Death After Life: A Zombie Apocalypse Thriller

Read Online Death After Life: A Zombie Apocalypse Thriller by John Evans - Free Book Online Page B

Book: Death After Life: A Zombie Apocalypse Thriller by John Evans Read Free Book Online
Authors: John Evans
Tags: Zombies
Ads: Link
hoarsely. “Till you learn to run!” He cackled at that, again struck by the dark hilarity of his situation.
    The bastard had made sixteen incisions on his body, eight above the waist and eight below. The slow trickle of blood from these cuts had him a bit light-headed, but he felt confident that it was coagulating. He wouldn’t bleed out back here, even if he could smell the coppery bouquet of his own spilled plasma as well as the dead could. It had saturated his clothes and still left a trail he could sometimes see glistening in the taillights of the monstrous tank, like the slime left behind by a snail. Its progress was so ploddingly methodical that the comparison felt apt to Murphy.
    He chuckled, blood loss making him loopy perhaps. So this is what a snail feels like. He knew he was dead no matter what, unless the stranger fucked up somehow AND Murphy found some reserve within himself from which to draw strength. Two broken arms would be tough to overcome, but he could still kick and head-butt and bite.  
    For now, though, all he could do was watch the pack of feeders follow them, eternally just a few steps behind. Occasionally shots would ring out and they would pass crumpled, fetid bodies on one side or another. But the driver was doing a masterful job of preventing the dead from heading them off and getting at Murphy from either side of the tank.  
    His diabolical gambit was working all too well. The ranks of the dead would swell every time he put the siren on for awhile, but none of them could claim the cheese in the trap.  
    Me , Murphy thought with a crazed giggle. The steak the dogs would never get their jaws on. At least until his abductor decided to stop tormenting them. Until then, he would keep swelling their ranks.  
    To what end, Murphy didn’t know. Why he was chosen, he didn’t know. Sure, he was road scum like almost everyone else out here. But he didn’t think he was really on the radar of anyone important.  
    I’m just a scavenger , he thought. And yet he knew he’d been watched, he knew the man in the military helmet and mask must have been monitoring his activities for some time. He’d been chosen.  
    Murphy figured that word must have gotten out. He knew better than to shit where he ate, but his range wasn’t vast. It was fair to say that for the last year, he’d been a holy terror in Kansas. People still needed to run supplies or visit relatives in one stronghold or another. The Interstates were reserved for official use and travel generally discouraged, but state highways and back roads still saw use by the brave or foolish.  
    Rumors flew about how Murphy was able to afford the homestead he outfitted. Trading machine parts and Army surplus gear, his ostensible means of making a living, didn’t explain everything.
    He remembered how easy it seemed, at first. Going out on his ATV, looting abandoned settlements and vehicles either left behind or overrun by feeders. There were worse people out there and he would go to ground when they came by.
    But that could only take you so far, and as he got bolder and better at dispatching the living dead, he began to see himself as a predator in his own right. That first family was just asking for it. Holding down a little ranch house with little more than hunting rifles and teens at the trigger! He knew that if he didn’t take them, marauders would. It was simple Darwinism.
    Sure, he still dreamt of that girl’s screams as he violated her, doing things he’d always fantasized about but never thought he would, but in the end he only strangled her. She would have fared worse if he hadn’t done her. The same went for the rest of them.
    Mercy killing.
    But the motherfucker hauling his carcass along, using him as zombie bait, this was a predator who was higher on the food chain. Murphy didn’t even hear him, let alone see him, until it was too late. One moment he was tucked into his little roadside blind, waiting for unwary travelers on the

Similar Books

If All Else Fails

Craig Strete

One Hot Summer

Norrey Ford

Divine Savior

Kathi S. Barton

Visions of Gerard

Jack Kerouac

Tangled Webs

Anne Bishop