Read Online Pray To Stay Dead by Mason James Cole - Free Book Online

was bulging and discolored with settling blood. Its genitals were gone.
    In a few seconds, Crate’s words had sunk in, and then they all leapt up and made for the door. All except for Kimberly and Colleen, who’d held hands across the table. Kimberly, with tears in her eyes and a bubble of snot on her upper lip had said, quite simply: “I don’t want to.”
    “ Neither do I,” Colleen said, looking back at Daniel and Guy, who’d lingered near the door. Richard was long gone.
    “ I,” Guy had said, looking down for a second and then lifting his face to meet Colleen’s eyes. “I have to.”
    A brisk nod had sufficed as Colleen’s blessing.
    “ Okay,” Crate said, looking back at them. Pacing near his master’s feet, the dog barked again, and dead Mark Willits reacted, its jaw dropping, its eyes shifting left and right with reptilian slowness. Though its mouth worked, it was silent. Save for the sound of its feet dragging through the gravel, the dead man made no noise.
    “ Bilbo Baggins ,” Crate hissed, made a face at the dog. “You shut the hell up right now.” Bilbo whined and sat on his haunches and piped down, and Crate looked at them again. “Stay put. All of you.”
    Samson took a few steps forward, his right hand resting atop the large pistol hanging from his belt.
    “ You, too, Lash La Rue.” The old man said, “You’ll get your shot before this is over.”
    “ Okay, Crate,” Misty said, worried. Dead Willits was no more than three feet away from the old man, its good arm extended.
    “ Humph,” Crate said. He lifted the rifle, pressed the barrel to Willits’s chest, just above the heart, and gave him a push. The dead man ambled backward, nearly losing its balance. “Nothing to worry about,” Crate yelled back, over his shoulder.
    “ I never really liked you,” Crate said to Willits, nudging it once more with the rifle, nudging and poking, hard. He pressed the dead man’s stomach, and a lifeless belch rattled in the thing’s throat. “Always talking bullshit.”
    “ Stop having fun and do it,” Misty said.
    “ I like having fun, woman,” Crate said. He pressed the barrel to the dead man’s heart once more and pulled the trigger. The report was muffled. Nothing happened. He stepped back a few feet, steadied the rifle, and squeezed off a round into its left knee-cap.
    “ Woo,” Crate said as Willits tottered and toppled and hit the ground face first, struggling like an infant to right itself. He stepped up to the fallen dead man, placed his left foot onto its back, pressed the barrel to its head, and pulled the trigger. Willits stopped moving even as everyone else jumped from the gun’s shout.
    Crate looked back at them.
    “ Christ,” Richard said.
    Guy gasped, like he’d been holding his breath. He looked a little pale.
    Daniel understood how Guy felt. His head spun. He wasn’t ill. He didn’t think he was going to throw up. But he felt wrong. Everything felt wrong.
    “ Nope,” Crate said, stepping away from his kill. “I don’t think the news is making this up.”
    “ Ah, crap,” Misty said. “Is that Nelli?”
    Another dead person shambled up the road.
    “ Looks like it,” Crate said. “Damn.”
    “ Mark’s daughter,” Samson said. “Nice girl.”
    Nelli was in pretty much the same shape as her father: bluish white, covered in blood and bites and moving with slow, clumsy deliberation. The dead girl’s clothes had been ripped away—all that remained were the tattered collar and sleeves of its dress, its panties. Its shoes were gone, its socks were filthy. Its bare chest was a baby’s food-crusted bib.
    Crate walked toward it, taking his time. He looked back at them, yelled to Misty: “I don’t see Mark Junior anywhere.”
    Misty looked down at her feet, and Daniel wondered if maybe the chunks of meat clinging to Nelli’s bloodied chest were all they’d see of Junior.
    “ Okay,” Guy said beside him, his voice a dry croak. “I’ve seen enough.”
    He