Night Betrayed Read Online Free PDF

of them so closely.
    That was why Lou hadn’t ever stopped searching for Theo after the Change. They’d both been in Vegas together, working on that high-level computer security project for Casino Venuto. They liked to tell people they did stuff like in Ocean’s Eleven or Ocean’s Thirteen (never Ocean’s Twelve, because that movie sucked).
    After all hell broke loose, Lou claimed he knew Theo was still alive. What he didn’t know at first was that Theo was buried, three levels below ground in a computer safe-room under Venuto. Theo had not only survived the Change, but he’d been physically altered.
    After the Change, Theo’s body was almost frozen in time; he hadn’t aged for decades . . . or, at least, had aged but very, very slowly. His nails and stubble hardly grew at all for the first thirty years; and the day he’d found his first gray hair—long after Lou had gone white—was a time of celebration for Theo. But this wasn’t the extent of the changes to his body that had occurred in the computer safe-room, deep below the surface of Vegas. Something else had happened during the cataclysmic events, when everything in the room of mainframes and computers and wires had exploded and shifted and sizzled into darkness . . .
    When Theo woke up, he’d found his body battered, bruised, and lacerated. And, in the lower part of his back, a wound that took too long to heal. It wasn’t until weeks after Lou had dragged him from beneath the ground that Theo realized a small integrated circuit had become embedded there in the soft flesh at the back of his hip. And it wasn’t until weeks later that Theo realized this little IC could send a surge of energy through his body at will.
    He was, in short—Holy shock-me-Batman, let me light your fire!—a superhero: Theo the Energizer.
    Now, miles away from the place he’d considered home for fifty years, that connection was still there with Lou. Theo reached out, felt that little sizzle of awareness . . . and just as it connected, he drew in a deep breath . . . felt his brother . . . and that wave of familiarity. Hey.
    Theo! The response was immediate, and Theo felt a wave of guilt for not remembering to contact him sooner.
    I’m here. I’m fine. Tired. Safe. His reply wasn’t so much sent in words but in sensations and feelings. They understood and read each other thus.
    Thank God! Worried, damn you!
    Theo nodded to himself. Sorry. More later.
    Hands closed tightly over his knees, he stared into the dark and allowed the connection to sever. He wasn’t ready for more, yet. Nothing more than that brief Yo, I’m here and safe. That, at least, would keep his brother from coming to look for him. Bringing Simon.
    He needed . . . time. Time to figure out what he was. Who he was.
    And why in the hell he’d been resurrected, so to speak, for a second time.
    “Ruuuuuthhhhhhh.”
    The groans pulled his attention back to the world outside.
    Holding on to the bed and then the table, he leaned toward the window, then braced himself as he thrust his head through its opening. The cool breeze, tinged with the foul scent of rotting ganga flesh, brushed over him.
    The flicker of orange lights, always in pairs, caught his attention. They might be coming closer, but the zombies were far beyond the wall that had been erected around this . . . building. A large house? Maybe some sort of apartment building? Theo hadn’t seen enough to be able to tell exactly what it was, and now it was too dark.
    But whatever it was, he and the other occupants of the structure were safe from the gangas. They couldn’t climb, so there was no way they could get over the walls. And even if they were smart enough to find an entrance, they’d never be able to figure out how to open a gate or door.
    Stupid, slow, and single-minded, the zombies nevertheless were tall and strong—and a threat to everyone. They fed on human flesh, tearing into it and leaving nothing behind but piles of bone and