Rotting to the Core (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 2) by S.P. Durnin Page A

released
her hold. “What's the plan?”
    Picking up an empty Jack Daniels bottle that
lay beside their dumpster, Jake nodded toward the far side of the
Dairy Freeze. “See that Dodge Charger over there?”
    Kat took a look across the lot. “You mean the
red one? With the racing stripes?”
    “That's the one.” Jake nodded and waggled the
bottle. “I hit it with this. It'd a safe bet whoever used to own
that midlife crisis-mobile set the alarm when they got out, so
it'll start squawking. Now, even if the battery's dead, the sound
of this breaking should focus the creatures away from us, and
they'll probably move in that direction. Then we leapfrog behind
the cars on this side till we get to the street, cut left
into the nearest house, and go through the backyards to the next
block.”
    Cho considered that idea for a moment. “I
like it. It's all sneaky-sneaky. I'm good with sneaky.”
    Jake shoved his crowbar into its holder on
his back as Kat quietly sheathed her sword and pulled one of her
knives. Since he wasn't good with a blade, the writer opted for
trusting her to take out the odd stray ghoul if they encountered
any. While Jake still had his bulky Hammer pistol, firing it would
announce their presence to every zombie for blocks and that would
put them up Shit Creek.
    Kat nodded that she was ready and Jake
counted down from three on his fingers. Keeping low, he
guesstimated the distance to the Charger, wound up, and hurled his
bottle over the dumpster blind in a long arc hoping for the
best.
    He needn’t have worried. Jake's throw sent
his bottle smashing into the Dodge's windshield and, right on cue,
its obnoxious alarm began blaring immediately. Three dozen heads
turned to face the noise. Three dozen mouths dropped open, allowing
thick black fluids to begin rolling over three dozen gray jaws, and
three dozen dead sets of necrotic vocal chords vibrated with rancid
air pushed through three dozen decomposing throats. The impromptu
zombie choir began stumping raggedly towards the source of the
noise and, even after all they'd been through, the awful song of
the dead chilled O'Connor and Cho to the marrow of their bones.
    When the first creatures reached the Charger,
they began beating on the hood and front quarter panels, leaving
shallow dents smeared with blood from smashed knuckles and
shattered fingers. Vile brown fluids splattered across red paint,
creating the visual equivalent of the devil's own rancid candy
apple, and the frenzied dead clustered about the squawking vehicle.
Some began clawing and beating on its windows, spider-webbing the
safety glass in dozens of places before shoving ruined arms inside
to clutch at the seats. As Jake and Kat watched, one particularly
enthusiastic zombie pressed itself face-first through the remnants
of the broken driver's window. The creature ignored the sharp edges
that shredded its flesh, shearing much of its face away down to the
naked skull, in its maddened attempt to find the nonexistent human
inside the car causing all the commotion. Moments later more of the
windows shattered inward and the interior of Charger was swarmed by
the zombie crowd.
    Cho nudged O'Connor with one elbow and
crouched low; the pair bolted from their dumpster to take shelter
behind the first vehicle at the opposite end of the parking lot. It
was an old 1970's circa Bronco still possessing the original paint
job, a color which could only be termed “Doo-doo Brown”. From there
the two humans began scurrying across gaps between the cars,
skirting months-old refuse, discarded personal items, and the
occasional splintered human bone. Jake kept one eye on the crowd
still battering the poor Dodge, which now looked decidedly worse
for wear with all the zombies scrambling to get inside. Much like a
clown car in a circus, now that he thought about it. The ones maybe
as big as a Mini Cooper that fifteen or twenty white-faced, clowns,
all sporting ridiculously loud costumes and walrus flipper-sized
shoes