The buildings they’d passed earlier when she’d killed the alleyway zombie had been damaged. Most of the windows on the ground floor had been broken and filled with trash, glass, and the undead. She wanted a safe, somewhat clean place to sleep overnight. Preferably, it would be a place without too many corpses. She didn’t want to get sick overnight.
Dennis followed quietly behind her. He barely made a sound as they moved. There was a fallen tree that blocked part of the path, but Velvet simply walked around it. Dennis followed suit, and Velvet wondered if this was how he’d managed to survive for so long.
He wasn’t scared.
He was just quiet and thoughtful, and he moved quickly when he needed to.
“Come on,” she whispered, gesturing for the little cat to keep up. She probably should have just carried him, but despite being close to her, Dennis didn’t like being held very much. Velvet knew he’d been loved by someone once. A cat that was truly feral wouldn’t hang out with her as much as this one did. She wondered sometimes what had happened to Dennis’ family.
Then she stopped wondering because she knew.
What had happened?
The same thing that always happened.
Zombies.
The undead didn’t care if you had a family. They didn’t care if you were loved by someone. The only thing they cared about was eating, destroying, hunting. They would follow you until you killed them, or they killed you.
There would be no in-between.
Velvet rounded the tree and was pleased to find there were no zombies on the other side. Still, she heard the sounds of them crying out. There were more than she’d originally thought, which was unfortunate. There was nowhere to hide in the park, nowhere to stay safe.
Technically, she could try simply standing quietly in the center of the park and hoping that they just passed her by, but she’d seen other people try to do that and it never worked out well. All it took was one bored zombie to wander past you and catch you. Then you’d be done.
No, she needed a place with a door: preferably a place up high.
Luckily, the park was surrounded with student housing: apartments, dorms, and a few streets over, sororities.
“Breathe,” she whispered to herself, and she stepped forward. The sounds grew louder as Velvet neared the edge of the park. She knew as she approached the gate on this far side of the park that she was going to have some trouble.
The gate over here was open, swinging idly in the night air. It wasn’t really windy, but there was enough of a breeze that the gate swung back and forth. It creaked just a little, and Velvet eyed the gate warily.
Was she going to be able to get through without pushing it?
Would touching it make even more noise?
She did not want to alert any undead monsters nearby that she was here. One or two probably suspected she was nearby, but they hadn’t managed to locate her. If she made noise, they’d know for certain. No, she didn’t want to alert anyone that she was around or that she was going to try to make a break for it.
Peering carefully ahead of her, she tried to slow her breathing. Zombies hunted primarily by sound. Their eyes were always kind of screwed up after they died. Something about their reanimation made it difficult for them to see. It was like their eyes were glazed over, just a little. They could see, but not well.
Mostly, they listened.
In and out, in and out. Velvet tried to regulate the sounds of her lungs. To her, it sounded like she was gasping for breath. She knew it wasn’t true, of course, but in a world where there were no cars, no air conditioners, and no planes to make noise, every single other sound felt amplified.
Carefully, she stepped toward the gate. It swung back and forth, back and forth. If she was quick, she could slip through it without being detected, but she’d have to move fast.
Dennis would, too.
Velvet looked down at the little cat and wished she could tell him her plan. She wanted him to know what she was going to do so he could follow along and not get hurt. At this point, Velvet wasn’t sure what she was going to do if she lost Dennis.
She needed him probably as much as he needed her.
Well, more.
Dennis didn’t seem to need anyone.
Carefully, Velvet counted as the gate swung. Once she figured out the rhythmic pattern and was certain she could make it through, she darted forward, hurrying out of the park. She made it! She’d made it all the way through the gate, but Dennis...
Dennis didn’t.
MEOW he cried out as the gate hit him on the backside as he scurried past her.
Shit.
She should have held him as she wiggled through. She’d been nervous that he was going to make noise if she did, though. He’d made noise anyway.
The sound of zombies wandering seemed to stop as the world began to move in slow motion. They’d heard. All of the nearby undead had heard, and they were trying to pinpoint where the sound had come from.
Breathe.
She wasn’t breathing, though. Velvet was actually holding her breath as she slowly rotated in a slow circle to see what she was up against. She was now standing in the road outside of the park. There were a few abandoned cars, as well as a row of apartment buildings across the street. To the right and left, at either end of the road, were more apartment buildings.
And there were zombies.
She counted three to her left and four to her right. That was more than she’d bargained for and more than she was ready for. Straight ahead, the apartment building seemed to be open. That could be good or terrible. She wasn’t going to have to break the door down, but she also might not be able to secure it.
Either way, it seemed like her only option unless she ran back through the park, but that would just bring her to the other side where she’d come from. If there were zombies over there, she’d be boxed in on all sides.
No, it was best to keep her options open, and running ahead was going to be best for today.
“Come on, Dennis!” Velvet yelled, no longer trying to be quiet. They knew where she was. They’d heard her.
