Only The Dead Don't Die | Book 4 | Finding Home Popovich, A.D. (any book recommendations txt) 📖

Still on the ladder, he eyeballed the hallway beyond the bedroom’s ripped off door for movement. He caught a whiff of that horrific stench. It was a dead giveaway. A horde awaited him.

Luther forced a leg over the window ledge, ducking into the room. “Mindy—” Good God Almighty! The shredded mattress flew in the air. A Z lunged for him. In a swift move right out of a Wesley Snipes action film, he sidestepped it, pivoted, and hurled the stinking nimrod out the window with a grand slam swing of his wrench.

He waited for more. Stragglers typically didn’t stray far from its horde. A rattling sound from outside jabbed at his nerves. He stole a glance out the window. The thing’s legs, arms, and torso had buckled into impossible positions as it shook the ladder, attempting to stand up in a hideous animatronic-like scene.

“Mindy? It’s me, Luther,” he called out. Would she trust him? He barely knew the young woman who couldn’t be more than sixteen or seventeen.

The back of his neck quivered as he slinked down the hallway like a beefy ballerina. He cocked the 9mm. Ready. Three Zs rushed him from the opened room he approached. He skull-smacked the fastest one with the wrench. It teetered about while another one leaped for him. Luther jumped out of its path, letting it crash to the floor. He stomped in its skull with his boot and turned to face the third one as it pounced. He fired two rounds, catching it in the head. It collapsed to the floor with a dull thud.

The element of surprise lost, he fired rounds at the next three who suddenly emerged. Six gone. Just a mini-horde. No big deal. It must have rambled to the lodge after the HAZMAT mop up.

“Mindy, Ella sent me to find you.” Sure, it was BS, but why would she trust him?

“The attic,” a weak voice trailed off.

She’s alive! He leaned over the third floor’s banister for a quick look below. “Un-fucking-believable!” A horde wriggled around the floor, gnawing on a mangled skeleton. Taking advantage of the horde’s distraction, he eyed the ceiling. Old buildings like this often built attic access in the hallway. Although the attic door could be in one of the bedrooms.

There it is. Luther tugged the cord to the attic’s pull-down ladder. The glow of a fading flashlight greeted him. “Mindy?” He inched his way up the old ladder to find a shadow of a young woman wasting away from lack of food. “Your Uber’s here.”

A gurgling Z spasmed-out at the foot of the ladder, looking a little too enthused for dinner. Luther stepped down and punted it to the end of the hall. The nimrod’s scream pierced his ears. Screamers were the worse. More wails joined in, morphing into howling. The Hunger’s Howl. No, no, no—not X-strains.

“Hurry down. I got your back.” He kept the quiver out of his voice.

She shook her head furiously, fear leaching from her aura.

“Mindy,” he continued in the tone of a well-rehearsed preschool teacher, “in about thirty seconds the rest of the horde will make it up the stairs.” Maybe less. X-strains were unpredictable. “All we have to do is get to the ladder three rooms down the hall. The truck’s right outside. Just take my hand.” He reached for her, eyeing the horde wrangling the stairs to the second floor from his narrow view from the ladder.

Too late. The horde reached the landing. He bolted up the attic ladder. He slammed shut the attic door. By the light flooding through the gabled windows, he studied the attic for options. A series of thuds followed. He knew what it was. The horde jumping for the ceiling. If they thought to pull the cord dangling from the attic’s door . . .

Mindy crouched against a wooden chest. He was trying to think of something encouraging to say when the attic door snapped open. He forced it shut. He thundered, “I’m getting you out of here.” But he had no idea how.

The backpack next to her suddenly fell over. He cocked the 9mm without missing a beat. She thrust the backpack to her chest.

A muffled baby’s cry seemed to linger in the back of his mind. “Starla!” Luther finally realized in heart-stopping recognition. He had assumed the baby had died.

Mindy barely nodded, apparently in a state of petrified shock.

He had to get them out of there. Before the horde got to them, before Enforcers showed up, before the lockdown, and before Dean and the gang left him for dead and took off for Tent City. It was a cosmic smackdown, demanding he get his head back in the game. And save Mindy and her baby.

The attic door lurched open again, requiring a babbling bout of profanity. A stinking nimrod hung from the cord with the others latching onto his legs. A battle even a burly man like him couldn’t win for long.

Aunt Mattie, you better not be shittin’ me. Voodoo spell or a natural immunity? Hell, it didn’t matter—as long as he believed in himself. There was only one way out of the attic. And it was going to get ugly.

Struggling to keep the door shut, Luther shouted, “See that tarp?” He head-jerked toward the tarp partially covering the mirror to an antique dressing table. “Tie the ends around your neck like a cape.” It was a heavy-duty tarp, not one of those plastic cheapies. Possibly capable of warding off Z-bites, he convinced himself.

She quickly tied it around her neck like a cape.

“Now strap the pack—to your front. Not your back,” he clarified.

“Okay.”

“Good,” he husked. “Now wrap your arms around my neck. And hug your legs around my waist.”

She looked up at him with unsure eyes.

“It’s the only way—” The door snapped open three more inches. She scampered to