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

by Jeff DeGordick

  Sarah bent over and smashed the bat down on its face twice more until it was a crushed and bloody pulp and its flailing arms stopped moving.

  The two that had seen her before came around to the back where she had been standing and followed her in a hurried trot.

  There was an empty aisle next to the felled zombie she stood over, or she could have continued forward and wrapped around the edge of the department. When a zombie appeared at the other end of the aisle next to her, it made the choice clear.

  She ran forward and rounded the corner, running into two more undead. She bowled into them as she tried to stop, and their bodies stumbled backward, their faces painted in sheer surprise.

  Hurried footsteps came behind her, and she knew they would round the corner at any moment.

  Sarah felt trapped, and her heart rate increased, her anxiety starting to get the best of her. That voice in her head that told her she could do this started to fade away, and she was suddenly unsure of herself. That made her arms shake, and it made her grip on the bat feel loose and slippery.

  Then an epiphany came to her, clear and brilliant. Strange machinations in her mind were at work, and they suddenly produced to her the image of the killer, imposing it on each of the two zombies in front of her. She saw his long, greasy black hair, his crazy eyes and his demented smile.

  The two killers leered at her, starting to gain their composure and moving toward her.

  The image caused something to snap in Sarah, and she thrust forward and slammed one of them in the side of the head with the bat, sending him crashing into the wall, then she planted her feet and swung the bat the other way, aiming low and taking out the other killer's leg.

  His knee popped like a chicken wing and he collapsed to the ground, his ridiculous smile still beaming as his face pointed up at the ceiling.

  Sarah hopped over the two killers, who were still alive, but injured. She looked behind her as the two sets of footsteps following her rounded the corner, and she saw two more holograms of the killer stalking her. She continued to run, but her ankle and the backpack slowed her down.

  She spun around as she got to the end of the shelf near the front of the automotive department, facing the killers with her bat raised.

  Another one came at her from the side and tackled her, hysterically clawing at her and trying to bring his gnashing teeth to her neck.

  Sarah stumbled and bounced off the wall. The killer clung to her, and she instinctively pulled the bat up with both hands and wedged it between them, pressing it against his neck. He was stronger than her, and he kept pushing her toward the wall, keeping her pressed against it as the other killers closed in.

  She cried out and used the bat to twist him around and redirect his momentum, sending him crashing into the others. Sarah stumbled backward, feeling the pain in her ankle swell up as she regained her footing.

  Another killer came around the corner from the end of the aisle where she had come from, and now she saw all of them lined up in front of her: the one that just appeared behind them all, the two that she had beaten down to the ground who had now gotten back to their feet, the two who had been following her, and the one who tackled her.

  Six killers stood in front of her, and they all sized each other up.

  Sarah felt the weight of the bat in her hand, and it almost felt like an extension of her own body now. It was comfortable and easy. She looked from one menacing face to the next, and though her adrenaline kept her on edge, a sense of calm came over her.

  She took a wide stance and let them come one by one. And one by one, she struck them down, the bat causing mists of blood to spray out of their fractured skulls as their bodies sailed every which way. Each hit felt incredibly satisfying as the bat erased their demented faces.

  Every last one of them hit the ground, and her arms were exhausted, but she wasn't through. As they all writhed on the ground, trying to get back to their feet, she marched up to each one and extinguished their lives forever.

  She stood in the midst of the lifeless pile of zombies, breathing heavily. She felt a heavy mask of perspiration on her face, but when she touched it she realized it was blood and knew it wasn't hers.

  Sarah stumbled out of the department and headed for the exit of the store, passing through the housewares department. She grabbed a towel and wiped the zombies' blood off her face, drying off her front as well.

  When she was out of the store and back in the brisk whiteness of the afternoon, she stopped for a moment and took a breath before carrying on. She knew the road ahead of her wasn't easy, but she was filled with the confidence that she could do it.

  Her mind was on the killer and the showdown that was coming.

  16

  The Hospital

  Sarah practically fell through the doors of the hospital. She dropped to her hands and knees and gasped for air. After a long journey to get there, the sliding glass doors leading to the emergency wing were locked, and she had to heave a heavy rock through it to gain entry.

  Her instincts had been correct about the hospital being abandoned. She had to wedge her way through a gap in a warped fence surrounding the property, and there were no vehicles in sight. The parking lot had been cracked and broken apart with tall weeds growing through, and she envisioned that that was what it had looked like before the world went down the drain.

  A particularly odious smell hit her and she turned her nose up and tried her best to ignore it as she slowly lifted herself off the ground and took a look around. She desperately wanted to peel the heavy backpack off her shoulders, but she made an agreement with herself that she would do it once she scoped out the building and settled in a few floors higher first.

  She flicked the flashlight on and looked over the counter at the emergency check-in. Old furniture and computers sat in the room behind it, and the whole area gave off an intensely creepy vibe. It hadn't dawned on her that picking an abandoned hospital would be in any way harmful to her psyche, but it had already started to put her on edge.

