Val: Prequel to The Zombie Chronicles

by Peebles, Chrissy

  “When people compromise human morals to survive, it’s despicable.”

  “Jenny is traumatized. Her mother turned into a zombie and tried to attack her…and she isn’t the only one who has nightmares.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, touching his hand. “My fiancé turned too. I’ll never forget the cold look in his eyes. I get the shudders just thinking about it. I still mourn his death every day. I just…can’t get over it.”

  “Seems everyone has had loved ones ripped away from them these days,” he softly said.

  “He’d want me to go on,” I whispered. “He’d want me to find my family.”

  “Tell me about them.”

  I reached into Sammy’s bag and grabbed my picture of my biological family. I took it out of the Ziploc bag, then handed it to Kyle.

  He studied it and smiled. “What a beautiful family.”

  “Thank you. I don’t really know that much, since I was adopted. My adoptive family is gone, but they were all beautiful people. I couldn’t have asked for better parents. I loved them so much. I only found out about a year ago that I was adopted.”

  “You never suspected before?”

  “Actually, I did. Some things just didn’t seem to add up. I was the tallest person in my family, even taller than my male cousins. I can’t tell you how many times people asked me how I got so tall. They had brown eyes, but mine are blue, and I’m a brunette while they’re all bleach blond. I used to stare in the mirror and ask myself whose eyes I was staring at and why they are so blue. When I found the adoption papers, I was floored. My parents were robbed, and since I was on call, I was sent over to make the police report. They weren’t home, but I checked the safe, to see what jewelry was missing, since I knew about the majority of my mom’s valuables. When I came on the adoption papers, I was dumbfounded.”

  “What a shock.”

  “Yeah, it was quite the jolt. I started asking questions about my background and where I was born and who my birth parents were. I was angry that they’d kept it from me all those years, and they weren’t happy that I wanted to look for my biological family. It was a big, hot mess for a while.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I tried to let it go, but I felt like a piece of me was missing. They tried to fill the void in my life, but they just couldn’t. I needed to know who I was and where I’d really come from, so my search began. I tried everything, from support groups to the Internet. When I found my mother’s phone number, I was elated. I couldn’t believe I’d tracked her down. I wondered if I should even bother her, intrude on her life like that. I worried that she might not want anything to do with me, that maybe I was just a painful memory for her since she’d gotten rid of me all those years ago. When I nervously dialed the phone and heard her voice for the very first time, I told her my name, birthdate, and hometown, and I told her I thought she was my mother. The phone went silent for a while, and I was worried that she’d just hung up on me, but then I heard a long sob. She admitted that she was my real mother, and she asked how I was doing. At that point, I started to sob too. We began emailing each other, and she sent tons of pictures of the family. I couldn’t stop staring at them, imagining the future we would have getting to know each other. We made plans to meet, but that never happened…because the world went to hell.”

  “I’m glad you at least had a chance to talk to her.”

  “We seem to have a lot in common, and I look just like her. I think knowing her, if only by phone, has helped me deal with a lot of the anxiety I used to feel about being an adoptee. It’s helped her as well, to come to terms with the past and to heal. She told me her heart is scarred and that she’s missed me every single day, that unresolved grief and guilt for giving me up has always eaten away at her.”

  “Wow. So there are still hurt feelings?”

  “I was hurt and angry at first, but I’m over that now. I know she only did what she thought was best, in order to give me a better life, and I had a beautiful life with my adoptive family, until…well, you know.”

  Our eyes locked, and we seemed lost in each other’s gaze, oblivious to anything else. I was fixated on his piercing stare. His eyes drifted down to my lips, and he moved closer to lower his mouth on mine. Our lips connected in a slow, gentle touch.

  A moan echoed through the open window, and Kyle’s eyes grew wide.

  “That wasn’t me,” I muttered, then swallowed hard.

  Chapter 25

  I hurried and shut the window. When I peeked out, I didn’t see anything, but I quickly pulled the curtains shut.

