Life After the Undead (Completed)

PART 8: Road Trip .6

Brandon's P.O.V.

Green sparks lit up the sky.

That wasn't a good sign. Evelyn sending up a flare meant there was some sort of problem. She also could have been showing me her position, but I knew better. She knew better than to set off a flare, at dusk, with a bunch of zombies around.

It took less than a minute for the zombies to start stampeding towards Evelyn's position. I didn't feel bad for her, but bad for whatever had attacked her. They probably weren't expecting Evelyn to be so petty that it was borderline suicidal. Then again, if she had brought Steve with her as I figured she would, a stampede of zombies probably didn't worry her. But then again, if she had Steve with her, why would anything attack her?

I needed to see her, needed to figure out if she is still a safe and viable option.

I climbed up an escape ladder, firstly to get somewhere safe to avoid any other zombies, and secondly to get a better look at what was going on. I had gotten all the way to the top when I heard the screams.

Screams that I recognized.

It was Lena.

But I had left them miles away from here, there was no reason for her to be anywhere near my position. Unless Connor and Lena didn't trust me and therefore left to follow after me. I could see Connor's smug smile now, the one he would have to show that he had been the smart one, the better tracker. Well would he be smiling smugly now?

I ran along roof tops, jumped over alleyways, heading towards the screams of my wife.

I found them four blocks over. I was already scrambling to get to them. I had swung down to the escape ladder for the building and nearly slipped. I rushed down the steps till I got to the bottom ledge. There was a platform and another ladder, one that had been pulled up.

My family hadn't noticed me. Steven was wailing in Lena's arms. Lena was cowering behind Connor who was shooting at the zombies with all he had. Which was just two hand guns.

It took all my strength to push the rusted ladder down and then I half slid down it to get to them. Lena, who had heard the straining had already maneuvered her way over to it.

"Take Steven!" she had pleaded and I reached out for my wailing child.

What I hadn't notice was Connor turn. I had told him time and time again to never show your back to a zombie, that they took that for weakness and yet in this urgent time, he turned to me, probably because all he wanted to do was run.

The zombies saw him as the weakest link immediately and charge them, shoving Connor and Lena to the wall. An undead hand snatched Steven from Lena before I could grab him and then his wailing stopped in a bloody spray.

I didn't think about it, I heard Lena's howling and suddenly she was throwing herself at the throng, ignoring Connor's desperate attempts to shoot and hold her still.

She was reaching for the child that had stopped crying because it wasn't in one piece to do that. Some of the zombies could be seen fighting over the limbs that had once been my only child. I pushed the thought from my mind as I jumped from my perch. The horde was coming back for them and I knew I couldn't get them up in time. I landed, my ankle protesting, probably snapping. I came between the oncoming zombies and my family doing the last thing I could think of—my Hail Mary Pass—to save what I had left.

I pulled them up in my arms and pressed them against the wall so that I was the first the zombies hand's reached. They tugged and pulled, chucks of my hair went flying, they scratched at my exposed skin but I refused to move. I waited for the trigger, I felt the bites go through the jacket, some tearing at the fabric ripping it and parts of my skin away from my arms. I held back my screams of agony as the same happened around my legs.

I counted at least six bites before the jacket was triggered. I didn't wonder why it took so long, I knew, Evelyn and Cooper had been working on the jacket. It hadn't been perfected yet, and if it had Evelyn hadn't had the chance to send me one.

I had a prototype, and it obviously had a delayed reaction time.

The explosion that should have been contained seared my skin off my back. The blast had knocked the oncoming zombies off, many lost limbs and would no doubt be unable to move anymore. But it also let loose a stink so bad the zombies that weren't affected by the blast were scattering and with all my energy spent I collapsed into a world of dark knowing that at least—for the moment—the smell alone would keep the zombies away. For the moment, my last moments, my family was safe and that was all that mattered.