Renegades Read Online Free PDF Page A

Attorney At Law” – now backwards – could be seen once more.  So could dozens of shapes, dark forms leaning close.
    One of the things – probably Gray-Suit – leaned in.  Even through the door, the sound of the gagging cough was enough to make Ken wish he was deaf.  The thing vomited, and something splashed against Stacy Gomberg, Esq.’s, office door.
    More of the things clustered around the door.  All of them gagging, coughing.  Excreting.
    “They’re sealing us in,” said Dorcas.
    “Good times,” said Christopher.
    Ken turned away from them both.  Because he heard Derek again.
    Somewhere in the office.
    Somewhere in the web.
    Crying.

 
14

 
     
    It was like looking for a dark ghost.  Not only because the sound was so weak and faraway, but because it came from the depths of the gray-white-black masses of webbing that coated everything in the office.
    The office itself was fairly large; apparently Stacy Gomberg ran a successful firm.  There was a receptionist desk, a waiting area with chairs, an open central space with several doors leading to other offices.
    At least, Ken thought that was the layout.  The silken threads that covered everything made the most basic observations little more than blind guesses.
    Even the air was spun thick with threads, with strands that stretched from ceiling to floor, from wall to wall.  Ken saw the overhead fluorescent lights straining to illuminate the area, but the webbing seemed to be bouncing the photons back, rejecting the light itself.  The office was dingy, dark.  It felt like a prison.  A dungeon.  An oubliette on the ninth floor of a skyscraper.
    Christopher shouted.  Ken looked over.  The younger man had stepped forward into the waiting area, and tripped over what looked like a thick mound of silk.  The webbing had sheared apart, though, revealing a white face.  Not a mound of silk, but a wrapped-over body.
    Something hissed.  This time it was Aaron who screamed, the cowboy permitting a rare showing of emotion as something moved behind him.  What had been wall a moment before now shifted.
    Not wall.  Not wall at all.
    It was a zombie.  Encased in silk, spun into a cocoon-like shell.  Standing silently right behind Aaron.  Now it tore forth, ripping out of the threads that held it.
    It went to the body that Christopher had revealed.  Leaned over.  Tore into its cheek and began to feed on it.
    “Daddy, please help!”
    Ken turned away.  For whatever reason, the zombie wasn’t bothering them.  He had a child calling him.
    One thing at a time .
    He walked through the lobby area, shivering as the trails of silky material trailed over his bare skin.  He felt like vomiting.
    “Derek,” he shouted, trying to keep his voice calm.  Strong.  And failing.  “Where are you?”
    “In here,” said the voice.
    Ken followed his son’s voice.  Derek still sounded hurt.  And in this world where so many new kinds of pain had recently erupted into being, Ken hesitated to think of what that might mean.
    He passed several offices.  Barely glanced into them.  Still, it was enough to show him nightmare visions, silk-wrapped sheets of once-life.  Bulky objects that were once desks and bookshelves and filing cabinets and phones and people.
    Some of the corpses had been ripped open and torn to pieces.
    Others were still whole and unmoving in their cocoons.
    Ken wondered what he would find when he finally located his son.  Derek had said his mother wasn’t moving.  So would Maggie be dead?  What about Hope?  What about the baby?
    “Kiddo?” he said.  Soft footsteps behind him, the sounds of shoes treading lightly on carpet sheathed by an alien secretion.
    “In here,” said the voice.
    Ken found the office.
    He saw his son.

 
15

 
     
    It was the fifth office.  Not really an office, in fact – more of a conference room.  A large table sat in the middle, the kind of thing around which high-powered attorneys haggled over even