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  * * *

  “Look!” Martin screams and I reluctantly turn around in my seat so that I have a clear view out the back window. Black choppers are spinning through the sky like Frisbees. Attached to them are DeadBorn with rotten, boney wings. They're exploding into lumps of flesh, sliced into pieces by the rotor blades, but it doesn't stop them. They smash through the windows of the helicopters and tear the pilots into pieces. Guns are exploding and bullets are peppering the crowd of undead in random bursts that shake them but don't drop a single one.

  Arms and legs come spinning off, and one even cracks the back windshield. Holly swerves a bit but doesn't stop, not even as the arm grasps onto the trunk with writhing fingers. Blood trails out behind the car like a row of bread crumbs, but I don't care. I can't stop watching the carnage in the sky, watching any hope of getting out of this alive go down in flames. Some of the choppers are trying to run, but they aren't getting any further than the ones that have already hit the ground behind us. They're exploding in rushes of heat that knock the DeadBorn down and catch some of them on fire. The necromancer watches this passively, as if she isn't frightened that one of the helicopters could come down on her.

  Holey, gray wings flash and the sky turns dark as a horde of them come up from behind the overpass, take over the sun, and turn the day to night.

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  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue - Outbreak

  Chapter 1 - Vino

  Chapter 2 - Onslaught

  Chapter 3 - Redoubtable

  Chapter 4 - Maladroit

  Chapter 5 - Repudiation

  Chapter 6- Malodorous

  Chapter 7 - Abscond

  Chapter 8 - Melee

  Chapter 9 - Batten

  Chapter 10 - Ardent

  Chapter 11 - Ad Intrim

  Chapter 12 - Dissaccord

  Chapter 13 - Mendacious

  Chapter 14 - Inadvertent

  Chapter 15 - Molder

  Chapter 16 - Proximate

  Chapter 17 - Irrepressible

  Chapter 18 - Premonitory

  Chapter 19 - Legion

  Chapter 20 - Mothers

  Epilogue - Coda

  Glossary - Galen's DeadBorn Dictionary

  Enjoyed This?

  More Books By

  About the Author

  C.M. Stunich

  Sarian Royal

  DeadBorn

  Copyright © C.M. Stunich

  All rights reserved. Formatted in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  For information address Sarian Royal Indie Publishing, 1863 Pioneer Pkwy. E Ste. 203, Springfield, OR 97477-3907.

  www.sarianroyal.com

  ISBN-10: 1938623193 (eBook)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-938623-19-6 (eBook)

  Cover art and design © Amanda Carroll and Sarian Royal

  Optimus Princeps font © Manfred Klein

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, businesses, or locales is coincidental and is not intended by the author.

  for my brother, Drew,

  who'd survive any zombie apocalypse,

  DeadBorn or otherwise

  PROLOGUE

  Outbreak

  Ten Minutes Before …

  They say the passage of time heals all wounds.

  But not mine. Never mine. My wounds are the type that fester, that ooze, that grow necrotic. I have tried to forget, tried to let time heal me with callous fingers. It hasn't worked. Not one bit. That little part of me, that infected, pulsing, aching wound has now burst, showering my soul with despair and I think I've lost it. I think I've lost my heart.

  I press my fingers to the cold earth as rain crashes down around me, like bullets peppering the soil with divots.

  “I have to get it back,” I say to cold marble, to stone that can't reply. Not like she could if she were here. The absence of her warmth has left this wound inside of me, but I know I can heal it if I try. I brought her heart back before, turned white fingers pink and glassy eyes full. I did it before and I can do it again.

  I close my eyes and I search for that wounded part, grab hold of it and wrap it around me. I take my fervor and my love and my desperation and I push that down into the earth until I feel the echo of a response. I take shallow breaths. I have never tried anything quite so big as this. When has there ever been the chance? They locked me away before I could ever try, when I was just a girl, a sad, lonely miserable girl and they took the one thing away from me that meant everything.

  “Everything,” I whisper as I hear footsteps pounding towards me. My captors have found me, chased me down like a dog with nets and shots full of chemicals that cloud my brain and block my gift. “She means everything.”