Now, they were going to hunt her.
She just had to hope she was faster than they were.
She was definitely smarter.
Then again, maybe not.
Chapter Three
Velvet rushed across the street that had once been chaotically filled with both cars and pedestrians. The apocalypse might have been going on for a decade, but she’d never forgotten the nightmare of trying to dart past cars and race to class. If someone wanted to make it to class on foot, they’d have to cross these roads and run through the park to try to make it to class on time. Sometimes that happened. Most of the time, it didn’t. There would always inevitably be some sort of hold-up. It might be traffic or it might be other students. It was always sort of impossible to tell what to expect.
Now, the only hold-up was zombies.
Now, the hold-up was that if she didn’t keep moving, they were going to feast on her flesh, and so Velvet moved.
She darted across the street and up the stairs to the front doors. The double doors had once featured beautiful glass panes, she guessed. Now they were just metal frames with a bar across the center of them. She didn’t duck through under the bar because she didn’t want to accidentally cut herself. Velvet couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a tetanus shot, but it had been more than 10 years ago.
She made a mental note to think about raiding a doctor’s office for vaccines, but she doubted anything she found at this point would even be remotely safe.
Besides, anywhere that had housed medication had been raided the first week after the apocalypse. There wasn’t a chance in hell there were still vaccines just lounging around a doctor’s office or clinic. It didn’t matter, though. She just wouldn’t get cut.
So, instead of ducking through the open area of the doors, Velvet reached for the handles and tugged the doors open. They squeaked but swung open so she cou
ld get inside. Dennis meowed again and stayed close to her. He really was a good cat.
Once inside, she fished a little flashlight out of her pocket. It was small, but it worked, and she flicked it around the first-floor lobby. There was an infected sitting at the reception desk, but it was mostly rotted. If she had to guess, it was an old zombie. The old ones always tended to be a little slower. They were weaker, less alive, and they were decomposing so that they couldn’t physically move much.
The fresh zombies were the ones that Velvet was more scared of.
The fresh ones were always faster than she liked.
She didn’t bother killing the reception zombie. Instead, she checked to see what options she had in this space. She heard noises outside and knew the crowd was growing bigger. Soon there would be several zombies, if not a dozen.
Awesome.
Velvet was just one person. Fighting a single zombie wasn’t a big deal, and while six or seven zombies was hardly a horde, it was still a lot to handle by yourself. If she let herself get surrounded, she’d be done for. All it took was a scratch.
She could beat them, though. Ten years, and she hadn’t been caught yet. Today wasn’t going to be the first time.
She’d have to hurry to the top floor to hide. Maybe there was a closet or somewhere she could stay with Dennis. If she moved fast enough, the zombie crowd might not get much bigger.
Velvet swung her flashlight from side to side. The first floor of this building was filled with knocked-over furniture, including chairs and tables. Once upon a time, people had been able to have nice meetings on this floor, she guessed. There were a couple of sitting areas that were now not only damaged, but covered with dust and grime.
Who knew that leaving a building empty meant it would end up being gross?
Toward the back of the room, she spotted an elevator. It was at the center back of the space, and the doors were permanently open. Had someone propped them open after the power had gone out? Or had the power died while the doors were still open?
She didn’t know and she didn’t care.
Velvet never went anywhere near elevators. She had no interest in falling to an untimely death. If she was going to die, she wanted it to be in a way that was dramatic, but also meaningful. Wasn’t that what everyone hoped for?
Even in the apocalypse, she didn’t want to die because she did something dumb or made some sort of stupid choice. If she was going to die, it should be because she was going to do something big and important, like save someone. Like, saving a baby or something like that.
The groans grew louder, and a quick glance over her shoulder revealed that there were creatures at the entrance to the apartment building.
Zombies.
It seemed like such a cartoonish name for something that was so gross, so horrible. She didn’t like to use the word “icky,” but it was the one that always came to mind for Velvet.
Glancing around once more, she saw that there was a wooden door at the back of the lobby. It was back in the north corner, carefully tucked away from the elevator.
Stairs.
It had to be.
Each of these old apartment buildings had to have stairs in them. Back before the world was filled with nasty, pus-filled zombies, there had been things like fire codes and safety guidelines.
“Let’s go,” she said to Dennis.
The cat moved swiftly. Despite the fact that it was probably as hungry as Velvet was, it moved with determination. A cat couldn’t survive long in the zombie apocalypse without quickly learning how to be fast. If this cat moved slowly, it wouldn’t have survived as long as it had.
Zombies were cruel, but they weren’t lazy when it came to hunting.
That was the biggest problem, Velvet thought. If a zombie caught your scent or decided to follow you, they’d keep going until they fell apart or you managed to lose them. Zombies didn’t get bored. They didn’t have jobs to go to.
They had nothing but their hunger to get them moving.
