Read Online The Zed Files Trilogy (Book 1): The Hanging Tree by David Andrew Wright - Free Book Online Page B

something out of the van, came back in with this big bite on his shoulder.  Said some big tall skinny guy just walked up and bit him.”  Kevin looks around the table.  Everyone is listening yet reliving their own story at the same time.  “We was all gettin geared up to go outside and kick sumbuddies ass and trying to bandage him up and call the ambulance and the next thing you know man, Travis passes out cold.  Just hits the floor like a sack of hammers.  I took his pulse man, he was dead.  It was some weird fuckin shit.  Everybody was freak’n out, some dude put the television behind the bar on and there was nothin.  No color bars, no emergency shit, it was just… fuck’n gone.”
    “It couldn’t happen at the beginning of a shift,” Betty says.  “I work my ass off all goddamn afternoon for money that’s worthless now.”
    Kevin ignores her.  “So man, you know… we go to call the fucking pigs to tell them what’s going on and the phones don’t work.  Cell signals are gone too.  We’re like, ‘what the hell?’  You know, we might as well have been on the fuck’n moon.  We figure it was some kind of fuck up from the tsunami but everything was working just after it… last time I looked anyway.”
    “It was already bad on the East Coast,” Tyler chimes in.  “They knew what was happening.  They figured there was no chance of containment so they decided to fuck everybody over.  The rich people took off to wherever with as much stuff as they could carry.  It’s easier to escape if there’s no general panic and people blocking the roads.”
    “ Whatever, man,” Kevin interrupts.  “It don’t matter now.  Of course, Travis went zombie, start’n going crazy.  We just got the fuck out of there.”
    Kevin passes me the pipe.  “So you were all in the strip club?  Is that how everybody met?” I ask. 
    “I wasn’t at the strip club,” Karen says in a monotone voice.
    I don’t say anything to her.  She hasn’t looked at me all through dinner.
    “Thaaat’s right,” Betty says in mock amazement.  “Karen fucking shot you.  So what, you tracked her here so you can get even, right?”  Her glee is pure malice. 
    Karen turns and looks me in the eyes.  She is as empty as I am.  Defeat and hopelessness hang on her shoulders like a chute that didn’t open.  I exhale without looking away.  “I figured she’d come back here.  And I’d get to meet all you lovely people.  And as much as I’d just as soon stay on my own, the Zed wave is here.”  I tap the cashed bowl onto a broken plate in the middle of the table.  “Gonna be real tough to make it on my own when the whole undead eastern coast of the United States shows up like a goddamned locust swarm.”
    “ Ahhhhh hell,” Kevin says in disbelief.  “Ain’t no wave of zombies goin where ever.  That’s just bullshit.”
    Tyler shakes his head no. “Just like there wasn’t any danger of a rock landing in the ocean.  East coast gone, northern shore of South America, Africa, a bunch of Europe… Greenland’s just fucking gone,” he says.  He isn’t smiling with puppy dog innocence now.  “It makes perfect sense to me,” he continues.  “They’ve infected everything they can infect out there, where it started.  Now they’re heading west, infecting every last human.  I figure they’ll be everywhere but the deserts and mountain tops.  In this country anyway.”
    Everyone is quiet.  After a minute, Daisy breaks the silence.  “Chock-O-Lot.  God. Damn.  It.”
    Kevin looks at Tyler.   “He told me a buncha stuff already but I don’t know what the hell he’s talk’n about man.  Maybe you can cipher it.”
    Tyler opens his hands in front of him, gathering his thoughts closer to his mind.  “So most people know that the tsunami that hit the East Coast… and Africa and Europe… was because of the rock.  It wasn’t a planet killer but it might as well have been.  What we don’t know