Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse (Book 2): Conflict Read Free

there to prevent anyone
from falling, they did prove beneficial when the raiders attacked. Along one
side wall are our townhouses, two story structures with a sitting room and
washroom on the bottom and a pair of tiny bedrooms above. Opposite these is a
large storehouse that doubles as the armory. In the rear, across from the gate,
rests the common hall and a small bathhouse. There are two latrines as well,
one near the entrance and another by the kitchen.
    Shortly
after the attack, Lizzy and I established a series of caches in and around the
forest, their purpose to guarantee a ready source of emergency supplies in case
we couldn’t make it back to the castle for any reason or if we were forced to
flee our home a second time. This system was greatly expanded in the months
following, so I’ll leave detailed descriptions for later.
    That
about covers the key events described in my first record, along with a simplified
explanation of where we stood following the battle. From here on I’ll be relating
all new material, some of it good, some bad, a few items dreadful in the
extreme. No way around that. Face it, our world sucks. We try to live as best
we can, staying safe, taking care of those we love, but the zombies are an
omnipresent danger. Add in the breathers who have used the situation as an
excuse to exercise their baser tendencies and heartbreak is always right around
the corner.

 
    Chapter I
     
     
    Thanksgiving
was pretty damn miserable. Most of our friends were dead, along with a large
number of assholes who more than deserved their fate. I’m not going to pretend
to give a whit about this latter group’s violent demise. However, I will say,
as I’ve informed Briana and the others repeatedly, that it’s a crying shame
they didn’t have the courtesy to fall in a nice, convenient pile. But no, we
had hundreds of bodies spread all over the meadow and nearby woods. It was a
mess, and only Lizzy and I were available to deal with it.
    Steph
and Briana were taking turns babysitting Johnny and working on the castle proper,
and Mary was acting as our lookout, leaving just the two of us. So, we hitched
a flatbed trailer to one of the pickups and carted the corpses several miles to
an isolated, rocky area. There, we dumped them. We briefly considered torching
the things but decided not to. There’d been enough disasters already. Adding a
forest fire to the mix was out of the question.
    The
temperature hovered around the freezing mark most of the time, which kept the
stiffs both stiff – hee hee – and somewhat fresh. The stink was at a minimum,
and with the normal decomposition that begins following true death hindered by
the weather, things were less disgusting than they might have been. Granted,
many of the bodies had been mauled by zombies or blasted apart by gunfire, and
there was plenty of nastiness leaking out of orifices and gaping wounds, but it
was bearable.
    Christmas
was looking to be much better. We didn’t have a lot of time to prepare – the
repairs and cleanup had to be completed first – but our small band was
determined to make it as jolly as possible. Johnny in particular needed something
cheerful in his life. His parents were dead, and he couldn’t begin to
understand why. The poor thing had haunted eyes and a streak of paranoia that
no four year old should have to suffer through.
     
    *
* *
     
    “Lizzy,
are you sure the tree isn’t going to fall over?”
    The
stout woman glared at Mary. “It won’t. I have it good and secure.”
    “Didn’t
stay up the first time.”
    Briana
began to laugh.
    “It’s
fixed!”
    Lizzy
had insisted on a large Christmas tree. I’ll start by saying a freshly cut,
fifteen foot pine is exceedingly heavy. Still, we managed to get it inside and
upright, securing it by tying the top to the rafters. The damn thing slipped
almost immediately, nearly taking Steph out. She was not pleased.
    Following
that epic failure, we sawed off the bottom six feet, leaving us