Read Online Nightmare of the Dead: Rise of the Zombies by Vincenzo Bilof - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Vincenzo Bilof
Ads: Link
might possess an arcane power that allowed them advantages living men didn't have. The unnatural monsters lusted after their blood; she was certain they were hunting her and McPhee, and who knew what might happen when they found a town of their own to ravage. Did the creatures travel together?
Death was supposed to belong to her—everyone thought Neasa Bannan, the notorious, gun slinging outlaw, was deceased. Shouldn't it be difficult to recognize a woman whose name appeared in illustrations in towns that were miles apart? There were things that didn't add up about her own identity. Surely, she was a pawn in some game played by the Nightmare Collective.
With her damaged mind wandering, her splintered memory once again attempted to reform itself through the sudden onslaught of familiar images: she saw herself in a town.
***
(The town was like any other town: it could be burned to the ground. There was a bank that could be robbed and t here was a group of local toughs who thought they were good enough with their guns and courage to defend the town against outlaws . Outlaws who sought to consume every shred of decency and morality they could rip from the flesh of the common folk. The toughs were sometimes envious of their outlaw foes; some of them had once served in criminal regiments, and they'd given up their desire to chase debauchery in all of its forms by hiding behind a badge someone gave them. It was a form of retirement, a version of cowardice.
The concept of justice was defined by those men who believed they upheld the intangible concept of law. Justice rode upon a powerful black stallion; justice was survival, and it roughly pursued all means by which justice might be acquired. To the outlaw, justice was tangible.
Santiago sat astride his own black horse. The sun was a yellow orb that hung behind a curtain of smoky clouds. Bannan looked up at him and saw only the figure of a man, features rendered invisible by the anonymity of that which he brought, the very power that cursed the mortal realm and transcended it: death. For too many men, he was the last thing they saw before their fool's road terminated.
The town burned. It could have burned for any number of reasons; the rationale for violence was lost to the discarded fragments of her shattered memory.
There was a rule. It might have been her own, unspoken rule, or it may have belonged to the group she attached herself to. It was a rule that played itself over and over again in her mind, a nagging, incessant whisper which suggested failure.
No women, no children.
She understood rape was its own sort of reward for the ravagers, but Bannan's savage group was purposeful. Women weren't supposed to be killed unless they were armed, and the same applied to children. Bannan didn't cringe nor did she hesitate to end another's life if they threatened hers.
Santiago's horse reared up, and its dragon-like nostrils flared. The funeral-pyre town smoked as the inferno engulfed the dreams of men and women who never asked to be murdered or caught in a conflict that hardly involved them.
In the middle of the main street, a little boy stared blankly at Santiago and Bannan. His tiny fingers were balled together into one fist, and his wide eyes were wet with tears. He briefly looked over his shoulder as if he expected someone to be there beside him, or he was perhaps wondering if anything from the world he'd once known was going to survive.
Bannan wanted to say a word. The sound caught in her throat, and with her hands on her guns, she stood stiffly, neither limb nor muscle responding to her desire to move. Santiago was her ally and he knew the rules. No harm would come to the boy. Let him suffer the world and taste the concept of revenge, or at least let him attempt to survive in the cruel world.
But Bannan knew the creed was already gone. The women in the town were dead. Something had moved Santiago to such villainy, and she'd watched it all. A bout of madness had
Death was supposed to belong to her—everyone thought Neasa Bannan, the notorious, gun slinging outlaw, was deceased. Shouldn't it be difficult to recognize a woman whose name appeared in illustrations in towns that were miles apart? There were things that didn't add up about her own identity. Surely, she was a pawn in some game played by the Nightmare Collective.
With her damaged mind wandering, her splintered memory once again attempted to reform itself through the sudden onslaught of familiar images: she saw herself in a town.
***
(The town was like any other town: it could be burned to the ground. There was a bank that could be robbed and t here was a group of local toughs who thought they were good enough with their guns and courage to defend the town against outlaws . Outlaws who sought to consume every shred of decency and morality they could rip from the flesh of the common folk. The toughs were sometimes envious of their outlaw foes; some of them had once served in criminal regiments, and they'd given up their desire to chase debauchery in all of its forms by hiding behind a badge someone gave them. It was a form of retirement, a version of cowardice.
The concept of justice was defined by those men who believed they upheld the intangible concept of law. Justice rode upon a powerful black stallion; justice was survival, and it roughly pursued all means by which justice might be acquired. To the outlaw, justice was tangible.
Santiago sat astride his own black horse. The sun was a yellow orb that hung behind a curtain of smoky clouds. Bannan looked up at him and saw only the figure of a man, features rendered invisible by the anonymity of that which he brought, the very power that cursed the mortal realm and transcended it: death. For too many men, he was the last thing they saw before their fool's road terminated.
The town burned. It could have burned for any number of reasons; the rationale for violence was lost to the discarded fragments of her shattered memory.
There was a rule. It might have been her own, unspoken rule, or it may have belonged to the group she attached herself to. It was a rule that played itself over and over again in her mind, a nagging, incessant whisper which suggested failure.
No women, no children.
She understood rape was its own sort of reward for the ravagers, but Bannan's savage group was purposeful. Women weren't supposed to be killed unless they were armed, and the same applied to children. Bannan didn't cringe nor did she hesitate to end another's life if they threatened hers.
Santiago's horse reared up, and its dragon-like nostrils flared. The funeral-pyre town smoked as the inferno engulfed the dreams of men and women who never asked to be murdered or caught in a conflict that hardly involved them.
In the middle of the main street, a little boy stared blankly at Santiago and Bannan. His tiny fingers were balled together into one fist, and his wide eyes were wet with tears. He briefly looked over his shoulder as if he expected someone to be there beside him, or he was perhaps wondering if anything from the world he'd once known was going to survive.
Bannan wanted to say a word. The sound caught in her throat, and with her hands on her guns, she stood stiffly, neither limb nor muscle responding to her desire to move. Santiago was her ally and he knew the rules. No harm would come to the boy. Let him suffer the world and taste the concept of revenge, or at least let him attempt to survive in the cruel world.
But Bannan knew the creed was already gone. The women in the town were dead. Something had moved Santiago to such villainy, and she'd watched it all. A bout of madness had
Similar Books
