Book Debut: Undead America: No Angels by Leah Rhyne
Back Cover
Jenna, Sam and Lola were lucky to
survive the horrors of a zombie-filled New Orleans. But they still have a lot
to learn.
In a zombie world, you can never let
your guard down. Even when you think
you're safe, dangers lurk around every corner. Sometimes the dangers are from
the undead, but more often they're from the living.
It's also much easier to inspire a
group to fight than it is to lead them through everyday hardship. Jenna once
saved lives, but the pressures managing an ever-growing group of survivors soon
wears her thin.
And finally, in Undead America, no
one remains unscathed. No one is whole, and almost everyone has something to
hide.
From the bowels of a rundown
farmhouse to the plains of Nebraska, from a leather-clad living monster to the
tiniest of child zombies, there are truly No Angels.
Excerpt
He appeared over a haystack hill
moments later, lurching and stumbling, lunging towards the sounds he’d heard in
the quiet prairie land. One zombie. I sighed and tightened my grip on the Slugger
in my hands, preparing for battle.
Allie appeared at my shoulder,
peeking over my head. Her jaw hung
slack, and she covered her gaping mouth with the back of her hand. “Oh no. Oh my God, Jenna, I am so sorry. I don’t
know what I was thinking. I wasn’t
thinking, actually, I was just...playing.
And now...oh my God now! What are we going to do?”
I turned around. “It’s fine,” I said, and I really meant
it. “I understand. It’s just one, I can handle him.”
But then tears filled her eyes,
which grew bigger as she stared over my shoulder.
Shit. “There’s more, aren’t there?” I said, afraid
to turn back, afraid to not. “How
many?”
Allie only shook her head.
Slowly, through the sticky molasses
of a bad dream, I spun around to face the zombies.
Dozens of the creatures flowed
across the grass, stumbling in packs of twos and threes to the tiny church in
which we stood. But they weren’t looking for absolution.
They were looking for breakfast, and
they were only minutes away.
Run! It was my first thought, but I
stifled it. Instead, I stepped down to
the round and walked to the corner of the church to take a peek at what was
coming behind us. Allie stayed on my
heels.
More zombies.
By my rough count, there were at
least a hundred headed our way, and the gaps between them weren’t big enough
for us to make an escape. We were
trapped.
“Do you have the walkie-talkie?”
Allie whispered.
“No, it’s sitting on the counter. I
forgot it.” In reality, I’d left it
behind on purpose. All my pockets were
full. “I don’t have enough ammo,
either. Not for this.”
We ran up the steps and inside the
church, and took a look around. “Shut
the door,” I said.
Allie slammed it, and I winced. More noise.
“Come help me. Please.”
Together we dragged a heavy wooden
pew across the floor, cutting deep wounds into the shining hardwood floor, and
pressed it up against the door.
“The door opens out, not in,” Allie
said, and I nodded.
“It’ll trip them up, create a
bottleneck, I hope. At least it’s
something.”
They wouldn’t only come in through
the door, though. I knew that. The
windows were low, so they could walk right through. “All that stained glass...” I muttered as I
ran toward the altar, hoping to find something, anything, that would help.
“What?”
“Never mind.” There was a podium on the altar, knocked over
on its side already. It looked
heavy. Maybe we could hide behind it and
I could shoot them one by one as they came through the door.
But all that stained glass. It’ll never hold them. Just because the church had remained pristine
for seven months didn’t mean it could survive this onslaught.
I considered fire. I had matches, and all the wood was surely
flammable. It had to be.
Maybe it’ll cause a distraction and
we could slip away.
But probably not without getting
burned. Badly.
Beside me, Allie trembled and
quaked. “What are we going to do,
Jenna?”
I wanted to remind her that she was
old enough to be my mom, and had been someone’s mom for a long time, but that
seemed cruel. Instead, I took her hand
as I continued my frantic surveying of the church. Nothing looked helpful.
“I don’t know.”
We backed into a corner. We could hear them clearly now, their
individual zombie-sounds tied together into a steady hum of decay. The sound of our end, I thought, and then
pinched myself for giving up. There has
to be a way out.
The wall behind us was covered with
a drape, and I leaned into the musty-smelling velvet. I pressed myself against it, wanting to wrap
up in it and hide like when I was a little girl playing in my mother’s
curtains. I turned into it, pulling Allie with me, when suddenly my elbow hit
something small, hard and round. A
doorknob.
“Come on,” I said, yanking the
curtain aside. It covered a plain wooden
door, and when I turned the knob the door opened. A ladder stretched way up into the bell
tower, higher than even the freshest zombie would be able to reach.
I set my Slugger down on the floor,
leaning against the wall, and started to climb as fast as I could, with Allie
close below me. I climbed until my arms
burned and my legs started to cramp, and then I climbed some more. A hundred or so rungs up, I felt the fresh
air of a warm breeze on our faces through the open windows. We’d reached the top.
The glassless windows gaped wide
open, and the interior of the tower was filled with a single brass bell that
smelled like a hot summer breeze. I
slung my leg over the side of the nearest window so that I straddled the frame,
then leaned my head out to look at the sea of zombies beneath us. They were inside the church, but for the
moment we were safe.
Allie climbed into her own window
and looked at me around the bell. “So now what?” she said.
“We wait.”
“For what?”
I shrugged. “Not sure yet. Help maybe? Or for them to get bored and go
somewhere else? We just wait.”
She looked at the M-16 on my back,
the pistol on my hip. “Can’t you shoot
them?”
“Nah,” I said, wrinkling my
nose. “That’ll just attract more of
them. And I don’t have enough ammunition
for the ones we already have down there.
We have to wait.”
“Right.”
We sat silently for a long time,
looking out at the sky, the prairie, the farmland, anywhere but directly below
where certain death and zombie-dom awaited us.
Then, quietly, I heard Allie singing.
Amazing Grace.
T’was Grace that brought us safe
thus far...and Grace will lead us home.
Grace, or Jenna, I wondered
silently. But then I shrugged again and
began humming along.
What else was I going to do?
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