This Dying World: The End Begins by James Dean Read Free Book Online Page A

permanently green.  It smelled as if this creature had been fed a steady diet of onions and sardines dipped in raw garlic for a month, and I was the recipient of its first burp since those thirty days began.  Had time allowed I would have held a funeral for my olfactory senses right then and there, as I am fairly certain the ones that survived the initial assault committed ritual suicide shortly after.  A fifty gallon drum of mouth wash couldn’t have put a dent in that aroma.
    Holding my breath I shoved her away, sending her toppling backwards onto her back.  The hammer came down with a dull thud in the middle of her forehead.  Her body went limp, either from the new dent in her head or from catching a whiff of her own death breath.
    I ran…sort of.  Three more were advancing in front of me.  I went wide around the first one.  It reached out for me, not realizing that I was well beyond its grasp.  In a never say die moment, (get it?) it fell to the ground in a monumental overreach.
    Hey, A for effort.
    My hammer swung in an upward arc, shattering the jawbone of the second zombie and knocking it back on its head.  I kept moving, not stopping to check if it was dead…again.  I caught the third creature in the chest with a one handed sideways swing.  Ribs cracked as its sternum caved inward.  It spun and fell as I went past, moving my injured legs as fast as I could.
    I was limping badly.  My left side had taken a beating, and my body was fast reaching its limit as I rounded the last townhouse towards the parking lot.  Directly in front of me was Abby and Katie sitting in a running CRV.  The passenger side door stood open, beckoning me forward to safety.  I felt myself slowing, the last of my reserves failing.
    “Run Dan!  Run now!” she screamed.
    I suddenly realized my near fatal mistake.  I was limping, not running.  I had stopped to kill Miss Halitosis and to deal with her friends.  But the pursuing creatures never slowed.  Persistent little bastards.
    I limped as fast as I could, my legs screaming as I pushed them harder than I knew I should.  Turning around to check how close the monsters were could mean life or death, and I wasn’t really that curious.  Abby’s frantic shouts told me all I needed to know.
    Though it only took about half a minute to get to the car, it felt like a lifetime.  I expected a claw or set of teeth to sink into me at any moment.  It wasn’t until I barreled into the car that I realized how close I was to the truth.
    The car rocked with the force of the first zombie hitting the cold steel seconds after I slammed the door shut.  Faces filled the window, trying in vain to bite their way through the glass.  Abby fed the engine, wheels chirping as we cut left towards the parking lot exit.
    As we hit the street, I took one final look at my house.  I felt the car slow and I knew Abby saw it too.
    Joe and Mary were in the window, Maddy standing between them.

 
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Six
     
     
    “That was...” a tearful Abby said.  She cut the wheel right, swerving around the wreckage of a car surrounded by the undead.  The back tires lost traction, screeching across the asphalt until Abby brought the car back under control.
    “I know!” I said, holding on for dear life.
    “We have to help them!  We have to do something!”
    “Abby, they’re gone!  There’s nothing we can do.”  The last part I said more for my own sake than for hers.
    It was a cold and harsh reality this new world had put on display for us.  The only blessing we took from it was that Katie had not seen her lifelong friend.  Her face was buried in her hands.
    Visions of my family and friends sped through my mind.  Who was alive?  Who wasn’t?  How many more of those close to me did I lose that night, and how many more in the days to come?  What about Abby’s family?  They were as close to me as my own blood relatives.  Abby kept her thoughts to herself, but I knew she must