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Also available from Matthew Marchon
After Failure
Blood Type : Infected (Book One) – No Future For Man
Blood Type : Infected (Book Two) – Fallen To The Flame
Blood Type : Infected (Book Three) – Death Becomes Us
Blood Type : Infected (Book Four) – Betrayal Of Hope
Stone Stairway – Against The Tide (Book One)
A Wish Upon A Christmas Village
The Acadia You Haven’t Seen (an off-trail hiking guide)
The Acadia You Haven’t Seen 2 (an off-trail hiking guide)
The White Mountains You Haven’t Seen (an off-trail hiking guide)
The White Mountains You Haven’t Seen: Waterfall Edition (an off-trail hiking guide)
In The Desperation Of Darkness (poetry anthology)
FREE Spirit Trapped (poetry anthology)
https://matthewmarchon.weebly.com/
Copyright © 2020 by Matthew Marchon
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Designed by Matthew Marchon
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
Also available from Orange Rock Publishing
CHAPTER 1
They’re gone.
They’re really gone. They left.
I thought that… I don’t know, the helicopter would turn around like this was some sick prank. That they’d come back and get us, not realizing we were on top of the dam. Like, maybe they thought we didn’t make it. I’m still trying to wrap my head around this.
That was our one chance. It was farfetched. No one thought it could be done, me included, but we did it.
What the hell is Buckley doing on our chopper? Where did he come from? Shouldn’t he be off somewhere with the bus he stole, forming his little cult?
And Shane? Shane’s supposed to be dead on a rowboat in the middle of the lake. Were they both in the tanker with Paul? How? No, this doesn’t make any sense. This can’t be happening. These assholes did not just hijack our escape.
We were supposed to make it. There was always this doubt, heavy enough to outweigh all hope. But together, there was nothing we couldn’t overcome. With our friends fighting beside us, we were unstoppable. The never-ending army of zombie vampire addicts didn’t stop us. We won, god dammit! We made it to the helicopter. We succeeded. We’re supposed to be flying to safety right now.
Everything’s spinning. I can’t feel my feet. The rapid fire of the rotor fades into obscurity, that or it’s drowned out by the sound of my heart trying to pound its way through my chest.
Hold on, are they coming back? It’s getting louder. Caylee saw us, she practically threw herself out of the helicopter trying to reach us, she must have convinced them to turn around. They can drop a rope or something, for us to climb up. Right? Is that what they’re doing?
Why don’t they look like they’re turning around? The black dot shrinking in the sky should be growing larger as they close the distance between us, shouldn’t it? It’s getting louder, I don’t understand. Is the echo somehow being carried on the wind?
“Shit, Noah.” Felecia’s grip tightens, nearly crushing my palm in hers. Our hands rain sweat, forcing out every bead of perspiration from between our clammy fingers.
It’s not the helicopter getting closer, it’s them. The infects are coming. How in the hell are they coordinated enough to tightrope across this six inch strip of cement when I can barely stand without wobbling?
Their feet pound off the dam in rapid succession, overlapping one another, drowning out those bringing up the rear. There have to be at least six of them that successfully made it off the ladder. The others tumble over the edge, snowflakes in a blizzard, fluttering through the air before joining those who fell before them.
When bodies hit from this high, they splatter, doesn’t matter if they fall towards the gorge or into the water. They slap the surface and explode. Their ravaged bodies are barely held together by flaps of skin and gnawed muscle, at the velocity they hit, detonating in a burst of human fireworks is an inevitability.
How are they not falling? They’re like a zombie conga line of acrobats, running the tightrope with no regard to what awaits them if they lose their balance. How the fuck are they not losing their balance?
“Oh my god, they’re not falling,” Felecia whimpers, gripping my hand even tighter as we try to remain vertical on shaky knees, fighting against the light breeze that may as well be gale force winds up here. “There’s no way we can outrun them.”
Her eyes light up with an idea, that, or there’s a fully stocked ice cream truck behind me. Steadying herself on my shoulder, she lets go of my hand and grabs for the canteen on her belt.
Words aren’t necessary, I know what she wants me to do the second she hands it over.
Not a moment wasted, I hurl it at the first in line. He can’t be more than fifteen feet away, but in zombie measurements, that basically means he’s slow dancing with me. He’ll be dry humping my leg in point two seconds.
The empty bottle of saltwater leaves my hand, side arm throw, like I’m skipping stones on the lake. But I only have one, and if it doesn’t skim the water six times, we don’t leave this dam alive.
The row of zompires don’t look the least bit concerned. They don’t know, never challenge Noah Britton in a rock skipping contest.
