Free The Apocalypse Crusade 2 by Peter Meredith Page B

rending sound. The beasts had to gorge their way through rolls of belly fat just to get at her vitals.
    Yvonne died a very slow death.
    Others heard her screams. The birds and animals that heard it shivered in their nests and their burrows. The humans cowered in their homes doing nothing but locking the doors and calling the sheriff. A hundred calls were made; after three rings they went to a pre-recorded message because the sheriff had died hours before at Saint Francis Hospital where the zombies outnumbered the living by ten to one. He had died screaming much the way Yvonne had screamed: high and girlish.
    And Thuy knew none of this. Her night had been one of basic survival. She had fought to stay alive before fleeing through a gap in the quarantine. Then she had slept, unaware of the chaos she had left behind. Unaware that Highland had been overrun by horrible creatures that were somewhere in limbo between the living and the dead, or that in the town of Lloyd people hid in basements and attics, under cars and in trash bins, and, in the case of three ten-year-old boys who’d been having a sleepover, in a tree house.
    The zombies had sniffed them out, but the wooden planks nailed to the trunk of the cottonwood had been an obstacle they could not overcome, but this didn’t save the children in the long run. After hours of waiting to be rescued, one of them, Jared Cooper, went mad from fear and worry and decided to chance making a dash for home where his parents were supposedly waiting, just up the street. There were four zombies beneath their tree and the other two boys pleaded with him not to go.
    “I’m fast. I’m fast. I’m fast,” he repeated over and over as he looked down the plank ladder. Even for a ten-year-old, Jared was athletic. He played basketball and football and he was fast and agile even with fear contorting his limbs, making him want to shrivel into a ball. He fought the feeling and went down the ladder like a monkey. At the bottom, he zigged around the zombies and their long arms. One hooked the collar of his wind-breaker and tried to reel him in but Jared was able to pull away, leaving his jacket behind.
    He ran up the block, past the Dern’s house, noticing that the front door was smeared with blood and flung wide. He ran past the Albertson’s which was brightly lit but abandoned. He ran past the McDonald’s and stared with wide unblinking eyes at the body on the front porch. It was Lisa McDonald, the only girl he had ever seen naked. He had seen her in the flesh on a dare. A month before, he had shimmied up the birch that grew outside her window and stared in at her as she got ready for bed. She had dropped her shorts like it was no big deal and walked around her room in only her tank top. He saw her butt and everything. Then she took her top off. She had been eleven and flat as a board. He would later tell his friends that she was “skinny” and “there was nothing there,” and yet he had stared, entranced, growing a funny twig of a little boy boner.
    Now she was lying on the porch, face down and one of her arms had been torn off. It was lying in the grass making no sense to Jared. It looked pale and still serviceable as though someone could stick it back into its slot and it would be good to go.
    Jared ran with his head swiveled like an owls. The bare arm, the same one he had seen attached to that beautiful, scrawny girl, wouldn’t leave his mind. It was the first thing he planned on telling his mom about when he got home.
    Three doors down was the house he grew up in. He hammered on the door but couldn’t yell; his lips were numb from his fear. His throat felt terribly scratchy like bark rubbing on burlap. He could only bam on the door until his hand hurt. When he looked back, he saw that the zombies were coming for him. They started appearing in doorways and through the slats of fences. Jared began crying and with his lips against the heavy wood door he croaked out a single word: