Here We Stand (Book 1): Infected (Surviving The Evacuation) Read Online Free PDF Page B

step toward the pair. The man was trying to push the woman away, but her hands had caught in his clothes. Her mouth opened, snapping up and down, getting closer and closer to his face. The man yelled a desperate plea for help.
    There was a crash of metal as the cabbie tried to shunt the car in front out of the way. The sound brought Tom out of his daze. He ran to the fighting couple, reaching them as the woman clamped her mouth down on the man’s neck. An arc of bright red blood sprayed across Tom’s chest as he wrestled the woman off the injured man. She fought with an inhuman strength, flailing her arms and kicking her legs in an uncoordinated frenzy. He let go, jumping out of reach of those clawing hands. She staggered sideways, moving jerkily, as if each limb was moving independently of the others. Her right arm swiped around in an arc, and that motion pivoted her around.
    It was like nothing he’d ever seen before. He backed off a pace, and she took one toward him, and another. Her hands reached out. Her fingers caught in the rucksack slung across his chest. With a surprisingly strong tug, she pulled him toward her. Her mouth opened. A gobbet of flesh she’d ripped from the man’s throat fell out. Horrified shock brought him out of frozen immobility. He shrugged off the pack. The woman sagged forward as the weight of the bag dragged her arms down. A low hiss escaped those bloody lips.
    Tom kicked. There was a crunch as his boot smashed into her kneecap. Her leg buckled. She collapsed, jaw first onto asphalt. A tooth flew out, but she didn’t scream and her arms didn’t stop flailing. Tom ran. This time he paid no attention to where he was going.
    It felt like seconds. It felt like hours. That woman’s bloody, blank face filled his vision until it was all he could see. He stopped, leaning against a wall. His heart was pounding, his vision blurred.
    A month on the run, sleeping little, eating quick and cheap meals, it hadn’t prepared him for this. Nothing could have. But what was this ? Some kind of drug, he supposed. A dirty bomb primed with an airborne hallucinogen. Did those even exist? They had to. The alternative was impossible. Forget the impossible, he told himself. Focus on the immediate. That, clearly, was reaching safety. Where that might be wasn’t an easy question to answer. He checked the sat-phone and tablet were still in his pockets. What he needed was a few minutes of calm so he could find out what was going on. There was the apartment in Harlem where he’d been sleeping for the last month. That prospect of safety evaporated when he remembered Powell. Wouldn’t the man have more immediate problems to concern himself with? Unless Farley and the cabal were behind this, whatever this was. No, that was fear speaking. What he needed was to get inside long enough for his heart to stop racing. Somewhere he could think.
    A gunshot came from somewhere far too close. Ahead was a coffee shop. Inside, two customers were helping a barista upturn tables against the floor-to-ceiling glass doors. That would do.
    He was ten feet away when a siren burst into life behind him. Fear of impossible horrors was again replaced by that of Powell and capture. Resisting the urge to turn around, he kept his head bowed, but his eyes on the people inside the coffee shop. The siren drew nearer. A police motorbike overtook him, weaving a path down the road.
    The police officer didn’t see the man, and Tom didn’t see from where he came. One second the bike was slowing to pass a cement truck whose driver-side door hung open; the next, a blood-soaked man tumbled out, onto the cop. The bike slewed into the side of a stalled limo. The rider fell off. Cop and man tumbled across the road in a jumble of arms and legs that kept on thrashing even after the two bodies had come to a halt.
    Without thinking, Tom ran over to the pair, grabbing at the back of the snarling, thrashing man’s coat. He hauled him up and off, and tried to hurl