Running From The Dead

By R.A Holmes

Follow Emma as she tried to survive a Zombie apocalypse. Meeting Dean, the two fall in love. They travel through death and destruction to an Island hoping to find freedom. But, do they ever find it?

• Language: English
• Publisher: R.A Holmes
• Release date: Jul 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301253791

R.A Holmes

R.A Holmes lives in a tiny apartment in Ohio with her newly wedded husband. When she's not reading or writing, she spends time hanging out with family or working at a gas station as the assistant manager.

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Running From The Dead

R A Holmes

Copyright © 2012 by R A Holmes

Smashwords Edition

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For my mom. I used my talent god has given me.

Thanks to my husband for not only giving me the world, but also making me finish this book as well.

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Running From The Dead

An apocalyptic Zombie tale

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R A Holmes

PRELUDE

My eyes pop open at the sound of movement in the hallway. I look around the dark room lit by nothing but the full bright moon. Dust particles glimmer in the rays casting on the wall. My heart starts to thump and the hairs on my neck stand on end. The moans are low, somewhere off in the distance there are more out there; waiting.

The clomps of unsteady feet grow louder and so does the beating of my heart. I jump off the bed I had borrowed last night and grab the baseball bat propped by the closet door. As my eyes are trying to adjust to the darkness, I tighten my grip on the bat. I slowly open the door. I try to keep the bat steady in my shaking hands. I have heard of them, I have heard of the terror they have caused throughout the world. I have seen them on TV, but what you see on TV we have learned to think of as fake or fantasy. This was real. I have never thought about killing another human being. I was always hoping I would never have to.

It has been exactly one week since humanity has been pretty much wiped out. Seven days is all it took. I have watched movies about this on TV and played video games with zombies in it. However, I have never expected it to be like this. It’s not what you think. There is no electricity, and there hasn’t been since this outbreak started. Yes, there is plenty of food but food does go bad after awhile. We have running water for now. But it’s unusable. You can shower in it, if you really need to. Without workers to purify it, it’s useless for consumption. Everyone in those movies weren’t afraid. They knew what to do, had an unlimited supply of ammunition and always had a cure. Unfortunately; that is not the case in real life, and truthfully; I’m terrified.

I was sitting in my apartment when the broadcast came on. I had just woken up from working all night. I knew something wasn’t right because the night before, some customers were acting outrageously odd. Not the normal nighttime creeps. They all looked a little sickly. A woman came in praying to god talking about something evil among us. I shook it off. My manager came in the next morning coughing and hacking. Her face was pale and she was sweating. Her arms seemed to droop oddly.

I can stay for you if you want me to. I told her looking at the bloody gauze on her arm. You don’t look too good.

I need the money. I got into a bar fight last night. Some guy bit me. She said smiling at me. My arm has been killing me ever since. Freaks. I left and went home not thinking anything was wrong.

Go inside and lock your doors. The petite woman’s shaky voice had said. Don’t open the door for anyone. Grab any weapons, food and water available. We don’t know what happened but it might some type of cult. Do not go up to anyone you don’t know. These people are very dangerous. You will get killed. She continued. The screams and panic coming from behind her were unbelievable. People were getting shot and a few minutes later waking back up and attacking others. Cars were wrecking into each other and running over pedestrians. Men in uniforms carrying big guns and wearing helmets were pulling men, women and children to safety in a warehouse. Flames and dark smoke grew from somewhere in the far distance. I’m getting information. The woman reads from somewhere next to her. There has been some sort of an outbreak, the president has no word on what we can do or how it happened. Our best suggestion is to get somewhere away from the city. Somewhere with less people. Our nightmares have become our reality. Then the screen went black.

I did as the woman said and locked my doors. I pushed my couch up against the door for extra support. I lived on the eighth floor of an almost run down apartment complex in the middle of the city. Gunshots were fired on the other side of my closed door. I immediately rushed around my apartment looking for anything and everything I could use. Secretly thanking my parents for the duffle bag they had bought me for my last birthday, I opened my fridge, took out bottles of water, and shoved them in the bag. Going through my cabinets I threw cans of peas, pears, pasta, and corn on top of the water and I headed to my bedroom. I jumped at the horrifying sound of the thumping and screams above me.

Not even looking at what I grab, I start tossing clothes and a few pairs of shoes in the almost full bag as well. My old high school book bag hangs from a peg on my wall. I open it and dump out all of my notes from my friends, all of my memories. My eyes well up with tears as I dump out the contents. The folded pieces of paper litter my floor in white. In the book bag, I toss in a blanket, some kitchen matches, a steak knife and another bigger kitchen knife. Shadows of someone running fly past my living room window and I shudder. Unsteady people stumbling over each other follow behind. Minutes later, I hear a bang and screaming. I knew someone had just been killed.

