UniteDead Kingdom 2

Stuart Irving

Description

What do you do when you strive to be better ... but the world around you goes from bad to worse?

A sequel to UniteDead Kingdom, the sage continues where we left off, in 2030, with the remains of the group of would-be heroes trying to reverse the UK's zombification.
They meet new friends and have to overcome their differences in order to stay alive. They also encounter dangerous enemies, who test their trust and will to live.
Revenge drives them on a new journey and threatens to destroy them, all the while trying to keep their secrets - and a multitude of snarling teeth - at bay.

Sujets

• Science-Fiction
• Toute la Science-Fiction
• Horror
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 16 décembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456630195
• Langue: English

Extrait

UNITE DEAD
KINGDOM 2
 
 
By
Stuart Irving
Copyright 2018 Mr Stuart Irving,
All rights reserved.
 
 
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com
 
 
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-3019-5
 
 
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Start with The End in Mind
Chapter 2: No Snooze is Good News
Chapter 3: Digging Your Own Grave
Chapter 4: Build the Wall
Chapter 5: Race to the Top
Chapter 6: The Treachery of Endings
Chapter 7: Die-hydrogen Monoxide
Chapter 8: Ever-Decreasing Psychos
Chapter 9: Be Careful What You Ask For
Chapter 10: Return of the Living, Dead
Chapter 11: Hotel Killifornia
Chapter 12: Room Service
Chapter 13: The Return of the McMaster
Chapter 14: Inflexion
Chapter 15: Gordon & the Fish
Chapter 16: Brother Beyond
Chapter 17: Pastures New
Chapter 18: Simon Says … Too Much
Chapter 19: Bike Shop Bust-Up
Chapter 20: Desperate Times
Chapter 21: The Peloton at the End of the World
Chapter 22: The World Gets Bigger
Chapter 23: The Sword and the Stone Age
Chapter 24: The Troubles
Chapter 25: Sophie’s Choice
Chapter 26: The Road
Chapter 27: Hell is Other People
Chapter 28: Away to Stamford Bridge
Chapter 29: Religion in Pieces
Chapter 30: Bike and Talk
Chapter 31: Prepped to Kill
Chapter 32: Return Leg in Stamford Bridge
Chapter 33: Infinite Retribution
Chapter 34: The Search is On
Chapter 35: Extenuating Circumstances
Chapter 36: Morning Glory
Chapter 37: A Good Son
Chapter 38: One Down
Chapter 39: 2nd Best
Chapter 40: Dark After Dawn
Chapter 41: Neighbourhood Watch
Chapter 42: To a Bullet, the Whole World is Flesh
Chapter 43: Survival Instinct
Chapter 44: Betrayal Cubed
Chapter 45: Delusions’ End
 
Chapter 1: Start with The End in Mind
“Listen to me Kevin. Don’t you dare go anywhere else; head straight for the church. I’ll meet you there at ten o’clock, that’s in twenty minutes. Leave now, you promise? DO YOU PROMISE?”
Claire closed her eyes and waited for a response. Silence. Then …
“I’m scared sis, I think they’re outside.”
“OK Kevin, keep quiet now. Don’t cry. Sssh, listen … sssh! Listen carefully. They are slow-moving, so keep—” The signal dropped. Claire stared at her left forearm, willing the connection to come back.
“Shit!” She closed her eyes and tried to compose herself. But then came the image of her crazy sister running off an hour ago, away from the
[ undead ]
infected people outside. I can’t lose my brother as well. A solitary tear formed in her eye. She wiped it away and willed herself to take action.
She looked around her bedroom. What should I take with me ? Do I have time? The church was mid-way between her and Kevin. I hope it’s the right choice. It’s the only place we have shared memories as a family and I pray Molly has the good sense to make her way there. Then we’ll go south, through fields and woods, and get the hell out of London.
The scraping and banging downstairs grew louder. More have joined the one I saw in the suit. She went through her bedroom drawers to collect her passport and her ruby necklace, a gift from her Mum and Dad on her eighteenth birthday. I remember Dad saying it matched my hair. All day he looked so sad and yet so happy at the same time. As if he wanted me to become a woman but was disappointed that it actually happened.
Claire thought about a weapon. She remembered the long, serrated knife that she used to cut open boxes of produce and vegetables only the previous day. But it was downstairs in the storeroom — behind the till with one doorless exit. They’ll break down the front glass door soon enough. If I’m still in the storeroom when they do, I’m screwed. Shit. It’s now or never …
 
