White Ash on Bone: A Zombie Novel by Jason Campagna Page A

store.  Ted's screams drew the dead further back into the store toward the storage room. There they confronted the cheap construction wood door that separated the living from the dead.  The weight of zombies pressed in on the door.  To its credit, the door held out, but its entire frame gave in pushing the top of the stacked boxes over.
    The survivors rushed to the service entrance corridor and tried to move away Ted's newly stacked barricade of boxes.  In the scramble to the door, they fell into each other.  Behind them, the zombies were breaking the “employees’ only” barrier down, and clawing their way over the breached door frame.  Two of the creatures got through the press of the undead and rolled to the floor. Their hands reached out at Ted.
    Ted tried to kick away at the one creature, but it grabbed on to his leg and sunk his teeth into Ted's shin.  Ted screamed out in pain.  One of the other survivors grabbed hold of the zombie to try and drag him off Ted only to be embraced from behind by several pairs of outstretched hands. 
    In the service corridor, Alison and Ginger ran.  The noise from electronics store attracted several ambling forms from further down the passage behind the girls.
    "I think we’re faster than them,” Alison said.  "Just make sure you don’t lose your keys."
    "When we get outside, keep running," Ginger said. "Don’t stop for anything.  My car is a red Saturn sitting off by its self."
    They burst through the door and into the dimly lit parking lot.  There were a couple of vehicles driving through the lot with figures of people chasing them.  One of the vehicles slammed into a parked minivan; glass shattered from the impact.  The undead caught up with the vehicle, and climbed their way through the window to get at the driver. 
    Ginger pointed at her car sitting alone under one of the lot's light-poles, "There it is."
    Behind them, the service door to the mall burst open; a dozen or more ghouls took chase after the two girls.
    The girls sprinted their way to the car passing rows of vehicles.
    Out from behind a parked van, a zombie stepped in front of Alison and tried to grab her.  Alison ran smack into the zombie and knocked him over with kinetic energy.  She plunged into a rolling fall to the ground, but managed to get right back up a number of feet away from the zombie.  She kept running while ignoring the sting from her hands.
    Ginger reached the car and unlocked it with her remote control.  Alison opened the passenger door to the car by the time Ginger brought the engine to life. 
    Out of no-where, a young teenage girl appeared in the headlights and then ran to the back passenger door.  She banged on the window desperately.  The undead from inside the mall were about to catch up with her.
    "Let me in, let me in," the girl pleaded.
    Ginger unlocked the door, and the girl scrambled inside to the safety of the back seat.  Ginger slammed on the gas and left the undead grasping at the moving vehicle.
    More of the creatures closed in on the car from all sides.  Ginger swerved left and right trying to avoid them and other parked cars.  Bodies bounced off the sides of the car more than a couple times.  She found an empty lane and accelerated away from the mall heading north.
    Driving home, they could see house after house under siege from the undead.
    "My God, they’re everywhere," Alison said.
    "Please Lord; don’t let them be at my parents’ house.  Let my family be safe," Ginger prayed aloud.
    "What do we do, if they are there?" the teenage girl in the backseat said.
    Ginger's mind tried to play out a scenario of what she would do if she found her family dead from these things.  Her mind couldn’t comprehend any kind of sane reaction.
    A woman ran out into the road in front of the car waving her arms franticly. Her clothes were torn like she had been running through the woods that she emerged from.
    Ginger caught the briefest glimpse of her mother’s face,