Dead Series (Book 2): A Little More Dead: Gunfire & Sunshine Read Online Free Page A

from a
spike of adrenaline, Paul undid the Velcro strap around his ankle and set the
board free before swimming to her rescue. Wendy popped up, clear of the strap
she must’ve undone while beneath the surface. Paul towed her into deeper water
as the man pulled the board from the foam and stared at the empty leash. Rage
tightened the lines in his rotted face as he realized Wendy had gotten away.
Tossing the swallow tail onto the sand behind him, he howled, stirring the
woman next to him into a frenzy. She paced back and forth in the shallows as the
man waded in deeper.
    Treading water
with Wendy in his arms, Paul watched the surface rise above the man’s jeans,
stomach shriveling along with his privates.
    “He’s coming in,”
Wendy panted.
    The thing stopped
when the ocean found his shoulders.
    “It’s okay. He won’t
come in any further. They can’t swim.” The fiend snarled and cursed at them in
a foreign tongue that Paul understood all too well.
    “What do we do?”
Wendy spit some water out, clinging to Paul for dear life.
    The portly woman
came closer, stopping when the water rose above her thick knees, wetting the
end of her shredded skirt. Matted hair swung across her face, doing little to
hide her twisted sneer. Sunlight glimmered off the silver wedding bands digging
into their swollen fingers, giving Paul the eerie feeling they’d been married
and, for whatever reason, not even death could keep them apart.
    “Paul!”
    Blinking water
from his eyes, he kicked to stay afloat, glancing at the guns just behind the
gruesome twosome. “I’m going to swim down the shoreline and draw them from the
towels. When they’re far enough away, you get the guns and shoot them.”
    Wendy studied the
creatures, indecision flickering in her eyes.
    “We can do this,
Wendy,” he said, jerking her from her doubt. “It will work. Trust me.”
    She nodded faintly,
her goose-pimpled skin shivering against him.
    When he tried
swimming away she latched on tighter. “It’s okay,” he said, already getting
tired from treading water. “They can’t get us out here. Just be ready to get to
those guns.”
    “Okay,” she panted,
reluctantly releasing her death grip.
    With the sun in
his eyes, Paul swam parallel to the beach, like you would to escape a riptide.
The dead man followed, tracking him like a coon dog. “That’s it, buddy,” Paul
yelled over the crashing waves. “Soup’s on! Come and get it!”
    The man took him
up on the invitation, eagerly splashing through the shallows while his better
half stayed put by the towels. “Shit,” Paul whispered, leading the heavyset man
further down the beach. “Come on, lady!” He waved his arms over his head, hoping
to attract the woman’s attention but her vacant gaze remained firmly fixed on
Wendy. “Sonofabitch.”
    Wendy seemed to
get the message and started swimming in the opposite direction, drawing the
dead woman away from the guns. Paul reversed course and swam back to the towels
with the tall man following along the shoreline. He swam like hell but it
wasn’t enough; the straggler was much faster on land and easily beat him back
to the guns. Treading water, he watched the man splash in up to his waist while
Wendy swam back over with the dead woman following in the wet sand. Paul
couldn’t believe his eyes. They were working in tandem, somehow wise to his
plan and it wasn’t possible. Those things couldn’t think, let alone outsmart
him. No fucking way.
    Wendy stopped next
to him, hands doing figure eights through the water, breathing hard out her
mouth. “Well, that didn’t work.”
    Paul kicked faster
to keep from swallowing more saltwater, his eyes locked on Mike and Molly standing
side-by-side in the shallows. “They’re working together to keep us from getting
the guns,” he panted.
    “That’s
impossible.”
      “And they don’t plan on letting us get out
anytime soon.”
    Studying the
monsters on shore, her eyes thinned into reflective slits.