Chaos Theory: A Zombie Novel by Rich Restucci Read Free Book Online Page B

even started pounding yet and I was confused, until the mirrors on the far wall exploded and I heard gunfire.
    Damned if I didn’t hear woo hoos and yee hahs again.
    I hightailed it through the shop following Ship, who threw the lock on the back door, and we stepped out into a long, skinny alley.
    OK, so I’ve told you about how scared I’ve been a couple of times already, with the cannibal heifers, and the Superfly runner, and evil rednecks, and zombies and more zombies, and moaning and crashing snowmobiles into walls, and most importantly, being bitten. Well, when we opened that back door and I stepped out into that alley, and we saw how many dead people were there milling about, I was even more scared. They all turned like a flock of birds, and every single dead eye in the bunch focused on me. I don’t even know if they saw Ship, even though he’s almost seven feet tall and four bills. I’m telling you, every one of those predators saw me as the sick gazelle, and every one of them wanted to eat me. They leaned left and right to look around my colossal friend. When the closest one turned and took a step, and it crunched in the frost, that sound is what scared me the most. Not holy crap I just got a two thousand dollar tax bill scared; not my God, where’s my kid in the department store scared; this was pants-shitting, total panic, fuck all, my agonizing death is most ricky-tick imminent terrified.
    Now multiply that sound times one hundred as the fifty dead bastards in that back alley streamed toward us en-mass.

Domestic Troubles
     
    I heard the tell-tale crunching of shoes on glass in the dark barbershop behind us, but as there was no place else to go, I ran back inside with Ship hot on my heels. He slammed the door extra hard, so it was extra loud. I couldn’t see any dead yet, as they hadn’t made it to the small corridor from the main room to the back room. I raised my rifle to deal with the first of the mini-horde that would be approaching from the shop, but I heard a door open behind me and the strong fingers of death on my shoulder.
    It was Ship, he had found another door with a set of stairs going up. He dragged me through the door and I shut it quickly. It was a flimsy interior door that a cat could scratch through given the time. A cheap knock off of a Home Depot fifty dollar special. Some draped Charmin would have slowed our antagonists better, and I could have used some right then anyway if you catch my meaning. Pounding had already begun on the back door, and it was only a matter of time before every pus sack in the area found our little sanctuary.
    I thundered up the stairs after Ship, who hadn’t made a sound, to another door, this one open and beckoned us into its shadowy maw. Ship stopped dead…poor choice of words…at the top landing, and let me tell you, in a three-foot-wide stairwell, there was no getting past this man. An octagonal window let moonlight in to illuminate my friend’s enormous frame. He cocked his head almost imperceptibly, then pulled his machete. I thought my machete was all tough and mean looking, but his looked like the wing from a Boeing as he cleaved the air in front of him. Turns out it wasn’t air, but a dead woman looking for an evening nibble. She dropped like a hot rock, her head split in two down to her trachea, and Ship yanked his weapon out of her noggin.
    What seemed like a steel cage melee was going on below us; I can only imagine that the inside horde had missed our side door as I initially had and opened the back door to confront the pounding of the outsiders. I had a brief moment of levity when I considered that the two groups could pound on either side of the door for eternity with only bloody stumps remaining before they realized they were hunting spoiled game.
    Ship stepped farther inside the room, which turned out to be a kitchen, and I came in after him. He shut the door, and to my relief, it was somewhat sturdier than the one below, but still not