I move my couch to the side. Slowly and quietly, I open my door and look outside. Screaming greets me as I stare below at the street. Bodies litter the ground and I hold back a scream of my own. Someone is eating another. I kneel over the balcony edge and vomit over it. I don’t bother closing my door and I walk quickly on the balcony checking behind me every couple of feet. Someone is standing by the stairs. Blood is rushing from their face as they turn to look at me. I stop abruptly.

Can I get through? I ask but it came as more of a whisper. The person looked at me as if trying to figure out what I was. They pulled their lips up over their teeth and started growling at me. They slowly started stumbling towards me. My heart stopped and my breath caught in my throat. Continuing to walk towards me, I hear the gurgling of their hungry stomach. Their twisted fingers were reaching out to me as I turn around to run. Tripping over a body on the balcony that wasn’t there a few moments ago, I fall and the thing chasing me falls on top of me. Its jaws were chomping at me. The eyes were white and milky. Blood caked teeth try to close down on my shoulder as I kick it off.

It grunts and hisses getting up from the ground. I ran past the same apartments and back toward the stairs and I was relieved when they’re clear. I take them two and even three at a time. The chomping of teeth and growls followed not far behind me. My car was parked on the street. Another person stumbling around reached for me and I ran toward my car. I jumped in, tossed my bags in the backseat, locked the doors started the growling engine and slammed my foot on the gas. The car lurched forward and I ran over bodies. The thumping of my tires crunching on bone made me whimper.

The needle in my car read a quarter. I had to get gas. Everywhere I looked, there was destruction. Every gas station was out of the question. What ones weren’t up in flames were completely swarmed with people taking food, gas and whatever else they could before they went to seek refuge. All the radio stations were dead air. My cell phone slowly lost service, and eventually stopped working. I slammed on the brakes just in time to avoid hitting a large truck barreling down the street, right past me, up the curb and into the grocery store. Muffled screams and cries from the dying pierced my ears. The people who have now turned to monsters stumble behind cars desperately trying to kill.

Police cars with their flashing lights on lined the sidewalks. Blood and body parts littered the roads. Gunshots and yells were heard in every direction. I had to get out of the city. Driving onto the on-ramp of the highway cars were parked. None were moving and smoke was rising up from somewhere ahead.

I reversed my car and decided to take back roads. About twenty miles west is a small town. Not many people live there and the news lady on TV told us that was a good idea. I Dodge stumbling monsters throughout the streets I sped fast trying to get away. A school bus was toppled on its side. Small legs and arms hung out of the windows. I started to cry.

I came to a street with houses on either side. Bikes and cars were in every driveway. Dogs were barking and more screaming filled my ears. A woman was laying on the street calling for help. I rolled over her and cried as I did so. How could this happen in a matter of a few hours? Thousands of people now dead. Others, up and trying to kill.

After a half, an hour of driving I whined as my car slowly started to putt and ran out of the last of the gas. The streets have been quieter the farther from the city I got. There was a forest on my left that hid anyone trying not to be seen. Moans and growls come from somewhere far away. An open and plowed field to my right showed signs of no one. It was eerily quiet. Not even birds dared to call in fear of being found.

My heart thumped hard in my chest and my eyes burnt as I got out of the car looking around and started to walk. No cars drove by as I walked for what seemed to be forever down the quiet road… A woman running from something passed me and looked over as if pleading me not to kill her. I put my head down and I walked faster. It’s almost fall and the leaves are beginning to change. The weather has been oddly warmer this year than past years. I dropped my book bag on the ground and fished out the big kitchen knife. I’m not sure what it would do but it made me feel safer knowing I had something rather than nothing.

A young boy riding his bike passed me. His shirt was covered in blood and he held a crowbar towards my head and swung. I dropped to the ground with the crowbar just missing contact. I kept walking reluctantly down the quiet street and away from the chaos behind me.

As I kept walking, the sun started to drop. It was getting dark and the moans from behind me made me feel uneasy. My feet were hurting and I was thirsty. The forest clears and I seen a small white bungalow to my left. The front door was open and a thick wooden fence lines the backyard. A garage door is closed hiding whatever is behind it. The field is gone and now more forest replaces it. The dark paved street was quiet. There was no sign of anyone alive. Movement in the woods behind me made me walk up to the house.

I took my chances walking up the small porch to the opened door. My hands started shaking as I walked through the open doorway. The sun had just set and I couldn’t see anything. I looked around behind me to make sure I wasn’t being followed before entering the house. The door had streaks of something dark on it. I assumed blood. But I really didn’t want to know. I quietly shut the heavy door and locked the chain behind me holding my knife out at arms length. I’m standing in a big living room. A Bay window sits in the middle of the room looking out at the woods beyond it. The windows have been half boarded. Broken pieces of wood and doors lay all over the floor. Blood is sprayed on the walls in sign of a struggle. To my left, a doorway leads to a big kitchen with open cabinets. A backdoor is locked with a view of the backyard. The fence surrounds the entire perimeter. A pond is off to the side.

