Reanimators Read Online Free

foregoing their daily rounds. The only people foolhardy enough to brave the frigid air and the frozen landscape were those with no worries or fears. Thus the winter streets of Arkham became filled with children: children on skates, children with sleds, children building snow men and snow forts. In retrospect the accident was inevitable, for while children filled the streets, the public servants, policemen and the like had shunned the temperatures and stayed close to their warming fires. So when the municipal trucks and their loads of salt left the garage, there was no one there to tell the children. When municipal truck number seven reached the top of the hill, there was no one there to clear the children. When municipal truck number seven, driven by Virgil Potter, began to roll down the hill, there was no one to warn the children. And when municipal truck number seven began to slip on the ice, and Virgil Potter turned the wheel, municipal truck seven lurched sideways first to the left, and then to right, no one on the street below was there to hear it and alert the children. Potter swore as the front left tire clipped the sidewalk, but no one heard that either. It was only when municipal truck number seven turned on its side, tossing Virgil Potter into the street, and dumping its load of salt onto the road in a crashing wave of glittering rock, only then did anyone, meaning the children, react.
    Virgil Potter rode the wave of salt down the street screaming in fear and pain. The salt swallowed up the road in front of it like a wave on the beach. Before it children scattered like seagulls, jumping to the sidewalk or into yards and even up trees or light poles. It was young Sally Moore who they say stumbled on her scarf and then tripped, taking down with her three others, including one of my neighbors, the eldest Peaslee boy. They were swallowed by the salt, devoured, chewed and smothered by it.
    I was on the street in seconds, for I and everyone else on the block had heard the truck overturn. Moreover, there was the screaming, that high-pitched mournful sound that was coming from Virgil Potter as he clutched his severed leg in his arms. I yelled for one of the unscathed children to run to St. Mary’s for an ambulance and I saw three boys take flight like the devil himself was after them. Reaching Potter, I ripped the scarf from around his neck and tied the wool garment tight around his leg to stay the flow of blood. His screaming was unbearable and as he turned towards me to beg for help I cold-cocked him across the chin, sending him instantly into unconsciousness. It was as I began to drag Potter that I saw little Sally’s boot sticking up out of the salt. I grabbed that tiny foot with two hands and in a supreme effort pulled the tiny girl out of her pebbly tomb. Crystals caked her face and packed her nose. Clearing her mouth, I immediately determined that the young child was not breathing. Cradling the girl’s head I carefully carried her from the street and into my offices. Laying her on an exam table, I began application of the Silvester Method, alternatively lifting her arms above her head and then compressing them against the chest. Sadly, several minutes of this activity produced no results, and I collapsed in a combination of exhaustion, frustration and despair.
    As I sat there listening to the siren of the approaching ambulance, I was suddenly conscious of the opportunity that had presented itself. Rising with a jolt, I dashed down to the basement and quickly prepared a syringe of reagent, basing the dosage on an estimate of the girl’s weight. Climbing the stairs, I carried the syringe before me as if it were the fabled philosopher’s stone itself. Pulling back the girl’s hair and sweater, I adeptly inserted the needle into the base of the skull and penetrated the deeper tissue. In a second action I depressed the plunger and injected the glowing green fluid into her brain.
    I fell back into a chair and rolled