Dying Days [Book 9] Read online

  Dying Days 9

  Armand Rosamilia

  Edited by Jenny Adams

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without expressed written consent of the author and/or artists

  This book is a work of fiction. Names characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living, dead or undead, is entirely coincidental.

  Dying Days 9 copyright 2017 by Armand Rosamilia

  Cover copyright 2017 by Jack Wallen

  First printing November 2017

  [email protected]

  http://dyingdayszombie.com

  I want to thank all of the Dying Days zombie fans who’ve taken this decade journey with me. Without you I’m nothing.

  And thank Shelly for everything she does for me, too numerous to mention

  The Dying Days series from Armand Rosamilia

  Highway To Hell

  Dying Days

  Dying Days 2

  Still Dying: Select Scenes From Dying Days

  Still Dying 2

  Dying Days 3

  Dying Days: Origins

  Highway To Hell 2

  Dying Days: Origins 2

  Dying Days 3

  Dying Days 4

  Dying Days 5

  Dying Days 6

  Dying Days 7

  Dying Days 8

  Dying Days 9

  Dying Days 9

  Chapter One

  Tosha had lost her weapon and Mitch, and was now losing her sanity.

  She heard the next shot but didn’t feel pain so knew she hadn’t been hit.

  It was only a matter of time before she was struck by a stray bullet.

  There was nowhere to hide. Too many enemies around every corner and down every street ahead. At this rate, she wouldn’t get across the river until daybreak, even though it was inches from her feet.

  Tosha hoped Mitch had made it to safety or to a hiding place.

  She hoped everyone she held dear to her had found a safe hiding spot because this was utter chaos.

  Not only had these assholes been chasing her up and down the streets for hours, but the horde of zombies had picked this fight to shamble east and kill everything in their way.

  Tosha had climbed onto the roof of a crumbling building and balanced on the only corner that was still standing, as the mass of rotting bodies marched, sweeping everything in front of it.

  She’d watched in horror as they kept going once they got to the river, walking across, heads going underwater.

  Tosha was sure most would be swept away, but not all of them. And, with thousands on the move, there would still be plenty to wreak havoc on The Promised Land.

  The Promised Land is no more, she thought.

  She could see the fires as she moved, trying to keep low and not step into the water. With any luck she could get to where the far north bridge was and hope one of the boats she’d stashed was still intact.

  Going across the river was a suicide mission. The fuckers who’d started this shit were laying siege to Main Street.

  She was sure other groups had snuck in through the back door and were fighting everyone as well. She’d seen a large group of armed men and women coming from the south. They looked like they hadn’t been touched by this mess yet. They were taking advantage of the distraction.

  None of it mattered. Everyone would need to be killed if Tosha hoped to survive to see the sun again.

  Getting across the river was going to be hard, especially since she had no idea how many zombies had been snagged in the water. There’d been plenty of sunken boats and bodies tossed into the water. All it would take was a fallen tree to stop a zombie from being pushed downriver and his rotting hand would grab her ankle in the dark.

  I need a fucking boat, Tosha thought.

  At least whoever was shooting at her had either gone the wrong way or found someone else to fuck with.

  She heard footsteps approaching and stopped, ducking as far down into the muck as she could. There wasn’t much cover and anyone looking right at her wouldn’t be fooled.

  Four men walked by, rifles aimed left and right as they moved.

  By sheer luck, the closest one to her sneezed before looking her way and his friends hissed at him to be quiet.

  Tosha waited until she was sure they’d gone further down the road and weren’t doubling back.

  The four were going the same direction she needed to go. Should she turn back and try another plan?

  Tosha didn’t have one.

  Get a boat and cross the river and hope no one saw her before it got too light out. That was her only plan and it sucked.

  She heard something take a step behind her but when she whirled around, holding her hands close to her body to look like a weapon, there wasn’t anyone there.

  Or was there?

  It was too dark. Too many shadows. The trees above were rustling in the slight breeze, making the darkness shimmer and the noise muffled.

  Tosha was beginning to see things. Every black shape separated itself from the darkness around it and aimed a weapon at her or had sharp claws.

  It wasn’t lack of sleep that had her on edge. She’d taken a nice, long power nap before Mitch shook her awake. They’d been surrounded by the bad guys but Mitch had taken one for the team, sliding out from under the pickup truck, throwing a few punches and then running.

  Tosha had taken down two of the three men confronting her but she’d lost her weapons. When she’d run, she had thought she would find Mitch.

  She was alone and felt her sense of sanity slipping away.

  There was a gunshot but it was blocks away. Tosha wondered who they’d caught. Who was even left at this point?