  “It could be a few stragglers,” he said. “I could take them out so they don’t start banging on the window and wake Jenny up. She’s already freaked enough.”

  I nodded and walked to the door. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep with those things out there. The hill had deterred most of them, but a few had managed to climb it, so we weren’t as safe as we’d naïvely thought we were.

  “Let’s turn off the generator,” Kyle said, “and take out any zombies that got up the hill.”

  I slung my rifle over my shoulder and grabbed an axe that was sitting next to a pile of wood, then opened the door. My gaze darted around, scanning the landscape ahead of me. Zombies approached. We didn’t want to alert every single zombie of our whereabouts, so we opted to take them out by bashing their heads.

  I shot Kyle a look. “Are you ready to make sure the dead stay dead?”

  He held his crowbar tight. “Yep. Time for a little head-bangin’!”

  Fueled by anger and revenge, I lifted up the axe as the hissing zombie with half a jaw shambled toward me.

  WHACK!

  When I sliced the thing’s head open, black liquid sprayed out like a fountain. The stench was almost as debilitating as the next corpse reaching for me. I slashed horizontally at its throat, and black goop dripped down its neck and throat. When the third one rushed in, snapping its jaws, I decapitated it with one fierce swing. Letting out a loud battle cry, I slammed into the next zombie as blood and gore flew. Another hideous beast walked toward me with dead-fish eyes and skin like brown leather. I took it down quickly, but my axe was embedded in the thing’s cranium. With a few hard tugs, it came loose. I then finished off the zombie with the slashed throat.

  I glanced over my shoulder and saw Kyle bashing a black-haired zombie. Another hiss caught my attention, and I spun around and whacked a zombie’s face that was already coming off in layers, barely hanging on. My axe got stuck again, and I cursed. Two more were coming, and every precious second counted. I pried it loose just in time to lunge at my next target. My swing caved in the zombie’s face and sent it crashing into the grass. Again, the axe was difficult to retrieve, and I wished I’d opted to look for a shovel or a baseball bat rather than a bladed weapon.

  I creamed my axe into the next one, which reached for me with long, black fingernails. The blade went in at a forty-five-degree angle, and the creature’s head bounced off, indicating that my axe was surprisingly sharp and/or the undead thing was already very decomposed. Three more stumbled out of the woods, and I wondered how many more were coming. Are we safe up here at all? Should we bolt now, before we’re permanently trapped?

  Panting, I wiped my face and pushed the sweaty hair out of my face. It was really hard work fighting the onslaught, especially without guns—nothing quite as easy and glamorous as Hollywood made it seem. I bludgeoned the next and smashed its face into a bloody pulp. Luckily, I had a strong stomach. When the axe blade embedded into another creature’s cranium, I had had enough and reached for my gun. I smashed the butt of my rifle against the zombie’s thick skull, crushing it like an egg. I looked around and stared at the bodies littering the yard. “Looks like we got ‘em all,” I said, “and we didn’t even have to use one bullet.”

  “Wow,” Kyle said, staring at me in disbelief.

  “What?”

  “You just…you’ve got mad, crazy skills, girl. You fight like a champ.”

 
“Bonding over zombie kills?” I replied. “I like that.”

  Smiling, he inched closer. “Let’s get inside and get cleaned up.”

  “I couldn’t agree more. This was my favorite shirt, and now there are zombie brains all over it.”

  We went back inside and put on some fresh clothes from one of the dressers. I had to roll up the pants and tuck in the shirt, but I found a belt to keep the baggy pants from falling off. The shirt Kyle found was two sizes small and had to stretch across his muscular chest and bulging muscles.

  I insisted that he go upstairs and get some sleep while I played lookout, and he took me up on the offer. I was glad, because it would give me some much-needed alone time for me to think and clear my head. Halfway through the night, he came back down and then I went up to bed.

  * * *

  When I awoke, Sammy was shaking me.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked sleepily. “Is Jenny okay?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But what?”

