Free The Hunt Chronicles (Volume 1): Awakening by J.D. Demers Page B

“Sarah, I’m not infected.  I fought it off last night.  Trust me.”  I thought I heard something crash outside, but the crazy woman in front of me drew my attention back as she swung the club harmlessly in my direction, trying to ward me off.
    “The radio!  They warned us,” she yelled, exiting my bedroom.
    “Get away from me!” she screamed again as she moved out of the hallway.  Unconsciously, I was backed up toward the front door in the living room as she came out.  She nearly tripped over Dave’s bug out bag, but regained her balance.  Still yelling at me to get away, she looked around the room desperately for another exit that did not involve going through me.  She eyed the back door.
                  “Don’t follow me!” she said, swinging again as she backed up through the kitchen toward the back exit.  That time, she hit the empty carton of orange juice on the counter and knocked it across the room.  Her towel had slipped completely off by then, and both of her hands gripped the golf club like a baseball bat.
                  “Please,” I pleaded, “I’m not sick.  We’re safer together.”  The truth was, I thought I was more worried about being alone again than I was about her safety.
                  Sarah didn’t hear me though.  She was focusing more on getting out of my house.  Her left hand gripped the back door knob as her right pointed the club at me as she gave me a death stare.  She opened the door and spun around to leave.
                  My nightmare became reality. 
                  Dave approached the doorway just as she turned around to go out.  I froze.  In my dream, Dave was still coming at me, even though he had a bullet through his brain.  Zombies could not function without their brain.  That’s what the urban legends told us.  You shot them in the head, and they fell over, never to move again.
                  But there he was, back from the dead… again.  His body was more decomposed than what I thought it would be at that point.  His skin was flaked away, and there were several dissolved patches of flesh scattered about.  The flap of skin below his temple where the bullet exited still dangled there.  He was wet from the rain and dripped water that pooled behind him.  I could see he had ripped the patio door off its hinges to get in.  That must have been the noise I heard a few moments earlier.
                  Sarah screamed and started to back up, but Dave was already upon her.  He grabbed her shoulder with one hand and hugged her with the other as they fell to the kitchen floor.  Her scream, somehow, became louder and curdled as he bit down on her face.  He ripped a chunk of skin and muscle off with his teeth, seemed to swallow, then continued down on her neck.  She was beating on him, and yelled for me to help. 
                  Do something! The voice screamed in my head.
                  But I did nothing.  I couldn’t.  My legs had no feeling.  I wasn’t breathing.  I just stared as my oldest friend tore into her over and over again.  Her scream died down in seconds as she faded away.  Dave had eaten at least half her neck, and started to tear into her chest when she finally went limp.  Blood pooled all around them on the laminate floor.  I felt my heart beat.  Another thump pounded in my chest, and another, until I finally shook myself out of the terror. 
                  “Dave…,” I croaked rhetorically.  I wasn’t really calling out to him, but something in my brain told me to talk to him.  I was losing my mind.  He was dead.  I could see he was dead.  I could see he was still a zombie.  Albeit, one that could function without a brain.  Things were not adding up. 
                  Dave heard me and stopped chewing on Sarah’s throat.  He tilted his head and eyed me menacingly.  Slowly,