Snareville by David Youngquist Read Free Book Online Page B

said.
    She gave a little smile. Her eyes were red and puffy.
    “ Think I was a deader?”
    “ Yeah.”
    “ I’m not.” She laid her gun next to mine. “I’m very much alive. For the first time, I think.”
    She pulled me close and kissed me deep and long. She slid her tongue into my mouth. For a long time, neither of us stopped.
    Finally, she pulled away.
    “ I love you, Danny.” She held up her left hand. The gold ring was gone. “I gave it back to him. I don't know anyone named Jennifer Mueller anymore. I’m Jenny One Sock, and I belong with Danny Death.”
    I grinned at her. She'd always held some part of herself away from me, but not anymore. Not now.
    “ And I don't remember anything about Daniel Jackson. I’m Danny Death, and I belong with Jenny One Sock.”
    She smiled at me through her tears. We gathered up our guns, I untied George, and we went in the house. Inside, we joined the others' cribbage game. For a long time after that, we were never apart.
     

Chapter Three
     
    One hundred miles, three weeks on horseback, and now they were stuck on the wrong side of the creek with a pack of Zeds behind them.
    Cori sat astride her Thoroughbred, eyeing the churning water five feet below the horse's hooves. Two of her students shot glances over their shoulders. The horses danced nervously. They, too, knew the Zeds were closing in.
    “ What do we do, Miss Cori?” asked Rachel, a slender, blonde girl of twelve mounted up on a big, chestnut Dutch Warmblood.
    “ We have to get across. I don’t know where.” Cori gazed across the span. She saw a deader tied with cables to one of the supports halfway across the creek. “I didn’t expect the bridge to be blown.”
    “ We gotta go,” said Joe, up on a bay Irish Warmblood.
    “ Sherrie, anything down there?” Cori called to her sixteen-year-old niece.
    The girl rode another Irish Warmblood. The bunch of them had left the riding academy in Coal Valley, one hundred miles west, and the ride thus far had cost the lives of two other students. But Rachel had received a text from a friend in Snareville who said folks were safe there, and Snareville was where they were headed.
    “ Nothin’, Aunt Cori. Banks are all cut like this, and the water’s up from the rain.”
    “ Damn.” Cori stared at the chocolate-colored water as it swirled below them. “We'll have to ride across.”
    Tied to the pillar in the creek, the zombie let out a moan. Others answered the call as they stumbled down the road behind the riders.
    Cori shot a look over her shoulder. Four more Zeds had joined the six.
    “ Get behind me,” Cori snapped. She pulled the riot gun she'd liberated from a burned-out squad car. Three shells left. She'd have to make them count.
    Her first blast took out the zombie leader. The horses jumped, but they held. They'd grown accustomed to gunfire, but not to the Zeds.
    Another shot took out an old woman with a missing breast. Cori's last shot went too low. Her round blew the shoulder off a younger woman. Cori slung her shotgun and reached for the pistol she'd taken from the remains of the dead cop.
    Before she could fire a shot, a deader’s head exploded. Black gore spattered its packmates. Another round barked; another dead Zed hit the ground.
    Thunder from a hidden gun tore the air apart, followed by shouts of victory. Five corpses lay on the roadbed. More corpses kept on coming.
    The gunfire paused.
    “ Get across the crick, dammit! We’re gonna draw more of 'em!”
    Two more gunshots, and now only still bodies lay where the pack had been shuffling down the road before.
    Cori urged her Thoroughbred forward, and the kids followed. As the horse plummeted into the flood, the cold shock of the water took her breath away. Cori’s mount pulled hard for the far bank. The others hung in there with her. In a few short minutes, the animals pulled themselves from the creek. They stood on the sandy bank, shaking water from their bodies as their riders gasped for