Read Online Waiting to Die ~ A Zombie Novel by Richard M. Cochran - Free Book Online

contact with Scarlet. His face is accepting, his
expression acute. He lowers his head again and scans the surrounding. When he
looks back to Scarlet, he raises his brow as his chest deflates. He turns and
walks back into the darkening room, out of eyeshot. 
      Reserved to the situation, she
returns to the seating area. She casually sits down on the edge of one of the
chairs and looks at Greg. “No one is coming for us,” she says.
    “What do you mean?” he asks.
    She jerks her head toward the
office and Greg follows her gaze. Curious, Greg stands and moves to the other
room. After a few minutes of reflection, he returns.
    “No, we’re not going to be
leaving any time soon,” he says and flops back onto the couch.

 
     
    ·6
     
     
     
    The door
to her sister’s house is locked. Sarah pounds on the window and checks over her
shoulder at the bodies that creep closer in the street. As the tears flow, she
can hear someone inside dragging something out of the way before the sound of
unbolting the locks ensue.
    A corpse
notices her from the street and swings its graying mass toward her. Its tongue
clicks across its teeth as its jaw opens wide. Slowly, it stumbles forward,
scraping out a death march with its hollow footfalls.
    The front door whips open, “Oh
my God, Sarah!” the woman exclaims and pulls the child inside, slamming the
door behind her. “Are you alright?”
    “April, they’re everywhere!”
Sarah sobs.
    “It’s okay; it’s going to be
okay. Johnny’s in the attic, he can look at those scrapes on your arm,” she
says, pulling the child in to her chest. 
     
    Sarah
shivers from her fever. Her frail body is tucked tightly beneath a comforter
with flower patterns sewn along the soft fabric. Beads of sweat glisten across
her hairless head and trickle down along her cheeks to her dry and cracked
lips.
    “Johnny,
she’s burning up,” April says in desperation.
    He rests
his head in his hands as he sits on the couch in the living room. He wears an
expression of hopelessness on his otherwise youthful face, “What can we do?” he
asks, looking up between sorrowful eyes.
    “We have
to do something,” she replies as she paces back and forth in front of the
coffee table. “It’s been three days and she’s getting worse.”
    Johnny
stares at the pistol on the table, eyes its polished surface and pleads within
himself for another way out.
    She
looks to the gun and back up to Johnny. “Don’t you even fucking think about
it!” she shouts between clenched teeth.
    “Damn
it, April, I’ve seen this before,” he explains. “The same thing happened to a
guy at the office. Hell, he only had a knick; it wasn’t even as bad as the
scratches on Sarah’s arm.”
    “That
little girl in there,” she points to the spare bedroom, “hasn’t survived all of
that chemotherapy just to die from a couple of fucking scratches.”
    “Do you
think if I knew of any other way, I wouldn’t try to do something to save her?”
    “I’m not
sure with the way you’re acting.”
    “For
fuck’s sake!” he yells and tosses his hands up into the air. He leans back
against the couch and stares at the ceiling for a moment. “When that guy at
work changed, he started eating another guy. When that guy died, he came
back, got up and ate someone else. That’s how this shit spreads, April. People
get bit, they die, get up and fucking bite someone else.”
    “So
you’re saying that she’s already dead.”
    “No, I’m
saying we don’t have any other options,” he explains, “Have you looked outside
lately? There are hundreds of those things out there, a nd every fucking one of them is waiting for the chance to eat
us. If we go outside, we’re dead.”
    “If we
stay in here, we’re dead,” she recoils in anger and glares at him. “It
seems to me that we’re screwed either way.”
    “But if
we stay in here, we might at least have a chance of living long enough for the
government or the police, or who the