Free Dead Hunt by Kenn Crawford

in the dark,” Emma said
as she turned on the tap.
    Nothing came out.
    “It’s an electric pump,” Lucy informed her.
“No electricity, no water.”
    “Any other good news?” Paul asked. “We don’t
have any electricity, there’s no water, and look,” he pointed to
the old stone fireplace. “No wood to build a fire. Nice place you
brought us to, Lucy.”
    “Hey, guys,” Michael spoke up, “we can’t stay
here.”
    “Why not?” they all asked in unison.
    “This place is too open. We don’t have any
electricity. There’s no food, or water….” Michael started.
    “Hey, I have water!” Lauren announced. “Two
or three bottles in my duffel bag.”
    “There’s six of us,” Michael told her. “And
we don’t know how much longer we’ll be stuck here. A couple bottles
of water and some beer ain’t going to help us much. I don’t see
anything we can use to board up the windows and,” he looked at
Wade, “the door won’t lock.”
    “Well, I didn’t see anyone else coming up
with ideas,” Wade bit back.
    “Well, we can’t go out there with those
things,” Paul told them. “We should just stay here the night and
head for St. Peter’s in the morning. Who in the hell were those
people?”
    “Zombies,” Emma suggested, not realizing she
said it out loud.
    “What?” she asked when she realized everyone
was staring at her.
    “She’s right,” Michael suggested.
    “Oh please,” Paul spoke up. “Zombies? Gimme a
fuckin’ break.”
    “No, think about it,” Michael started to
explain.
    “Think about what?” Wade interrupted. “This
ain’t the movies, Mate.”
    “No, it’s not,” Michael agreed. “It’s as real
as we are standing here. Those things out there are real and they
are headed this way.”
    “You don’t know that!” Paul argued.
    “Then let’s go by what we do know,” Michael
suggested. “We saw them eating human bodies.”
    “I hate to break it to you, Sherlock,” Paul
interrupted. “But that would make them cannibals, not zombies.”
    “When we ran out of the Co-op and out of that
hall,” Michael continued, “they didn’t run after us. They walked.
They staggered like they had no coordination.”
    “So?” Wade questioned.
    “So, when you pulled away,” Michael told him,
“twice I saw you shower them with rocks and twice they barely even
flinched. Like it didn’t even hurt them! And, what about the little
girl you ran over?”
    “What about her?” Wade asked.
    “You hit her doing what? Forty, fifty miles
an hour? We all felt the van hit her. And she got up! That impact
should have killed her, but she got up and started walking after
us! I don’t know what they are or how they got that way, but
everything so far points to zombie-like behavior, and that’s all we
have to go on.”
    “So, what’s your point?” Lucy asked.
    “My point is, we can’t stay here,” he said
again. “When we first saw them, Lucy, you said hello but they
didn’t really hear you until you screamed. It wasn’t until that
first one made that weird growling sound that the other one
came.”
    The teens stared at him, trying to follow
along.
    “And at the hall, they didn’t even know we
were there. But as soon as Emma screamed, that little kid let out
the same type of growl, and that’s when the rest of them looked. If
they are like zombies then maybe their brains can’t really
distinguish one sound from the next, but that growl they make is
like some kind of sensory communication or something.”
    “Sounds kinda weird to me,” Wade offered.
    “And people eating people or little girls
getting up when they were hit by a van is not weird?” Lauren
asked.
    “They didn’t really see or hear us,” Michael
explained. “But as soon as one of them knew we were there and made
that growl, they all knew we were there.”
    “Then that settles it,” Paul announced. “If
we stay here in the dark and be real quiet, they can’t see or hear
us.”
    “No,” Michael