She shoved a wooden chair out of the way. Why was there so much furniture on the floor? Had people brought this furniture down from the apartments in order to block out zombies?
In the early days of the apocalypse, people hadn’t known what to do. They’d struggled, fighting with everyone else. They’d fought the zombies, yes, but they’d fought other things, too. They’d fought against the environment, and the wildlife, and they’d fought against the weather.
Things hadn’t been easy.
That wasn’t going to change.
Now, though, as Velvet heard the zombies moving into the apartment building, she knew she had to keep moving. Scurrying over the fallen furniture, pushing aside end-tables, and kicking forgotten objects, she finally reached the door to the stairs.
To her relief, the door opened inward. It wasn’t blocked off. Sometimes, when you found a building that you planned to hide in, you quickly realized that previous survivors had blocked the door off from the inside.
Luckily, that wasn’t a problem this time.
Dennis followed Velvet through the door, and she slammed it shut behind them. There was a deadbolt, which she used, but the hinges looked worn and weak.
“It won’t hold long,” she said out loud. She scooped Dennis into her arms and started running up the dusty stairs. Her chest tightened as she started breathing in the dust and debris. She’d start sneezing soon, she thought, and that wasn’t exactly a discreet way to hide out in a zombie-infested building.
Maybe it wasn’t infested, though. She wouldn’t know until she got to the top.
Well, second from the top.
Velvet was slightly scared of heights, so when she could help it, she never stayed right on the top floor. It was a bad habit. She probably should have gotten over it, but she didn’t. Instead, she’d choose the floor second from the top.
Also, she had often found that most survivors lingered on the top floor of a building because they liked to be close to the rooftop. They liked to be close to the open air and the open breeze.
Velvet wasn’t going to be going anywhere.
She had food and water to last her a couple of days if she didn’t eat much. She would share with Dennis, and the two of them would be just fine for now. Velvet would do just about anything for her cat. Sometimes, he was the only thing keeping her going.
The cat was silent as she climbed up the stairs. She stopped on the second floor and opened the door to the hallway. If zombies broke the first-floor door down, they’d file into the hallway and go bang on those doors. Unless they were running and visibly spotted Velvet, she didn’t think they’d bother walking all the way up the remaining flights of stairs.
Velvet did, though.
The apartment building stairs kept going, stretching up. They made it to the sixth floor, which wasn’t as high as she preferred, but Velvet suspected that they were out of time. She wanted those zombies to hang out on floor number two and not come find her all the way up here, but if they heard her in the stairwell, they’d climb all the way up.
And she could hear the growls of the zombies on the first floor. Their groans had gotten louder, and they were howling at the door. One of them realized where she and Dennis had gone and was banging on the door.
Could it get through?
If it worked hard enough.
Would it stand there and bang on the door until those weak-ass hinges failed?
Possibly.
Unlike some zombie movies she’d seen in the “before days,” zombies didn’t always punch down doors. If there was only one zombie to hit, the chances of it breaking through a door, even if it had shoddy hinges, were low. Zombies weren’t exactly the brightest bunch, and they didn’t communicate very well, so unless a zombie managed to get its friends to hit with it, Velvet figured she’d be okay for a few more minutes, at least.
Even if a horde of zombies wasn’t pouring into the building, Velvet was worn out. She sneezed and shook her head. If she didn’t stop now, the dust was
going to make her go crazy. She didn’t have many allergy pills left with her. They were precious, and she’d need to find more soon.
It would be better to stop now than to try to get even higher.
There were a million reasons to stop and not very many to keep going.
“Not as high as we want,” she pointed out to the cat, “but this should be good enough for now.”
She pushed open the door that led to an interior hallway. Peering in, it looked clear. She set Dennis down and the cat pranced ahead, exploring the space. Dennis instantly started sniffing different spaces and rubbing his cheeks on random items that were littered in the hallway. Why every cat had to mark its territory, she’d never understand.
“Must be nice to see so well in the dark,” she muttered, once more wishing that she was the type of person who had incredible eyesight. As it was, she’d worn glasses for years. If she ever met an eye doctor, she’d ask for a better prescription. Was that something that would ever happen?
She pushed her glasses up the end of her nose. She’d taped her glasses for years until she’d found an optometrists shop with lenses in the frames. She knew her prescription number, so she’d managed to find some glasses that worked for her. She’d taken every pair they’d had and even though they’d broken during fights, she still had a couple of pairs in the bottom of her backpack.
Just in case she needed them, which she would.
She always needed glasses.
The hallway was empty, but it looked like there had been fights there long ago. The dried red stains on the carpet weren’t from wine nights that had gotten a little too out of control. The scratches on the wall weren’t from people moving in at the beginning of the semester and out at the end.
Nope.
This place had seen better days.
It had seen fighting and it had seen chaos. It had seen destruction and now...
Beautifully Undead | Book 1 | The Chasing of Zombies Page 2
