Nightmare of the Dead: Rise of the Zombies Read Online Free PDF Page A

were packages of salted beef, corn, pork, and soft bread. She sat down for a while and removed her gun belts. After laying out both guns, she proceeded to check and reload all of her cylinders. While the stench of the dead continued to corrupt the train's stale air, she filled her stomach with food and water while systematically taking inventory of her powder and ball supply.
    The ritual calmed her. She lost herself in the exercise, completely forgetting the nightmarish event she had survived. The entire process was familiar to her. Perhaps she really was a mysterious outlaw with a bloodthirsty reputation.
    As she investigated the pouches on her belts, a crumpled slip of paper dropped to the floor. She immediately opened it and read the perfectly neat penmanship.
     
    Please understand  it was not our intention to kill you. We're all very glad  you're still alive, and we know you ' re very concerned about the tragic fatality of your memory. It would be my pleasure to have you join us in the town of Cedar Rock. I have provided a map that will adequately reveal its location. I look forward to enjoying a pleasant meal with you, although I can predict your own apprehension. My liaison will greet you there; he might be identified by the mark on his left forearm, which resembles your own. Answers will be provided, and perhaps, too, you may recover a semblance of yourself. See you soon!
    Doctor Saul Lynch
     
    The letter fled her fingers and dropped to the floor. She stared at her arm as if it might unleash an unspoken hazard upon her soul. She hesitated; if she was an excellent killer, did she really want to know who she was?
    Of course, she did. Dispelling her sense of dread, she quickly pushed up her sleeve.
    On the inside of her forearm was a tattoo. A fiery black stallion was forever etched into her skin, flame dancing around its head.
    She remembered:
    Under the cover of darkness on the Potomac River. Inside a slender boat, she waited with three men, all of them killers. She was going to help them murder a man. The boat floated uneasily on the black water, and three pairs of eyes watched her from beneath the shadows of wide-brimmed hats. Her hands rested upon her guns. These men wanted to kill her.
    Their eyes leveled against one another. The man closest to her turned and spat into the river. His hands were far away from his weapons, yet she understood that he was confident in his own ability to end her life. He leaned forward with his forearm against his knee and dared her to attack.
    A glancing blow of pale moonlight revealed the dark ridges of his face and the thick, black moustache above his upper lip. This was a man whose cold gaze had withered the courage of whores and the bravado of outlaws. His was the gaze of a man who murdered others as if it were a matter of course, a primeval gesture of will that was as simple as shoveling food into his mouth or shuffling a deck of cards.
    They could have been floating on a river of blood and pain, for all the suffering this man had wrought. He lived by a code that was his alone, a path that would certainly bring him to the edge of mortality, though it was something he understood. His own end would not be tragic, or heroic. He lived not by the gun, but by a terrible power residing within him. He did not enjoy nor lament his position in life, because it was his. The world spun and bled within the palm of his calloused hand; in his world, any man could and would die.
    Bannan shivered and opened her eyes. She was desperate for the truth and closed her eyes again, but the vision didn't return.
    The Potomac River. A plot to kill a man. She'd gone with three other men, yet, they'd turned their attention to her. Why?
    The mustached man was still alive.
    Bannan packed up provisions and prepared her guns. Before she left the train, she wet some black powder and set fire to the train. The wind carried the smell of its flames a short distance over the horizon, as the storm of distant cannon