Claire tip-toed down the stairs, as the noise from the scraping and banging on the shutters grew and grew. When she reached the bottom she stepped on a loose floorboard. It creaked noisily.
“Fuck” she whispered and stopped dead. She waited and listened for what felt like an eternity … but there was no response outside. She tip-toed round the staircase to the main shop floor and started to smell the vegetables and fresh fruit … and something else beyond. A siren went off in the distance to the rear and kept going as if stuck. It agitated them; they scraped and banged the shutters with growing violence and urgency. The shadows and noise suggested up to a dozen of them. Her throat clicked; she could not muster enough saliva to swallow.
She hurried behind the till to the storeroom doorway and reached for the light-switch. Her hand hovered over it. What if it draws even more attention? She looked at the front of the shop. What, more attention than the siren? There’s already a dozen maniacs trying to get in. She suddenly felt silly and switched it on. A large dark figure appeared behind the boxes with its arms outstretched. She gasped and jumped back … and a moment later realised it was an overcoat on a hanger. But in jumping back she swung her arm into a display cabinet of lottery tickets and vaping devices. It teetered on the edge of the counter, millimetres from falling. Then she sighed. That was close. That would have been louder than a siren. She reached over to pull it back to safety but nudged it with her elbow instead, knocking it forward. The whole cabinet slowly toppled over and crashed loudly onto the tiled floor.
The response was immediate. The groaning and scraping at the shutters grew even louder, punctuated by thuds against the glass front door. She tip-toed down the drinks aisle to see the door and jumped when a man’s bloodied fist pounded at the glass. Claire watched in horror as more of them appeared, smearing the glass with their vacant faces.
It felt like her heart rate had doubled and she scrambled back into the storeroom. She searched for the boxes she had opened the day before and found the serrated knife, lying right on top. She grabbed it and reached into a box to get a bottle of water and glugged it down, soothing her parched throat. It momentarily distracted her from her anxiety until she heard a loud crack at the front door. The fright made her belch some the water back up. She threw the empty bottle at the back wall and stepped forward into the shop with the knife in her hand, trembling …
 
She took two more steps down the aisle to have a line-of-sight with the front door, in readiness to open it and barge past them. But on her second step the glass cracked noisily as three figures started to break in. She glimpsed smeared blood and spittle, ripped clothes and open mouths. She stepped back again before they saw her. Her heart thundered. Fuck, w hat do I do, what do they want? She looked down at her sleeve to see if there was any network. Completely dead. She heard another crack and she stepped back. The glass won’t last much longer. There’s no way they’re going to leave me alone. She looked up and grimaced. I’ve no other choice.
She retreated down the aisle and went semi-crouched into the next aisle, looking for anything she could use as rope. There was a small section her mum and dad stocked with ‘miscellaneous’ items to draw in new customers. But there was nothing but some sewing thread and ribbon. Shit, there’s only one thing for it …
 
She ran back upstairs to her bedroom window. She put the knife on the window-sill, opened the curtains fully and looked south-east over London. She could see multiple smoke plumes in every direction including one reaching over a hundred metres in the air and big enough to form a mushroom cloud. Fifty or so helicopters and air-cabs pockmarked the sky, all heading south or south-east out of the city.
Various small groups of people were fighting hand-to-hand in nearby streets, on roads, on pavements, in gardens and in the nearby park. Some people were motionless on the ground and several were sprinting in all directions. Emergency vehicle sirens blared from everywhere, dogs barked and howled furiously from nearby houses and blood-curdling screams emanated from multiple sources.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
She shook her head slowly and shut her eyes as if to dismiss the nightmare scene. She opened them again and rubbed them, mouth agape, trying to process what she saw. Then she heard another crack from downstairs and cursed as she quickly refocused on her escape. The window was double-glazed and about a metre tall and two metres wide. She opened one side as far as possible: about sixty degrees. No way I can fit my mattress through this. She peered out the window; the drop to the tarmac looked sickening, I’ll definitely need the mattress to break my fall. She looked at the other smaller window facing the side street. Claire went to it and held her breath as she opened the curtains wide.
It looked onto a row of back-gardens and a side street directly below. Several of the houses had broken windows or doors or were on fire. Two doors down a young-looking man was crawling on his belly across the carpet of broken glass, leaving a wide trail of blood behind him to the smashed patio doors. He was groaning and shouting ‘help’ over and over again.
Diagonally to the right a house was billowing smoke. When it cleared for a second she could see into the living room where three children clawed and bit a sobbing middle-aged woman as she tried to fight them off. Thankfully, the smoke engulfed them once more.
Only the house opposite her looked empty and untouched.
To her left the garden gate hung open and both windows and patio door were smashed. An older man lay in the garden, writhing and struggling as two young women knelt on either side, biting lumps off him whilst a little brown terrier yelped like crazy. Claire put a hand to her mouth and s