Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 4): Resolution
Read Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 4): Resolution Online
Authors: Sean Schubert
Tags: #undead, #series, #horror, #alaska, #zombie, #adventure, #action, #walking dead, #survival, #Thriller
A PERMUTED PRESS book
Published at Smashwords
ISBN (trade paperback): 978-1-61868-251-2
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-252-9
Resolution
:
Alaskan
Undead
Apocalypse
copyright © 2014
by Sean Schubert
All Rights Reserved.
Cover art by Dean Samed, Conzpiracy Digital
This
book
is
a
work
of
fiction
.
People
,
places
,
events
,
and
situations
are
the
product
of
the
author’s
imagination
.
Any
resemblance
to
actual
persons
,
living
or
dead
,
or
historical
events
,
is
purely
coincidental
.
No
part
of
this
book
may
be
reproduced
,
stored
in
a
retrieval
system
,
or
transmitted
by
any
means
without
the
written
permission
of
the
author
and
publisher
.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Alaskan Undead Apocalypse series is
dedicated to my very loving and supportive family, without whom
these books would never have been written.
I would like to acknowledge the efforts and
support of my editor Felicia; beta readers Faye and Brian Cole;
John, Eric, and Mark of Bosco's; Rachel and Penny of the UAA
Bookstore; the team at Permuted Press; and all the hardcore
zombiephiles who have all contributed to the series' success.
Thank you all.
As miserable and bleak as a cold rain at a
funeral, the reluctant autumn dawn finally broke. A lingering damp
fog laden with the wispy, malodorous remnants of smoke muted and
delayed the slowly gathering light. From the persistent bank of
gray and white arose the reeking, foul stench of charred human
flesh and scorched hair. It was no wonder the dawn stalled so long
in emerging.
Within the melancholy clouds clinging to the
landscape, hazy specters shuffled aimlessly in stilted gait to and
fro. As if fruitlessly searching for a lost memory, they wandered
in the stubborn gloom, moaning a song conducted by the Devil
himself. Like wretched floating wraiths haunting the nightmares of
a child, their faces, their bodies, and their true terror all
withheld themselves from view. But their voices...their hellish
voices penetrated to the soul.
Through the obscuring fog, the meandering
figures could be mistaken for people, though they were far from it.
As their wandering led them individually to the edge of the murk,
the mistake of thinking them still people would have become
abundantly clear. Most of them had skin the color of weathered
granite and wore clothes that were scarcely more than stained
tatters of cloth stuck permanently in place against skin by blood
or other mortal matter. Their limbs and heads rippled and quivered
unpredictably with violent nervous tics. Many were adorned with
grisly mortal wounds about their bodies; a gouged throat here, a
chewed and partially eaten abdomen there, missing limbs, bullet
holes, and ghastly burns. Bites, gashes, torn flesh; a veritable
cornucopia of death.
Perhaps the most disturbing and least human
of their features was their faces; more specifically, their eyes.
Their humanity had been cleaved from their aspect like flesh from
bone, leaving no shred to be seen. Like an echo of the violence
that had carved away their souls, their faces were twisted into
snarling sneers whose only apparent emotion was rage. The
creatures’ eyes, as dark as deepest night, smoldered and sparked
with a horrifying hunger, driven by an unspeakable and long
forgotten infection.
These things were merely shadows of men,
women, and children. Their deaths had not been final. The infection
jolted them back, and the hunger would not let them slip into their
eternal slumbers. It tortured them and enraged them. There was no
respite and no satiating the infection’s ravenous desire. They were
forever compelled to kill and eat and kill again.
A single, echoing firearm’s report cracked
the quiet. Like a stone dropped in a still pond, the sound rippled
in every direction. In response, one of the hazy figures slumped
disjointedly onto its belly. The others, still plodding back and
forth, neither noticed nor cared that one of their own had fallen.
The familiar and now echoing sound that had excited them was all
that mattered. They responded with a horrible chorus of desperate
moans that vibrated the air with all the welcome comfort of a
struggling chainsaw blade stuck grinding endlessly into a rusty
steel girder. It was like fingernails across a chalkboard with a
constant, industrial edge to it. The sound was enough to produce
nausea akin to motion sickness.