  On the entire trip to get here, she thought about the killer as she occasionally glanced over her shoulder, and she was surprised that she hadn't seen or heard a single trace from him since the night before and she wondered if she really did get off the hook. But she refused to entertain the idea until she got prepared. When she was finished, she would reassess the situation then.

  Sarah passed a gift shop, heading in the other direction now, and a couple of derelict elevators sat sadly in the wall.

  The hospital had a fairly long and straight design, and the hallway she walked along stretched in front of her all the way to the other end of the building, separated only by a few sets of doors along the way.

  She found a map on the wall and shone the flashlight on it, seeing all the different wings of the hospital lit up in once-vibrant, but now faded colors. The building was four floors high, and she decided that the third floor, barring any unforeseen circumstances, would be where she would make her stand. The straightforward layout of the hospital didn't afford any circular routes, opting only for long hallways connected by elevator or staircase, and she had been disappointed that it didn't give her as much flexibility as she was hoping for. But it was fine. She would just need to adapt, and if the killer closed in on her, she could always flee down or up the staircase to the next floor.

  Sarah passed the radiology check-in, glancing down a branching hallway leading off to the side with signs on the walls asking patients to turn off their cell phones. She pointed the flashlight up at the ceiling and saw a sign ahead with an arrow pointing to the left and a symbol of a black stick figure heading up a flight of stairs.

  She went up to the door and shone the flashlight through the little window in it, checking around in the corners for any surprises. When it appeared empty, she opened the door and the long-unused metal handle produced a whine that echoed up the tall shaft. She paused at the foot of the stairs, looking up and sighing.

  The heaviness of the backpack on her
shoulders pulled at her now more than ever, but she soldiered through it and started heading up, one step at a time. She stopped at the second floor and poked her head out into the long hallway stretching north and south. She didn't go far, but she wanted to check around a little just to make sure the floor truly was empty. But she didn't hear anything or see anything, and so she headed up to the third and then the fourth floors, coming up with the same result.

  When she stood on the top floor, she took a moment to stare out the window. The sun was setting and she had a perfect view of the reds and oranges washing over the horizon. Every once in a while she would come across a strange existential moment, or something of beauty would nudge her and remind her that it still existed amid the mundane and cruel world that remained. This was one of them, and as she admired the sunset's beauty, she felt sad as she realized that whatever was out there in the universe—the sun, the stars, billions of other planets, some perhaps teeming with life not too different than what had been brought up on Earth—all of it continued on without a second thought while Earth and everything on it slowly died.

  When the moment passed, she got back to work. Sarah made her way down to the third floor again and dropped her backpack on a bench near the nurses' station. She took the AK-47 off her neck as even that had started to really irritate her, and she set it down next to the backpack. She opened the zipper and started pulling out each item that she picked up, setting them down on the floor next to her. When they were all lined up in a row, she swept the flashlight across each one, going through the plan in her head.

  Windows occasionally interspersed the rooms on the west side of the hallway, and as the sun disappeared over the horizon and was replaced by the moon, there should have been just enough light to see where she was going without the aid of the flashlight if worst came to worst. But darkness and low visibility was part of her plan.

  She set off to work, finding good places for each of her booby-traps and makeshift items. It took longer than she anticipated to prepare, and night soon fell. When she picked up the second can of primer spray to finish off her plan, she glanced out a window and saw that she was out of time.

  Just inside the fence where she had come in, the killer stood, staring up at her. He was just a dark silhouette in the moonlight, but she could see the light glinting off the blade of his knife as he slowly twisted it back and forth by his side.

  That familiar and insidious fear grew inside her like a seeping gas, causing her to tremble. Now that she was actually standing in an abandoned hospital with the killer about to come in and add her to a long list of victims, she started to have second thoughts about what she was doing.

  But now it was far too late.

  17

  Showdown

  Sarah stepped back from the window, looking up and down the hallway, not knowing what to do. She had gone over everything in her head beforehand, but now that the time had come, she seized up.

  She ran over to the backpack and stuffed the primer spray inside with the leftover road flare and hid it behind the desk at the nurses' station. She stuffed her head inside the football helmet and made sure the face mask and chinstrap were secure. It obscured her vision, blocking her peripheral and making it hard to see what was around her. It also muffled her hearing, leaving her vulnerable to missing subtle noises that she may have otherwise picked up. But she needed protection more than anything.

  Sarah grabbed the baseball bat and hid it in a cramped closet in one of the patient rooms in case she needed it later.

  Pulling the assault rifle off her shoulder, she ran back to the window, hearing her own breathing amplified in the cramped spaces of the helmet. Her eyes scanned the empty lot, but she didn't see him. She pressed her head to the glass, bumping the front of the helmet into it as she frantically tried to see down to the entrance, but he was already inside.

  Sarah looked at each end of the long hallway, keeping an iron grip on the rifle. Her heart was like a jackhammer and she tried to calm down, but it was no use. She jogged to the stairwell next to the nurses' station and quietly opened the door, poking her head in and listening.

