The Dead Divide Us (Book 1) Read Free Page A

ironic.
    So for those two days without heat, Robert had Wynona up to the second floor with him. It wasn’t all that bad really. Wynona told him stories about war time and her family. She talked about her late husband, how they’d lost a child to leukemia early on, and never wanted to try again with another baby. That experience came with a pain that should never be felt; once was enough. She talked about Catholic schools, social dances, and her love for John Wayne films. In two days Wynona had just about retold her entire life to Robert, all while sitting next to a cranked up space heater and sipping on hot tea. It was Wynona who got Robert hooked on her all time favorite television show, Happy Days .
    Wynona died a little over a year prior; her downstairs apartment still vacant. Robert was sad to see her pass on, but he was even sadder to see how hardly anyone showed up to her funeral.
    Robert’s memory was cut short by Carl slamming against the bedroom door again, splintering off a piece of the door frame in the process. The room was now fairly lit from the early morning light. Robert was startled again, but now enraged. If the news was true; the fat bastard that wouldn’t pay to get an emergency maintenance service on the furnace during the dead of winter was now infected with a killer virus that seemed to be spreading.
    Robert thought about what Paul had said, “You’ve got to get to Mom and Dad’s. Make sure they’re okay."
    Carl slammed against the door again. This time a top corner of the door broke off and almost hit Robert. He could hear Carl’s ghastly moans, no longer muffled by the door and completely sickening.
    “Alright, fuck this,” Robert said.
    He grabbed his truck keys from off of his dresser, slid on a pair of jeans, and yanked on his work boots. He took a hooded sweatshirt from the foot of his bed and put that on too. Robert looked at the bedroom door as Carl slammed on it again. He then looked to the corner of his room, spotting his trusty thirty-four inch aluminum softball bat leaning against the wall.
    “You’re dead, fucker,” Robert said grabbing his bat and squeezing it tight.
     
    3
     
    There are many ways to kill a person. Over the years, Robert had thought of a lot of ways to kill his landlord Carl. But that was all in his head you know, just imaging how fun it would be to off your piece-of-shit landlord. Now though, it was very real.
    Carl had been slamming himself against the thin plywood door for almost ten minutes straight. Thinking back, Robert found it very odd that when Carl first shambled out of the bathroom he was relatively calm, but once Carl had set his eyes on Robert it was like a jolt of raw power and rage that suddenly surged through his body. And Carl did not seem like he was going to be letting up anytime soon.
    A huge crack was heard and splintered wood exploded as Carl’s left arm and upper body smashed through the door. Carl was now momentarily stuck in the door. He was reaching out toward Robert, clawing at the air, and moaning that sick wet sound. Robert briefly looked over Carl’s face again. He still couldn’t believe what a grotesque being Carl had become. He was somehow worse than he was before. Robert couldn’t believe that either.
    “Now’s my chance,” he told himself.
    Robert ran up to his bedroom door with his softball bat held high in the air, ready to swing down on Carl’s face. If everything that his brother Paul told him was true, then putting Carl of out his misery was necessary. Necessary because that meant Carl intended to kill Robert and Robert never knew his brother to be a liar.
    Robert was a fraction of a second from swinging downward onto Carl’s forehead when the bedroom door completely broke open. Carl, along with the door, crashed directly into Robert. Robert was much too close and it happened far too quickly for him to get out of the way. Both parties hit the floor. Robert cracked his head on the wooden floor boards of his