Click here for Part 4.
Click here for Part 3.
Click here for Part 2.
Click here for Part 1.
All right, zombie fans, let’s tuck into another series of excerpts, this time from GRACE AMONG THE DEAD. This first chapter, “Drugstore Cowpunching,” opens with straight-up zombie-fighting action and carries on straight into the next complication.
As Frank Zappa said in Joe’s Garage, “You’ll love it. It’s a way of life.”
I could rack the slide for effect like they used to do in the movies and I’m sure it would be the only thing she’d hear, too, despite all the slapping and thumping about the truck. All she needs to hear, though, is this:
“You do not climb into my truck unasked and tell me what to do.”
“I—”
“Shut up. I’ll be fighting for my life against mobs of walkers you’ll bring straight to us because you can’t stay quiet and you can’t stay still.”
“I…I’ll be good,” she says.
“To apologize is to lay the foundation for a future offense,” I say, quoting Ambrose Bierce. “I’ll make a deal with you. Don’t ask questions. Don’t talk. I’ll take you to where I’m staying and we’ll get you something to eat. After that, we’ll decide on where you go.”
She sinks back into her seat as I holster my Glock. I make my turn back towards Colorado Springs, but once it’s clear I’m going the same way I did with the last bunch, a low, angry, growling rises from all around the truck.
Pretty Holly Half-a-Face drops off halfway through the turn. I feel a lightening of the frame. In the mirrors, I see two more letting go, trying to land as gingerly as their reanimated reflexes will allow.
I drive faster down the three-lane westbound before I hit the brakes. The swerve goes harder than I like, and for a gut-freezing moment I fear the truck will go over on its side, if not flip outright. The stinky once-people are thrown clear, though. Every last one, and we’re still on four wheels. Life is good.
Through a blue curtain of smoking rubber, I steer us back into the eastbound lanes, among a crowd of death-shriveled faces and dry, blank eyes white with dust. The former citizens of Falcon, Colorado, stand frozen in their tracks, like some strange and ugly municipal art project. Only their heads move as their undead senses follow our progress. I spare a glance towards my stowaway as I turn left down US 24. “Thirteen the first trip,” she says quietly.
“Did you have your eyes squeezed shut for the second trip?” I say as we speed away from Falcon. “Or were you mad at me because I had to point a gun at you?”
“You got an even 20, including the one running alongside the truck, and the two before you made your turn.”
“Great.” I wasn’t planning on ganking so many ghouls today. I just wanted a few things from town.
A stray survivor wasn’t on my shopping list, though. For right now, let’s get the hell out of here so I can figure this out.
THE END for now, but there's more where this came from in either one of my two novels in THE SAGA OF THE DEAD SILENCER series.
Grace Among the Dead Copyright © 2014, 2017 by Lawrence Roy Aiken.
All rights reserved.
All rights reserved.
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