Read Online 4 Hardcore Zombie Novellas by Cheryl Mullenax - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Cheryl Mullenax
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the train to the tracks and stood there with her arms outstretched in a kaput parody of crucifixion.
She looked up at the fabled rosy-fingered dawn, renamed it
bloody-fingered dawn of the dead,
and then looked at the Cyclopean beam of light shining from the mighty engine that would (with any luck at all) turn her already mangled body into mincemeat, and she said (without sound), “I’m not Piggy Poop. I’m Peg Pope and I quit this world of my own free will. God damn it all to hell!”
She couldn’t know for certain where this mystery train might take her. But if it wasn’t the Oblivion Express, she was going to be appallingly pissed.
18
Paradise Denied
Nadif didn’t know how to be dead. Dead in the way the two Mexicans who killed him were. Dead but still going. Going about the business of killing. And eating. Human flesh. Once he was dead, or at least without breath and a heartbeat, the murderous dead left him alone. They—and now he—wanted only living flesh and streaming blood. How could this be?
What must Allah be thinking to allow such a thing?
But no, this was not Allah’s doing. This was Satan’s. Allah was simply sitting back and letting it happen as punishment for this crazy-quilt continent of infidels. Was this not right? Nadif didn’t know. Could only guess and his guesses were not so good now that his brain was dead and his consciousness was running unknown ethereal circuits, plagued with power surges and brownouts, the brownouts characterized by mindless walking and virtually no mental activity. And beneath it all, the constant craving for warm blood-in-the-flesh.
Was this a test?
A test of his will to fulfill his mission? The canisters of Black Death remained in his backpack but he was far afield from his jihadi job, and his feet seemed to be going their own way. His feet cared nothing for the Grand Jihad. Was his spirit strong enough to prevail? He wanted to face Mecca, drop to his knees and pray for strength but his feet kept walking the cursed land, in search of the only thing that would satisfy his infernal craving.
The irony was not entirely lost on him that he had been prepared to die hideously of the Black Death, so long as Paradise waited to welcome him on the other side of death, but now here he was stranded in a hellish realm where death itself was a permanent state of being. This was too diabolical for words. This was—
Something slapped his arm.
A moment later came the echoing pop of distant gunfire. Someone was shooting at him.
Up ahead a cluster of three or four other dead walkers also drew fire. The tallest one’s head exploded and he went down like a marionette whose strings have been all at once severed.
Another slug slapped into Nadif, this time striking him squarely in the chest and knocking him backward to the ground. As he got slowly to his feet, Nadif’s memory lazily looped back to his combat training at various camps in the Horn of Africa and he recalled his abbreviated training with a high-powered Russian sniper rifle. By the time he was standing again his sluggish mind had worked out that right now there were at least two shooters taking pot-shots at him and his … kind. Zombies. Zionist zombies?
There would be a big exit wound in his back. One of the backpack canisters containing weaponized plague had most likely been breached. The virus would be wasted here in this wasteland.
He thought he should remove the backpack and note the damage but as soon as the thought came into his head, it evaporated and he walked on into the dawn, thinking single-mindedly of finding bloody sustenance.
Nadif paid little mind to the sniper’s slugs snapping past and sometimes slamming into him. They were hardly more annoying than aggressive insects, hungry horseflies or fat mosquitoes.
19
Man Walks Into A Bar
Cruz came to with a shotgun muzzle pressed hard against his forehead, just above the bridge of his nose.
“What’ll it be?” the shotgun-wielding bartender
She looked up at the fabled rosy-fingered dawn, renamed it
bloody-fingered dawn of the dead,
and then looked at the Cyclopean beam of light shining from the mighty engine that would (with any luck at all) turn her already mangled body into mincemeat, and she said (without sound), “I’m not Piggy Poop. I’m Peg Pope and I quit this world of my own free will. God damn it all to hell!”
She couldn’t know for certain where this mystery train might take her. But if it wasn’t the Oblivion Express, she was going to be appallingly pissed.
18
Paradise Denied
Nadif didn’t know how to be dead. Dead in the way the two Mexicans who killed him were. Dead but still going. Going about the business of killing. And eating. Human flesh. Once he was dead, or at least without breath and a heartbeat, the murderous dead left him alone. They—and now he—wanted only living flesh and streaming blood. How could this be?
What must Allah be thinking to allow such a thing?
But no, this was not Allah’s doing. This was Satan’s. Allah was simply sitting back and letting it happen as punishment for this crazy-quilt continent of infidels. Was this not right? Nadif didn’t know. Could only guess and his guesses were not so good now that his brain was dead and his consciousness was running unknown ethereal circuits, plagued with power surges and brownouts, the brownouts characterized by mindless walking and virtually no mental activity. And beneath it all, the constant craving for warm blood-in-the-flesh.
Was this a test?
A test of his will to fulfill his mission? The canisters of Black Death remained in his backpack but he was far afield from his jihadi job, and his feet seemed to be going their own way. His feet cared nothing for the Grand Jihad. Was his spirit strong enough to prevail? He wanted to face Mecca, drop to his knees and pray for strength but his feet kept walking the cursed land, in search of the only thing that would satisfy his infernal craving.
The irony was not entirely lost on him that he had been prepared to die hideously of the Black Death, so long as Paradise waited to welcome him on the other side of death, but now here he was stranded in a hellish realm where death itself was a permanent state of being. This was too diabolical for words. This was—
Something slapped his arm.
A moment later came the echoing pop of distant gunfire. Someone was shooting at him.
Up ahead a cluster of three or four other dead walkers also drew fire. The tallest one’s head exploded and he went down like a marionette whose strings have been all at once severed.
Another slug slapped into Nadif, this time striking him squarely in the chest and knocking him backward to the ground. As he got slowly to his feet, Nadif’s memory lazily looped back to his combat training at various camps in the Horn of Africa and he recalled his abbreviated training with a high-powered Russian sniper rifle. By the time he was standing again his sluggish mind had worked out that right now there were at least two shooters taking pot-shots at him and his … kind. Zombies. Zionist zombies?
There would be a big exit wound in his back. One of the backpack canisters containing weaponized plague had most likely been breached. The virus would be wasted here in this wasteland.
He thought he should remove the backpack and note the damage but as soon as the thought came into his head, it evaporated and he walked on into the dawn, thinking single-mindedly of finding bloody sustenance.
Nadif paid little mind to the sniper’s slugs snapping past and sometimes slamming into him. They were hardly more annoying than aggressive insects, hungry horseflies or fat mosquitoes.
19
Man Walks Into A Bar
Cruz came to with a shotgun muzzle pressed hard against his forehead, just above the bridge of his nose.
“What’ll it be?” the shotgun-wielding bartender
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