Cities of the Dead: Stories From The Zombie Apocalypse Read Online Free

he and Don Fox took their rifles and headed toward the school on the other side of the park. Haven’t seen Old Man Morris since, but Don Fox is a zombie that mostly hangs out around the Rib House, only he’s missing both arms and looks like someone set his head on fire.
    I didn’t make it home. Of course, I wasn’t supposed to be outside of home, either. Dad took Mom, Kelly, Molly and Craig up to Pop Pop’s house out in the country with our dog, Rocket, thinking maybe it’d be safer up there away from so many people, since zombies seem to be drawn to people. I was supposed to stay and guard the house, only Dad took the .45 and the shotgun and left me with Mom’s little five-shot .380, which is good for shooting muggers and carjackers, but not so much for zombies. Not that it matters, since I forgot it on coffee table in the living room right next to the keys to the house.
    All because of Kyle, of course, who came by that afternoon to tell me he heard Old Man Morris and Don Fox were going to snipe zombies from the top of the hill and did I want to come watch? He had two pairs of binoculars, so I said sure, and then – you guessed it – click!, the front door locked behind me. And since the windows on the first floor were all boarded up inside and out, well, there was no way back in if you weren’t Spider-Man.
    I’m not Spider-Man, I’m Ralph McGuire.
    So, I ended up in The Point. Just barely. Like I said, some zombies are fast, and there were some fast little illegal Mexican zombies that came across us as we were walking down Grove Street talking about how bad my Dad would kill me if I had to pry off some plywood from a window, break the glass, and kick my way into the house. I knew there was canned food, water, and all my clothes in there. Plus, that’s where my Dad was coming back to after he dropped off my Mom and sisters and brother.
    And then the zombies were just there, kinda running up the alley at us in some sort of stutter-step half-skip run, if you can imagine that. I think they must have played a lot of soccer when they were alive to have been able to run like that.
    So, Kyle and I had to start running down the street looking for someplace to hide, and – of course – every house in town is locked and most of them are boarded up, more or less. So we ran a couple of blocks with those zombie Mexicans on our tails and Kyle sees a bunch of people prying open the door to the pub while a lady with a shotgun is blowing holes in a handful of zombies – the normal American kind – and we ran over to them. Almost got shot, too, but at the last second the lady – Valerie – realized we weren’t fast zombies and didn’t shoot us.
    Plunked a couple of the Mexican zombies, though.
    After we got inside, everyone started pushing things against the door. The first floor windows already had some metal screens on the outside, although most of them were high enough on the walls that nobody – well, no zombie, anyway – would be able to climb up and in through them. After that, nobody really knew what to do, and all the adults started kind of arguing about who should be in charge, almost like we were on that television show Survivor.
    I guess maybe we kind of actually were. Only nobody gets voted off, they get eaten off.
    Valerie was the only one with a gun, and even though she only had seven shells left everyone sort of let her be in charge. I mean sort of in charge, because Steve “I’m a trial attorney” Douchenozzle was always horning in with his opinion on what should be done and how. Not that there was really anything to be in charge of: there were just eleven of us in a bar, it’s not like we needed to write a Constitution or something.
    That first night was the only real excitement. About an hour after sunset, there was a huge commotion a couple of blocks over toward Swedesburg. A lot of gunfire and shouting moving down Prospect Street. A couple of us managed to get up on the roof, but you really