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Surviving In a Zombie Apocalypse Chapter Sixty Three
The controls for the Predator RQ-1A Unmanned Aerial Vehicle were simple enough. They'd been designed for the average 21st Century soldier and were a near replica of the gamepad for the Sony Playstation. You used one thumbstick for the throttle and the other to steer while vehicle systems were mapped to the face and shoulder buttons - raising the landing gear, moving the nose-mounted cameras and so on. Child's play, I figured. I had studied the weapon system back in the old days, back when I had a life and a career. I felt confident and alert as my little plane leapt into the air off Governors Island and streaked toward Manhattan."Watch out for sudden updrafts," Kreutzer said. "They can be a real bitch." He had the second seat in the cramped, overheated trailer. As systems specialist he had to keep the aircraft's avionics and telemetry streams coming in clear and legible. He faced three big monitors where he could display and manipulate his "product."The Standard Oil Building came up
Surviving In a Zombie Apocalypse Chapter Sixty Four
Eggsy flew with the undead pigeons on First Avenue. Through their eyes he watched as they fell, whole flocks at a time, tumbling through the air, their wingtips spinning lifelessly. Eggsy was a man of his word - if Dekalb wanted to take him up on his generous offer the way to the UN building would be clear. Eggsy wasn't so much afraid of Dekalb as concerned. While the weapons inspector and his team of Somali killers could hardly make a dent in Eggsy’s defenses, they could conceivably do something so random it would endanger Gary's breeding stock. If they were to fire missiles at the broch, for instance, Eggsy would almost certainly survive but Marisol's people could be hurt in the ensuing chaos and debris. A thousand such scenarios had gone through Eggsy’s mind and he didn't relish any of them. Getting Dekalb out of New York as quickly as possible was just good common sense.Eggsy sucked the life out of the birds until only one remained, banking unconcernedly over the great piles of i
Surviving In a Zombie Apocalypse Chapter Sixty Five
The thirty-foot trailer barely had room for a crew of three. With the girls all struggling to get in and have a look at the monitors the air inside quickly became too muggy and close to be breathable. I mopped sweat away from my forehead and nodded when Kreutzer asked if I was ready. Jack still had the Predator in the air, making wide circles around Manhattan at about twenty thousand feet but even he couldn't help his curiosity. We all wanted to know what the spy plane had seen.I blinked rapidly as the display shot images rapid-fire at me of buildings passing far too close and fast on either side. I nearly lurched forward in my chair as the view opened up dramatically, the Predator gliding over the head of the Columbus statue at 59th street. Beyond the barrier of Central Park South the view changed again, and dramatically, into a landscape of mud laced with junk. The park had become unrecognizable, even the green grass torn away by the changes of the Epidemic. I hadn't even considere
Surviving In a Zombie Apocalypse Chapter Sixty Six
"Sure," Kreutzer said, scratching vigorously at his unkempt hair. "It makes sense. She's an A-rab, right? They actually want to become martyrs. It's a good deal for them - one quick death and then you're in fucking paradise with your seventy-two virgins." He considered that for a second. "Or maybe she gets to be one of somebody else's virgins. Face it, blowing themselves up is what they do best."I glared at him. "That's the most asinine thing I've ever heard." I waved my hands in the air. "She's a teenager, that's all. She doesn't understand what dying really means but she knows for a fact that life sucks. She's got all these hormones and energy and weird bad culturally created bullshit, fucked up sexuality projected into glamorous ideas of death as transcendence - ""She's a soldier." Jack peeled apart a blade of unmowed grass and put it to his lips. He blew hard and it made a reedy sound, like a mournful bassoon starting a dirge."She's a child." I said. But of course, she was much
Surviving In a Zombie Apocalypse Chapter Sixty Seven
