In the Dead: Volume 1 Read Free Page A

peered into the main room. It was empty, of course, lit up by the game screen from Bonewrecker 2 and a lamp he’d forgotten about days ago.
    With a sigh, he stepped inside and shut the door behind him. He headed for the kitchen. It was a big, open room with an island in the center that was scattered with crumbs from the chips, cookies and microwave pizzas he’d been living on the last few days. An empty Safeway bag sat next to the leftovers and he grabbed it to fill it with whatever food he could carry with him back to Mrs. Floyd’s apartment. There wasn’t much to choose from. A quarter of a bag of chips, a box of sugar cereal with a cartoon gorilla on the box (he could only imagine what Carrie would say when she saw that), and a couple of cans of beans and soup.
    A sad little collection and one that wouldn’t get him through more than a day or two. Less since he intended to share with the women if they joined him on the road. Not that he knew where he was going.
    He moved back into the living room and stared at the game screen. It was the hand of Bonewrecker , the military hero of the game. He was holding a big ass gun and in the background were an army of monsters and zombies.
    Would the ones he found downstairs be worse or better than the ones he’d been fighting for years in video games?
    There was a rattle and the door to his apartment squeaked open. Out of pure instinct, Zander raised the shotgun and swung it on the intruder. As the door hit the wall and revealed Carrie, she froze, their eyes locked for a long moment.
    “ Sorry,” Zander muttered. “You should have knocked.”
    “ You should have locked the door,” she retorted, but there was no heat or anger in her tone. She shut the door behind her and locked the deadbolt. “So did you find anything of value?”
    He lifted the plastic bag of leftovers and she frowned. “That’s it?”
    He shrugged. “I’m a bachelor, what do you want?”
    She glanced around the room and sniffed in disgust. “You’re a slob, dude. Bachelor or not. So is this the famous game?”
    He nodded as the two of them stared at the play screen. She laughed. “Actually, they get the zombies pretty close to right.”
    He stared at the image on the screen. Dead eyes, gray skin, black sludge around the lips. He shuttered.
    She looked at him in surprise. “I would have thought you’d be excited.”
    “ Why?” he asked with an incredulous laugh. “I don’t even like to talk to the pizza guy, let alone fight a real zombie.”
    “ Yeah, you do need to get out more,” she said. “But I guess you’ll get your chance now. My Mom and I decided to try your plan and make a move before the situation gets even worse.”
    Zander was surprised that relief flooded him. He didn’t even like people as a whole, Mrs. Floyd specifically, but he was happy not to have to head out into zombie-infested streets on his own.
    “ Ok, well it’s still pretty early. What do you think of starting out today?”
    Carrie shifted slightly and he could see she was nervous. Scared. But then she nodded. “Yeah. Now or never, right?”
    “ Right.”
    #
    The stairwell was eerily quiet. So quiet that Zander’s heavy breathing echoed in the empty space around them and sounded like freaking Darth Vader. He peered around and then motioned behind him so that Mrs. Floyd and Carrie would follow. Mrs. Floyd had surrendered her Glock to Carrie and Zander kept the shotgun, so Mrs. Floyd was right behind him, flanked by the two of them with high powered weapons. Not that she was unarmed. She had a heavy iron skillet raised up like a battle axe and Zander wasn’t so sure he wanted to find out if she could wield it.
    “ How did you two end up with guns, anyway?” he whispered as they crept down the first set of stairs and rounded the corner past the 11 th floor. “You don’t exactly seem all Pro-Second Amendment to me.”
    Mrs. Floyd answered. “Well, a woman of my age, living alone in an expensive apartment. I