Undead Freaks Read Free

away was that he used to mountain
bike all over the damn place and he knew the local trails. He got
Todd to follow him and they ran a couple miles across town on back
trails until the moans got distant and faded into the trees and
brush.
    They ended up here at the Brookside
neighborhood. This was the place where you'd find the rich wives
with plastic tits and Land Rovers and Beemers and all the other
shit rich people liked. That was, if all the rest weren't dead by
now. There was no way to know.
    Frank told himself that they didn't come here
to save the people in the neighborhood because they were entitled
to better treatment. It was just where he and Todd had ended up. A
matter of survival. This was where the trails dumped out and if
they could get into another vehicle and find some backup, even
civilians, it might get them the hell out of town in one
piece.
    Getting Marvin had been a lucky break. They'd
found him when he was walking up to Kelly's door. They were just
going up the road looking for survivors or a car they could borrow.
And nothing funny meant by it, but it was a no brainer to take
Marvin out; they moved in for the kill because they could. Frank
took him. The new kid Todd didn't have the stomach for
it.
    That'll change, thought Frank.
    Marvin had looked like an ambler, one of the
ones that didn't have much left for brains. Kinda like what you
imagined from the zombie movies. A dumb dead fuck. What they knew
so far, which was hardly anything but it was better than nothing,
was that these things were walking dead. And they came in
flavors.
    Some of them were dumb and slow, like Marvin.
And some of them weren't. Some of them were freakishly fast and
they even looked smart. Frank saw the look from one of them right
before the cruiser went over the embankment. It was looking right
at him like it knew. The fucking thing knew what the swarm was
doing and it was playing with him and the new kid.
    Could the dead even play games? It sure as
fuck looked like it after the rollover. But lucky for them, when
they came up on Marvin at Kelly's place he'd been an easy target.
The thing was trying to break in to Kelly's house through the front
door. Was that what the dumb ones did? Didn't bother going for the
windows? Frank didn't know. All he knew was that yesterday
everything was normal and now it was all fucked. FUBARed to
hell.
    Frank took an AR-15 from the closet. He smiled
again because this was some nice hardware for a douchebag car
dealer. He knew this one was illegal by the size of the magazine,
but he wasn't going to give Kelly shit about Terry's gun habits
today. More ammo getting fed to the chamber faster was better. The
gun felt familiar, but that was because he'd had plenty of practice
with the M-16 when he was Army. This AR 15 was close enough to the
real deal.
    He checked the mag and saw it was loaded. He
slid it back in and flicked off the safety. Kelly was watching him.
She had a look on her face like she was scared.
    "What now?" said Kelly. "What are you going to
do with Terry's gun?"
    "Shoot the undead maybe?"
    "The what?” Kelly looked like she'd seen a
ghost. Her face went pale. “Are you serious? Are you fucking
serious with me right now? Are you saying that Marvin wasn't alive
when you shot him?"
    "You learn fast, grasshopper. Now go get some
clothes on and grab a gun from the closet that you think you might
be able to shoot straight."
    Frank looked in the closet and found a couple
boxes of ammo for the rifle. He picked them up and dumped as much
as he could into his pockets. There were two spare mags, too.
Loaded. Good , he
thought.
    He saw Kelly shuffling in the closet by the
guns and she was having trouble deciding what to take. He reached
in past her and grabbed a pump action 12 gauge Remington. He gave
it to her and she looked like she was holding a live
snake.
    "Isn't it too big?" she said.
    "It makes a big damn hole. Just point and
squeeze."
    "Shouldn't I have something
smaller?"
    "Because you're