Everyone's Dead But Us Read Online Free PDF

you okay?” I asked.
    “I think so.” He wiped at the blood on his forehead. His hand smeared it, but the rain quickly washed it away. He swayed. I helped prop him up.
    I examined him as best I could. Lights were out and the flashes of lightning illumined the scene only briefly. I said, “I think you need stitches.” I glanced at my hand. The torrent rinsed my hand of his blood. “A doctor should look at both of us.” For several seconds we surveyed the destruction amid the violence of nature. “We’ve got to see if we can help anyone.”
    Less than fifteen feet from us, the skeleton of the Atrium teetered. A groan, as if the Earth itself was choosing to die, engulfed us. Metal bits began flying in a thousand directions. We backpedaled for a moment then turned and ran. When we thought we were out of range, we looked back. Some of the metal bars swayed precariously. We retreated a few more steps.
    In seconds, with a moan louder than thunder crashing within an inch of your ear, the entire superstructure smashed to the ground. Great iron struts and tons of glass crushed anything in their path. The old cypress trees swayed and fell. The line of pedicars was turned into mostly junk. Only one still had an intact roof, but all of its glass was shattered. I saw large chunks of cement among the shards. One such chunk had incapacitated three of the electric carts. One large beam had crashed into the side of the yacht. Its lights failed. In the next flash of lightning I saw that the beam had opened a great gaping gash down the entire port side of the vessel. It was already listing badly to that side. For several moments we stood in shock and awe at what had been and what had happened. Rain sluiced down both of our faces.
    I said, “We’ve got to see if anyone is still alive in that. We’ve got to try and help them.”
    The immediate problem was the near total darkness. One boat in the harbor still had its lights on. The one boat near the castle was on fire, but they were a distance away and the light was barely fitful. We crunched over shards of glass as we rushed to help anyone who might have survived the collapse of the dome. Two of the other guests joined us. Rufus Seymour and Matthew McCue. One of them had a flashlight. For all the help it gave us, we might as well be trying to illumine the dark side of the moon with a single match. Our lack of illumination slowed the hunt. I also wondered why more of the guests and the staff weren’t out helping to look for survivors. The explosion had been massive and the collapse of the dome had made the most titanic noise I ever expected to hear. There had to be more than this number still alive on the island but this was futile speculation for now.
    We hunched near the one light, followed it, and peered intently in every direction. Rain gleamed like diamonds hurtling earthward in the beam’s light. There wasn’t much point in examining Sherebury’s body, but we went toward him. There could be others nearby.
    His remains were a horrible sight. Before the light swung away from his torso I saw that the surgically straight cut had sliced clean through nearly seven-eighths of his torso. Rain sluiced blood away from his insides. The storm couldn’t do much to erase the image that his death wrought on my brain. I thought about the fact that he undoubtedly had a mom and a dad, perhaps a lover. I realized I didn’t know him. He’d been little more than a blip in my life. Still, it was sad and ghastly. Scott was sick as were two of the others with us. I may have seen death and misery when I was a Marine, but I don’t know how I kept my recent repast down. This was as bad as any of the worst I’d seen. We used one of the tablecloths from the dining room to cover him up. Then we moved on.
    The kitchen area contained the remnants of four more employees. I had never seen corpses so mutilated or destruction so violent. The torrential rain was rapidly washing blood from their lifeless