“This first way, it looks like we avoid any towns or anything, but we don’t have enough gas to get us around that way, and we don’t know if we’ll be able to gather up anything. If we keep going straight, we should hit some neighborhoods just skirtin’ around the outside of this little town here. This last way we’re gonna be driving straight through the center of this other town here.”“I’m just gonna go ahead and call that one Samarra,” said Jay.“It does seem like straight ahead is our best option,” added Gabriel.By this point, the zombie group had finished crossing the road, so they started off again. When the CD that was playing ended, Aliyah ejected it as she rummaged around for a different one.“Oh, thank God,” muttered Gabriel when the silence resumed. After a moment he realized everyone was looking at him. “What?”“You have something against musicals?” jake asked.“You mean, other than the fact that they’re the sonic equivalent of having your eardrums slowly ripped apart by a
“Huh,” said Gabriel , staring at the sticker. “It’s one of those stupid family decals.”“Those what?” asked Jay absently, his face locked in concentration.“You know. One of those sticker sets everybody was putting on their cars for a while. The ones where you have a sticker for every member of the family. You’d have like dad stickers and mom stickers and boy and girl stickers and baby stickers. Sometimes they’d be just regular people, but sometimes they’d be like, other things that were supposed to represent those members of the family. Like various sized spaceships from Star Jump or something.“Oh,” replied Jay.“Ironically, this one is a family of zombies. A dad zombie, a mom zombie, two child zombies, and a baby zombie.” Gabriel shook his head. “It’s almost like they knew.”For a moment he continued staring at the decal, and something started to not look right about it. From around the side of the car, they could hear the “thunk” of the lock finally popping up.“Ha-ha!” Jay cried
Gabriel sat on his knees as a strange man stood in front of him, shotgun on his shoulder, staring placidly back at him. Gabriel couldn’t take his eyes off the man’s mouth, which steadily moved up and down like he was a cow chewing cud.“You know,” Gabriel said, “prolonged use of chew tends to lead to very disgusting sores and abscesses in the mouth and there aren’t really any doctors around anymore to help with the pain.”The man did not skip a beat in his chewing motion, but his eyes narrowed into a look of confusion. He stepped forward and kicked Gabriel straight in the gut hard enough to double the young man over and leave him gasping for air.“Shut the hell up,” he snarled, eloquently. He spat a streak of thick, red saliva down near Gabriel ’s knees as if in defiance. He turned and continued down the line to Jake. He looked her up and down, a smile spreading across his lips. Her face, inversely, was a mask of sheer disgust. She look ready to punch the man in the face, and prob
Gabriel stepped inside and couldn’t help but let out a whistle of appreciation. The front entrance was massive, with most of the ground floor being just one large, interconnected room. The house had a rustic aesthetic, with wood floors and ceilings and plenty of stone walls. Golden chandeliers hung here and there from the ceiling, providing all of the illumination. The first room, opening out to their right, was a living room. The floor was dotted here and there strategically with couches, most the size of Gabriel ’s bed back home. Or larger.“Well, well, what have we here?”From out of one of the side rooms stepped a big, heavy set man. He was older, probably in his sixties, with a bushy beard that hung down to his upper torso. The hair of his beard, and what little remained on his head, were mostly a faded gray, though here and there specks of red still shone through the mist. Gabriel ventured the guess that this man was the person named “Red” that Bob had referred to earlier.“Fo
“Right,” Red said, nodding his head thoughtfully. “There’s just one problem with your theory.”“What?” Gabriel looked confused. “There is?”Red pulled a gun from his pants and aimed it straight at Gabriel . “Only my people are making a run for it.” He motioned with the gun to a nearby open door. “Your people are being locked in that room. As extra distraction.”“You can’t! They’ll kill us!”“That’s the idea,” Red said. “Now move!”Slowly he backed them up into the room, and once they were all inside he slammed the door shut. A moment later they heard the key click the lock into place, and a moment after that they heard the sound of the front door as it opened and closed.“Way to go, Gabriel ,” said Aliyah. “Now we’re locked into a tiny room.”“Yeah, yeah,” said Gabriel , distracted. He looked around the room. As he had hoped, it was a dining room. He stepped over to a cabinet displaying the fine china. “Let’s just work on getting our hands free.”“Oh, what’s the point?” whined Daina.
Mac, who had come into the lead, suddenly came to a stop, and several of the others were so distracted by the nightmare landscape that they ran into him and nearly knocked him over. After some shuffling, muttering, and grumbling, they all turned to see what had caused the delay.Up ahead of them, the driveway had come into view, and in the driveway sat the car that stood as their destination. Atop the car, highlighted dramatically by the full moon as though it were a spotlight on a stage, was a nightmare come to life: a fully formed, hairy, drooling aberration.A werewolf.It stood up straight, pulled back its head, and let out a howl.“Hole. Ly. Diver,” said Jay, his disbelief ef winning in the internal battle raging inside of him between the hope that voicing his surprise would dismiss the impossible and the fear that told him to keep silent to remain undetected.The werewolf snapped to attention in the direction of Jay’s voice. A low growl rumbled from inside of it as it knelt down
The werewolves both jumped and soared easily over the gate, but skidded as they landed and tried to get pointed back at the turning vehicle. Aliyah slammed on the gas and shot past them while they were still righting themselves.Mac let out a long and shrill “Woohoo!” as though the entire thing had been some sort of new exciting roller coaster. They shot down the road at top speed and slowly, ever so slowly, the wolves fell into the darkness behind them.The vehicle roared down the highway, pushing eighty, rocking this way and that as Aliyah attempted to dodge abandoned cars, loose debris, and even the occasional wandering zombie. Every movement was made with at best inches to spare, and occasionally there would be a terrible scraping sound or a sickening thump on those occasions when she didn’t quite manage to completely dodge the object in question. The single working headlight in the pitch black dark of an empty night made the navigation exceptionally difficult.“We can’t keep this
Then they were on them – biting, tearing, scratching, growling. For a long moment, everything was a blur of motion. One of the creatures came straight for Gabriel , and practically tackled him to the ground. They rolled around on the floor, with Gabriel focusing more on just pushing the creature away than trying to take it out completely. Around him he could tell the others were in much the same position.Jake, the only one with a weapon, had not been among the first attacked. She had swung at one of the creatures as it had passed, but it had not been a fatal blow, so it had carried on and slammed into Daina. Now the two women were trying to hold it off and get it into a position where Jake could deliver a killing swing.Gabriel managed to kick his assailant off, and as he tried to rise he felt hands grabbing at him. He tried to fight them off, but a reassuring voice calmed him.“Woah, woah, it’s just me.”Gabriel looked to see that Gabriel was standing above him, attempting to hel