Order of the Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

protein.
    Some survivors lost their minds over it,
killing and eating the zombie animals and knowing full well that the tainted
meat would infect them with the virus. It hadn’t happened in New Crozet for
almost five years, but before then, one to two meat-eaters a year had been the
name of the game.
    We’re due for another one, Alan thought
grimly. Past due.
    The Voltaire II was radiating a good
deal of heat outward, still purring, baby, rolling waves of hot air out through
the slits in her heatproof chassis. This feeling of warmth was familiar to
Alan, who was holding the Voltaire II at a practiced distance from his body by her
insulated bits.
    The heat had once been uncomfortable,
but not anymore. He’d burned thousands of zombie corpses, and the cooling
flamethrower recalled the feeling of walking away from the infernos, intact, more
or less unscathed—though far from untouched mentally—and, most importantly,
uninfected.
    “What about when the others say they
miss meat?” Rosemary asked. “Were the other meats better?”
    “No,” Senna said, wishing the adults would
stop bringing it up with the kids. What the hell was the point of that anyway?
“They just say that because they miss the option of eating it.”
    Rosemary frowned. “What do you mean?”
    “Sometimes, when something isn’t
around anymore, we miss the possibility of having it, even if we don’t like it that
much. Grass is greener sort of thing.”
    Rosemary looked thoughtful. “Oh.” She
had the ability, usually reserved to children, to switch gears rapidly, and now
that she was focused on the meat eating question, the traumatic experience
she’d just gone through felt dulled. Being easily distracted could be a real
asset at times.
    “Come on,” Senna said, putting an
encouraging hand on Rosemary’s shoulder, “let’s get you inside where it’s
warm.”
    It was past ten, and a fresh autumn chill
had entered the air.
    “Okay,” Rosemary said, looking somber,
but no longer distraught. She’d done what she was supposed to do, and it had
been horrible, but, with Senna and Alan’s help, she’d been able to will herself
through it. Rosemary hoped that she would never have to do it again, but if she
did, she would be more prepared for it than she’d been an hour earlier.
    From his post in the sentry’s tower, Corks
had nervously watched the trio of townspeople pass through the middle gate, then
he’d closed the gate behind them and opened the last one in the sequence, and
after that he felt a brief upsurge of calm because Rosemary and Senna and Alan would
return to their homes unharmed.
    There were holly bushes at either side
of the innermost gate, planted there by Amanda Fortelberry and Betty Jane
Oswalt, two of New Crozet’s founding stalwarts, with the aid of some of the
younger folk, of course. The bushes’ glossy, pointy leaves were drawing
luminescence from the moonlight, giving the bushes a faint aura of silver, and
when Rosemary, Senna, and Alan had passed through this last gate, Corks saw Rosemary
and Alan, who were walking to either side of Senna, pick up some of the holly
luster.
    Corks rubbed his eyes, and now that Senna,
Alan, and Rosemary were well inside, he shut the inner gate and watched them
walk away until their forms began to merge with the shadows cast by New
Crozet’s dimly-glowing lights. Then he turned back to the town’s entrance and flipped
the heavy switch that controlled the spotlights.
    The big lights blinked off their beams
with only a flicker or two of delay, seeming to say to the seasoned watchman: there’s
still a long shift ahead of you and we’re sorry about that, but we’re done so
goodnight. He nodded, used to it as he was, and watched the afterglow of the
spotlights hang in the air like a wicked half-grin until it was vacuumed up by
the advancing dark.

9
    The deer’s burning corpse was casting a shallow, shifting light on the path
into the woods. As the fire receded, the darkening skeleton