Life After the Undead (Book 1 in the Life After the Undead Series)

CHAPTER 3

Mom and I spent the morning holding one another in silence. Clouds from the fire darkened the sky, and gray ash fluttered on the wind.

Midday, Mom rose. "Get packed. We're not staying here anymore."

"Where are we going to go?"

Mom stuffed a sleeping bag into its sack and threw cans into a box. "He told us to get him the next day."

"Mom—"

"He might not be dead," she snapped. "He might still be at the compound."

I didn't argue. I didn't want to imagine the unthinkable had happened. Like Mom, I was optimistic we'd find Dad alive. We didn't know the extent of damage or exactly what had happened at the complex, so anything was possible. I helped Mom finish packing, then we headed onto the deck. She peeked over the rail and lowered the rope before placing our belongings into the basket. She was about to lower it when a man burst through the trees. His hair stuck out, and his face and clothes were covered in soot. He ran to the rope and started to climb toward us. He lost his grip and slipped. He tried again and had more luck.

My heart leapt into my throat when I met the man's gaze. His eyes were red and flared with intensity. I couldn't tell if he was a zombie or human. He moved quickly, so it was safe to assume he wasn't the undead, but the intensity in his eyes didn't make me believe he was there to protect us. Maybe he was infected. We didn't know what the victims looked like before they turned into zombies.

"Hey!" Mom yelled down at the man. "What do you think you're doing?"

The man didn't answer but kept climbing frantically toward us.

Mom aimed the shotgun over the rail. "Hey! I asked you a question!"

The man glanced up and noticed the gun but didn't slow his climbing.

"I'm giving you one more chance! If you don't answer me by the count of three, I'm going to blow you away." She cocked the gun. "One...two...three."

I gritted my teeth and waited for the explosion of the gun, but it never came. I turned. Mom held the gun over the railing, her finger flexed on the trigger. I turned back to the man. He was a few feet from the top of the rope.

"This is your last chance," Mom yelled.

The man glanced up at us. His lip curled into a snarl.

There was a deafening crack, and the man's head split in a spray of blood and bone. His body lingered on the rope for a few seconds before flopping onto the ground. My throat tightened. I couldn't catch my breath, so I sat on the deck.

Mom knelt next to me and placed a hand on my shoulder. "We have to get to the base." She pulled me up and toward the rope.

I grabbed it and slowly lowered myself down while Mom kept watch. Bile rose in the back of my throat as I slid through the blood and brain matter that stuck to the fibers. When I made it to the bottom, I pulled out my own weapon and kept an eye on the forest, listening for anything out of place. Mom joined me on the ground. We jumped onto the four wheeler. I sat uneasily on the back. What had possessed her to kill that man? Yeah, it was possible he was going to kill us, or worse, but I never knew she had it in her. Something was wrong with her, and I desperately wanted to know what it was.

It took us an hour to reach the base. We stopped on top of the same hill we had been on a few days earlier and stared down at the complex. The buildings that were still standing were charred black, and wisps of dark smoke curled into the sky. The chain-link fence that surrounded the place had been toppled in several areas and laid on the ground. The blackened corpses of people lay strewn about the yard, and the smell of burnt flesh permeated the air. Any hope I had of finding Dad disappeared when I saw the destruction. There was no way he'd survived.