When the gunner shifted his aim, Jenn lifted up just enough to aim. Two more Corsairs died before she ducked down and began low-crawling forward. Fifteen seconds later she popped up again and killed another man. She was about to shoot again when two men ran up from behind her.
She screamed and kicked as they reached down and lifted her off the ground as if she were a child. “Shut up!” Mike whispered, as he and Stu ran for the cover of the porch. They set her down and both fired at the fence where one of the Corsairs twisted with the impact of their bullets and fell as he was trying to climb over.
“What are you doing here?” Mike asked.
“I, uh, wanted to give you, or rather Stu, this,” she lied, presenting the M4 to Stu. Although she wouldn’t need the gun where she was going, the real reason she had come was that she needed to see Mike. She would be going outside the fence as soon as the Corsairs realized how terrible their position was, and that time was coming quickly. There were screams from all over the perimeter and cries of retreat echoed over the gunfire.
At the same time, there was a great cracking sound as the dead began to tear down the plywood boards on the west side of the complex.
Mike looked confused. “What are you talking about? Stu can barely limp around. Keep the rifle, Jenn. You’re more effective…”
Stu tried to hand back the rifle. “We can get someone else. Or I can do it.”
“Do what?” Mike demanded.
Angrily, Jenn pushed the gun back, saying, “Someone has to be ready to put out the fire, and I can’t climb up there. Someone else has to clear out the last of the Corsairs and then button this place up. That’ll be Stu’s job, because frankly, we can’t trust anyone else to do it.”
Mike glanced back and forth from Jenn to Stu. “And?”
“And someone has to go outside the fence to distract the dead,” she said in a whisper. “Or they’ll get in the perimeter.”
“I’ll go,” Mike said, standing up. “We’ll get someone else to go up onto the roof. One of the men.” He looked around, ignoring two of the Corsairs as they climbed up the wall and disappeared. Other than the few Corsairs left, there were no men in evidence.
Stu stood, wagging his head, his mouth hanging open in disbelief. “Maybe I could get them away. I don’t have to go far. Just far enough…”
Jenn punched his hurt leg and he crumpled. “No. This has to be done, now! The fire has to be put out, now! The complex has to be shut down, now! Three jobs for three of us.” She stood, staring up at Mike and swallowed hard. “Stu, look away.”
He turned to the wall of the porch and punched a hole in the siding. Jenn ignored him. She brushed away one of Mike’s tears. “Maybe…maybe, I’ll make it,” she said.
“Wait! I could…” She shut him up, kissing him for the third and final time. Midway through the kiss, his shoulders slumped as he realized their fates were set.
He looked broken as she pulled away from him. His face was a mask of misery and his green eyes were tortured with the knowledge that she would never get away from so many of the dead.
She left him, knowing that another kiss would only doom them all. She ran away, her vision blurred by tears. Savagely, she ripped them away with the back of her hand. Tears were wasted now. They all had their jobs, and hers was the most important.
This was what she told herself as she ran up to her apartment, stopping only long enough to grab her broom and wrap it loosely in a pair of sheets. Then she sped to the gate and looked back at building four, where she saw Mike’s silhouette as he smothered the fire. At the same time, the last of the gunshots rang out in the complex and people began to hush each other into silence.
The only sound were the dead tearing the wall and the running feet of the Corsairs.
It was time for her to go. After dousing the sheets with oil, and lighting them, she ran through the gate, a scream of anger and fear erupting out of her. The dead turned to Jenn Lockhart and converged on her by the hundreds.
She was a beacon. Every eye, dead or alive fixated on her and her, fear was visible for all to see as she ran zigzagging all over the hilltop. The dead seemed to appear before her out of nowhere. She dodged back and forth, panic gripping her just as surely as she gripped the Glock. It was her insurance policy against the inevitable. It was only a matter of time before she would need to use it on herself; there were just too many of them and they were fast and strong and their arms seemed to stretch farther and farther so that their claws were always inches away.
Almost mindlessly, she ran from one, only to blunder into the next, and more and more her thoughts turned to the gun. Jillybean would have been disappointed: Jenn was thinking only one step ahead and that step was suicide.
What would a second step ahead even be? she wondered.
A gunshot from down the hill gave her an idea. If she was going to die, she could at least take a few Corsairs with her. Holding the burning sheet above her head, she ran down the hill, dodging the dead, tripping over branches and crashing through bushes.
The hill was covered in black shadows and the flames only made them deeper. She fell and fell again, sometimes rolling uncontrollably, sometimes going down and popping up almost without losing her stride. She couldn’t spare a second even to look back. There was an avalanche of giant grey bodies pouring down the hill after her. Not only could she hear them crushing everything in their way, she could feel the hill itself tremble.
Cut and bruised and muddy, she raced down onto the streets just up from the harbor. Up until that moment she had been running with panic driving her, but suddenly she knew exactly where she was and, what was more, an actual plan came to her.
With an insane laugh, she tossed the broom to her left and cut right, racing through the front door of the Jiffy Lube and slamming it behind her.
At least a hundred of the dead charged after the broom and the burning sheets, stomping them out. An equal number attacked the Jiffy Lube. The metal door was bent in and torn down in seconds, while the front window was smashed in even faster. That was just fine with Jenn who needed only seconds to put her plan in motion. As the creatures swept around the building and bashed their way inside, she threw down the barrel of used oil and set her lighter to it. Before the first of the dead charged into the bay, the barrel was covered in flames. She kicked it out into the street and then ducked down into one of the black pits.
She had visions of the barrel rolling like a ball of fire all the way down to the docks, where it would smash into the flagship of the Corsairs and burn it down to its waterline.
