Stay Dead: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

slowly coming up the street. It was a grey,
decaying, mob of things that used to people. It was the walking
dead: the kind of dead that shouldn’t exist but did regardless, the
kind that stood upright, craving living flesh. And there they were,
making their way to New Haven.
    Dane grabbed his talkie, “We’ve got more
coming! Requesting immediate backup!” His voice was thick with
panic.
    “Sal, how many are there?” Asked Jones,
shotgun in hand.
    “Don’t know, must be a hundred easy,” he
handed Jones the rifle. “Take a look for your self and let me know
I’m not loosing my mind.”
    Jones reassured him. There were at least a
hundred dead things shambling toward town. They stayed close
together for the most part, with only a few smaller clusters off to
either side, and a few trailing behind. Jones could see that one of
the creatures was dragging its intestines on the ground, foot upon
foot of ropey innards, with not so much as a scowl. He nearly
vomited. The sheer number of them was surreal. They had encountered
the dead things a number of times, but never like this. This was an
army of the dead.
    “Shoot at will! We’ll be there when we can!”
Sheriff Davis snapped, “Over.”
    “Make it quick! Over and out,” Dane
replied.
    Sal started picking them off one by one. They
were too far away for him to be accurate with their shots. The
wind, coupled with the distance the bullet would have to travel
made it tough for even a trained sniper to accurately hit his mark.
Dane rushed Susan to her car. He told her to get home, lock all the
doors and windows. Then he promised he’d be there just as soon as
he could. She reluctantly got into her car but drove off in a
hurry.
    Dane and the rest of the men grabbed their
guns. Dane hopped into his cruiser and took off down the road to
get closer and no one objected. Sal thought it was a good idea and
did the same. They got close enough to make their shots count, and
began picking them off at a decent clip. But they still kept
coming. They knew they had fewer bullets than targets and if backup
didn’t show up before they ran out, they’d be fucked.
    They held their position and kept firing.
Dane wasn’t nearly as good a shot with a rifle as Sal, so he opted
to grab his shotgun and drive in even closer. Sal was stunned to
see Dane do such a thing: he’d never been the type to pull cowboy
stunts, and Dane was far more cautious than that. He watched in awe
as Dane got dangerously close to the dead things, close enough to
blast three of them in the face with his shotgun.
    As he headed off-road to loop around he
nailed one with the front end of his cruiser. The foul-smelling
creature was struck at an angle that dragged it below the
underbelly of the car, popping its head like a bottle under the
wheel. He did this a few more times, eventually thinning the heard
by seven. After Dane was finished with his unusual antics he headed
back to the roadblock and positioned his car where it had been
previously. Jones never left his spot and had only fired a few
shots. He was on the walkie-talkie with Davis. They were only
minutes away.
    The creatures weren’t discouraged in the
slightest and continued to creep forward. It looked like they’d be
past the roadblock any minute. Sal was still up ahead and shooting,
but quickly got in his cruiser, as a few of the creatures began
hurrying toward him. Their dead muscles tearing with every step,
they got to the car just as Sal closed the door. He sped off and
managed to knock them to the ground with the tail of his
cruiser.
    Jones squeezed off shot after shot with his
shaky hands and somehow, by the grace of God he thought, hit his
marks. But, with every walking corpse they put down, another came
into view. The officers stood their ground in front of the
roadblock, making as many shots count as possible. But the
creatures continued to close the distance. The stench of their
rotting bodies could make a garbage truck scream, or