Dead End: Midnight Hollow by Penn Cassidy (free novel 24 TXT) 📗

heads were on a swivel, and another moan rattled through the air. It was sort of gurgly and broken and sounded like… No… No fucking way was I going to voice what it sounded like. Not here. Watching The Walking Dead before bed time messed me up with nightmares, and now it seemed in the daytime, it caused me to hear things.

Dragging footsteps echoed between the sides of the buildings, but I couldn’t tell which direction they were coming from. Freddy and Norman inched backwards, keeping me between their massive bodies. I appreciated the thought, but we really needed to get out of here before whatever was making those noises found us alone in the fucking dark alley where no one could see us from the street.

The lanterns began to flicker, and a cold wind blew my hair off my shoulder. I was regretting my choice in skimpy attire as I shivered. Norman groaned, “What now?” as more broken moans joined together in a haunting chorus.

Out of the shadows stepped several slender figures, moving in jerky, harsh movements. I yelped and jumped back, heart pounding against my ribs painfully. My brain instantly recognized the danger we were in. I was a lifelong horror buff, but the one thing I’d always been deathly afraid of were zombies. Give me demons, vampires, and werewolves, and I’d be fine…but zombies were fucking terrifying, and they were headed right towards us.

It was wrong on so many levels, especially when my gaze swung over to the zombie at the end of the alleyway behind the cluster of brain eating corpses with a freaking marionette dummy strapped to its bony chest in a baby carrier. Why did that dummy fucking turn up everywhere? I had to squint my eyes to see him fully, but I could have sworn his arm moved as if pointing at us, unless the zombie was pulling a string I couldn’t see. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The doll’s mouth looked like it was vibrating as a creepy as fuck laugh slipped past his unhinged painted on lips.

‘It’s close to midnight’

The music made me jump and I whipped my head to Freddy, forgetting about the zombie carrying around a dummy for a second. “Are you freaking kidding me right now?!” He fumbled for his phone, but the shadows were coming closer, so he had no choice but to just shove it in his pocket and let the fucking alarm play.

‘You try to scream...but terror takes the sound before you make it’

The zombies were getting closer now. I searched my person for any object I could possibly use as a weapon, but all I had were a few feather quills. Holy shit, this was not how I imagined going out. And with a fucking soundtrack, no less…

‘As horror looks you right between the eyes’

“Here’s the plan,” Norman said in a murmur. “we fucking rush them. We run for it, barrel our way through, and keep running.”

“And get bitten?!” My eyes were wide, and I shook my head back and forth. “That’s the worst plan ever! Not all of us have vampire speed, Norman!”

“Well if we don’t do it now, more will come,” he stressed, his fangs shoving past his gums into his bottom lip.

“Technically, we don’t know if they're the biting kind… Maybe zombies are just regular—”

A growling moan ripped through what Freddy was about to say as one of the zombies appeared seemingly out of nowhere. In the light of a lantern, its grotesque features were enhanced. Its eyes were sunken in, and the whites were glossed over in pure blackness, soulless pits with hunger and desperation in them.

I screamed and jumped back, Norman steadying me by the waist. I heard a ripping noise, and I looked to my left and watched as Freddy shifted his fingers into massive claws. I sucked in a breath. “I didn’t know you could do that!”

He looked at his claws with wide eyes, now shining bright yellow. “You and me both…” He smiled a heartbeat later and winked a wolfy eye. “But it’s convenient, right?”

I was too scared to say anything particularly witty, and I think he knew that. Freddy slashed at the zombie, nearly severing its head with one swipe, before staring at his hand again in shock. “Holy fuck, that actually worked!”

“We need to move!” Norman urged, grabbing me by the hand and tugging me down the alley. Freddy followed.

‘You hear the creature creepin up behind… You’re out of time’

I watched Freddy cut a few more of the zombies down as they stumbled out of the shadows. “Where the hell are they coming from?!” I shouted over the music that wouldn’t stop playing over and over again.

We kept running as we cleared the end of the street and didn’t stop. I spotted an old building up ahead with a revolving glass door. It looked like a theater, and the marquee above had some kind of play listed for tonight’s event.

‘You're fighting for your life inside a killer thriller tonight’

We made a beeline for the theater with zombies on our heels, snapping their teeth each time they got close enough to bite. Slamming through the revolving doors was comical, and I was surprised we didn’t break the damn thing. I didn’t know how smart these zombies were, but I really hoped the door would slow them down.

“This way,” Norman said, leading us through the darkened theater. It was too early for anyone to be here, and the hallways were empty. Freddy’s alarm kept repeating, echoing off the walls, making my teeth grind.

It smelled musty, but not the bad kind, just old. The walls were decorated in a deep red velvet wallpaper, and there were massive portraits adorning them, of what I assumed to be famous playwrights in this world. We took a staircase to the right that brought us to a landing. There were a few doors scattered around the dark hallways, but Norman seemed to pick one at random and shove his