesn’t hurt her, but it does drop her to the floor in a sickening crunch of broken bone.
She pulls herself up using the back of the couch, tries to come at me again and falls. Her
fingernails scrape on the floor as she drags herself closer to me, groaning and gnashing her
rotting teeth together. With a precise blade stroke her head rolls away from her body, the teeth
still chattering ineffectually. I can never stand seeing that, but if you don’t destroy the brain
stem, the part that controls their survival instincts, they can still function. I stamp down on her
head and twist the heel of my boot to crush the stem. Thick, dark blood spurts from the opening
and her head falls still.
I turn back to Conner, because he has fallen still once more in the final grips of his
transformation. Even at that point their mouths work, as if they know they will be eating for all
eternity so they try to warm themselves up for it.
I know he will rise soon, even now the wound on his neck is drying up, crusting over like
meat left on the counter for too long. His skin is taking on a waxy, clammy look, and veins can
be seen along the surface of his skin, purple in death as if the last pulse of his heart pushed the
veins to the surface where they froze.
I can’t see him like this. I can’t stand to see the man I have lain with for three years shifting.
A braver person would kill him, but I’m not the hero he sees.
I enter the room with him to retrieve my gun, and as I near my heart hammers in my ears.
I’m dizzy with the rush of blood and fear that flood my body. He could rise at any moment.
Outside a crow caws and I hear the heavy wings of vultures coming to feed on the dead. The
last rays of the setting sun are spilling through the dining room window, bathing Conner’s corpse
in hues of orange and red, filtered only by a tossing tree.
I don’t take my eyes off him as I crouch for the gun. With the pistol in hand, I back away
from him and clean my machete on the zombie girl’s clothes. I flee the house. The sun is falling
just below the horizon as I jump in the black pickup. I squeal out of the driveway as Conner
comes to the doorway, watching me with a calculated gaze. If it weren’t for his pale skin and the
large bite mark on his throat I would never know he was dead. In time his eyes will become
murky with the glaze of death, and there won’t be any part of him left that I’ll recognize.
But in that short span of time I know he is an infernal, and he has my scent.
Chapter Two Maybe I should stop. Maybe I should pull over and let him take me, conscribe me to the
grave. I know I won’t rise. I know I won’t become a zombie, but at least I won’t have to go on
without him. It is three AM. Several times the same thought has made me pull over, but just as I
sense him, I start out again. I’m not sure if this sensing him is real or if it is my imagination, but I
get a buzz in my head, mirrored by a strange feeling in my stomach and I just know that he is
near. The sensation takes over and makes me put the truck in drive and press the accelerator
almost against my will, like I am a robot being controlled by this knowing he will catch me and
the certainty that when he does, I will die.
Despite all my bravado, something inside me won’t let me die, doesn’t want to let me die.
I drive fast and I drive for a long time because I don’t know how fast Conner can move. The
last infernal I faced wasn’t fun, and I don’t want him catching up to me.
We heard there was a quarantine in Binghamton, New York. It was rumored to be an old
military compound, large enough to house a small city and with working, green energy. It could
all be a lie, wishful thinking, but Conner and I were headed there when we were attacked; when
Conner died.
Just thinking of him makes me sick, and I have to fight the urge to vomit.
The problem is, everything reminds me of him. Whenever I catch a look at my reflection in
the mirror I’m reminded how he loved the emerald of my eyes and the blackness of my messy
hair. He’d always said the combination was what attracted him to me when he first laid eyes on
me at the gay pride parade.
His seat is empty, a testament that he will never sit there again. At times, if I’m not thinking
about it, I can catch a whiff of his scent still clinging to the upholstery and his balled up jacket on
the floor with his days’ worth of rations that will never be eaten. It’s all painful evidence that he
existed, that mere hours before, he occupied the truck’s cab with me.
Several times I have to fight pulling over and giving in to my emotions, but such a move
would be risky. For whatever reason, zombies are more active at night, as if whatever hellish
power gives them energy is strengthened at night. True, I haven’t seen any tonight, but that
doesn’t mean they aren’t there, lurking, just out of the range of my headlights.
