Devouring The Dead (Book 1) Read Free Page B

There was no time to do anything though; he had been too slow.
    Sally stretched her limbs and crawled to her knees, her crooked neck sloping to the left, and her bloodied face was twisted cruelly. Her eyes locked onto Brian as he sat in the gutter, rainwater puddling around him as he stared at Lyn floating away. Sally crawled over to him on hands and knees. She did not feel the cold concrete beneath her, or hear the vehicles crashing on the bridge above, and she would never reach her son. Brian turned around just in time to see Sally’s dead eyes and sharp teeth bearing down on him. It was the last thing Brian saw.
     

CHAPTER TWO
     
    The tower’s security officer, Ranjit, watched closely on the monitor as hundreds of people poured into his building. It wasn’t literally his building, of course, but he felt like it was his. He had been in charge of security here for several years now and knew every inch of the building. He felt safest here in his den, or the ‘crib,’ as the guys called it; this was where the action was.
    He reclined back on his chair and stared at the bank of monitors in fro nt of him. There were cameras all over the building, and most of the people who worked here, didn’t know about them and never would. He found the mornings amusing. Hundreds of men and women filed past each other through the big sliding doors, yet hardly anyone spoke to one another. He had cameras trained inside and outside the foyer, in the lifts, the stairwells, the basement, and the bathrooms; in fact every single room on every single floor. About seven years ago, they had tried to tell him it was an invasion of privacy; that you couldn’t possibly need to see everything, and cameras were unnecessary. He soon explained that if they wanted to be blown up by a terrorist or brought down by a conman defrauding them out of millions, well, yeah, sure, take out all the cameras. Then they could see how long they would last when people knew no one was watching, and they had free reign. He pointed out how many terrorist attacks could have been stopped if the perpetrators had been monitored effectively. That shut them up, and since then, he had been in no doubt as to who was really in charge.
    Ranjit watched as a young man approached Jessica at the front desk. He had seen it before: the young man would try to start a conversation, and she would blow them off. She pretended she was above everyone else, as if somehow by being born beautiful, made her better than they were. He knew differently; he watched her screw a random woman up on twelve in the bathroom after last year’s Christmas party. They had seen each other for a while, but then Jessica must’ve broken it off. He watched the woman cry in the bathroom before she left for the day, and she had never come back. He tried to find Jessica playing around again, but he hadn’t caught her; yet.
    A team of ten worked for him and did the rounds, checked the locks, worked the nightshift for him, and basically did all the shit that he didn’t want to do. Here, in the crib, he was in charge. He stuffed another doughnut into his mouth, sucking on it, relishing in the sweet sugar before he swallowed the last dry crumbs. His gut hung over his trousers so much it was a struggle to reach his desk anymore. He leant forward slowly and caught a reflection of himself in one of the screens. A fat face with three chins looked back at him. He rubbed his bristly chin. I should probably shave, he thought, but does it really matter? He picked up the coffee his second-in-command, Stu, had brought him, and sipped it. It was still burning hot and he put it down quickly.
    There it was, just as he predicted ; the young man had left, idling off to the sofa, rejected. Jessica was talking to her colleague. Ranjit zoomed in, unable to remember who was working the morning shift with Jessica today. Oh yes, Brie. She was more to Ranjit’s taste: dark smooth skin and silky black hair. He had not seen much of her,