Love & the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 1, Zombie Apocalypse Trilogy) (17 page)

“Would you shut up, already?”  Nicky said to Lindsay.

Selena resisted the urge to slap the girl and slung the backpack on her shoulders.  She held Adam’s lead pipe tight in her hands.  She would fight for Adam.  She would not be a liability. 

“GET READY YOU GUYS!
  ON THREE,” Adam screamed.

Cage twisted the lock on the door.  “Stay close.  Run as fast as you can.”

“ONE.”

Selena
gripped the lead pipe.  Nicky moved to the rear.  All of the girls – Selena, Lindsay and Rachel - were together in the middle.  Cage grabbed the door handle. 

“TWO!
  I LOVE YOU SELENA!”

Selena choked back a sob.
Fear grew in the pit of her stomach. 

“THREE!  GO!”

Cage opened the door and they raced out of the pizzeria.  Selena didn’t look back.  She focused on the back of Rachel’s head.  A curtain of long blonde hair bounced in front of her face. The sounds coming from the zombies were horrifying - groaning and growling and snarling.  They were salivating at the mouth for Adam.  She couldn’t bear to see him on the roof alone.

Adam’s voice rang
out loud and clear over the megaphone.  “OH SHIT!”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Adam
edged to the end of the building.  He leaned over as far as he could, dangling himself as live bait.  It was the only way he could get the zombies’ attention.  He had to be as flamboyant and loud as possible so they could see and hear him.  All of their lives depended on it.  Selena’s life depended on it. 

It was a dumb mistake and probably a fatal one.

He scooted too far over the edge.  One of the bricks slid loose and Adam’s right leg gave out.  The megaphone slipped from his hand and, out of pure reflex, he reached to catch the stupid piece of plastic.  He cursed as the momentum propelled him over the edge of the building.

~     ~     ~

Rachel heard Adam’s curse over the megaphone and her heart sank.  What happened? Selena slowed.  Rachel reached behind her and clamped a hand around Selena’s wrist.  “We can’t go back there,” she whispered.

“He’s in trouble,” Selena cried.

“Shhh!” Lindsay ran past them.  “They’ll hear us!” 

They
reached the end of the Strip and rounded the corner of the last building.  Rachel had to drag Selena the rest of the way. 

“Please, we have to go back,” Selena pleaded.  “
Adam needs our help.  He would do the same for us.  Please.”

“She’s right,” Cage said
.  “I’ll go check on him.”

“Check on him?”  Lindsay said incredulously. 
“Are you crazy?  You can’t help him now.  There are too many zombies.”

Rachel kept silent.  Lindsay was right, but she didn’t want to up
set Selena.

“I’ll
sneak around the corner and look,” Cage said.  “It will take two seconds.”

“Cage,” Rachel said. 

“I’ll be fine.”

“Adam
hasn’t said anything over the megaphone since he cried out,” Nicky said. 

“Maybe he dropped it,” Selena countered.

“Maybe.” Nicky looked over his shoulder.  “We need to make a decision.  We can’t stay out in the open.”

“I agree with Nicky.
” Lindsay placed her hands on her hips.

“Then I must’
ve said something rude and shallow,” Nicky said.

“I’ll be right back. 
I’m going to see if I can see Adam on the roof,” Cage said.

Nicky threw his hands
in the air.  “Never say that dude! ‘I’ll be right back’ means instant death!”

Cage
ignored Nicky and disappeared around the corner.  Rachel’s stomach squeezed into knots.  She couldn’t imagine what Selena felt right now. 

One minute passed.

Two minutes.

Rachel’s heartbeat raced.  Three minutes. 

Cage
rounded the corner.  His eyes fell on Selena.  “All of the zombies are still gathered at the end of the Strip.  I didn’t see Adam on the roof.  I didn’t see anything, but zombies.”

Selena sobbed.

Nicky put his hand on her shoulder.  “Selena, honey, maybe he didn’t make it.”

“Nicky!”
Rachel hit his arm.

“What?”

“No, I know he made it.  He’s okay, I can feel it,” Selena said.

“Let’s go to the dorm.  That’s where Adam said he’d meet us,” Cage said.

~     ~     ~

The roar of their growls was thunderous.  Transparent blue eyes filled every inch of pavement below.  The zombies bumped into each other like an angry mob - groaning and snarling and snapping their jaws as they reached for Adam’s dangling feet. 

Adam had
caught the edge of the roof during his fall and now he was holding on for dear life.  His fingers were slipping.  The muscles in his arms were on fire and his hands were sweaty.

This was it. 

He closed his eyes and thought of his mother.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Selena was inconsolable.  Cage wasn’t sure if she could make it to the dorm. He practically dragged her, with Selena fighting him every step of the way, but somehow they managed to make it to campus. They passed a few straggling zombies, but the group stayed hidden in the safety of the shadows.

“There it is.
” Rachel pointed. 

Peabody Do
rm’s front glass doors were smashed to pieces.  Glass glistened over the cement like diamonds.  Not a single light was on in the six-story dormitory.  The building looked abandoned.