The canteen smacks the pock marked face of the infected ring leader, bitch slapped by a water bottle. Direct hit, right between the eyes. Might have popped a pimple in the process, otherwise, I don’t know what that white pus dripping down his face could be. Don’t particularly want to know.
He doesn’t flinch, wince in pain or so much as acknowledge the fact that he just took a hit to his acne scarred nose. Their reflexes take a backseat to the hunger they can’t ignore, addicts willing to die for their next fix because quelling that addiction is all that matters.
His eyes don’t eve
n blink, but the impact jars him just enough to cause his foot to land a little too far to the right. He misses the narrow bridge of cement by millimeters, tumbling forward.
His chest slams against the top of the structure, followed by his face as he slides across the rough surface, scraping his cratered flesh from his bones. I can literally hear tissue slurping and tearing, like shaving with a power sander.
The second member of their undead conga line is following too closely to stop in time. I run track, I know what happens when you travel in a pack and the runner in front goes down. This is why I never liked driving with Shane, you ride the ass of the car in front of you, you don’t have time to react. Next thing you know, pileup.
The tailgating zombies are no different. A flurry of limbs flail about, trying in vain to hold onto something, but the only thing there is the body in front of them, already falling.
Three of them topple over the edge, clinging to one another, holding on for dear life. Not to save their own, their mortality means nothing to them, but holding on because they were so close to feeding their addiction. So close they can smell our blood flowing through our veins, and they’re falling further and further from the force that drives them.
The chain of corpses bounce off the wall of the dam, scraping the surface with nothing to hold onto, bungee jumping without a rope. Their emaciated wails grow distant, I can’t even hear them land.
But that only took out half of them, the leader of the pack is still clinging to the side of the dam, trying to pull himself back up. His legs kick frantically, both arms draped over the top, doggie paddling his way back to safety, if you can even call it safety because I’m where he’s trying to get and I don’t feel anything close to safe right now.
The last two in line are still vertical but it doesn’t look like it’ll remain that way for long. The elderly woman is hunched over, still racing towards us, trying to keep her balance without even considering the thought of maybe slowing down. They have one speed, and tennis ball walker is not it.
The frenzied urgency catches up to her. Her foot lands awkwardly, sending her crashing down with a thunderous crack. She hits hard, one leg on each side of the dam, straddling it. Her pelvic bone shatters, a crunch so horrendous it makes me flinch involuntarily. I think Noah’s Ark just shriveled up forever at the sound of splintering bones in the nether region.
She’s got the right idea though. We can’t stand here any longer. If one of them reaches us, we’re going right over with them. The gust of wind whipping around us only solidifies it more. Standing up is going to get us killed.
Felecia must sense it because she starts squatting on our precarious ledge without me mentioning it. On our hunting trips, the first few times we had to cross rivers on logs, I was too scared to walk. Me and Neil both, we’d straddle the damn thing and slide our butts across. Back then, Dad would stick up for us and do it too, acting like he was scared just to make us feel better about being wusses. I miss that version of him.
I plop down cautiously, like the dam is a saddle, and not on one of those little ponies you ride at the petting zoo, but like it’s the mechanical bull at a backwoods strip club that plays nothing but classic country. This is so gonna give me hemorrhoids.
The shot of cold on my ass is a welcome change over the sweat that’s been pouring down my crack for the last several hours. It’s like a freakin’ swamp in there, or I don’t know, maybe I pooed myself. Could you blame me?
Oh thank god, my legs are so shaky I’m not sure I could have stood like that any longer. Every muscle is so tensed up I feel like a bodybuilder posing, oiled up in a never ending torrent of sweat leaking from every pore.
The white haired old biddy reaches out her gnarled hand, broken in the fall, her wrist bent back so far her knuckles are scraping against her forearm. The bones protruding from her wrist are pointed at me, dripping blood and cartilage from the open wound.
The soldier behind her leaps over the fallen woman like it’s nothing. He might as well be hopping over a puddle in the parking lot. I’ve jumped hurdles on the track with less grace than this. You can tell by his perfect form that he’s about to stick the landing. And when he does, he’s no more than a few steps away from us.
I grab the sword from my back out of instinct, but at this point, what am I even fighting for? That helicopter was our one way out. Everything was riding on that. Does it really matter if I get eaten alive or fall off the edge of a dam? Either way, it’s over for us. This was it. We’re out of options. There’s nowhere left to run.
I choke the handle of the sword like it’s Buckley’s throat, ready to swing with everything I have. If we go down, we’re taking a hell of a lot of bodies down with us. Bring it on!
CHAPTER 2
He floats through the air, a ballerina in camo fatigues and steel toe boots. He never so much as looks at his footing to know he’s going to land gracefully before sprinting towards us on a surface most people couldn’t walk on. And I know just as well as he does, so the grip around my blade tightens until I can hear my knuckles cracking against the handle.
