by David Bourne
The two of them waited behind the living room windows that faced the driveway. They heard the horde before they could see it. The shuffling, smacking and moaning of the undead was unmistakable. The large number of these creatures increased the noise level even further.
As soon as the horde had reached the driveway, it became clear that the idea of them moving on was just wishful thinking. The zombies deliberately moved towards the house—as if they instinctively knew fresh prey was waiting inside. The first undead creature collided with the fence and nearly went berserk. The noise now reached an almost deafening level. The zombies up front were simply flattened and pinned against the fence and the gate by the crowd following them. Then it became all too clear that neither the fence nor the gate would offer much protection for long. The hinges and supports creaked due to the constant force from the bodies pressed against them. The zombies in back simply walked over their flattened comrades and used them as a means for climbing. It didn’t take long for the first zombies to climb over the fence and drop about seven feet down onto the lawn. Unaffected by the fall, the first ones got up again and made their way towards the house.
Scott held his ax and gripped the handle so hard his knuckles turned white. He looked at Ray. “We have to eliminate them before they become too many. We still have the chance to fight them individually.”
Ray nodded and pulled out his machete. “Let’s go.”
When they opened the door, they could already hear the hissing and humming of Chris’ slingshot in action. Soon afterwards, two zombies collapsed. Meanwhile, three more undead had crossed over the fence. The first one encountered Scott’s ax, and Ray took care of numbers two and three. Thick, coagulated blood started to stain the lawn a dark red.
Now more and more of the undead entered the area. Scott decapitated two female zombies who came directly at him. He saw in the corner of his eye that Ray was busy with an attacker and didn’t notice the group of zombies approaching him from behind.
“Ray, behind you!” he yelled.
Ray whirled around and faced three zombies who were dangerously close. He attempted to strike a lethal blow, but the tallest beast blocked his attack with its forearm. He dropped the machete.
“Scott!” He hit the tall one with a strong right hook and tried to get further away from the undead.
Once again he heard the familiar sssrrrrrrr of Chris’ slingshot bullets, and many of the zombies fell down sporting neat, round holes in their heads with brain matter dripping from their skulls. Ray picked up his machete and looked at the balcony. Chris grinned and had already fired the next bullets. Meanwhile, Scott had finished off two more creatures as Ray looked at the fence. The horde had been noticeably decimated, but the fence no longer slowed them down much. The sheer weight of the undead had bent the metal parts of the fence, and it was now a bridge leading into the property. It might still work, Ray thought, but then something inconceivable happened.
At the left side of the gate they heard an animalistic scream. Then a zombie jumped over the seven-foot fence, as if it had not been taller than a step.
This extraordinary undead creature landed on all fours. Its eyes shone red.
Who the hell is this son of a bitch?, Ray thought. Unlike the other shuffling undead, this zombie was remarkable agile. He raced towards the house with incredibly quick movements.
“Chris, here on the left,” Ray yelled at the balcony.
Chris was already aiming at the attacker and fired three bullets in quick succession in his direction.
The jumper avoided the projectiles seemingly without effort. With the grace of a dancer he jumped from spot to spot and changed his position with breathtaking speed. Then he continued crawling on all fours towards the house.
More zombies came streaming in and required all of Ray’s attention. From the corner of his eye, he saw that Scott had his hands full. He wanted to come to his aid, when once again one of these animalistic screams made him turn around.
It appeared Chris had finally hit the jumper on his shoulder while in mid-flight. The creature tumbled to the ground and fell hard, as he couldn’t break his fall with his useless right arm.
However, instead of the hit eliminating this zombie, it appeared to have made him go even more berserk. Still screaming loudly, the jumper broke into an enormous leap. Ray hardly believed his eyes. Seemingly without effort, the creature catapulted himself up towards the balcony, and a moment later he crashed onto the wooden structure. Chris, who stood at the railing, was thrown back and dropped his slingshot. He got up half dazed and immediately wanted to attack the jumper with his fists. Since he was unarmed and dizzy from pain, this uneven fight was over in a fraction of a second. The jumper grabbed Chris and threw him from the balcony. Chris flew downwards and hit the lawn with a dull thud. He didn’t move afterwards. The jumper glared at Ray and then disappeared into the house.
Ray heard Cathy and the children scream. No, no, no! “Scott, hold the line here!”
Scott, who stood in the middle of a semicircular mound of corpses, barely seemed to hear him. He only gave him a quick glance and a short nod to signal that he understood the situation.
As Ray moved towards the house, Scott had already faced the attackers again and split the skull of the next zombie. Ray ran as fast as he could into the house. On the stairs, Phil came running towards him, carrying his children in his arms. Fiona and Robbie screamed non-stop. “Take them into the van!” Ray yelled. “Where’s Cathy?”
“Upstairs!” Phil gasped before running to the garage with his children.
“CATHY!” Ray screamed.
