The Dead Hunger Series: Books 1 through 5 Read Online Free PDF Page A

pale white, her cap-sleeved tee shirt torn and bloody, her mouth open to reveal gnashing teeth that looked like they were always chewing, chewing, eating, eating. 
    “Jamie,” I said softly.  “Jamie, it’s me, Flex.”
    Her eyes filled with something like concern for just a split second.  Then she started to tear at the screening, trying to get to where we were.  The door was right in front of her, but it was closed. 
    And she spoke as she did this.  Not clear.  Garbled.  But the words I could still make out.
    “I’m hungry hungry starving hungry hungry . . .”  Her eyes glowed, but there was no light reflecting in them.  The pupils were dilated huge, so that no irises were visible, only black.  Against her pale white skin, this increased the oddness of it.  Her hair, once so shiny and beautiful, was stringy and even beginning to fall out in places.  What had happened to her had happened fast.  I couldn’t imagine that we’d spoken on the phone just earlier that day.
    “Jamie, baby.  It’s me, Flex!  I’ll help you!  You’re sick, sis.  Just sick.  Sit down there on the grass, and I’ll get someone to help you!  Just stay there and – ”
    I stopped talking.  She didn’t hear anything, and her guttural grunts and moans as she continued tearing down the screen mesh just obscured what I was trying to get across.  She was making headway through the screen and as it broke through, she began her scramble over the lower crossbar. 
    I looked at her, then looked at sweet Jesse’s limp body lying on the concrete in front of me, and there was no fucking way I was going to let this . . . this thing get to her.  I’d never forgive myself.  I pulled Jesse’s soaked body into my arms and back into the water.  I carried her to the deep end and let her body slip beneath the surface to the dark bottom again.
    As I headed back toward the shallow end, the Jamie-thing had made it through and was staggering toward the pool.  I stood about five feet from the edge and watched her.  As she reached the edge of the pool again, she stopped and stared down.
    Afraid?  Unable to judge the water, perhaps even confused as to what it was?
    In my mind I kept thinking cure.  The gun was in my hand, but I knew I would not be using it on my sister.  Whatever she was, whatever she’d become, she was Jamie, my kid sister, and I loved her more than anyone else on this entire planet.  She had not killed her daughter directly, though clearly she’d been the cause of her death.  But I had to use that logic; she was incapable, even at this strange stage of metamorphosis, or whatever it was, of killing her own child.
    And so I had to capture her somehow.  Get her to a doctor. 
    Something.
    As I stared at her an idea began to formulate.  She stood stock still, staring into the water toward me, her teeth gnashing, gnashing.  I was horrified to see her so far gone.
    I could not get too near her.  Trina was relying on me, and if this was contagious, it wouldn’t do to become infected.  If not airborne, it could be transferred by bodily fluids, and Jamie looked to be capable of spreading her share of them right now.  She could not be allowed to be too near me or Trina.
    I stood there, the idea continuing to take shape.  The pool cover was a bubble wrap type material, only thicker.  It was rolled up on a long cylinder at the deep end of the pool, operated by a hand crank.  If I wanted to pull it out, I had only to grab onto it and start to pull it across the pool.  I could safely work in the water, because apparently Jamie did not want to work in the water.  I looked at the large roll and felt in the front pocket of my jeans.  My pocket knife was there. 
    I looked at the Jamie-thing again, gauging her reluctance to come in after me, and while I could read nothing in her features, she hadn’t moved.  Aside from her mouth, she stood perfectly still.  Occasionally she moaned, and the gnashing was constant.