Dead Beginnings (Vol. 2) Read Online Free PDF

lying on the ground, hidden between the parked cars. It gnawed at his Achilles tendon viciously as the man screamed all the while. His fingers dug into the blacktop as he tried to pull himself away, but the creature wouldn’t relinquish its hold.
                  Lee was close enough to see just how hard the man was fighting for his life. A distant part of his mind shouted for him to get out of the car and help, but the muscles in his body wouldn’t listen. He sat frozen, watching the blood spill. The man dug so hard into the ground, Lee saw the whites of scratch marked etched into the blacktop.
    But the thing that had him was stronger. It gave a final yank to shove more flesh into its mouth. Several of the man’s fingernails snapped clean off and stuck up out of the pavement like tiny tombstones. The monstrous being climbed ontop of him and sank its teeth into the side of his torso.
                  It was all too much for Lee. His eyes squeezed shut. Terrible cries for help circled around the parking lot as he sat petrified, trying to will it all away. If he hushed his breathing, he could hear the clacking of teeth as the beings closed in on their wounded prey.
                  “I have to get out of here,” he said quietly to himself, his eyes still shut. “I have to get out of here. I have to get out of here. I have to get out of here.”
                  Suddenly, he was surrounded by an eerie silence.
    Reluctant to open his eyes fully, he allowed one to peek through a crack in his lid. The man who’d helped him was sprawled out, his ribs bent fully back and sticking straight up in the air, his chest a hollowed out hole. Whatever ate his insides had moved on once he was cleared out. Lee couldn’t find a single sign of movement. Now was the time to leave.
                  He shoved his keys into the ignition and started the car. The engine rumbled to life. Had it always been so loud? he wondered with a cringe. Luckily, the things seemed to have moved on, leaving behind the wreckage of truly dead scattered about. He stepped on the gas and backed up quicker than he intended.
                  Thud!
                  Lee whipped his head around to find one of the bloodied cannibals crawling onto the trunk of his car. It pawed at the rear window, leaving rusty streaks that blocked his view.
                  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Lee shouted, his old-world Catholic upbringing escaping his lips unintentionally.
                  He put the car in drive and shot forward without another thought. With a flick of his eyes, he checked the rearview mirror to make sure the thing wasn’t still clinging on. He saw a body roll across the pavement and smack into the tire of a parked car.
                  Something inside Lee Hickey wanted to smile in that moment, cheer aloud for making it out of Hell alive, but he couldn’t bring himself to give in to it. Heidi’s smashed face flashed in his mind. He swerved the wheel to avoid hitting another car as he merged onto the highway to head back home. A loud honk cleared away the horrifying image of his destroyed friend.
                  Going ninety miles an hour, Lee raced down the two lane highway toward the lakeside town of Chesterton, where his pregnant wife was waiting for him.
                  I hope , he couldn’t help thinking. The minute he did, his breath failed to leave his lungs. It stayed there like a fireball caught in his chest. She had to be alive. There was no other alternative. Anna and his child had to be safe inside the house, alive.
                  Along the side of the road, cars sat running with their doors wide open. People scrambled across the grassy ditch to get away from the monsters that chased them. Quickly, the people ran, fell, got back up, looked over their shoulders, tripped again, scrambled to get back