  Earth explodes, the dead rise, and the living scream.

  CHAPTER 1

  Vino

  Ten Hours Before …

  I'm lying on my bed with my headphones on, wishing my mother would send her book club friends away. They always pull at my hair, kiss my cheeks, and run their fucking nails over my forearms. They also haven't read a book in years.

  “Galen!” My mother's voice cuts through my music, and I pull out an earbud. She wants me to come downstairs and visit, eat cupcakes that the women bake to get me to hang around. But their eyes rove too much, cut too deep into me. Their husbands never touch them anymore, so I can understand in a way, but it still disturbs me. I ignore her and pull out my phone to call Holly. Holly. I smile and in my head I can see her swollen lips and the way her mussy hair sticks to them when the wind blows.

  “I'm watching that video you made for class,” she says by way of answer. Holly's strange like that. “It's so fucking incredible, Galen. I can't stop watching it.” She pauses and I hear an intake of breath.

  “Galen!” My mother's voice is buzzing closer, like a swarm of bees.

  “Can I come over?” I ask suddenly, wanting to see her. I can hear her nodding, face brushing against the speaker on her ancient phone. Then she hangs up. I smile wider and sit up, stretching. I fetch my shirt from where I've thrown it over my desk chair, sniff it and decide it's clean enough. I also pack a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, some deodorant. I'll be spending the night, always do. Holly's mom likes me better than wine. I wish I could say that was true for the woman knocking on my door.

  “Galen!” I ignore her and open my desk drawer. I don't want Holly to think I'm expecting something from her, but I want to be prepared, just in case. I take a handful of condoms and stuff them in my backpack. I grab my baseball bat in case we go to the park and face off against Holly's rivals, the girls who think they'll beat her out for any potential scholarships. Holly wants to go pro and she knows the competition is tough. “Galen!”

  I open my window and climb out so that I'm standing on the roof, facing the highway and the flow of traffic. I inch my way over to the balcony that comes off of the guest room and hop over the railing. There's a set of wooden stairs here that leads down to the backyard. I take them two at a time and pull my bike from the mess of blackberry bushes that have taken over the better part of my father's flower beds. When he died, my mother let them have the yard, claiming she'd never set foot in it again. She was telling the truth.

  We don't have a shed or a garage, so I spend fifteen minutes cleaning spiders and thorny branches from the spokes. By the time I set off, the sun is dipping into the horizon and I'm already yawning.

  The ride to Holly's is a long one. I have to cros
s three bridges and two highways. It takes me an hour, but when I finally arrive, dinner is on the table and Holly's father has a new comic book to show me. He collects them, whether they're worth something or not.

  “Look at this,” he says to me as soon as I walk in the front door. I left my bike on the porch and just went in. I never knock. “Batman, number 150. Came out in 1962. The guy at the yard sale wanted a quarter for it.” I'm nodding, but all I can see is Holly coming down the stairs in a purple dress that swishes around her ankles when she moves. Seeing Holly in a dress is like winning the lottery – it could happen, but it isn't likely. I smile and take her in, absorb that image, sure that it's one of the rarest sights I'll ever see.

  “Dad,” she admonishes in that tone that's both loving and scolding. He either ignores her or doesn't hear her and keeps talking.

  “So I says to him, so I says,” he pauses and taps at the plastic wrap with his fingers. “I says to him, 'It says right here on the front that it's twelve cents,' and the man looks down, and do you know what he says?” I shake my head and wave at Mrs. Arget who's just emerging from the kitchen. “He says, 'You know, you're right.' And he sells it to me for a dime. A dime,” he emphasizes. “And it's worth at least twenty bucks, I'll betcha.” Mr. Arget shakes his head and ruffles my hair. “You're a good boy, Galen,” he says and starts off towards his office.

  “You're eating at the dinner table with everybody else,” Mrs. Arget calls after him, giving me a raised eyebrow. “Ever since you set that game up on his laptop, he sits in there twenty-four/seven and plays.” I grimace but smile. Holly's already wrapping her arms around my waist and laying her head against my chest. Mrs. Arget doesn't say a word.

