Read ZOMBIES: "Chronicles of the Dead": A Zombie Novel for Free Online

much longer."
    I motioned for her and Jacob to come back into the house.
    "Come back in here, the smell isn't as bad now, smells more like bug spray," I said, hoping they wouldn’t get sick again.
    "Let's grab a few things, and then we've got to go!"
    "Hey, everybody, come in here, there's a disease update on the television," Billy yelled from the living room.
    While we entered the living room and converged on the television, we all hoped the new information that Billy had summoned us to hear was good news, but it wasn't.
    "They say that the diseased people are dead!"
    Grabbing the remote from the coffee table, I pointed it toward the television, and pressing the plus on the volume button I shouted.
    "Quiet, I can't hear what they're saying."
    The faceless voice behind the emergency warning screen, repeated the announcement over and over, as we stood there dazed, listening in disbelief.
    We now learned that the disease first kills you, and within seconds, you reanimate with an insatiable appetite for human flesh. If you die first, say you're hit by a car and killed, then the disease takes you over immediately and you get up and attack the first person that you see.
    It was clear now why Jon and Julie didn't die immediately after their horrendous mutilating fates, they were already dead.
    Now the broadcasts were no longer focusing on how to save the living, they seemed more intent on spreading information on how to kill the living dead. Five or six minutes passed while we stood in front of the television, all of us in an almost trance like state. Then without warning, the television went dark, snapping us back to the cruel reality that confronted us.
    "Great, now the electricity is out," Gin said angrily.
    Then trying to comfort herself, by convincing herself that everything would be all right, she mumbled. "Maybe it's a rolling blackout, and it'll come back on in awhile."
    "I hope you're right," I said, also trying to comfort her. "But we can't wait here to find out. If we're still here when it gets dark, and the lights are still off, it could get really ugly.”
    “Uglier than what happened in the kitchen?” Jacob asked sarcastically.
    Smiling sarcastically back at him, I replied. “Well I for one don't want to go to sleep with this lingering smell in the house, and dead stark raving flesh eating homicidal maniacs walking around outside the house with only a canvas tarp and duct tape between us. So like I said before, let's grab a few things and get the hell out of here."
    A sheepish grin creped over Jacob's face and he replied.
    "Indeed!"
    It wasn’t long before the electricity in our house did come back on. In the beginning, there were rolling blackouts, but each time the electric went off, it stayed off longer and more areas were affected, until ultimately total blackouts came, and the power grid never did come back up. Ever again!
     

     
    Back to Contents
     
     
    GET THE HELL OUT OF DODGE
     
    We walked back to the garage carrying a few meager items we had collected in the house, mostly food some water and heavier clothing we might need later.
    Fortunately, I had made some preparations in case of a regular emergency, if there is any such thing, by collecting a hodgepodge of equipment. To which I now added to the list, guns, ammunition, and some camouflage army surplus clothing I had acquired along the way. But I was not prepared for anything like this cataclysm.
    My home was in a subdivision and it had too many windows and too many doors, I didn't have a fireplace for heat, a generator for power, or a well for water. It wasn't a place I felt we could hold out for long, from the living or from the living-dead. That belief was confirmed by how easily Jon and Julie had entered the house. I knew I had to find someplace, someplace safe, someplace my family and I could survive this horrific new world that we had been thrust into, but where.
    Then, on the short walk to our garage to survey my inadequate pile of emergency