Fear the Dead 2 Read Online Free PDF

him. His words were a whisper, his breath hot. “I took the wallet
off a guy I killed. There never was a wife and kid. You gullible fucking
moron.”
     
    My body tensed up. I tightened my
hands into fists and tried to keep them at my side as they shook.
     
    Harlowe leaned in further. He spoke
so quietly that nobody could hear him but me. “Think your friends would like to
know what I told you yesterday. About the wave of infected that’s going to kill
them all.”
     
    After lying to me about his wife and
kid, why should I believe him about this? I’d trusted his word once, and I
wouldn’t do it again.
     
    Even so, if he told everyone about
the wave, Moe wouldn’t think about it objectively. He’d use it as a reason to
leave Vasey straight away, and he’d take half the town with him. Vasey was on a
knife edge, and I had to stop it cutting itself.
     
    I took a deep breath and held it in
my chest. My arms and legs felt tight, my stomach fluttery. Was I really going
to do this?
     
    I slipped my knife into my hand. The
blade caught Harlowe’s eye, and his face sagged. I moved my arm back ready to
swing at his throat, but I stopped myself at the last second. I couldn’t do it.
     
    Moe threw Harlowe to the ground. He
looked at my knife and grinned. “Glad you’re coming round to my way of
thinking, Kyle, but this one’s mine. And I’ve got a few questions before we let
him bleed.”
     
    Harlowe stayed on the ground. A
trickle of blood ran from a graze on his forehead. He rubbed at it, leaving a
red smear across his skin.
     
    Moe addressed the crowd. “Who wants
justice today?”
     
    They answered in the affirmative.
     
    Moe paced across the square as he
spoke, an orator in his element.
     
    “Is it the will of the people that
this man dies?”
     
    A chorus of yesses.
     
    “Harlowe”, said Moe. “I’ve got one
last question before I bleed you dry.”
     
    Harlowe looked up, a man resigned to
his fate. In death he wasn’t the coward I thought he’d be.
     
    Moe held his knife in his hand, span
it by the blade. “Why were you stupid enough to try and steal the same car
twice? You’re no genius, but you must have a pretty good reason.”
     
    Harlowe dragged himself into a
sitting position. The strain of it drained his face white. The angry faces of
the crowd stared down at him, a throng of furious men and women looking for
revenge.
     
    All I could do was watch. This had
gone beyond me now, beyond what any leader could do. Harlowe was in the hands
of the crowd.
     
    He cleared his throat. As he took his
last breaths, he looked the crowd in the eyes and spoke clearly.  “They’re
coming for you,” he said. “And you’re all going to die.”
     
    And then he told everyone about the
wave of infected.
     
    Panic seeped into the faces of the
crowd. They believed him, and the thought of it terrified them. Soon their
panic would turn to anger and then there would be no reasoning, no examining of
the facts. They would take action, and Moe would guide them into it. Vasey was
done.

 
     
    4
     
    Sam Henderson lay under a bedsheet on
the ground. He left behind two girls, four and six years old, and a wife. He
also left a girlfriend and a string of casual one night stands, having made it
his mission to work through as many of the women of Vasey as he could. But
nobody was going to tell the crying widow about that.
     
    I lifted the shovel up high and
heaved it down, breaking through the crust of the soil. The top layer was
cracked with cold and hadn’t been touched for a long time, so breaking through
took a lot of strain.
     
    Weak rays of sun shone over the wall
and illuminated this little-visited part of Vasey, but they weren’t warm enough
to cut through the frosted autumn air. The clouds above me were plump and
tinged concrete-grey.
     
    I turned the shovel and let more mud
fall onto the pile next to me. The hole wasn’t big enough yet, and I wanted to
get this done by sundown. Despite the