Read White Ash on Bone: A Zombie Novel for Free Online Page A

trying to run. 
    Sulla charged down the hill with the riot shotgun.  The others were not prepared for the charge and were slow to follow.  Sulla could tell he was not going to reach Wilson in time.  The four people fell on the old trooper, but it was too late. Wilson was already dead.
    Their attack only lasted a few seconds, until even in their diminished capacity, they could see Wilson was no longer of value.
    "Back," Sulla ordered them.  They moved to embrace Sulla.  He fired the shotgun at the nearest zombie.  The blast knocked it over, and it rolled for a good fifteen feet down the hill. 
    "What in hell were you thinking Su-" one of the vets yelled, but stopped when he saw the zombie getting back up.
    Oh my god, Sulla thought, and he pumped a round into the next zombie.  The blast caught it dead center and blew a huge hole in its abdomen.  It fell over, but kept clawing forward leaving its lower half behind it.
    He aimed higher on the next attacker and pulled the trigger.  The man's head blew apart in two different directions.   He didn’t get back up.
    Sulla's volunteers took up a line on either side of him and opened fire on the remaining ghouls.  The barrage turned the zombies into chunks of flesh.
    "Cease fire," Sulla ordered.  One of the creature's head lay intact, decapitated from the body.  Sulla watched its eyes track him as he moved closer to it.
    "Do you guys see this shit?" Sulla asked the group standing around him.
    "I’m seeing it," one of the dealership salesmen said. “This is fucked up."
    The head of the ghoul tried to bite at Sulla as he drew near.  Sulla looked at the other body parts to see them unmoving.  "It's just like it's out of a mother fucking horror movie," Sulla said.  "New rule, head shots only." He looked down at the moving head, "Someone bag this freak show.  I imagine someone is going to win a Nobel Prize for studying this thing."
    "What about officer Wilson, do you think he is going to turn into one of them?" one of the men asked.
    Sulla looked at all the bodies.  "All these things came up the hill injured and mauled. Wilson died just before they got him from what I saw.  We won’t know for sure unless Wilson gets back up.  Let’s get back to the trucks and call this into the EOC.  They’re going to need to know about the head shots."  He looked down the hill, half a mile away, and he saw movement on the road.  Hundreds of shapes were at the bottom of the hill moving south in his direction.
    "That’s a whole mess of trouble coming this way boss," one of the men said.
    Sulla noticed a few of his guys were carrying rifles with mounted scopes. 
    Bob Owen could see Sulla regarding him, and he nodded in understanding.  Even as a child Bob had been good with rifles.  When his number came up in the draft, the U.S. Army also learned of Bob's exceptional skills with a rifle.  Bob didn’t enjoy the killing, but he knew it helped protect the men he served with in Vietnam.  Bob let his thumb caress the stock on his .308 and introduced himself to Sulla.
    Sulla's plan involved fighting a delaying action in stages.  Bob and a couple other guys, who were decent shots, would set up in the back of pickup trucks.  The trucks would drive down the road to decrease the distance to the hoard.  They would start to thin the undead on the road from the back of the trucks.  Every time the dead would get close enough, they would just drive the trucks back to a safe distance.
    While this was occurring, the Road Department would be setting up the biggest roadblock they could manage.  A mile south of their location, Route 8 enters a big dip, where it goes over a creek.  The bridge could be barricaded with the Jersey Barriers.   The bridge marked the only place where the zombies heading south could be funneled and stopped. 
    At that point Sulla would commit every gun he could round up to hold the zombies at the bridge.  If he couldn't hold, Sulla would continue to pull back