Fleeing north to the fabled Sanctuary, Alyssa, Jacob, DeAndre, Caitlyn, Risa and Luke face disturbing ordeals and terrible tragedy as they encounter unbelievable situations in their struggle to reach safety. Using their skills and wits in their fight to survive against ever worsening odds, they weather hardship, betrayal, and the ever-present specter of death as they flee north, all the while vowing to protect one another – and most of all their precious 5-year-old Luke, from a world gone mad.
Sanctuary, the second installment in the Mad World series, is a heart-rending adventure of astonishing revelations, tragic discoveries, agonizing separations and devastating losses that test these friends to their limits. With heart-pounding, edge-of-your-seat suspense at every turn, this is a story you will not be able to put down.
Excerpt Chapter Twelve:
We were about 50
feet from the barn when suddenly the lights inside went out.
“Oh, that is so
not good,” I said under my breath.
Risa stopped
completely and stared, trying to see any danger before she got to it. I
stopped, too, and we just stood there for the space of a few heartbeats. This
night was getting creepier by the hour. After a minute, Risa shrugged and said,
“Well, whatever. I can’t just sit here waiting. Let’s go see what scary horrors
lie in wait for us in there.”
At this I burst
out laughing, and hung my arm over her shoulders. She had broken the tension,
and I felt immensely better. Laughing together we walked toward the now dark
barn.
We got to the
barn door and peered in. It was pitch dark, so we switched our flashlights on
and tried to illuminate the massive interior.
“Hmmmm,” I said,
trying to see in the darkness beyond the twin beams of light. The barn was too
big to see; there was nothing for it, we would have to search the dark expanse
cubic yard by cubic yard.
We split up and
began searching and calling every few minutes. I heard a snuffling in the dark
reaches, but it was Risa who said, “Awww, hi there little guy.” And then,
“Alyssa, come look at this.”
I trotted over
to where Risa was standing at a stall door, shining her flashlight on the
interior. Peering over the tall wooden door, I looked inside the stall and saw
a mare with what appeared to be her newborn foal. The baby teetered over to its
mother on long legs and then ducked its head under and began to nurse.
“Awww,” I said
softly, smiling. We watched the two for a while, marveling at the wonderful
sight. It was so adorable. A reminded that life goes on, that the plague hadn’t
affected this little family one bit.
We didn’t hear
what had just entered the barn until it was almost upon us. As we watched the
mother and baby, the mare’s head shot up and she snorted nervously. At the same
time, we heard the low growls, several of them, coming from the direction of
the door we’d just come in not five minutes ago.
“Oh, crud,” Risa
said as she turned. The hairs on the back of my neck rose as they did every
time I heard those growls when I wasn’t expecting them.
“Quick, switch
off your flashlight,” I whispered. “Maybe it’ll help.” I switched mine off as I
said it, and then ducked and ran softly on the hay-covered floor to the far end
of the huge barn. Risa followed me, making hardly any sound. We tiptoed along
the side of the stalls and tried to make ourselves as small as possible. After
we got to the last of the doors, we crouched there in the darkness. I was
unwilling to go inside a stall to hide; I didn’t want to be caught in one, with
no way out.
The growling
became intermittent, and I thought I could make out at least three different
voices. So, at least three zombies now shared this barn with Risa and me, and
the mare and her foal. Somehow, I didn’t think the horses had much to worry
about.
In the five-plus
years since the epidemic began, scientists had been studying the problem and
testing different theories. In the process, they had discovered a few
interesting facts about the people infected by the plague. The zombies. First
of all, they didn’t seem to be attracted to animals. Lucky for us people, they
seemed to only want to taste us. Great, huh?
Second. They
seemed to have very poor vision. Guess that might have had something to do with
the way their eyes quickly went milky, as if they had cataracts. Gross. Anyway,
they seemed to hunt by smell mostly, and also used their sense of hearing to
find their prey. Speaking of prey, we were it. That’s right, our own people,
who had been ravished and zombie-fied by this terrible plague, turned back on
us and hunted the humans who had yet to be infected.
Smell. Sounds.
These things were on our minds as we huddled there in the dark in the corner of
that strange barn. We knew the zombies acted mostly on instinct; they weren’t
too smart. But then again, they weren’t too dumb, either. We’d seem zombies
duck shots fired at them, and think things through in their seemingly insatiable
quest for human flesh. They would attack strategically, looking for any
weakness. If we were barricaded in the van, locking the doors on one side,
they’d come around to the other side of a car to try the windows there.
