Beyond the Barriers Read Online Free PDF Page B

anything to convince him otherwise, and I didn’t want to take the time.
    “I have a place to hide up in the hills. Why don’t you and Lisa join me?” I cursed myself even as the words came out. I didn’t have enough supplies to feed three mouths, let alone one.
    He shook his head. A strong refusal backed up by fear in his eyes.
    I looked over and noticed that Edwards’s little import was running, and the door was cracked open. In my haste earlier to get the goods in my house and sorted, I didn’t notice my neighbor had left his car idling. In fact, when I looked at his place now, I realized that his front door was open a couple of inches. But I saw him in the back yard, so he had to be home. I had seen the top of his head and assumed he was standing back to look at his yard or something.
    Maybe he was just … then the noise came.
    I moved to the side of my patio, where the corner nearly butted up against his yard, and looked into the back of mine. Edwards had been working on his fence off and on for about three months now, and it was almost done, but the back near our green belt hadn’t even been started. I saw my neighbor come around the fence and walk toward me.
    “Hey man, everything all right?” I asked.
    He was Argentinian and had a slight accent, but just now, he didn’t answer. We were on friendly terms, but not as close as Devon and I were. Still, I considered him a friend—well, up until now. He didn’t look so good. He looked gray and tired. Devon stood on the doorstep and slipped his glasses off, as if he didn’t believe what he was seeing. He put them back on, and the gray man turned and stumbled toward us. His attention set on me, and he started moaning and snarling like a dog.
    “Oh shit, what do we do?” Devon’s voice bordered on hysteria. He looked around at the empty porch as if searching for a weapon, but there was not even a scrap of furniture on it. Then he glanced over the yard.
    I didn’t wait around to find a weapon. Edwards was moving slowly enough that I didn’t feel he represented much of a threat. Of course, I could have been fooling myself. After all, it had been a while since I was in the service, and all those fighting skills were a little rusty. I should have gone back and gotten the axe from my house, but I didn’t feel the same heat I did earlier when those monsters attacked the woman in the silver BMW. What I felt was oddly cool and collected, the same way I used to feel before we went into the action.
    “Hey, you all right?” I had to be sure before I did anything. I was suddenly light on my feet; the old moves came back like I had practiced them just yesterday. I shifted to the right, so one side of my body was presented, while my left was at an angle, so I made less of a target. I’ve heard it called drifting forward, only I was about to become a whirlwind.
    Edwards was covered in red, like he had spilled an entire bottle of wine down his shirt. He was missing one side of his neck, and the ear opposite hung by a flap of skin. He moaned at me like he was half asleep, and I saw a huge chunk of skin hanging out of his mouth. I wondered if he had bitten himself.
    Then his wife, Cindy, came out the open door and stumbled forward. Half of her face was torn off. The portly woman always had an easy laugh, and told me dirty jokes when Edwards wasn’t around. She wouldn’t be telling jokes now. Not by a long shot.
    “Devon, stay back,” I called, but didn’t look back for him, trusting he had the sense to stay in place.
    Edwards shambled toward me, blood dripped from the wound on his head. It splattered down his face and onto his shirt. His wife didn’t look much better; her wounds were also horrific. I had a vision of him coming home, her greeting him at the door. Maybe he was freshly bitten and it hadn’t kicked in yet. But he died there while she dabbed at the blood and exclaimed that he needed to go to the doctor. He came back as his undead self and attacked his