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

Her face did not turn away from me.  I can’t say she saw me, but she knew exactly where I was.
    I turned and cupped the knife in my hand and swam to the far edge.  As I reached it, I leaned out and took the bubble plastic in my hand and pushed off the edge back toward the middle of the pool, unspooling it behind me.  When my feet could touch the bottom again, I stood, one eye on Jamie and the other on my work.  With my pocket knife, I began cutting the plastic off at about an eight foot length.  It was about fourteen feet wide.  Still light and easy to work with.  I had just finished cutting through the last two feet and had started rolling it up so that the width would become my length.  When I glanced back toward Jamie I saw that she was no longer alone.
    There was a man walking up behind her.
    “Stop!” I shouted.  “Stay away from her!”  The man didn’t falter.  His gait was strange.  Unsteady, jerky.  Jamie, apparently sensing his presence behind her, turned her body and head to see him, but did not step out of his path.  Her movement was enough to allow me to see his face. 
    He was her .  They were the same .  My God, he had the disease too, and he seemed more determined.  Chills shot so fast down my spine I was surprised the pool didn’t ripple as they sped past the water line.  I pocketed the knife and pulled the gun out of the back of my pants, then shook what water I could from it.  The man-creature walked around Jamie as though he didn’t see her, his eyes on me.  He walked to the pool’s edge, just opposite where I stood.  Jamie had remained at the corner, eyes on me, but had never walked the edge to be closer. 
    He may have been hungrier than even she was.  His teeth and jaws also gnashed and worked at chewing nothing, and he had the same eyes.  His feet now hung over the edge of the pool’s coping, and he looked from my face to the surface of the water. 
    “Hey, you fuck!  You’re not coming in here,” I yelled, my voice tremulous.  “Get out of here, or I’ll put a bullet –”
    And it was as if he dared me to do it.  Suddenly he was falling forward, his body stiff as a board, his eyes staring through me as he plummeted toward the dark water and into my sanctuary.  His eyes were somehow black, yet aglow with an internal light of their own.  His jaws working back and forth, up and down, anticipating my flesh.  Mid-fall, I jerked my arm up and pulled the trigger hard, shooting him square in the forehead.  Two more quick pulls of the trigger and his left eye was blown out of the socket and his right cheekbone disintegrated.
    The boo ming sound shook me to the bone as I gripped the bubble wrap in my hands and pushed back away from where his body splashed into the water.  I scrambled to the opposite side and pressed myself against the pool wall.  Jamie still had not moved, or even seemed to have noticed the encounter at all.  As the thing’s body floated toward me, now motionless, I nudged it away from me with the now rolled up bubble wrap.  When I was sure it was floating away – and to the shallow end of the pool, for I did not want it to sink down anywhere near my Jesse – I scrambled out of the water.  I still didn’t know whether this horror was transmitted via air, fluid, or what, but I didn’t want to be in any water this thing might secrete his fluids into.
    Once I was out, Jamie started toward me.  It was the water she was afraid of, this woman who was once a hell of a swimmer.  But now I was out, and she was still hungry, because her guttural words came again, and she stepped slowly, erratically toward me.  Not fast, but steady.  I tucked my gun back into the back of my pants and hefted the roll of bubble wrap.  It was rolled up like a rug, long and stiff enough for me to use as a tool to push her away. 
    If I could push her down, then I would execute my plan.
    Or try, at least. 
    Starting around the back side of the pool, I hurried around