Zombie Road | Book 8 | Crossroads of Chaos Simpson, A. (new books to read .txt) 📖

He flipped the dead man switches on the Merc and took off towards the sound, stepping around the debris littering the parking lot. Shredded plastic bags caught in the fences still fluttered listlessly with the light breeze. As he went up the street, he kept his head on a swivel looking for danger and also signs of life. He stayed in the middle of the road and set a brisk pace towards the town center. A quarter mile later, he saw what had stirred up the crows.

In the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly grocery store a dozen or more zombies were half-leaping and clawing at someone trapped on the roof of an RV. She was little, just a kid, with an unruly mop of black hair. The undead were fairly fresh ones, they still moved fast and jumped and they all had clothes on. They must have been stuck inside the store, out of the weather and the baking sun. That kid on the roof, or whoever she was with, had set them free. They’d probably been trapped in a break room or something. Maybe he should have brought his armor. Too many of them to take on with his blades, not without protection. He didn’t feel like getting bit or covered in their stinking blood. Too bad Bob wasn’t here. He’d have to use the carbine and be quick about it because anything within blocks was already on the way, following the keening of the undead. Even with the suppressor it was still loud in the silence of the dead world. Once he started shooting, every crawler, shambler and runner within a mile would be headed towards him as fast as it could.

He dropped to a knee, shouldered the M-4 and started popping heads. They turned, saw the fresh meat, and ran towards him as fast as they could. They were in better shape than most he’d come across recently but still, they’d been dead for a long time. Fourteen became twelve became ten. They were closing the distance too fast and he wasn’t getting enough head shots. Their uneven gait made their ugly, open-mouthed heads bob and weave. This was gonna be close. Even above the sound of the rifle double tapping and their breathless screams, he heard more glass shatter across the street behind him. He’d have company from one of the houses lurching for his blood. This plan sucked. He needed a plan B. He emptied the magazine and sprang to his feet, sprinting towards the RV. He dodged around the six still running for him and smashed the stock of his rifle into a mummified store clerk's face as he dashed by. The jawbone shattered and teeth went skittering across the parking lot as Jessie kept going, not even breaking stride. He leaped for the hood then bounded up to the roof, pulling one of the spare magazines from his pocket to reload. The girl was gone and he spotted her disappearing into the undergrowth at the side of the store, tote bags of groceries in her hands.

“You’re welcome,” he grumbled to himself, then waited a few minutes for the shufflers and shamblers to make their way to him. He let them all gather around the RV and start reaching for him before he began killing them again. He checked each face, looking for a brand new one that may have been with the girl but they were all old, lips dry and shriveled and exposing their snapping teeth. When they all lay in heaps around the camper, he double checked the bodies he’d already put down but they were withered and dried out, too. No freshly turned zeds. The kid had been alone. She wasn’t too bright, though, if she’d loosed a pack of zombies on herself. Jessie wondered if she had recently lost her guardians. No way had she been out here on her own for very long. She’d made a bunch of rookie mistakes. She wasn’t armored. She didn’t have weapons or a go-bag on her back and she had just run in a blind terror to climb on top of the RV. She would have been dead in a day or so if he hadn’t come along.

Now he had a choice. Go gear up or take off after her immediately. He grimaced. Both choices were bad. The smart thing to do would be to leave her. She’d ran off and left him, she could take care of herself.

But she couldn’t. That had been pretty obvious. She'd had maybe a ten-minute lead by the time he’d finished off all of the zeds so he skipped the armor and started off at an easy jog into the undergrowth. The woods and kudzu were slowly reclaiming the town, the back of the building already covered in the vines, the dumpster shapes barely recognizable. He had seen where she went in and it was easy to pick up her trail. She was running in a panic with an armload of groceries. He followed the broken branches and the bent weeds over the edge of the hilltop and down the grassy hillside.

The little town of Cattle Creek was situated on a South Carolina knoll with only a few dozen streets and the one county road snaking through it. The area behind the Piggly Wiggly dropped off into a valley and there was another wooded hill on the other side of the creek at the bottom. Her path through the waist high grass was easy to see and when she started following a game trail on the other side of the stream, her footprints were evident in the dirt. Small, bare feet left impressions alongside the hoof prints of deer.

Jessie was hot, sweat was rolling off of him and biting insects buzzed his head. This is ridiculous he kept thinking as he swatted mosquitoes and deer flies. Why am I even bothering? But