Nothing so spectacular happened. The barrel rolled with a side spin halfway down one block before it veered off the street, bounced over a curb and struck a fire hydrant. This knocked the barrel back on course, but the spin sent it into the curb again where it burst open. Burning oil poured down the gutter for another fifty feet or so before emptying into the sewer where it set fire to a dozen years of moldering leaves that burned with such a dense cloud of black smoke that the flames were hidden and the dead turned away.
It wasn’t a complete bust, however. The grey wave of zombies that had followed the barrel now moved on to the closest noise which happened to be the Corsairs attempting to get their boats away from the harbor as fast as they could in complete darkness.
It was pure chaos. They had docked haphazardly with the larger ships in close and crowded by the smaller ones. Men ran around trying to find their ships, not knowing which dock was which. Some boats were overloaded with so many men that they fell over each other trying to get them moving, while other boats sat empty and in the way.
When two ships collided and became locked together, shouts erupted and flashlights beamed back and forth. The dead went crazy and rushed full onto the docks, or waded out to grab the boats and hold them fast. The strength of the dead was fantastic. Boats were overturned and the men either drowned or were eaten alive.
Gunshots began to ring out, which only had more of the dead rushing in. Desperation t
urned to panic and in the mad scramble to get away a third of the fleet was abandoned. Over a hundred men ran north with the dead racing after.
Jenn watched this, sitting with her back against the Jiffy Lube. It played out in shadows but she saw enough to know that they had won an amazing victory. Although she was exhausted and drained, the reason she sat there for over half an hour was that victory or not, there would be casualties and she would be blamed.
She was still sitting there when she heard twigs snap and pebbles kicked. A smile spread across her face. Even before she saw his shadow she knew. On the ocean he was a king, on land…well, he tried. “Mike. I’m over here.”
He had the M4. The little red battery light gave away the fact that he was sizing her up. “Are you alright?”
The best way to answer that was not to answer it at all. “Sit,” she said, patting the cement next to her. When he eased down, groaning like an old man, she asked, “How bad is it?”
His eyes were red and swollen, but his smile lit up the night. “Not bad at all. Two hurt, well three if you count Stu. He had a stitch come undone and is bleeding like a stuck pig. I was coming out to find you anyway, but Jillybean rushed out and stopped me at the gate. She said she wants you to assist her. She said you need to learn the fine art of surgeoning.”
“Huh. She wants me to be a doctor? What else did she say?”
He hesitated before answering, “She said that there’s only time for me to kiss you for one minute.” Jenn was sure he was blushing; she could practically hear it in his voice.
“Only one minute?” she asked. “Well, that’s a bit disappointing. Jillybean must not have believed I would make it. She should have known that there’s no way I’m going to stop at a minute.”
And she didn’t.
THE END
***
Author’s Note
Thank you so much for reading Generation Z. I sincerely hope that you enjoyed it. If so, I would greatly appreciate it if you would, please, take the time to write a kind review on Amazon and your Facebook page. I will choose my favorite reviews and send the reviewers a signed copy of the book as a thank you.
For my new readers, Generation Z is a spinoff of my highly successful 10-book series: The Undead World. While you eagerly wait for Generation Z Book 2, please check out The Apocalypse to discover what true desperation and inhumanity lies within all of us.
Peter Meredith
PS If you are interested in autographed copies of my books, souvenir posters of the covers, Apocalypse T-shirts and other awesome swag, please visit my website at https://www.petemeredith1.com
The Apocalypse:
Greed, terrorism, and simple bad luck conspire to bring mankind to its knees as a viral infection spreads out of control, reducing those infected to undead horrors that feed upon the rest.
It's a time of misery and death for most, however there are some who are lucky, some who are ruthless, and some who are just too damned tough to go down without a fight. This is their story.
What the readers say about The Apocalypse:
"No frills, just raw and earnest fear."
"Fun and scary, it will have you turning the pages right to the end..."
"This has everything I love in a good story: interesting characters, vivid details, fast pacing, and a shocker at the end.”
Fictional works by Peter Meredith:
A Perfect America
Infinite Reality: Daggerland Online Novel 1
Infinite Assassins: Daggerland Online Novel 2
Generation Z Book 1
The Sacrificial Daughter
The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead: Day One
The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead: Day Two
The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead Day Three
The Apocalypse Crusade War of the Undead Day Four
The Horror of the Shade: Trilogy of the Void 1
An Illusion of Hell: Trilogy of the Void 2
Hell Blade: Trilogy of the Void 3
The Punished
Sprite
The Blood Lure The Hidden Land Novel 1
The King’s Trap The Hidden Land Novel 2
To Ensnare a Queen The Hidden Land Novel 3
The Apocalypse: The Undead World Novel 1
The Apocalypse Survivors: The Undead World Novel 2
The Apocalypse Outcasts: The Undead World Novel 3
The Apocalypse Fugitives: The Undead World Novel 4
The Apocalypse Renegades: The Undead World Novel 5
The Apocalypse Exile: The Undead World Novel 6
The Apocalypse War: The Undead World Novel 7
The Apocalypse Executioner: The Undead World Novel 8
The Apocalypse Revenge: The Undead World Novel 9
The Apocalypse Sacrifice: The Undead World 10
The Edge of Hell: Gods of the Undead Book One
The Edge of Temptation: Gods of the Undead Book Two
Pen(Novella)
A Sliver of Perfection (Novella)
The Haunting At Red Feathers(Short Story)
The Haunting On Colonel's Row(Short Story)
The Drawer(Short Story)
The Eyes in the Storm(Short Story)
The Witch: Jillybean in the Undead World
Table of Contents
Generation Z
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
Generation Z (Book 1): Generation Z Page 33
