Disappearance at Devil's Rock Read Online Free PDF Page A

supernatural zombies. Those aren’t like real-life zombies that can happen. Real-life zombies would freeze up.”
    Luis: “Yeah, maybe. Seems fucking stupid if they all froze that easy and assholes like us could walk around cutting off their heads.”
    Josh: “We’d need a chisel or something if they were frozen.”
    Luis: “Whatever. You’d still probably have to survive at least a few warm months before the big freeze with the things herding around and eating the shit out of everyone.”
    Tommy: “I’m not afraid of the herd.”
    Josh: “Hardo!”
    Luis: “You can’t even watch Scooby Doo without getting nightmares.”
    Tommy shrugged and had a smaller version of his goofy I-got-nothing-to-say smile on his face, before it snuffed itself out. “I’d be all right, if it happened.”
    Luis: “Yeah, right. What about the one zombie that locks onto you. You afraid of that? It follows you wherever you go, never gives up because it picked you, likes your smell, thinks you’re cute. Probably is someone you know, too—Zombie Josh. He’d follow you everywhere, but he’d be slower than shit—”
    Josh: “Ha ha, go fuck yourself, shorty.” He said it without malice. Normally Luis and Josh were the only ones who could comment on each other’s physical limitations without either getting upset at the other, but Luis looked over at Josh quickly, as though trying to triangulate from where the lobbed stone came.
    Tommy: “Bruh. Herd, rogue zombie; it don’t matter.” Tommy leaped over the split in the rock, triumphantly raised his arms up in the air, and shouted with mock authority and in his best stentorian voice, “It has been decided!”
    Josh and Luis shrugged at him.
    Tommy walked back over between them, pushed on the dead tree’s trunk like he wanted to knock it over and see what was inside, and he said, “When it happens. I’m making my last stand here.”

Elizabeth at the Park, at Home with Janice, Kate, and a Ghost
    E ight A.M. Although Borderland State Park is officially closed to the public, the main entrance and the visitor’s parking lot is overrun by SUVs, patrol cars (local and state police), and vans. Local news crews are staging their live feeds and reporter-on-the-scene shots.
    Something like this doesn’t happen in the affluent suburb of Ames, this happy little town twenty-five miles southwest of Boston, often listed in money and lifestyle magazines as one of the top places to live in the country. People certainly don’t go missing within the boundaries of their beloved and well-kept state park. And given that Elizabeth Sanderson is a clerk for the town public works and is friendly, if not friends, with every last town employee, it’s all hands on deck.
    The police have taken over the Visitors Center, a one-level cabin, painted forest green, the tar shingles sun-bleached gray and spotted with lichen. Park rangers, Ames Police officers, and State Police pour in and out of the Center, which is situated on the edge of the main parking lot and the surrounding forest, and is adjacent to the beginning curl of the Pond Walk trail.
    To the right of the Visitors Center and main parking lot is a large, open field that leads to the Eastman mansion—built in 1910, made of stone, three levels, twenty rooms, sitting like an ancient tortoise sunning itself on the green. Groups of search volunteers and park rangers are gathered there and begin to splinter and set off on foot with walking sticks, two-way radios, and park maps in tow.
    Elizabeth remains at the mansion to wait for the detective. She paces behind a fold-up table, positioned at the foot of the front stairs, as though it were some invisible barrier. She fusses with the fliers and folders, and she has her cell phone clutched tightly in her left hand.
    Detective Allison Murtagh makes the long walk from the