Zombie Apocalypse Series (Book 3): Ashes in the Mouth Read online

  There was a black sedan parked at the side of the road in the middle of the street and it didn't look like there were any undead near it. Sarah took a moment to steel her nerves, then she crouched low and scurried over to it. She hid behind the car and scoped out her path to the second house in the row.

  There were a couple zombies wandering around on the grass near the house, and she waited for them to look away. When they did, she bolted out from behind the sedan.

  As she skirted around the hood, a zombie that had been obscured from view on the other side of the car stood in front of her. Her shoes scraped along the road as she screeched to a stop. The zombie turned around and spotted her just before she dove back behind the car. It stood there dumbfounded at first. Its jaw started to shift around as it took a step forward, certain it saw something.

  Sarah's heart pounded as she sat with her back pressed against the car on the other side. Uneven footsteps scraped across the pavement and she scampered around to the trunk as she heard them round the hood.

  The zombie picked up speed, hearing the sounds of her moving, but it was confused about why there wasn't anything there. It broke into a slow jog and circled around the sedan, seeing around each corner just a little too late to spot her. It made its way around two laps of the car before stopping behind it where Sarah first hid.

  She was crouched on the other side, completely exposed to any zombie near the houses that happened to look. One of the corpses blocked her path to the front door of the house and it stared right at it, refusing to look away. She heard the zombie behind the car stir again and she knew she had to move.

  Sarah quietly crouch-walked away from the sedan and onto the weedy grass. The few undead nearby hadn't spotted her, and the one ahead was still facing the house. There was a large shrub on the right side of the front garden and she ran for it.

  The zombie finally turned toward her just as she dove for the shrub. She hit the dirt and wiggled her body behind it, curling herself up and hoping it hadn't seen her.

  The corpse stopped dead, staring at the bush. The moonlight bounced off its pale eyes—the only highlight in its black silhouette. Its fingers curled and stretched and cold saliva dribbled from its mouth. It walked for the shrub, its eyes lighting up.

  Sarah waited on the other side and listened as its soft footsteps plodded along the grass. She didn't know where to go, and if she made a run for the door and it was locked, she might've had half the neighborhood after her.

  It reached for the bush and slid its bony hand into it, grabbing a handful of it and pulling it around, trying to see what was hiding inside.

  Sarah tensed and pulled out her hatchet.

  A gust of wind picked up and swept across the front of the houses. A wind chime hanging outside the front door clanged and the bush rustled and swayed.

  The zombie paused and stared at the bush, then looked up at the wind chime. It withdrew its hand from the shrub and stumbled away from it, realizing there hadn't been any food there after all.

  Sarah watched it go back to the front of the house, but this time it turned its back to it. She waited, but it didn't move and she could hear moans behind her not too far away. She peeked around and decided it was now or never. She stood up and gently brushed the dirt off her front as she crept for the door. The wind was still blowing gently and the wind chime continued its high and airy melody. She kept her eyes on the zombie, ready to strike at it if it turned around. But it was motionless.

  Sarah reached the porch and pressed her thumb to the lever on the handle.

  It was locked.

  She slowly shoved at the door while she pressed down to make sure, but it wouldn't budge.

  The zombie became restless and shifted around.

  Sarah darted off along the house and disappeared around the side, feeling her heart thumping. She made her way around the fence enclosing the backyard and found an open gate. The coast was clear and she slipped inside.

  There was a swimming pool in the ground that was only a quarter-filled with water. Sarah peeked down into it and saw a zombie floating facedown in it that had apparently drowned.

  She walked past a tool shed and a broken set of patio furniture. There was a sliding patio door leading into the house and she yanked on it to find that it was locked too, as was a window next to it where she decided to try her luck next. She glanced at the tool shed again, wondering if she should cut her losses and try to spend the night hidden inside, but she knew it was neither warm nor safe.

  Carefully making her way out of the backyard, she slipped through the watchful guard of the prowling dead and checked the next house. But both the front door, as well as the gate to the backyard, were locked.

  Her body was ready to shut down and she knew she needed to find a place immediately. Crouched against the end of the back fence, she looked out at the next row of houses across the street and saw that the undead presence there was sparser. As she moved across the street, her vision started to blur and she suddenly felt very weak. She didn't even notice the zombie that spotted her as she went to the front door of the nearest house.

  She shoved her weight against the door, but it didn't open. Frustrated, she banged her head against it, and she was afraid that her heart was about to stop. But her hearing hadn't faltered, and she heard the footsteps and groans closing in.

  It swung for her shoulder just as she moved away from the door and its face collided into it, leaving a spray of rank saliva on the peeling paint.

  The final burst of adrenaline Sarah's body could produce flowed through her veins and gave her the alertness and agility to back away from it as it gained its balance and chased her around the side of the house. She fled through the path between two houses and ran along the fences enclosing the backyards on both sides.

  Another zombie casually walked by at the end of the fences and saw her. It stopped and blocked her escape, turning for her and boxing her in.

