DeadBorn by C.M. Stunich Read Free Book Online

it's a way for him to cope with the stress, so I let it go. “Somebody, I don't know who or what, knows what's happening. They're either going to quarantine us or blow us up.”
    “ Did you learn that from The Walking Dead, too?” Holly says and I think she was trying to sound mean, but she just sounds sad. Her mouth is full of candy corn, but she keeps talking. “Maybe we should go to the CDC and wait for a rocket to blow us all up.”
    “ I'm not kidding!” Martin yells as he rises to his feet and nearly trips on the bag. “If they're covering it up, it's for a reason. We need to get out of town now. ” Holly nods her head like she already knew this was our best option, Martin's advice aside.
    “ I know a place,” she says as she rises to her feet. “My dad sometimes does a little work at the wildlife refuge. It's about forty miles outside of town. It should be a good place to hole up for a little while.” I don't ask what happens next. I don't want to know. “I've got the security code memorized so – ” Holly's words are cut off by a series of gunshots from downstairs. The three of us grab whatever weapons are closest and race out of the room.
    We find Dawson with the front door open and a pistol clutched between his shaking fingers. Outside on the front lawn is a bloody lump, like a small pig or a dog or something.
    “ What happened?” Holly asks, but Dawson doesn't answer. His face is pale and there's blood on his cheeks and neck. They're just spatters and I can tell that they're not his, but whatever it was that he just shot has left him traumatized. Martin keeps his back to us and his eyes on the living room. I secretly commend him for that. He might be a geek, but he's picked up a few good tricks from his video games. Figuring that someone's going to have to go outside and look, I move forward and hope that none of the neighbors comes over to investigate. “Careful,” Holly warns as I approach the quivering thing.
    When I get close enough, I kick it over with my rain boot and scream.
    Holly's by my side in less time than it takes me to close my mouth, breathe, and scream again. She looks down at the thing and I can see that she's wrestling with a hundred different emotions. I can understand why. The creature looks like a baby or even a fetus maybe. An umbilical cord is wrapped around its throat and its skin is red and blotchy. When it opens its mouth, it gurgles and I swear to myself that it's saying Holly's name.
    “ It came right at me,” Dawson says from the doorway. “And it was floating.”
    I stare down at the baby and catch a flicker of that black and silver light again. Seconds later and it starts to rise from the grass, just as Dawson said. It isn't until it's sitting in the air before us like a p iñata that Holly raises her baseball bat, pulls back her arms, and swings.

CHAPTER 6
    Malodorous

    Seven Hours and Thirty-Two Minutes After …

    The four of us take my mother's blue sedan with the broken seat belts and load it up with food, blankets, clothing, tools, and weapons. When it's as packed as it can get, we lock up the house and slide furniture in front of the doors. Martin says this is a precaution in case we have to come back to the area. He says this helps deter people from breaking in and also give us a better hint if anyone, or any zombie for that matter, is hiding inside. I don't buy it for a second, but we all need tasks to occupy our minds, so I do it anyway.
    When we finally squeeze into the car, Holly gets into the driver's seat and I take shotgun. Martin and Dawson sit in the back and don't talk to one another.
    “ How many types of DeadBorn are there do you think?” Martin asks as if we're playing a trivia game. Nobody answers so he just keeps talking. Most people would've just shut their mouths but not Martin. “When I got up to pee this morning, I noticed this woman climbing over the fence in my backyard. I watched her thinking she was like, a burglar or something