  Gunshots across the river had stopped a few minutes ago as well. She’d just realized it, so deep was she in her own thoughts.

  The silence was unsettling.

  Only the wind and the palm fronds and the lapping water could be heard now.

  The world had died around Tosha and she hadn’t known it had all ended until it was over. Life had ended with a whimper instead of a bang.

  Tosha had never felt more alone.

  “Hey, Red. You wanna party?”

  Tosha turned with a grin.

  Her faith in shitty humanity, as well as the reaching darkness of this world, had returned, bringing with it a new purpose for her this moment.

  Life was about moments. Fuck the big picture.

  Tosha needed to get through this next shitstorm before she could take another breath.

  It had always been her life and she reveled in it.

  The four men had doubled back like she had known they would.

  They smiled, as if they controlled the situation and the odds were in their favor.

  “Let’s see if you got the balls to party with me,” she said and charged the four heavily-armed men, knowing she was going to die.

  Chapter Two

  How much longer can we hold them off? Bernie was out of ammo and her arms were too tired to lift right now.

  Still they came, slamming into the walls of the bar. Pulling the wood off the windows and firing inside. Sometimes they hit someone.

  Bernie looked around the dark room.

  At least four people had been shot. One man had been bludgeoned across his head, and was bleeding profusely.

  No one had fired a single shot in the last three hours because there were no bullets left. No ammo to speak of, and as soon as the enemy had a breach and tried to attack they were forced back with fists and broken furniture.


  She was sure the zombies had made their move as well, since there was no way so many were suddenly in the area. It created a short distraction but not enough to get her people to safety.

  The dumb bastards kicked in the doors to Main Street and let the zombies wander in right behind them, Bernie thought. In their arrogance, they’ve probably killed all of us.

  Mister Hand looked like he was on his last leg, slumped over the bar with a chair leg dangling from his fingers. His wife had a vacant stare as she held a broken bottle and the rest of the chair.

  Was any of this worth it? Opening the door and letting the zombies or the raiders kill her quickly might be the best course of action. They were only prolonging the inevitable.

  Bernie shook her head.

  She couldn’t give up on the few people left with her. Fighting at her side.

  A pounding on the side of a wall brought dust from the ceiling and was bending the sheetrock.

  “They’re trying to break through a wall,” Bernie said.

  She was talking to herself. Everyone else was either physically and mentally exhausted or already trying to fight off those trying to get through other breaches.

  A smaller woman with a bent piece of metal, one end covered in blood, ran past Bernie and stabbed a man in the eye as he tried to enter through one of the broken windows. She pulled down and his face slammed into the windowsill, further slicing him on the shards of glass still embedded in the frame.

  We can’t last forever, Bernie thought. Her arms were so heavy she could barely lift them.

  Shooting from outside dropped her to the ground but she realized it wasn’t aimed in their direction. No new bullets pierced the floor, skipping around the room looking for a victim.

  Stray bullets had killed a couple of their numbers already.

  “Zombies. A lot of them, too,” Profit yelled down the steps. He’d been killing from a distance until he’d run out of bullets but he had stayed on the second floor to monitor their enemy.

  “Is that good or bad?” Bernie asked.

  Profit smiled at the top of the stairs. “It might be good. Let’s get everyone upstairs. I found a storeroom with a heavy door still intact. We can hide. Maybe the zombie horde will wipe everyone out and move along.”

  “Do you really think so?” Bernie was so tired. She was having a hell of a time focusing her eyes and her thoughts right now.

  “I think we need to give it a shot. Being on the ground floor with so many is definitely not a good thing,” Profit said. He came halfway down the steps. “Gather up everything you can carry. Anything we can still use as a weapon. Food and water if there’s any left, too. Hurry.”

  Bernie was frozen in place.

  She heard more gunshots. Lots of gunshots.

  Men and women screaming now.

  So many people dying again.

  Will this nightmare ever end?

  Bernie looked down at her shaking hands covered in blood.

  A banging noise against the outside wall made her hands shake more.

  It was followed by more as the zombies hit the building.

  Bernie was sure if she took a look out one of the breaches she’d see so many zombies packed into the courtyard behind the bar and on the street in front they could hardly move. The other two sides of the building would be filthy with undead, too.

  Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

  Sheer numbers would push through the thin walls and what was left of the barriers. Support pillars would buckle under the strain.

  The upstairs would creak and shift until the floor finally gave way, dropping the last members of their group onto the concrete below.

  Easy prey for the zombies.

  “Seriously. I’ll carry you if I have to but then I can’t promise I won’t try to squeeze your ass,” Profit said. He gripped her hands and she tried to keep them from shaking.

  His smile calmed Bernie enough to focus again.

