Beautiful Dead 02 - Arizona Read Online Free PDF

after
    him and asked if I could come too. 'No, you'd better stay here' was on his 29
    lips when Hunter exited the house with Lee Stone. 'Take her,' he told Phoenix curtly from the shadowy porch. 'And take Lee along too. Let him see the way we work.'
    So Phoenix, Iceman and Arizona led the way down the bank of the
    creek, with me and the rookie zombie on their tails. We trod through long grass, over boulders and through wil ow thickets, raising a family of mule deer from the bushes, sending them leaping up an almost sheer slope.
    'Crap!' Lee swore as he plunged ankle deep into the icy water.
    'Keep up!' Arizona ordered as he stooped to unlace his boot. By this time Government Bridge was in sight.
    'What is this - my worst nightmare?' Lee muttered. He looked as
    though someone had hit him on the head and he was stil reeling in the
    after-effect.
    'Kind of,' I grunted, pul ing myself up the granite rockface to a ledge which kept me clear of the stream. 'But wait there's more!'
    'Keep your head down, Darina!' Arizona hissed. 'Do you want to advertise us and get us al zapped back where we came from?'
    'Maybe,' I muttered under my breath.
    Fifty metres ahead, Phoenix heard me with his super-hearing and frowned. He pointed to the two yel ow earth-movers by the old bridge and a smal knot of men standing nearby. 'No sign of the surveyor,' he reported.

    'That's not good.' Iceman was sure he'd heard the surveyor tel the guys he was heading upstream. 'Maybe we should cut back and take another look.'

    'Not right now,' Arizona contradicted. The light was poor but she'd
    noticed a worker splitting away from the group and heading towards us. My heart lurched when I saw he was carrying a shotgun.
    'What happened, Josh? What did you see?' Another guy yel ed after him. A third picked up his own gun from a flatbed truck.
    'I thought I saw something - coyote maybe,' the overweight one named Josh cal ed over his shoulder. 'Or maybe a deer.'
    Arizona took up position behind a tal rock. 'Thanks, Darina,' she
    muttered. 'That wouldn't be coyote or deer that would be you he saw.' 30
    'What you going to do - shoot it?' Josh's buddies laughed at the clumsy run he was making up the hil towards us. 'You planning on mule-deer burger for supper?'
    Stil , in spite of the laughter, there were two men with guns heading our way. Phoenix knew it was time to get serious.
    As I came up beside him and Iceman, crouching low behind a rock
    weathered into a tal , rounded pinnacle, I felt them set up the zombie force field that had terrified me so many times in the recent past. First there was a fierce wind blowing dirt and grit in a cloud across the hil side, then the sound of sighing, then wings beating louder than you would ever believe.
    'Crap!' Lee muttered from somewhere behind me. Shock had cut down his vocabulary, it seemed. 'Is that a giant flock of birds, or what?'
    Invisible wings beating up a storm, battering at the guys with guns, forcing them to stoop forwards and stop in their tracks. It grew darker. The guys raised their arms to shield their heads.
    'They'l turn around you watch!' I hissed at Lee. But not straight away. These were two tough guys.

    'Whoo, shi-it! ' Josh yel ed as the wings raised by Phoenix and Iceman
    blasted against them. 'This is what those storm chasers go after can you believe the adrenalin rush?'
    'What are we - in the eye of a tornado?' the other man cried. 'Man, that stil sounds like wings to me!'
    More and more lost souls joined the force field to drive the guys back
    down to the bridge. They swept across the mountainside, flattening the grass and tearing at flowers, whirling against the outsiders until their legs buckled and they sank to the ground.
    'Wait for it here come the death-heads!' I warned Lee.
    These were grown men down there who didn't want to lose face in front of their buddies, but it had grown dark and they were getting battered by a force they didn't understand, being driven back down the hil . And now they