Byron's Legacy Episode 1: Zombie Apocalypse Wasteland Fiction Read Online Free Page A

ran full pelt into the horde of undead, swinging his hammer wildly. They were mown down like wheat before a thresher. Vallance and the rest blasted their way through the crowd of revenants. They fought their way to an emergency exit, left of the stage and pressed on, leaving their fallen comrade to his tomb.
                  The mess hall was overrun with infected. Before reaching it, the team had donned their gas masks in preparation for detonating the Zom-B-Gone bomb.
    “Okay,” Sarah began. “We use mine,” she continued tapping the bomb strapped to her back. “You know the drill. Once it starts spewing, we hold ‘em off till they start dropping.”
    “Just fucking do it.” said Stag. Vallance felt an ice cold shiver run down his spine. He could’ve sworn he heard something… strange... like a slithering noise. He was about to warn the others when out of nowhere, Sarah was dragged up into the darkness of the unlit hall’s upper alcoves. It looked like a tentacle, or a tongue. Sarah’s comrades gasped and swore. Stag was about to unlatch his own bomb when another monstrous tendril lashed out at him, sending a metal table flying against the wall. He was flung back, winded. Vallance rushed to help him while Byron and Jeff shot blindly into the darkness, every flash revealing the advancing zombies.
    Vallance somehow managed to drag Stags enormous weight up and back onto his feet, the group made a dash for the nearest exit. They were almost at the door when a tentacle scythed through the air, knocking Jeff into the clutches of the infected. Almost immediately torn limb from limb, Vallance couldn’t believe their strength. Jeff still managed to shriek out in pain, calling for help. But they knew they couldn’t save him. They kept going.
                  The sounds of screaming and unholy, animalistic cries rang out from behind the heavy metal door as Stag slammed it shut. He pounded the door furiously and roared.
    “Retail plaza.” Byron said, distant. “Retail plaza. The next box.”
    Vallance and Stag looked to each other and Stag nodded. Onwards, into the abyss. After some painful searching of empty corridors, they found their way to the cabins. A long narrow hallway stretched before them, packed tightly with shuffling corpses. In an almost mechanical fashion the trio began unloading on the throng of zombies as they pushed forward. Bodies dropped, they were stepped over, and more bodies dropped ahead of them. Vallance felt like he was walking through an abattoir. It all felt so meaningless now. It was purely survival. For no other reason than to survive.
                  By the time they reached the plaza, Vallance and the others found their clips practically empty. A shopping area, three stories high surrounded them. Stag set his bomb down in the center of the floor. He was about to pull the pin when he noticed a zombie stepped out from behind a staircase. Grinning, he gripped his sledgehammer and walked towards it, he was more concerned with revenge than anything else now it seemed. With Stag approaching, the zombie opened its mouth causing its throat to swell and convulse, turn green and ooze pus. Noticing far too late, Stag raised his hammer just as the creature spit in his face. The bile seared his skin with a hiss and began to melt the flesh. Stag screamed in pain, dropping to the floor, clutching his disintegrating face. The acid had even eaten the gas mask. Stag crawled over to the bomb but before he could pull the pin, a pack of rippers lunged at him, one of them crashing into the bomb, which skidded across the floor to the opposite side of the plaza. Vallance took aim at one of the rippers but Byron pulled him away.
    “I’m not going to lose you all!” Byron cried as he dragged Vallance from the room. He saw Stag snap one of the ripper’s necks before another sunk its teeth into his throat. Vallance and Byron shut the door behind them and it was silent.
    They