As The World Dies Trilogy Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Frater, Rhiannon

  “Oh, yeah,” Jenni said, and winced. “But Peter survived in Dawn of the Dead with Fran.”

  “Good point. So, we’ll just keep steady and we’ll both be okay, right?” Mike said, obviously trying to convince himself this was true.

  Jenni grinned. “And at least my name isn’t Barbara.”

  That made Mike burst out laughing and they high-fived each other. “You’re crazy, girl, just like Juan says.”

  “We’re all in position. Starting the countdown,” Travis said over the walkie-talkie attached to Mike’s belt.

  Mike winked at Jenni. “Keep cool, girl.”

  Jenni winked back. “Keep cool, dude.”

  “You got it.”

  “Five, four, three, two, one…,” Travis intoned.

  The crack of rifles filled the early morning air.

  Jenni and Mike stood up, aimed and fired. Her first target was an old man, and she split his head nicely in two. Barely moving the rifle, Jenni sighted the next zombie, a young woman with her face torn away, and fired.

  Aim …

  Fire …

  Aim …

  Fire …

  She reloaded as quickly as possible and kept shooting. The zombies were pushing hard against the truck and she could feel the massive vehicle shaking slightly under her feet. Mike fired with precision and swiftness. Jenni tried to match him the best she could. With every successful shot, she was glad of the Sunday afternoons she’d spent with her grandpa when she was a kid, shooting old tires and soda cans.

  Each mangled, screaming, distorted face that dissolved into bloody mist beneath their assault made the knots in her stomach ease just a bit. They were thinning the crowd, making them pay for what they had become. She hated them. She fiercely, passionately hated them, and each time a head burst beneath the hail of bullets, she felt her smile grow.

  Ten minutes in, with the killing in full swing, Jenni paused to reload once again. Just then a male zombie came up over the sandbags and charged her. She was so startled by his abrupt appearance that she was surprised when she instinctively drew her revolver and shot a nice little hole into his head.

  “Wow! I’m more of a badass than I thought,” she exclaimed with surprise.

  “Fuck,” Mike swore. “More coming!”

  Another was scrambling easily onto the truck.

  Mike took this one down, firing over Jenni’s head.

  Jenni stood up and Mike quickly went back to firing into the area that he was assigned. Jenni stepped cautiously toward the edge and blinked, then blinked again in horror. “Juan, get us the fuck off of here!” she screamed.

  By killing the zombies toward the front of the crowd, they had inadvertently made a nice little ramp of bodies right up to the top of the truck.

  Two more zombies appeared at the far end of the truck and started to race for them. Jenni shot both of them.

  “Fuck!” Mike grabbed the walkie-talkie. “Get us the hell off this thing!”

  More zombies were beginning to charge now. At least four. Jenni kept firing, but more were coming.

  Her body was jerked up so hard that the revolver fell from her hand. She gripped the rifle tightly through the pain that erupted through her back and arms as she was dragged upward. The zombies kept coming. She swiftly curled her legs up to her chest, out of the reach of the undead. They swung their arms fruitlessly under her, trying to catch her. Being far taller, Mike was much longer, and therefore had trouble pulling his legs out of the way. One zombie gripped his leg. Mike shouted in anger and fear as he fired point-blank into the zombie’s face. Another zombie had grabbed his booted foot and was lifted with him. Mike kicked his leg hard, but the creature was tenacious, trying to pull itself up for a bite.

  Jenni tried to take aim with her rifle, but they were swinging wildly due to being hoisted so quickly. “I can’t get him.”

  “Muthafucka,” Mike snarled, and kicked as hard as he could. The zombie fell and landed face-first on a spike.

  At least a dozen zombies had clambered up onto the truck now.

  “Why aren’t they swinging us back?” Jenni screamed.

  They had been lifted high enough that no zombie could grab hold of them.

  “We’re bait,” Mike answered in a grim tone. “We’re fucking bait.”

  Sure enough, Jenni saw that all the zombies climbing up onto the trucks were gathering directly under the two humans.

  “They can’t move us back to the fort or those things will follow,” Mike explained. “And that will compromise everyone.”