  The first zombie crashed through what was left of the door, stopping when it couldn’t get past the counters they’d erected as a barricade.

  Zombies behind it were pushing and Bernie knew they’d manage to get the counter out of the way soon enough.

  “Come with me if you want to live,” Profit said in a horrible Arnold Schwarzenegger voice.

  “That’s really cheesy. Even for you,” Bernie said.

  “With the situation we’re currently in, I think I get points for even trying to joke,” Profit said.

  Bernie thought he looked exhausted. She was sure she looked horrible right now and the crazed look in her eyes couldn’t be pleasant, especially when she was supposed to be leading the survivors.

  What survivors? Most of them were dead.

  The world was dead.

  “Last chance to walk or your ass gets a grab,” Profit said.

  Bernie laughed. “I’m coming.”

  “You go first. I need to cover our retreat,” Profit said and grinned. “Plus I can stare at your ass as I follow. It might be the last one I ever see.”

  “If they have a mirror upstairs, look into it and you’ll see another ass,” Bernie said. “Everyone upstairs. Now. Help those who can’t walk or are hurt. We can’t leave anyone behind.”

  She sighed in relief when everyone seemed to have heard the message and began to shuffle to the stairs, dragging those who couldn’t do it themselves.

  Bernie didn’t want to count their numbers because she knew she’d be disappointed.

  “We’re going to make it. We’ve come this far, right?” Profit winked at Bernie.

  She couldn’t believe he was acting so nonchalant until she started to turn away and stopped.

  Profit dropped the facade.

  He looked beaten. He was scared.

  Profit knew what Bernie knew.

  They were all going to die in this bar, eaten by zombies or shot by the living.

  She didn’t know which way she’d rather die at this point.

  The side door crashed in and the first zombie entered the bar area.

  Chapter Three

  His son had given him all of his memories back in a flood. Everything from his conception to his death, as if it was happening in real time and all at once, an overload of memories and sensations.

  A broken leg in high school during a football game. His first sex. His last sex. Killing zombies. Passing his final exam in college. The embarrassment and happiness of becoming a mall cop instead of what Murph called a real cop. His wife. His missed dreams. Vacations. Storms. Births. Deaths. His entire life flashed in seconds, all of it as if it had happened seconds ago. All at once.

  He tried to control his body but it was no use. His son had his full attention and every cell in his body was under command.

  To either side, stretching across the parking lot as far as he would be able to see, if he was allowed to turn his head, were rows of zombies.

  The thirty ranks that had stood in front of him for days had been dispatched once darkness had settled over Daytona Beach.

  Zombies were marching in step like a well-trained military.

  Now it was his turn.

  He didn’t know what they’d be walking into. Had the humans survived the first wave attack? He hoped so. He hoped someone shot him in the head and put him out of his misery.

  There was no reason to live.

  Is this really living?

  He was undead. A walking corpse. A monster that couldn’t do anything but kill everything with a heartbeat. What made it worse was he was controlled by a bigger monster.

  The call, like a whisper, came and shut out his thoughts of his old life.

  The zombies stretching to both sides of him and the many rows behind all received the same message.

  It was time to join the battle and destroy everything in their path.

  Most of the zombies had marched south for months, shambling whichever way they felt the presence of the living. Their path would stray in other directions but the siren’s pull of the south alwa
ys put them back on course.

  He didn’t know if his son had always been behind the call. He doubted it, since he’d come into this dying world long after it had begun to rot.

  Maybe his son had tapped into the putrid death, the rot and ruin, and used it. Turned it to his advantage. Made this awful undead army.

  He tried to fight it again as the call became more insistent.

  If he could break free, he wouldn’t run. There was nowhere to escape to. No sanctuary. No safe haven. All he could hope for was a swift death.

  The zombies around him must still be carrying weapons.

  He’d seen several with modified arms. Chainsaws and swords where hands should be. Spikes driven through their bodies. Machine gun arms.

  If he could get between one of those monstrosities and the living, he could get ripped apart by bullets or sliced to pieces by a sword-arm.

  Anything to end this madness.

  He knew who was out there, too. On the other side of this fight.

  What would she do when she saw him in this state? Would she try to help or cut him down?

  It would be helping if she killed him.

  The mental strain was too much. His thoughts were being blocked as commands began to pour into what was left of his mind.

  There was no way to fight this.

  John Murphy, father of the monster trying to destroy the world, had no choice but to lead the undead army into battle to destroy not only every human in their path, from here to the ocean, but Darlene Bobich, the real love of his life.

  He took a step forward, against his will, and gave the signal to begin the march over the bridge and across the river.

  Chapter Four