They were walking in the garden between the dormitory buildings, the mummies keeping a discrete distance from the living when something white and fast blurred across Eggsy’s vision and collided with his temple, making his eyes shiver in their sockets. His brain squirmed in his head as he sent out a dozen commands at once, drawing in clumps of soldiers to cover his blind spot, sending Noseless clambering up the stairs of the broch to get a clear view, rushing Faceless out to where the wall of the enclosure wasn't quite finished.It was with his own eyes, however, that he solved the mystery. Looking down, still shaken by the blow, he saw the missile that had struck him so violently. It was a softball, soiled and dented from long use. Looking up again he saw a girl standing stock still a few dozen yards away, her eyes very wide. She wore a catcher's glove and her nose was running unheeded. Her bright energy thrummed inside her with the adrenaline coursing through her veins.Eggsy knelt d
Surviving In a Zombie Apocalypse Chapter Sixty Eight
Six hours earlier:Osman handed me a limp kif cigarette and a pack of matches before he jumped back onto the Arawelo and started belching orders at Yusuf. "It will calm your nerves," he told me. I guess I looked like a ghost - people had been telling me all morning how pale I was. I didn't think Osman's weak hashish was going to help so I shoved the joint in my pocket after waving him my gratitude.The boat pulled away from the Coast Guard dock with a rattling of pistons and a blast of hot exhaust from its diesels. Osman brought it around slowly, backing and filling with a series of slow-motion turns. The girls on the deck held to the rails or to lashed-down boxes of armaments and looked wistfully over the green grass of Governors Island. I had hoped not to see Ayaan before she left but there she was on top of the wheelhouse like a homecoming queen on a particularly rusty parade float. She looked down at me and I looked up at her. Our eyes met for perhaps the last time and we seemed t
Surviving In a Zombie Apocalypse Chapter Sixty Nine
Our walk through the Upper East Side made my bones ache and sweat pool in the small of my back but we weren't spotted, which was the main thing. The streets were deserted - presumably Eggsy had pulled all of the dead away from this area to join the ranks of his army. That didn't mean we took a lot of chances. We moved through the streets of Manhattan using a cover strategy that Jack called "bounding overwatch," which meant I would hide in a shadowy doorway, my eyes scanning a street corner while Jack crossed the open space as fast as he could. Then he would take up position behind some kind of cover and I would do what he had just done, though far more clumsily.We saw a number of buildings that had been pulled down by brute force - presumably for the bricks that built Gary's tower. Hands and feet stuck out of the resulting rubble piles. Clearly Eggsy hadn't worried much about job site safety when he sent his troops out for building materials. We only saw one active dead man, which wa
Surviving In a Zombie Apocalypse Chapter Seventy
The bodies arched and heaved, backs curling, heads pushed down by feet looking for purchase. A thousand moving corpses strained with their arms and legs, pushing each other upward, the limbs of the ones on the bottom snapping like dry sticks. The one on top, an Asian girl in a pair of blood-stained pink Sanryo overalls, reached up with one hand and touched the coping of the planetarium's roof. A Somali girl with a bayonet on the end of her rifle lunged forward and impaled the dead girl's head like a pineapple. When the bayonet retracted the Asian girl rolled down the side of the undead human pyramid to smack the asphalt of Central Park West. A man in an Armani suit with one leg hanging in tatters slumped forward to take her place. One of the Somalis opened up with a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on a tripod and his body erupted in chunks of rotten meat that pelted the bodies below like foul rain.The pyramid wasn't going to work. Instead Eggsy turned to his original plan and looked
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Chapter 130