  Sarah stopped and glanced at the two zombies approaching her. She held up the hatchet, but they were both the same distance away, and she knew she couldn't fight off one before the other one got to her.

  In a split-second decision that she wasn't even aware her brain processed, she tossed the hatchet into the backyard on her right, then she jumped up and grabbed hold of the wooden board on top of the fence. She used all her strength to pull herself up, and somehow, to her great surprise, she was actually rising. Her feet tried to walk up the flat boards, but they kept slipping. The zombie who blocked her exit came up to her and clawed at her ankles, trying to grab one of her feet.

  Sarah struggled against it, holding onto the fence for dear life as she wildly kicked her feet out of its grasp. As the second zombie joined in, she kicked out at it and her feet hit it square in the chest, knocking it backward and giving her the final boost she needed to get over.

  Her body flipped over the fence and she landed, thankfully, on a mound of dirt in the garden. Her head rolled to the side and looked at the gate in the back fence, but it was closed.

  Sarah lay perfectly still and rested as the two zombies banged angrily on the other side of the fence. For all that she had been through that day, she was finally safe for the moment. When she was able to, she got up and walked to the gate, making sure the latch was secure, then she grabbed the hatchet and went up to the back of the house.

  There was a sturdy metal door at the top of a few steps, and Sarah prayed. Her hand fell on the freezing metal knob and twisted. It turned and she heaved herself against the door, swinging it inward and revealing the black interior of the house.

  She let out a soft cry of joy and she stumbled into a small laundry room, closing and locking the door behind her. She carefully made her way through the dark house, relying on the moonlight coming through the windows to guide her. She walked to the front door and made sure it was locked, then went around to all the windows and checked them as well. Before she felt safe enough to go to sleep, she looked around for some heavy furniture.

 
; There was a long black leather couch in the living room and she slowly dragged it to the laundry room. There was a couple steps leading down to the laundry room from the hallway, and she managed to wedge the couch between the back door and the bottom of the steps, securely barring the entrance.

  She shoved a long dining room table to the wide front hall and barely managed to tip it over, sliding its heavy frame against the front door. Sarah headed upstairs and dragged the king-size mattress and the box spring from the master bedroom to the top of the stairs and slid them down. They each crashed into the table and she adjusted them so that their weight was firmly pressed against it. Her barricades did nothing to prevent someone from coming in through a window, but if that happened at least she would hear the shattering glass ahead of time.

  She made her way upstairs and found another bedroom to sleep in for the night. It looked like it belonged to a little girl, and the walls and furniture were adorned with dolls and playhouses and other girly things. The walls were painted pink, but in the moonlight, it looked like pale blue.

  She stood by the edge of the window. The street below was still teeming with the undead, and they moved like black blips through the darkness. The highway that she'd traveled all day was visible from the second floor, and she watched for any sign of movement.

  But everything was quiet. Only the dead roamed through the night; no serial killers. Before she turned in to bed, she watched the zombies awhile longer. Her eyes traced one as it shambled at the edge of a lawn. Then something moved in the corner of her eye.

  She looked and it was just another corpse moving about. Her eyes played tricks on her, telling her brain that she saw a man standing in the street staring up at her, but every time she looked, it would just be a zombie stumbling over its own feet. The shadowy figure moved around and around as her gaze did the same, and she just drove herself batty. She gave one last careful sweep across the street and knew that whoever had been following her had turned away miles ago.

  Sarah collapsed onto the twin-size bed and fell asleep immediately.

  6

  TABLEAU VIVANT

  The whole night, she tossed and turned in the small bed. A rough and vicious dream came to her, in which she was being attacked by a shadow. She found herself on a crowded street, surrounded by piles of ash in the shapes of humans, standing and posing in horrific ways, as if some terrible bomb had gone off that instantly destroyed any living trace of them and transmuted their bodies into the charred, silty substance. She stood amongst them, lost in the sea of them, staring around. She was being stalked by something, but she couldn't see what it was. It was furtive. As she walked through the rows of dead people, she brushed by one and watched as the slightest touch caused the man, who had his arm shielding his face, to collapse into a gray cloud of lung-scratching dust. But she found she had no reaction to this. As she walked through the crowd, trying to find a way out, the sun streaked across the sky and immediately came to a bright sunset, splashing oranges, reds, and pinks across the landscape. Then it came from behind her when she let her attention slip: a shadow rising up from the earth as if it appeared from nowhere at all. It grew in size until it was taller than a skyscraper. It stalked her without her even noticing until the edge of it fell over her shoulder, causing an anomalous but severely painful feeling. She recoiled and spun around, facing the predator, only to see it grow bigger. She started to run away from it, knocking into ash-humans as she charged through, sending up great clouds of smoky ash to permeate the air. Their faces were twisted into the final horrors that they experienced when the shadow killed them, but still she didn't care about them; they were parts of a world long gone and they weren't relevant anymore. As she ran for the sunset, knowing it was her salvation, she realized that it wasn't a sunset at all, but rather a raging fire, like the whole sky had ignited. The dead people around her erupted into flames and billowed up pillars of jet-black smoke. They now more closely resembled blackened lumber ruined from the blaze, and their pieces collectively formed a house that had collapsed from the inferno. She ran and ran until she realized that there was no end to the maze of the ruins; it stretched on forever. She turned at last to face the looming shadow only to see that the tall behemoth wasn't any such thing: it was the size and shape of a normal man. He walked through the blackened wooden frames, and as he passed each one, the lumber would fall away to either side and more flame would surge up into the air, as if the shadow were the cause of the fire. She suddenly felt a wall behind her and didn't try to move. She knew it was too late. The man came for her, one agonizing step at a time, his entire figure a shifting black mass. The last thing she saw was the face, and she desperately peered into it, trying to find any humanlike qualities. But it was just an empty chasm, blacker than anything she had ever seen.

