Stay Dead 2: The Dead and The Dying Read Free

beast
altogether. They were talking about the good times: vacations,
parties, and their honeymoon. Scott usually wasn’t much for taking
trips down memory lane, but Judy loved it and it put a smile on her
face and if that’s what it took for Scott to see that smile then
that’s what he’d do. It was that smile of hers that kept him
going.
    “ You think we’re doing the
right thing?”
    “ I don’t know babe. Going
North seems like a good move. The broadcast could be a false hope.
We could get down there and find ourselves in a worse situation.
Just think of how many people might be trying to get
there.”
    She thought about that for a
moment…
    What if everyone who’d heard the
broadcast decided to try and get to West Virginia? It would just be
chaos. She could picture the streets already clogged with abandoned
vehicles and other obstacles, and now to picture them with other
survivors trying to get to a safe haven. It would be just as bad as
the first few days. The fights, the violence, only now it was
harder to get anywhere because you had to go through all of the
ruin that remained from those early days, and the dead. The first
days were hard because of the living, now it was the living dead
that complicated matters.
    Scott turned the volume up on the
broadcast.
    --tent timeframe for which a hostile
will reanimate. The only permanent way of dispatching the hostiles
is by incineration, or the use of a chemical agent to dissolve the
remains.
    It is also safest to stay off the
roads and out of heavily populated areas. If you have found a safe
haven it is recommended you remain there. Specially equipped units
of the military are in the process of reclaiming key strategic
areas around the nation. Once we are able to reclaim those areas we
will reinstate the Emergency Transportation System to aid survivors
in getting to those locations.
    We will continue repeating—
    Then he abruptly turned it
off. He was already sick of hearing it.

***
    The blood from the dead man’s body
emptied onto the cold tile floor. It was dark, almost muddy, and
oozed like old motor oil from a lawnmower that should’ve been
changed seasons ago. Danni couldn’t help but stare at it. Aside
from the walls, and floor it was the next best thing to focus on.
Everything else was too gruesome—too maddening—and just too damn
hopeless to look at let alone think about.
    Sherriff Bruce Davis, the man who was
going to save New Haven by walling off the town, sat with his back
against the wall and his eyes staring up at the ceiling. Though the
town was probably dead, he was still thinking of a way out. He
refused to resign himself to a fate so ironic—if only the dead
grasping between the bars were people he himself had put away it
would be almost poetic. Davis didn’t like poetry, irony, and he
sure as shit didn’t like the idea of wasting away in a holding cell
surrounded by the dead.
    Clem on the other hand, looked ready
for death. He had that far away look of resignation that Davis so
adamantly refused to wear. It was written in his face. His eyes
said ‘take me now’, and so did the crease in his forehead. He
longed to be with his wife again. Back at their apartment before
all this had happened. Before he found Danni on his rooftop. Before
they tried to leave. Before he lost Lorraine. He stared at the dead
things, all those thoughts running through his mind, looking at
them with sad eyes and the taste of empathy in the back of his
throat.
    Topher, whom Davis and his men rescued
while investigating the power station, was a sniveling mess. He
kept murmuring to himself and wiping the tears from his eyes. He
sat against the wall with his legs pulled in tight. He wanted to
roll up into a ball and disappear. Sitting next to him, and just
growing aggravated by Topher, was Keith. His face was stone and his
knuckles were white. He wanted to beat Topher to death. All he
could think about was Jones, his dead brother in blue, and knew
that he was