The Dead Road: Vol. 4 - Survival: The Dead Road, #4

By Robert Paine

Volume 4 of The Dead Road series!

It was supposed to be a relaxing vacation. It turned out to be the complete opposite...

A peaceful camping trip in the mountains of Vermont is interrupted when a group of friends discover there has been a slight interruption - a zombie outbreak.

Having barely survived the horrors in Maybridge and Stockton, the group now has a difficult decision to make: do they risk everything and lead a rescue effort against the better-armed and better-equipped Others, or flee for safety with what little life they have left??

Can the group cover miles of dark woods on foot while trying to avoid getting overtaken by the undead or the Others?

Read the final, chilling Volume of The Dead Road to find out...

Praise for The Dead Road:
"Really liked all the books in this collection, they kept me on the edge of my seat. I would definitely recommend this to anyone that enjoys this type of book."

"Starts out fast and furious with backseat mayhem reminiscent of Pulp Fiction and ends with a road trip to destiny...or the next town over, called Maybridge. Four city slickers go camping/hunting for a week in the woods and discover that the world around them has become zombified. This is the story of their escape from the woods. Nicely done."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Our Pack Press
• Release date: Jan 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781497752641

Book preview

~Volume Four: Survival ~

The Jeep was packed with as much food and supplies as we could carry. We had jugs of water, cans of food, a backpack full of ammunition, even a portable fire extinguisher. Eli drove, following the wide path of Route 67, the noise from the engine reverberating off of the rock faces we passed between. Roger sat in the passenger seat, a shotgun cradled in his arms. I was in the back, two rifles lying in the floorboards at my feet, two handguns on the seat beside me. I had checked and loaded all of them, preparing for the worst. But something was missing.

Behind us, somewhere in the distance, following the scent of our sweat and the Jeep's exhaust, was a horde of over a hundred walking corpses, groaning and wheezing as they shambled along the road, arms outstretched. They were following the scent of fresh meat, following the trail they knew would lead to prey. They were following two vehicles that took the same road within minutes of one another - ours, and a white pickup truck holding at least six people. One of those people was a boy, maybe eighteen years old, named Zack. Zack was a local. He lived on Birch road. I had committed his face to memory. I repeated his name and address to myself like a mantra, Zack, Birch road, Stockton Vermont.

In the back of that truck was Amy. Amy was with us before. Zack and his people took her. They grabbed her, kicking and screaming, and drove away after shooting at us. They wanted her, so they took her. I picked up the rifle lying beside me and checked it again, opening the bolt to peer inside, making sure it was loaded.

Roger looked back at me as he heard me fiddling with the rifle. Do we have a plan?

I glared at him. I didn't want to, but the sarcastic tone in his voice just set me on edge. How am I supposed to have a plan when we don't even know where Birch Street is? Don't be an asshole, Roger.

You're the one all gung-ho to rescue her, Alex. You want so bad to get her back that you're putting us at serious risk. Those guys were armed. They were organized. What are we besides three idiots, only one of us that can shoot worth a damn?

Roger was at least partially right. The guys in the white truck had a perfect setup. They used Zack as bait. They spotted us looting Stapleton's and sent Zack out to lure her. He wandered, apparently aimlessly, down the hill, casually approaching the reunion with his supposed friend. Amy ran up to greet him with open arms. She was so happy to see another survivor, another familiar face, she didn't hesitate to go to him. Zack was also a connection to her dead brother, Parker. Parker was another casualty of the outbreak, but by his own hand. He and his friends committed suicide rather than face the bleak future the world presented. We found them in Amy's parents' house, sprawled out in the living room, looking like a party that got way out of hand. She screamed and cried while we looted the house for supplies.

She wanted to bury them, but we were in no shape to dig graves. We hadn't slept, hadn't eaten. To stand out in the summer sun and dig hole would have weakened us to the point of useless. We would be corpse food. So we left. We took Parker's jeep and left them there to rot.

