Read My Zombie Summer (Book 1): The Undead Road Online
Authors: David Powers King
Tags: #Zombie Apocalypse
My Zombie Summer (Book 1): The Undead Road
Nothing brings the family together like a zombie apocalypse …
Fifteen-year-old Jeremy Barnes would rather watch a zombie movie than shoot a real one, but he has no choice if his family wants to survive the end of the world. Their plan? Drive across the infected United States to a cabin in the Colorado Rockies without a scratch, but their trip takes a complicated detour in the middle of Nebraska when they find Kaylynn, a girl who can handle a baseball bat better than Jeremy can hold a .45 Beretta. And when they stumble into a sanctuary, Jeremy soon learns that Kaylynn is stronger than she looks—a deadly secret lies inside her.
After the radio picks up a distress call from Kansas City about a possible cure, Jeremy’s parents go with a team to investigate. They never return. The only way to find their parents is for Jeremy and his sister Jewel to rely on a dangerous girl who might just turn on them at any moment.
For my father, the smartest man I know.
Everyone had their own idea for how the world was going to end: a nuclear war, a giant asteroid, or the latest boyband breakup. The odds seemed to favor the latter—for the girls in my class, at least—but the sad truth is that the
real
end of the world turned out to be something else entirely. A week after people turned, we survived on a balanced diet of old storage water, stale grape soda, and canned baked beans well beyond their best by dates until our supplies had all but run out.
That’s when Dad picked up his car keys, and his AR-15. “Let’s hit the road!”
Mom went upstairs to their bedroom and grabbed the 12 gauge shotgun. Jewel, my little sister, called dibs on the .22 that was laying on the dining room table. As for me, I went into the kitchen for the .45 Beretta.
We piled into our Ford Explorer, eager to see the light of day after hiding indoors for the first week of summer. Dad turned the engine on, and then he went to manually open the garage door. When he came back, he buckled himself in and told us to do the same.
“Can we stop at the store for some Flamin’ Hot Cheetos?” Jewel asked.
Dad smiled as he put the gear into drive. “If it’s not too crowded.”
We ran over a couple of them as we pulled out of the driveway. The ones who didn’t turn into squirming speed bumps chased after us, out of our cul-de-sac where I’d grown up. And I would never see it again.
Perhaps I’d better fill you in on the details. My name is Jeremy Barnes. I’m one of the few survivors of the Vector Pandemic, and this is the story of how my family survived—for now. There’s no telling what will happen to us, not after what we’ve been through. I knew that if we wanted to survive, we had to find food, shelter, and other survivors—possibly a girlfriend.
I was about to find much more than that . . . on the undead road.
When Dad handed me his .45 for the first time, I didn’t know I’d use it ten minutes later.
Her name was Cassidy Mill, the most popular girl in Sands West Middle School. She had the largest brown eyes ever, and the finest blonde hair. It wasn’t hard for her to throw every guy at school into a jealous frenzy the way she clung to boyfriends like fashion accessories. I was never one of them: boyfriend or accessory. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought to ask her out once or twice, but we never talked. We didn’t share the same classes, and she never looked at me. But when she finally did, she ran at me—but not in
that
way.
Red eyes. Torn hair. Rotting skin.
Not really my idea of a hot date.
Three weeks later, I still couldn’t decide what hurt more: landing a headshot between the eyes of my life-long crush or the recoil that sent my butt to the ground. Both hurt, to be honest. I couldn’t let myself think of these things as human anymore. Eventually, I didn’t. I liked Cassidy a lot, not what she had become. This fact didn’t make the killing of my first zombie any easier.
I’ve never had a shot that clean since. Beginner’s luck, I guess.
Jewel nudged me. “What do you think Mom and Dad will find in there?”
The small town smell of a hot Nebraska afternoon invaded my nose as I glanced up. My little sister was pointing at the abandoned armory, her green, twelve-year-old eyes filled with excitement. I leaned against the car door. “I’m not sure, but I could go for a pizza.”
Jewel smacked a fly against her window. “If there’s no peppers, I’m good.”
I smiled at my little sister. She was good. Like,
scare-the-crap-out-of-me
good. I usually wait to see what these monsters do before I pull the trigger. Not my Jewel, although it was good of her to miss that shotgun-toting old guy in the middle of Iowa. He’d boarded up a gas station just south of Des Moines, and he bargained us an arm and a leg for a few gallons of gas and a safe place to sleep. I mean that figuratively. In those days, arms and legs were fairly easy to come by.
The next morning, the guy lunged for my jugular.
Jewel didn’t miss then. I’ve kept her close since.
She glanced at her pink plastic Barbie watch, the one she had mail ordered by collecting cereal coupons when she was eight—amazing how long the batteries last in those things. “It’s been ten minutes,” she whined. “Does it really take that long to look inside an armory?”
“It looks more like a National Guard building, or something.” I opened my door.
Jewel flashed a worried look my way. Her jaw-length chestnut hair whipped her cheeks. “What’re you doing? They told us to stay inside the car!?”
“Chillax. They’ll be back before
they
reach us.”
By
they
, I meant the
Crawlers
, also known as
Stage 3 Vectors
according to some medical expert on the radio before the airwaves died. I counted nine. Each one crawled, clawed or rolled their way over the dying grass of the abandoned armory, their skinny arms and legs moving with mindless desperation. It was a sad sight, really. Without a victim to munch on, the infection, or parasite, or whatever made these dead people
un
dead had all but consumed their fat cells and inner tissues.
These hungry, mummy-like ghouls kept inching for us like dehydrated slugs.
Crawlers are mostly harmless. Nothing really scary about them. A decent pair of steel-toed boots was enough to make them stop forever. So long as we maintained a good five-foot distance from their reach, we could walk around them without breaking a sweat. Still, we had to keep our guards up. The tiniest bite or slightest scratch was enough to turn us into one of
them
.
I couldn’t hear them yet. Or smell them. I pulled out my .45 anyway. The radio in my other hand clicked.
“Get the car started, Jeremy!”
Mom’s voice was calm, but I knew what
start the car
meant. We were about to have company . . .
Jewel turned around, looking frantic. I opened the driver door, reached for the keys and woke the engine. It sputtered to life. Thankfully our Dad was a handy mechanic. The likelihood of our Explorer breaking down was approximately zero to zip. I moved to the passenger side and opened Mom’s door. Taking my .45 in my right hand and a spare .40 in my left, I walked around the car and checked for obstacles and other Vectors that we might have previously overlooked.
Nothing so far.
Then, on the other side of the street, three Crawlers pulled themselves over the curb. The hot pavement rubbed against their dry skin like coarse sandpaper. They didn’t seem to mind, and their eyes—those that had them—stared longingly at me.
I moved back to my side of the car, just as my sister raised the .22 semi-automatic to her open window and set the barrel on the sill.
She aimed at the armory door. “I see them!”
With my back turned, I had to rely on Jewel to know what was happening on the other side of the car. My job was to keep an eye on my side, to make sure nothing but the living came into our Explorer. Standard procedure. I didn’t want to imagine our parents running out of the red bricked building, chased by a dozen or more of the decaying undead. I just couldn’t help it.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “Are they okay?”
Crack! Crack!
The sound of gunfire for an answer has never sat well with me. I turned around, ignoring the Crawlers that had reached the pavement, each of them heaving like shriveled chain-smokers.