DEAD RAIN: A Tale of the Zombie Apocalypse Read Online Free PDF Page A

flesh was missing, including his lips and most of his cheeks.
    She swung the lamp with all her might. Its marble base cracked the zombie’s skull, knocking his head sideways, dislodging it from it s supporting vertebrae. The thing staggered dizzily, then lumbered towards her, its head dangling awkwardly, rolling on damaged ligaments like a sack of rotten onions.
    “Run, girl, run!” the Sheriff’s voice was calm but tense.
    But Emma could barely move, half-paralyzed with fear. Her knees felt like waterlogged sponges as she crept past the staggering corpse, her eyes locked uncertainly on its impossibly dangling head. As it stepped into the beam of the spotlight she recognized its clothing.
    Oh my God… Buddy!
    “Come on, girl! Hurry up, I’ve got you covered!”
    The Sheriff’s words finally cut through her crippling terror. Dropping the heavy lamp, she sobbed out a muffled cry and ran towards the gate. She made it halfway there—then her foot sank into a hole and she flopped down hard on the damp sandy soil.
    She lay in a daze for a moment, gazing up at the dazzling spotlight, and wondered if maybe she was only dreaming. This can’t be real. It’s just a really bad nightmare. Wake up!
    “Get up, girl! ” the Sheriff called. “Come on now! Move!”
    Emma looked up at the Sheriff silhouetted behind the gate, shotgun poking through the iron bars. The spotlight of his SUV burned through the fog like a beam straight from heaven.
    “Come on, girl! Get up, you can make it!”
    My God this is real. Get up!
    Pulling herself to her feet, she completed the final stretch to the gate in seconds, to find the portly lawman aiming his shotgun through the bars, covering her just like he’d promised.
    “Oh my God, get me out of here, Sheriff! Please!”
    “Calm down, you’re safe now. I’ve got you covered.”
    “No, they’re coming for me! Look, over there! It’s coming!” She backed against the iron gate, eyes wide as she watched a dim black shape shuffle slowly towards her through the rows of timeworn headstones. “What’s going on? What are they?”
    She started to move away towards the open marshland on one side of the gate, but after taking two steps her foot sank into wet mushy soil.
    “Stay by the gate!” the Sheriff warned. “This place is surrounded by swampland.”
    Emma heard an engine growing close and the crunch of tires on gravel. Headlights flashed through the gate. A police cruiser jerked to a halt behind the Sheriff’s SUV.
    A deputy, tall and a bit gawky, emerged from the vehicle. In his hands was a pair of bolt-cutters. “What the hell’s goin’ on out here, Sheriff?”
    “Just get your ass over here, Zack. You got the cutters?”
    “Yes, sir.” He held them up.
    “Well get them up here fast. We need to cut this damn chain off. Something weird’s going on here.”
    “Hurry!” Emma pleaded.
    “Just relax now, sweetie, we’ll have you out in two shakes of a monkey’s tail.”
    Emma turned to check the cemetery grounds.
    A thin black shape plodded toward her through the fog, hobbling into the glare of the spotlight. In an instant it went from shadowy specter to fully i lluminated zombie—the remains of a frail old woman, stutter-stepping on bony legs. She wore a tattered black dress, once floor-length, now ragged and coated with mud. Both of her hands were missing. Rotted away to stumps.
    Emma stared at the woman’s skull-like face, with its jaw hanging low on withered ligaments. Her eyes were milky, the irises clouded. They bulged slightly, framed by skeletal shadows.
    “Oh my God… Shoot it, Sheriff. Shoot it!”
    “Just calm down. Don’t look at it.”
    “Calm down!?” Emma backed against the gate, drumming up her courage for a run if she had to. “Hurry, Sheriff, hurry! Cut that chain and get me out of here!”
    The corpse dodde red closer, just ten feet away.
    Emma ’s heart was pounding as she heard the chain rattle behind her. She turned, flooded with relief as she saw