Double Dead Read Online Free PDF

out at the dark waters.
    Strange. Or not, since dogs were basically morons.
    Carl went back to gutting the tabby.
    Then: a bloom of mud up through the dark waters. About twenty feet off the scum-slick waters. Might be that the catfish are restless , Carl thought. They were morons, too—didn’t take much to nab a catfish. Few pieces of bread in the water and they came up with their big dumb mouths open. Easy to hook. Could just reach in and grab ’em if one were so inclined.
    Carl set the cat down on the rocks, gingerly took a few steps out into the water. It was cold, but he didn’t mind. Later he’d light a fire and dry off (if it brought the rotters, he’d just burn the lot of them—the pile of charred zombie bodies around his campsite showed just how willing he was to make a stand).
    He let his hands float into the water. He pulled a few dry bread hunks—he called them ‘croutons’ even though they were just rock-stale moldy chunks of French bread—and let them float out into the water.
    The mud stirred.
    Gotcha , he thought as he saw a shadow rising from ten feet away.
    Oooh. This catfish was a big sucker. Good eats.
    He bent his knees. He leaned forward.
    Then the catfish shot up out of the river and Carl screamed.
     
    Coburn kicked up out of the water and wrapped his hands around Carl’s throat—he didn’t know the man’s name, of course, and didn’t much care. This sodden fool with his pooched-out belly and his greasy, matted beard was going to serve as the first true meal that Coburn had consumed in a good long while.
    As Carl screamed, Coburn ripped into his prey’s neck with his pair of mean fangs. His incisors were curved in and back—like a snake’s. When he closed his mouth, they fell neatly betwixt his lower teeth, his tongue slumbering atop them. But even better, the toothy curves let him bite down and dig in real good; anybody wanted to rip away from his bite they’d have to lose a big fat chunk of neck to do it.
    Normally, he wouldn’t be this crass. Generally, he wooed his victims a little bit: a little talky-talk, a little hypno-gaze, a little here, listen to my suddenly eerily lyrical voice , and then settle in low and slow for a bit of bloodletting.
    But hell with it, Coburn was hungry. This was the equivalent of ripping into a candy bar with the wrapper still on.
    Carl cried out. He beat uselessly at Coburn’s side.
    Blood, hot and sticky, filled his mouth. He was like a kid guzzling chocolate milk: he couldn’t stop and he didn’t want to. He needed this.
    Wasn’t long before Carl went limp. Coburn kept drinking.
    He kept drinking until his tongue played in the neck wound, licking up whatever last vestiges he could of his victim’s juices.
    The body fell into the water. Well, all of him except the head: the head smacked against the rocks, thudding dully like an unripe cantaloupe.
    The rest of Carl just bobbed there in the muddy river.
    Coburn laughed. Wiped his mouth. Then, with his legs—wholly repaired now, not a bone chip or taut tendon out of place—he marched his ass out of the water.
    Further, he felt an itchy tingle in a space above his hand, a phantom twitch. He watched as his middle finger grew back, sinew threading around a stretching bone, blood and flesh knitting together.
    The vampire stretched.
    He noticed then the dead cat. The vampire couldn’t help but wonder if it was curiosity that killed this beast.
    Then: a growling. He spotted the little terrier in some kind of makeshift bird cage. The stubby little dog snarled at him. He met the animal’s gaze and did a little of the old eye hoodoo , then shushed the dog.
    “Shhh,” he said. “Chill the fuck out, pup. Last thing I need is for you to call a gaggle of undead assholes my way. Is it a gaggle? What is it? It’s a school of fish. A murder of crows. A parliament of owls. What’s a bunch of fucking zombies? A cluster? A cadre? You know what? I’m going to go with a fuckbucket of zombies. Sound good to