Forget The Zombies (Book 3): Forget America by R.J. Spears Page A

one of Jeb’s goon, while not paying attention, slammed into my back. I was jostled forward, but then held my ground, pushing back on him.
    “Keep moving,” a gruff voice sounded behind me, but I ignored it.
    Instead, I focused my eyes on the inky blackness ahead of me. The mist had thickened somewhat, causing it to be even more challenging to discern what was ahead of us, but whatever it was, it wasn’t a good thing. Something in my gut told me that.
    “Don’t force me to carry you,” Clint said coming up beside the other goon.
    I put up my handcuffed hands in a gesture of ‘wait a minute’ and asked, “Do you hear that?”
    “Quit stalling or else you’ll get the butt of my rifle upside your head,” Clint growled.
    “I think we need to go back to compound,” I said, my throat drying up.
    “This is your last warning,” Clint said leveling his rifle at me.
    I said, “Just shut up and list---,” but I cut myself off.
    Forms came out of the darkness. Shambling and shuffling human forms. I had seen these forms before. They were unmistakable and were never good news.
    “What is the hold up?” Jeb asked from behind me.
    “It’s time to get the hell out of here,” I said.
    “What in the name of…” Jeb said, but his words got caught in his throat.
    They came out of the mist like wraiths. Zombies, lots of zombies, shuffling their way across the field at us. I didn’t stop to count them, but it was a small horde, at least. To make it worse, I was unarmed and handcuffed. I didn’t like this.
    “What the--,” Clint said.
    “Oh my God,” another voice said.
    “What do we do?” Another voice asked.
    What we should be doing and what we did were two different things. We should have been doing was an immediate about face and then hauling ass back to the compound. What we did instead was freeze in place, unable to move from the fear now gripping our not very merry little band.
    A woman cried out, a shrill piercing scream full of fear, warbling up and down like bird. A man shouted something I didn’t make out, but I could hear the terror in his voice. I started backing up, but was stopped by two forms behind me.
    The horde gathered speed and I could see the rows of the undead streaming towards us. The barrel of a rifle appeared beside my head and a second later whoever was holding the rifle pulled the trigger. A nuclear blast went off just beside my ear and was followed by the ringing of a thousand church bells as I bought my hand to cover my ears. I was a dollar short and a day late.
    Somehow, I followed the trajectory of the shot and saw a zombie spin sideways, a small plume of blood erupting from its shoulder as it stumbled a few feet, but then righted itself and continued on towards us as did the rest of the horde. Another shot was fired, but this one was a few feet away and didn’t rupture my eardrum like the last one. A zombie stumbled from the impact of the bullet to its chest, but kept coming.
    More of Jeb’s men moved up to fire on the zombies. I used the distraction to back pedal out of the line of fire. The men started firing in earnest at the oncoming undead, but very few of the zombies fell. Jeb’s men apparently weren’t well trained on going for the headshot. A few of the men were clearly petrified in fear, their shots going wild into the dark or just kicking up dirt in front of the zombies.
    To say those moments were chaos would have been an understatement. It was chaos inside pandemonium wrapped in bedlam. Some people broke and ran while others stood doing nothing. I scanned the crowd, trying to catch the attention of my people and when I did, I jerked my head back toward the compound. I caught Joni’s attention and she got Dave and the kids moving backwards. Jay and Jane didn’t need any coaxing and were already stepping backwards through the crowd of Jeb’s people.
    I was nearly through the biggest pack of Jeb’s men when I ran into something solid. A vice-like grip fell on my