  Silence.

  She turned around and slowly walked down across the length of the hospital toward the other stairwell, keeping the rifle and flashlight aimed in front of her. There were only two, and they were within sight of each other at the end of each floor. The hallway stretched in front of her agonizingly, seeming to never end, as the tiny stairwell door in the distance stayed almost invisible, always just outside the flashlight's fading light.

  She walked softly, keeping her footsteps barely audible so she could hear any approaching noises, but still there was nothing to be heard. She knew the killer saw that she was on the third floor, and he would be coming, but she didn't know when or from which direction.

  The more time that passed without anything happening, the more deafening the silence became. It started to drive her mad, and the silence scared her more than anything. Eventually she got to the point where she was longing to hear the killer make a noise to put her mind at ease. But it never came.

  She reached the other stairwell and looked through the window in the door, shining the light through. She opened it a crack, being very cautious until she was sure there was nothing lurking behind it, then she pushed it open.

  Silence.

  Sarah walked to the edge of the railing, keeping the toe of her shoe stretched out behind her to hold open the door as she leaned her head over the edge and looked down.

  Suddenly there was a noise, and it came from behind her. It was a faint squeak like a wheel that needed some grease. The noise scared her so badly that she jumped on the spot, inadvertently letting go of the door and jumping even higher as it slammed behind her. She spun around and clawed at the handle, pulling it open and dashing back into the third-floor hallway with her rifle and flashlight raised and ready to fire before settling down.

  The tiny door to the other stairwell at the end of the hallway remained closed, and she never took her eyes off of it. But she started to second-guess herself, telling herself that he already came through the door, then arguing back that there was no way he could have done it in such a short time without her hearing or seeing anything.

  The squeaky sound echoed through the corridor again.

  Sarah stopped.

  It was somewhere far down the hall, but the stairwell door didn't move.

  She couldn't understand what she was hearing, and when silence fell over the area again, she cautiously began to creep forward. Suddenly every patient room next to her was like a tomb of death, hiding a lurking evil that wanted to reach out and grab her and swallow her whole. She flicked the flashlight into each room very briefly as she passed before returning the light back down the hallway. Every time she did, old beds and monitoring equipment would move and shift along with their shadows in the bright light, giving the illusion of quick movement, and it would scare her each time, knowing that if there were actual movement from one of the rooms, she would never see it until it was too late.

  The squeaking sound came once more, then nothing. It sounded like it was close-by, but it couldn't have been; there was no way the killer could have reached her floor without coming through one of the stairwells, and she was positive he hadn't.

  The fear buzzed through her brain, making it itch. She wanted to rip off the helmet and throw it away like it were a bomb about to go off, but she kept it on, her better judgment holding steady.

  Sarah reached the end of the hall, passing every room and the lifeless old elevators, and came to the nurses' station. She shone the flashlight toward the staff rooms behind the counter, but there was no way entry could have been gained through them unless the killer had somehow climbed the outside of the building and slipped in through a window. She knew the thought was ridiculous, but she kept the flashlight and rifle pointed toward the tucked away rooms for a moment, wondering.

  When Sarah had been walking down the hallway, trying to find the so
urce of the strange noise, looking from room to room, she had completely ignored the open elevator door that she passed, her brain no longer paying any attention to it since there was no power to the building.

  As she stood with her back to it, the killer climbed up from the elevator shaft and stepped into the hallway.

  Sarah swept the flashlight back to the stairwell next to her, completely oblivious about what was behind her. The football helmet hugging against her ears prevented her from hearing his quiet footsteps on the floor as he approached.

  A strong gust of wind flew through the shattered ER doors on the ground floor and went up through the open elevator shaft. It became faint by the time it reached the third floor, the tail end of it just licking at the back of Sarah's exposed neck between her coat and the helmet. As her skin tickled and gave her a little shudder, she turned around, curious.

  The knife sailed through the air, coming down in an arc. She staggered backward, the blade sweeping down in front of her face and missing her body. Her momentum carried her into the wall and her back hit it with a hard thud. Sarah aimed the AK-47, holding the flashlight in her front hand to illuminate the killer.

  By the time she took aim and pulled the trigger, he had already taken off down the hallway. The gun recoiled crazily in her hands as the incredibly loud noise of gunfire pierced the stillness of the dark hospital. Her arms were badly shaking, causing her accuracy to go out the window as the bullets sprayed around in a wide scatter and missed the killer completely.

  When she let go of the trigger and the gun stopped kicking, she steadied the flashlight and tried to see where he went.

  Something moved in a quick flash at the edge of the light before it was gone, and she craned her neck, taking a few steps forward as she tried to decide which room he had hidden in.

  Silence settled over the floor again as she slowly crept down the hallway. Her heart was pounding like crazy and the whole event happened so fast that she couldn't be sure it wasn't just a trick of the light.