Read Online Forest Park: A Zombie Novel by Jamie Marks - Free Book Online

room. However, if this is what you wish, I can save you from becoming ill --- Awad!”
    Crack!
    A bullet raced through Samir’s throat, causing him to fall to the ground in a crumpled heap.
    Blood began to bubble outwards through the small hole in Samir’s throat. His every breath was a desperate gasp for air until another shot to the head spilled a circular pool of deep red blood. Awad replaced his gun back into his belt, and then covered it with his shirt.
    “For longer than a generation, it has been cowards such as Samir who have held us back my brothers,” Daud said. “By tomorrow, thousands will suffer infection, and by the next day millions more across the globe will greet their death because of martyr cells such as ours. We may not see the end, brothers, but we will know it was us with the blessings of Allah that made it happen, God willing.”
    Within hours of the cell dispersing, Daud started to become seriously ill --- he felt nauseous and hot, his temperature begun to skyrocket without any signs of it slowing, and his chest wheezed with excess phlegm and bile.
    Daud would be Undead by morning, well before the predicted thirty-six hours.
    Viruses have their own schedule, outside of the divine.
     
     
     
    FOREST PARK
    CLAYTON COUNTY GEORGIA
     
    Forest Park was at the centre of the fastest-growing county in Georgia, Clayton County. Since the recent announcement of the closure of Fort Gillem, the local military base and a satellite of Fort McPherson; the small town of twenty-five thousand found itself at the sharp end of a short-term financial calamity.
    Forest Park relied heavily on Fort Gillem’s lucrative government contracts since the base first opened its gates in 1941. However, now Fort Gillem was working through the long process of being cleaned and cleared of any dangerous materials, before the gates shut for the very last time in the coming months.
    As devastating as the loss of the base was, there were some benefits on the horizon. Washington gifted thousands of acres of prime land to the Forest Park local Government for extensive land redevelopment, which opened the door to many opportunities. With construction jobs being created and small business’s beginning to feel confident once more after the slowdown on Main Street, due to the recession on Wall Street --- the town was feeling positive again.
    Brand-new housing developments were in the planning stages, and a modern shopping precinct was in the pipeline. Many of the towns that had only dreamed of projects, could now see those dreams become a reality.
    Forest Park’s civic leaders had always spoken of small-town country living, but within a stone throw of Atlanta, a city life with the security and the sense of community of the country. It was a slogan that appealed and one that was becoming true.
     
     
     
    THE COUPLE
     
    Steve stood about six feet tall with a straight back and was slightly overweight. Slightly, being his word.
    Professionally, Steve struggled to keep his head above water, not because he was a failure, but more so a dreamer. If a man could make legal tender based purely on dreams, he would’ve been considered one of the richest men in any town. Unfortunately, another of Steve’s attempts at running a contracting business had failed once again, and the global financial crash did nothing to ease his and Kathy’s budgetary pains.
    The recent failure of Steve’s business prompted his wife Kathy, to crusade extra hard for their move home to Georgia. She’d always been a Georgia girl at heart. Her remaining family, her sister Amanda, and her children, lived a short drive from Forest Park, a few miles down the road in Macon.
    At first, Steve wasn’t particularly interested in packing up and moving halfway across the country, but given time and some dogged persistent nagging, he eventually folded in the direction Kathy desired. In his heart, he knew he was ready for a new beginning. They both were. Anyhow, Georgia was