Undead L.A. 2 by Devan Sagliani Read Free Book Online Page A

realized, enjoying the feeling of certainty that lay just beneath the surface of the words. I guess now she knows that. If we somehow manage to live through this I'll always be able to remind her that I literally fought my way through a zombie apocalypse to be with her. Should make one hell of a Hallmark card.
    He'd been dating Emily since the first week his family moved to Southern California. She was one of the first people he met at his new high school. She was in his English class, right before lunch. He'd impressed her by arguing that Emily Dickinson was actually the mother of rap music, because of her invention of the slant rhyme and its importance in the development of the genre. He'd taken on another popular student, a self-proclaimed hip hop head named Curtis who argued that a sickly white girl with an obsession for death had nothing to do with the art of rap.   Like jazz, or the blues, rap evolved from the slave culture in America; it grew out of a custom of calling out an opponent and verbally attacking them. Tyler stuck to his guns, not backing down an inch, and even though Curtis didn't seem to respect him for it, Emily did. She used it as an excuse to sit with him at lunch, and soon they were lost in deep philosophical debates about the meaning of life, the existence of aliens, and the scariest horror movies of all time. A month later they were officially dating, which only made sense since they were inseparable. Not a single day had gone by since they'd met that they hadn't texted each other good morning and good night—at least until the cell towers went down. When he stepped out of the safety of his parents' house, he hadn't heard from her in over a week. By that point, he was ready to risk crossing a mine-strewn war zone if he had to, just to make sure she was still okay.
    I was going out of my mind, not knowing if she was alive or dead, he reminded himself.
    He'd fought his way out the front door towards the minivan. He was so pumped up on adrenaline and caffeine at the time that he hadn't stopped to think much about what he was doing. It was only after he'd gotten to the van, started it up, and backed into the middle of the street—knocking over several of his newly transformed neighbors in the process—that he started processing what he was seeing. They weren't just random strangers hunting him down. These were people he'd known for years, people he'd become close to since his dad took the job at Lockheed, after quitting Boeing, and moving the family from the suburbs of Chicago to the perennially sunny streets of Pasadena.
    I remember being worried about making new friends, he thought. I gave my parents so much shit about it all. If I could have known what was waiting for me, I would have been willing to leave all my shit behind, or even burn it.
    It wasn't just Emily that he'd grown to love. His new neighborhood was like something out of a Disney Channel show, with themed block get-togethers, street hockey and baseball games, skateboard launch ramps, summer barbeques, and frequent pool parties. There was always something going on. During Halloween, they shut down the whole area to create the spookiest haunted house show in Southern California. They shut it down once more during Christmas, and set up their own version of the fabled Candy Cane Lane—with guided block tours, fake snow made from shredded plastic, hot cocoa, and loud Christmas caroling—during the entire month of December. Each family tried to outdo the next with the brilliance of their lights and decorations. Christmas day, they all played together out on the hot asphalt with their new toys like one big happy family, and not a single snowflake in sight. A week later, groups from the neighborhood would camp out side-by-side overnight in tents to ensure everyone had the best seats for the Rose Parade on New Year's Day. The thought that things would never be the same again, that those days were all over, made his stomach churn.
    I never