Free Blood of the Dead: A Zombie Novel (Undead World Trilogy, Book One) by A.P. Fuchs Page B

mouth.
    “Hear anything?” she asked, squeezing the bar, desperately needing to relieve some stress.
    “Hang on a sec. Can’t hear nothing with you jabbering.”
    She stuck her tongue out at him even though he didn’t see.
    “I can’t . . .” he said and got closer to the ground. He turned his head so he was facing her and scooted to the side with his ear closer to Shank’s mouth. “The angle . . .”
    Billie’s mouth was dry. She wriggled her tongue in her mouth, trying to get some spit going. “I don’t think he’s alive, Des.”
    Des closed his eyes, brought a finger to his lips, shushing her, and waited.
    Putting one palm on her thighs, the other still holding the bar beside her leg, she straightened her back, took a deep breath, then checked the sidewalk for the rats again. The sidewalk was bare.
    She looked back at Des. He opened his eyes, his ear still close to Mr. Shank’s mouth.
    “Can’t hear anything,” he said.
    “Check his pulse.”
    “Okay.”
    Mr. Shank’s arm snapped up from his side, jerked into the air, then dropped onto Des’s head.
    Des screamed and tried to pull away but Shank’s palm on his skull kept him pinned.
    It could have been the sudden movement that did it, but suddenly Billie’s eyes were drawn to Shank’s other arm, the one she couldn’t see when she had studied him from across the street. A moist, dark red patch was on his biceps, the gray material ripped, as if something had bit into it and torn it away.
    “Des!” she screamed, dropping the bar. She grabbed him by the shoulders, tugging him back, trying to free him from the old guy’s hold. The man wouldn’t let go. “Get off him, you . . .” She kicked Shank in the underside of the forearm, sending the arm up and loosening its grip on Des.
    Des scrambled backward on his belly then got to his feet. “Did you see, did you see?”
    “Run!” she said. She began to run but had to stop abruptly.
    She hadn’t seen them coming, not with her attention on Des and Mr. Shank.
    A dozen undead stepped slowly toward her, some dragging their feet, others managing fairly well considering they had no life in their legs.
    She and Des turned around and both stopped short when they were met by fifteen more coming from the other side.
    Billie could scarcely breathe.
    A soft scraping sound signaled Mr. Shank was getting to his feet. The old man straightened, dropped his shoulders as if they were too heavy for him, and started moving toward them, one arm out, the other trying to extend but not seeming to get past stomach level.
    Not far behind the old man’s feet was the bar from Des’s closet. She was closest to it.
    She checked the zombies; she had maybe three seconds before it’d be too hard and too late to move. Carefully, her eyes on Mr. Shank’s white ones, she crouched down, and duck-walked closer, reaching for the bar. Shank stumbled a step to the side, blocking it from her. She didn’t know if the move was intentional or not.
    “Uh, Billie?” Des said, poking her in the back.
    She spun around.
    They were surrounded, the zombies having formed a ring around them.
    There was nowhere to run.
     
     
    7
    In a Swarm of Death
     
    Des tried to swallow the cotton ball at the back of his throat. The tissue back there was so dry that he coughed and had a hard time catching his breath. Billie, so transfixed on the mass of zombies surrounding them, didn’t look his way to see if he was all right.
    When he was finally able to breathe, he looked at her with watery eyes.
    “We’re going to die,” he whispered, the words dripping with defeat.
    Billie only nodded.
    Should he tell her how he felt about her? If this was the end, what could it hurt? It’s not like it would matter in a few moments anyway.
    I love you, he said to her in his mind.
    He wished she could hear his thoughts. He wanted her know, wanted her to understand that despite the world nearly at its end, despite all the loss she’d suffered in the past year,