  “Do we shoot?” Jenni held tight to her rifle.

  “Praying sounds better to me. Told you, the black man always gets it,” Mike grumbled.

  Twenty of the undead were now crowded onto the truck.

  “We’re not dead yet,” Jenni said.

  “Yeah,” Mike said. “Yet.”

  3.

  Close Encounters

  Things were going to hell. Katie felt as if the world were toppling around her. The guards were all shouting at each other. Jenni was screaming and Mike’s voice was blasting out of the walkie-talkie. Juan was arguing with the mayor. Jason was yelling, “Get my mom down!” And the zombies were clustered on top of a truck, trying to get to Jenni and Mike.

  “Cease fire!” Juan shouted, the command being relayed down the line. “We don’t want to hit Jenni and Mike!”

  “Fuck me,” Travis whispered.

  “Who’s a crack shot?” Katie demanded, looking around at the men and women with the rifles lined up along the wall near her.

  “I am. Through the eye every time,” one man said. He was older and had a weather-beaten face.

  “Take out the zombies on the left end of the truck,” Katie ordered.

  Travis looked sharply at her. “Are you sure? They’re so close to falling into the spiked area.”

  “As the zombies fall back, they’ll block that ramp of dead bodies, and the other zombies won’t be able to scramble over them.” Katie pointed. “We might be able to eliminate that slope in the pile and make it harder for them to get up.”

  Travis studied the situation. “Yeah. I see that. And if they try to climb, they’ll pull the dead ones down on them. Go for it, Ed.” He signaled to the volunteer.

  “They’re as good as dead.” Ed began to target the zombies.

  Katie watched as the zombies tumbled backwards into the corral.

  “Shoot the fucking ones under us!” Mike shouted into the walkie-talkie.

  “They can’t reach you,” Juan’s voice answered over the cackling static.

  Katie gripped her rifle tightly in one hand, watching the zombies falling under Ed’s sharpshooting. Jason came running toward the sentry post. “Katie, get her down!”

  “Jason, we’re doing our best without compromising everyone’s safety,” Katie answered, resting one hand on his shoulders. Her gaze returned to where Jenni dangled and the zombies that clawed hungrily at the air, desperate to reach her. Swallowing hard, she fought down her own fear.

  Jack was barking hysterically at the zombies that were still intent on getting hold of Jenni and Mike.

  “Why don’t we have grenades? Or flamethrowers or something like that!” Jason’s voice was high and strained.

  “Because we’re not soldiers, Jason. We’re just trying to survive.” After glancing back one more time in the direction of Jenni and Mike, she ran down the steps from the sentry post toward where Juan was directing his men from another platform. A scan of the zombies revealed that Ed, the hunter, had significantly reduced the population atop the dirt-filled truck. But there were still maybe ten or so under Jenni and Mike. “Juan, what are we going to do?”

  Juan intently studied the situation. He lifted his walkie-talkie to his mouth. “Travis, status?”

  There was a burst of static, then, “We’ve slowed them down. They can’t just walk up onto the truck anymore; they’re struggling to try to get up now. Katie had a good idea, but it may not last. The more they claw at the de
ad, the more slide down. They’ll be able to get back up soon if we don’t hurry.”

  Juan looked at Katie, then at the zombies on the truck. “I think we should pull Jenni and Mike back until they’re above the spikes and let the rest of the zombies try to reach them and fall.”

  Katie winced. “I hate using them as bait.”

  “We don’t have a choice, Katie.” Juan shrugged, his expression somber.

  “We need better weapons,” Jason said furiously .

  “Yeah, we do. Know where to get any or how to make them?” Juan’s voice was sharp. He turned and began talking into the walkie-talkie, instructing the pulley operators. Jason threw up his hands and stalked away angrily.

  Katie glanced toward Jenni and Mike. They seemed so vulnerable up there. The operators on the pulleys began to tug them back and the zombies leaped for them. Four tumbled into the no-man’s-land where the spikes were. Two were impaled, but two more glanced off the spikes and landed on the ground.