- (Last Chapter) -Before I realized what was happening, a collar was being snapped around my neck, sharp electrical pulses shooting through me. Suddenly I couldn’t move, could barely breathe. Panic filled me, joining the adrenaline rushing through me, and my body wasn’t sure how to react. Keep fighting, or shut down.“What are you doing?” I heard Kat scream. “Let her go!”She could see me? The collar, maybe...Keep fighting. Definitely keep fighting. I tried to stand, but my legs refused to cooperate.“You want me docile? Leave the girls out of this,” I tried to shout, but only gurgles escaped.“Ethan?” Reeve gasped. “Help us!”“You told me you wouldn’t hurt Reeve,” Ethan shouted.Instant comprehension. He knew the Hazmats, because he was one of them.He was the spy—no doubts about that now—and he had gotten some of his information from Reeve. When I’d lived with her, she’d known my schedule. The rest he must have gotten by watching me.He’d covered his tracks very well. I still felt
Chapter 129
I wasn’t going to get through to her, was I? “Seriously, how did you find me? And who is we?”“I can answer that.” Ethan moved to her side, watching me warily.Ethan? The potential spy?Great. Wonderful. This couldn’t get any worse. “Fill me in before I have a panic attack.”“Well, for starters,” said another female, “I found out about the zombies.”Reeve stepped up to Kat’s other side.Okay. It was officially worse.“My dad doesn’t know that I know,” Reeve said.“When you disappeared, Reeve did some investigating, and told me what she learned,” Ethan said, “and that’s when we discovered the zombies, and your whereabouts, and decided to bring Kat in to help us save you. You’re welcome, by the way. Do you have any idea what we had to do to hack into Mr. Ankh’s computer and get the coordinates to this place?”I hoped that was rhetorical.“In other astonishing news,” Kat said before I could process everything I’d been told, “Frosty and I broke up—of course. He wouldn’t tell me where you
Chapter 128
He loaded a third. “This is a sedative.”I felt a third sting, and whatever the sedative was, it worked quickly. Darkness fell over me, and my knees collapsed. I knew nothing more.My head pounded as I blinked open my eyes. I lay on...my bed? No, the mattress beneath me was too narrow to be mine. Gingerly I sat up. Dizziness struck me, and I moaned.“Hey, Ali-gator.”Cole’s voice. I breathed deep in an effort to clear my head, saw the haunting beauty of his face. I hated to look away, but curiosity got to me. We...were in a small bedroom I didn’t recognize, with log walls and planked floors.“You’re in a secluded home Ankh owns. It’s twenty miles from my house,” he said, “but they aren’t highway miles, so it takes me forty minutes to get here.”I’d been banished.My expression must have fallen to reflect my dismay, even though I knew this was for the best, because he added, “You’re too dangerous to be around others right now, sweetheart.”Acid eroded my throat, and I choked. “I know,
Chapter 127
“O-kay. I should have guessed this was why you both took off so unexpectedly.”Nothing except Frosty.Dang it! I was so sick of interruptions!Cole sprang away from me, assuming a battle-ready position.Frosty rolled his shoulders, hard and intractable, and just as ready. “Don’t bother trying to get rid of me. I’m not leaving without Ali. Nana is worried.”“Fine. But you will turn around,” Cole snapped.Though he looked as if he wanted to protest, Frosty obeyed.My cheeks burned, and my heart pounded as I sat up. Cole helped me right my disheveled clothing before righting his own. Our gazes locked for a long, strained moment, and we both knew there were a million things we needed to say, but couldn’t. Not now.Later, he mouthed, hooking a strand of hair behind my ear.I should tell him no again, that this was it, the end. I might be dangerous to his health, but he was dangerous to my self-control. Instead, I found myself nodding.Cole kept his arm around me while we walked back to the
Chapter 126
“You trusted me,” I said, shocked to my soul, “despite what you saw.” That was absolutely, utterly huge.“Yes,” he said. He fit his hands against my jaw. “I told you I did. I’m in this thing, Ali. All the way.”“But...why did you stop texting me?”I saw the ice frost over his eyes, and I shuddered. “My dad was monitoring my phone feed.”Oh. The ice wasn’t for me, but for his father.I looked away from him, trying to give myself time to think, and caught a glance of my reflection in the glass. I stumbled backward.Zombie Ali was back.Flickers of red burned in her eyes, and the black smudges on her cheeks were thicker. She smiled at me, waved—and then, through the reflection, I watched her step out of my body, away from the glass.With the tick of a clock loud in my ears, I watched Z.A. glide off the porch and into the driveway. She paused to look back at me and crook her finger, a silent command for me to follow. A need to know her purpose consumed me, and I stepped off after her.Unc