Then he saw her. She came running out of the bedroom they shared, along the hallway near the stairs. Her eyes expressed sheer panic, but once she saw him, Ray thought a brief smile played around her lips. She ran towards the stairs, but as she almost reached them, the jumping monster burst forth from the bedroom. The enormous impact of his leap hit Cathy in the back and knocked her off her feet. They both flew over Ray, down the stairway and crashed at the bottom of the stairs. Ray heard the loud crack of bones breaking when her body hit the wooden floor face-down. Cathy’s screams were blood-curdling. The beast sat on Cathy’s back and tore a large piece of flesh from her neck, which it shook in its mouth like a trophy. With a shrill shriek of triumph, the jumper grotesquely celebrated the seizure of his prey, its mouth a deep red from all the blood. Ray charged at the undead. He raised his weapon high and struck from the right towards the zombie’s neck, but once again the creature was much faster It jumped several yards to the side and landed on a sofa in the adjacent living room. “Hang in there, Cathy,” Ray whispered to her motionless body.
The jumper glared at Ray with his maniacal eyes. Then Ray suddenly realized something: He knew who stood in front of him. At least he had seen the zombie’s jacket before—the undead creature wore an olive-green parka.
Uncertainty
When tennis players hit almost every ball perfectly, make almost no mistakes and are perfectly focused on the next move, they are in the zone. Scott Gerber swung an axe rather than a tennis racket, but since the attack of the horde he had been in the zone. He acted as if he were in a trance and probably would hardly remember any of the details at the end of the day. He would remember one important thing, though: He loved the feeling he was experiencing now, and he could finally pay them back. All of them.
The zombies fell, like the trees used to fall in his earlier life. In most instances, he cleanly chopped off the creature’s head. In the few other ones, when he didn’t hit them directly, a second blow served to dispatch them. Meanwhile, he was drenched in sweat and his arms burned like fire, but nevertheless, he performed his work with clockwork precision. The people in this house had become his friends, and he would kill the last damned zombie to defend them.
A shrill scream from the house brought him back to reality. He ignored the few remaining zombies and ran inside.
He saw Ray standing in the hallway, staring at a zombie in a gr
een parka who looked incredibly alive. Cathy lay at the foot of the stairs, bleeding profusely, and she didn’t move. Ray leaned over her protectively, and Scott saw that the jumper was baring his teeth and aiming at Ray.
“Ray, come over here! Ray! RAY!!” Scott yelled as loud a she could, but Ray didn’t appear to hear him. The jumper was getting ready to charge Ray from the sofa. When the jumper leapt up into the air from his position, Scott placed his massive body between the zombie and Ray. He hit the creature on the right side and landed roughly on it. He could hear how several of the monster’s bones broke in a loud crunch, but the creature pushed Scott away with remarkable strength. Scott slammed against the living room table, which collapsed under his weight. At first, he was out of breath, but then he rolled to his feet and grimly stood up. A few seconds later, the two opponents faced each other again. Scott saw a gaping hole in the zombie’s right shoulder.
This asshole doesn’t seem to feel much pain, Scott thought. His ax was out of reach. He desperately searched for something to turn the tide of the battle with. From the corner of his eyes, Scott saw the fireplace, and this gave him an idea. He grabbed the poker that stood next to it and held it in front of him. The jumper tightened his leg muscles and extended his claw-like hands to rip out Scott’s throat. Then he launched himself at Scott. Everything happened really fast. Once the jumper made his next move, Scott rammed the poker at him and pierced his chest. The undead creature jerked wildly in the air and uttered ear-splitting screams.
Scott used all his force and threw both the monster and the poker into the fireplace, where it landed in the middle of the fire. Within moments, the olive-green parka was ignited, but the jumper continued to attack Scott. Scott struck him twice with his elbow, then kicked the burning monster in the chest and it smashed backwards into a window pane and landed among the curtains. The fabric immediately caught fire, which spread to the carpet and other curtains.
DIE, FINALLY, Scott thought. He couldn’t understand how this tough creature was not overwhelmed by pain and still moved among the flames. Scott ran to get his ax and managed to finally kill the jumper who still lay lashing about and burning among the curtains. Then he hurried over to Ray who crouched over Cathy’s corpse and did not seem aware of the chaos around him.
Scott felt the heat of the fire against his skin, as the living room by now was ablaze.
“Ray, damn it, get a grip!” Scott yelled.
Ray looked at Scott with eyes void of expression, as if he just saw him for the first time in his life. Then Scott saw Cathy. She lay there motionless, had a gaping wound in her neck, and her body was shattered by the fall from upstairs. Where was Chris? Where were Greg and Howard? Where were Phil and his kids? Scott took Ray by the collar and shook him.
“Listen Ray, listen to me! Take Cathy now and get a car. I will follow you right away!” Then he picked up Cathy from the bottom of the stairs and placed her in Ray’s arms. Ray moved towards the front door as if in a trance. Scott took another look at the flaming inferno in the living room. The fire would be consuming the house within a few minutes. Scott ran upstairs. He hoped to find the others there. When he looked inside the bedroom, the last bit of hope that this day might end well after all had vanished. The room looked like a slaughterhouse. He found the corpses of two people, who must have been Greg and Howard, but they had been mauled so badly they were unrecognizable. Blood and guts were spread all over the room. He could find no trace of Chris, Phil or the children.
