ZOMB-POCALYPSE BOOK 2

Chapter Four

My world spins on its axis, and I have to lean back against the door to steady myself. I look at Silas, hoping to see him laugh or something, anything to indicate that this is his attempt at a dumb joke. Silas doesn't laugh though, or even move. He's staring at me, frozen, waiting to see what I'm going to do.

"You're serious?" I ask, and Silas nods.

"He didn't want me to tell you."

It's a slap in the face to hear this was Ryan's idea. "How could you do this to me?" I ask, my voice starting to crack. "How could he?" I draw in a deep breath, trying to calm down. I'm very close to having another Camp Freedom-sized melt down.

Silas walks up to me and tries to put his hand on my shoulder, but I brush it off. If something happens to Ryan, I will never forgive either one of them.

"How could you let him go out alone?" I ask, and Silas shrugs uncomfortably.

"It's what he wanted. He didn't want to put you in danger for something that was his screw up."

I glare at Silas for saying that. "Hey, his words, not mine," Silas objects, but that doesn't make me any less mad.

"You didn't think that I would want to know, that I would want to go with him, regardless of whose fault it was?" I spit, and Silas shakes his head.

"Of course I thought you'd want to go. I argued with him not to do it, but he didn't want to listen. Hell, I even offered to go in place of your precious Ryan, so don't sit here and bitch at me for something I didn't have any control over," Silas yells back at me, and for a minute I recoil from his anger.

"You still could've told me," I say despite him already being mad, and then I turn my back on Silas. I head towards the front because, logically, that's where I think Ryan would leave from.

My heart stutters when I see a small crowd of zombies have migrated to the front of the mall; they're bunched around the door like they still retain enough of their humanity to know that's how they'll get in. There is a dead one lying lifelessly further up the parking lot, and I have no idea if Ryan killed it, or the people who stole our truck.

I squint and look off into the distance, but there isn't a lot to see. The road runs past the mall, the same road that we were driving on yesterday when the rain made it impossible to see. In the distance though, I can see a cluster of homes, probably a neighborhood.

I don't see anything else, so I know in my gut that's where Ryan would have gone. It's probably where the zombies came from too because there doesn't seem to be all that much around.

"Let's kill the rest of these..." I trail off, I can't even bring myself to say the word zombie right now. Silas doesn't need any urging and sets his gun up again, this time at the front of the building.

The zombies fall to a hail of gunfire, black, sludgy blood spraying everywhere. I look down at the pile of bodies on the ground. They used to be people, but I feel nothing. We need to find Ryan.

More zombies lumber around the corner, drawn from back to front by the noise, and Silas takes them out too.

I reload magazines until my fingers get sore from popping in bullets, and then Silas stops. I look over at him. There are still probably thirty zombies left.

"Why did you stop?" I demand, my eyes scanning the horizon again, looking for Ryan—nothing.

"The barrel's getting too hot. We need to let it cool down or we could risk it melting and wreck the gun."