4 Hardcore Zombie Novellas Read Online Free PDF Page A

the man with the raised machete stood over him and howled in triumph, Pedro recognized that the powerful craving he suddenly felt was ferocious hunger.
    Hunger for living flesh. He ached to sink his teeth into the machete man’s inviting throat.
    Then the machete’s blade came down and hacked hacked hacked his head off his neck.
    And still he was hungry, snapping his ruined teeth and broken jaw at the man who lifted his head by his sparse hair and held it up to the moon.
8
Dead But Not Gone
    Piggy Poop walked the tracks. Not thinking. Just walking. Walking. One foot dragging. Step. Drag. Step. Walking.
    Until she saw the fire. Then thoughts formed, flickered, flared against dancing memories. She veered off the tracks and headed toward the firelight, her gait gawky and halting because of the injuries sustained in the fall, the leap and impact. A hitch in her get-along.
    A thought leapt into her mind: hobo fire. Then: campfire … cookfire … food! She was achingly hungry. Hunger kept her going now. Where the impulse toward death had been a driving force in her life, now it was a raw visceral hunger that drove her.
    She knew she was something other than alive. She could feel herself swinging like a wobbly pendulum between the poles of Dead and Alive. You didn’t do a flip off a bridge like she did and live. No way. Impossible to walk away from that. Yet she had. And was. Walking. Dead. Walking. And oh so hungry. Hungry with a deep carnal lust. Carnivore lust. Stronger than sex. Stronger than death. She wanted, needed bloody meat. Extremely rare. Make that raw. And while you’re at it, make it living.
I want blood pumping through my dinner.
Blood. Lots of blood. To sate the terrible thirst on the underbelly of this infernal hunger.
    She left the rail bed and shambled up a short weed-choked slope. She saw two men huddled round the fire. What used to be called hobos, bums. Sitting there like they were waiting for her. An existential invitation to dine. Meat on the hoof. She heard the blood pulsing through their veins. She knew the taste would be intoxicating. Even orgasmic. Yes.
    One of them was wiping the bottom of a bowl clean of bean juice with a crust of bread and the other was turning up a pint of dark port. A third man lay curled in an army blanket, shivering and groaning.
    “Be cold as a bitch tit ’for this night is through,” said the bean eater.
    “Old Sambo’s shivering his ass off already and the bitch ain’t even here yet,” the other man said between sucks on his bottle.
    “I could use me some warm titties ’bout now. Piece of pussy wouldn’t hurt none neither. ’Bout as likely as winning a billion-dollar lotto.”
    “Wouldn’t do it no how with that God’s Eye up there watching ya.”
    Then the wine drinker saw Piggy Poop step into the firelight and said, “Jesus God girl!”
    “What in hell happened to you?!” Bean Sop said.
    “Damn me but what she ain’t got a big hole in her head,” Wine Suck said.
    Piggy Poop said, “Mumph mee” as she stagger-stepped over to the bum in the blanket.
    “What’d she say?” Sop asked his bud.
    “Fuck if I know,” said Suck. “Damned if I didn’t just shit myself.
Shit
.”
    Piggy went awkwardly to her knees beside the man in the blanket, who had for the moment stopped shivering and groaning.
    “Hey,” shouted Sop, “he’s took sick. Leave him be, little lady.”
    She bent over and took a big bite out of Sick’s face.
    Sop shouted.
    Suck doubled over and shat himself some more.
    Piggy spat and sputtered, sickened a little herself by the mouthful of cooling meat. Just that quick the sick man had died. And dead meat was not at all what she craved. Flesh drizzled with pumping blood was the only thing that would fill the bill.
    She craned her head slowly, looking for a bite to eat. Just as her eyes fell on Suck, Sop cracked her across the side of the head with a piece of firewood. The blow dropped her. Her face hit the dirt by the edge of the