In the Dead: Volume 1 Read Online Free

Glock, his hand didn’t share nearly as much. He pressed the trigger firmly, kept the girl’s head in his sites and fired.
    The sound was deafening in the echoing confines of the stairwell and his ears rung with the explosion of gun powder and fire. He blinked and stared through a weird haze. The zombie he’d been targeting was now a headless corpse, collapsed against the barrier of chairs that separated human from monster. She was definitely not hot.
    The other zombies jerked their gazes up and Zander’s blood ran cold. They were looking, seeing and it was clear they were all thinking the same primal thing:
    FOOD!
    All at once, they rushed the barrier, clawing and climbing in a disorganized fashion.
    “ Shit, they’re going to get through,” Carrie cried, her voice echoing in his still ringing ears. She raised the shotgun, but he put a hand against the barrel to keep it low.
    “ Don’t waste the spray weapon,” he snapped, his mind turning to gaming tactics. “Save the shells for when they get through. Position yourself at the top of that stairwell and blast them once they’re past the barrier.”
    Carrie stared at him for a minute and then nodded as she ran down one flight of stairs lower and waited for the horde to break through.
    Zander reloaded his weapon from the precious collection of bullets in his pocket and said, “Mrs. Floyd, I need you to go up one flight of stairs. Your frying pan is a last resort weapon. If the zombies get past Carrie and get to me, run! Lock yourself in your apartment.”
    She stared at him, her lips parted and pale with fear.
    “ Now!” he ordered and smiled when she jerked out a nod and scurried up the stairs.
    He turned his attention back to the zombies below. In Bonewrecker 2 , one of the unlockable achievements in the game was called…
    “ One Shot, Two Kills ,” he muttered and lined up the site on the head of another zombie. He held his breath as the others milled around and finally another stepped behind the first. He depressed the trigger gently and the bullet exploded, slicing through both soft skulls and splattering infected brains across the back wall of the stairwell. Shell casings bounced off the floor with a metallic clink and he fired again.
    “ Shit!” he snapped as the zombie lurched out of the way and the bullet only hit his shoulder. Flesh exploded, but the… thing didn’t even seem to register any kind of reaction. He continued to paw at the chairs in his way, even though his arm now hung at his side by just a thin collection of shattered bone and stretching sinew.
    “ The head!” Carrie screamed from the stairs below. “Aim for the head!”
    “ I know,” he snapped back, clenching his jaw as he lined up the next shot.
    This time when he fired, a zombie dropped but before he could move along to the next shot, the two who were climbing on the stack of twisted dining chairs applied the right pressure to the right place and the teetering stack of wood and cushion collapsed, the barrier shattering as zombies staggered backward.
    “ Get ready!” Zander cried as he fired off another shot and caught one of the zombies as he staggered to his feet and started toward the gaping hole in the only thing separating them from imminent death, dismemberment and cannibalism. “They’re coming through.”
    “ I know,” Carrie muttered, her tone tight.
    Zander continued to fire his handgun a few more times. He had to force himself not to just go crazy, not to just unload on the monsters without any precision. Every time that wild fear threatened to overtake him, he thought of Bonewrecker and all the other video games he’d played over the years and somehow he stayed calm and in control.
    The zombies had gotten themselves back together now and started streaming past what was left of the dining chair barrier. There were five of them who made it past the last splinters of wood and Zander cursed as he rushed toward the stairs where Carrie was crouched.
    She started