The Dead Man: Kill Them All Read Online Free PDF Page A

the shotgun, aiming towards his own house. Out here in the middle of nowhere, the noise was like the bark of a giant dog. “Stay away from me, you bastard! Stay back!”
    Spooked, Matt looked. The house. The rocker. There was nobody there.
    Kearns squinted, carefully studying his porch for the movement of a creature that didn’t exist. Matt took advantage of the distraction and edged towards his belongings. Kearns clearly had a bad case of amphetamine psychosis—full-on auditory and visual hallucinations. If he had really seen the Dark Man, the experience had run together in his mind with dozens of other delusions. He’d be useless in terms of acquiring new information. The trip had been a waste of time—and could still be a fatal mistake.
    The gun discharged again. An echo barked back a few seconds later, and then one more. The crow cawed as if amused. Kearns screamed in a voice high and shrill. He fired at it the bird, and blood and feathers exploded in all directions.
    “Take that, you skinny, black-winged motherfucker!”
    Matt trotted over to his stuff but didn’t take his eyes off of Kearns. He gathered up the backpack and sleeping bag and reached for the ax. Matt thought he heard some kind of low throbbing sound, wasn’t sure from where. Could have been the panicked blood thundering through the veins in his own ears. Facing down an enemy was one thing. A psychotic with a shotgun was quite another.
    Kearns hunkered down like a man taking a dump in his pants, which was actually quite possible, all things considered. He gripped the shotgun in his trembling right hand and with his left he dug into his filthy pocket for another shell. He seemed to have forgotten Matt’s presence or written it off as a hallucination. Kearns reloaded and stalked towards his own home.
    But Kearns stalked nothing and fired at nothing. Matt backed away, the ax in his right hand and the pack and bedroll over his left shoulder. He was almost out of range of the shotgun when he noticed the humming sound again and pegged it for an engine.
    A vehicle this far from the highway?
    A large one, a truck or a van, and it sounded closer. Perhaps he could hitch a ride away from this madhouse.
    “Ugh!”
    Kearns threw his hands up as if upset by something, and the shotgun went sailing. Matt blinked. Part of the redneck’s head disappeared, to be replaced by a strange pink cloud that floated away. Kearns dropped to his knees and fell over dead.
    He’d been shot, and Matt hadn’t heard a thing.
    Someone was using a silencer.
    Matt ducked and tried to run, but something slammed into the side of his head, and he dropped his gear. The world went white with pain, spun in a circle, and turned pitch-black.

CHAPTER SIX

    Friday, 4:32 p.m.

    Matt came to but kept his eyes closed. He was inside and could feel cool air-conditioning on his exposed skin. His arm ached—like an IV needle had been badly inserted and then clumsily taped down. The back of his head was pounding. No one could have gotten close enough to hit him without Matt sensing it, so he’d been shot with something, perhaps a beanbag. Cops or military? But why?
    “Sleeping Beauty is awake.” A man’s jocular baritone. “Bro, we have been trying to catch up to your ass for a week. This morning we got here ahead of you. At last we meet!”
    Matt forced his eyes open and squinted. He was on a gurney but not in a hospital. This was some kind of gigantic van—he could tell by the shape of the walls. Everything around and below him vibrated a bit. The speaker was dressed in black with a web belt and a sidearm. Mercenary all the way. He had a friendly, boyish face and a good-natured grin.
    “My name is Scotty, Cahill,” the man said. “And of course we already know who you are.”
    The scary stranger Sally had mentioned. Scotty instantly reminded Matt of someone. Someone he knew. His head hurt too much to focus. He rolled his head to the right. There was a needle in his arm. And some kind of