“PHIL? FIONA? ROBBIE? CHRIS?” Scott searched the other rooms, but in vain. He noticed how the smoke was getting thicker upstairs and now entered his lungs. He was getting dizzy. Then he heard the car honk. They are down in the van!
Scott raced down the stairs and faced a massive wall of flames. He had to decide whether to run through the fire or jump off the balcony. Without hesitating, he sprinted through the flames and was outside. When he was sure he was not on fire, he looked around: It was dark, but in the orange glow of the fire he could still see some zombies that had not made it across the fence. They were staring in fascination at the enormous fire before them. After the death of the jumper, who seemed to have been some kind of alpha zombie, their collective aggression seemed to wane for the moment.
A few yards away, Ray sat on the lawn, with Cathy in his arms. Chris was still lying motionless on the grass. Two headlights shone from the garage, and an engine was started. Then Phil drove the VW van out onto the lawn and stopped directly next to Ray. Fiona and Robbie sat in the passenger seat and stared silently at the burning house. Scott ran to Chris and checked his vital signs. He was relieved when he could feel a pulse, and he carried him to the van.
“Scott, where are the others?” Phil asked in a desperate tone when Scott arrived.
Scott only shook his head. “Take care of Chris, Phil. He’s unconscious, but still breathing.” Then he placed Chris on the back seat.
Ray still seemed not to be himself. He rocked back and forth on his heels, holding Cathy’s corpse and whimpering. Behind him in the background, parts of the roof collapsed and sent a heat wave blasting towards the survivors. Ray’s hair was singed, but he didn’t seem to care about it, or anything else.
Scott had once witnessed someone in such a state of shock. One time due to an accident in the forest, his buddy Lewis had his lower leg trapped under a tree. It happened far away from the logging camp, and they had to wait almost half an hour for help to come. During the entire time, Lewis was in such a state of shock that you could barely talk to him. When the tree was finally lifted, his lower leg looked like a crushed tomato. It was incredible how someone could block out pain like that. When he later talked to Lewis in the hospital, he could hardly remember anything.
Scott also hoped Ray would remember little of this horror. Scenes from his parents’ house swirled through his head and Scott understood how Ray must be feeling at this moment. He knew how much Cathy had meant to him, and he hated himself for what he had to do now. He softly touched his friend on the shoulder.
“Ray. Hey, Ray. She is in a better place now. We have to get out of here.”
Ray didn’t react, but when Scott took Cathy away from him, he let it happen. Scott carried the shattered body to a nearby tree and slowly placed it out of Ray’s sight behind the trunk. He took her head between his hands and thought for a moment. Then he rapidly twisted her head by a hundred eighty degrees, until the neck broke. Cathy had left his world as a human being, and he wanted her to stay that way.
When he returned to the van, Ray was already sitting in the back. Phil had placed Chris in the small loading area inside the VW and put his jacket below his head. “Phil, I’m going to open the gate. Some of those assholes are still standing outside. I’ll return immediately, and then you accelerate. If necessary, we run over all of them.” Phil nodded.
Scott marched to the gate. When he opened it, three of undead lurched towards him. How could the zombie in the house be so fast? Scott wondered. Compared to the jumper, these specimens moved in slow motion. He shook his head, returned to the van and got inside. Then Phil stepped on the accelerator. At the gate, they had gathered enough speed to simply sweep away the last three zombies.
Then they followed along the road. For several minutes, nobody said a word. Phil finally broke the silence.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Fort Weeks,” Scott said.
Thank-you and Bonus
Dear reader,
I am very happy to see you decided to read my first novel. I sincerely hope you enjoyed following my sometimes admittedly wild imagination. Why did I decide to write a book about zombies and undead creatures? The answer is simple. It was so much fun for me, and I hope you felt the same when you read my book.
If you feel I entertained you and made you laugh, cry or scream while being caught up in the story, you in return can do me a great favor. Please tell your friends about it.
Tweet it to the world, or post about it on Facebook. Talk to you
r family about it, or mention it to friends and colleagues. Of course, most of all I would like for you to leave a positive review on Amazon if you liked the book. I am an independent author, not connected to a large publishing house, and therefore, I don’t have other ways of advertising.
As a little “thank-you,” I have prepared a bonus feature for you: If you join my VIP Reader Club, I will email a secret chapter of the book to you which provides more background information about the virus! Of course you can receive this chapter even if you don’t leave a review (but then the zombies might come and attack you some time!!:-) ).
Click here to join the VIP Reader Club:
One click ensures that you will receive all the news and updates about my books and new publications, current offers and discounts.
You can also use this to contact me directly. After all, direct feedback, that I hope to receive often, is as important as online evaluations. What did you like? What did not work well in your opinion? What was missing that you would definitely like to read about? Just mail to [email protected] !
I will do my best to answer you and begin a dialog. Please contact me, so that I can soon once again unleash these “damned critters” on humanity – “Stage Two” is already in the works!
Sincerely,
David Bourne
Table of Contents
Evolution Z - Stage One
Preface
Ray (1)
Scott (2)
Josh (3)
Josh (4)
Ray (5)
Ray (6)
Scott (7)
Scott (8)
Ray (9)
