Domain of the Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

cross the line.
     
    * * *
     
    Nathan could feel Elspeth becoming heavy. “Come on, Elspeth. We’re almost there. We can make it.”
    The old woman looked deathly pale, like the creatures around her. She looked up at Nathan with sleepy eyes.
    Nathan looked down at the bundle in her arms. “Do it for your granddaughter.”
    Her tired old muscles filled with energy again and Elspeth pushed on.
     
    * * *
     
    “Keep going down to the chopper!” Cahz called out to the two men supporting the old woman as they lolloped past.
    Cahz looked down the busy street. Hundreds of zombies shambled their way towards him. He peered through the throng, trying to get a glimpse of the other survivors. There was a blur of movement and Cahz spotted a man with a shaggy black beard wielding a metal pipe.
    Cahz lent into his rifle butt and started thinning out the zombies in the survivors’ position. A break in the mob revealed the dark haired man again. His fist clenched around the pipe as he pounded the zombies around him.
    Cahz fired on either side of the man. Through the tunnel view of his sight he could see the man’s face sprayed with blood. Pushing the image aside, Cahz continued shooting the zombies.
    His scope went black. Cahz pulled back to see just yards in front of him a zombie had stepped into his line of sight. Its arms stretched out, ready to make a grab for him. It was so close that Cahz could read the blanched employee name tag on the shop worker’s apron.
    Cahz fired and floored the creature.
    If its lurching walk hadn’t blocked my view, Cahz thought, I wouldn’t have known it was there until it had taken a chunk out of me!
    Cahz was interrupted from his train of thought by a voice over his radio.
    “Boss, this is Bates. I’m running dry and there’s no let-up.”
    Cahz toggled his mic. “Angel, have you got eyes on the other survivors?”
    The creatures were converging on the town square in the thousands and Cahz realised he could no longer see the other survivors in the mass of zombies.
    There was a silent gulf on the radio. “Angel, come in,” Cahz said.
    “Lieutenant, I have situation,” came Angel’s belated response.
     
    * * *
     
    Behind Angel, on the roof of the office block, there came the sound of splintering wood. The door to the stairwell cracked open, spraying rotten wood onto the gravel. From the darkness of the abandoned building stumbled out a stream of corpses.
    “Otyebis!”
    Angel whipped round, sending a shower of loose stones tumbling from the rooftop. Incorporating the energy from her twist, Angel leapt to her feet, swinging her sniper rifle over her back as she did. She delved into her holster and pulled out a pistol to take up her new firing position. Leaning forward as if she were about to sprint, Angel aimed her gun.
    The zombies’ lethargic attention slowly focused on the human.
    She pulled the trigger, obliterating the lead zombie’s skull.
    The presence of live prey galvanised the undead and they started shambling towards her.
    Angel opened fire in earnest.
    Her gun barked with each squeeze of the trigger. Like a drum beat, Angel fired a steady rhythm of deadly shots. Within a few short seconds fifteen zombies lay decapitated.
    Angel discarded the empty clip and reloaded her weapon all in one fluid motion. Again she fired until her clip was dry, destroying the next fifteen zombies that stumbled through the door. The bottleneck caused by the locked door dealt with, they were less bunched up now, but there were still too many. Inexorably they shuffled towards her, torn flesh hanging from their outstretched arms and rasping moans surging from their stiff throats.
    Again Angel changed her clip with the automatic action ingrained in her muscle memory. She pointed the gun at the closest ghoul but they were emerging from the stairwell faster than she could shoot them.
    “Fucking pointless.”
    She holstered her gun, turned, and threw herself off the building.
    Three floors down the line