  “Homemade pasta,” Holly says by way of greeting. “Dad made it; Mom made the sauce.” She pulls back and grins up at me. “I made the salad. You – ” She pokes me in the chest. “You wash the dishes.” I'm already laughing, bending down and kissing her on the lips. This is so much better than Mom and her book club, I think as Holly takes my hand and sits us down to eat.

  ***

  Eight Hours and Twenty Minutes Before …

  After dinner, we go upstairs and make out for awhile before Holly declares herself “hot” and gets up to open the window. The summer breeze tickles my nostrils with the scent of flowers and even at this late hour, we can hear lawn mowers buzzing.

  “Your video is fucking incredible,” she tells me and my heart skips a beat. “I think you should enter it into a contest or something.” I sigh and look around for my shirt. Holly took it off of me and threw it, and now it's gone.

  “I don't want to enter it into a contest,” I say and rest my hands under my chin. The shirt has disappeared into the mess that is Holly's bedroom. It's a sea of candy wrappers and dirty laundry. Her parents don't force her to clean it like mine does. “I made it for you,” I say, trying to lift the irritation in her face by softening my words. I roll to my side and watch her start the movie over again. “I only turned it in for class because I spent all my time working on it and forgot the other one.” This makes Holly smile as she turns to face me.

  Then the crack of wood cuts through the room and she is at the window, dirty blonde hair swirling around her pale face. Her lips are dry and cracked, always blistered because she refuses to wear lip balm and spends all day in the sun. She nibbles them fiercely and spins to face me, pale eyes flaming.

  “The Garcia sisters are outside,” she says and even though it's getting dark, we both spring into action, pulling on socks and shoes, gathering balls, gloves, bats. I have to borrow one of Holly's shirts since I can't find mine. It's black with a bowl of strawberries on it. Eat Fresh, Live Fresh, Stay Fresh. It's a shirt she got at the farmer's market, but Holly likes it because she says it sounds like a tampon ad. Holly doesn't change clothes and looks ridiculously beautiful with her dirty white socks and ratty tennis shoes underneath all the satin of that pretty dress.

  “Let's kick some serious ass,” she says to me, slapping me a high five. We always lose to the Garcia sisters, but it's never Holly's fault; it's mine.

  ***

  Six Hours and Thirty-Seven Minutes Before …

  Holly and I crawl back to the house after the cops show up and tell us the park is closed. Holly is disappointed, but I'm not: we were in the bottom of the fifth inning and the score was 6-2, Garcia Sisters. I didn't score a single run.

  Her parents intercept us in the hallway and treat us to homemade sponge cake with fresh strawberries. There isn't much to say so the four us sit in silence and eat before Holly and I retreat up to her bedroom.

  We start an action film that neither of us can get into because we're both so nervous about what may or may not happen between us. I tell Holly I've got condoms and she blushes; Holly never blushes. I blush, too, but I get them anyway so she can look at them. It isn't like we haven't had sex before, but when we did, it was at Holly's grandmother's house in a guest room. There were people everywhere and we had to be quiet. Also, we didn't use a condom. Holly tells me I'm lucky she didn't get pregnant since it would've ruined her baseball career.

  We have sex and it's better than before but still not great. Holly tells me we'll get there.

  We fall asleep and a few hours later, I wake to find hell crouching on my doorstep.

  CHAPTER 2

  Onslaught

  Twenty Minutes After …

  I wake up and Holly isn't in bed. It's five in the morning, so I'm surprised she isn't there. I check the bathroom, but it's empty. I brush my teeth because my breath smells like old whipped cream and sponge cake and I don't want Holly to smell it when she comes back. I climb into bed again and wait. Fifteen minutes later I get restless and crawl back out of the covers. I grab a sweatshirt off the back of the computer chair and slip it over my arms. Then I tiptoe into the hallway and check the guest bedroom first. Maybe Holly finally got tired of my snoring and bailed on me?

