Dawn of the Dead Read Online Free Page B

didn’t have the faith and confidence of the people. The stock market had plummeted way below the lowest point of the Carter administration; unemployment had soared, and inflation was rampant. With a presidential election coming up, most citizens felt this was just another ploy to get the country behind the administration’s candidate.
    Roger looked at his watch. The figures next to him checked their weapons. The sweep hand on his watch reached twelve.
    “Lights,” Roger mumbled to himself.
    As if on cue, large searchlights bathed the side of the building in a soft amber glow.
    “Martinez,” came the sound of a disembodied voice from behind a large truck. It was the troop commander, shouting through an electronic bullhorn. “You’ve been watching,” he continued to the Puerto Rican leader of the tenants’ uprising. They had refused to evacuate the building and were creating their own cemetery in the basement of their building. “You know we have the building surrounded . . .”
    At the sound of the electronically amplified voice, any lights inside the project that had remained on blinked out one at a time.
    “Little bastard’s got ’em all moved into one building . . . dumb little bastard,” the commander said to the sergeant on his left.
    “Looks like they’re gonna try to fight us,” the sergeant responded.
    The commander took up the bullhorn again.
    “Martinez . . . the people in this project are your responsibility. We don’t want any of them hurt, and neither do you!”
    Roger cocked his ear for the reply but was met with silence. The great concrete slab was mute to the commander’s demands. The four S.W.A.T. team members crouched in readiness.
    “I’m giving you three minutes, Martinez . . .” Roger mouthed as the commander bellowed the familiar refrain through the bullhorn.
    “Turn over your weapons and surrender . . .” the commander, a brisk, wiry, gray-haired man in his fifties, continued.
    “There are no charges against you . . .” Roger mouthed.
    The commander repeated, “There are no charges against you or any of your people . . .”
    “Yet,” Roger said aloud, to no one in particular. The men beside him were struggling with their own feelings of nervousness and excitement toward the impending battle.
    “Three minutes, Martinez,” the amplified voice of the commander boomed out across the inanimate fortresses, the deserted playgrounds, the parking lots filled with rusting second-hand cars, a few pimps’ Cadillacs sprinkled throughout.
    Roger lifted the luminous dial of his watch to his face.
    “And counting . . .”
    The project was like a still-life photograph.
    “Come on, Martinez!” Roger rooted out loud.
    One of the silent squatting figures suddenly lurched toward Roger.
    “Yeah, come on, Martinez,” Wooley lashed out viciously. “Show your greasy little Puerto Rican ass . . . so I can blow it off,” spat the seasoned veteran, a redneck of the first order, who had come up North like a mercenary.
    Distressed, Roger looked over at the big man, who was so caught up in his violence that he jumped up from under cover and was a perfect moving target for the snipers.
    “I’ll blow all their asses off,” he rambled on. “Low-life bastards. Blow all their little low-life Puerto Rican and nigger asses right off . . .”
    Roger could see that the Alabama man was starting to crack. He was also concerned about the smooth-faced rookie sitting on Wooley’s other side. The boy’s eyes flickered nervously from Wooley to the ground below.
    “Keep cool,” Roger cautioned quietly. “Just don’t pop off in there when we go in.”
    The boy nodded gratefully. Roger was pleased that in this confusion and terror he was able to add a word or two of human kindness.
    Wouldn’t Louise be surprised at him now. She was always screaming at him that he didn’t have an ounce of human kindness or consideration in his five-foot-ten,