The Dead Divide Us (Book 1) Read Free

turn, get all angry, and try to bite your ass off, but then it turns around with its tail wagging, happy as could be. Robert felt this now for the unknown person in his apartment, except without all the jolly tail wagging and happiness. This person meant to hurt him and he knew it.
    So, Robert did one of the few smart things he would end up doing that day; he turned around and ran to his bedroom. The dark figure shambled slowly after him. Robert reached his room quickly and just before he was about to slam the door closed and lock it, he looked back at the dark figure. It passed through a streak of sunlight coming in from between the living room curtains. It was his landlord, Carl Riggins.
    “Carl?” Robert said, thinking now that he could reason with the intruder since he recognized him. He was human and not a monster in the flesh as Robert had previously convinced himself.
    Robert’s landlord only shambled faster toward him. Robert could hear him making an awful gurgling and moaning sound. It sounded as if Carl was trying to breathe and scream all at once with a gallon of water stuck in his lungs. It was the most horrible thing Robert had ever heard.
    Just before Carl reached the bedroom door, Robert could see his eyes. They were cloudy-white, blank, and dead; matching the rest of his face that appeared to be drained of life. It looked like Carl’s face had been flushed of all its fluids and color. The black veins stretching down his neck stood out in stark contrast to the rest of his face. The last thing Robert noticed was the stench coming off Carl and thought if shit had a really bad day, it would still smell better then Carl Riggins’s breath.
    Robert slammed his bedroom door shut just as Carl slammed into it. For a second Robert thought that the door was going to snap off its hinges. He locked the door and took a few steps backward while Carl continued to slam against the door. Robert could tell that the door didn’t have much time; Carl’s fat ass would eventually break through.
    “Somebody’s got to help me out here,” Robert said to himself.
    Given what Paul had told him only a few minutes ago, Robert was pretty damn sure that his landlord Carl was infected by whatever was causing people to go crazy. He went for his cell phone to call for help.
    “Shit!” Robert whispered.
    Without even noticing, he’d lost the cell phone. He must have dropped it when he hit the coffee table. After realizing this, he also remembered that his laptop computer was out in the living room too, resting closed on his lazy boy recliner.
    “Fuck!” Robert said, a little louder now.
    Carl slammed harder on the door causing Robert to think that Carl could hear him just fine in there.
    “Yeah, that’s right Carl. Fuck you! You got what was coming to you, you greedy asshole!” Robert yelled back, feeling somewhat better despite his dire situation. Robert was not the biggest fan of his landlord Carl Riggins. He moved into his apartment five years ago, which was shortly after he was hired at the chemical company. The place was cheap and that was what Robert was looking for, but what Robert wasn’t looking for was a “cheap as balls” landlord who wouldn’t even fork out the cash to fix a broken furnace three winters ago. Robert remembered Carl telling him that it would be a few days until the heat would be restored. Robert could deal with that; he had a few electric space heaters set up around his place. But Wynona, the ninety-two year old woman with crippling arthritis who lived on the first floor, could not deal with that. She had next to no money and no space heaters. How could you expect an old woman to live in the dead of winter with no heat?
    Robert overheard Carl ordering Wynona to go stay with family for a few days, because the heat wasn’t going to be fixed right away. Robert knew that she didn’t have any family left in the immediate area; they had all moved down south to escape these bitter cold winters. Fairly