  Sarah shot upward on the bed, leaning over her knees and breathing heavily. Beads of sweat ran down her hot skin and she felt her clothes stick to her uncomfortably.

  She found herself in the little girl's bedroom, all the pink and dolls and decorations intact. It was daytime and the sun came through the window, throwing a patch of heat right across her lap. When she realized she just had a nightmare and everything was okay, she relaxed. She let her body fall back down and her head hit the pillow.

  Everything felt better, including all her aches and pains. Her muscles were a little sore, but she knew that she got the rest she needed. Her empty stomach had constricted in the night, thankfully leaving her not very hungry at the moment, but her throat felt like shards of glass were sliding up and down it every time she swallowed.

  Sarah got out of bed and made her way to the window, still being careful—especially in the daylight—to keep out of sight. She looked at the streets and the neighborhood below and saw the same group of zombies lazily wandering around. There were fewer in the day now than there had been in the night before, and there were certainly no killers, no flames, and no shadows. Everything was peaceful and she breathed a sigh of relief at finally being safe once again.

  She didn't like being out in the country, she decided, and she thought that she would continue along the road, because according to her foggy memory of the map, the more developed outskirts of Raleigh would be coming up soon, and she needed to find somewhere permanent to stay, at least long enough to recuperate for the time being.

  Sarah stepped away from the window and searched the room for anything useful to take with her. She had placed the hatchet on a dainty pink nightstand next to the bed, and the juxtaposition of the two was amusing. The closet door slid open on its track and she looked inside, finding nothing but toys and dusty blankets. Sarah came out of the girl's room and checked the master bedroom, followed by the bathroom back out in the hallway.

  There were some first aid supplies in the medicine cabinet and she stuffed some things into a plastic bag she found under the sink. She went downstairs and saw that the mattress and box spring were still pressed against the table blocking the front door. She thought of the haunting image of the Navy SEALs' heads lined up and looking their dead looks at her, and she was glad to be away from whatever maniac did that. She walked to the back door where she entered the house and found the couch still wedged between it and the bottom of the steps in the laundry room.

  Coming out into the living room, she could actually see everything now in the daytime. An old LED TV hung on the wall and there were four round imprints in a big white throw rug from where she'd taken the couch. She checked the kitchen for food or water, but it was completely empty. Whoever used to live there had probably taken everything and left, or the house had already been looted by other survivors many years ago. Sarah swallowed and her throat scratched again.

  A door creaked somewhere behind her.

  She jumped and spun around, instinctively leaning back over the kitchen sink. She listened, but everything was silent. The noise came from somewhere around the corner of the kitchen wall, near the living room. She crept across the tile floor and peeked around the wall.
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  A door stood open at the edge of the living room near the front hall, leading to what looked like the basement. Sarah paused and watched it, confused and scared. It suddenly shifted an inch back and forth again, seemingly by itself, and she jumped again. It took two more times of her staring at it like a scared rabbit peering out at something from a bush before she calmed down. This time, she felt the breeze wafting up from the basement in tandem with the door moving, and she knew there was no one hidden behind the door, using it to draw her closer and waiting to ambush her; there must have been a basement window open, letting in the breeze.

  But still, that didn't ease her nerves as a flurry of new questions entered her mind. She hadn't even noticed the basement door the night before when she was going around ensuring all the windows were locked.

  Sarah stood at the top of the stairs, looking down into the darkness. She would have normally thought better of such an idea, but she desperately needed something to drink and would soon need something to eat too. She knew she was just being jumpy and that she needed to check the basement for supplies. She wouldn't be able to travel anywhere for very long as parched as she was, and she hoped beyond all hope that there were stores of food and water in the basement.

  She searched the kitchen for some kind of light and found a flashlight that no longer worked, but she also found a long candle and a box of matches in a drawer. She slid open the box and drew one of the tiny sticks, flicking it against the striker. The phosphorous erupted into a tiny flame and she held it to the wick of the candle, watching as the orange fire jumped to it. She shook out the match and returned to the basement stairs, shielding the flame from the soft breeze coming up from the darkness.

  Sarah hesitated at the threshold, watching the soft glow emitting from the candle quickly disappear into the darkness. Her throat swallowed that terrible scratchy gulp and she felt the hairs on her skin tingle. She waited, listening for any sound of movement, but there was only silence.