Dead Days: Season 3 (Books 13-18) Read Free Page B

Manchester. Straight to the Living Zone.”
    “How d’you even know where this Living Zone is supposed to be, anyway?”
    Chris kicked at some of the snow with his large black boots. “If you were setting up a hotspot to save mankind against a mass of illiterate creatures, what’s the one thing you’d use to catch attention?”
    Pedro shrugged. “Machine gun.”
    Chris sniggered. “Words, Pedro. I saw it on the websites and the blogs I managed to take a peek at in that house two weeks ago. Big red banner, right on the entrance of the city, directing us right to it. We’ll see it.”
    “And if we don’t?”
    Chris didn’t even flinch. “I believe we will.”
    Pedro was about to take the argument further, simply ‘cause he was feeling tired and ratty, when he heard a scream from behind.
    Right away, him and Chris swung around.
    What he saw made the rattiness intensify inside him.
    There were five creatures surrounding Barry, Tamara and Josh. Barry was occupying himself with two of them with a large, sharp piece of scrap metal, and Tamara too was dealing with two, snipping and stabbing away at the goons with the hedge cutters.
    But there was one of them closing in on Josh.
    One of them making him tumble to the road, into the thin layer of snow, reaching its filthy, bloody hands towards him.
    Pedro didn’t even think.
    He ran. Ran along the slippy road in the direction of the creature as it got closer and closer to Josh.
    He sprinted with all he had. Sprinted, fuelled on adrenaline, towards Josh, towards the creature closing in on him.
    He saw the blood. Saw the blood in his mind’s eye, but not in reality. The blood in his mind’s eye was Sam’s. His son’s.
    No. He wasn’t seeing that blood again.
    He threw himself at the creature before it could sink its teeth into Josh, knocking it onto its back. The creature‌—‌once a man with short, dark hair, now with a chunk of his head missing and filled with green maggots‌—‌gasped and snapped at Pedro with its chipped, worn-down teeth.
    Pedro pressed his hand into the creature’s head. Pressed with all he had, pushing, and then smacking, and then beating to the concrete, the sound of the flesh giving way to the harder sound of skull, until eventually…‌
    A crack.
    And then another crack and another and another, and then Pedro twisted the creature onto its back and smacked his fist into its brains, mashing them up as well as he could.
    The creature shook, twitched, hurled darkened blood out of its dead mouth as Pedro tore its skull’s contents up with his bare hands, flesh and brains wedged between his fingernails.
    And then he looked up. Looked up at the shock on Tamara’s face, the fear on Josh’s face, the sheer disgusted disbelief on Barry’s face.
    Chris smiled. Shook his head. “Looks like you’re with us then, friend?”

Chapter Three: Chloë
    Chloë had been walking for so long that her feet were sore all over.
    She shivered as she held the map that she’d taken from the bad men under her arm, and she walked down the road. The snow was stopping and starting. Dad used to say it was typical British and “couldn’t make its mind up,” though she didn’t know what he meant. But it looked pretty. Pretty at the sides of the road. Just she had to be careful not to slip because she’d slipped before and it’d hurt her butt a bit.
    She looked around her every step she took down this road. It wasn’t a road like Lulworth Road that she used to live at with her mum, with Elizabeth, with Dad. No, there were no houses on this road. No houses, just trees. And the wind blew against the trees and made things crack and rustle, which she always thought were the monsters but they weren’t. Not yet. But she’d have to be careful. She’d seen what the horrible monsters did to people, how cruel they were. She had to watch herself.
    Her teeth chattered together. She had a blue coat on, but she’d zipped the hood off back when they were with Mike