Undead Much Read Online Free PDF Page A

someone accidentally mentioned Jess, the girl who had been my best friend for nearly six years before she’d tried to kill me.
      “Yeah, well, we’ve got to do whatever it takes to raise more money than the cheerleaders or we lose halftime rights for the entire basketball season. The team that makes the biggest contribution to the boosters by Friday night wins,” I said in a breezy voice, refusing to let Mom know how much thinking about Jess still bugged me.
      She’d been after me to go “talk to someone” since last September, but I didn’t have the time for therapy. I had zombie stuff to learn and pom squad and school and would like to spend some time with my boyfriend at some point. Maybe after the car wash. He said he’d come by once he got off his Protocol shift. In addition to going to college part-time, Ethan was a Settler cop.
      Is there anything hotter than a cute guy who is also armed and dangerous? I think not.
      “Call us if you need a ride home,” Dad said.
      “And don’t get wet! You’ll get hypothermia.” Mom called as I slammed out the door.
      I thought I heard her mumbling something about the idiocy of a car wash in winter but didn’t respond. She was right, but what else were we supposed to do? We only had four days to make enough cash to win this stupid competition before Saturday’s game, and a car wash was the only thing we could get up and running fast.
      We had other irons in the fire, but for now scrubbing dirt from cars and trucks wrecked by the mess they’d put on the streets after the snow was the best we could do. Not a fun way to spend a Tuesday night, but at least we wouldn’t have to wash the tops of the cars, and it wasn’t cold enough to make the water freeze.
      And we already had one customer. The senior girls were hard at work scrubbing a Mustang while a couple of juniors held up signs near the road and the rest of the team stood around trying to look adorable and worthy of the ten dollars per vehicle we were charging-plus tip, of course.
      “Was that your mom and dad? They’re cute.” Penny was one of the three other sophomores on the team, and a girl I thought I’d like to get to know better if I had the time. She was always very sweet, and her curly copper hair and nose freckles reminded me of Lindsay Lohan when she was still the cute little kid from the Parent Trap remake.
      “Thanks. Yeah, they weren’t thrilled with the gimmick,” I said, rolling up my coat sleeves and scoping out a bucket to commandeer for my personal scrubbing use.
      “Oh God, my mom wasn’t either. I thought she was going to have a stroke. And then she saw Monica and…” Our eyes drifted to where Monica was halfheartedly scrubbing the sides of the red Mustang. She had on a sweater and jeans, but both were so tight she looked like she’d been poured into a catsuit. And she was wearing stiletto boots. Who wore high heels to wash cars? “Well, after that I was lucky to get out of the car.”
      I laughed and Penny did too, and for a second I thought I might enjoy this evening of slavery. Penny was cool and we have never had the chance to just hang out and talk at practice.
      Then I smelled it-death wafting across the parking lot.
      It wasn’t grave dirt or the sickeningly sweet odor of rotting flesh, but there was no doubt that whatever this was had been summoned from its grave with black magic. After months spent studying the various ingredients one could use to reanimate a corpse, I had the pungent odor of wormwood and gardenia memorized.
      Still, I didn’t want to believe it. This couldn’t be happening again! Carol was a nice, sleepy small town, not a hotbed of black magic and mayhem. Or at least it hadn’t been until four months ago. Now, it seemed the rules had changed.
      I heard the unmistakable groans of flesh-hungry zombies and was running toward the tree line at the edge of the parking lot a second later.
      “Monica! I saw