  She looked terrified. “While you were sleeping, I took a shift on the roof this morning. And…well, you gotta see this for yourself!”

  “Val!” Kyle yelled. “Get down here!”

  By his panicked voice, I knew something was terribly wrong. I grabbed my gun and hurried down the stairs, with Sammy hot on my heels. The door was open, and she darted past me and rushed right outside. “C’mon!” she said.

  She led me to the side of the house and told me to climb up the ladder. When I got to the top, Kyle, helped me up and handed me a pair of binoculars. I stared through them in complete shock.

  Chapter 26

  I studied the situation from atop the roof and gasped. A herd had surrounded our tiny hill, zombies as far as the eye could see, with no possible escape route around them. “This isn’t good,” I said.

  “You got that right,” Kyle agreed. “They probably gathered there last night.”

  I let out a long breath. “Thank goodness we didn’t use guns.”

  “Tell me about it.” Kyle’s brows knitted together. “We need to come up with a plan.”

  “Gimme a minute,” I said, my mind scrambling for a solution.

  “Duh! It’s simple,” Sammy said.

  I cocked a questioning brow at her. “Simple?”

  She continued, “We just have to use the brains God gave us. They don’t have any, and they’re pretty stupid. That’s probably why they want our brains.” She nudged me with a chuckle.

  “She’s right,” Kyle said. “Any trick we can think of, anything strategic, would outwit them. We can tip the scales in our favor by using rationale. Hmm. I’m thinking.”

  “Thought I smelled something burning,” Sammy teased.

  He rolled his eyes at her while I stifled a tiny chuckle.

  “Should we leave?” Sammy asked. “Maybe we can get through using sheer force.”

  “I don’t know how we could get through all those things,” I said, “but we can build some pretty impressive zombie traps. I’ve got a lotta tricks up my sleeve.”

  “If they come up this hill, booby traps aren’t gonna hold them,” Kyle said. “They’ll just step over their fallen comrades and keep coming.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Sammy said. “Have you ever seen Val’s zombie traps? They’re amazing!”

  “I’m sure they are,” he replied, “but there are just too many. It won’t work.”

  I sighed. “At the very least, it might buy us the precious time we need to make a break for it, to run.”

  “Run to where? Into the waiting herd?” Sammy asked.

  I just shook my head, contemplating any possible escape.

  “They can smell us, right?” Sammy asked. “What if the wind carries our scent down there? I’m not so sure it’s even safe to be hanging around out here.”

  “You’re right,” Kyle said. “Let’s just go inside and keep quiet and hope they pass. And no turning that generator back on.”

  I clambered down the ladder and waited for Kyle, who was studying our predicament intensely. I could tell he was scared to death for him and his daughter, no matter how hard he tried to hide it.

  “What’s going on?” Jenny asked from the porch.

  “Everything’s fine, honey,” I lied. “We were just…doing a security check.”

  As soon as the words left my mouth and I spun around to meet her gaze, I saw a zombie shuffling toward her.

  “Run, Jenny!” Sammy screamed. “Get inside! Lock the door!”

  The girl froze and the zombie took full advantage as it lumbered toward her.

  I pointed my gun.

  “Don’t shoot!” Sammy warned. “It’ll just draw them all over here.”

  I grabbed Sammy’s axe. Lifting it, I ran at Jenny and yelled for her to go back in the house.

  Wide-eyed, the girl screamed.

  I quickly whacked the head clean off the zombie. It rolled across the porch like a bowling ball, and the body collapsed and fell down the stairs.

  Jenny screamed, but I quickly led her inside. Kyle and Sammy came in as I tried to comfort Jenny.

  A second later, she ran up to her room and slammed the door, and Kyle ran after her.

  “You couldn’t have killed the zombie a different way?” Sammy said. “She’s only five, Val. No need to be so…R-rated about everything.”

  “You know the first rule of survival, Sammy. Don’t get bitten…and don’t let your friends get bitten either—at any cost.”

  “There are other ways to kill the things that aren’t so gory.”

