Awakening: Dead Forever Book 1 Read Online Free PDF Page A

this stupid rifle. I may need that wrench back.
    I’ve got to figure out how this thing works, particularly, how to increase the damage. The current settings must be stun, and even that has little effect. This must work like a volume knob, clockwise means more. Okay, every dial all the way to maximum. This time they’re toast.
    “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Someone might get hurt, including yourself.”
    * * *
    I whirl around to find a fellow crouched in a corner. Masked by shadows, his features are unclear, but I’m quick to notice his rumpled brown jacket, unlike the cheesy plastic kind the Bobs wear.
    “What are you talking about?” I ask.
    The stranger creeps out of the shadows. He looks fit, not particularly young, hair shorter than mine but not cropped like the Bobs, and disheveled like he just woke up. He has the rough start of a beard, a few days unshaven. A fellow loser?
    “If you fire that thing at full power,” he says, “you might kill them. Sure, after you blow out an entire wall and the building collapses. But just think, all that will probably kill you, too.”
    I have to admit, he could be right. Given the destruction at a lower setting, full volume might take out an entire wall. And without a wall, yes, gravity tends to bring things down.
    “Okay, but why doesn’t it work on them? It tears the walls apart, but all it does is knock them over.”
    “Well sure,” he says, like I should already know. “It’s electromagnetic. Microwaves, you know. Like an oven, just more concentrated. It shakes up molecules, that’s all.”
    “Look, buddy, that doesn’t explain how it blows up walls but not them. It doesn’t do a damn thing. They just get up and brush themselves off.”
    “It’s the frequency,” he says, oddly calm in light of the blasts streaking across the room. “And the target, that’s all. In a body, molecules are loose, but in something hard like concrete, they’re rigid. At the right frequency, a chain reaction begins, and all the shaking makes it shatter. See?” He points to a wall just as a blast strikes and sprays debris. “Solid objects can’t take it and explode. Bodies though, they can deal with it. But it does hurt, I know, so please, stop pointing that thing at me.”
    He reaches out to the rifle and directs the barrel to one side. He may be trustworthy. He seems reasonable, unlike the Bobs, and he talks like a real person, not like a robot on drugs.
    “Come on,” he says. “Let’s get out of here.”
    He crawls toward the rear of the room, the farthest end from where the Bob brothers are busy having target practice. Though reluctant, I follow. He nudges a door open and we slip through, then descend a stairwell without attracting any attention. He has stealth, I admire that. Perhaps together, we may get out of this mess. Wait a minute—we? We are getting out of here?
    “Who are you?” I ask.
    He says nothing, and continues down the steps. Despite my growing concern, I keep close behind. When we reach the last step, he turns around.
    “I’m Jared. What’s your name?”
    I expect him to already know my name, though I couldn’t say where the notion comes from, and I’m not comfortable disclosing my notions to a stranger.
    “Me? I’m just the janitor. I was minding my own business, you know, cleaning up the dust, and these boys started shooting at me.”
    “Carl, that’s stupid. We know you’re not the janitor.”
    “We? Who is we? ”
    He chuckles. “You know, you and me.”
    Upstairs, the blasting continues, a ruckus so loud it reverberates throughout the building. The Bobs don’t give up easy, and they’re awfully noisy in their effort to make sure I’m good and dead. Except, to be dead . . .
    “Jared, if this thing doesn’t hurt them . . .” I indicate the rifle in my grasp. “And it’s the same weapon they have, it won’t hurt me either, will it?”
    He grins like he knows too much. “I never said it doesn’t hurt, Carl. I’m sure it