The ZWD Trilogy (Book 1): Zombie World Dominance [The Destruction Begins] by L.D. King Page B

around for the creatures that had
killed their friends. He looked up the stairs to see if it was clear that way
as well. He said to Jerry, “I’m good, and Jen’s ready to go. Come on, let’s get
out of this hellhole.”
    Like
Mike, Jerry was looking around, checking the tunnel in both directions. He knew
that the creatures must be close behind them. Neither of the boys knew if there
were other creatures down here with them, elsewhere in the tunnel. They looked
like their heads were on swivels, their eyes looking for danger everywhere; the
stairs up to the street, however, looked safe, as far as they could see.
    “Okay,
I know this is probably not the best time to bring this up,” Mike said, “but we
have to talk about this sometime, and now is as good as ever. We just watched two
of our friends brutally slaughtered back there. There’s no guarantee that this
is a one-time event, or even that it was a random act of violence. We found the
creatures down here, or better put, they found us. The chance
that there are more of them is very good. I hope I’m wrong, but right now we
can’t take a chance that there aren’t more of those things around. We’ve already
seen three or four. There might be a whole swarm of them down here with us. We
all need to keep in mind that there might be many, many more.”
    “I’m
scared!” said Jennifer.
    “Come
on,” Mike continued. “Let’s get out of this place. We need to be up on the
street, where it should be safer. It’s more likely we could find help up there.”
    Jerry
and Mary, walking hand in hand, started up the last set of stairs to the
street. Jennifer followed, with Mike bringing up the rear.
    They
talked as they were climbing the last set of stairs. Mike asked, “Does anyone
have any idea what the hell those things were?”
    “I’ve
never seen anything like them before,” said Jerry. “In all of my ROTC training,
I was never told about anything like them, ever. In all the books that I have
read or TV shows I’ve watched, there’s never been anything like what we just
saw. They stand upright like a human, but humans don’t have claws for fingers
or fangs for teeth. Your guess is as good as mine right now. All I know for
sure is they are vicious and very effective killers, but they don’t move as
fast as a human does. Rather than walk, they shuffle or lurch as they move.
They seem to have some kind of spasms running through their bodies.”
    “Did
you see how fast they killed Stan and Rosie?” asked Mike. I don’t ever want to run
into those things again.”
    “I know,”
said Jerry.
    Mary said,
“Did you notice they had tattered clothes on? All torn up, and just hanging on
them. Animals don’t wear clothes. What the hell are they?”
    “I know,”
said Jerry, “But their clothes were torn to hell. But yeah, they had clothes
on.”
    “Jerry,
what’s going on?” said Jennifer. “This can’t be real, can it?”
    “Jen,
I can’t tell you what they are or where they came from, or if there are any
more of them. Right now all I want to do is get back to our room where we can
rest. From there we can figure out what we should do. All I know right now is I
want to get out of this city.”
    They were
just two or three steps from street level; nearly there. They felt like they
would be safe soon, and this whole ordeal would be over. From the street, they
would go to their rooms, get their bags and go home. Everything would be better
once they got home. They knew it would.
    Little
did they know was that the street was not going to be safe for them. They would
not be able to get home. Not now. Maybe not ever. Their nightmare had just
begun. The deaths of their friends marked the start of their troubles. Before
this would be over, they would see many more people die. It could be months, if
not years, perhaps even decades before this would end — if it would end at all.
    Tomorrow
they would start back home.
    Tomorrow
they would be running.
    Every
tomorrow