RU in? - 1st novel in the Ruinsaga series

Chapter 12 .

Lily

"What are we going to do?" Monica whispered.

Hunter looked from the left to the right and then looked to me as if I had the answers.

"Maybe we could make a noise to distract them downstairs or something," I whispered, but I really didn't want to repeat the process of killing many zombies in between a door and its frame. "Maybe we could somehow lure them into one room and lock them in there."

Hunter seemed to like that suggestion.

"Let's go . . .," he started, but a zombie head turned our way and moaned loudly. Several zombie heads turned in our direction.

"Go back," Hunter waved Grant and Monica to go back down the stairs.

They turned around and started to run down the stairs together. Maria was close on their heels and Hunter and I followed. There was several feet running behind us, closing in. Moans mingled together in menacing threats.

Monica tripped and tumbled down two stairs before her hand reached out and grabbed onto the baluster to keep her from tumbling all the way down. Grant didn't hesitate as he leaped over her and continued down the stairs.

Maria bent down and helped Monica up. The moans behind us were closer, close enough that goosebumps formed on the back of my neck. We weren't going to make it. Hunter and I turned around almost in complete synchronicity.

The stairs were large enough that the zombies could come down two at a time, but that didn't stop the zombies from behind to push the zombies in front. The front zombies were directly behind us. Hunter stabbed his knife into the temple of the zombie in front of him. I brought my ax down hard through the skull of the zombie in front of me. Normally, the zombie would have the height advantage being higher on the stairs, but she was short and I was tall.

I withdrew my ax as Hunter withdrew his knife. Maria's and Monica's footsteps retreated down the stairs behind us. The zombies in front of us dropped to our feet. The zombies directly behind them tripped over their downed bodies. But even as the zombie fell over the one at my feet, reached out, grabbed my leg and tried to bite it with his teeth that were red with blood.

A door slammed somewhere below us, but since Maria's and Monica's footsteps just reached the bottom of the stairs, I assumed Grant retreated into a room by himself and shut all of us out.

"Lily!" Maria screamed. "Run!"

But I couldn't run. I had a zombie attached to my leg. Hunter stabbed the zombie that had tripped in front of him. The zombie that had a hold of my leg bit me. My heart dropped and my only thought was that I let my family down. Then I realized there wasn't any pain nor could I feel a zombie mouth. I looked down as another zombie tripped and started to crawl towards me over the zombie that was gnawing at my jeans but not breaking the skin.

"Grant!" Monica called out from somewhere below us. "Let us in!"

"Come out and fight, coward!" Maria said instead. I heard her footsteps as she bounded up the stairs.

The next zombie in front of Hunter was once Mark Turner, a defensive lineman on the football team. He didn't trip over the downed zombies in front of him but instead walked over them to grab Hunter's arms and tried to bite his arm. Hunter was pushed back several steps.

I couldn't worry about the zombie biting at my jeans as a fourth zombie walked over the tripped zombies at my feet. I swung my ax sideways into his head and he fell into the zombie that was trying to get at Hunter and the Mark Turner zombie. The ax slipped out of my hands in the process. My pants leg was starting to lift up and the zombie's teeth were getting dangerously close to my flesh.