Read Online Dead Beginnings (Vol. 2) by Alex Apostol - Free Book Online

just as the young girl lost her balance and fell to the ground.
                  “NO!” Lee screamed.
                  He reached for her as the thing sunk its teeth into her shoulder. Lee pulled her up, tearing away flesh and muscle that still hung from between the zombie’s blackened, bloody teeth. Its tongue moved all around to lap up the fresh, warm liquid life.
                  He held Jessica to his chest. She no longer cried out in pain. Defeated, tiny sobs racked her body as she started to shake.
    Tears welled up in Lee’s brown eyes. He’d failed again. Every single person he tried to keep alive during this apocalypse had been ripped apart by the vile undead.
                  The thing still snatched at the air to get more meat into its masticating mouth. A rage filled Lee’s heart until he thought it would burst. He let out a long, anguished cry as he stomped on its head, rendering it unrecognizable.
                  “You son-of-a-bitch!” he yelled out with fury. “You fucking son-of-a-goddamn-bitch!”
                  Long after the creature had stopped moving, Lee finally took a step back with heaving breaths. The fog of devastation dissipated. He remembered what brought him to that very moment.
                  Jessica’s small arms no longer wrapped tightly around his neck. Instead of curling up in a ball on his chest, her head laid back, her neck extended, and her long blonde hair fell downward like a golden waterfall.
                  Gently, he laid her down on the ground where the stalks had been flattened. Blood gushed from the wound near her throat. There was silence all around as her life spilled from her tiny body onto his shaking hands. His bottom lip quivered as he stared into her vacant eyes. He suppressed the urge to say her name again. She wouldn’t answer this time.
                  With one knee rested on the ground, he lowered his head into one of his thick hands. It was his destiny in life to be alone, that much was becoming clear. With the world the way it was now, it was useless to become attached to any living thing. The dead would simply claim it as their own.
                  A hand brushed against his, causing his lids to spring open. Jessica stared up at him with new eyes, starving for her first feeding. Her teeth gnashed together as she gave a feminine but threatening hiss. The wound on her shoulder no longer bled. There was no life left in her to pour out.
                  Before Lee could move, he heard a loud bang and dark blood drenched his face.
                  “Got it!” he heard a man yell with enthusiasm. “I got the sumbitch. Did you see that? The way it exploded? Aw, man!”
                  Whoever it was, he wasn’t alone.
    Mixed emotions spread through Lee as he continued to kneel in the cornfield with his eyes closed—hatred for the person who so callously wasted poor Jessica, heartsick from the entire day of loss with no time to grieve, and exhausted from endless running from the dead. The only thing he didn’t feel was fear.
                  Slowly, he rose to his full height.
                  “Hey, man, you all right? Did it get you?” the same man asked with authority.
                  Lee’s eyes opened, the only part of his face not covered in Jessica’s blood.
                  “Oh, shit,” the young blond man said slowly. “He’s one of them!”
    Lee waited for the release of death and the reunion with his wife and Jessica on the other side.
                  “No! Wait!” another gentler man’s voice said. “He’s not a zombie. Look at his eyes.”
                  Lee continued to stand there, breathing in and out through his nostrils heavily. His arms hovered over the sides of his legs in a solid stance. The intensity at