Lockey vs. the Apocalypse | Book 1 | No More Heroes [Adrian's Undead Diary Novel] Meadows, Carl (book recommendations for teens TXT) 📖

Yeah, keep telling yourself that, Lockey. That might make the guilt go a little quicker.

Fuck the apocalypse, man.

I hit the bottom of the stairs back into the open kitchen just as I heard Ariel’s screams gurgle and fade as she was assaulted by the zombies. I looked around frantically for a weapon, then stopped myself. Seriously, I couldn’t take that many undead in fucking melee combat and there was nothing heavy enough to swing. I wasn’t taking on five undead in a kitchen with a knife.

While my mind frantically tried to figure out what to do, I was drawn by a thumping behind me. I’d have laughed if my situation wasn’t so fucking dire.

Zombies aren’t too smart at coming downstairs. They just don’t have the coordination, so when Hope and her growing legion of undeath shredded Ariel, they all poured forward and a zombie avalanche came down the stairs, arse over tit, one after the other, piling up at the bottom. There was no way I could get past them to get back up the stairs, but I had a brainwave.

Now they were all down here, I could use my mad parkour skills to get back upstairs via the outside and get my shotgun. Brilliant. Go Team Lockey.

The shitstorm wasn’t finished though. Ariel’s ungodly screams were probably heard by Nate at the farm two miles away, so Grace and Theo had easily heard them. Just as I was opening the sliding doors to get outside, I heard running footsteps.

Grace and Theo’s bungalow joins to the main building and the door in is—yep, you guessed it—right next to the stairs.

Theo came thundering through the door at speed all wild-eyed and ran straight into the writhing undead mass at the foot of the stairs. He tripped, fell face first into them, and was summarily chewed in multiple places all at once.

“Oh, come the fuck on!” I roared in frustration.

Grace was just behind Theo and managed to stop falling into the mass, but like Ariel, her mind just fucking broke as she watched her testicle-faced husband ravaged like an antelope by undead hyenas, tearing bloody chunks out of him as the writhing blob of undead added him to their platoon.

She screamed, staring at the gorefest splashing at her feet, then a hand from somewhere in the writhing horror snapped out to grab her ankle. Jericho’s face slithered from the demonic blob of heads and limbs, tearing a mouthful of meat straight from her calf.

Just like that. In two gore-drenched minutes, the whole fucking lodge bar me and Freya were dead. It’s easy to see how the world got so boned so damn quick. Can you imagine this shit in a hospital? Man, that shit would have got exponential in no time.

With Grace doomed, I slid out the glass doors and ran to the side of the lodge, trying to figure out which window was mine.

“Freya!” I called out. I needed a little help. “Freya!” I didn’t know whether she’d be able to hear me, because holy shit, Grace was making as much noise as Ariel was. Absolute psychosis.

Then Particles leaped up on to a sill in full view of me and started barking.

My man.

Freya appeared at the window and opened it.

“I’m coming up!”

My eyes were already working out the route and I was up in no time, scampering up a drainpipe, then transferring across, holding to the open window. I slipped in through the window Dukes of Hazzard style, right into Freya’s embrace.

“What’s going on?” she asked when she finally released me. I fussed over Particles who danced around in little circles at my feet, desperate for attention.

“Everyone’s dead,” I said bluntly. “Don’t know how it started, but it seems to have started with Hope and Jericho and it’s gone nuts since then. Everyone is bitten and dying, or already undead.”

Freya’s hand clamped to her mouth and she sat down on her bed. Particles, ever alert, bounced around at her feet until she picked him up, then both started to calm a little.

Reaching under the bed, I pulled out the shotgun and a box of shells, popped one in each barrel, then stuffed a handful in the pockets of the hoody and pants. Enough to do the job that needed doing, with a few spares.

I couldn’t climb back down the way I’d come with a shotgun and couldn’t afford for it to be dropped out the window to me in case I missed the catch and it broke. Nate had all the other weapons and the only way I was taking out a small battalion of these bastards safely was with my gun. So, I had to go down the stairs and do these fuckers in the kitchen.

I was already dreading the cleaning.

“Stay here,” I ordered. “I’ll let you know when it’s clear.”

Freya just nodded and put a hand on my arm. “Be careful.”

I gave Particles one final scratch around his ears, sucked in a deep breath and slipped out into the hallway.

I checked on Top Knot’s room as I passed, making sure the door was still firmly closed. That would be one less problem to worry about that I could deal with at leisure later. Then I pressed on to the staircase. Jesus, the landing and top of the stairs was a crime scene. Blood and gore just everywhere.

I lightly moved step by step to the top of the stairs, then stalked down one by one, shotgun up and ready. As I came around the bend where the foot of the staircase would become visible, I silently swore to myself. The writhing mass had separated and must have got to their feet in the time I’d been messing about outside and climbing up to Freya and Particles.

My sphincter clamped so tight it would have its own six-pack by the evening, I edged down the stairs, looking for the first sign of the undead. I hate how quiet these things are. Hate it. They give you