Toward the Brink (Book 3) by Craig A. McDonough Page A

staple gun, a roll of wire, a tool kit, pain killers, bars of soap, and personal hygiene items. The more obvious items such as water purification tablets, can openers, freeze dried vegetables and fruits, plus a few boxes of canned foods were already stored on board the vehicles. They had more of the dried vegetables than the canned goods; with so many now in the group, the Tall Man was concerned about weight.
    Kath had planned well ahead for her survival. She had always believed the threat would come in the form of nuclear fallout after a missile exchange between the United States and Russia, or perhaps China. Like most, she hadn’t thought the Armageddon she prepared for would be an infestation of undead zombies created by greedy individuals who didn’t know what the word enough meant.
    Kath had an assortment of hand tools that would be useful. If they could just hold out through the long winter on Graham Island, they could send teams back to the mainland to forage for supplies. By that time, there shouldn’t be anyone around—alive or undead—to bother them. Shouldn’t was the key word.

7
    J ust before the darkness engulfed Prince George and as Elliot and Cindy prepared to spend some time together, a lone figure staggered down Austin Road West, two miles north of the center of Prince George. Richard Holmes was tired, cold, and hungry, but his main concern was to find shelter before night enveloped the streets and the foamers left their daytime refuge in search of living tissue to feast upon. He had seen the undead up close at the airport less than twenty-four hours earlier, and he was aware from surveillance footage and his own investigations that the foamers ventured out after dark.
    “There has to be someplace safe around here,” Holmes said.
    He had just moved from concerned to frantic when he spotted the Christ Our Savior Church just ahead on Austin Road. The church brought back memories of the movie The War of the Worlds , the original with Gene Barry, where he searches for fellow scientist and romantic interest Sylvia Van Buren and finds her in a church. She tells Gene (the astronomer in the movie) that as a youngster, she had been instructed to always go to a church when she was in trouble, because that was where she would always be safe. Holmes wasn’t sure of the logic of following a line from a sixty-year-old movie, but there were no other structures that looked solid enough to keep the foamers out. He had to hope there weren’t any already inside, just waiting for darkness to fall; he had to take the chance. He wished he had taken a gun from the motor home before he ran off, but the possibility that he might alert the others to his presence had prevented him. He had never been in such a vulnerable position.
    There’ll be more than a few unused weapons left at the airport.
    “Weapons and bodies!” he said.
    He found a length of wood on the ground—an old fence post—grabbed it, and wielded it in both hands like a baseball bat. He doubted it would do him any good if he were attacked by more than two foamers at once, but it was something.
    The arched doors to the church were closed but not locked. He thought this was promising—he doubted foamers would bother closing doors behind them. Inside, as far as he could see, the church was empty. He checked along the pews and saw no sign of anyone—living or dead. He didn’t bother looking further and headed straight for the door to the bell tower.
    “I doubt these dead fucks know how to climb.” He shut the door behind him and started up the stairs. He would be cold in the room below the bell itself, but he’d be safe from foamers.
    Tomorrow he would gather some supplies, get a vehicle, head to the airport for a weapon or two, and then follow the others to the west coast, all the way to that island he’d heard them mention.
    “If they think they’ve seen the last of me, well …”
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    A fter a coffee and a quick meal of SPAM and eggs, Elliot