Zombies! A Love Story Read Online Free PDF Page A

been.
    On the opposite side of the road there was a small convenience store-slash gas station, the only thing made of brick in the entire village. It also looked abandoned. The ten wheel gas truck was out front, where he was in the wee hours every Sunday and Wednesday when he delivered gas. The big hose lay on the ground, not leaking, not inserted into the underground tank, just lying there. Like maybe the old truck driver, Bert McCourtney, had been interrupted before he’d been able to make his delivery.
    Damn.
    We sat there for a full minute, none of us moving or saying a word, and then Mom finally shut off the engine.
    There was nothing moving inside the Chief’s office. No lights on in there. It felt empty. “What do we do?” I asked.
    “We just go right up to the front door,” Mom said.
    “What if it’s locked?” I asked. I glanced over at Chuck.
    “Dive back in the car,” he said. “Try not to slam the doors. Keep as quiet as possible.”
    “You think they’re attracted by noise?”
    He shrugged. “It kind of seems that way to me. I guess it could be smell.”
    “In which case, we’re screwed.”
    Mom was staring at the front doors of the PD, and I thought her eyes were damp. “Maybe just one of us should go,” she suggested.
    “We need to stick together,” Chuck told her. His voice sounded funny. Tight. Then again, he’d just lost his sister. I was pretty sure he’d been battling a full blown bout of grief ever since we’d picked him up.
    “Are you okay?” I asked him.
    He met my eyes, nodded. “So far, so good. Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t scratched or bitten. I promise to let you know if I start getting the urge to eat brains.”
    I shuddered but refrained from punching him. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
    “Everyone ready, then?” Mom asked.
    He nodded. Mom scooted over to the passenger side, and we both unlocked our doors. Then we opened them, real slow. Mom got out with her gun in hand. I got out with mine. Chuck slid across the seat and got out behind me. He’d left his hatchet at the campsite. (Thank God. It had his sister’s brains all over it.) But he had located a jack handle in the spare tire compartment on the way over, a nice big one, the way they made them back in ‘85, and he held it now. Together we crept across the sidewalk and up to the front door with the words Bloody Gulch Police painted in a half circle over a star on its pebbled glass. I reached out real slow to touch the door handle.
    “We’ve got creepers coming up the sidewalk from the north, about a hundred feet away,” Chuck whispered.
    “Ditto from my side, only fifty feet,” Mom said.
    I closed my hand on the doorknob, tried to turn it.
    It burst open all by itself, and the barrel of a shotgun pressed to my forehead.
    “You shoot my daughter I’ll tear you apart and feed you to those things myself, John Mallory.”
    Before Mom even finished the sentence, Chuck pulled me aside and wedged himself in between me and the gun barrel, and then Chief Mallory lowered it and stepped aside, holding the door open. “Get in here and hurry the hell up about it!”
    We did, and he closed the door behind us. Then he moved away a little, and yanked a towel away from a lamp that was on his desk, filling the entire reception area with light. I saw the blankets hanging over each window, which explained why no light or motion had been visible from the outside. Groans and wet, smacking sounds came from the back, and I backed up to the door, raising my gun and aiming it that way.
    “Don’t shoot, girl,” John whispered harshly, pushing my gun hand down. “They’re behind bars. They can’t hurt us and you go shooting you’re gonna attract the rest of ‘em.”
    There were three of them, I saw as my eyes adjusted to the light and shadows; two in one cell and one in another, moving around and bumping into things, but apparently not caring or maybe even noticing.
    “For the love of God,