Zombie Road: The Second Omnibus | Books 4-6 | Jessie+Scarlet Simpson, A. (pride and prejudice read txt) 📖

They never went in, there were twelve people in there. His parents, his brothers and sister and their families. They each had their own houses on the property, but everyone always met at the farmhouse for breakfast and to start the day with family. After that, it was school and work and chores and ranch duties, but you’d better have a good excuse for Mamma Abelson if you weren’t there.

Jessie spotted the ranch sign hanging over the driveway and turned in.

The dirt path twisted and turned for a few miles before it opened up on a little oasis in the high desert. There were a dozen buildings spread out among the tall, old oak trees. A few of them were houses, the rest were barns and equipment sheds. He picked out the main house easily enough, it was the biggest and the first built when the family started cowboying the land.

He pulled up in the yard and spun the car around so it was facing out. Bob could smell them already and was doing his whine-growl thing. He didn’t like them, they were deadly and something unnatural and he was afraid for Jessie, but he also wanted to attack and kill. To make them stop moving, because every sense he had told him they were worm food and they needed to lay down and act like it. They needed to stop walking around.

Jessie hopped out and double checked his loadout. Both pistols firmly in place on his hips, both knives secured. He pulled on the leather jacket with the reinforced shoulder pads his mom had made. It had disappeared from his shop one day and he was actually starting to think someone had stolen it when Stabby and Scratch brought it back, customized even more.

“Now it’s a proper Zombie Hunter’s leather,” Stabby had said when they presented it to him. They’d added bits of chainmail, some ammo bandoliers, and had painted a skull on the sleeve.

“Metal as fuck!” Scratch had proclaimed, sticking out his tongue and throwing the devil’s horn sign. Jessie had to admit, it did look kinda cool.

He grabbed the SRM 12-16 Griz had pimped out for him. It was a twelve gauge with a rotating magazine that would hold sixteen rounds total, hence the name. There were only twelve of the undead and he was using number four birdshot. Each shell had about two hundred bits of lead so he had more than enough to make a big brainy mess, wade through the glop, see if they had any Ding Dongs, then get the books from upstairs. Piece of cake.

No stupid mistakes, he reminded himself and rechecked everything for the third time. Pull them to you, kill ‘em one at a time, keep constant situational awareness.

“You ready, Bob?” he asked and got a cocked head for an answer. Ol’ Bob knew they were getting ready for something. His hair was already standing on end and his growl came from deep in his chest. Jessie took another deep breath, willed himself calm, and started for the porch steps. Nope, he didn’t have to do this, but he was going to anyway. He liked Wally and his wife, the guy had helped him nurse Bob back to health. He didn’t have any schooling, but he knew a lot about animals and how to take care of them. It was Jessie’s time to return the favor.

They were at the door, he could hear them on the other side, slapping at it and starting to keen. Part of him wondered how they even knew where the door was. They were so brain dead they couldn’t turn a knob, but somehow, they knew the difference between a door and a wall. Most of the time. It was made of solid wood, though. No windows to shoot through. There was a big picture window that led into the living room so Jessie walked down to it so he could see in. Maybe see what he was up against. They followed his footsteps, stumbled over furniture and against the curtains. They tore loose and fell on top of the small horde causing a few of them to start thrashing. A flailing arm sent a heavy lamp flying toward the window and it was cold enough for it to shatter. Jessie had the gun up and started splitting heads instantly, raking it across the clawing crowd. They were fast, they’d been protected all winter inside the house and ten of them leapt, almost in unison, for him. Jessie spun and ran, Bob right on his heels. The undead poured out of the frame, using the bodies of the two dropped by the shotgun as a springboard through the opening. There were a couple that were ten or twelve years old and they hit the porch in a bound, springing like animals after prey. They covered the distance to the steps in a single jump and were reaching for Jessie with outstretched arms, curled fingers, and guttural cries of hunger. He hooked the banister with his free hand and spun down the step, the shrieking crowd right on his heels, tumbling over each other in their eagerness.

“Go, go go!” Jessie yelled at Bob, urging him to leap into the car because he wasn’t messing around. He didn’t have time to waste. Bob sensed the danger and understood the commands and was already in his seat when Jessie dove in, pulling the door shut behind him. The bodies slammed into the bars on the window and clawed with desperate hands and snapped with starving teeth. They were savage. They had been slowly bumbling around inside the house for the past six months with a hungering, gnawing, need that couldn’t be satisfied. If brain-dead, barely aware creatures could go insane from desire, these surely had. Teeth broke off trying to bite into steel. Hands broke and faces were repeatedly bashed against the roll cage on the outside of the car. It