His landing is a thing of beauty, until he realizes it’s not the gentle curvature of the massive structure his foot is touching, it’s the bone protruding from a dead woman’s wrist, reaching for me, oblivious to the fact that her fingers are pointed in the wrong direction.
He tries to correct himself with his other foot but it’s too late, he stumbles, slamming ribs first into the narrow strip of cement. His body bends in half, joints creaking and grinding as he teeters on the edge before falling head first, clawing at the wall in a failed attempt to hold himself up. There’s nothing to grab onto…
Except the legs of the leader of the pack.
He’s still dangling over the gorge. How has he not fallen yet? I swing my sword at his head but he’s just out of reach. I think I scraped his shoulder with the tip of the blade but it’s not enough to make a difference.
The militant ballerina grabs onto the ringleader’s legs, jerking him even further from my sword. And this is just great, Geriatric Cowgirl is getting off the saddle, she’s trying to stand up, bones crunching with every subtle movement.
“I gotta get closer,” I shout over my shoulder, sliding away from Felecia’s grasp. But she slides with me, keeping herself firmly pressed against my back as we scooch forward.
Ringleader’s eyes are locked on me, his deadly stare cutting through his bleary gaze. The bridge of his nose is swelling as blood drips from his flaring nostrils, mixing in with the crimson liquid that coated his face long before the canteen broke his nose.
He doesn’t show any sign of pain or even acknowledgement, it’s as if G.I. Ballerina isn’t dangling from his ankles while blood gushes down his face. It trickles over his shredded lips, where his face scraped against the unforgiving surface, and enters his mouth with every inhale.
How could the scientists have gotten this so wrong? If he’s supposed to be addicted to his own blood, shouldn’t he be lapping it up right now, a kitten with a bowl of milk? It’s his own blood he’s supposed to be addicted to, so why the hell does he want mine so bad?
He’s not getting it. I swing my sword like I’m chopping firewood, bringing the blade down across his forearm closest to me. It digs into his skin, meeting resistance on the bone. It’s too dull to cut through. I might as well be sawing through a tree branch with a butter knife.
G.I. Ballerina is climbing up him. He’s already reached his belt. And this guy doesn’t seem to care that he’s being used as a ladder, he’s too busy huffing and puffing, bloody spittle blowing everywhere as it escapes through the mangled splits in his lips.
A guttural cry echoes over the gorge as I bring the blade down again, every ounce of strength I have behind it. The force of the blow shatters his bone in a burst of calcified blood droplets. Vibrations sting my arms when the sword meets the cement, ringing through me like a giant church bell. Even the cortisone Paul’s dad pumped me full of isn’t enough to protect m
y injured arm from the bone rattling collision.
It worked. His hand doesn’t let go, but it doesn’t matter because the rest of his arm is no longer attached to it. It’s sitting on top of the dam, precariously balanced, rocking in the wind while his severed stub flails wildly, trying to find something to grab hold of. Blood squirts from the wound with every muscle spasm, coating the dam in a red paint that no amount of rain will wash away.
How is he still holding on? He’s only got one hand, and the weight of a whole other person hanging onto him! Just fall, damn it!
Cowgirl with the broken pelvic bone is on her feet, blood saturating her elastic waist jeans like she just started the period to end all periods, had menopause not taken them from her thirty years ago.
Her bones grind and pop with every jerky movement. It’s as if she’s moving in slow motion until something snaps in her hip and releases its grip on her broken body.
She takes a step towards us, trying to run but her dislocated bones won’t allow it. With a gruesome wiggle, she manages to plant her foot firmly in front of her, snapping and popping the whole time, like crushing a bag of ice. The sound is enough to make my skin crawl.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, prepare for her creepy disjointed assault or try to hack through this guy’s other arm before G.I. Ballerina muscles his way back onto the dam?
The warmth of Felecia’s body pressed against mine is replaced with a cold breeze on my spine as she gets back to a standing position, using my shoulders for balance. What on earth is she doing? Is she wrapping her leg around me? Don’t get me wrong, I like her legs around me in whatever kinky position she’s going for, but I’m not entirely sure now’s the appropriate time.
“Whatever you do,” she gasps, placing her foot in front of me, calf pressed as tightly against my chest as humanly possible, “don’t let me fall. You get him, I’ll get her.”
I know I can’t reach his forearm from here, and there’s no way I’m scooching closer, not with Felecia’s leg draped over my shoulder. There’s only one thing I can think of that might work, poking the beast.
Blood Type Infected (Book 5): The Departed Page 1
