Dead Air (Book One of The Dead Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

you come up with.
    Steve pulled up an advertising spreadsheet but found it hard to concentrate as his mind kept drifting back to the story out of Little Rock.
    How would that feel? How would you kill someone by biting him? It would have to be on the neck like some kind of vampire or something, he decided. Just bite down and rip out the jugular vein or maybe just clamp onto their windpipe and crush it.
    Steve clicked his teeth together a few times as he imagined what it would be like . The taste, the texture of the skin, the feel of flesh ripping.
    Shuddering at the thought, he admonished himself to quit freaking himself out and turned his attention back to the spreadsheet on his monitor. The work was boring and he was tired from being up all night so his concentration waned. His mind kept returning to thoughts of people biting each other.
    Just too weird , he thought.
     
     
    C HAPTER THREE
     
    Little Rock, Arkansas:
    Suzy Wong, the nurse that Darryl Turp had bitten on the finger, had been ready to go off shift and on vacation when the attack happened. After fleeing the room, she waited impatiently for the security guards to restrain the crazy man so she could give her statement and be on her way. She had been in similar situations where a patient attacked staff and knew that the process of police reports and witness accounts would take hours to go through. She resigned herself to this fate and was trying to calculate how long she would be delayed, when word reached her that the patient had died.
    Shaking her head in disgust, she told herself, no way are you getting caught up in a death inquest, girl. This is your first vacation in eighteen months and nothing is going to ruin it . Finding an unoccupied room, Suzy cleaned and bandaged the bite on her finger before slipping away unnoticed in all the confusion still raging on the floor.
    She was concerned about infection but assured herself that she had a very resilient immune system and should have nothing to worry about. Besides, the bite was minor. It had happened when she was trying to pull the patients head away from Doctor Rahjib and the crazy man had snapped at her with his teeth. Suzy had no doubt that if he had connected he would have taken her finger off at the second joint, but she was young and her reflexes were good, so instead he only raked his teeth over her little finger, taking off a layer of skin.
    Once in the nurse ’s locker room, Suzy changed quickly and then made her way through the maze of hallways leading to the loading dock at the side of the hospital, thus avoiding the police and news media already swarming the lobby. Safely in her car, she took the long way around the hospital toward the exit, even waiting patiently for a Sheriff’s car to enter the parking lot before making a right turn toward the freeway.
    Pleased with her foresight at having packed her car that morning before coming to work, she stopped only once to gas up and buy a large coffee before hitting the road. Checking her watch as she returned to her vehicle, she saw that she was actually ahead of her schedule. The incident with the patient had let her get a head start on her vacation.
    Excitement, and the virus, coursed through her body as she thought about her upcoming days off. She was on her way to a family reunion in Nashville and was thrilled at the prospect of seeing her relatives again. It seemed incredible to her, but she hadn't seen some of them in decades, only keeping in touch with them through phone calls, pictures and the occasional e-mail. This year though, she vowed to reacquaint herself with all of them. Her entire family would be flying in from all over the country, some from as far away as San Francisco. There was even rumor that her great aunt was making the trip from Hong Kong.
    This was impressive to Suzy who had never traveled any further away from her parents ’ home in Nashville than Little Rock, first to go to school and now to live and work. She could only