The Zombie Chronicles - Book 6 - Revelation (Apocalypse Infection Unleashed Series) (10 page)

Chapter 10

The truck took off with a jerk as we put our plan in motion. We started shooting from all different directions, until the truck stopped in the middle of the front yard. Steven and his buddy climbed out and split up, each one taking a different direction. I covered Steven and shot anything that got remotely close to him.

Steven aimed and fired, swishing his weapon side to side, letting out an impressive blast of flames. The fiery stream decimated anything and everything in its path in a fifty-foot radius around him. Zombies moaned as their decaying flesh crisped up like bacon.

A naked, slimy monster lurched toward Steven from behind, but I let out a shot and hit it straight in the back of the head, sending it crashing to the ground just inches from him.

“
Great shot!” one of the guys yelled.

A hellish chorus of moans, grunts, sizzles, and gunshots echoed in the air. Rachel’s semiautomatic rifle was eardrum-poppingly loud as she shot it next to me. Claire was absolutely focused on defeating the enemy, letting out shot after shot and keeping the undead at bay.

In the armored car, Bart careened down the driveway, easily running over anything in his path. He pulled up to the door and honked, hoping to lure the survivors out of their hiding place. When they just looked at him dumbly and stumbled around in the living room, we realized they were zombies; the house had been breached.

A shiver shot down my spine.
Why can’t anything go according to plan?
“Zombies broke in!” I warned my comrades.

“
I’m going in,” Rachel said, reloading her gun. “We’ll just kill ‘em all.”

I was sure we could take them all on with our weapons, so I wasn’t worried about that. I was far more worried about the herd breaking through the fire as it died down. When Steven moved to join Rachel, I grabbed his arm. “We need the flamethrowers to stay out here and keep the zombies down.”

“
But what about Rachel?” he said.

Just over his left shoulder, I shot at a fiery zombie who was getting too close for comfort. The walking blaze collapsed, and I looked back at Steve. “Listen, I’ve got her back. The two other guys can cover you two.”

He nodded. “I trust you, Dean. Just keep her safe!” Sucking in a deep breath, he gripped the flamethrower tightly, then went back to his position.

We all pointed our guns as Rachel slowly opened the door. Loud shrieks pierced the air, and zombies immediately lurched for us. Rachel let out an exploding round of bullets.

A zombie with wrinkled black skin and a missing jaw came at me from the left. I stepped a foot back and fired. The semiautomatic vibrated in my hands as the deep, reverberating sounds rang in my head. The zombie and its rotting friends behind it dropped, riddled with bullets.

Claire motioned us to the staircase. As Rachel fired up the stairs, Claire fired across the entire living room. Bullets ripped through the air, ripping through the zombies, portraits, and vases, sending chunks of rotting flesh and plaster and glass everywhere.

I headed up the stairs and looked left, then right.
Clear
. My heart was beating so hard that I thought I might faint, but I somehow found the courage to pull open the first door. Inside were zombies galore, even more than I had expected, and I fired off another round into them.

A scream echoed in the bathroom. I bolted there and saw Claire fighting a zombie. She kicked it in the gut, and it went flying through the glass shower door, shattering it into a million tiny pieces. She wrapped her hands in a towel and grabbed a large shard of glass; without hesitation, she plunged her makeshift dagger into the zombie’s left eye, bursting it like a rotten tomato.

“
Looks like you got this covered,” I said.

She spun around, startled. “How do I reload this thing?” she frantically asked. “I ran out, and I need another clip.”

“
It’s called a magazine.” I quickly showed her. “Got it?”

“
Yep.” Expertly and bravely pointing her gun, she scoped out the hallway. “All clear,” she said.

“
Up here!” Rachel shouted. “In the attic.”

Claire ran down the hall and bolted up a rickety wooden stairway, and I anxiously followed. In the attic, rather than zombies, we found a terrified group of fifteen people.

“
We’ve got an armored truck ready to go,” I said. “Let’s move it!”

Claire ushered the frightened people downstairs. I went down first to make sure there was nothing waiting for us at the bottom, but one member of the welcoming committee greeted me with a snarling growl. I reached for my pistol in my holster and shot the thing right between its two white eyes. Its head jerked back as it crumbled to the floor. Then I aimed for the one coming past the couch. I squeezed the trigger, and the well-placed shot had the zombie slumping over the couch, its neck spewing out black tar like a geyser.

“
Look out!” a woman screamed. “There’re more of them! Oh my gosh. They’re everywhere!”

Claire aimed and shot an entire round at the horde as Rachel and I motioned the survivors outside to the armored truck. The smell of smoke wafted through the air, and embers were still sizzling in every direction. Stragglers were everywhere, but Rachel and I kept right on firing, squeezing out one shot after another. Gunfire echoed all around me.

Outside, Bart opened the back of the truck and started herding the wide-eyed, petrified survivors inside.

Another line of zombies staggered toward us. Taking a deep breath, I reloaded and mowed them down in seconds. A loud moan made me jump. From the left, a zombie on fire walked toward me, blazing as it moved, its foul stench intensified by the fact that it was frying. I shot it in the head, and it crumbled to the ground as flames consumed it.

A new stench, a different sort of putrid smell, attacked my nostrils, and I turned to see where it was coming from. Something horrible caught my eye: one of Steven’s friends, scorched and still twitching. I wasn’t sure if he’d gotten caught in the path of the flamethrowers or if burning debris or a zombie inferno had fallen on him, but there was nothing worse than the sight of a warrior’s burnt corpse lying on the grass next to me. Again, nausea churned in the pit of my stomach.