Luckily, the barn we were in was full of smells other than ourselves. The big
pile of horse manure in the corner, for instance.
We had no choice
but to try to find a way out of our predicament, while making as little noise
as possible. The three zombies we knew of were growling and shuffling around
toward the front of the barn again, while we crouched in the back. I began
searching for any back door or window we could use as an escape route, and
Risa, seeing what I was doing, began looking with me. We must have been about 8
feet apart, at the back wall of the barn, when the zombie we didn’t know was
there jumped down from the loft and onto … me.
“AHHHHH!!!!!!” I
yelled, startled, as I tumbled to the ground. Luckily, the zombie had fallen
more than ten feet, so when it landed on me, it rolled off to the side and was
momentarily stunned. I quickly scrambled to my feet and unholstered my shotgun,
bringing it forward and leveling it at the figure on the ground.
Risa reacted
quickly as well, bringing her the .33 up and training it on the creature. One
thing we had learned fast in the last five years was not to hesitate. So I
walked up to the figure that was starting to rise, and I fired at its head, the
muzzle of my sawed off not a foot away. It quickly dropped to the ground and
was still, but the shot, that had been deafening in the closed area, had
alerted the other zombies to our presence.
We both looked
up toward the barn door and heard the low growling become even more menacing,
if that were at all possible.
“Oh, to heck
with this,” I mumbled, and turning behind me, I shot out the nearest wooden
board in the wall of the barn. With Risa covering me, I kicked out a hole large
enough so we could get through. I scrambled through the 2-by-3-foot hole I’d
made, and Risa emerged after me, with a zombie hot on her heels. The thing
actually stuck its head through the hole, and stretched an arm out too,
reaching. Big mistake. Huge.
Quickly
holstering my shotgun, I brought my bowie knife up and then down, slashing the
thing trying to eat us. The sharp blade sliced cleanly through its neck, and
its head rolled free at Risa’s feet, dripping black blood. Hey, what can I say?
I liked to keep my blades razor sharp.
“Oh, gross,”
Risa said softly.
Laughing, I
quickly switched back to my shotgun, reloading it in less than 30 seconds. “We
need the men here,” I said, pointing my shotgun to the sky. I let off three
rounds, at five second intervals. POP!! POP!! POP!! The shots echoed across the
farmyard. We heard the growls stop on the other side of the barn wall, and then
resume, sounding angrier than ever.
Looking around,
I saw a small water tower on stilts, about three stories tall. We could climb
the ladder and, if the zombies came, we’d be able to pick them off one by one.
We’d be safe up there. Indicating it with a tilt of my head, I holstered my
shotgun and we both trotted over to the ladder.
“Up you go,” I
said, boosting her up. The water tower ladder started about 5 feet off the
ground so we had to scramble a bit. The growls had faded away, but I was
worried the zombies were going to come around the corner any minute. Boosting
the skinny teenager up, I prepared to hoist myself up after her.
Then I heard the
zombies growls, much closer than before. Without stopping to look around at the
direction they were coming from, I jumped and grabbed the third rung and
hoisted myself up, my foot catching the bottom rung on the first try. There was
nothing like being hunted by zombies to hasten your climb up a ladder, I tell
ya.
Risa and I
clambered up to the ledge on the bottom of the large, barreled, wooden
structure; it was 10-12 feet up. We stood on it, we didn’t want to sit and then
have our legs dangling off the end out into possible grab territory. We waited.
We didn’t have
long to wait. It was less than a minute after I started up the ladder that the
first zombie shambled into view. It was a female, in an old housecoat that had
seen better, non-zombie, days. It walked out into the open, not sure where we
were, but definitely smelling us. It was followed by two more zombies, both
male, one looked to be an old man and the other a middle aged man. It was
almost funny to watch, because the old man zombie appeared to have been a bit
crippled by old age before being infected, turned and subsequently infused with
zombie strength. So what we were watching was a crooked old zombie that look
arthritic, but moving pretty fast and not appearing in pain at all. These three
zombies began a zigzag pattern, using their noses to find us.
They were about
twenty feet away when things got really nasty. And by really nasty I mean that
a dozen or more young zombies, of varying ages, came to join the adult zombies
in their hunt for us humans. Apparently, this had been a pretty large family.