They ha
d survived a carjacking, the Wooden Barrel, the fire station, his parents’ turning, the hillbillies at the gas station, they trekked miles on foot, escaped a horde of zombies – all for this moment.  Peabody Dorm.

“
Adam is on his way?”  Selena asked hopefully.

“He said he would
meet us here.”  Cage stepped inside the broken door, careful not to brush against the jagged edges.  Rows of mailboxes lined one wall of the common room.  Public bathrooms were to the right and in the back of the room sofas surrounded a flat screen television. 

A
stairwell with a keypad led upstairs to the dorm rooms.  Normally, the keypad blocked access to anyone who didn’t have an ID card.  Not this time.  The door was propped open by a bloody body, half in and half out of the doorway.
 
It should have been a safe place for the children – locked behind a secure door – but anything could have slipped by with the door wedged open like that.

“Do
you know which floor Morgan was on?”  Cage asked.

Rachel sh
ook her head.  “The science camp had two floors of students in Peabody.  The other floors were empty for the summer.”

“We should split
up and search each floor,” Cage said.

“Split up?”  Nicky’s dark eyebrows
rose.  “Haven’t you ever seen a horror movie in your life?  You never, under any circumstance, split up.  Splitting up equals death.  Always.  There’s absolutely no exception to that rule.  Obviously, I’ll have to explain these rules to you later.”

“There
are hundreds of zombies outside,” Cage said.  “If any of them get a whiff of us in here, then we’re sitting ducks.  We need to get in and get out as quickly as possible.”

“Quack, quack,” Nicky said.

“What?”  Cage turned to Nicky. 

He pointed
at the shattered front doors.  “We’re sitting ducks, man.  Dead ducks.”

Selena screamed. 
“Adam!”

Adam was a hundred yards away, running
without his shirt, toward Peabody Dorm.  On his heels was an army of zombies.  It looked like all of the zombies from the Strip had followed him. 

“Holy crap,” Lindsay muttered.

Adam waved at them.  “Get inside!  Hurry!”

“He doesn’t know that the front doors are broken,” Rachel said. 

Adam leaped over the curb and up the front lawn of Peabody dorm.  “Get back!” 

“In here!”  Rachel tugged the dead body away from the access door.  “The doors will lock.”

“That’s not going to stop all of those zombies!” Nicky said.  “They’ll knock the hinges right off the door.”

“Do you have a better idea?” 
Rachel shouted.

Nicky cursed and helped Cage
and Rachel drag the dead body away from the doorframe.  Selena and Lindsay ran into the stairwell.  Cage held the door open, waiting for Adam. 

Adam sprinted up the sidewalk and through the broken glass doors.  A zombie – a man with a dark moustache
- reached for him.  The zombie’s fingers grabbed his shoulder and Adam lost his balance.  He tumbled head over feet onto the glassy floor.

“Adam!”  Selena screamed.

Rachel ran to help.  Ten more zombies busted through the front door.  Adam shoved the moustache zombie off him.  Cage wielded his pipe at the group that surrounded Adam and Rachel.  Another swarm of zombies pushed through the door.  They flowed into the building like rushing water. 

“Get inside!  Now!”  Lindsay screamed from the stairwell.

Cage lifted Adam to his feet.  Rachel fired a gun at close range.  Two zombies wearing U of M t-shirts crumbled to the ground.

“Rachel, come on!”  Cage screamed.

Cage, Rachel and Adam ran to the stairwell.  Cage could feel the hot breath of the creatures on his neck.  Over forty of them had filled the common room.  More of them poured in through the front doors.

They ran
into the stairwell and Nicky slammed the steel door behind them.  The zombies hammered on the other side.  A hand shattered the window.  Dirty, bloody hands reached through the small squared opening in the door.

“I love how we
keep escaping by the skin of our teeth,” Nicky said.  “It’s never a dull moment.”

Selena wrapped her arms around Adam.  “You made it, you made it.”
His chest heaved from running and he was dripping with sweat. Selena planted kisses all over his face – his cheeks, his chin and his forehead.

“How did you
get out?  I didn’t see you on the roof,” Cage said. 

“I fell,” Adam said.  “A
brick gave out and I was dangling in the air like a piñata, but I managed to pull myself up. I needed a diversion.  I grabbed a sack of flour from the pizzeria, rubbed raw bacon meat all over it and put my shirt over the bag.  I hoisted it back up to the roof and launched it over.  They swarmed the decoy and it was enough time for me to get out.  They caught wind of me once I was on the Strip and I had to haul ass.  Sorry about leading them here.”

Nicky patted Adam on the back.  “Bacon.  Classic.”

“I’m glad you’re alive,” Rachel said. 

“We’
re in the same situation that we were in before,” Lindsay said.  “Instead of a pizzeria, now we’re trapped in a dorm.”

Cage ignored her.  “How lon
g do you think we have until that door breaks down and all of those zombies come rushing in?”

Adam ran his hand over the steel door.  It was vibrating from the zombies
thrashing on the other side.  “Fifteen minutes?  We should go find Morgan and figure a way out.”

