The End: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller Read Free Page A

trying to look out of. All you could do was look straight up and right into the rot-festering mouths and hands of the dead. By this point, so many of them had gathered over it that you couldn’t tell when it was day or night. The scratching and banging of their efforts to get in had Eric feeling like he was in a pot of water slowly heating up. He couldn’t take much more.
    “This is the last one. I can’t believe I’m already down to the last smoke,” Kent said.
    Eric perched on the bed looked over at Kent, who was lying against the wall beside the ladder. Eric had only just met the man but liked his attitude right away. Kent came across cool and like he had his shit together. Like he didn’t have a care in the world, which didn’t make any bit of sense. Because the world as they had known it was turned upside down overnight—delivered over to rotting cannibals, and Kent was just… cool with it. Something Eric admired. Kent was lighting a cigarette no doubt. When did he ever not have one lit?
    Cynthia obviously had worn herself out in the last hour from all that pacing and stressing. She sat across from him on the other bed, surprisingly silent. For an older woman, Eric couldn’t place it, but he found something rather familiar about her, but decided it best to keep that to himself. It just didn’t seem like the right time or place; not after just meeting her two days ago right before leading her and Kent to the underground safe haven.
    He stared at Cynthia for a moment, taking to memory her supple form as she lay still on the bed. Her fiery red hair halfway down her back definitely shined true to her similar personality.
    Surely she’s a professional of some type. Maybe even a school principal .
    Despite the bit of dirt on her face and the ragged attacked by flesh eating zombies look that she had going on, he imagined her cleaned up and in a feminine business suit, standing tall and thin. She had the legs for it if anything.
    Eric briefly smiled to himself before looking back at Kent, who seemed to be enjoying that cigarette just a little too much. 12:00 flashed from behind the bed, and Kent sat with a red shadow of himself blinking against the floor from the clock.
    “I’m surprised you have any cigarettes left. You’ve been chain smoking those things since the three of us arrived,” Eric said.
    “Man, what I wouldn’t give for a tall glass of scotch right about now,” Kent said. “It would help me catch some sleep. I just don’t understand how she does it.” Kent pointed to Cynthia lying on the bed. “The constant racket from up top is just too much, and she manages to get some shut eye. To tell you truthfully, I probably wouldn’t be able to fall asleep even if I had an entire bottle of scotch. And yet, she is out like a light. But seriously… just a single glass, oh that would be sweet. Just enough maybe to knock the edge—”
    “You know, I’ve pretty much decided that you talk as much as you do simply because you’re in love with your own voice,” Eric said. “Instead of thinking about what we don’t have that we really need, like a can opener, we should decide what to do with what we have. Cynthia is right, man. We need to figure something out before we’re totally out of food. We can’t stay down here forever.”
    “Speaking of food, it’s obvious why those things want to get in here. To fucking eat us!” Kent grumbled and puffed on his cigarette. Blowing the smoke up toward the overhead door in little O shapes, he flicked his cigarette ashes on the floor. “We’re stuck in here like sardines in a can, just waiting to get plucked out and chewed up.”
    Kent cocked his head to the side and gazed out at Eric through narrow eyes. After pulling a drag off the smoke, he said, “Less than a few minutes before I ran into you on the street the other night, I watched three of those things take down an old man. He moved slow—slower than those things, even. They cornered him. Had him