Undead Read Online Free PDF Page B

dead. The flesh on their faces was rotting and oozing in places. Their eyes bulged from deep sockets. Their flesh was bloodless and pasty white. They moved with an effort, as though whatever force had brought them to life had not done a complete job. But they were horrible, ghoulish beings, and they frightened Ben to the depths of his ability to be frightened, as he moved toward them brandishing his jack-handle.
    “Come and get it, now. Come and get it,” Ben muttered to himself, as he concentrated on his attack, moving forward stolidly at first, then breaking almost into a run.
    But the two, instead of backing off, moved toward the man, as though drawn by some deep-seated urge. Ben pounded into them, swinging his jack-handle again and again with all his might. But his blows, powerful though they were, seemed to have little effect. He couldn’t stop the things, or hurt them. It was like beating a rug; every time he flung them back they advanced again, in a violent, brutal struggle. But Ben finally managed to beat them to the ground, and for a long while he continued to pound at their heads, at their limp forms lying there on the lawn, until he was almost sobbing with each of his blows, beating and beating at them, while Barbara stood on the porch and watched in a state of shock. Over and over, he drove the jack-handle smashing into the skulls of the prostrate creatures—humanoids, or whatever they were—until the sheer violence of it set Barbara off on a rampage of screaming—screaming and holding her head and trying to cover her eyes. Again and again her screams pierced the night, mingled with Ben’s sobs and the sounds of the jack-handle hammering into the skulls of the dead things.
    Ben finally got hold of himself, and stopped. Breathing heavily, he stood, enveloped in the quiet of the night.
    Silent now, the girl stood in the doorway and looked at him—or through him—he could not be sure which. He turned to face her and say something to comfort her, but he could not get his breath.
    Suddenly, he heard a noise behind the girl, from inside the house. He leaped up onto the porch, and walking toward her from the kitchen was another of the horrible dead things. Somehow it must have broken the bolt on the kitchen door.
    “Lock that door!” Ben yelled and Barbara summoned the presence of mind to shut the living-room door and lock it, as still another brutal struggle ensued in the living room.
    The dead thing that Ben began struggling with this time was more horrible-looking than the other two, as if it had been dead longer, or had died a more terrible death. Patches of hair and flesh had been torn from its head and face, and the bones of its arms showed through the skin like a jacket with the elbows worn through. And one dead eye was hanging halfway out of its socket, and its mouth was twisted and caked with blood and dirt.
    Ben tried to hit it, but the thing grabbed onto Ben’s arm, and the jack-handle dropped to the floor. Ben groped and struggled with the thing, and finally twisted it around and wrestled it down onto the carpet. The thing was emitting strange rasping sounds from its dead throat, like the sounds that had been made by whoever had killed Barbara’s brother…and it raked its hands in the direction of Ben’s throat—but it did not make contact, because Ben had seized the jack-handle and he drove it point first into the thing’s skull.
    Ben stood up. He had to use his foot against the dead thing’s head to gain leverage to pull the jack-handle out—and the dead skull flopped back with a thud against the living-room floor. And just the tiniest bit of fluid, white and not the color of blood, oozed from the wound made by the jack-handle in the dead creature’s skull.
    But Ben had no time to think of what it might mean, because a sound in the kitchen told him that still another of the things had gotten in. He met it in the hall and with powerful jack-handle blows drove it out beyond the kitchen door