  Juan cursed loudly in Spanish as he motioned to the operators to stop hauling. Another zombie made a flying leap at Jenni; his fingers glanced off her shoe before he fell hard against the hurricane fence. Three more tumbled onto spikes while the rest reached the hurricane fence and rattled it.

  “Gawd, this keeps getting worse!” Shaking her head with disbelief, it was difficult for Katie to fathom how everything had gone so terribly wrong.

  Travis’s voice crackled through the walkie-talkies again. “We have a breach.” He sounded overwhelmed.

  “And now it’s even worse.” Juan threw his hands. “Fuck!”

  Katie looked up to see more zombies flowing onto the trucks. Because they had pulled Jenni and Mike back, when the zombies tried to reach their prey, they were hurtling into the spiked area. Many were impaled, but more and more were falling to the ground as they glanced off their undead companions’ skewered bodies.

  “Juan, we’re fucked if we don’t hold that line,” Katie screamed, and headed for the stairs that led up to the sentry post where Travis was. Juan followed her as the mayor shouted at them to do something fast.

  “Keep the guns thinning the herd at the back of the corral,” Travis instructed Ed and the other men.

  “We need to go in with spears,” Katie said, almost over him.

  “We need to keep someone shooting the ones trying to get over the truck,” Juan added.

  “Sounds like a three-pronged plan,” Travis said. He grabbed Katie’s arm as she turned to pick up a spear off a pile of them near the wall. “You don’t have to.”

  “Yeah, I do,” Katie answered. She slung her rifle off her shoulder and set it aside before double-checking her revolver. The rifle would get too easily in the way in such close quarters.

  Jenni and Mike were now dangling over the spikes, screaming to be pulled to safety, but Juan barked at them that it wasn’t going to happen. Katie understood why. At this point, Jenni and Mike were the main focus of the undead cannibals. Drawing them into the fort would just turn the zombies’ attention to all of them.

  Unable to hear Juan, Jenni and Mike kept shouting to be pulled back.

  “Where is the fucking bullhorn?” Juan shouted.

  Travis darted down the row, grabbing men off the firing line. He quickly explained the new plan as shots rang out in an attempt to keep the zombies at bay.

  “This is crazy!” Jason’s voice drew Katie’s attention. “We need better weapons. We need grenades and … and…”

  “Jason, we’ll take care of it.” She saw Travis and his men rushing toward the guard post. “We’ve got a plan.”

  Jason threw up his hands in frustration, his terrified gaze resting on his mother.

  Juan and several others lowered ladders from the sentry posts into the area between the wall and the hurricane fence.

  “We get down there and deal with them as fast as we can,” Travis ordered as the men grabbed spears off the pile.

  “This was a bullshit plan from the beginning,” snapped a man with blond hair and a cowboy hat.

  “Let’s just kill the damn things,” another man with a bushy mustache growled.

  Katie scrambled up onto the sentry platform first and felt her heart pound even harder at the sight of the ravenous undead below.

  Travis joined her, taking in the view, the color draining from his face. “Shit.”

  Juan looked down, sweat beading on his face, and took a deep breath. “You gotta kill them or we’re going to be in a whole heap of it.”

  Peggy darted up the stairs and thrust the bullhorn into Juan’s hands before rushing back down to her screaming child. For the first time, Katie became aware of the fort’s inhabitants who were bystanders in this battle. They were clustered around the living quarters, holding on to one another, fear etched into their features.

  A few zombies had seen them and begun rattling the fence. Katie muttered “fuck” a few times before starting down the ladder. Her hands were shaking so badly, it was hard to hold on. All that separated her from a gruesome death was a wire fence.

  Travis climbed down behind her, followed by several construction workers. Katie pressed herself back against the wall and stared at the crazed, rabid faces of the zombies just on the other side of the fence. She gripped her spear tightly, her body shivering.

  “Katie?” Travis whispered, obviously concerned.

  “Yeah,” she answered, struggling to get her terror under control. She could hardly take a breath, she was so afraid. “I’m good.” She peeled herself off the wall and took a step forward, determination settling into her features.

  Beside her, a short Hispanic man drove his spear through one of the holes in the fence and into the eye of a zombie. And with that simple act of violence, the world turned bloody and surreal. The rest of the construction workers thrust the screwdriver-tipped spears hard through the fence, trying to drive the sharp blades through the eyes or mouths of the screeching zombies.

