Read Online Hissers II: Death March by Ryan C. Thomas - Free Book Online Page A

guy’s face in. I see the guy’s nose crush into pulp. Must have jarred the brain, thankfully, because the guy went down and stayed down. But it was too late. More of them were coming. Kevin’s got his Telecaster up again and it’s dripping brain and blood and he swings again and this time I kind of snap out of my trance. I don’t remember a whole lot besides picking up my stage monitor and bringing it down on this chick’s head. She was climbing on stage and clawing for me. I’d been looking at her in the crowd earlier but she had those same yellow eyes now and some dude’s fingers in her mouth. I hit her so hard I saw bits of her brain shoot of of her ears. Our drummer, George, starts throwing his toms and doing his best to keep them things at bay. I saw him stab his drum stick right into some jughead’s eye, right into the brain, but it was too late. He went down under a pile of them things, swinging and kicking and doing damage that would knock out a real person, but not these things. And I look around and there’s Kevin under another pile. Our bass player—I don’t even know his real name—he’s punching and kicking but the dead fucks have got him, pulling him apart in a tug-o-war. Both his arms rip right off at the shoulder. Man, he screamed so loud I thought my ears would bleed.
    “I take my guitar off and I go to hit the hissing freak to my left but I just can’t.”
    Amanita hugged herself tighter. “Why not?”
“Because it was Kevin.  He was all yellow-eyed and covered in blood and he was reaching for me. I knew he was gonna try and eat me, but I just couldn’t hit my friend, you know. I couldn’t do it. The bass player maybe, I didn’t like him so much, but not Kevin. And not George, who was also standing back up now, one eyeball missing and his tongue dangling down to his chest owing to the fact his bottom jaw was gone. Which was a sad situation, even for him being dead, because he had a good singing voice. Could sing like Morrissey or Dion if he wanted to.”
    “I’m not even going to ask.”
    “Please don’t. Anyway, I just lost it, you know. I just started screaming because here are two of my best friends, now dead, ripped up and dripping gore, and they want to kill me.”
    “So you ran.”
    “I did. Used to play football in high school. Made all state three years in a row. So I just plowed into them and sent them flying as I ran backstage to the green room and locked the door. Last thing I saw as I slammed it shut was George’s lower jaw now stuck to that bass player’s shoulder. Like it was fused there. They always roomed together and were close, but this wasn’t natural, you know? Somehow they’d joined body parts.”
    “Yeah, that seems to be part of the process. I saw a woman with a foot sticking out of her head. It kicked at me.”
    “I made it out through a back door to my truck. Been trying to stay ahead of these things ever since. Can’t call nobody, ain’t got Internet, and everyone I do meet is just running to nowhere. But I know there’s got to be safety at one of the military bases.”
    “I’m telling you there isn’ t,” Amanita said.
    “And I’m telling you, I served a few years with Air Force Search & Rescue, and American soldiers don’t leave people hanging. Not if they can help it. You just haven’t found the right base.”
    “Such as?”
    “I don’t know. But this thing is spreading outward, like ripples in a pond after you throw a stone in, and those ripples haven’t reached as far as they can go yet. We’re still in them. So we gotta get beyond them to a base that’s prepared for what’s coming.”
    His words made sense, even though Amanita loathed the thought of running anymore. She just wanted to lock herself in a bunker somewhere and close her eyes and maybe not ever wake up, or at least not until the world made sense again. But of course she knew that was not going to happen. Not without some sort of weapon of vaccine for the plague.