Chloe Zombie Apocalypse series (Book 1): Chloe (4 page)

C
hloë stared
at her home and tried not to cry.

The sun was rising slowly by the minute, rapidly warming up the day. But the main warmth came from the trees, some of which were still in flames.

One of the trees in flames was
her
tree.

The one she slept in.

The one she kept her supplies in.

Her home.

She walked towards her tree. The crackling of flames was all she could hear. The taste of burning filled her mouth, made her want to cough and heave. Ashes of burned wood crumbled as she stepped through them.

She stared into the opening. The opening where she lived. The opening where she’d lived in for weeks. Except it wasn’t an opening anymore. It wasn’t a home anymore. It had collapsed. Smoke billowed out of it.

Her water. Her food. Her supplies. Her home.

Gone.

But it was something else that made the tears build up behind Chloë’s eyelids, threaten to run down her cheeks.

The charred remains of a hardcover book lying on the ground in front of the old opening of the tree.

She walked towards it. Walked into the smoke, towards the crackling flames.

She saw the purple cover of
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
. Saw Harry’s illustrated face.

Saw the pages, blackened. Crumbling apart.

She felt her jaw start to shake. She had to be tough. Had to be grown up. She knew that. But she’d just wanted to read
Harry Potter
. She’d just wanted to escape this life for a few minutes every day.

She just wanted a world to disappear to. To distract her from the darkness at night. From the howls of the dogs. The footsteps of the dead.

She just wanted something to help her feel like a child again. A child that she still was.

That was gone.

She wiped her eyes. Looked up at the tree. Sniffed up, getting a lungful of smoke, which she instantly regretted. She’d lost her bags of crisps. She’d lost the bulk of her water. But that was her own silly fault. Her own stupid fault for leaving it all in one place. She’d kept meaning to bury some supplies in different parts of the woods. But this tree just felt so … safe. Like home.

And now it was gone.

Now she had no home.

Again.

She wanted to cry. She wanted to get to her knees and cry. Because she couldn’t do this. She’d been forced out of her homes so many times. And finally she’d found somewhere. Somewhere good. Somewhere safe. Not like the hotel with Mike and his people last winter. Not like the Warburtons Factory with the psychotic Moustache Man and all his lorries. She’d found somewhere safe. Really safe.

But no. That was where she was wrong.

Nowhere was safe.

Not anymore.

All she could do was take a deep breath—when she got away from this smoke.

All she could do was move on.

She stood still. Looked at the tree. She thought about going closer. Seeing if she could salvage anything. She had a couple of bottles of water weighing down her backpack, as well as a blanket, some crisps, a few energy bars that’d gone out of date. And a tin of beans that she’d salvaged, but they were on the turn.

She had enough to go on. For now.

She had to push on. Find somewhere else like this.

Find some more supplies.

The last part made her stomach churn.

Because finding more supplies meant stealing from people.

And stealing from people sometimes meant killing people.

She kicked the ashes on the ground. She wished she could trust someone. Wished she could just walk up to a group and ask them to help. But she’d met so many people since the world collapsed. Enough people to know what they all wanted, really.

Enough people to know that groups didn’t work. They argued. They split. They fell apart.

Enough people for Chloë to realise she was bad news.

She looked back up at the tree. She had to stop sobbing. Had to get away. Had to push on. She could try following the group who’d burned her home. The ones she’d seen hunting the squirrel a mile or two back. But it sounded like there were a lot of them. And she didn’t like the feel of them. The smell of the alcohol in the air. The taste of their sweat. The sound of their laughter.

She didn’t like them.

And somehow, she didn’t think they’d like her either.

She started to turn when she saw something above the old opening to the tree.

It was small. Small and insignificant, probably.

But something about it drew Chloë towards it.

There were three letters. Three letters etched on the tree. And for some reason, as Chloë stepped closer, she felt like she’d seen them somewhere before. Like they were familiar, from some point in her dreamlike life since the world fell and the monsters started walking.

She reached the front of the tree. The air was thick with smoke. The warmth of the flames nipped at her skin.

She stared at the letters.

CoY.

CoY.

Where had she seen them before?

What did they mean?

She rubbed her fingers against them. They’d been cut into the tree with a knife. And in the light brown of the wood, Chloë swore she saw a hint of red.

