F.E.A.R.: Face Everything And Rise - A Zombie novel

Chapter twenty-one

We fell asleep on that couch. I vaguely remembered Tyler pulling back after kissing me for god knows how long and settling behind me on the piece of furniture. It was too small to fit both of us on it, but somehow, we made it work.

I woke up a few hours later. Dawn was just creeping in and if I ignored the zombies groaning on the streets outside, I'd say this would become a beautiful day. Tyler and I had confessed our feelings for each other, we had the first decent night of sleep in weeks and the sunbeams made the room light up in a happy orange glow. But I didn't ignore the groans. They were too loud and too sustained to be ignored. I slipped from Ty's grip and stormed up the stairs, staring out the large window.

Fucking hell.

The street was black with them. Literally black. Every window and door of the house was closed, but I could still smell the festering, dead smell of the corpses stumbling around. Why did they come here? Tyler and I had been very silent. No way they could've followed us by sound. We hadn't bled, so they weren't here because of our smell, either. Then why were they here, blocking our path to McKey Park? Either something had drawn them here, or they were chased away from somewhere.

Could you chase zombies away? If so, I'd love to know how.

I went back down and woke Tyler up softly. He smacked his lips twice and opened his eyes slightly. He grinned when he saw me, eyeing my entire body slowly.

I blushed – I was still dressed in only a wide T-shirt and panties.

"Wake up," I said, hiding my embarrassment behind my hair when I bent over to pick up the blanket that lay discarded on the floor. "We need to get out of here."

He was fully awake when he heard my worried tone. "What's wrong?"

"The street," I said, grabbing our dried clothes and throwing him his. I pulled on my pair of trousers, socks and shoes while I explained what I had seen.

He was dressed before me and grabbed two bottles of water from the kitchen. "Take one. I think today will be particularly hot."

"How are we going to get out of this? We can't use the street," I said, taking the bottle and putting it in my backpack.

"We'll have to," he objected. "We need to go to McKey Park. It's the only place Henry has mentioned before we got separated. I know they'll be there. Jack and I are the same when it comes to these things. I think that's one of the reasons we found each other in the chaos the day of the outbreak."

"We won't survive today if we use the road to McKey Park," I near-shouted, not understanding why he didn't see that. "We need to find another way."

"No," he shot back, "we don't. Listen, Charlie, there's nothing wrong with the road. It's the zombies that are out of place. If we get rid of them, we can go without too many problems."

"How –"

He grabbed my hand in his and tugged me behind him up the stairs. He looked at the mess below us on the street and nodded, as if his assumptions were correct. He pointed out of the window. "I see five cars. Two about eighteen yards away from here. Three about thirty yards in the opposite direction. This is a fancy neighbourhood, where only rich people could have lived. I bet my left eye those cars all have protection systems. If you break the window of those cars, the alarms will go off."

The pieces of the puzzle finally came together in my mind. "Sound attracts those ugly bastards. If we separate the big group in two smaller groups and we act quickly, we can be on our way before they even realize we crossed the street."

He nodded. "Exactly."

"Now we just need to find a way to break those windows," I figured, tapping my chin with a finger.

"Charlie –"

"Maybe we can throw a rock? Can you throw a rock that far? I know I can't..."

Tyler chuckled and put his hands on my shoulders. He turned me towards him and kissed my brow. "You're so cute when you think."

I raised my eyebrows. "Funny. I could've sworn you called me 'beautiful' yesterday night."

He grinned and kissed me short and sweet. "You are always kickass-beautiful. When you're not fighting, but thinking, you're cute."

I rolled my eyes and laughed. "Tyler."

"Hmmm?" he hummed when he buried his face in my neck and started showering the skin with kisses.

"The zombies. McKey Park."

He sighed. A few times. Then he let me go. "I was planning on shooting the windows with my arrows. I held my high school's record for several years. Thirty yards is a piece of cake."

--

When Tyler had wasted five arrows on the last window that was thirty feet away from us, he had to confess his shooting skills on distant objects were a little rusty. At last, he hit every window and the zombies scattered, clearing our way.

"Let's go," I said, grabbing our packs and my hunting knife. Shooting my gun in this situation would kill one zombie and the two of us. Besides, I was running out of ammo. I had only a few boxes of bullets in the truck, but since we didn't have the truck with us right now, we would have to get through today with the four bullets that had remained in my gun.

I shook my head at that lethal thought. We would get through today. I wanted to reach that hospital. I wanted to be there when Louisa was reunited with her mother and maybe her father. Who knew? If Louisa's mother had made it there, maybe her father would have, too.

Tyler opened the door and we ran up the street. Just like we expected, the zombies were attracted by the noise the ruined cars made and we had to face very few undead. The ones we did were dead pretty soon.

However, what we didn't expect, was the heavily armed soldier-zombie heading our way. He had two shotguns strapped to his back, his upper body was clad in a bulletproof vest and... and –

He had at least seven hand grenades tied to his belt. A gun dangled from his waist and he had several knives. The fact this dude hadn't blown up already was a miracle.

Tyler made to ram his knife through the zombie-soldier's head, but I held up my hand and he backed off.

He frowned at me, but I motioned to keep moving. I would have time to explain everything later. We didn't know how fragile those explosives around the zombie's waist were. If he fell, he could explode and blow us all up. Besides, with a little bit of luck, he would get pushed by another walking corpse and send a good number of them to zombie-heaven.

We were quick, silent and efficient. A team. We had each other's backs and made it to McKey Park in approximately fifteen minutes, a trip that would otherwise have taken us a few seconds. I looked over my shoulder and saw how some zombies lost interest in the bellowing cars and picked up our scent.

A few turned in our exact direction and glared at us with their dead eyes.

"Run," I whispered. "Run!"

Tyler loaded his bow, but didn't make any move to run. When I kept staring at the nearing zombies behind us and collided with his back, I twirled to demand why the hell he wasn't running, when –

At least fifteen heavily armed men were smirking at us and pointed their rifles, flamethrowers and arrows at us.

One opened fire and Tyler and I dove to the ground. The zombies behind us were all killed and when I crawled up from the dry earth beneath us, a man with brown hair and a reddish beard neared us.

I extended my hand to thank him when the back of his rifle met my temple.