The Dead Won't Die Read Online Free PDF

become a zombie. Somebody will have to put you down. When I die, same thing. The same poison runs in both our veins. We are truly in this together.”
    With that, Dr. Brooks turned and went to the door. He waited for Jacob to speak, but when he didn’t, he opened the door and stepped out.
    Before he closed it he said, “You will remember that, won’t you, Jacob? I’m on your side.”
    â€œYeah,” Jacob said, turning back to the window. “Yeah, I got it.”

C HAPTER 3
    â€œWhat is it you people don’t understand?” Jacob said. “Haven’t we been through this already? Why do you keep asking me the same thing over and over?”
    He was sitting at one end of a long, oval conference table, surrounded by old men who wore expensive-looking gray suits and dour expressions. This was the Executive Council of the Community of Temple, nearly every one of them a senior scientist in his field.
    Introductions alone had taken forty-five minutes.
    The hearing started out with all the dignity and fanfare of some sort of state function. Jacob sat through the introductions and the pleasantries, ever mindful of what Lester Brooks, who sat three seats down from him on the right, had said about this meeting deciding the terms of friendship between their two communities.
    Jacob had gone into the meeting with high hopes.
    In the few jaunts he’d taken outside the hospital, he’d seen solar-powered clipper ships out on the ocean and airships bigger than skyscrapers gliding across the sky and electric cars and dozens more wonders he didn’t even have words for yet. This community’s medical knowledge alone could save dozens of lives every year back in Arbella. Jacob himself had been brought back from the brink of death twice now by their medical knowledge.
    But, of course, he was young and strong.
    Back home, there was an entire generation of aging heroes of the First Days, of which his mother was a member. They looked on a broken hip as a death sentence. To them, flu season was a killing field. In recent years, his mother’s main social function had been to attend the funerals of people she’d learned to call brothers and sisters. The idea of bringing Temple’s medical knowledge back to Arbella, and using it to restore the lives of his community’s aging heroes and the dozens of people who died from curable diseases and minor injuries every year, was absolutely critical, he realized.
    And so he’d settled into the high-backed leather chair they’d offered him and readied himself for their questions.
    That had been four hours ago.
    Now, he was exhausted. Mad; irritable; so frustrated he wanted to knock the hat off a random stranger’s head; but above all, exhausted.
    Jacob looked around the table, hoping to find at least one encouraging face, but found none. Not even Lester Brooks, who had pointedly refused to meet his gaze even once during the hearing.
    â€œI think you need to look at this in a more pragmatic sense,” said a man on Jacob’s left. His name was Steve Welch, a thin, tall man with a crane-like neck who spoke like a man accustomed to spending most of his life in front of classroom. He’d been steering the questioning for the last forty-five minutes. “Please. See this our way. Now, you freely admit to shooting a man. A Mr. Nicolas Carroll, I believe you said.”
    â€œNick, yes,” Jacob said.
    The older councilman nodded. “You and Ms. Chelsea Walker tell similar stories, up to a point, Mr. Carlton. Apparently this Mr. Carroll was involved in some petty theft back in your community of New Madrid, and you, acting as the town’s first deputy, murdered him for it. That’s it in a nutshell, as I understand your testimony?”
    â€œI did not murder him,” Jacob said, his voice rising. He had to stop himself, take a mental step back. He took a deep breath, and went on. “I told you. He invaded the