Chapter 125
He even dropped me off at work, only to return an hour later and remain inside the coffeehouse for the rest of my shift. My coworkers stared at him, the guys frightened, the girls excited. Everyone whispered, speculating about who he was, and why he was there.I think I blew their minds when I left with him.“Any zombie sightings tonight?” I asked. The moon was high, full.“So far, none.”“Shouldn’t you be out there searching?”“I traded nights with Gavin.” His voice tightened. “He owed me.”“Don’t fight him over me. Over what happened.”“I want to, but I won’t,” he said tightly. “You aren’t mine. Not officially. Technically he didn’t do anything wrong.”He dropped me off at home but didn’t try to kiss me. I couldn’t blame him.I received a text from him the next day. No party tonight, I’m sorry & I’m not ditching U this time, promise. My dad is sending me out of town. Will U miss me?Me: I plead the 5th.Him: I will definitely miss U.Sappy girl. My heart soared.I could have gone to
Chapter 124
“I’m so glad you’re okay. When Cole called and told me you’d been in a car accident, my heart almost stopped.”“I’m sorry,” I said.“Ali, I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.”“Nana, I...” Didn’t know what to say.“I know you’re fighting for a good cause, but it’s hard on me sometimes. Waiting and worrying.”“I’m sorry,” I repeated, but I couldn’t promise to morph into a normal teenager with normal problems, and we both knew it.“Yes, well, enough about that for now.” As she bustled around the kitchen to make me a sandwich, she changed the subject and said, “Are you and Cole back together? Or are you seeing two hot totties at the same time? Or are you single and just playing the court?”Hot totties? Playing the court? “No, Cole and I aren’t back together, but we are going to a party on Thursday. And Gavin... Well, he and I will only ever be friends.”“I think maybe you need to rethink things with Cole. He’s good for you. You light up when you see him, and he can actually get you to
Chapter 123
He instantly sobered. “Okay. Point taken.”“Tell me her name. I’m going to track her down and knock her teeth down her throat.”“As hot as that is, no. She’s part of a past I’d now like to forget. But...I’m glad you never slept with anyone. I don’t like the thought of you with anyone else, probably would have fed the fuc—uh, the guys more than teeth.”Must resist this possessive, charming side of him. “Do I get another question?”“You get as many as you want.”He sounded determined.I’d probably make him regret that.“Did you sleep with Veronica?”He stiffened, but he didn’t hesitate to answer. “Yes. But it was over a year ago, when we were dating.”“Mackenzie?”“Yes. Months ago, for a little while after we’d stopped dating. Then I met you, and that was over.”“Others?”“Yes. You want the exact number?”“No,” I grumbled. Yes. Maybe. “Am I the only girlfriend not to go all the way with you?”“No,” he said. “But I wouldn’t change anything about what we’ve done—and haven’t done. I wanted
Chapter 122
“I’ll tell him.” My pronouncement was quickly met with inquiring glances. “I know what it’s like to lose your family. And I know you guys do, too,” I added in a rush. They’d all lost someone in the war. “But with me, the loss is fresh. Jaclyn was his twin, and he loved her more than he loved himself. I felt the same way about Emma.”Mr. Ankh sighed. “Very well.”Cole made the call.It wasn’t long before Mr. Holland was escorting Justin to my bedside. He sat down opposite Cole, his expression closed off. He had no idea why he was here. My chin trembled as I said, “Justin, I met with a man named Dr. Bendari.”He nodded. “You’ve mentioned him before.”“Yes. He was...he was killed in front of me.” Tears streamed down my cheeks, burning, leaving track marks, I was sure.Justin softened. “I’m sorry.”“Before he died, he told me that your sister—”With a pained groan, he jumped up, the chair skidding behind him. “I know. Don’t say it. Don’t you dare say it.”“You know?” Cole asked.Justin cl
