Double Dead by Chuck Wendig

Author:Chuck Wendig [Wendig, Chuck]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fantasy, Horror, Vampires, Humour, Lang:en, Tomes of the Dead
Publisher: Rebellion Publishing Ltd
Published: 2012-05-17T08:45:57+00:00

Cut to:

The RV, overturned.

Couple zombies underneath, still thrashing—well, sluggishly shifting, perhaps. Their soft decayed heads thumping dully against the macadam. Coburn stepped off the bike. Told Ginger to kill the engine.

He and the boy had been riding the highway now for a handful of hours, zipping through defunct towns, passing by zombies that groped at the air ten, twenty feet away, as if that would somehow matter. Coburn scented the Winnebago like a hound and had the boy turn the bike off Lincoln Highway and down to Route 70—in the distance, Coburn could make out the shadowy hills and buildings of Pittsburgh, and no way was he going to brave wading into the middle of a city again. That way, the streets were surely choked with the living dead, like rats and roaches in the walls of a ruined building. Thankfully, the RV didn’t go that way, which meant he didn’t have to, either.

But now, here it was, laying on its side like a dead, beached whale.

Hollow. Gutted. Nobody inside.

Two rotters jogged up—literally a pair of joggers in full jogger regalia, tracksuits with the line running top to bottom, shoulder to ankle—and Coburn grabbed for both and smashed their heads together. They fell, unmoving.

Beyond them, though, lay other zombies. Dead. Extra dead. For real dead. Shot in the head so as never to move again.

Two there. Five over there. Another half-dozen in a clumsy circle.

Somebody’d made short work of these undead.

He sniffed the air. Smelled blood. Not sure whose, though—he cursed himself, wished he had taken a moment to become acquainted with the scent of each human’s blood, because right now he couldn’t differentiate Gil from Ebbie, Leelee from Cecelia. But he also smelled their sweat and desperation. And mingled in there, the odor of a rat terrier named Creampuff.

Coburn put together a picture of what happened.

Looked like they were driving along, maybe even at a good clip since the highway here wasn’t gummed up with too many broken cars. Then… something happened. Zombies, probably. Came out of nowhere. Smart money said Ebbie was driving and Ebbie knew the rules that Gil put forth: thou shalt not make roadkill of the living dead lest they get all wedged up under the tires.

And so big boy panicked. Cut the wheel hard.

Overestimated. RV wobbled. Maybe he cut the wheel back the other way. Again, too hard, too far. And with that, the RV tipped, hit, skidded.

Loud sound. Fast movement. The zombies came, then.

Gil or someone shot a handful and they fled, knowing that more would come.

“They got away,” Coburn said to Ginger, who stood there straddling the bike. “But the fools didn’t take the highway. They left it. Went over the guardrail here. Hightailed it into the woods, near as I can tell. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Out there in the dark, they could get lost, ambushed. They might be out there right now, wandering in circles. Or maybe the whole lot of them turned to the stumbling, mumbling dead.”

Other problem was, the sun wasn’t long away.

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