Dead Earth: The Green Dawn Read Online Free PDF Page A

Jubal’s hairs again,
standing at attention. What was wrong with him? He wasn’t some
little kid who was frightened by ghost stories.
    The silence in the store seemed ominous now.
Some part of Jubal wished Fiona would stop, but he said nothing to
her.
    “This guy was taller than the others, except
for maybe one or two of the monsters. And as he moved closer, I
could see he was dressed in red, flowing robes. And in his hand, he
held some sort of weird walking staff, or something.”
    Jubal watched the clear tan skin on Fiona’s
arm suddenly break out in goose pimples.
    “His head...well, he had a large helmet on
his head that was disproportionate to his body. It was like one of
those Aztec masks. And as he drew closer, I saw that he moved in an
odd manner; it wasn’t noticeable at first compared to the way the
others staggered and shambled about.”
    “Then what happens?”
    “Then he raises his staff above his head and
makes some sort of shrieking sound, but I think it’s some sort of
freaky language...”
    “Then?”
    “Its voice is so horrible that I wake
up.”
    Jubal put his arm around Fiona and patted her
far shoulder. She laid her head on his shoulder.
    “Damn, that’s some wild dreaming you’re doing
there, Fee. It’s bad enough you had the nightmare once, but to have
it all night long—maybe you are getting this flu or virus or
whatever the hell it is.”
    There was a jingle and a bang and then
someone was running down the aisle of the store straight toward
them.
    Jubal recognized Billy Owens, a local
teenager.
    “Jubal! There’s something going on
outside.”
    Jubal bolted out of his chair and ran, nearly
knocking Billy over in the process.
    Down the street, at the western edge of town,
a trail of dust plumed. A car. Judging from the sound it made: it
was a solar. And it was moving fast into town.
    Too fast.
    Before Jubal could even leave the sidewalk,
the car whizzed by down Main Street. Jubal watched it shriek into a
sharp turn and pull into an abandoned car wash.
    A thwooping sound, unnoticed until
now, grew louder as a black helicopter flew low above him, rattling
his shirt and sending his hair into disarray. As it cleared town,
it barely missed smashing into the billboard atop the auto shop
across the street.
    “What’s going on?” Billy said from behind
him.
    He looked back at Billy. Fiona and some other
townspeople gathered on the sidewalk around him, watching the sky
and the abandoned car wash.
    Just as Jubal was about to respond, the solar
car pulled out of the car wash and sped back down the street in the
direction it had come from, racing past them at full speed.
    Jubal started round his car to give
chase.
    Fiona called out, “Look!”
    Someone was crawling, hand over hand, out of
the car wash.
    Jubal jogged down the sidewalk toward the
crawler. The others followed close behind.
    The person stopped moving. As Jubal
approached, he saw something that made him halt in his tracks. He
turned around toward the trailing crowd.
    “Okay, everybody. Don’t move any closer; I
want you to stay back. This is official police business.”
    Everyone stopped, some nearly running into
the person in front of them. They all looked at him with blank
faces. Some nodded their heads in response to his instructions.
Others tried to look around him at the person on the ground.
    “I mean it, now,” Jubal said, then turned
away.
    The Wet ’N’ Dry wash had been abandoned for a
decade. Once the Amoco down the street had set up its own
drive-through car wash, business had dwindled. Dry weeds surrounded
it now and graffiti covered its graying cement walls.
    “Oh, my god.”
    The woman on the ground had rolled onto her
back. She whimpered through dry, parted lips. Her exposed skin—face
and hands—was as gray as the car wash’s cement walls and covered
with large, ugly blisters. She was so disfigured, her face a
swelling mass, that the only way Jubal knew it was a woman
was from the large breasts