Read Dead Series (Book 3): A Little More Alive Online
Authors: Sean Thomas Fisher
Tags: #Zombie Apocalypse
Dead Series (Book 3): A Little More Alive
A Little More Alive
by
Sean Thomas Fisher
Copyright © 2016 by Sean Thomas Fisher
Cover design by The Cover Collection
All
rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or
distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. This is a
work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events,
or locales is entirely coincidental.
For you.
One
DAY TWENTY-SIX
T
he M4 cut through
the decaying horde on the right side of the front porch, carving out a grisly path
to the Suburban parked in the double drive. Paul let up on the trigger,
staggering forward with the release in pressure and trying to control the panic
in his voice as the dead staggered closer. “Clear the jam, Wendy.”
“I’m trying!”
“Just like we
practiced.”
Her blond ponytail
fell over a shoulder, hiding the tendon bulging in her neck as she wrestled
with the pink gun. “It’s really stuck!”
“Keep working it!”
Body jerking, Billy unloaded Chubby’s sidearm in a controlled manner,
conserving ammo with last second headshots.
“Let’s go back
inside,” Rebecca shouted, pulling on the back of Paul’s leather jacket,
floorboards creaking beneath her shifting weight.
He turned just in
time to see three stiffs ambling through the open front door behind her.
Pushing Rebecca to the side, he kicked them back a step and snatched the doorknob,
catching a fleeting glimpse of Sophia standing at the oven in a dingy nightgown
just before the door slammed shut. His heart did a quick flip inside his chest,
landing in the bottom of his stomach with a wet splat. She looked so real. So
dead. Like her flesh was still decomposing even though she wasn’t even there.
Glancing past Wendy, who was still struggling with her weapon, he scanned the
front yard, searching the rotting faces for Stephanie and Curtis. “You stay
right behind me.”
Rebecca nodded
rapidly, eyes wide and jumpy. The way she held onto the back of his coat reminded
him of Cora and Brock. But they were nothing like Cora and Brock and never
would be.
“Got it!” Wendy brought
the gun up in both hands, taking aim through the falling snow at a hipster shuffling
closer in brown boots and jeans with the cuffs rolled up at the bottom. Blood
and bits of flesh encrusted the beard around his sneering mouth, hands
longingly reaching for her as he limped closer. Two uneven steps later, she put
a bullet through his gentleman’s haircut, spinning him to the ground in a heap.
“Curtis!” Paul
called out, pointing the M4 at the corpses beginning to climb the porch steps.
The dead answered with hollow death moans floating from their broken mouths in a
rhythmic harmony, rising and falling on the rancid breeze stinging his eyes.
Three months ago, if you would’ve told him this is how he and Sophia’s dream
home would end up, he never would’ve believed it. Not in a million years. But
here it was, tattered and torn with dead people trampling the lawn.
Somebody put a round
through the Suburban’s backdoor, tightening his back. “Don’t shoot the car!” He
kicked a dead lady in the chest and sent her tumbling backwards down the steps.
“Come on!” Gliding down the short flight of stairs, he looked to the left,
praying Stephanie and Curtis would pop out around the corner of the house
because he sure as shit wasn’t going to survive long without them. The gunfire
drew shambling cadavers from the neighboring houses and yards in pungent
rolling waves. They stumbled from cars, trees and bushes with no end in sight.
Darting to the right, Paul led Rebecca and Billy down the paved walkway to the
SUV while Wendy covered their backs. He rationed his shots with one and two
round bursts, holding off as long as possible until he was sure each and every
bullet would be a winner.
“Get in,” he
yelled, opening the rear door and putting his back to the truck. Rebecca slid
across the backseat and Billy followed. Paul blew the face off a Jehovah’s
Witness with a nametag indicating his name was
Steve
. Wendy dove in next and Paul slammed the door shut behind her.
Turning for the front, somebody slammed him up against the vehicle, pinning the
M4 between their bodies. Looking up, he fell into Brock’s sunken eyes. The
cowboy’s breath smelled of raw sewage and there was something stuck in his
teeth.
“Curtis and
Stephanie are four houses to the north,” he said in a gravelly voice, his
cowboy hat askew and face peppered with heavy decay. “Go get em and then get
yer asses to Camp Dodge in a mudslingin hurry.” His face came closer, the
stench of death clinging to his grey tongue. “Now push me back, shoot me in the
face and take cover.”
Brock’s weight pushed
the air from Paul’s lungs. Dried blood caked his bushy mustache and suddenly
his cowboy hat was a yellow hardhat. Paul shoved the utility worker in the
chest and shot him in the eye before turning to the Suburban. Rotten hands
slapped down on his shoulders and arms, forcing the barrel of his weapon to the
ground and raising his heartbeat. They pinned him against the passenger door
and this was all she wrote. This time, there was no escaping the infection dripping
from their fangs like venom. The kitchen exploded and the house windows blew
out, throwing his head against the truck and knocking the dead off their feet.
Regaining his balance, he dashed around the front of the vehicle, yanked the driver’s
door open and jumped in. He pulled his leg inside and slammed the door shut just
before an old woman sunk her yellowed nails into him. Looking down, his insides
twisted when he saw her bony fingers wiggling in the door jam.
“Let’s go before
they get back up!” Billy yelled from the passenger seat, jerking his terrified
gaze in every direction.
