Read Online District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse by Shawn Chesser - Free Book Online Page A

adrenaline-affected vision
began to narrow, he shifted focus from the big picture to the gnarled fingers
beginning to find purchase on the tightly braided shock of hair hanging down
the back of Taryn’s camouflage jacket.
    He cleared the trio of cement stairs in one bound and added
all hundred-and-seventy-some-odd pounds of mostly wiry muscle to the effort. But
it was too late, for the thing had quickly transitioned its grip from Taryn’s
jacket to her long ponytail and was reeling her head toward the shadowy opening
which, inexplicably, was beginning to widen instead of narrow as it should
given the added weight.
    Reacting to the sudden sight of his girl’s head snapping back,
Wilson disengaged the Beretta’s safety and, without thought of the
consequences, thrust his right arm into the narrow opening. After twisting his
wrist and bending his elbow to get the muzzle pointed to where he envisioned the
thing’s head to be behind the windowless steel-door, he squeezed off half a
dozen rounds to no good effect.
    Slumping backward, her knees beginning to buckle, Taryn
slipped her knife from its sheath and motioned with her eyes to the arm
dragging her down.
    Instantly getting her message, Wilson accepted the offered
knife with his free hand while loosing the remaining four rounds from the
Beretta at the shadowy shapes inside the darkened store.
    Seeing Wilson going for her twisted hair with the black
Tanto-style blade, Taryn drew a breath and in a choked voice blurted, “The
wrist. Cut the tendons. That’ll make it let go of me.”
    Having been in a nearly identical predicament himself,
albeit with the offending appendage sans the attached reanimated corpse, Wilson
had every reason to sympathize. So he hacked away with the razor-sharp blade,
slicing a trio of inch-deep furrows across the pallid swath of skin on the Z’s
upturned forearm.
    On the third pass of the Cold Steel blade the Z’s fingers
snapped open and a thin tendril of sticky black fluid painted a crazy pattern
on the cement all around Wilson’s boots.
    Freed from the cold hand’s grip, Taryn drew her pistol and
crabbed sideways from the door. “Let it come,” she hissed at Wilson, her eyes
never leaving the ever-widening crack between door and jamb.
    Ears still ringing from his own weapon discharging so near
to his head, Wilson relied on his minimal lip-reading skills, complying only when
he realized what Taryn had in mind.
    “Let ‘em come,” she urged, eyes dark with anger.
    Wilson eased his weight from the door and backpedaled to his
left, taking up station partway down the wheelchair ramp.
    Naturally, with the weight of the monster—or monsters—still pressing
out on it, the door flung wide open, hitting the outside wall with a bang.
    Painted by the intruding slice of white sunlight, the sneering
creature looked more ghost than living dead. Eyes panning left and right, it
remained rooted, seemingly stuck making a decision as to which morsel looked
the most appetizing. Then, as quickly as the rotten male cadaver had filled up
the door, several pale arms snaked around both sides of his body.
    The Beretta in Taryn’s small fist bucked twice. The first
9mm slug cut the air just to the right of the zombie’s left ear and hit a wire
rack containing pamphlets, sending it spinning slowly clockwise and a spritz of
shredded glossy paper airborne. The natural rise of the discharging pistol
combined with a slight flinch brought on by the first sharp report sent the
second bullet high and left of the first. Which was a welcome yet unintended
consequence that saw the speeding missile careen sidelong off the bridge of the
thing’s nose and embark on an exploratory mission of the inside of its cranium.
There was no explosion of brain, bone, and hair as Taryn had expected. Instead,
the strangely silent first turn’s head snapped back and its body instantly
followed that same trajectory to the floor.
    Already having slapped a fresh magazine into the