As I think about them, it’s almost as if I can feel them out there, lurking in the unforgiving
woods to either side of the shadowed road. The feeling is like bugs crawling on my skin. I try to
figure out how far away they are, but the feeling is fleeting and trying to get a range on it’s like
trying to figure out where in the forest a baying wolf is when you are alone at night without a
flashlight. Fear drives the senses and monsters appear to be everywhere. I shake my head and
blink hard. It’s just my imagination. The lack of sleep is befuddling my mind into thinking I can
sense these beasts.
There’s no way around it, I’m tired and I’m human and that means I need sleep.
There are so many abandoned houses now that it doesn’t take long to find one in a clearing
to the right of the wooded lane. The truck skids to a halt past the driveway, and I have to put it in
reverse to pull in. The white vinyl siding was once pristine and new, but now it’s dirty with mud
and blood and things I don’t want to identify. The door has claw marks on it as if a horde has
passed by and tried to batter and scratch their way inside. Despite the light of the full moon
breaking through the racing clouds, the house is cast in a constant gloom from the overhanging
trees and the unruly grass and unkempt lawn. A chill races up my spine just looking at the house,
and every instinct tells me to leave, but I’m just too tired to obey my better judgment.
I survey the area before putting the truck in park. Nothing seems to be lurking, inside or out.
I think I see a curtain move upstairs, but after a few moments of studying the dirty yellow drapes
there’s no indication it was anything other than my overactive imagination.
I kill the engine and the oppressive silence closes in on me in a deafening rush. My ears ring
with the utter lack of noise and my heart starts racing. I gather a flashlight, a couple of guns, and
clips of bullets just in case. My machete is still strapped to my side in a makeshift sheath Conner
made for me.
I open the truck door and listen to see if I can hear any zombies, but only an audible void
greets me. I’m not really surprised. Zombies flock to more populated areas and tend not to visit
the rural areas unless shortage of food pushes them there.
There are no lamps or candles burning in the house, but that doesn’t mean anything because
lights draw attention, so most sane people don’t keep them on at night.
The doorknob is rough under my palm. I try to ignore the caked on gore as I turn the handle
and push the door open on squeaky hinges. The click of the flashlight is too loud in the silence.
The swath of light cutting across the floor is like a beacon in the darkness of the house. The
flashlight illuminates the ransacked room. For a moment I think I see a figure looming in the
corner, watching me from the shadowed depths, but there’s nothing there but a heap of blankets,
a dolls head and a broken chair. I close the door lightly and take a moment to listen again, but
there is only silence.
There are signs that something happened here before. I try not to look at the gore, the blood
and thicker things on the wall, but my mind is drawn to them. I wonder if the chunks of
whatever’s plastered to the floral wallpaper are from humans or zombies. Right now it doesn’t
matter because whatever it came from is dead.
What I expect to find, and don’t, are bodies. Either someone cleaned up all the bodies and
left the gore, or the zombies took the bodies with them. They don’t often do this because most of
them are too stupid to think to do that.
Unless they are infernals, then they might take the bodies for later.
There is no way of telling if someone is living here without looking and that is exactly what
I do.
Thankfully there’s no basement. I hated basements before the infestation, and I hate them
more now. As a child there was an old man in my basement who would stand in the corner and
watch me whenever I went down to get something from of the freezer. Cloaked in shadows, he
wouldn’t talk, just watch like he expected something of me. At first I thought he was an intruder,
but there was something dark about him, something menacing that no human can replicate. His
gaze was like bugs under my skin, and I felt just talking to him made him more hostile, angrier.
He would follow me back to the stairs, and watch me climb up them. I often ran up the last few
steps worried he would grab me around the ankles before I reached the safety of the hallway
above. As I got older I realized ghosts didn’t exist. Now that zombies are real, I’m not so sure the
old man was just a figment of my imagination. After the night I’ve had, I can’t imagine checking
a basement if need called for it.
The kitchen is tidy in contrast to the rest of the ground floor. The cupboards are bare and the
fridge is empty and warm from lack of electricity. The backdoor stands open to the overgrown
backyard where a swing set is starting to squeal in a breeze. I wonder if I should close the door
and risk making a noise, or leave it open and risk someone, or something, coming in undetected.
I opt for closing it slowly, which only produces a minimal amount of noise.
