Dawn of the Dead Read Online Free

Dawn of the Dead
Book: Dawn of the Dead Read Online Free
Author: George A. Romero
Pages:
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had made a decision, he took a grip on his rifle, opened the door and let the group through. Without a backward glance to the now screaming Givens, he ran out the door himself, deserting the losing cause and the crazed pandemonium.
    “Get somebody in here that knows how to run this thing,” Givens shouted as he jumped toward the console. He frantically tried to work the complex dials. “Come on, I’ll triple the money for the man that can run this thing . . . triple the money. We’re staying on the air!” He said the last part as if it were a threat. Fran just shook her head in disbelief and moved off slowly toward the studio.
    In the big room the tension was thicker than ever. Newspeople went about their business earnestly, trying to perform their various functions, but they wore faces of stone. It was as though any mention of crisis would crack their seemingly calm exteriors. But, the burden of staying calm was even greater with the sound of the agitated discussion that was being played over the airways in counterpoint to the newspeople’s desperate actions.
    “They kill for one reason,” Dr. Foster said, as if in a trance. He had his suit jacket off and was mopping his brow with a handkerchief. “They kill for food. They eat their victims, do you understand that, Mr. Berman?” he asked carefully, as though speaking to a child. “That’s what keeps them going.”
    A wave of nausea overcame Fran, and she had to lean against the hallway wall, in the shadows. People frantically rushed past her as though running to catch a train. She tried to calm herself and listened to the argument. TV station employees were filing past her, some leaving the studio in disgust.
    “If we’d listened. If we’d dealt with the phenomenon properly . . . without emotion . . . without . . . emotion. It wouldn’t have come to this!” Dr. Foster pleaded with the thinning crowd.
    Foster wiped his sweat-drenched brow with the now soaking dirty handkerchief. He pulled his tie away from his tight collar and popped the shirt button open. The once calm, collected doctor was now a bundle of nerves, desperate, shivering with anger and frustration. Fran had never seen so radical a change come over a person. She herself was shivering now, and clutched at her shoulders in the thin blouse. She felt so tired, so worn out, she just wanted to lie down and forget the whole mess.
    But the rasping, hoarse voice of Dr. Foster droned on, begging the people to heed his cry.
    “There is a state of martial law in effect in Philadelphia, as in all other major cities in the country. Citizens must understand the dire . . . dire consequences of this phenomenon. Should we be unable to check the spread . . . because of the emotional attitudes of the citizenry . . . toward . . . these issues of . . . morality.” The man’s frail shoulders seemed to crumble inward. He stood now, clutching the back of his chair with one hand and raising the other in a gesture of defiance:
    “By command of the federal government, the president of the United States . . . citizens may no longer occupy private residences. No matter how safely protected or well stocked . . .”
    The murmur in the studio began to build to an emotional crescendo. One woman gave a bloodcurdling scream and fell to the floor in a heap, another man cried out over and over again, “Air, air, I can’t breathe . . .” Foster tried to talk over the furor, but his voice cracked, and he could barely be heard.
    “Citizens will be moved into central areas of the city . . .” Foster cried to the technicians abandoning their posts, the cameramen dropping their headsets on the floor and breaking for the door. One cameraman’s instrument spun on its liquid head, and on the monitors a whirling blur was seen as Foster continued to speak. Fran moved quickly toward the unmanned spinning camera. She tried to remember what Givens had told her to do in case of an emergency, but her
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