Dying Days 2

Dying Days 2

Armand Rosamilia

Edited by Jenny Adams

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without expressed written consent of the author and/or artists

This book is a work of fiction. Names characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living, dead or undead, is entirely coincidental.

copyright 2016 by Armand Rosamilia

Cover copyright 2016 by Jack Wallen

First printing March 2012

Updated May 2016

http://DyingDaysZombie.com

[email protected]

This release couldn't have been done without so many people that helped along the way… they say that writing is a lonely profession, but I've been lucky to have so much help, keeping me grounded, being pushed to complete the work, and having friends who support me…

The Extreme Zombie Readers: M.J. O'Neill, Jeff Beesler and Robert Clark, who rip my prose apart like a zombie and make it so much better…

Those that let me kill them (er, I mean, survive) in this story: Russ "Madman" Meyer, Tosha Shorb, Steven Brack, David Monsour, Ellen Harden, and Michael Ross…

Those that supported this endeavor: Bill O'Toole, Carl R. Moore, Michael Wolfe, Wayne Via, Don Corcoran, Nancy Tomec, Jonathan Lambert,  Erik Gustafson, Cheree Ingram, Wendy McLane, Jennifer McMorrow, Brian Philbin, and C.J. Marsicano

I thank you!

Armand Rosamilia

March 8th 2012 

The
Dying Days
series from Armand Rosamilia

Highway To Hell

Dying Days

Dying Days 2

Still Dying: Select Scenes From Dying Days

Still Dying 2

Dying Days 3

Dying Days: Origins

Highway To Hell 2

Dying Days: Origins 2

Dying Days 3

Dying Days 4

Dying Days 5

Dying Days 6

Dying Days 2

Chapter One

The undead came on, wave after wave, almost in time with the pounding of the surf to their right. For six hours, they filled the dunes and the strip of A1A with their rotting, shambling carcasses.

There were still hundreds of them below, wandering in and out of the ocean, stumbling over the dunes, under the stilt houses and clogging up the street.

At some point, they'd figured out how to climb the stairs to two stilt houses, killing the occupants of one and being slaughtered, in turn, by the survivors in the other until a barrier could be erected. None of the survivors in the other stilt houses said anything, but everyone knew that once this attack was over, the occupants would all need thorough checking for bite wounds.

Murph spit tobacco over the side of his home, the brown glob splattering on the head of an undead woman twenty feet below. "Looks like rain."

Darlene Bobich, looking tired and older than her twenty-eight years, could only laugh. "If rain were the worst of our worries, it'd be a great fucking day, old man."

"True." Murph turned his crinkled face toward her and grinned. "But no matter what happens, at some point you gotta figure it's gonna rain, even here in Florida."

"True indeed. I'm going to crack open a cold one. You in?"

Murph spit the last of his chew over the side and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. "Yeah, but none of that foreign crap. I think I hid some Buds in the back so John-John wouldn't see them."

The two walked back inside and laughed at the sight of John, Murph's son, passed out on the couch with three Budweiser beer cans on the coffee table.

Murph went to wake him up but Darlene stopped him. "Let him sleep. We've been through Hell the last couple days, especially him. He covered our retreat the entire march back."

They'd sent a group to meet, greet and protect a large horde of survivors coming from Daytona Beach. Orlando had been overrun and thousands of refugees had fought their way east on I-4, toward the ocean, before turning north for the safety of St. Augustine.

Something had gone terribly wrong. Instead of weary, tired and hungry people, they encountered thousands and thousands of deadly, unwavering, hungry zombies. The way back had been relatively clear, with a few stray undead in their path, but the horde had unnerved some of them, especially fourteen-year old Bri, who was in such shock that Eric had to carry her all the way back.

Darlene grabbed a couple of cold ones and tried to shake the thoughts from her head. She couldn't. "It was the smell."

"Pardon?" Murph said and took an offered beer.

"Right before we knew something was wrong, a second before Bri turned back to us with that confused fear in her eyes, I smelled them. Not consciously, but the faint scent was there."

"Nothing worse than being downwind from a corpse, honey."

Darlene shook her head. "I didn't simply smell them, I sensed them. It's hard to explain." She took a gulp of beer and closed her eyes. "I don't know. I just knew what they were in my head before my eyes could really see them, before even Bri saw them, and she was standing only five feet from them."

"Crazy world we live in," Murph said and winked. "That's why God made beer. The great equalizer."

Darlene raised her can in salute. "A wise man once said, 'Beer… now, there's a temporary solution.'"

"Wise man?"

"Homer Simpson."

"Who?" Murph asked.

Darlene laughed. "Never mind."

Murph went into the kitchen. "D'oh," he said, loud enough for Darlene to hear.

She laughed. "I think the weird part right now is the relief that we know exactly where they are."

"Want pretzels?" Murph asked.

"Sure. I mean, there are swarms of them down there but at least we're not under the false pretense that they've all rotted away or wandered off."

Murph pointed at his son. "I haven't seen him that comfortable in way too long. I know what you mean. I'm too old for this shit. My knees are popping like crazy and I honestly don't think I'll ever make it down those stairs. For all intents and purposes, this is my coffin." Murph sat down in his chair and sighed. "But you can't ask for a bigger coffin than this, right?"

"Exactly, and especially one with a working fridge full of beer."

"I'll drink to that."

John rolled off the couch and stretched, looking worn-out. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and trudged silently to the bathroom.

"And they say the ones outside are the rude ones. At least they have an excuse," Murph said loudly. He stopped when he heard the thump and jumped out of his seat at the same time Darlene did.

"Was that the wood?" Murph whispered, frozen in place.

"I'm not rude, but don't fuck with me before I take a piss," John said as he entered the living room.

Before anyone could shush him, they heard the tell-tale sound of wood being pried from the stairs.

They went into action, with John getting one of his bows and Darlene her trusty Desert Eagle and her machete. Murph grabbed a baseball bat and opened the door for them.

Since they'd been out here on the deck last, the rain had begun, a thin sheet of wetness. It looked like it would spit for a bit before sputtering out, but you never knew what the Florida weather would do.

"Breach," Darlene said, although her companions already saw.

The zombies had pulled the wooden barrier from the stairs below and were now moving two abreast up the steps, slowly scrambling up.

John looked around. "I told you we should have brought heavy things up here to toss down."

"There was no time for that," Murph said and waved over to the next stilt house, where Eric White was standing on his deck with a hunting rifle in hand. Murph waved him off.

Darlene nodded. No use shooting and drawing even more of them. They had no idea how far the main horde had gotten, and if they were still close they might turn back, drawn to the noise.