  She isn't there. The pink and white room sits in shafts of quiet light from the street lamps outside. Already, morning is coming, teasing the edges of the sky with bright fingers. Outside the window, I catch a glimpse of somebody standing in the street. I take a closer look and realize that it's Holly.

  I race downstairs, trying my best to stay silent so that Holly's parents don't wake up. It isn't too difficult; the front door is already open, so I walk outside and pause at the edge of the walkway that runs between the flower beds.

  Holly is standing in the middle of the street still dressed in her pajamas. I move closer to her, surprised at how cold the pavement is under my bare feet. It might be summer, but the nights are still chilly.

  “I had a dream,” Holly says without turning to face me. Her mussy hair is blowing around her face and sticking to her lips which are moist with tears. I squeeze the edges of Holly's gray sweatshirt together and try to zip it. It's too small for me, but I finally manage to connect the tracks and pull the zipper up to my belly button. Holly is staring at the hill ahead of us where the houses get a little bit bigger, a little bit nicer. The sun is rising behind it, tinting the sky a pale yellow, like butter. “You were in it,” she says as I reach out and put my hand on her shoulder. Her pink robe is billowing out behind her, brushing the skin on my arms. I shiver and step forward, wrap my arms around her neck and put my chin on her head. I don't know what she's doing outside, but I can tell that whatever the reason, she's upset. “Only you were dead,” she adds as she pulls away and turns to face me. Her face is frozen, tight with fear. I don't say anything. I'm not sure what to say really.

  Holly turns back to the hill and takes a step forward. I can hear something now. A shuffling, like a group of people walking. A parade? I wonder, but that's silly. It's far too early for that. A practice parade? Do parades practice? I don't know, but I stand there with Holly anyway.

  “I had a dream, too,” I say, trying to smile and lighten the mood. Holly isn't looking at me, and she isn't smiling, but I keep going. “You were in it.” The shuffling is getter
louder. “Only you were …” I pause. Someone has just crested the hill. It's a man, or maybe a woman, dressed in a black cloak. It's strange enough that I stop talking and stare. Holly is shaking now and her mouth is opening and closing like a fish. The figure pauses and waits there, limned in red-orange from the morning sun. The black fabric is whipping in the breeze and the shuffling is loud enough now that I start to wonder why none of the neighbors have come out to see what it is.

  Heads are appearing in my field of vision. They're far enough way that it takes a moment for me to realize that something is wrong. There's a scent in the air that I don't recognize but that sets me on edge. It smells like the docks on a summer day, or the fridge at Holly's cabin, after the power had gone out. The way the venison had spoiled in the hundred degree heat. Rot.

  The figure holds up a hand and the sleeve of the cloak falls away revealing pale flesh and feminine fingers. I'm pretty sure now that the figure is a woman. Her hand drops and her finger points seemingly straight at Holly's chest. Holly's breathing hard and her eyes are glazed. She's scared, terrified maybe. This makes me terrified, too. Something is wrong here, but I can't put my finger on it. Holly spins to face me and grabs at the fabric of the sweatshirt. There's not much extra so her fingers dig painfully into my skin.

  “We have to go,” she says, glancing over her shoulder. Faces are visible now. Skewed faces, terrible faces, dirty faces. Something is really wrong. I try to ask Holly what it is, but she starts to drag me. “We have to go now,” she says, pulling me. I stumble after her for a moment, pausing just long enough to look behind us.

  The shuffling is louder, faster now. The people in front start to run, lope, shuffle. They're not walking right. Something is very wrong.

  Over the crest of the hill comes a horde of rotten things, spilling down the streets in a sea of broken skin, dirty clothes, blood, bones, flesh. I see things I've never seen before spilling from the abdomens of human bodies, splattering the ground. I scream, but Holly's smarter, tugging me into the house. I catch a glimpse of some of the things breaking off and spreading out, heading towards the houses on either side. There's no time to warn them. The creatures are already halfway down the hill and they're fast, much faster than me, maybe not faster than Holly. Holly throws me against the wall and slams the door, locks it, deadbolts it.