Paul pulled the
M4’s strap over his head and passed the weapon to Wendy in back before turning
the keys he’d thankfully left in the ignition. Decomposing corpses began beating
against the doors and windows, leaving bloody smudges and blotting out the
light.
“They’re
everywhere!” Rebecca cried from the tailgate with their gear.
Mangled fingers and
teeth clawed at the windows, smearing the glass and turning the day to night.
Billy sank into
the seat. “Try the wipers!”
Paul cursed himself
for not backing the Suburban into the driveway but he was so set on seeing a
picture of Sophia it never crossed his mind. In this world, where things could
turn on a dime, it was the little things that killed. Shifting into reverse, he
looked over his shoulder at the snarling faces pressing against the tinted rear
glass. Another explosion sent debris rocketing from the house in jagged shards
and hurling some of the dead to the brown grass. Flames licked at the top of
the bay window as the dead started getting back to their feet.
“Hang on!” Easing
into the gas, the truck slowly pushed the dead back. If it got hung up on a
pile of bodies now, this SUV would become their tomb.
“What about
Stephanie and Curtis?” Wendy shouted, her pink gun pointed at the dome light.
“We’ll get them!”
Pail gunned it when some of the stiffs tripped over their own feet and fell to
the side. It was now or never. Muscles tensing, he bounced with the truck as it
ran over the people he couldn’t see or avoid. Whipping out into the street, he
cranked the wheel hard left and slammed on the brakes, swinging the front end out
to the right and skidding to a screeching stop that would only draw more of the
infected. The unruly mob gave chase, scraping their shredded shoes and bare
feet against the cement, arms reaching out like they were walking in their
sleep. Slamming the gear shifter into drive, Paul mashed the gas pedal to the
floor and jerked back in the seat when the truck shot forward.
He took one last
look at the flames swallowing his house, realizing he never got the photo
albums and now he never would. They would burn with everything else and he
would never see her beautiful face again. Not in this world. “Shit!” He pounded
the wheel and pushed the grim thought from his mind because right now he needed
to count.
One.
Two.
Three.
Dead Brock’s words
floated through Paul’s mind like restless ghosts in a fog. Taking a hard left, they
bounced violently as the Suburban jumped the curb and found the driveway of the
fourth house from his.
“What’re you
doing?” Wendy screeched.
The house and yard
was as empty as the driveway and Paul suddenly realized he was risking their
lives on a dead man’s claims but laid on the horn just the same. Looking to his
left, he saw the throng from his place limping across the front yards.
“Paul!”
He glanced at
Wendy in the rearview mirror and honked again. “Curtis and Stephanie are around
here somewhere.”
She searched the bloody
windows. “Where?”
“I don’t know,” he
answered, looking back to the encroaching horde of flesh-eaters. The cracks in
their faces were getting clearer, their chokes and angry grunts louder.
Wendy popped her
door open.
“Wendy!” he
shouted, reaching into the back and grabbing her blue jacket.
Knocking his hand
away, she got out. “I’m going to find them.”
“No!”
“There,” Billy
yelled.
Paul followed his
finger to the two people darting from the unattached garage in the backyard.
Wendy jumped back in, leaving the door open and sliding to the other side of
the backseat. The shuffling corpses grew nearer, one with a spear-like piece of
white trim sticking through his abdomen. Paul’s blood pounded thickly in his
temples. If they hadn’t already dispatched the heavyset ones, he’d probably be
dead by now.
“Come on!” He
jammed it into reverse.
Stephanie dove
into the backseat and Curtis squeezed in next, slamming the door shut behind
him and breathing heavily.
“Jesus Christ!” he
panted, mopping sweat from his forehead with the same hand holding his Glock.
“I thought you guys would be dead by now.”
“Sorry to
disappoint ya.” Paul floored it, backing down the driveway and skidding into
the street. There was a loud
thump
as
the bumper sent a gangly man airborne. Dropping it in gear, he stomped on the
gas and sped off, chasing his illusive breath as the dead continued chasing
them. “Are you okay?”
“We’re fine,”
Stephanie breathed, watching the corpses fade into the distance behind them.
“How’d you know
where we were?”
He didn’t glance at
Curtis in the mirror because taking his eyes off the road now could be his last
mistake. Instead, he went faster, not bothering to look at the mangled cars and
bodies littering the yards and street. Determined not to notice the smoke
rising from his home in the side mirror. Hell-bent on not thinking about the
photo albums in the guestroom beginning to curl with heat.
“Paul!” Wendy
shouted. “How’d you know they were at that house?”
“Where else would
they fucking be?” he shouted back, taking a hard left and leaving his new
neighborhood to rot with everything else in this fucked up world.
Other than their
own ragged breaths and the tires humming against the pavement, everything got
quiet and muffled like airplane ear. Vacated houses, vehicles and looted shops
zipped past in a ghastly blur, scratched with crimson streaks and charcoal-colored
burns. Soon, he was cutting through front yards and parking lots to get past
roads clogged with abandoned emergency vehicles and walking corpses.
“Man, I really
don’t want to do this anymore.” Billy turned from a little boy dragging a dead
cat by its tail down the side of the road, face drawn and sweaty. “I’d rather
go back to Jiffy Lube.”
Paul
white-knuckled the wheel with one hand and wiped blood from his face with the
other, the road buzzing in his ears as tiny snow pellets struck the windshield.
“Reload everything we have.” He exhaled a longwinded breath, imagining National
Guardsmen patrolling Camp Dodge with machine guns hanging from their decaying
necks. “This could get weird.”