A metal shed sits along the corner of the yard. The cabinets have been cleared out except for a few cans of food. I took out each one and sat them on the counter. I opened the fridge and a rotten smell greeted me. I held my nose looking for something of use. A half-drunk gallon of water sits on the bottom shelf. I took it out and put it on the counter next to the cans of food.

The house had three bedrooms. Two of which weren’t touched. The third bedroom had nothing in it. A bed frame and a few pictures were all that remained. I opened the closet door to find nothing. The window faced the house next door. That house also was quiet and untouched. The only light coming throughout the house was from the bright moon.

I opened the dresser of the second room and found clothes. They were men’s clothes. Khakis and dress shirts were tucked neatly on top of each other in piles. The bed was neatly made with pillows stacked on it. A big chair sat on a dark, soft rug. In the closet, I found a baseball bat leaned in the back corner. It was too dark to see anything else so I closed the door and continued my search taking the bat with me.

Finally, I searched the last room. The big oak dresser had a huge mirror attached to it. Perfumes sat in a row on top of it. Woman’s dresses and shirts occupied the drawers. A small Television sat on a table next to the bed. A skylight let the stars shine in leaving shadows on the wall.

After not finding anyone or anything. My eyes fell heavy. I lay on the bed bringing the blanket close to my chest and I fell into a dreamless sleep hoping to wake up to normalcy.

CHAPTER ONE

The door squeaked open and I scrunched my nose at the rotten smell. The moaning was so close it hurt my ears. To my left a shadow was three feet away I swung with all I had and felt the contact of the bat on hard flesh. The body fell with a thump and immediately started getting up. I kept swinging and hitting whatever or whomever it was laying on the ground. I swung until my arms were sore. The thing finally stopped moving. I panicked at the feel of something wet on my face and I realized it was my own tears. I ran down the hall and fell onto the floor sobbing.

The sun was bright in my swollen eyes. I didn’t remember falling asleep. The house was quiet and relief washed over me. The fact that I was still in a strange house made yesterday all too real and fresh in my mind. I went into the hallway to find a body lying on the floor; its face is mangled and smashed. Clotted blood lies all around it. The skin is grey and bruised. The stomach is descended. The long straw-like hair made me think it was a woman. The stench of rot and dead animal swarmed my nostrils and made my eyes water and my stomach churn.

I walked to the room where I slept and grabbed a sheet. The walls were a deep pink. The sun shined in on all sides of the room through the skylight. I wrapped the body up into the sheet and drug it slowly through the hallway and onto the front porch. I opened the door and cautiously peeked around looking for people. No one was anywhere to be seen. A few zombies were slowly making their way down the street. Their feet are dragging behind them. I pushed the body down the porch stairs and shut the door in a hurry.

I clicked the lock shut and I was safe; for now at least. The door to the basement was opened.

Shit the basement. I said a lot louder than I had wanted. I hadn’t checked the basement last night. I hadn’t even noticed a door. Nevertheless, it was dark and I probably couldn‘t see it. I grabbed a kitchen knife out of a drawer and climbed down the basement stairs. It smelled like mold and dirt. The windows were dirty and thick and it made the basement dark. There were boxes of food scattered throughout the basement. Blankets and buckets were laid out in a pile on a cot. Someone had been prepared to stay here. Just like I planned to do. Puddles of blood line the floor along with a body. Nothing is left of it but bones and hair. I lost my breath at the sight of the horror in front of me. I couldn’t hold it and I knelt over throwing up on the floor at my feet.

My head hurts. I walk to the bathroom and start digging through the medicines in the cabinet. I found ibuprofen and took some with a bottle of water. The hands on the clock said seven thirty am. Glad I hadn’t slept all day I started picking up the wood off the ground and decided I’d better start working on the windows. In case of emergency, I planned an escape route. That door would not be boarded. The back door was my escape route. I grabbed pieces of wood and started hammering them quickly to the front door and the windows on the side of the house. The house had three entrances. The front door, which was already, boarded the back door, which I wasn’t boarding, and the garage. The metal garage door should hold so I just left the interior door to the garage alone.

I ran out of wood after just boarding up the living room. I didn’t like the darkness it brought but I felt safe. I started tearing apart anything made of wood. I took the doors off the remaining closets and bedrooms. I stopped with only a few more windows to go. I was tired and my hands had blisters on them from hammering. The moans outside were more frequent while I was drinking a bottle of water and eating my dinner of a granola bar and some candy. The hammering must have attracted them. I decide to stop for a day or two. The house is boarded up