Nightmare of the Dead: Rise of the Zombies Read Online Free Page B

posture.
    The words escaped without a thought, though they were given form, "I'm awake. This is real."
    That's it, then. She didn’t know who she was, or where she was. According to Carter, they were somewhere in Mississippi. The war was easy to remember, but why couldn’t she remember anything else?
    Who was the man with the metal teeth who had spoken to Bill Carter?
    Neasa Bannan. The name was as good as anything else. It might even be suitable, considering how she had been able to stand up to those hellish creatures. And what were they?
    Her head buzzed with the unanswered questions. She was wasting time with self-pity; in order to find answers, she had to get off her ass and find them.
    Close your eyes and try to remember.
    A name was the most important thing. Bannan could work—she was clearly good enough with a gun to inspire some measure of fear in others. If she needed to prove herself, she could hold her own.
    The train was the best place to begin looking for answers. When she stepped back inside, it smelled worse than before. The fresh air had tainted her ability to withstand the coppery smell of blood and the musty stench of rot in an enclosed space. The green fog slowly rolled out of the train and evaporated into the cool air.
    After dealing with the conductor, she had discovered the shattered remnants of a glass jar in the hospital car as she'd made her way outside. From what she could figure out, a sort of timer had been attached to the jar with a hammer that apparently smashed it at a certain time. She was confident the mist, or whatever it was, had been trapped inside the container.
    Bannan and Carter had been immune to the terrifying effect that green cloud had on the human condition. The doctor, the wounded men, and the conductor had all been tormented and transformed into things, which were hardly human ; creatures with a penchant for violence and terror.
    She was starting to think that she'd been pitted against those creatures as part of some benign scheme. It would certainly explain the metal-toothed man's intentions. However, did it also explain her amnesia?
    While making her way to the supply car, she stepped over the fallen, desiccated corpses of the surreal creatures she had managed to destroy. She wanted to feel pity for Bill Carter, but she felt nothing. Why should she care? He was a stranger, and he was a likely co-conspirator in the plot to hijack her memory. Was it true that he had lost a brother, too? The boy's parents would never see their two sons again.
    Bannan thought about these things, but she remained indifferent. She could easily get used to the life of an outlaw, even if she really wasn't Bannan, after all. Wouldn't a normal person care something for the boy? Wouldn't a normal person observe the human waste and feel a twinge of anger at the war-mongering politicians who ground his life beneath the weight of the mighty war machine?
    She stepped over the corpses, careful not to get blood on her boots. Chunks of gore were apparently vital organs that slipped out from the bowels of those horrendous ghouls. Certainly, no man could live without the ropy intestines that sat in a smoking pile beside an organ that Bannan couldn't easily name. Those creatures had been walking dead men whose existences could only be ended with a gunshot to the brain.
    And what of the green cloud? It slipped out of the train and into the Mississippi wind…was it still dangerous, or did its strength subside?
    Carter seemed a tragic figure, lying face down in a pool of blood in the immense, still ed silence that corrupted the aura of peace that dominated the low plain outside of the train. Bannan stepped over him and opened the door to the supply car, where she found plenty of medical supplies, including opium, morphine, and apparatuses for crutches and other barbaric replacements for lost limbs. There were containers full of fresh water, which made her tongue race along the edges of her dry, cracked lips.
    There