Anything Can Be Dangerous Read Online Free PDF Page A

against the side of the car and
windshield, startling him from his thoughts.
    They slid around the seam of the glass
and side panel, probing the door seal, searching for a way
in.
    He let off the brake and slammed on
the gas, bringing the car up to speed. He planned on using the
aerodynamic design of the vehicle to work in his favor and let the
outside airflow blow the bags away. But they held on! He didn’t
know how, but they clung tight to the door and windows, inching
across the glass.
    He went faster, entering another
business district doing double the posted speed limit. The bag on
the windshield, a black Hefty, was fanning itself out, trying to
block his view of the road.
    How could it know to do
that? his mind raged. How
intelligent are they?
    “ Fuck off!” he
screamed.
    He flipped on the wipers and let out a
wild cheer when the bag got swiped clear from the glass and thrown
off the side of the hood. He craned his head around to watch it
flip-fall in his wake, eventually flattening on the
pavement.
    He faced forward again just in time to
see a police car pull out in front of him.
    “ Oh, shit!”
    It came out of an alleyway between two
buildings, emerging into his path half a heartbeat away.
    Greg hit the breaks, swerved the car
hard to the left. The tires squealed. He missed the cruiser’s front
bumper with scant room to spare, and the stink of burnt rubber
assaulted his nostrils. Then he was spinning the wheel right again,
struggling to correct his course, but it was already too late. Even
before the car began to spin, he could tell he was going way too
fast to pull out of such a sharp turn, and now the momentum had
him. It was like being on ice.
    The car shrieked across the street,
skidding in a full 360-degree circle, then collided with the curb
along the opposite lane, hitting hard enough to flip over. It all
seemed to happen at light-speed. Greg’s head whacked the ceiling
with the initial impact, and the next thing he knew, he was hanging
upside-down, held in place by his seatbelt.
    His vision blurred like a bad video
feed for a moment, but then cleared when he remembered the bags
clinging to his door. He had to get out. Fast.
    His hands groped the side of his hip,
sliding along the Nylon strap, unable to locate the belt release,
and a full lifetime seemed to pass before he realized he was
looking on the wrong side.
    “ Fuck!”
    He reached to the right, found the
belt buckle, unlatched it, and dropped to the roof of the vehicle.
The passenger side window had shattered in the crash, and Greg
scrambled out through its frame as fast as he could. His legs
wobbled under him when he first stood, but after several steps he
regained his balance.
    He looked up and saw the officer
coming toward him, marching up the middle of the road. He never
imagined he’d be so glad to have nearly sideswiped a policeman
while speeding like a maniac, and the thought of it actually made
him laugh. Then he remembered he was only in his underwear and
didn’t have his license with him, and that made him laugh
harder.
    But his amusement died as the officer
pulled his gun.
    Not because of the weapon itself, but
because of the wrinkly, milky-white plastic head staring at him
from under the man’s uniform hat.
    “ No …”
    The thing strode forward, forty feet
away and closing, walking with a stiff and irregular gait Greg had
failed to notice offhand. Now it seemed appropriate.
    The thing raised its sidearm as it
lumbered closer but didn’t fire any shots. Maybe it couldn’t see
well enough to aim properly, or maybe it didn’t really know how to
use the weapon in the first place. Whatever the case, Greg wasn’t
going to wait around to find out. Instead, he spun in the opposite
direction, and—
    And here was the sight he’d expected
to see back at the Amoco station.
    Dead people. Dozens of them. Wrapped
in plastic and walking right toward him.
    Like a scene out of Night of the Living Dead , they
shambled forward, moving up the