  Katie took a deep breath. She gazed into the face of a female zombie who was screaming and growling on the other side of the fence. The woman’s fingers, stripped of most their skin, clutched the fence as she wrenched at the metal, trying to rip down the barrier keeping her away from a meal—Katie. Katie lifted the spear and aimed at the woman’s eye. As hard as she could, she thrust the spear forward and felt the sickening squish of the zombie’s eyeball. Shoving harder, Katie pressed the spear deep into the screaming woman’s head and finally into her brain.

  “Scramble it!” Travis voice was jagged with exertion as he struggled to impale an enormous zombie on the other side of the fence.

  Katie jiggled the spear around and felt the woman go limp with one harsh cry. Shifting her weight back, she drew the spear out of the now dead zombie’s flesh. Blood splattered her clothes. “Shit.”

  “On a stick,” Travis said.

  More zombies were leaping off the trucks, eager to reach the living, but due to Travis’s and Juan’s foresight, the truck perimeter was a good distance from the fence. The undead kept landing on the spikes or tumbling to the ground.

  Katie felt sweat dripping off her as she thrust the spear into the eye of another zombie. Then another. Over and over again. It was hard work—gory work—and the screaming faces made her quake. But she kept going.

  Juan’s voice sounded over the bullhorn. “Travis, the corral is nearly empty. Most of the zombies are now up against the truck or down in the trenches with you.”

  “Then this fucking battle is almost over,” Travis grunted.

  “Let go! Let go!” someone shouted, followed by a harsh scream.

  Katie snapped her head around. A construction worker had been foolish enough to brace his foot against the fence while he drew his spear out of his victim, and two zombies had managed to grab on to his boot, throwing him off balance. As Katie watched in horror, he fell sideways against the fence, and his hair and clothes were snagged by frantic bloodied fingers. Where he had grabbed on to the fence to try to keep himself from falling, a zo
mbie had bitten off his fingers. Now the zombies were tearing away bits of his flesh with their fingers and teeth.

  Katie dropped her spear and walked over to the man. Another construction worker, Shane, was trying to wrestle the fallen man away from the zombies. She drew her gun.

  “No, no, just save me,” the bitten man pleaded.

  “I am,” she answered. She fired four shots, point-blank, through the fence, killing the zombies who had attacked the man. Despite her quivering stomach and tattered nerves, her aim was sure.

  “Thank you, thank you,” he whispered.

  Katie said softly, “No problem,” and shot him square between the eyes.

  “Bitch!” She was tackled from the side and knocked to the ground. Shane, who had been trying to save his colleague, punched her so hard that her vision swam. “Stupid fuckin’ lesbo bitch!”

  He hit her again and her sight darkened. Dimly, she heard Jenni screaming, “Get off her! Get off her!”

  Someone shoved the man off her.

  Katie tried to roll over and tasted blood in her mouth. She spit it out and managed to flip onto her knees and palms. Men were shouting and arguing. She heard the impact of a fist against flesh. There were more screams. She crawled to the wall and used it as support while she slowly drew herself up. Her body was shaking and she felt like vomiting. The world swam around her. To her surprise, she realized she was still clutching her gun.

  Swinging around, she took in the scene in a flash. Shane had Travis in a stranglehold. Two other construction workers were trying to get him off Travis, nearly tearing Shane’s shirt off in the process. The zombies were almost all dead; just two were left to jangle the fence and screech.

  “Let him go,” she rasped, aiming her revolver at the man who had struck her. No one paid any attention. The men continued to fight. “Let him go!”

  Shane glared at her when she shouted, his blue eyes bright with fierce anger. He released Travis abruptly and lunged at her. The gun slid up his slick skin to his neck as he tackled her to the ground.

  “I’m going to feed you to those things,” he spat in her face. “You killed my brother, you bitch.”

  “He was already dead,” Katie managed to say as his weight slowly pressed the air out of her lungs. Her finger tightened on the trigger. Shane put his hands around her throat and started to squeeze.