It looked like a grandfather, a great grandfather, a mother, and at least a
dozen youths ranging in age from around ten all the way up to early twenties. I
suspected the father might have been one of the two I’d killed by the barn, but
I wasn’t sure. Trying to count these things was useless, plus in the end, we couldn’t
know how big the family had been, how many members there were. Heck, we could
try to mentally calculate the whole family only to miss the Uncle Bob zombie or
the Auntie Tweedie zombie or something. In this situation you just had to
assess the threat as best you could and meet the danger head on as it came to
you. Deal with the zombies you knew about, and never let down your guard.
“Shoot, where’s
my extra ammo?” Risa said, fumbling in her side bag.
“I put it in the
back pocket, there,” I pointed. I fumbled for my own ammo - we were going to
need it. I located the box of cartridges in my side pouch and checked my
shotgun. I was ready.
“Okay, hold my
belt,” I said, and after Risa hooked her arm around the wooden structure and
grabbed hold of the back of my belt, I leaned over and shot out the ladder.
Good. Now they had no way of climbing up to us, I hoped.
We watched them
come, both of us calm, holding our firearms at the ready. We’d been through
over five years of this so we were somewhat used to it. This wasn’t even Risa’s
first situation of this type. Three other times, we’d been trapped and either
holed up or treed like cats and had to pick off zombies one by one to free
ourselves. But this was the first time Risa and I had done it alone. I was really
counting on her. Glancing sideways I asked, “You okay?”
Risa looked at
me and nodded her head, a look of calm determination on her face. “Absolutely,”
she said, then looked down on the advancing horde.
___
We later learned
that Jacob had heard my three shots and had begun jogging through the trees
toward our location. He was almost a mile and a half away, and there was
underbrush to deal with, but he made pretty good time. He had slung his shotgun
over his shoulder and was trotting steadily, zigzagging through the trees,
following the sound of the shots.
DeAndre had
heard the shots, too, but was a bit farther away - over the low hills and south
of the water tower. The shots I’d fired sounded faint, but it was closing in on
midnight and the night was very quiet and peaceful. The stars were brilliant,
and together with the quarter moon, they stood watch as D hiked up through the
foothills toward our location.
___
Risa and I stood
there, waiting for the zombies to wander closer. My shotgun needed to be fired
at close range to knock one out for good. I’d shot from several dozen feet
away, and you just got a wide spread. The result was a zombie with a pitted,
icky, gross, dripping-with-goo face. No, I would need to wait until they had
closed within about 6 feet or less. But that was okay, we were up high. I
figured we could pick them off one at a time. Unless by some miracle they
decided to work together. I’d heard of this happening sometimes. I hoped it
didn’t happen tonight.
“Here comes the
first one,” Risa said, taking aim. The zombie shambled up to the water tower
and looked up, its eyes all milky and its scalp shredded where it had
apparently been bitten when it was a human. It looked like it had once been a
teenage girl, maybe 16 or 17. It still wore pedal pushers and a flowery
sweater. Growling at us, it stretched its arms upward and jumped, trying to
catch the ledge we were on. Risa steadied her .33 and shot off a round: *POP*
The bullet caught the zombie right in the temple; it dropped heavily to the ground
and was still.
“Good shot!” I
said. And then, “uh, oh,” as three more zombies began jumping for the ledge.
POP! I knocked
another zombie down. It was taller than the first and had actually been able to
slap its fingers to the edge of the wood when it jumped. Now it was slumped
against one of the wooden stilts that supported the water tower. It would never
jump again.
Risa tried to
shoot a third zombie, but it was moving around more erratically and it was
harder for her to get a bead on it. It took her four shots, but she finally
nailed it in the head, and it fell to the ground.
The third of the
closest zombies just growled and moaned as it looked up at us. I had no pity
for the thing. If we were within reach it would not hesitate to attack us. And
I did not hesitate. Lowering my shotgun muzzle and sighting down at it, I
pulled the trigger and blasted the thing’s face off. It fell backward onto the
ground and lay still.
I looked up to
get an idea of what to expect next, and my eyes found the old man zombie
approaching. It moved pretty fast - it probably hadn’t moved that fast when it
was alive, for several decades. But now, in its crooked, arthritic, sideways
shamble-hop, it was fast. And shrewd as well. Looking up at us and staying back
a ways, it seemed to study us. Its eyes had not gone completely milky yet, and
apparently it could see us. It was kind of creepy in a way, almost as if it was
actually sentient.
“Will you look
at that,” I said softly. At the sound of my voice, its gaze focused on me, and
it cocked its head.
“Whoa!” I said,
nearly losing my footing in surprise. The old man zombie seemed to notice this,
and then it dropped its eyes down to study the area under our feet.
