Iron Mike Read Online Free PDF

aloud.
    Gran scowled. “Tomayto, Tomahto!” she snapped irritably. “Now, I need you to get a quilt from the cedar chest and wrap your grandfather in that. Then …” she hesitated, thinking a moment. “Then, take him out back, under the rose trellis. You can cover him with snow, and see to a proper burial come spring.”
    Mike nodded, moving into Gran’s bedroom as he’d been instructed. Helen Garrett watched her grandson thoughtfully, her eyes moving to the closed door of nine-year-old Jennifer’s room. She sighed heavily. The boy would have enough responsibility with the little one to be accountable for. The last thing he needed was a wheelchair-bound old woman weighing him down.

Kari
     
    Kari was a ghoul, feeding on the dead. She pushed the thought away, but it came back to her with persistence as she rolled over the fourth body, along with unwelcome images from every late-night horror movie she’d ever watched and every Stephen King novel she’d ever read. She was scavenging the bodies of the dead partiers, people who used to be her friends, and her self-loathing and disgust were almost enough to make her stop.
    Almost.
    Despite their strained relationship, Kari Kasoniak was her father’s daughter, an Army brat and a survivor. So, she continued digging through the pockets of each corpse in the trashed living room, even though her mind recoiled from the gruesome task. It took a minute – okay, closer to an hour – for her to completely lose her shit when she first realized she was the only survivor among the twenty-eight people Malik invited to stay over and party the night before.
    She spent several minutes in hyperventilating hysteria, then several more trying cell phones, then a few more staring blankly into space. But she finally got her head back on.
    Malik’s 65-inch ultra high definition television showed the same horrifying coverage since she’d turned it on, and Kari’s mind reeled with the implications. This was not a drill. She wondered who had developed the warhead and, more, had had the effrontery to launch it against the United States? North Korea? China? Daddy told her more than once he would expect endgame attacks from those nations even more than from the Middle East. But this weapon wasn't nuclear, as she would have expected. It was an anti-personnel weapon, and it was unlike anything her father ever even hinted about.
    Kari pulled the cash from Randy Blumenson’s wallet, counting it quickly. There was more than two hundred dollars, which surprised her, since he was always begging for cigarettes or hits. She put his wallet back into his vest pocket, her fingertips touching a small plastic baggie. She pulled it out, looking down at the little blue pills in dull surprise. She didn't know Randy did X. The pills were cut, obviously – not anything close to the sweet purity of the powder Malik gave her last night – but … there were eight 120s in the baggie. It usually took only two pills for Kari to go flying off to her happy place.
    Kari frowned, sticking the plastic bag into the pocket of her little black dress. It was time to grow the fuck up. After she looted the rest of the bodies for items Malik’s friends would never need again, she intended to flush the pills down the toilet. Her party days were over. She needed to get to Fort Knox and find her father, or at least figure out where the Army would be sending him now. She smiled, a bit sadly. It seemed Dad wouldn’t get to retire after all.
    By the time Kari searched each body, she had over a thousand dollars in cash and five times that value in pot, heroin and cocaine, the baggies shoved into the pocket with the ecstasy. She also had three handguns – a Glock G22, a Smith & Wesson .357 and a Sig Sauer. She unloaded the Glock and .357, checking the chambers of each, and then set them on an end table. She tucked the Sig into the pocket of her little black dress opposite the cache of drugs.
    The sun was high overhead when she