Amy was excited to see Zack. The pickup truck came out of a side street and drove right towards her. The men in back reached out and scooped her up. I thought they were going to take Zack too, but when he raised his gun and pointed it at us I knew he was just the decoy. It was too late before I realized what was really going on. Amy was in the back of the truck and they were speeding past before I could react. They fired at us as they went by, putting a bullet through one of our tires, leaving us unable to follow with a horde of monsters coming our way.

Eli and Roger changed the tire like men in a NASCAR pit crew. We were off and running before the mass of dead things got too close. Before we left I grabbed a map of the county from inside of the store. Amy had said Zack lived on Birch Street.

We're three smart guys, Roger. That's what we have over them. Eli, I think we got enough distance between us and the things back there. Pull over.

Eli pulled to the side of the road and turned off the engine. Aside from the faint ticking noises from under the hood all we could hear was the wind in the trees, birds singing and insects buzzing. I stood up in the back seat of the Jeep, peering behind us through the binoculars we took from Stapleton's. Nothing but empty road. I knew there was a mass of hundreds of hungry mouths somewhere a few miles back, making their way slowly up the hill towards us, but we had some time to recollect.

Eli rubbed at his face with both hands. How long do you think those things are going to chase us, man? I mean, are they going to follow us until they're all dead?

Until they can't smell us anymore. We keep stopping. We keep letting them catch up. If we just hit the road and don't look back, eventually they'll lose our scent.

But they didn't follow us off the mountain like this, man. They got lost in the parking lot once Roger got in the car.

I nodded then looked back at him, Open-top Jeep. They can still smell us. Once Roger got in the closed off car, they lost his scent.

Eli frowned and hopped out of the Jeep to stretch. We should get something else then. And soon.

I sat back down. I have my eyes on a nice white pickup.

Roger scoffed. You're insane, Alex. You really are.

Look, I began, leveling my gaze at Roger, Amy was part of our group. Yeah, it was only for a few hours but we busted up a car to rescue her. It was her voice, her message that kept us from rushing headlong into this town and getting killed. We owe her for that. She risked her ass to get to the radio station and it almost cost her. Then we come along, rescue her, let her cry on our shoulder over her brother, and now we're just going to abandon her to a bunch of redneck hicks? No sir, not me.

Roger threw up his hands, How do you know they're abusing her? How do you know they aren't just grabbing up familiar faces to bring to their fortified position? You ever think they were putting on a show to ward us off, and once they got out of sight they calmed her down?

I shook my head. No way. That was not at all friendly. They didn't even pretend to be doing anything other than kidnapping her. They shot at us so we couldn't stop them. She was kicking and yelling when they put her in the back of that truck. I heard them laughing at her distress, not trying to settle her in. No, they grabbed her because she's a pretty girl and they...

I couldn't finish my thought. My words caught in my throat. My mind went to New York, to a city full of millions of zombies, walking down Park Avenue, people in tall buildings living like autonomous states, each one only as safe as their first floor. Things would get desperate quickly. I imagined my girlfriend, Katie, trapped in her 7th floor apartment, a street full of zombies below her window, armed men banging on her door because she's the only living woman in the building.

Roger put his hand on my shoulder. Ok, Alex. Ok. We'll do this. I just don't have any idea how we're going to pull it off.

I grabbed the county map out of the front seat and unfolded it. It had been a long time since I had to use a paper map, having been relying on the Internet for all of my navigation for the past few years. I remembered the days of my youth poring over the atlas of Fairfield County and the street map of Manhattan. I used to be able to visualize entire neighborhoods, the way the streets intersected twisted, just from studying the maps. It didn't take me long to find Stockton town center, then trace Route 67 to where we were. There was a lot more white spice in Vermont, vast tracts of hills and forest that would encompass ten city blocks in New York. Scanning the scattered yellow lines of roads through the empty space was easy once I got my bearings. I tapped the map. Birch Street.

It was a small winding road that cut through the white emptiness around it like an infection. Somehow the road looked poisonous to me, that the yellow ink was more grotesque than the rest of the map. The S-shaped road looked like a