Blood.

And then it came to her.

The memory.

Travelling with her old group four months ago.

The bodies they’d found. The CoY markings etched into them.

The people Riley and the rest of her old group were worried about.

She remembered them and her heart started to race. She couldn’t explain why, but she didn’t like the thought of these people. Because the more she pondered it, the more she swore she remembered seeing other markings like this. On the chests of hanging, lifeless corpses. On the necks of some of the monsters.

CoY.

CoY.

What did it mean?

Who were—

Her thoughts were interrupted by the snap of a twig behind her.

Her stomach sank. She froze.

Another snap from behind her to the left.

And then another on her right.

Her pulse raced. She stared at the tree. She didn’t want to turn around. Because turning around meant accepting they were there. Turning around made them real.

She didn’t have to turn around.

Not when she heard the groan.

Then the next groan.

Then the next.

At that point, she knew she had to turn around.

Five monsters were standing opposite her.

All of them were in various stages of decomposition. A mixture of two men, two women and a boy, younger than her.

One of the men had a chunk of his neck missing. Maggots crawled around it.

One of the women was naked. Her breasts had been ripped apart. Chloë could see right through the cracks in her yellowing ribs to where her heart used to be.

A heart that had been gnawed at by rats.

Chloë held her breath. Gripped her knife. Started to move to her right.

And then another monster stepped out.

The side of its head crushed.

Eyeball drooping down its cheek.

And to the left, another monster.

A young girl. Older than Chloë, but only in her twenties or something.

White shirt.

Blue jeans.

Intestines trailing behind her.

Chloë looked at the oncoming monsters.

Felt the flames engulfing, the burning getting hotter.

The smoke getting thicker.

She was surrounded.

She was trapped.

She was screwed.

C
hloë gripped
the knife and the pistol tightly as the monsters approached.

Burning trees crackled around her. Smoke filled the air. The seven monsters groaned as they staggered towards her. Gasped right from the backs of their torn throats. Blood dripping from their loose flesh. Flies buzzing around their wounds.

Chloë wanted to throw up. Not because of the smell. She was used to the smell. She was used to the taste of rot the monsters carried with them everywhere. No, because of the sudden turn of events.

One minute, she had a home.

The next minute, her home was gone.

Surrounded by the dead.

She looked at the monster on the left. The girl in the white shirt and blue jeans. Looked at the loose flap of skin on its scalp. She could see a crack in its skull as it edged towards her. She knew she could use that crack. Use it to her advantage—

The monster to her right tumbled forward.

Its long, filthy nails scratched her bare toes.

She lifted the knife. Rammed it right into the back of the monster’s skull. It didn’t break it. Not at first.

So she had to lift it again.

Lift it again as the monster opened its blood-soaked mouth.

As it moved it towards Chloë’s ankle.

All the while, the five monsters ahead of her got closer.

The monster with the cracked skull got closer.

She pulled her foot away. Lifted it. Stamped on the monster’s head. Kicked it as hard as she could into the soily earth. It wouldn’t kill it, but it would do for now.

It’d keep it down.

Give her a chance to escape.

Give her—

The girl with the cracked skull grabbed her left arm.

Of all the things that still scared Chloë in this world of nightmares, the tight grip of the monsters still got to her. Because she knew these undead creatures had been people once upon a time. Men. Women. Children.

And sometimes, in their fading eyes, she thought she saw a glimpse of the person they once were. A glimmer of sense. Like they knew who they were but they were trapped inside a prison of their own body. A prison they couldn’t get out of.

The monster tightened its grip.

So tight that Chloë’s arm felt like it was going to burst.

She lifted the knife.

Slammed it into the hole in its skull.

She pierced the hole at the first attempt. Felt the pressure as the bone fought back, refusing to split away.

The monster’s mouth widened. Sharp, blackened teeth on show.

Dead eyes.

She needed to stab it again. One more hit with the knife and its skull would crack.

She pulled the knife back.

It was stuck.

She held her hand there for a moment. Held it in disbelief. The knife. It was stuck. Stuck in the monster’s skull. Stuck in—

She didn’t get a chance to think for much longer.

The boy monster pummelled into her right and knocked her to the forest floor.

