Read Ravage: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel for Free Online Page A

understand?  They’re goddamn zomb-”
    The elderly man lurched forward, the golf club falling from
his hands and clattering on the tarmac.  Nick hopped out of the way just
in time to see that two more of his neighbours had appeared out of the dawn
shadows.  The two of them were snarling and spitting like a pair of wolves
and they took the old man down like a winded fox. 
    Nick stepped back, unable to take his eyes off what was
happening.  How is this possible?  How has everybody gone
insane? 
    He looked down at his elderly neighbour and saw that it was
already too late to help him.  The old man’s throat had been torn free of
his neck and the tubular mass of his windpipe was hanging to one side like a
loose tie.  The two neighbours that had attacked him were now crouched
over the body and doing the unthinkable.
    Christ, they’re eating him. 
    Nick fought to keep his stomach under control.  His
mind turned to action.  He grabbed the driver’s side door of his car and
swung it open as hard as he could.  It caught the nearest neighbour square
in their face and sent him reeling backwards. 
    Nick wasted no time and leapt in behind the steering wheel,
slammed shut the door, and engaged the central locking.
    Click!  It was the sound of safety.
    His neighbours rose to their feet, discarding the remains of
the old man and beating their bloody fists against the car’s windows.  The
vehicle rocked back and forth.  Nick keyed the ignition and put the engine
in gear.  The automatic headlights flicked on and bathed the road in their
harsh glare.  It was then that he saw the full scale of horror taking hold
of his neighbourhood.
    This can’t be real.  I’m in a twisted nightmare and
any second Deana is going to wake me up with a nice cup of tea and let me know
that it’s time for work.  This has to be a dream.  It has to be…
    Ten feet ahead, a woman lay dead and mangled in the centre
of the road while, several feet beyond her, was a desperate man battling with a
group of attackers.  They seemed to be eating him alive, tearing chunks of
flesh from his flailing arms and wrists as he wearily fought them off.
    The whole neighbourhood is under attack.  It’s like
bloody Sarajevo.  
    One of the houses on Nick’s right was billowing thick black
smoke from some unseen fire taking hold.  Muffled screams came from inside
and joined the ones that were already filling the air with their collective
buzz.
    People were fighting and dying all around him. 
    Nick sat in his car, staring through the windscreen, frozen
by what he was witnessing.  There was just too much to take in.  So
much horror.  It filled his eyes and ears. 
    Stumbling down the road towards him was a young boy, not
much older than James.  He wasn’t quite like the other sick people,
though; he was slower and clumsier then they were, almost like he was
drunk.  When the boy stepped into the cone of the car’s headlights, Nick
saw that his intestines were hanging out and dragging on the ground behind
him.  Every couple of steps the boy would tread on them and stumble.
    How is that kid still walking?  His guts are on the
floor, hanging out like kebab meat .
    Nick couldn’t take any more.  He gear-changed into reverse
and shot the car backwards.  He kept going, until the shadows reclaimed
the nightmarish child and the chaos of his street.  Once there was nothing
left to see, he stamped on the brake and stopped the car.
    He sat there for a few seconds, hyperventilating.  For
a brief moment he almost convinced himself that it was all over and that he was
the one who had been sick all along, hallucinating with fever.
    There’s nothing happening here.  When I head back to
the front of my house I’ll see that I was just imagining it all.  Maybe
I’m the one with fever.
    But he knew that wasn’t true.  People were dying and he
needed to get help.  Help for Deana.
    Nick shifted back into first gear and rolled the car
forwards, picking up