Free Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed by Shawn Chesser

Cade
knew, the notes detailing those first experiments had been in the computers and
were lost in the fire set by Pug. Moreover, if the thumb-drive found by Taryn
contained anything other than the doctor’s notes on the Omega antiserum, Nash
had decided, for whatever reason, to keep that knowledge to herself.
    Moving with a locked-knee type of shuffle, the high-pitched
squawking still emanating from its constantly moving maw, the creature caught a
9mm round to each milky eye, fired by the man whose pistol prowess had earned
him the nickname Wyatt early on in his Special Forces career. They
don’t call it a silencer for nothing , he thought to himself as the
screeching pusbag went silent and fell in a heap, partially blocking a gloomy
stairwell leading up.
    Finished ‘ shopping ’ in under a minute, cargo pockets
bulging with liberated goods, Cade hurried back to his truck.
    He popped the door and climbed in, saying, “Mission
accomplished, Max.” He trapped the Glock under his thigh and transferred some
of the liberated goods from his pockets to the deep center console.
    Max growled as soon as the motor turned over. “Yeah ...”
Cade said in response, “I don’t want to drive through them either. But it’s
what we’re going to have to do in order to get back to 39. And Max, when we
return to the compound”—the dog looked up from the floor, regarded him with
multi-colored eyes, and yawned—“do not let on to the others that I talked to
you so much.” Another yawn confirmed acknowledgement as the truck rolled slowly
over a handful of withered and gunshot Z bodies and then bounced and lurched as
Cade drove it off the curb.
    As Cade angled the F-650 toward the column of dead, he
detected no movement whatsoever. They were rooted in place like life-sized
figures in a museum diorama. Or those terra cotta soldiers on display in the
Forbidden City in China, the country responsible for this entire mess.
    “Domino time,” said Cade, intending to put the wide steel
bumper to use like a cowcatcher on a locomotive. He turned left onto Main and
drove south, weaving slowly left and right, pleased when his spoken assumption
came to fruition. The impacts with the Zs sounded through the sheet metal like
hollow thuds, which were a far cry from the usual resonant slaps and screeching
of fingernails digging into the paint. Instantly a chain reaction was started
and, domino-like, the dead began toppling into each other, cascading away from
the Ford like dual waves pushing out from the bow of a ship. Gunshot-like
cracks of bones breaking under the tires competed with the same shrill noise
the Z in the rehab place had made. Only here, in the midst of scores of
immobilized flesh eaters, the noise soon rose to a deafening peal and suddenly
Cade was driving through a scene from his childhood nightmares. In the next
instant, with the windows vibrating slightly from the sonic onslaught, in his
mind it was Oldies Night and he was at the Moreland Theater in Portland
ensconced in the comfortable love seats in the back of the house. He wasn’t
alone and there was this ethereal feeling of being wary and excited all at
once. He was on the precipice of stealing a kiss from his first real girlfriend
when that sound belted out of the speakers directly above them. He let
go of Barbara’s hand then, took his arm from around her slender shoulders, and
clamped his palms over his ears just like the people were doing on the movie
screen. Who knew the body snatchers screamed when they were onto you? Until
then, sitting through it in the theater, he’d had no idea. That God-awful noise
ruined the moment and the screaming pod people returned in his sleep regularly
in the form of nightmares that lasted nearly a year until another Oldies
Night featured Alien and a whole new cast of baddies took their
places.
    The mental side trip lasted a millisecond and then, for the first
time Cade could remember, he heard Max whine. Not one and done, but a