Infected Freaks Volume One: Family First Read Free

screams of terror echoed in his mind. The monsters seemed to enjoy the warmth of light.
    “We got about twenty minutes. Keep me safe.” Abraham gulped.
    “Whatever,” Hunter said, rolling his piercing eyes. He rested his elbows on the edge of a dubious boulder. On his belly, he placed his focus on the optic and rested his finger parallel to the trigger.
    “Never touch the trigger until you’re ready to shoot,” Abraham repeated for the third time this trip. The words Remington were stenciled to the stained wood frame of the high-powered rifle. The gun had served Hunter well over the years. It was the same rifle Hunter used to kill a man, a real, living human.
    It took a moment for Abraham to muster the strength to carry on. Once he did, he hiked down the curved dirt pathway, staying low for cover and support. To the left and right were knots of rocks and weeds that stretched on for miles in every direction. Wild bushes and pine trees dotted the rigid landscape. A light breeze whispered through his blue flannel shirt as he kept an eye on the empty highways that intersected at the strip of town. The several buildings etched together didn’t deserve to be called a town. It was too small.
    The sudden retreat of shadows at the edge of the uninhabited structure gave him pause. Fifteen minutes. I better play it safe. Abraham quickened his step. The last time he stayed out after dark, he all but lost his life in a bloody chase that left him bruised and his imagination on the brick of insanity. He sprinted down the final stretch of road careful to check every direction. Looks safe.
    The glass doors at the front had been shattered for years. The owners fled to Denver with everyone else after the first bombs fell. Yet, Abraham wasn’t sure if Denver survived the global catastrophe. Part of him only believed in what he saw, and for the last six months, he hadn’t seen a soul outside of a few neighbors. Maybe what was left of his family and the specks of locals were all that survived? Had the world evolved into the new stomping grounds for the infected? Perhaps humanity was already lost?
    He entered the ruined building ready to fight. Get it together, old man . The sloping shelves of sheet metal were empty minus the inch-thick dust that had settled like an unfavorable blanket. When he moved around the chipped counter, his hands dropped to the butt of his pistol holstered at his side. Bloody handprints painted the floor and continued up toward the backroom. He maneuvered around the smears, trying not to picture the blossomed features of the diseased freaks.
    Against better judgment, Abraham followed the smudges into the backroom of the gas station. His eyes followed the flicker of shadows toward the deep corners. The prompt pounding of fists against the sealed freezer door stole his breath. The freezer was held shut by a length of metal pipe. His heart drummed to the rhythm of an unforgiving beat. A trail of bloody footprints swerved around several inclined shelves.
    Then, he saw the man lying against the inside wall of the backroom. “What happened to you?” Abraham muttered, unable to blink. Chunks of the dark-skinned man’s neck hung like a ruffled collar of flesh. His sore, pink eyes stared up at Abraham and then back to the walk-in freezer.
    “Can you help?” wheezed the man, his white button-up shirt saturated in clotted blood.
    “Did one of the infected do this?” Abraham questioned, focusing on the candle melting on the floor nearby. He still didn’t understand the savage, diseased oddities and their purpose. The clotted wound of the man was caked in a strange, almost demonic-looking fungus. It had interlaced itself with the human tissue.
    “Help me,” the man snapped, fighting off an intoxicating case of chills. “There is a pack of them on Highway 24. They came fast.”
    Abraham wished he had listened to his smartass grandson. He should have gone home while he had the chance. “What’s in the freezer?” His