Eaters Read Online Free Page B

man with a bicycle standing near the rear of the group who was wearing a sporty riding outfit and a long plastic tube on a shoulder strap, “What’s going on?”
    “Beats me. I’m trying to make a delivery. There’s a police barricade or something, and I don’t have time for this…”
    She didn’t have time for this either.
    She decided to shove her way through, figuring that once she was past the crowd, she could skirt around whatever was causing the hold up. “Excuse me…” she said as she tried to use her elbows to gently nudge a path. The people were crammed together tightly, not giving up their position willingly as if they were in line for some big event. Eventually, she managed to angle her torso and clutch her purse close to make herself thin like a needle and pierce her way through.
    Nearing daylight at the front, she hesitated as her shoes stepped into something sticky. Each heel clung to the cement like a suction cup, and she had to pull them off with force. She tried to look down to see what sort of muck she’d stepped into, but the close bodies and resulting shadows on the ground prevented her from getting a look.
    It took a few more pushes to burst through the edge of the crowd. When she popped out into the clearing, she stopped as quickly as if she’d slammed into a brick wall.
    Oh my God…
    The scene in front of her was pure carnage.
    There were a half-dozen bodies splayed out on the sidewalk. They’d been shot in the head, and blood, brain tissue, and other detritus were splattered around them. Two paramedics were busy unloading body bags from the back of an ambulance.
    She looked down and realized that, for the last few feet, she’d been walking in the blood of the nearest victim.
    What had happened? Had someone gone crazy and started shooting pedestrians? Out of morbid curiosity and the sheer will to know what terrible thing had occurred, she forced herself to look at the bodies again.
    The dead included three men, a woman, and a couple of teenaged boys. All of them had skin with that unnatural gray hue. It was the disease, wasn’t it? But why had they been shot?
    She turned to her right to ask the person next to her. He was an older man with wisps of white hair, a normal looking fellow with a navy t-shirt, khaki shorts, and white socks underneath his leather sandals. He held a black plastic garbage sack with one hand, reaching into it with the other, and sticking handfuls of something green and slimy into his mouth that looked like seaweed…or rotten vegetation.
    She felt sick. How could someone look at the horrific scene in front of them and eat? Feeling faint, her legs wobbled for a second on her heels.
    “Cheryl!”
    Hearing her name, she turned around and looked behind her but only saw the mass of people. Maybe the voice was in her head—her subconscious speaking to her as she was about to pass out.
    “Cheryl!”
    It sounded like Mark. But how was that possible? She’d just been on the phone with him a few minutes ago. She stood, rooted to the spot, unsure if it was her imagination.
    A second later, a hand grabbed her shoulder. She turned around. It was Mark.
    He was dressed in his khaki fatigues and tan combat boots with his rifle slung over his shoulder inside its nylon case, hardly disguised as something as benign as a golf club or a guitar.
    “What are you doing here?” she managed to ask before covering her mouth to hold back the urge to retch.
    His eyes were big wide saucers, icy blue crystals that seemed frozen with fear. She’d never seen that look on him before, and it made her even more scared.
    He clamped onto her arm. “We’ve got to get out of here now.”
    She looked at the crowd behind him. It seemed even larger now. People were shoving and pressing them forward. Another inch, and she’d topple over the yellow police tape. Were they all just rubbernecking, trying to see this massacre?
    She assumed he had seen the news. “What happened here?”
    “There’s no