Until the End of the World (Book 1) by Sarah Lyons Fleming

I strain my eyes and imagine things moving in the dark: a mass of infected like the ones who attacked the looters. Except I’m not safe on my roof right now, with months of food to eat and access to stored water below me. All we’ve got is what’s on our backs. We have two places to go: the Palisades and the upper floor of this building. The Lexers may not be able to make it up, but if there’s no water, all those people will be dead in a week, if not days, trapped up there.
    After what seems like forever, one of the radios carries a warning. “We have approximately one hundred Lexers heading our way. ETA of two minutes. Be ready, boys.”
    The soldiers stand at attention. A figure advances out of the gloom and nears the fence. It’s followed by another and another. The outside lights blaze to life, and I gasp at the sight.
    The main road is full of infected, of Lexers. They stumble their way over the grass and into the lot. The guns and soldiers make no impression on them, except to draw them closer.
    Shots ring out. A man with no lower jaw falls after the top of his head is blown off. A woman wearing a bright purple wrap dress drops to the ground with a well-placed shot. A little boy, who can’t be more than nine, limps to the fence. His mouth hangs open and his baseball cap has slid down over one eye, giving him a rakish look. His parents must be so worried about him. His parents might have been the ones who did this to him, I realize, and my mouth goes even drier.
    My legs grow weak. These people are dead. They’re dead, and they’re not. If I think about it too much I might go crazy, so I push the thought to the back of my mind. I watch the little boy stagger from a head shot, and it’s only when he drops to the ground, face-first, that I see his shirt wasn’t always brown. Before all the blood, it had been white.
    There’s an older woman who looks like an office worker, a doctor still wearing his white coat, a couple of men wearing orange road worker vests. They all fall, but the tide continues as they veer off the road.
    There are so many of them. They make it to the fence, where they push and pull and yank. I can hear them through the window, even over the gunshots. It’s a cacophony of low, rasping cries and drawn-out moans. It sounds like hunger, and we’re the food. I fight the urge to cover my ears with my hands and use them to clench my pistol. The gate swings alarmingly, but it holds.
    A flash of light out by the main road illuminates the room. The explosion makes us jump. For a few minutes they’re killed as fast as they come. But then Rodriguez points out the window and shouts. I visibly follow his finger, and the sight forces the air out of my lungs. I tighten my sweaty hold on my gun.
    A gigantic throng of infected follows the first. They trip and swarm over the road barricades they’ve knocked to the ground. All the noise must have attracted them. Rodriguez, Park and the others have a loud conversation over the gunfire.
    Rodriguez turns to us as they run out. “We’ve got to get out there,” he yells. “We’re gonna kill those motherLexers!”
    The Lexers at the fence push. Their fingers stretch through the wire, beckoning us. The fence buckles at the joints where the panels meet; the sheer force of hundreds of bodies is not something it’s made to withstand. I back up, right into a wide-eyed Penny.
    It sounds like the finale at the Fourth of July fireworks. My heart booms and my stomach pounds like a bass drum. Please, please , I chant along with it. Please . But, when the second group meets the first at the fence, it bends from the top and the bottom scrapes along the pavement. The seam between two panels of fence cracks. A Lexer on the ground slithers through. He’s missing an arm, and his shirt hangs open to reveal shredded skin and coagulated blood.
    “No!” Penny whispers.
    When she grabs my arm it stops my trembling. I can’t freak out now. She isn’t armed. And if the Army