Zombies Ever After: Sirens of the Zombie Apocalypse, Book 6 Read Online Free Page B

did.
    The door was unlocked, so he pushed through and stepped into a
narrow hallway. Steps leading up to another level were about ten feet
beyond the entrance. Once the door was closed, he held it—and
his breath—to see if the zombies would follow and bang on the
door. He was sure they would...but a minute went by, and nothing
happened.
    “That's odd,” he whispered.
    He stood up straight and collected his wits. A small window above
the door allowed a little light into the chamber, but it remained
dark and stuffy. Safety meant many things these days, and having a
door between him and the zombies was close enough to it.
    “Let's see what's upstairs,” he murmured to himself.
    He took two steps and then felt the sensation of free fall. The
wooden floor had given way, and he dropped almost straight down. His
reflexes kicked in, and he managed to cushion his fall on the hard
floor and roll himself forward to further save himself.
    On all fours, he caught his breath from the fall and the fright of
it. He'd been totally off guard.
    Are things falling apart this quickly?
    There would be no more maintenance of infrastructure…
    His thoughts were squelched by the moans of zombies.
    The hole he'd fallen through had covered itself back up. He
couldn't see the light from above. There was no light at all, now.
    A quiet realization fell upon him, and he was silent while he
tried to solve the puzzle.
    He'd spent enough time at night with zombies around to know their
sound, and he had some experience judging distance in the dark. Some
of the more distant zombies were calling out from a long way away.
Others were very close. He was in a large chamber.
    He pulled off his backpack and his rifle. An overpowering urge
toward silence compelled him to move with painfully slow motions. As
if disturbing the air was all it would take to bring the zombies to
him. For all he knew, there was a type of zombie that could hone in
on air movements. He froze for a long time…
    The zipper on the pack echoed off the far wall; he was sure of
that. The friction between his hand and the canvas bag had all the
subtlety of an explosive new movie. Removing the flashlight from his
other gear was the final insult that would get him killed. Each
second he was sure he'd feel the touch.
    But it didn't come.
    An eternity later he had the flashlight in his hand, but he was as
afraid of turning it on as he was of sitting there in the dark. The
cacophony of sound had grown louder as if they all fed off each
other. He was convinced there were hundreds of zombies in the room
with him…
    This is why I need Victoria with me.
    Despite everything, thinking about her put a tiny smile on his
face. He imagined how mad she'd be if she knew he wished she was
there, in the dark, with zombies screaming for her blood, just so he
would have the courage to turn on a flashlight.
    Still, it sat unlit in his hand.
    He hoped his eyes would adjust to the darkness. He sought any
illumination to try to get a sense of things. Even in the pit mine,
there were dim lights enough he could see.
    He tried the trapdoor again, but his hands couldn't touch anything
up there. He couldn't crawl blindly through a room full of zombies.
And he wasn't ready to die in place.
    Just pretend Victoria is here.
    “You ready for this, girlfriend?”
    “Let's do this, boyfriend.”
    The flashlight switched on with a loud click.
    Even with the diffuse beam of the flashlight, he was glad Victoria
wasn't there to see it.
    6
    He was in a long hallway. On the right side, a concrete wall. On
the other...
    He swept the light to his left. It was a metal cage. Several
zombies had their arms through the metal links. Reaching for him. He
was nauseated to see the arms had been stripped of skin, as if they'd
been pushed and pulled through the rough metal cage—it was a
type of chain link enclosure—for a very long time.
    The nature of the trap was revealed. Before the plague, it had
been a kennel for dogs. A long line of