Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse (Book 9): Frayed Read Online Free

vanishing again into the clouds.
    Leaving the quarry road behind, Cade hit the straightaway
bordering the Ogden River and upped the speed. Moving at a forty-mile-per-hour
clip, in under ten minutes the Ford ate up the distance from the quarry road to
the juncture where State Route 39 bisected State Route 16.
    He tapped the brakes well before the crossing and then a
football field’s length short of the junction brought the Ford to a complete
stop with the engine idling and heated air hissing through the vents. He
trained the Steiner binoculars at the convergence of State Routes and glassed
the area from right-to-left. He saw the jog in 16 where it went from a
north/south run, took a right angle turn west and ran straight for a short
distance before swinging back northbound again. A stone’s throw north of the
jog in driving terms was the intersection and the wrecked yellow school bus
where a Z had literally gotten the drop on Brook and rent a baseball-sized bite
of flesh from her back. The rear end of the bus was facing him and the wheels
jutted out horizontally to the left, leaving a scant few yards of road on which
to squeeze by.
    Both Chief Jenkins’ patrol Tahoe and a second vehicle that
Cade expected to see here were gone. Instantly a tingle shot up his spine. He
felt the combat juices begin to flow, sharpening his focus and slowing his
heart rate.
    Momentarily finding himself caught in a break between the
slow-moving clouds, Cade lowered the field glasses and decided, despite this
new development, to continue on into Woodruff and get this shopping spree over with.

Chapter 2
     
     
    Cutting the air behind a big overhand swing, the razor-sharp
blade created a faint whistle before embedding in the putrefying creature’s
skull. The honed steel, pre-treated with a liberal amount of gun oil and now
slickened by a viscous mixture of congealed blood and lumpy gray matter,
retreated easily from the six-inch chasm and in the next beat was tracking on a
horizontal plane, backhand, towards the monsters vectoring in from the man’s
right. A deft back step and guttural grunt later, the former humans crumpled to
the gore-slickened roadway like a couple of stunned boxers, their heads
bouncing and spinning away, jaundiced eyes in the sockets still scanning the
surroundings for fresh meat.
    Overhead, a murder of crows, having been disturbed from
their early morning feast, cussed and muttered, their shrill caws echoing off
the cold metal skin of a nearby cluster of inert vehicles.
    Hearing a dry rasp at his back, the man tore his eyes from
the swirling black mass overhead and leveled his gaze at the sword clutched
firmly in his two-handed grip. Reflected in the blade’s polished surface, he
watched a half-dozen biters round the SUV he’d left parked near the shoulder
several yards north of him. He stood stock-still and waited for the dead to
come to him. Energy was his friend. Especially with the temperature sitting
somewhere in the low thirties and food high in calories and protein a dwindling
commodity. Wait, watch, and at the last second uncoil like a bear trap was an
energy saving technique he’d adopted early on.
    The zombies doddered across the recently crushed mess of
rotting flesh and bone. Protruding from the putrid morass, wisps of hair still
attached to half-moons of crushed and shattered skull waved in a wind gust
stout enough to cut through his oiled leather duster. Still he didn’t move.
With nothing to his fore, he watched them shamble closer, their stunted clumsy
steps accentuated and clownlike as reflected back to him in the black blood
dripping down the unwavering blade.
    Once free from the obstacle course of human detritus, they
picked up speed, moving in an almost lock-step fashion.
    He remained still as their spindly arms elevated, straining
for him.
    Getting closer. Ten feet, he guessed, judging by the
growing size of the leering faces mirrored back at him.
    The raspy hisses rose over the wind and then