Zombie Apocalypse Series Books 1-3 (Zombie Apocalypse Series Box Set) Read online

  The streets were quiet and mostly empty, with a few cars on the road here and there. The power outage seemed like it was city-wide. They passed a house with people sitting on the porch by candlelight. They shifted in their chairs, looking around almost frantically. She pressed her face to the window to get a better look, but the car sped by too quickly and they were out of sight.

  They turned the corner and set off down the next road. Another image flashed by the car. Someone running, their gait off-kilter. The car squealed around a bend, and another flash. One person lying on top of another in a driveway. The person on the bottom convulsing.

  She craned her neck, trying to see, but the sights were gone, replaced by empty streets again.

  "Did you hear that?" she asked him.

  "Hear what?"

  "Oh, nothing."

  She thought she heard screaming as the frightening still images sped past the car, but maybe she had imagined it. She felt safe in the car with her husband and soon-to-be-born son. Everything inside the car's glass and metal walls was a bubble of safety and warmth. The night outside was quiet and peaceful, but she couldn't shake the feeling that something very bad was happening all around them.

  Traffic started to get heavy when they got downtown. Her contractions were becoming intense and she spent the rest of the car ride doubled over, breathing rapidly between cries of pain.

  "It's not too much farther," he said. "We're almost there."

  Her eyes suddenly went wide as she looked at him.

  "What is it?"

  "I don't think I'm going to make it. I think he's coming right now."

  "Just hold on a little longer. We're so close." He held her hand as tightly as he could and stepped on the gas.

  They only made it a couple blocks before they turned a corner and saw a sea of red brake lights.

  "No, no, no... don't do this to me," he said.

  The street was jammed with cars, all stopped for some obstruction in the road ahead that he couldn't quite see. He craned his neck out the window to get a better look, then he pulled his head back in the car and looked at Sarah.

  "Hold on tight."

  "What are you doing?"

  He drove the car onto the sidewalk as gently as he could and slipped past all the cars. Honks and angry shouts chased them, but he didn't care. They made it to the front of the cars and he hit the brakes.

  A silver sedan had crashed into a bus stop on the sidewalk directly in front of them, blocking David from driving through. A confused mess of mangled vehicles sat in the middle of the road, some of them smoking and one of them upside-down. On the far side, a bus had slammed into a telephone pole, knocking it over, and then into a building.

  A crowd of people stood around surveying the wreckage and helping the injured.

  Despite the chaos, the only thing blocking them from continuing down the sidewalk was the sedan. It was empty and still looked like it was in drivable shape.

  David put the car in park and turned to Sarah. "I'm going to move that car. I have to leave for just a second, baby."

  "Don't!" she pleaded.

  "I have to. It's the only way to the hospital. It's just a little bit further."

  "I don't think I can make it," she said between labored breaths.

  He reached over and put his palm on her stomach, feeling the baby. "You're strong, honey. I know you can do this. Just a little longer." And with that, he shoved open the door and threw his weight out of the car.

  Sarah caught his arm. "Wait!"

  "What?"

  "It's Kevin, right?"

  "What?"

  "The baby. We're going with Kevin, right?"

  He looked into her eyes with such love and squeezed her hand. "Yeah. Our little Kevin." He kissed her on the forehead and was out of the car. He slammed the door shut and ran up to the driver's side of the sedan, leaning his head through the window.

  Another contraction shook her and she put both hands on her belly and clenched her stomach, trying to relieve some of the pressure. The baby was coming very soon. She fought with every bit of energy she had to hold on a little longer.

  Someone screamed. Then a lot of people screamed. The crowd standing by the wreckage started to scramble.

  Sarah's eyes shot to David. He was still leaning in the sedan's window, then like a flash of lightning, he reeled back and went down.

  She let out a cry and got out of the car. "David!" she screamed.

  He got back up to his feet and held a hand to his neck, disoriented. Someone crawled out the window of the sedan and dropped onto the ground. David held his hand out in front of him and saw blood on it, then he looked at the man on the ground in front of him as he took a few steps back, leading him out of sight behind the wreck of cars.

  "David!" she screamed again and broke into a trot. Adrenaline shot through her and kept her mind off the pain.

  More screams came from the crowd ahead as they zipped between the mangled wreckage, trying to escape from something.

  A wave of people with cracked, gray skin emerged in the distance and shambled after them, lit up in the headlights of the cars jammed in the road. They looked sickly and thin. Their eyeballs were pale white stones, like their irises and pupils had faded away. They wore bloody wounds on their flesh as if someone had bitten them in various places, and they ran clumsily, like they lost some control of their motor functions. Hanging jaws showed rows of grayish-yellow teeth, saliva pouring down them onto their chins. Their arms stretched out and swung around, scratching at the air in front of them.

  The scene turned into complete carnage. Screams shattered the sky as everyone in their cars fled on foot. The horrific gray-skinned attackers chewed and thrashed their victims, eating mouthfuls of flesh at a time. They were insatiable, feasting on everyone they could get their gnarled hands on. Blood poured into the street and flowed into the gutters, filling the air with a metallic taste.

