Rise of the Dead Read Online Free

pointed out I don’t have a profession anymore, other than talking about myself. That really made her eyes roll.
    The med student takes the tie with her calloused hands and undoes the knot. She fashions a tight tourniquet around the cop’s wounded thigh. The cop lets out an agonized groan. He buries his face in his forearm to wipe away the moisture welling up around his eyelids. It’s pretty unsettling to watch, so I move around to the front of the reception desk. I take my cellphone out of my pocket by instinct. When I don’t know what else to do, I take out my phone as if it has all the answers. The phone displays the time above a picture of Amanda and Abby that I set as a background. The probability that either of them is still alive is not comforting to think about considering the survival rate of the people that were at the train station this morning. I send her a text message that just says, “Where are you?” I don’t even want to think about the odds of me finding my way to them now, or ever seeing either one of them ever again.
    Chatter from other police units squawks from the cop’s radio as I wait for a response. I replay the phone call with Amanda in my head, trying to recall if she said anything to indicate where she might have been driving at that moment. I wonder if I will ever hear her voice again.
    An idea comes to me, and I feel stupid for taking so long to think of it. There is an app to locate any device on our account using GPS. I had this bad habit of leaving my phone everywhere. She rolled her eyes every time I asked to borrow her phone to locate mine. I could make her completely nuts sometimes. I open the app and stare at the rotating bars as cell towers work to triangulate a signal from her phone.
    “I guess I’m lucky you were around here,” says the cop to Danielle. “Gracias.” Then his face turns into a grimace of pain as she applies pressure back on the wound.
    “Don’t thank me. Thank that guy.” She tilts her head in my direction. “I would have been trampled to death out there if he didn’t stop to help.”
    “Lucky for me, he did,” says the cop.
    I look up from my phone, and he gives me a nod of gratitude.
    “I wouldn’t call any of us lucky,” I say.
    The GPS application shows Amanda's phone as offline. I check the box to have the app notify me when it locates the phone, and then I put the phone in sleep mode to conserve the battery. I don’t have a charger, and it might be a long time before I get out of here. My head aches and I wish I had a chance to finish my coffee. I don’t even recall dropping it. My hands still quiver from the adrenaline. I lean against the desk and pinch at the bridge of my nose. I want to close my eyes, but whenever I do, I just see the parking lot again. Torn apart bodies getting up to rip apart more people. I can’t help but imagine what could be happening at Abby’s school, or to my wife out there on the road. 
    Another transmission crackles from the radio on the cops shoulder and pulls me back from the thoughts of my family. “Requesting additional units,” a voice yells. “Damn it, is anyone else still alive out there?” There are more clicks, gunshots, and static. The voice comes back briefly before screams and gunshots drown it out. The cop here hasn’t bothered to transmit a response at all. It gives me another uneasy feeling.
    “This thing is happening everywhere,” I say. He doesn’t answer but takes his stare off the wounded leg to look me in the eyes. “Isn’t it?”
    The cop turns the volume down on his radio. He glances around at the rest of the people. They are all gathered near the windows, watching the world go to hell outside. The more terrible something is, the more people feel the need to look at it. When the cop feels confident no one else is listening, he returns his attention to me.
    “Hey,” he says. “What’s your name?”
    “Blake,” I tell him.
    “Okay, Blake,” he whispers. “My name is