Dead Chaos - Book 1 - Zombie Apocalypse

Dead Chaos - Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

“Do you think only the white trash zombies congregate at K-Mart?” Alexi asked quietly while peering through his binoculars at the scene across the street.

I held back a smile as not to encourage him, but couldn’t resist teasing him. “Oh yeah, the high class ones prefer Target.”

“Shut up you two,” Viktor ordered the both of us, clearly annoyed.

True to character, Alexi always bent the rules and simply lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’m telling you guys, we should hit up Walmart. The pickings are better.”

“There are too many of them there. We’d be the pickings,” Viktor responded while pulling out his billhook machete.

“I can put out that many,” I informed my older brother. Although, this was something he well knew.

Viktor shook his head, frowning in thought. “Not worth the risk, Anya. Better to hit this place first.”

Our dad and Viktor had already decided on the K-Mart in this town, so that was the way it’d be. They led and the rest of us minions followed. Five years older than me, Viktor’s opinion mattered more to our dad than mine and Alexi’s.

Even if I was considered the talent in the family.

I couldn’t blame my dad when it came to my brother Alexi, though. Alexi was seventeen going on seven. The only reason Alexi sat on this roof with us instead of a few blocks over where Kyle, Justin and my dad were about to start the fireworks was because Viktor was on a recent mission to toughen our younger brother up. Alexi had guts in spades. It was his lack of brains that was worrisome.

Viktor stared intently at his watch. “Three, two, one.” The explosion from the west lit the sky brighter than the rising sun in the opposite direction. My dad, Kyle and Justin would be circling around to meet us here, having now provided the distraction.

Our gazes drifted back to the K-Mart parking lot. It worked as expected. Like a flock of birds, the dead headed toward the smoky sky. From our rooftop perch my brothers and I patiently, and not so patiently in Alexi’s case, waited for the zombie herd to clear out. It was slow moving, comparable to watching a group of toddlers waddle in a race. Partially brain dead or not, zombies were competitive when it came to dinner time. The first-come, first-served saying came to mind. The early bird gets the intestine. I’d even seen one zombie unintentionally maim another to feast first. If only they’d start eating each other, life would be much easier.

The biters who’d been least damaged before death were at the front of the pack. Alpha zombies were what we’d nicknamed them, the ones you had to watch out for the most. Then there were the stragglers, the ones who’d been gnawed on before they’d died and turned undead cannibal. Missing limbs or massive amounts of flesh and muscle resulted in the cripples. Looking through my binoculars, I saw an infected male down in the middle of the parking lot trying to stand up. Hard to do when you’re armless. Another zombie with the opposite problem was desperately trying to catch up to the herd, dragging her legless body along on two arms.