  David stood in the middle of the chaos in a daze. Blood streamed down his neck as he kept his hand pressed to it. The man who crawled out of the sedan worked his way across the ground toward him. His skin was gray and diseased, too; his face looked like an old leather mask, caked in ash. He pulled himself along the asphalt with his arms, his mangled legs dragging behind him. He looked like a corpse who had crawled its way out of the grave. His mouth hung open and he moaned, his milky eyes staring up at David.

  David's fate had been sealed as soon as he stepped out of the car. He was in shock, staring down at the corpse approaching him. He didn't see the other one coming as it wrapped its arms around him from behind and sank its teeth into his neck.

  He crumpled to the ground like a piece of paper. They fell upon him and his limbs twitched as gallons of his warm blood spilled onto the street.

  Sarah screamed so loud her throat went raw. She stood rooted to the ground, staring at what used to be her husband. He said he would be back in a second. He said they were almost there, just a little bit farther. Kevin, he said. Their baby's name was Kevin.

  When more lumbering corpses emerged from the field of cars and came for her, she ran. Where she ran or how far she went, she didn't know.

  The last thing she remembered was huddling in a storm drain, hidden away from the world falling apart outside. She took off her pants and her soiled underwear and squatted down, and she pushed and screamed. She screamed until she couldn't scream anymore.

  2

  Eight Years Later

  The knife ran through the rabbit's pelt, slicing it away from the meat. Sarah held it from its nape as she jerked the blade through.

  The sun warmed her face and made her blond hair shine. It looked like another perfect day, relatively speaking. Some birds chirped in the distance, but otherwise, it was silent. The sky was pure blue and the summer heat rippled around the lazy day.

  The vegetables were growing quite nicely. It was a little too early in the summer to grow tomatoes, but she had plenty of green beans, carrots, cucumbers, bell peppers, and sweet potato
es already. She even had a small watermelon patch in the corner of the garden. It was the only fruit that she could manage to grow, and one of the only things she could feed David without a fight.

  "David," she called.

  "What?" he said without looking at her as he crashed his toy cars together.

  "Come here for a second."

  He bumped his cars into each other a few more times before finally putting them down and sauntering over to his mom.

  "I need to go get some more water," she said. "We're almost out."

  "Okay."

  "I'm going to finish with this rabbit and then head out. Can you cook it for me so it's ready when I get back?"

  "Sure," he said. He turned and walked back to his toys.

  She watched him go and worried about him. He seemed down lately. He always was, but he seemed to be getting worse. The world they lived in was no place for an eight-year-old boy, or anyone, for that matter.

  The zombie infection spread quickly and wiped out the entire planet, as far as she could tell. There was no military riding on white horses to save the day; when it happened, power and communications of all kinds were the first things to go, and after that, everyone was left in the dark. Most people were wiped out right away in the first attacks, rapidly transforming into mindless flesh-eaters after just a simple bite from an infected person. The remaining survivors slowly dwindled over time, getting careless or being drawn out from shelter when their supplies were depleted.

  But Sarah and David were in good shape. They had found a set of empty townhouses that formed a square around a courtyard where she could plant her vegetables to sustain them. They built fences in the alleys between townhouses to block off the courtyard from zombies, and for all intents and purposes, they were safe. The only thing she had to leave for on a regular basis was to get clean water from a natural spring in the woods. But the woods were close by and she followed a rarely-populated route to get there.

  Still, she never allowed David to come with her to get water, because she felt that it was too dangerous for him. On occasion she would allow him to come with her if she needed to look for other supplies in the strip mall across the street, or the houses surrounding them, but that was the only time she let him leave. One of the reasons she decided to stay in the townhouses was because it was in a lower-populated part of town where there wasn't much chance of running into anyone else. She couldn't even remember the last time she ran into a human survivor, and she liked keeping it that way. The only way to stay alive was to remain diligent when it came to potential risks to their safety. She was going to keep her son safe, no matter what it took.

  She finished skinning the rabbit and left it by the fire, then told David to put his toys away. She didn't like him being distracted by them when he was supposed to keep watch. Even just being out in the courtyard by himself made her uncomfortable if anyone were to come by.

  She rustled his hair. "Not too crispy," she said with a smile.

  "Okay."

  She said goodbye and took the wagon carrying two big glass water jugs through the gate in the fence. He closed it behind her and she waited to hear him slide the bolt into place before she left on her trek. She carried a Glock 17 pistol that she found in the cellar of a house for protection. She had only the original 17-round magazine loaded into it that she found with the gun, and she had never fired a single shot. She knew a zombie could be stopped with a bullet to the brain, but she was always too scared when the situation arose, always favoring to run and hide.

  But the trip went without incident, and she spent the whole time thinking about her son. She had been denying it for a long time, but she knew he was slipping into a deep depression. He was upset with being cooped up all day, every day, and he didn't even ask her anymore if he could come with her to do anything. It was like he didn't care anymore, like he'd given up. She wanted so badly to give him a normal life, but she knew that was impossible. She wanted to give him something to be hopeful for, but she couldn't even find it for herself.

