It is available to download here. Sunkissed will be the first of two zombie novels I'm writing this year,
so, WAIT! Theres more!
Here's a sneak-peek of the novel!
Stealing out into the hall, we make it swiftly down the
staircase. Danny was right; the apartment is silent, save for the occasional
scream that pierces through the south wall. As our feet quickly descend the
staircase, my eyes scan the doors on every landing, but each one is shut tight.
It’s not long until we’re on the ground floor with the last door that we have
to pass through before us.
I look over my shoulder to Danny, nodding once. “Are you
ready? Do you remember where the Chevy is?”
“Yeah. Around the corner on Roland,” Danny nods back. She takes
in another shaking breath; I do the same.
“On three. Run straight in that direction. Try to avoid
the…things,” I end bleakly, my attention back on the door.
“See you there,” Danny promises.
I shift my grip on the axe, my palm already sweating in
nervousness. “Okay. One…two…three!”
I turn the knob and slam the door open and we burst outside.
I run blindly forward into the courtyard.
A woman’s scream shreds the initial calm of the outside air;
I take half a second to check it’s not Danny. But she was at my heels,
sprinting in the direction of the street. My eyes hastily scanned the area;
undead swarm at the edges of the courtyard, the blood on them wet and their
skin sagging. My eyes connect with one standing not far from us, and before I know
it he’s on our trail.
I scream incoherently at Danny to move faster and she bolts
ahead. Getting a stronger grip on my axe, I throw my arm back at the
approaching undead man, who’s already close enough that his heavy breathing
fills my ears.
The torrential uproar becomes a dull background noise. The
axe blade lands in the space between his shoulder and neck and sticks. My
balance thrown, I stumble into the man and use both arms to wrench the axe back
out, spinning around to lurch after Danny.
He pauses but doesn’t stop; in a heartbeat, his unsteady
breathing rasps in my ear. I stumble downhill and into a parking lot at the
corner of Roland. Look first, a voice
– my mind, in haste – commands, and I glance over my shoulder to find him. His
blue eyes, red where they should be white, a chunk of skin torn away to reveal
the skull beneath his brow, meet mine as I drive the axe blade into his neck.
I don’t decapitate him – not completely. I throw my weight
in the other direction and the axe is easier to pull out this time. Cold blood splatters
against my bare arms and he falls, his head collapsed to one side, his neck
muscles and bone splintered and exposed. I turn on my heel, my stomach in somersaults,
and race again after Danny.
She’s nearly to the car, and although her hammer is bloodied
she looks unscathed. As I watch her, the sun glimmering off the shining body catches
my eye and temporarily blinds me.
“Danny!” I exclaim, falling slightly behind.
We emerge onto the sunlit street, crowded with cars, bikes,
and corpses. A sordid scorched smell reaches my nose – like a barbeque gone
very, very wrong – and I look for the source as I run. The smell must be coming
from the corpses I avoid. They probably
won’t be corpses for much longer, I think. I suddenly skid to a halt.
“Hayden!” Danny calls out. She reaches the car and wrenches
open the backdoor, throwing the bags in. “Hayden, come on!”
I turn slowly in place, my eyes scanning the long road that
stretches out behind us; in the distance I see my previous attacker, stumbling
down a set of courtyard stairs I just passed. The chaos of the moaning undead,
the screaming nearly-dead, and the whirring of sirens echoes in my ears. Unlike
the adjacent street we had come down, this street is flooded in sunlight. It’s also
peculiarly empty of the infected.
“Danny,” I say, in a voice loud enough that she can hear me.
“They can’t go out in the sunlight!” Suddenly the decomposing bodies and the
rotten smell plaguing my nose make perfect sense. The corpses in the roads are
fallen undead that were pushed out into the sunlight, and before they could
make it back to the shade of the tall buildings, of the trees in the courtyard,
they were burned to death.
Danny pauses, taking a moment to look around. “Thank God,”
she whispers. “They have a weakness.”
“Yeah,” I mutter, bitterness overtaking me. “Until dusk.”