  “It was the heat of the moment,” I answered, “and you said no guns!”

  “So you felt the need to decapitate the thing? Its head practically rolled right over her little shoes! Then, you hacked away at the head like Gallagher on a watermelon!”

  “I had to kill it, to destroy the brain. I hate that Jenny saw that, but I’m sure she’s seen worse before.”

  “Well, you put on quite the show.”

  “I wasn’t trying to.”

  “You’re lucky I can handle blood and guts,” she said. “I’m a little more grown up, colder, jaded, and rough around the edges. I guess, in a zombie apocalypse, my experience as a juvenile delinquent actually comes in handy. That little girl’s been protected her whole life, though, so she’s a bit…squeamish.”

  “You’re right, but she has been through a lot,” I said.

  “And I haven’t? My whole family was devoured by the living dead, and I lost most of my friends.”

  “So has she, and she’s only five.”

  Kyle came down the stairs, looking distraught.

  I looked up at him. “I’m sorry.”

  “You only did what you had to do. It isn’t your fault. It’s just the world we live in, and things like this are to be expected.”

  “Does she know about the herd down there?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t think so. We can’t just pretend like zombies don’t exist and life’s just a bunch of unicorns, rainbows, and marshmallows,” Sammy said. “Then it only hurts worse when reality smacks you in the face with its green, slimy, bony hand.”

  “I know,” Kyle said.

  “I know she’s young, but her survival instincts need to kick in now. She needs to know what to do. What if all of us get killed? She has to be prepared to take care of herself. All kids do these days. There’s no time for childhood anymore.”

  Kyle bit his lip and looked at Sammy. “You think I don’t know that? That’s why I’m glad we met you two. Maybe you can help, teach her some things and try to be her friend.”

  “I’ve tried to be her friend, but she doesn’t like me. Maybe it’s the blue hair or the pierced nose.”

  “Or the attitude,” I said.

  “Listen, Val—”

  “Don’t get mad at Val,” Kyle snapped. “She’s just trying to help.”

  “What? I could never get mad at Val,” Sammy retorted. “I mean, she’s arrested me twice and thrown me i
n the slammer, and we’re still BFFs.” She tapped her chin. “Well, that last night in the slammer was Marvin’s fault, not hers,” she said with a grin.

  Kyle looked at me. “Wow. Between Jenny and this one, we definitely have our hands full.”

  I laughed. “Yeah. Raising kids is hard work.”

  “Hey!” Sammy said. “At least I don’t stay out all night like some teenagers.”

  “You break curfew now, young lady, you might end up as dinner for some lucky zombie,” I said. “But, all kidding aside, we do need to come up with a smokin’ game plan.”

  “We’ll keep watching and see if they move on,” Kyle said.

  “And what if they don’t?” Sammy asked.

  “Then we fight our way through,” he said. “We’ve got guns, and we might just have to use them.”

  “You know a gunfight would be suicide, right? I might be the crazy chick with blue hair, but even I wouldn’t try something so stupid.”

  I tried to lighten the mood, because my heart was pounding a million miles a minute. “Who says those rotting piles of rigor mortis would even want you?”

  She slid her hands down her hips. “Hey now! All this is USDA, Grade A! I’m a tasty delicacy.”

  I playfully punched my young friend, and she hurried upstairs to go talk to Jenny.

  “It’s gonna be okay,” Kyle said, noticing the worried look on my face.

  “I put on a good show for Sammy, but between you and me, I’m scared to death. We need to keep an eye on that herd at all times. If we see one opening, we gotta take it. If they come up here, we’re screwed.”

  “They won’t,” he assured me, though I caught some doubt in his voice.

  “You hope. I don’t think waiting them out is the best idea.”

  “We have plenty of food and water.”

  “I guess we can wait a day or two for the antibiotics to get Jenny back on par. Even if the zombies aren’t gone by then, we need to hightail it out of here, because they will eventually come up here.”

  “Fighting our way through a herd won’t do much to settle Jenny’s nerves,” he said.