Zombies Don't Surrender (A Living Dead Love Story)

As the final volume in the series opens, Maddy, Dane, and Stamp are still together, though barely, nestled safely inside the walls of Sentinel City, a stronghold designed to keep Zerkers out—and zombies in.Maddy trains night and day, hoping to join Vera as a Keeper. Dane has been given Sentinel Support in the form a busty blonde named Courtney. And what of Stamp? Although Maddy’s dad has worked hard to rehabilitate him after his Zerker bite, he’s still not all . . . there.When Dr. Swift inadvertently allows the zombies’ archenemy, Val, to escape from Sentinel City, Maddy’s world turns upside down. She and Stamp are vanished—expelled from the safety of Sentinel City, no better than common Zerkers. Dane, a Sentinel now, escapes punishment and is assigned to ensure that his old friends never return.As Maddy and Stamp stray from the safety of Sentinel City, danger mounts . . . and not just for them. Val has taken up residence in a seaside town and enrolled in another Normal high school. To outwit her and save Seagull Shores from all-out zombie Armageddon, Maddy must face her archenemy once again.Only this time, she’s all alone...

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Jogger Girl is closer now, a kind of soft keening coming from her jagged mouth. God, she looks worse than some of the masks we’d wear to scare the audience in The Great Movie Monster Makeover Show.“Can you hear?” I ask, gripping the Eliminator tightly, trying to keep her occupied, focused on me, on my mouth, my head, not the hand at my side. “Can you talk?” “Yeah,” she grunts, soft air moving through the hole in her cheek where I see the white of her jaw muscles flex. It’s a reedy, whistling sound but weird because her voice is so hoarse and Zerker deep. “I just don’t like to.” That airiness combined with that hoarseness—I figure probably the gash in her throat nicked some vocal cords when the Zerkers were chewing on her face.I shiver. “Stop. You don’t have to do this. I, I know there are a lot of them, but I have friends too.” She shakes her head, as if even she knows how stupid I sound. “Just don’t,” she says, limping faster now. “Just stop. It won’t work.” I raise the Eliminator, hoping she’ll see it and stop, giving her one last chance. “Don’t,” I blurt, my voice raw with emotion, with guilt. “Don’t make me do this.” “Do what?” she says, three feet away now. She pauses, giving me that creepy half smile that is her full smile because half her freakin’ face is missing. Her good eye narrows. “All you’re doing is finishing what they started. What you let them start.” “I couldn’t,” I sputter. “I couldn’t take them all by myself.” She cocks her head, a little drool drizzling onto her shoeless foot. “That’s not what she says.” “Who? Who she?” I growl. “Tell me!” Then she starts walking again. “Why should I help you?” she croaks in that whistly, raspy voice that oozes from her mouth and throat at the same time, “when you never helped me?”

About the Author

Rusty Fischer, a former high school teacher, has worked for the best-selling educational magazines The Mailbox, Learning,and Bookbag. A full-time freelance writer, he is the author of the YA novels Zombies Don’t Cry and Vamplayers.

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