Book of the Dead: A Zombie Anthology Read Online Free PDF Page B

her. It dropped from its height slashing sideways, its bony fingers of wood clattering and bursting into twigs as it crashed through the cadavers. Three of them were knocked off their feet. A fourth, the charred one, lurched backward to escape the blow, stepped into the Reaper’s torso, and stumbled. Jean didn’t see whether she went down, because the weight of the limb was hurling her around in a ful circle. A branch struck the face of the scalped girl crawling toward her, popped, and flew off. Then the crawling girl was behind Jean again and the others were stil down. Al except the rock thrower. She’d been missed, first time around.
    Out of range. Now her arm was cocked back, ready to hurl a smal block of stone.
    Jean, spinning, released the limb.
    Its barkless wood scraped her side and bel y.
    It flew from her like a mammoth, tined lance.
    Free of its pul , Jean twirled. The rock flicked her ear. She fel to her knees. Facing the crawler.
    Who scurried toward her moaning as if she already knew she had lost.
    Driving both fists against the ground, Jean pushed herself up. She took two quick steps toward the crawler and kicked her in the face. Then she staggered backward. Whirled around.
    The rock thrower was down, arms batting through the maze of dead branches above her.
    The others were starting to get up.
    Jean ran through them, cuffed hands high, twisting and dodging as they scurried for her, lurched at her, grabbed.
    Then they were behind her. Al but the Reaper and the armless thing sprawled between his legs, chewing on him. Gotta get the handcuff key , she thought.
    Charging toward them, she realized the cuffs didn’t matter. They couldn’t stop her from driving.
    The car key was in the ignition.
    She leaped the Reaper.
    And staggered to a stop on the other side of his body.
    Gasping, she bent over and lifted a rock from the ring around the fire. Though its heat scorched her hands, she raised it overhead. She turned around.
    The corpses were coming, crawling and limping closer.
    But they weren’t that close.
    “HERE’S ONE FOR NUMBER EIGHT!” she shouted, and smashed the rock down onto the remains of the Reaper’s face. It struck with a wet, crunching sound. It didn’t rol off. It stayed on his face as if it had made a nest for itself.
    Jean stomped on it once, pounding it in farther.
    Then she swung around. She leaped the fire and dashed through the clearing toward the waiting car.
    3. It Helps If You Sing By Ramsey Campbell
    They could be on their summer holidays. If they were better able to afford one than he was, Bright wished them luck. Now that it was daylight, he could see into al the lowest rooms of the high rise opposite, but there was no sign of life on the first two floors. Perhaps al the tenants were singing the hymns he could hear somewhere in the suburb. He took his time about making himself presentable, and then he went downstairs.
    The lifts were out of order. Presumably it was a repairman who peered at him through the smeary window of one scrawled metal door on the landing below his. The blurred face startled him so much that he was glad to see people on the third floor. Weren’t they from the building opposite, from one of the apartments that had stayed unlit last night? The woman they had come to visit was losing a smiling contest with them. She stepped back grudgingly, and Bright heard the bolt and chain slide home as he reached the stairs.
    The public library was on the ground floor. First he strol ed to the job center among the locked and armored shops. There was nothing for a printer on the cards, and cards that offered training in a new career were meant for people thirty years younger. They needed the work more than he did, even if they had no families to provide for. He ambled back to the library, whistling a wartime song.
    The young job-hunters had finished with the newspapers. Bright started with the tabloids, saving the serious papers for the afternoon, though even those suggested