“I really don’t
like the looks of that one,” Risa said. “It’s giving me the creeps.” I nodded.
I didn’t like the looks of it either. But my attention was drawn to another
wave of zombies trying to get at us. I blew three of them away in quick
succession and then leaned back to reload. Risa was getting better with her
.33, which was good. That gun was not terribly accurate at greater distances,
so you had to wait until you had a clear shot at a zombie no more than ten feet
away to have a really good chance of hitting it in the head and stopping it.
I finished
reloading and covered Risa as she also reloaded. Sighting down the muzzle of my
shotgun, I picked off two more zombies, then stopped to look up. The
grandfather zombie had moved back a bit and was now about a dozen feet away
from the base of the water tower. As I watched him, he all of a sudden let out
a huge roar that made all the zombies stop all of a sudden. Then it grunted and
growled and gestured and OH MY GOD IT WAS COMMUNICATING WITH THE OTHER ZOMBIES.
“Oh, this is not
good,” I said.
“Oh my God. Oh
my ever-loving God, what is happening?” Risa said.
There were maybe
six zombies left, including the old man zombie and, believe it or not, they
were in an informal huddle, looking like an amateur football team. Those
zombies were concentrating their attention on the old man zombie, and he seemed
to somehow be GIVING THEM INSTRUCTIONS.
“I don’t believe
this,” I said. Looking around us, I saw that we were trapped like treed cats.
“Listen, Risa. If this situation starts to go south, I want you to make a break
for it, okay?”
“I won’t leave
you, Alyssa,” Risa said.
“I’m not
planning on becoming a martyr or anything, but I have a bad feeling about this
and I ...,” I said.
“Alyssa, don’t
even think that way. We will come out of this alive and we will find Luke,”
Risa said.
Looking around
again, I once again pointed my shotgun at the sky and let off three rounds
about five seconds apart. I nodded to Risa and reloaded again. Risa nudged my
arm, and when I looked up she gestured to the zombies. They were breaking apart
slowly and something was happening.
They seemed to
be a bit confused I thought, but then the old man zombie let out another loud
roar and then hobble-charged right at us!
The other
zombies followed him, and all of a sudden we had a small mob of half a dozen
zombies rushing at our water tower. Risa and I could only watch as they came.
Our guns pointed down, we wondered what was going on. This was not a good
scenario at all. When dealing with zombies, I had always preferred to be on the
side making the active decisions and controlling the game. Now they were
calling the shots, executing some bizarre strategy from their zombie playbook.
We fired as they
ran toward us. POP! POP!! POPPOPPOP!!
Two of the
zombies fell to the ground, but four others just kept charging, in fact, they
ran right under our ledge.
A split-second
later we felt the water tower shudder and lean slightly before righting itself
again. The zombies had hit the stilts holding us up. I couldn’t believe it.
They had launched a coordinated attack and were trying to knock the water tower
over to get at us.
“How on earth…?”
I said. I didn’t have time to finish my sentence. They were still directly
under us, pushing at the stilts in an effort to finish the job.
We teetered as
the zombies below us pushed at the stilts. The water tower swung back and forth
several times as we hung on to the wooden planks. Then for a few seconds, it
stopped moving to the side and I thought perhaps the zombies had given up. But
apparently they had just stepped back to gather their strength for another
push, because all of a sudden the movement started again and it was worse than
before. We hung on tightly to anything we could grab, but it was no use.
“Oh! OH!!” Risa
said, as the water tower leaned alarmingly to the side.
“We’re going to
have to jump! Come on!” I said, as the thing began to topple over.
Find out what happens next.
Alyssa and Jake are away with their class on a highly anticipated year-end trip to Broadway with their senior acting class when all hell breaks loose at home. Traveling back, and trying to find their families, they encounter deadly results. Riots are breaking out. People are being evacuated. And they have no idea what's happening to their families.
Horrific ordeals, heart-pounding tragedy, and chance encounters harden them for what lies ahead. Faced with tormenting decisions, they're forced to follow their instinct for survival at any cost - even when the cost is a heart-wrenching decision of life or death.
A harrowing adventure of frightening discoveries, horrifying confrontations and narrow escapes in Epidemic, the first installment of the Mad World series.
Find out what's got everyone so terrified.
Samaire Provost lives in California with her husband and son.
Her love of paranormal stories, odd plots, and unique tales as well as the works of Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Susan Cooper, Madeleine L'Engle and Stephen King has deeply influenced her writing.
Great excerpt!
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