Chicago Fell First: A Zombie Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

do you feel? Does anything hurt?”
    Still no answer, Maribel raised her hand in front of the child’s face with one finger extended. She began to slowly move the finger back and forth in front of his eyes, to see if he followed the motion, hoping for some response.
    There was a sound. Not a word and not a cry of pain or discomfort or even fear. It came from Joseph’s mouth, or at least his throat, but Maribel didn’t have time to interpret its meaning.
    Movement, a flash of pain, and blood.
    Maribel pulled her hand away from the child, stepped back and looked down at the damage. A chunk of flesh had been torn from her finger and blood was flowing freely. She went into nurse mode and pushed away any urge to panic or lose control of her emotions, trying to ignore the pain. She grabbed the box of tissues, covered the wounded finger, tried to stop the blood flow.
    She looked back at Joseph. He was standing on the bed, his eyes stared straight at her, and they seemed blacker, darker and wrong for the eyes of a small boy. She could see some of her blood staining his teeth and dripping down his chin, causing her to gag.
    Another sound came from the boy —louder, sounding something like “More!”
    He squatted down on the bed, and leaped through the air at her.
    Maribel had time to scream one word before the small flying body hit her.
    “Help!”

 
     
    Chapter 3
     
    Douglas Clancy was a serial killer waiting to happen. He could feel himself sliding closer toward his destiny with each passing year. He knew what the seed in his mind and heart was and what it would grow to be—and although it disturbed him, he did nothing to stop it, for he also, in some very honest way deep inside his soul, looked forward to the day when the dam would burst and the blood would flow in the real world just as it did in his most personal dreams. Eventually, Douglas knew, he would allow it to happen, for he could not keep his nature in check forever.
    Doug was fascinated by the structure and composition of things. He always had been, since the earliest moments in his memories. He wanted, perhaps needed, to know how things were put together, how they worked. 
    He still remembered how it had started. He couldn’t have been more than three or four when he suddenly came to the realization that the house he lived in was not just one big piece sprung up out of the ground like a vegetable. It was, he understood with his child eyes and child brain, something made of very specific parts put together in a very specific way to serve a very specific purpose. The foundation held it all up and the roof topped it off and every beam and brick and bit of cement in between added something to the stability of the structure.
    He could recall looking at many buildings with the same fascination as he went to various places with his parents and noticed the magnificent variety of structures. He saw the high ceilings of the church and understood that the roof there was of a different kind than that of a residence. He saw how the school was entirely different from either the house or the church, and how each had been put together purposely to serve its role and not fall apart.
    The seeds that began to grow in Doug’s mind at that early age seemed destined to grow into the soul of an architect. He could visualize the how and why of each piece of each building and how it related to all the other pieces, whether directly connected to its partners or separated by the many components in between. A house might have appeared to be one solid object to a casual observer, but Douglas Clancy knew better. Every house or skyscraper or little log cabin was a committee, a team of bits and pieces working in absolute sweet synchronicity to become and remain what it was meant to be. Such reveries brought many fascinated smiles to young Doug’s face and he often wondered if he was the only person in the world who truly appreciated the way everything was put together. 
    Yes, it began