At this point I can’t imagine there are zombies in the house, because if there were, I
would’ve heard them by now, and possibly been fighting already. I don’t want to check upstairs,
but as I stand at the base of the carpeted stairs, shining my light into the darkness above, all I can
think of is the moving curtain. I know to be safe I must check up there, but the darkness seems to
drink in the light, and every instinct I possess screams not to go up there
I almost shriek when a rat skitters across my foot. Hand on my chest to calm my near failing
heart I make it from room to room and see nothing more than upended beds, broken windows,
dirty toys and one bloody handprint that turns into a smear of blood down the hall and then fades
to nothing at the head of the stairs.
I want to clean up, but I know the water isn’t running, and whatever soap there is has dried
and cracked over time, looking more like wood than anything worth using.
There’s dried blood in the sink which makes me wonder if someone had cleaned up after the
melee, but it doesn’t matter now. I’m no detective, and I’m not looking for people, just a safe
place to sleep.
Back downstairs I take up a post on the broken couch because it’s against the wall and I’m
able to keep an eye on the rest of the room until I fall asleep, which is easier to do than I
previously thought.
When I wake up hours later it is to the barrel of a shotgun in my face and the angry brown
eyes of a middle-aged woman glaring at me.
“Who are you and what are you doing in my home?” she asks, but I doubt it’s her home. I
assume she is a squatter like me, like most people are now, when they tire of running.
“I swear I didn’t know anyone was here. I needed a place to sleep for a few hours.” I raise
my hands to show I’m unarmed like they do in the movies.
She steps back, but doesn’t lower the gun. It’s still trained on my face and I’m having
horrible ideas about where the chunks on the wall behind me came from. I think of begging her
not to shoot me, but then wonder why I care if it all ends here.
My entire family was wiped out in the first wave of zombies that hit Philadelphia. I had to
put all of them down even though I didn’t want to. Conner and I were frantic wondering if I was
going to change after their attack. After three days chained up in the stolen truck we decided I
was somehow safe and released me.
I’ve been fighting ever since, struggling for shelter and seeking safe harbor in abandoned or
infected refuge after refuge. We held out hope that this one in Binghamton would hold the key to
our safety, only to have Conner get infected miles before we reached it.
And there’s no telling I won’t find another wasted quarantine when I finally locate it. Was
this any kind of life to live? What was I fighting for? Why even bother going any further?
“Do it,” I tell her, memories creating fresh streaks of tears on my dirty cheeks. “I have lost
too much to even want to live any longer in this hellish world. Every day is like a waking
nightmare, and when you think you can’t go on, you only lose more. The worst of it is, I can’t be
changed, I can’t become one of them, and so I’m forced to endure. Why would I want to
continue on? Killing me would be the best thing anyone could do for me. So do it. Add my
brains to the wall.”
There’s silence for a time. Outside, crickets and birds greet the lightening skies. If it wasn’t
for all the horror I’d faced in the last weeks I could almost imagine this was exactly how the first
day of the world had bloomed, with the peaceful sounds of nature preceding it. Why is it when
we lose so much we finally know release? Am I losing it? Is my mind finally giving way to the
cracks that have been battered into it from all the death?
“My name’s Mary,” she says lowering the gun. She’s wearing a sweater that is too large for
her and jeans dirty enough to stand on their own. Her boots are knee-high and her brown hair
hangs in grungy strands to the middle of her back. Cleaned up she would have been rather pretty.
“Asher,” I tell her, my eyes rooted to the floor at my feet which in happier times had seen a
lot of traffic.
“It was the Trenton, New Jersey shelling when it happened. We had made it through the
worst of it and were heading out of town. I can remember parts of buildings falling down around
us as we ran. Things were in such chaos, zombies clogging the streets, neighbors and loved ones
rising of their own accord, attacking passersby. My daughter, Amelia held fast to my neck, trying
to screw her eyes shut, as if that would make the horror end. My oldest son, Taylor, was there
with me and he fought bravely.
“I knew what they were just as sure as I knew my own name. All the strange attacks had
been leading up to it, and we knew, Taylor and I, that it was only a matter of time before the
zombies came full force. We used to tell friends ‘you watch, one day it will happen.’ Those that
didn’t think we were joking thought we were crazy.” She peers out the picture window, and I
know she’s seeing another time. “No, I knew what they were, just as Taylor knew the bite on his
arm would fester with the infection. He was trying to get Amelia and I to safety before he threw
himself to the horde to hold them off our trail.
