City of the Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

many."
    "What are we going to do?
    Jim shook his head. "I don't know, Martin. I don't know. What about that window over there?"
    "I checked it already," the preacher answered. "It's too far to jump and the zombies are waiting at the bottom."
    "Damn!" Jim slammed his fist into the wall. Danny flinched, staring at his father in concern.
    Martin frowned. "We're trapped, aren't we?"
    Jim didn't respond.
    "Jim? Tell me now, man! Are we trapped?"
    Slowly, Jim nodded.
    From below, Frankie shouted, "Jim, if you've got a plan, now would be a good time to share it!"
    27 THREE
    Laughing, the demon lord Ob looked out through eyes that had once belonged to a scientist named Baker.
    Undead carrion birds hovered above him like a dark cloud, blending in with the night sky. The rag-tag paramilitary group was decimated, beaten by Ob's superior forces. The remains of burned-out tank husks and other vehicles littered the blasted landscape. Wisps of curling, oily smoke still rose from a few, the former inhabitants smoldering inside them. Inanimate zombies lay scattered across the ground, each one brought down by some form of head trauma. Dozens more thrashed in the mud; appendages severed, bodies cut in half, destroyed-but still moving. Hordes of the more mobile ones swarmed about the lawn, feasting on the fallen and wounded humans.
    Not all the humans were being killed. Ob had ordered several dozen rounded up, stripped of their weapons, and herded inside the complex. They would be questioned as to the location of other survivors and then used for food-livestock. It wasn't that his kind needed to eat-at least, not while in spiritual form. They had
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    gotten rid of that flaw eons before. But still, like any other physical life form, they needed energy, and when they took over these empty human shells, that energy was drawn from food. Eating the living served three purposes. It was an affront upon Him, the Creator, the one who had banished them to the Void. It allowed them to convert the flesh to energy while in human form, even without a digestive system, since his kind processed food on a different level. And it served to dispatch the humans' souls, killing them and enabling more of his kind to take over the bodies.
    He chuckled. Gnawing on a still screaming human was much more fun than shooting them. But in the end, all the captives-livestock and otherwise-would host one of his brethren.
    The battle had been over for several hours now, and the sounds of combat had faded with the vanishing daylight, replaced only by the occasional scream from the living. The dead had inherited the earth, or at least this part of it. The rest would soon follow. If not today, then tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, then soon. Unlike his kind, humans were not immortal. Eventually, they would die. That was all it took. Ob and his brothers had waited millennia to exact their revenge. If necessary, they could wait a little longer. It was less amusing that way, but it could be done.
    He sighed, exhaling fetid breath from lungs that no longer served a purpose.
    " 'And when Alexander looked out across his kingdom, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.' Or something like that."
    The zombie nearest to him had taken the body of a plump housewife. Gasses swelled its horribly distended
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    belly, and the abdomen was slick and shiny. Ob admired the putrescent beauty.
    "Who was Alexander?" it rasped.
    "He was a human. A warlord for his time-he conquered much of this planet. I met him once when his soul passed through the Void on its way to Hell. On the field of battle, he was a great warrior. Still, in the end, he was just meat. They all are. Nothing but meat. Cattle. Cattle that used to worship us until the One, the Creator, grew jealous and washed the Earth clean with the Deluge."
    He approached a pair of captives, a woman and man taken during the assault on the government's research facility. The zombies had lashed them to lampposts in the parking lot. The woman