Undead at Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

shade of the trees he felt relief from the heat that had
been rolling off the burning field. The image of it was still floating before
him, imprinted on his retina, and as he ran he careened from trunk to trunk.
His earlier care over his shirt was forgotten as moss and dirt created a new
pattern over the blue pin-stripe, but his Blackberry was still clutched in his
hand. Despite his fear and panic he peered at it every few steps ,, focussing on its black screen through the burning haze
obscuring his vision, hoping that it would come back to life and somehow
transport him from all of this.
    Finally, inevitably,
he tripped over a root, or a log, or a pine cone, or nothing at all, and
sprawled on the ground. His breath was coming in gasps which sounded in his
ears like sobs. He tried to calm, to breathe normally, but he no longer seemed
have control. He bowed his head and let out a series of loud moans.
    He didn’t hear her
come up behind him, so he squealed and scrabbled away when he felt a hand on
his shoulder. The owner of the hand screamed in response, took a step back and
fell onto her bottom with a yelp. Tony peered at her in the darkness. It wasn’t
Nicola, it was someone else. She was young and blonde and slim.
    “What?” he asked her,
unable to articulate more. “What?!”
    She leaned forward,
reaching behind to rub where she had landed. “I- I’m sorry,” she said, still rubbing
and emitting little hisses when she touched a particularly sore part. “I just
wanted to see if you were okay; if you’d been hurt. You sounded like you were
in pain.”
    Her voice was soft,
but not breathy or girlish, and it calmed him. He felt a sheepish grin form on
his lips, only a shadow of his normal charmer’s smile, but a step back towards
normality nonetheless. “Yeah, sorry, I guess I’m more out of shape than I
thought.” He saw her quizzical look and explained. “I was wheezing, you know,
from running. I wanted to get away before. Well, before whatever happened
next.”
    “What did happen?” she
asked.
    “I have no fucking
idea. There was a helicopter which, I think, blew up a truck. And then all the
electrics went down – and, and I still don’t know how that happened.” He lifted
his Blackberry up again, pressing all the buttons and shaking it, trying to
find the combination of button-presses and agitation which would resurrect the
dead device. “And then fighter jets flew in and blew up a field.”
    There was silence for
a moment and then he laughed. “Now that was a collection of words that I never
expected to hear myself say. ‘ Fighter jets flew in and blew up a field ’!”
He laughed louder, ignoring the rise of his gorge and the sting of tears that
he could feel accompanying it. The girl started to laugh too, but a little more
uncertainly. Tony just laughed louder. “They must really hate the
countryside!”
    His laughter was
howling now, and he was aware it was going on too long, but he couldn’t stop
it. Eventually it caught in his tightening throat and he started coughing.
    The girl came to his
side again, slapping his back, and when he could breathe properly again, the
laughter had gone and taken the urge to cry or vomit away with it.
    He looked up at her
and smiled, aware that his eyes were watering, but not caring as these were
from coughing, certainly not crying. He was about to ask her name when other
people started to appear through the trees. They were walking, rather than
running, and some of them had started to talk to each other, comparing their
experiences, trying to work out what was going on. Some of them spotted Tony
and the girl and a group formed around them. It seemed, for the moment, that
everyone felt comfortable being this far inside the forest, and many of them
sat down on the ground until it started to look like some bizarre family
outing.
    Although they were all
talking about what they had just seen, no consensus could be formed on what was
happening. The subject of the