“I knew he was thinking it. I knew he was going to do it, and with all of my heart I didn’t
want to let him go, but worse than that was the idea of killing him. He found us a car with keys
still in it and pushed us behind the wheel as an alley clogged with the dead overflowed into the
streets right behind us.
“I can still remember it, sirens going off, dirt and mortar dust clogging the air as huge pieces
of buildings rained death around us. Taylor threw himself at them, but before he even made it, a
large piece of rooftop landed on him, adding his blood to the ruined street.
“It wasn’t until later that night Amelia began to sicken. I hadn’t noticed it then, but she had
been scratched, and as I studied her wound, I knew it was from a zombie. The way the virus
spreads through the body is like a rash, and it was quickly overcoming her little body.
“I had nothing on me to kill her with. I remember taking her little body when she slept, and
placing it in front of the car, her head lined up perfectly with the tire,” and she doesn’t finish. She
stares at her hands as if she’s still holding her daughter and silent tears stream down her face. I
sit dumbfounded on the couch. For a moment what I’ve gone through pales in comparison. I can
see the loneliness in the set of her shoulders, in the slump of her head.
“I have lost a lot too kid,” she says to me as she comes back to the present. Her words don’t
stop the pain, if anything it makes it worse. “It’s hard,” she tells me. “But the best way to honor
their memory is to keep living. Never forget that you are one of the last people alive who knew
them. What happens when everyone who knew them dies?”
“Then they are truly gone.”
We don’t speak for a while. She sits on the couch beside me and wraps a motherly arm
around my shoulders, pulling me tight. I can’t explain it, but I feel an instant connection, as if
I’ve known Mary before and she had been a good friend in that time. I feel at ease with her as if
she fully understands what I’m going through and she doesn’t judge me for my weakness.
“Where are you headed?”
“Binghamton, I here there is a refuge there.”
“Yeah, I would say another hundred miles or so north.”
More silence.
“The sun is coming up,” Mary says. She stands and grabs a bag from the back door. “Take
these with you. I didn’t expect you to live through the night. When I saw your truck out there I
took whatever I could find. I was going to take your truck too, but this is the safest place I’ve
found in weeks.”
“Will you come with me?” I ask, hoping she will.
“I’ve thought about it, but honestly I don’t know what condition you’ll find that quarantine
in. I know this place is safe for now, so you better run along.”
And that was goodbye.
Chapter Three I hear a ding and look down. In whatever state of turmoil I’m in, I’d forgot one thing.
Gas.
It’s a small town. A “one gas station town” as Conner and I called them. There’s no helping
it, I have to stop. There’s no telling when I can gas up again.
I see the signs before I pull in. The faded spray painted letters on the windows of the Gas
Mart pronounce “Binghamton Refuge fifty miles” and an arrow pointing in the direction I’m
heading. If there were any other signs before now, I didn’t see them.
I check to make sure my gun is holstered at my side and my machete is ready before
stepping out into the overcast afternoon. No sound greets me but that of the wind around the
station.
It takes a moment to find a pump that’s been left on. There must’ve been some kind of
convenient store memo because more often than not there’s at least one pump still pumping gas
at the small stations. Like the owners had known people would need it and left them on for any
survivors.
There’s another sign over the price display of the machine.
Binghamton Refuge fifty miles.
The name is to the point. I just hope it is still there and hasn’t been overrun like all the
others. But this sign looks fresh as if it was placed only days ago. The ink and tape haven’t even
succumbed to the elements yet.
I don’t get much gas, maybe five gallons. Many times on this journey I’ve cursed myself for
not stealing a more fuel efficient vehicle, but beggars can’t be choosers, and a large truck sure
makes it easier to cut through throngs of undead.
I think about going in for food because my supply is running low, but with the refuge being
so close . . . I hesitate longer than I should. The gas should hold out until I make it to the safe
zone, as should my food.
This time I don’t hear them coming. Two of the three that lumber out from beside the store
are speeders.
A blast of my gun hits the slow one precisely at the base of the brain, ending its slack-jawed
moan before it can even work up an appetite. As the two speeders come into range, I decapitate
one, but then the other is on me, biting my shoulder.
