Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed by Shawn Chesser Read Free Book Online Page A

earlier, Cade grabbed a paper sack with stiff and sturdy handles from
under the sink in the kitchen. Nose wrinkled against the stench from the sink,
he padded through the front room and transited the hall to the bedroom. Without
hesitation, he went straight for the bookshelf he’d spotted earlier and emptied
two rows of paperbacks into the grocery bag. As they tumbled from the shelves,
the titles and author’s names on the spines and covers registered: Tolkien,
Heinlein, Bradbury, Sagan, Asimov, Niven, Goodkind . The list went on and the
bag grew heavy as all of the greats passed in front of his eyes and vanished
inside. He snatched a trade paperback off the top shelf and examined the cover.
Saw the book was by an author named Forstchen and the title was One
Second After . The blurb on the back cover revealed the book was about an
EMP attack on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States; a catastrophe he’d
gladly embrace over the current widespread Omega outbreak and resulting armies
of flesh-seeking walking dead. But the reality of the matter for both the
book’s content and what was happening all around the world was that there was
no reset button for either. No way to bring those already turned back to the
side of the living. And where Omega was concerned, time was of the essence. So,
making himself a mental note to crack it open later, he tossed the book atop
the others and, bag in hand, retraced his steps down the hall.
    A quick glance out the window told him the temperature had
fallen since he’d been inside. The big, fast-falling flakes had seemingly been
supersized and were now floating to earth like goose down. The kind of snow he
and Brook sought out in their youth. Oftentimes elusive in the Pacific
Northwest, deep fluffy powder was his favorite surface to ride in the world.
The waist-high stuff his petite wife plowed through wearing a wide smile.
    Youth not wasted on the young, he thought, focusing
on the dead down the hill. The further drop in temperature seemed to have
affected them greatly. Though they were still moving his way, uphill, their
pace was glacially slow. That was the good news.
    Grabbing his attention a tick later was a sight that
wouldn’t have even registered on his give-a-shit-meter had it been moving at a
normal pace. However, it wasn’t. In addition, the sheer numbers involved were
staggering. Hundreds, if not more than a thousand migrating flesh eaters—which
in Cade’s mind after having seen the hordes in Denver and Los Angeles and at
the Conex roadblock standing between Ogden and Huntsville, still constituted a
herd—a grouping not large enough to move cars and topple poles, yet still a
force to be wary of. Under normal circumstances, he would lay low and let them
pass on by, but this turn of events was far from normal. Trying to wait them
out as slow as they were moving might get him snowed in and trapped outside the
wire overnight. The former he could dig out of. The latter was unacceptable.
The last time he’d been trapped in a house by the dead his life had been spared
by the appearance of a Black Hawk helicopter with Duncan at the controls. This
time, however, if the slow-moving train of death somehow got wind of him and
encircled the home, these flimsy pre-fab walls wouldn’t last an hour under the
kind of force numbers like that were capable of exerting.
    But he had a plan. So he pushed the loveseat aside, opened
the broken door, and let Max outside first. Forgoing the keyless entry for fear
the dead might hear the alarm chirp, he opened the Ford with the key and let
the dog in. The overstuffed Kelty, unwieldy bag of Purina dog chow, and paper
sack full of reading material all went into the backseat area with Max. After
spilling out a liberal amount of dog food onto the floorboards for the
shepherd, Cade gently closed the rear passenger door, climbed behind the wheel,
and pulled his door shut with care.
    Acutely aware of how fast and far sound could travel in the
open,