Read Online The Phoenix Trilogy (Book 1): World On Fire by Charles Scottie - Free Book Online Page A

was cathartic.
        “ First thing we do is identify what we're
dealing with. That pretty much falls under one of three categories. One finger
pointing down is a human, two pointing down is a zombie that's upright, and
four down is a zombie that's crawling. Pretty easy so far, yeah?” He stopped at
the look of confusion on Natalie's face. With an entirely too confident grin,
he relaxed against the wall.
        “ Does my student need me to clarify
something for her?” Natalie's fantasy now involved pushing him in front of a
bus. She snickered at the thought. A girl can dream, after all. Better ask him
her question and be done with all of this as soon as possible.
        “ You have a whole other signal for them
crawling? That seems a little weird to me. I wouldn’t have guessed it was
necessary.” Natalie could understand humans and zombies being separate, but
crawling versus standing was an interesting distinction to make.
        “ Ah, right. I forget that you don't have a
lot of experience with these things.” Marco tapped his chin briefly before
grunting a huff of impatience at having to switch tracks in his education.
Natalie’s face twitched as she refrained from growling at the man.
        The
bus in her mind was now on fire, and hurtling toward a pit filled with angry
bees. It was a completely juvenile way of handling her frustration, but as her
heart sighed with slight relief, she decided she’d take whatever reprieve she
could find. Marco continued to blunder forward, unaware of his effect on the
young woman.
        “You
know that they have to eat in order to keep moving. If they don't find food,
their muscles start eating themselves, same as us. The kicker is that they can
control what gets used up first.” Natalie fixed Marco with a look of
uncertainty as he spoke, and he returned it with an uncharacteristically grim
nod.
        “I
know. That's a pretty convenient design for it to happen by accident, right?”
With a heavy sigh, Marco rubbed his palm over his eyes. All of this sounded
bad. As much as Natalie had appreciated the company of the men so far, she had
to admit that the world seemed like a better place before they had started
telling her more about it.
        It
was a silly thought, of course. Nothing about what was happening outside had
been good, but before it at least seemed like it might have been an accident.
Now, it was hard to deny the likelihood that all of this was very intentional.
Somehow, that made it worse. Natalie was pulled from her reverie as Marco
cleared his throat .
        “Not
important right now, and besides, I haven't gotten to the fun part.” The smile
on his face warned Natalie that this was going to be anything but fun.
        “So!
The blighters can choose what parts they burn up
first if they aren't able to get energy from an, ahem, 'outside source.'
Obviously, their arms and legs are both vital to hunting, but their torso? Not
so much. The end result is they wind up without enough muscle in their core to
hold themselves upright.” A look of disgust passed over
Marco's face.
        Apparently
he'd had some experience with these creatures. Considering that the undead were
horrifying to begin with, Natalie took it as a bad sign that the crawling
variety were even worse.
        “ The reason we have different signals for
them is because you wouldn't expect to aim that low, otherwise. You walk into a
room, you're looking five, six feet off the ground. These fuckers sit closer to
two or three, and they're just as fast as normal. It might not seem like much,
but the time it takes to correct where you're aiming could make the difference
between life and death.” Marco's voice dropped off, his words lingering in the
air as he seemed to be momentarily lost in thought. It wasn't hard for Natalie
to guess what was on his mind.
         Considering what he did for a living these
days, if you could call it that, it was likely he had seen