Die Trying: A Zombie Apocalypse Read Online Free PDF Page A

The rank, decaying smell seemed to coat the back of my mouth so that I felt myself begin to gag. I opened my eyes and stared directly ahead. I could see nothing. I could sense no movement. I tightened my finger on the trigger of the Glock – and struck the lighter.
    The flash of orange glow in the night was like a bright, burning flare. Without my free hand shielding the light, the area ahead of us was thrown into dramatic relief.
    I stared fixedly ahead, my gun ha nd extended, my finger tight on the trigger, and my whole body tensed and coiled, expecting violence. I gritted my teeth.
    Nothing.
    Nothing at all. The night was empty.
    I stared, bewildered.
    And then I looked down.
    There was a young girl’s body lying in the grass at my feet. She might have been ten, certainly no older. She was wearing a floral dress. She was lying on her back, one arm flung out, the other still clutching the dirty, muddied shape of a stuffed teddy bear. The girl’s face was grey rotting flesh. Her eyes were gone, and the soft alabaster skin of her cheeks was crawling with writhing swarms of maggots. She had been shot once. Through the head. Her hair was crusted stiff with dirt and dried blood. She had been dead for some time.
    Rats had gnawed their way through the fabric of her dress and torn the flesh from her abdomen to burrow into her stomach cavity. Ragged swollen entrails lay in the long grass beside her. I felt my stomach heave, and a scalding burn in the back of my throat. I turned to the side and retched.
    Sheet lightning jagged across the sky and for an instant everything around us was lit. The trees before us were outlined as stark black shapes below the heavy belly of the storm clouds, and a trick of the sudden light seemed to make the dead girl’s body move.
    I took a step back.
    Then the night slammed down again, plunging the world around us back into solid darkness.
    I reeled away from the body, my hands trembling, and a surge of hysterical relieved laughter leaped into my throat.
    “You okay?” Harrigan’s voice from near by lifted anxiously.
    “Yeah,” I said, but my voice was shaky. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “There’s a dead girl here. She’s been dead for a while. I…. I thought I saw her move. It scared me shitless.”
    There was a rustle of movement from the others, and I heard Jed laugh softly.
    I took a deep breath. My mouth was dry, my breathing too quick, and I could feel a flush of warmth beneath the skin of my cheeks from the fright. I cleared my throat. “The trees are just ahead of us,” I muttered. “Let’s go.”
    We moved in single file, so close together that I could sense Harrigan’s bulky body right behind me. I moved with high, cautious steps, lifting my feet with exaggerated care and placing them gently back into the grass, like a man walking blindly through a minefield. I doubted the girl’s body was the only one laying nearby – and maybe the next one we stumbled across would rise up and lunge for us.
    We reached the tree line and paused.
    I felt the tension rise. It was in all of us. I could hear it in Harrigan’s and Jed’s breathing, and in their footsteps as we edged our way through the woods. I could feel it in the brush of Harrigan’s arm against mine, and in the occasional odor of their bodies that carried in the wind – the scent of anxious sweat and strung-out nerves.
    Ahead of us, the heavy cloud bank was beginning to lift, and I could see the first hint of moonlight as it shone through shredded tatters of cloud. It was no longer utterly dark and we moved more quickly. There was a dull orange glow of light reflecting from the belly of the clouds that grew brighter and then faded – then brightened once more. I frowned, and kept my eyes on the clouds until we reached the edge of the trees and stood in a tight knot. I was breathing hard, and drenched in sweat. Not the healthy sweat that comes from strenuous exercise – this was the nervous sweat of someone