She fumbled around. Tried to get an idea of where the monsters were. She could hear them. Feel them. See the light above fading as they swarmed around her.

She didn’t want to open her eyes.

She didn’t want to see what was above.

But she had to.

She opened her eyes.

All seven monsters stood over her.

All seven moved down towards her.

Glazed eyes focused on just one thing.

Chloë’s body.

She saw the monster with the knife in its head move down towards her first.

Then the woman, stringy pieces of flesh trailing out of her bitten neck.

Then the man, half an ear dangling off by a loose thread of skin.

And she knew this was it. Knew it was over. Knew her life was ending, right here, right now.

But then she remembered.

The gun.

The fucking gun.

She didn’t like using the ammo. She didn’t have much.

She didn’t like using it. Unless there was some kind of emergency. Because a gunshot attracted attention. And Chloë had learned that it usually attracted the wrong kind of attention.

But right now was an emergency.

Right now, she needed to use it.

The monster with the knife in its head stuffed its drooling face into her neck.

She pressed the pistol to its temple.

Squeezed the trigger.

The blast rattled her eardrums. She went blind for a moment as blood splattered all over her. Amongst the fragments of skull and splattering of brain, something hard and heavy hit her face.

It took her a moment to realise it was her knife.

She looked around for the knife. Didn’t have time to keep looking.

The woman monster moved in towards her shoulder.

Chloë fired.

More blood splattered over her.

She fired at the man. Then at the boy. And when there were just three of them left, she started to worry about where her knife had gone. Because she didn’t have unlimited ammo. This wasn’t like one of those silly video games Dad used to play.

She needed her knife.

She needed another weapon.

She felt the man grab her right arm. Twist it right back over her head. Snap his broken teeth together as his bitten-down lips got closer to Chloë’s skin.

She pointed the gun at his head.

Fired.

Nothing.

She fired again.

Nothing.

Chloë’s stomach sank. She didn’t even have time to think about what this meant.

All that mattered were the man’s loose, broken teeth.

Inches from her flesh.

She pulled back the gun.

Cracked it against the man’s mouth.

Again.

Again.

Again.

She heard the teeth split away. Felt them tumble down her arm, hit the forest floor below.

But the man kept on moving towards her.

Wrapping his mouth around Chloë’s arm.

Biting down…

But no. Nothing was there. No sharpness in his mouth. Nothing but his icy cold, eel-like tongue. Nothing but the jagged stubs of rotted teeth.

But she needed to get him away from him.

She needed to get him away before his friends joined in.

She needed…

She looked to her feet.

Saw her knife lying just beside her left ankle.

She reached down. Stretched as far as she could.

The man’s lips got tighter.

The stubs of his teeth grew sharper.

His loose ear wobbled at the side of his blood-soaked head.

The other two monsters descended on her body.

She felt her fingertips brush against the bottom of the knife.

Come on. A little further. A little fucking further.

Felt one of the monsters grab her right leg.

Come on!

She got hold of the knife.

Lifted it.

Rammed it into the man’s temple.

And then she pushed him away.

Lifted the knife back. Stuck it between the eyes of the descending monster.

She scrambled away. Stood up. Choking on smoke and covered in the icy blood of the monsters.

She watched the last of the monsters hobble towards her. One of the monster’s legs had snapped away completely just below the knee. She could see the bone. See where he’d tripped.

But there was nothing in his eyes.

No pain.

No nothing.

But for a moment, Chloë saw that glimmer of humanity in the man’s blue eyes. Saw that look. That begging. That look of being trapped. Imprisoned.

She saw that look and she couldn’t deny the pity she felt.

No. Not a man. A monster. Not a he. An it.

She wiped the blood from her face.

Pulled back the knife.

Stuck it through the right side of the monster’s head.

It fell to the ground with a thud.

Chloë stepped back. Looked at her home. Looked at the burned-out remains of the tree she’d stayed inside for weeks. Looked at the mass of dead bodies around it. The CoY symbol etched into the bark.

She looked at her home. Looked at it like it was the last time she’d ever see it.

Because it was.

Then she looked down at the burned-out
Harry Potter
book.

Covered in blood, brains and fragments of skull, Chloë cleared her throat.

Lifted her rucksack higher up her back.

And, knife in hand, she walked.