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

before firing the big V10, Cade planned his egress route from the vantage
the higher ground afforded. By the time he came to the most obvious conclusion,
the dead had seemingly ceased all forward movement and appeared frozen in place
due west of the rehab place.
    Adding a mental wrinkle to his plan, which he figured would
be doable only on account of this newfound turn of events, he started the motor
and jockeyed the truck around on the patch of snow-covered gravel.
    Fear the reaper , crossed his mind as he wheeled the
F-650 down the narrow gravel drive and what he hoped to be a quick in-and-out
stop at Back in the Saddle Rehabilitation. And if all went as planned there,
hopefully an uneventful meet-and-greet with the unmoving zombie herd.

Chapter 6
     
     
    The first missile came extremely close to taking out
Daymon’s eye. However, just as he was reacting to the first near miss, the
second whizzing projectile, coming from the opposite direction, caught him full
force on the top of his head. He let out a yelp and a plume of his own breath
enveloped his face as he went to the ground on all fours, numbed hands feeling
around blindly for something to fight back with.
    “Incoming,” bellowed Wilson as he dove, joining Daymon on
the crushed grass where he instantly began pulling armfuls of heavy snow close
to his body.
    Keeping his head down just below the bent grass stalks
demarking the edge of his and Duncan’s sad attempt at creating an alien
crop-circle, Daymon slowly walked a three-sixty—still on all fours—and was able
to locate both enemy positions.
    A blur of white shot by a foot over their heads from the
direction Jamie and the others were holed up.
    By the time Daymon was back to facing Wilson, the scrappy
redhead had already produced half a dozen perfectly formed snowballs each the
size of a navel orange. Then Daymon noticed the twenty-year-old’s breath billow
up around his ever-present camouflage boonie hat and knew instantly their
position was given away. So he grabbed two of the snowballs, winked at Wilson,
and laid flat. Tucking his arms in, he logrolled a few feet left and came up to
his knees, throwing arm cocked, eyes scanning for a target. Which he found a
few feet left of where he’d initially spotted movement.
    Daymon raised up on his knees, arm cocked and the target in
his crosshairs. He let fly with everything he had in him, but before he could
see if the snowball had found its mark, there was an explosion of pain behind
his eyes and he fell back down onto his stomach, uttering obscenities and
trying to blink his eyesight back so he could go kick the shit out of the
headhunting waste of skin who had beaned him.
     
     
    North of Ray and Helen’s Home
     
    Dregan drove north on 16 with the venerable Chevy dropped
into four-wheel-drive and Helen’s mirthless smile still etched in his mind’s
eye. The snow was sticking hard to the road now, and though the military
version of the K5 had a fairly strong engine under the hood, keeping it from
fishtailing around the corners while rolling on worn tires was a full time job.
    So he took the curves like he imagined Helen would—slow and
cautious. On the straightaways, however, trying to make up for lost time, he
kicked the speed up a bit. And it was on one of these stretches, moving at a
clip above the posted limit, when a sudden gust threw the snow horizontal at
the windshield and visibility was reduced to only a couple of car lengths.
    Dregan doubled down on his grip on the wheel and was easing
off the accelerator when a human form materialized fast out of the clutter.
Facing away dead center in the road, the oblivious biter made no move to
acquire the engine noise that Dregan was certain it could hear. Instead, in the
few seconds during which he had a decision to make, Dregan saw the thing take
only one sluggish step forward. Then, the reaction severely delayed, its head
began a slow sweep left in the general direction of the rapidly