I scream and the zombie rears back for another bite, but he doesn’t get the chance. I bring up
my gun and shoot him in the head. There’s a lot of gore, and a little blood. The top of his head is
missing, but he is still moving. How this is possible I’ll never understand, but logic says if you
are missing half of your brain you’re done. Not in the case of zombies.
How much damage can he do with only a lower jaw? I don’t want to find out. I shoot again
and it takes out the base of his head, destroying the stem.
Assessing the damage to my shoulder I find I’m bleeding profusely. I can wrap that later.
For now I need to get away from this spot before . . .
Dinner bell.
Just my effing luck. More zombies are pouring out of the nearby woods and ransacked
homes toward me. I’m not sure what it is with me. Can they sense my blood? Do they come to
the sound of the gun? I’m not sure, but wherever I am, there are mobs of hungry, slavering
zombies.
There’re too many of them for me to ever hope to kill, but I can still take out a good portion.
I back toward the truck, but the passenger side door is locked. I always keep it locked. Maybe I
should rethink that.
Click.
Great. I fish in my pocket for the extra clip, but I don’t have much time.
Dead hands grab me from behind and swing me around. I lose my footing and they are after
me. I kick out, I thrash, I swing my machete.
I lose track of my gun.
I don’t know how many zombies there are, but there seem to be a lot, maybe twenty of them.
Not all of them are speeders, which is good, but at least two of them are trying to get to me on
the ground. Somehow I manage to stand, their fingers clawing at me and their mouths chomping
at my throat like wild dogs.
I kick out behind me and hear the crunch of bone, but I don’t look to see the carnage that
one kick caused.
I see my gun by the tire and I grab it, jamming the next clip in. There are zombies blocking
my way around the truck. I consider smashing the window and climbing in, but then the truck
wouldn’t be as safe as I would like.
My gun cuts a swath before me. Zombies drop like flies. I’m not saying I kill each and every
one of them, but I am not aiming to kill, just aiming to get the hell out of here and back to the
safety of the road. My nerves are shot, my emotions tortured and my aim isn’t so good. Some of
my shots miss, but that doesn’t mean the zombies aren’t knocked to the ground.
I run around the truck, shooting and kicking, dodging reaching arms and ducking out of the
way of open mouths.
Finally I make it to the driver’s side.
I can feel Conner drawing close. My head swims, and for a moment I have a sense of double
vision, one of ground rushing preternaturally fast under my feet, and the other of the open truck
door and the safety of the cab beyond.
God, Conner can move fast.
I’ve only seen vampires in movies move this fast. I should have ruined his brain when he
was dead instead of living some fairy tale dream, hoping he would come back to me and we
could remain happy, with me living and, what—him sloughing off bits of his body in the
passenger seat? I close my eyes against tears.
There’s no time for this. There is no time to feel. There’s only time to act because the
zombies are closing in behind me. I jump inside the truck, and slam the door a few times into
zombies to keep them at bay. The wasted time has only added more zombies from the other side
of the truck into the mix.
I start the engine and throw the truck into drive. I peel out of the gas station, their arms
reaching for me, their fingers clawing the paint from the side of the vehicle.
Before long I’m back on the road, door firmly closed and locked.
I check in the mirror behind me, but the zombies are converging on the opposite side of the
road, coalescing on a figure. I stop the truck and get out.
“Hey,” I yell to the stranger, hoping they have enough sense to move. But there’s something
strange about the newcomer. I can tell it’s a woman, but she is dressed in rags and scraps of
clothes that remind me of fallen leaves and her face is strangely white.
She turns to look at me and I see it isn’t her face that’s so white, but a mask I can only
imagine is porcelain. She cocks her head as if she hasn’t understood what I’m saying. Turning
back to the zombies, she holds out a hand, and they kneel before her. Again she turns to look at
me, and I back toward the truck, my mouth hanging open.
A strange quality hangs in the air, almost like the charged air before a storm. Shadows seem
to gather around the figure and a strange hush comes over the zombies.
“Eff this,” I whisper and leap back into the truck, jamming it into drive as the first drops of
rain fall from the sky.
The terror I feel coursing through my veins has made the gun a permanent fixture in my
hand.
End of sample
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