Read Online The Turning: A Tale of the Living Dead by Kelly M. Hudson - Free Book Online Page A

forward, pushing the Construction Worker and Jeff
back against the side of the building.  
    Jenny screamed, an avenging angel,
and fired the shotgun.  Construction Worker's head exploded in a shower of bone
and brains.  Jeff’s face was pelted with the tiny pieces and he nearly vomited
when the tongue of the worker slapped the side of his face and bounced off.  It
left a slimy trail, thick with black blood, as if it had licked his cheek.
    Jeff spun and jumped for the
window as Jenny let out two more rounds to buy him time.  His hands caught the
edge and he got as far as his chest before his momentum ended.  Jenny, inside,
grabbed his hands and hauled him forward but even as she did, dead hands
grabbed his pants and shoes, pulling in the opposite direction.
    “Shoot them!” Jeff screeched.
    Jenny let go, grabbed the shotgun,
positioned herself beside Jeff’s struggling body, and fired twice more before
the gun clicked empty.  She looked down at him, stunned.
    He was over halfway through now,
past his stomach and leaning down.  He kicked his legs like he was pedaling a
bike with a broken chain, and threw himself loose of their clutching fingers. 
    Jeff spilled into the room, safe.
    He looked up at Jenny and
laughed.  It was high-pitched and hysterical, the giggle of a survivor of an
impossible situation.  She laughed, too, as he reached for the gun and reloaded
it with the shells that were left in his pockets.  They both kept laughing, the
din of their mirth drowning out the moaning of the living dead outside, denied
their prize, pushing up against the side of the building, their hands
scrabbling along the bottom of the window.
    Jeff looked around, still
laughing, still out of his mind.  The room they'd dropped into was a small
office.  There was a desk next to them and scattered files on the floor from
where they’d come through the window and knocked over a couple of shelves. 
Next to the desk and against the wall beside them were two tall, metal filing
cabinets.  On the other side of the door, seven feet from them, was a door.
    A door whose knob turned suddenly
and burst open.
    Jeff, armed with the shotgun,
didn’t hesitate.  Even as the man ran in, claw-hammer in hand, screaming, “Get
out!  Get out!” Jeff leveled the gun and fired, cutting the man in two.  His
torso flung to the left, landing on the top of the desk in an avalanche of
blood and guts as his legs kept running for two more feet and careened to the
right against the wall into a twitching pile of spasming muscles.
    The man on the desk looked up, his
hair wild and his eyes wide, and spit up blood from his mouth.
    “You killed me,” he said.  His
head lolled to the side and his life left his body.  Before Jeff had a chance
to react to what had happened, Jenny ripped the hammer from the dead man’s
hands and buried it deep into the side of the man’s skull.  He would not rise
from the dead.
    Jeff's legs trembled and his
stomach churned.  He grabbed the side of the desk to steady himself when
another man appeared in the doorway.
    “You killed Clint,” the man said. 
He was unkempt, his hair also wild, and he looked old.  The man wore a pair of
bib overalls and a checkered flannel shirt underneath.  He had a pistol in his
hand and it dangled at his side.  The man’s hands shook as if he were stricken
with palsy.  His dark eyes pierced Jeff’s.
    “You killed Clint,” he said again.
    “I’m sorry,” Jeff said.
    “Fuck you,” the man said.  He
raised the gun.
    Again, Jeff reacted instinctively,
his finger finding the trigger of the shotgun even as his arms raised it.  He
sighted and fired, blowing the old man’s head clean off his shoulders.  The
pellets shredded his neck and severed the head.  His body fell forward, dead,
as his head tumbled back and landed with a hollow thunk.  It rolled off into
the darkness. 
    Gunsmoke filled the air, burning
Jeff’s nostrils.  He didn't move, the gun aimed at the doorway,