Lyle Perez-Tinics: Existing Dead

Praise for

Existing Dead

“Lyle Perez-Tinics takes you on a ride into hell where anything that can go wrong does. Existing Dead is a true horror novel that goes for the jugular and even death is not an escape!”

- Edward J. Russell, author of The Dead Infested

“For Zombie and post-apocalyptic fans, Lyle Perez-Tinics delivers a fast moving road trip of carnage and endurance with well created characters that you will soon find yourself caring for.

Aiming to flee from Nevada, which is abundant with the walking dead, Kyle Reynolds’s motive is to reach his longtime girlfriend in California, but as his journey slowly advances, his trip is marred and hindered with challenging and devastating situations. However, he does pick up a young companion and encounters fellow survivors along the way. Kyle and his companion have to fight for survival and to find clues to end the cause that is infecting the population. With graphic and emotional scenes, you will feel empathy for the protagonist and his companion as their mental welfare is tested to the breaking point as events unfold. With many twists and turns, this is not your typical Zombie set-up, though zombies are rampant, this is a thrilling yet sensitive take on surviving an apocalyptic world.”

- Charlotte Emma Gledson, author of The Lonely Tree and other Twisted Tales of Torment and chief editor for Black Hound.

“Provocative, innovative, and mind numbingly horrific encompass the novel Existing Dead by Lyle Perez-Tinics. Unlike any zombie story you've ever read, you'll find yourself immersed in a new vision of terror.”

- Nate D. Burleigh, author of Sustenance

www.ExistingDead.com

KINDLE EDITION

The characters depicted in this story are completely fictitious, and any similarities to actual events, locations or people, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by Lyle Perez-Tinics

All rights reserved.

Special Thanks!

I want to thank everyone who has helped me on this wild journey. First, I want to thank my good friend Eloise J. Knapp for being supportive and creating the awesome cover. I want to thank Charlotte Emma Gledson for giving my story a read through and catching any mistakes I missed. I also want to thank Kelly Dunn for giving my story another round of editing. A special thanks to Dallas Green, I listened to the Little Hell album about a million times while writing. And a very special thanks to my family who might never read this book. They already think I’m crazy.

For Dallas Green & City and Colour

Thanks for your Little Hell , now here’s mine.

Prologue

At the moment of birth, life begins to die. But when the rules of life change and death is replaced by an existing hell, the world as we know it ends.

It didn’t take the world long to crumble. When the first reports of the dead walking came in, that was it. People began to panic and within an hour of the news broadcast, suicides and murder rates peaked. Some of the population couldn’t handle the thought of their lives suddenly changing. The smart folks listened to the National Guard and gathered supplies to wait it out, while the unintelligent thought they could meet the threat head-on. Many small mobs armed themselves with whatever blunt objects they could find. As the dead quickly overran the living, the would-be heroes soon discovered that destroying a human’s brain, through the skull, is not as easy as it sounds. Those with firearms lasted a bit longer, but not all of them were marksmen. Once ammunition became a problem, they were massacred. Many reanimated while their intestines were being ripped out of their bellies, and others were eaten whole before they had a chance to reopen their eyes. The dead never stopped looking for victims, they continued on the food’s path until they reached it. That is the reason why the dead outnumbered the living ten to one.

Kyle Reynolds was in the smarter group.

Kyle, a thirty-five year old welder from Nevada, formerly from sunny Southern California, was nothing more than that. He had married a woman who was not the one meant for him, and they had a son together. The boy’s name was Eddie and they loved him. Kyle and his wife, Mary, were constantly fighting. If it wasn’t one reason, it was another. When the dead began attacking the living, things didn’t change between them. Instead of fighting about sex and money, they fought about supplies and safety.

The three of them took refuge in the basement of their Nevada home. They were only down there for a few days, but that was long enough for Kyle’s hatred toward Mary to intensify. He was only there to protect his son and nothing more. To help give him some extra time, he would have been more than happy to throw Mary into a horde of hungry monsters. But the chances of the dead finding a way in were low. The basement doors were reinforced with steel beams that Kyle had welded shut. The only way out was through a small tunnel that led up to the front yard. His thinking was that if anything began banging on the doors, there would be another way out. Supplies of water, canned food, and entertainment were stacked to the roof.

Eddie’s safety was not the only thing he was worried about. There was something else on his mind, something that made his heart ache. In a secret compartment in his wallet, he carried an old, creased photo of a woman. From time to time, he would take the picture out and stare at it. He had never been able to let Jasmine go and always wondered what life would have been like if he had married her. Jasmine was Kyle’s real love, and he wished that things in his life could have been different. Gazing at the picture, something inside his heart told him that he had to go and find her. He had to make sure that she was okay, and if she wasn’t, then he would make her safe, like he’d done with Eddie and Mary. There was only one thing holding Kyle back.

As Kyle sat on a chair in the corner looking at the old picture of Jasmine, he felt eyes on him. He glanced up and staring at him was the worried gaze of Eddie. Kyle smiled devilishly in hopes of getting a reaction from his son. The little boy was only eight-years-old; he didn’t fully understand what was going on and why he couldn’t go outside to play with Gary, the next-door neighbor’s kid. It hurt Kyle to think what was really going on in his son’s mind. Was he hurt? Confused? Sad? Depressed? Did he find Kyle’s devilish grin funny? But there was no reaction; Eddie continued to stare at him with those eyes that always tore Kyle into pieces. He looked down at the picture of Jasmine again, her bright blue eyes seemed to smile back at him, calling him, begging him for help. A thought of him running his hand through her soft blond hair ran through his mind. The fantasy quickly turned to horror as that same memory was replaced with an image of a dead hand ripping her hair out and biting into her face. It was then that Kyle realized he would have to make the toughest decision of his life.

Chapter One

“So what? You’re just gonna leave us?” Mary demanded an answer with her hands on her hips. Her hazel eyes stared at him like a vulture stalking its prey. Her long black hair fell down toward her face. The shine of her hair made her eyes glow.

“I’ll only be gone for a few days. I’ll be back; there’s just something that I have to do,” Kyle replied as he stuffed more things into Eddie’s robot themed knapsack.

“Are you going to take my backpack, Daddy?” Eddie asked from behind them, Kyle turned just in time to see Eddie’s eyes water.

“I am, Sport, is that okay? I can look for something else if you want me to. I thought you would be okay with me taking this. Y’know, so I can have something of yours to keep near me,” Kyle said as he reached into his pocket. “I’ll tell you what, let me hold on to your backpack and I’ll let you hold on to my lucky four leaf-clover keychain.”