Rachel, Claire, and I ran toward the Land Rover.

It seemed as if the zombies were multiplying, and I let out a trembling breath as I got back into the truck.

“
Rachel!” Steven yelled. He then shot me a quick nod, and his eyes said it all; it was his way of thanking me for keeping her alive.

The Land Rover was quickly being surrounded by the incoming mob, and my breath quickened. The armored truck ahead of us quickly turned them into road kill, and any that happened to escape collision, I killed with my gun, unleashed all my bullets as I swished my hands back and forth, the gun vibrating in my hands and thundering in the air. The truck zigzagged and jerked as we ran over bodies, crunching bones. There was another jerk as the vehicle swung to the left, throwing me and Claire, who were sitting on the edge, out of the vehicle.

I moaned as pain shot across my left side when I landed. When I opened my eyes, I saw stars, and then I heard gunshots and moans. I tried to focus because I knew I
had
to. I sucked in a quick breath and staggered to my feet as my heart started beating again. “Where’d they go?” I asked, not spotting the Land Rover anywhere.

“
Get up!” Claire shouted. “They left us, Dean. You’ve gotta get up and fight!”

My raw anger and adrenaline surged. I’d lost my semiautomatic, but I still had my pistol. I was fighting for my life, and I had to give it everything I had; otherwise, I would not survive. I’d gone down for a minute, but I wouldn’t stay down. I’d get right back up and keep fighting. A zombie with torn skin and no hair on its rotting scalp shambled toward me. Its lips had been ripped from its mouth, revealing yellow teeth. It stretched out its arms for me, and I squeezed off a shot that landed straight between its cloudy white eyes. Another zombie moaned, and I was sure it was signaling the rest of the mob that a snack was near.

“
I’m out of ammo!” Claire screamed. “Just used my last magazine.”

A green, dead hand suddenly lashed out, and jaws bit into my upper thigh. Pain exploded in my arm as two more zombies bit my arm. I whipped out my handgun and fired off two shots, taking down the beasts that were trying to make a meal of my biceps. Another one approached, followed by at least a dozen more. The closet one snapped its jaws like a wild animal, and I could feel the intensity of its white-eyed stare. Raw fear gripped me, making my stomach churn; I knew they’d never stop coming. The herd was breaking through the fire, and I knew we had to get away fast. I pulled the trigger again and again, spraying a burst of bullets, and the undead corpses sank to the ground.

Chapter 11

I continued firing shot after shot, until my gun clicked empty. I gasped, and every muscle in my body tensed, my brain screaming that I should flee the scene. Still, I refused to run without Claire. I turned to find her, and my eyes bulged at the sight before me. Four zombies had pounced on her and knocked her to the ground. My heart thundered as they attacked her viciously, chewing on her arms and legs like dogs on a rawhide. Claire reached for a knife and stabbed one zombie right through its eye, and I clenched my teeth and quickly rammed the butt of my gun into another zombie and then another. When I glanced over at Claire, she was stomping on a zombie’s skull.

A sickening choir of grunts and groans echoed in the air. A zombie came at me, hobbling because its left ankle was turned at an unnatural angle. Its leg was merely a bone, devoid of skin and muscle, but it managed to amble along on its broken foot, moving in my direction. At the same time, another one joined in on the pursuit. That one was missing its stomach and had been gutted like a ravenous bear had devoured it. I smashed one on the head with the butt of my gun, and it flew down into the grass. I hit the other in the mouth, shattering its decaying teeth.

I’d taken down enough of them for us to get through. I yanked Claire’s hand, and we ran faster than the wind—or at least it felt that way. When the adrenaline kicked in, I ran like an Olympic track star, faster than I’d ever run before, yelling for Claire to keep up.

After fifty more feet. I leapt forward. I fixed my gaze on my destination and threw my body into a whole other gear.
Run faster, Dean. Faster! Thirty feet? Ugh. Why does it feel like three times that?
There was no time to look back, but I had to take a peek over my shoulder to see how close the zombies were. I gasped, then pumped my legs even harder when I saw the horde coming our way. Adrenaline gushed through my body with each pound of my feet on the pavement. “C’mon, Claire!” I encouraged.

Twenty-five more feet…just fifteen more…
My lungs wheezed with the effort, and rivers of sweat poured down my face.
Just ten more feet…five more…three more. Almost there! Just another foot and…

Gasping for breath, I crossed the line and tumbled to the ground. Claire collapsed next to me, panting loudly. Long, dead moans echoed in the air, a menacing sound I hated more than any in the entire world. Hundreds of zombies stopped dead in their tracks at the invisible barrier. I wasn’t exactly sure what repelled them, but I was thankful for it. I stared up at the torn, tattered freaks snapping their jaws in the air and reaching out their arms, as if we were long-lost friends they wanted to embrace. Claire and I looked at each other in complete awe. Scrambling to my feet, I held out a hand and helped her up.

Claire exhaled sharply and placed her palm on her chest to calm her racing heart as she bent forward to rest against a tree trunk. “They just…stopped,” she said, “dead in their tracks.”

“
Punny,” I said, mustering a smile.

“
I’m not trying to be funny,” she said, still gasping.

I ran a hand through my hair, still not believing we’d survived. “Are you okay?”

She rubbed her arm where the zombies had tried to bite through the shark suit. “They didn’t get me. How about you?”

“
I was bitten about four times.”

Her eyes widened, and she held my gaze. “Dean!”

“
If Jaws can’t get through this thing, neither can they, right?”