  She made it back to the townhouses at what she guessed was around seven o'clock. As she turned into the alley to the courtyard, she stopped dead.

  The gate was wide open.

  She left the wagon and jogged into the courtyard, her heart hammering in her chest.

  David wasn't there. The fire flickered, but the pot they suspended over it to cook their meat was empty. Not a sound was in the air, and everything looked undisturbed. If robbers had come through, they didn't take much.

  "David!" she cried, searching the courtyard.

  The gate creaked behind her and she spun around.

  Her son stood frozen in the open gate, his eyes wide. After a moment, he lowered his head in shame.

  "What are you doing out?" she demanded, running over to him and yanking him inside by a handful of his filthy t-shirt. "Are you hurt?"

  "No."

  "Well?"

  "I saw a dog outside. It looked hurt."

  "Don't lie to me."

  "I'm not lying!"

  "David."

  "I just... wanted to go outside. I'm tired of staying in here all the time."

  "Honey, you know it's dangerous outside."

  "I don't care."

  She let out an exasperated sigh and sank down onto one knee. She put a hand on his shoulder, but he just rolled it off and walked to the other end of the courtyard. Anger rose in her as she was about to bark his name, but then it was replaced with pity. He disappeared around the back of a splintering wooden staircase leading up to the second floor of one of the townhouses. She let him go and tended to the open gate. She dragged the wagon full of water into the courtyard and shut the gate, sliding the bolt into place.

  A yell came from behind the stairs.

  David shot out from behind them and fell onto the concrete. A figure lunged out after him and landed on him. Its gray, parched skin peeked out from under the filthy rags it wore. Its eyes were wide and crazy, white moons of mindless insanity. It pinned him to the ground and grabbed at his face. David wiggled as hard as he could, but the zombie was too heavy. It opened its mouth wide to consume him, and half-chewed pieces of the rabbit that he left sitting on a tray next to the fire fell out of its mouth.

  Sarah ran up and bowled into it with her shoulder in a frantic act of motherly protection. It flew off and rolled on the concrete. She tumbled too, scraping her arms and legs, and the pistol slid out of her waistband and skittered along the ground. The zombie clawed at her as she tried to regain her balance and get away from it.

  David got up and bolted off. He picked up the gun and took aim at the zombie.

  Sarah threw up her hand to him. "Don't!"

  Behind the fear on his face, it sank a little in disappointment as he reluctantly lowered the gun.

  "Open the gate!" she yelled.

  As he ran off to the gate, the zombie made a pass at her and she screamed and stepped out of the way. It lost its balance and fell on its face. She snatched the hunting knife she had used to clean the rabbit from the tray next to the fire and shakily brandished it at the zombie. As it tried to get back to its feet, she screamed and plunged the knife into its back. The zombie didn't react as it stood up.

  She stood behind it, trying to pull the knife out, but it was stuck. It turned and swiped at her and she stumbled backward then turned and fled to the gate.

  David waited in the alley and they ran into the parking lot at the front of the townhouses. A patch of thick bushes sat next to the lot and they hid behind it.

  The zombie came out of the alleyway. It stopped and bobbed its head around, wondering where its meal went.

  She held her breath and clamped a hand over David's mouth. It staggered around a bit and, deciding it lost its prey, walked off across the street, the knife still in its back. It took her years to find a knife that good, and she watched it bob away in its new sheath.

  When it was safe, she brought her son back into the courtyard and bolted the gate. She made sure he was
safe, did a quick sweep of the area to check for other surprises, then told him she was going to do one last check behind the stairs.

  She crouched down behind them and broke down crying. She spent a good five minutes sobbing by herself, hiding from him like an ugly troll under a bridge.

  Finally, a small hand fell on her shoulder.

  She startled and looked up to see him. She wiped the streams of tears away from her eyes. "What is it, baby?"

  He fidgeted. "Are you mad at me?"

  "No, honey," she said as she forced a tired smile. "Just don't wander off like that again, okay? I was really worried about you."

  "Okay," he said and walked off. She could tell he was ashamed, but there was also a sense of detachment that was becoming prevalent in him.

  They went to bed early that night, each in their own bed in one of the townhouses.

  She stayed awake for a long time, thinking about everything that happened. Was she mad at him, he wanted to know. No, of course not. Their dinner was ruined, the only good knife she had, gone, and the long scrape marks on her arms and legs stung her endlessly. No, she wasn't mad. How could she be mad? She cried until her eyes got heavy and she slept.

  3

  Travelers' Tale

  She sat in a rusted lawn chair in the courtyard, poking at her breakfast of salted green beans and sweet potatoes. She watched David play with his toy cars in the corner, keeping to himself. As time went on, he talked less and less, withdrawing further into himself. The tension of the events of the previous day had only made things worse between the two of them, and they had hardly said a word to each other all morning.

  He bumped his cars together one last time, not even putting in the effort to make the appropriate sound effects anymore. He took a long look at them and then scooped them all up in his arms and dumped them in a garbage pile that Sarah kept in the corner.

  "What was that all about?" Sarah asked. "You don't like playing with them anymore?"

  He shrugged.

  "What is it?"