Free District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse by Shawn Chesser

passenger to a shallow crossfire from the pair of AR-15s.
    Better to be safe than sorry was what the older folks were
always preaching. And after the ambush in Huntsville, the Kids had been more
than happy to take that advice to heart.
    North and southbound traffic was regulated at the intersection
by a pair of stop signs. To the left, a late-model import sitting on four flat
tires and a waist-high white picket fence fronting a two-story house partially
blocked the vehicle’s approach on Main from view. However, once the matte-black
bumper and massive grill broke the plane, there was no mistaking the vehicle
for anything but the towering Ford.
    Peering through the 3x magnifier atop his carbine, Wilson
confirmed the two in the truck were indeed Jamie and Lev. “Clear,” he called
out, still training the muzzle on the passenger door.
    “Copy,” Taryn said, setting the rotters in the doorway off
on a new round of try-to-climb-over-each-other which sent the rest of the
automotive brochures spilling onto the ground outside the entry.
    Lowering his carbine, Wilson smiled and approached the Ford
with one hand raised in greeting.
    Once her window had powered down completely, Jamie asked,
“Whatcha got?”
    “Follow me,” Wilson said, setting off for the short stack of
stairs to his right.
    Jamie exited the idling truck, one hand holding a boxy
pistol, the other resting on the handle of her sheathed flat-black war
tomahawk.
    Wilson and Lev formed up behind the women and followed them
up the wheelchair ramp fronting the building.
    Disregarding the unruly pair of zombies stalled out in the
doorway, Taryn stopped and knelt next to the gaunt first turn. “I walked right
into a trap,” she said, turning the twice-dead corpse over so that its neck
faced the others. With the angled tip of her Tanto, she pointed to the gaping wound
where an Adam’s Apple should have been. “All three of these have been … for
lack of a better word, silenced . It’s as if someone took out their voice
boxes … or damaged their vocal cords so badly they’ve been rendered mute.”
    “That’s why we bang on doors first ,” Lev said.
    Coming to Taryn’s aid, Wilson said, “She did. Three or four
times.” He moved closer to her and squared up to Lev.
    “I waited the full ten-count before trying the door, too,”
Taryn added, her eyes flicking from Jamie to Lev. “Look here.” She probed the
creature’s left ear with the knife. Where there should have been the usual
canal and raised cartilage inside, there was now just a hole roughly the
circumference of a dime. It had well-defined edges and was partially filled in
with crusted blood black as marrow.
    Jamie asked, “Is it the same on the other side?”
    Grimacing, Taryn grabbed the shock of dirty hair atop the
corpse’s head and turned it over. Same thing. A neatly bored hole crusted over
with some kind of dried fluid.
    The other two monsters continued battering themselves
against the doorframe, teeth bared in silent snarls. Both had puckered bullet
wounds peppering their torsos.
    “Those holes aren’t the work of hungry larvae,” Lev said. “Someone’s
used them for target practice.” He took a step toward the doorway and craned to
see the handiwork up close. Quickly determined that the bullet wounds looked
new. And like the rotter at his feet, these two had had their ears drilled out
and their throats operated on.
     “So what’s keeping them in check?” Jamie asked.
    “Let’s find out.” Lev drew a knife from a scabbard on his
hip. He set his right foot forward and leaned in like a fencer, jabbing the
dagger hilt deep into the eye of the corpse on his right. Instantly an awful-smelling
liquid seeped from the punctured orb and the shirtless Z collapsed vertically
into a heap, bony knees twisted Indian-style, sharp elbows and knobby vertebra
straining against pale, parchment-thin skin.
    After dispatching the other Omega-infected monster in the
same manner as the last, Lev