“We were dividing up,” Cage said.  “Two groups.  Each group takes three floors. 
I’ll go with Rachel.”

“Of course you will,” Lindsay muttered. 

Adam looked at Lindsay.  “Will you go with them?  I think it will be better if Nicky comes with Selena and me.”

Lindsay rolled her eyes.  “Fine.”

“We’ll take the top three floors,” Cage said.  “Let’s meet on the third floor stairwell as quickly as possible.”

“What does your sister
look like, Rachel?”  Nicky asked.

“She’s eleven,” Rachel said with a broken voice.  “
Her name is Morgan.  She has long blonde hair with bangs and blue eyes.  She was wearing a neon yellow t-shirt that read, ‘
Summer Science Fun’
.”

Selena hugged Rachel.  “We’ll find her.  I can feel it.”

Rachel nodded with glistening eyes.  “Thank you.”

The
zombies pounded on the steel door.  The groaning and hissing filled the dormitory.

“L
et’s head upstairs,” Adam said.  “Watch out for corners and open doors.  Stick together.”

“I have to climb
six flights of stairs?”  Lindsay’s head fell back as she gaped up the stairwell.  “Are you freaking kidding me?”

Rach
el brushed past her and jogged up the stairs. 

Cage followed.  “Come on Lindsay, stay close.”

The stairwell was empty.  Tiny bloody handprints were smeared across the wall on the second floor.  The small hands made Cage sick.  He quickened his pace, so Rachel couldn’t dwell on the sight. 

Adam, Selena and Nicky entered the third floor while they continued up
the last three flights.  Lindsay was breathing heavily, but she hadn’t complained again. Cage opened the door to the sixth floor.  The floor was split into a giant ‘L’ with one window at the end of each hallway.  Small pockets of moonlight filtered in through the windows.  Twenty doors lined each side of the hallways. 

Cage quickly did the math.  F
orty rooms per floor with six floors meant they had over two hundred and forty rooms to search. The noise from the zombies was getting louder.  How much longer did they have until they broke down the door?  Where would they hide?  How would they get out of the building?

“Right or left?”  Cage asked. 

“Right.” Rachel’s Nikes squeaked on the linoleum.  She poked her head inside the first room.  “Morgan?”

“This must be one of the unoccupied
floors.  There’s not even sheets on the bed,” Lindsay said.  “Let’s go downstairs.”

“Morgan
might be hiding,” Rachel said.  “We need to search all of the rooms before we go down to the fifth floor.” 

Cage
checked room after room.  Where was everyone?  Had someone evacuated the kids?  It was a possibility.  Maybe Morgan and the other children were somewhere safe. 

They searched the
floor without any luck and headed down to the fifth floor.  Brightly colored sheets and blankets covered the small beds in the room.  Cage even saw a few stuffed animals.  He turned away.  He had to believe that someone rescued these children, because the alternative was too horrible to imagine. 

Rachel
ducked into a room.  She gasped and her hand flew to her mouth.   

A
young boy – one of Morgan’s classmates because he wore the neon yellow camp shirt – was inside the room.  His skin was pale and his eyes were ice blue.  He raised his little arms and his jaw slid open. 

Cage reached for his pipe, but
Rachel shook her head.  Tears slid down her cheeks.  She kicked the doorstop and the door slammed shut before the small zombie child could reach them.

“Morgan
!” Rachel screamed.

Lindsay slapped Ra
chel on the arm.  “Shut up!  Are you stupid?  All of the zombies in the building are going to hear you!”

Rachel thrust
a finger in Lindsay’s face.  “If you lay a hand on me again, I’m going to break it.  Do you hear me?”

“Cut it out, you two,” Cage said.  “We need to hurry up and find Morgan before the
zombies break down the door.”

“
Oh, shut up Cage.” Lindsay glared at Rachel.  “And you, Blondie, you can’t scream for your sister like that.  You’ll attract every dead thing on the floor.”

“
What’s with the ‘Blondie’?  You’re a blonde, too, if you haven’t noticed,” Rachel said.  “It still counts, even if it’s fake.”

Lindsay’s eyes widen
ed.

Cage butted
in.  “Lindsay, what if Morgan’s hiding?  What if she’s under a bed or in a closet?”  He poked his head in a room.  “We won’t find her unless she hears Rachel’s voice.”

Lindsay
rolled her eyes and walked down the hallway.  “Traitor.”

“Morgan
!”  Rachel called out. “MORGAN!!!”

Lindsay shot her
a dirty look.  “You stupid b-” 

Three
zombies sprang out of the room.  Two women and one child – all wearing the yellow camp shirts.  Bloody arms wrapped around Lindsay’s waist.  She screamed as they lifted her off her feet. 

“Lindsay!”  Cage tore
down the hallway.  He saw Rachel, out of the corner of his eye, running beside him. The three zombies already had Lindsay on the ground.  Rachel and Cage were twenty yards away and he wasn’t sure if they could make it in time. 

A
little girl screamed from the other end of the hallway: “RACHEL!!”