Free Dead Hunger V: The Road To California by Eric A. Shelman Page A

screamed.
    The creature turned toward me as Lisa’s voice shattered the sound of flesh being devoured.  Her cry was shrill and clearly acknowledged by Matt Rowe, for he looked up just as I raised the .45 toward his head.
    Pink mist began to pour from his eyes as I pulled the trigger and staggered out of its cloud, sputtering. 
    Nothing.  The gun had failed to properly chamber a round.  I had no backup plan, and this dead fuck was advancing on the door. 
    With a guttural scream I charged him.  Dropping my head like a linebacker, I rushed the feeding creature, slamming my head into the dead thing’s midsection.  I hadn’t expected my own reaction, so it took the thing completely by surprise and he toppled backward into the hall, falling and sliding another three feet on its back across the hall floor.   My momentum carried me clear over him, and I rolled as I hit the floor, coming to rest against the wall next to Lisa’s room.
    I recovered quickly, trying to clear the jam from the gun.  I quickly discovered it was good and stuck.
    “Close that door, Lisa!  Close it now!” I shouted, and scrambled back to my feet just as Matt did the same, only a bit more slowly.
    I watched until the door slammed before pounding on the wall to get his attention and running down the hall and into the dining room.  I threw the .45 down on the dining table, grabbed a hefty chair – the end chair with arms – not a side model – and waited.
    I heard him coming up the hall, the chair raised high over my head, and timed my downswing so as his head appeared, the chair slammed into it.
    One of the stiff, wooden legs punched through his skull and kept going, exiting beneath his chin.  I pushed at the chair then, and knocked him down, his body kicking and almost spinning on the floor.  I grabbed another chair and raised it high over my head, bringing it down onto his twitching head and neck. More damage, but it was still trying to get up.
    Jumping backward, I grabbed the .45 and yanked on the top of it, seeing the jammed bullet, but unable to clear it.  Another try.  I pulled it back and the round ejected.
    I spun and fired between the embedded chair legs and directly into his head, which exploded onto the floor behind him, the white tile floor turned red-black, spattered all the way to the corner leading to the kitchen.  At the sound of the gunshot, I heard Lisa’s shrill scream.
    My stepdad’s deformed body seemed to deflate as it lay there, settling in with a squishy sound as his lifeless corpse sank in and molded to every grout line in the floor.
    I leapt over him and ran back to the bedroom.  Careful not to frighten her, I called, “Lisa!  It’s me.  It’s safe now.”
    Nothing.  I opened the door and saw Lisa sitting on the bed.  She had dropped the gun, which lay on the floor in front of her, her expression as dead as the zombies we sought to escape or destroy.  If any emotions at all dwelled on her face, horror and fear would be counted among them.
    We needed to wipe those emotions away and replace them with one: fierce determination.  After all I’d already been through, I knew it was the only way we would survive.
    I knew how she felt.  I slammed the door again – just in case – and tucked the now functional .45 away.  I went to Lisa and pulled her hard into my arms and held her very, very tight, trying to absorb her shudders and take away her trembling.
    I pulled away, leaned down and picked up her gun.  I lifted her arm and put the rifle in her hand, closing her fingers around it.  “Hold onto this, Leese.”
    She obeyed me exactly.  I led her back into her room.
    “Get changed into some jeans.  Shorts won’t do.  You need your body to be as protected as possible.  I’m going back in there and getting a different shirt.  I saw some in the closet.”
    “Don’t leave me,” she whimpered.
    “Lisa, I’ll be thirty feet away.  You’ll be okay.  Hurry.”
    I ran into the bedroom, pulling