Free The Zombie Chronicles by Chrissy Peebles Page A

road trip.” I was pretty cocky and certain she’d change her mind and come with us. By the twinkle in her eye, I could tell she liked me, at least a little.  
    “ I’m sorry you crashed.”
    “ It was what it was,” I said. “I can’t cry about it now. I need to stay focused and keep moving.”
    “ Can we ever defeat these things? I mean, do you think our lives will ever be normal again?”
    I reached for her hand. “Yes, I believe we will prevail. Zombies will die off, and eventually their bodies will rot away. All we have to do is outlive the infected. Yes, there are overwhelming odds stacked against us, but we can do this. I believe with all my heart that humanity can overcome anything, as long as we don’t lose hope.”
    “ So you’re heading to a safe haven, one of the walled cities?”
    “ Yes. We can hold out in the fortresses created around the Unites States. Zombies will run out of food and die, and we’ll get our world back. We just need a little time.”
    She nodded. “You make a good point.”
    “ Then come with us. I’m sure Claire will cave once she sees you’re serious about leaving.”
    A thump on the window drew my attention.
    Jackie jumped. “What was that?”
    I turned and couldn’t believe my eyes. A zombie with rotting flesh and oozing eyeballs was hitting his head against the glass. He shot me a stone-cold, glazed-over look that said in not so many words, “I want your brains…now!” The stupid thing seemed stumped as to why he couldn’t pass through the transparent glass wall.
    Speechless, Jackie pointed to the other glass walls.
    I gasped. Shit. Another one stared me straight in the eyes. This one looked like a raccoon, with blackened skin around her eyes; she definitely had that I-just-got-out-of-the-grave look about her. The dead seemed to be coming out of the woodwork like cockroaches, multiplying before our very eyes. Our beautiful view of the sunset had turned into a grotesque nightmare.
    I stood, but my sudden movement made them moan and groan even louder. Decaying h uman hands pounded on the glass walls from all three sides of the bedroom, and my heart raced. Brain-hungry walking corpses staggered around with white, sunken eyes and green, mottled skin. It was downright disturbing. I sucked in a deep gulp of air.  
    The glass shook, and I wondered if it would shatter. I gasped as bloody handprints streaked across the glass. Windows are notoriously easy to break, but I wondered how well a glass wall would hold up. I sure didn’t want to find out.
    I backed up slowly, focusing on the zombie who was making the most fuss. Even though he had decayed hands with exposed tendons, he still kept pounding. I cringed at his blue-green veins and the open flesh wounds on his forehead, cheeks, and neck. Through a tear in his shirt, I noticed an exposed ribcage with decaying flesh hanging off of it in grotesque shreds. The right pant leg was also torn to reveal a long white femur. Even a famous horror writer couldn’t have invented anything as horrible as the very real monster I was staring at.
    “ Let’s go!” Jackie said, grabbing my shoulder.
    “ Nick!” I yelled. “We’ve got to go…NOW!”
     
    Chapter 8
    With the orange light of the setting sun as a backdrop, the zombie looked like a creature out of a horror movie. His decaying palms pressed against the smooth surface of the glass wall, and his open mouth dripped with spit and blood as his dead gaze focused on me, making me flinch. For a whole second, I could barely breathe, let alone form a coherent thought in my head, and then it dawned on me that we had to get the heck away from there.
    I grabbed Jackie’s hand and headed down the hallway, calling as loudly as my lungs would allow, “Nick! Val! There’s a pack of zombies out there. We need to get going now!”
    Our feet pounded the hardwood floor as we passed the hall and rounded the corner into the living room. The door stood ajar, as though no one had bothered