Books of the Dead (Book 1): Sanctuary From The Dead by R.J. Spears

they tried to eat us.  Most of the houses showed signs of neglect and abandonment with broken windows and doors hanging off their hinges.  The worst were painted with streaks of blood and red hand prints, ugly reminders of the worst days. 
    Every yard was overgrown as grass ran wild when the assault of the lawn mowers ended with the Outbreak.  Weeds and vines had their way with the sides of houses with no one to take them out with weed whackers and pruners.
    “Something just moved down the alley,” I said directing everyone’s attention to the alley between 5th and 6th Streets. 
    “Was it a Z?”  Brandon asked using the jargon for zombies that some of the younger people had adopted.
    “Something moved, but I only caught the briefest of movement,” I said.
    “The briefest of movement...what are you -- some kind of English professor?” Brandon asked. 
    “Why can’t you just say you saw something?”  Aaron snickered.
    Mike held up a hand for silence as he pulled to the curb and picked up the walk ie-talkie, “Greg, we saw something in the alley between 5th and 6th.  You see anything?”
    “No.  There are at least four of them, maybe more, in the street milling about on 6th,” Greg reported.  “I’d say stay where you are and move towards them on foot.”
    “That’s what I was thinking,” Mike said putting down the walkie-talkie.  “Okay fellas, it looks like we’re walking from here.”  We disembarked quietly and efficiently in the way that the warriors had drilled into us.
    “Leave the doors unlocked,” he said.  “The keys are in the ignition if anything happens to me.”
    He took point, hugging the side of a house, edging toward the front to get a better view down 6th.  Brandon was second, Aaron third, and I took up the rear.  We stacked up at the corner of the house’s front porch.  Mike craned his neck forward for about ten seconds and then turned back to us.
    In a low voice he said, “There’s four in the street, but it looks like there are some in a house about halfway down the block.  For now, since we don’t know how many are in the house, we go in quiet, but have your side arms ready.  If things get tight, go foursquare quiet.  If things get real tight, then shoot your way out.  Whoever gets to the driver’s seat waits five minutes and no longer.”
    Foursquare quiet was a drill that the warriors had worked up in which a clearing or foraging team backed-up to each other in a tight square, back-to-back, then stepped off two paces to take on any undead with our slicing or bludgeoning weapons.  We drilled hour-after-hour on this to make sure each person knew what to do.  One wrong step and someone could get a bat or sword upside their head.  No one wanted that.
    Each of us pulled out their weapon of choice.  The familiarity of my bat in my hands calmed me some.  I still found Brandon ridiculous with his broadsword, and because Aaron worshipped Brandon, he had a sword too, only smaller.  Mike must have liked my method because he had a baseball bat, too.
    Mike led us toward the street in a running crouch until he got to the back of a beat up Ford pickup.  Through the truck’s windows I could see the zombies shuffling aimlessly in the street as if waiting on someone to pick them up for dinner and movie.  One was an elderly woman in a badly soiled housecoat and pajamas.  There was a tall guy in a tattered suit and a teen aged girl in jeans and a sweatshirt.  The girl looked like she had been mauled by a wood chipper, ribbons of flesh hanging off her head and shoulders.  The man in the suit moved in a herky-jerky motion with one of his legs missing a large hunk of muscle.  The last one looked like he had been a biker and was wearing leather from head to foot.  His distinguishing feature was a waist length beard complete with snarled knots of dried blood and gore.
    “Let’s draw them down to us,” Mike said in a whisper.  “Then we’ll take them out.”  He