Rise of the Dead Read Online Free Page A

Marco. Now, Blake, these people don’t need to hear that all right now. We are safe inside here for the moment, so I need you to help me make sure everyone stays that way by not panicking. You got me?”
     I just watched hundreds of people die outside. It wasn’t even those things that killed them. They killed each other. It was the panic. Instincts kicked in, and we stopped pretending to treat each other like human beings. I know the cop is right.
    “Got it,” I say.
    Marco looks at Danielle too, and she nods as well.
    “Between us, all I can tell you two is this shit is happening all over the city. At seven this morning, I was sitting in the cruiser half asleep, nothing was going on. Twenty minutes later there was a call about a homicide, followed by some assault at a hospital, and a nursing home on fire. We got a call to a car accident here. Calls were coming in from all over; it spread so fast. It may be all over the country. I don’t know for sure. But right now, we need to keep these people from trying to leave here no matter what. It’s not safe out there.”
    “So you think help will eventually arrive?” I ask him.
    He looks me in the eye and says, “I think it will, eventually.”
    By the slight hesitation in his voice, I can tell this is not what he truly thinks. It’s a lie he has chosen to believe in. I wish I could believe it too. My feet carry me away from the information desk, and I join the crowd near the windows. Pressed against the fence are hundreds of the walking dead. They smear blood on the bars until the paint no longer gleams white.
    Only a few cars speed along the roads anymore. Several vehicles on the streets are surrounded by the dead. They pound their hands against the windows to get at the survivors inside. Someone in the street makes a run for it. She doesn’t get wherever she was trying to go. The things outnumber and corner the long-haired blonde, and then the horde drags her to the ground.  The bloody female crawls beneath a car, but they just keep coming. There is no way she could survive for long with the horrific amount of injuries she has suffered. It’s only a matter of time before she bleeds out. After several long minutes, the corpses lose interest. The dead woman struggles to her feet, then joins a throng of undead surrounding another nearby vehicle.
    From a couple of office buildings across the road, smoke drifts up into a pristine and cloudless sky. In one of the many shattered windows, a figure appears, engulfed in flames. It drops silently toward the ground, crashing into the hood of an abandoned vehicle below.
    At the racetrack gates, the dead continue to gather, moaning at the sight of us. The people inside stare back at them through the glass. I understand what transfixes them as I look upon the monsters that human beings are capable of becoming. We entertain ourselves with imagined nightmares like this, only to be overcome by them. Maybe we did more than envision them. Maybe somehow, we made them real. I can’t make sense of the world I see outside. It defies all logic or reason. The only thing I can be certain about is that no one out there can help us now. 
    “Folks, I need you all to move away from the windows,” says Marco. “We don’t need to draw more attention to ourselves in here.”
    I pry my eyes from the faces of the dead and step away from the glass. Without the scene outside to occupy them, the survivors take a renewed interest in the injured cop.
    “Hey, man,” questions a guy with long golden hair. His flip-flops smack the ground as he approaches Marco. “How do we even know none of those things got in here?”
    “We’re fine,” sighs Marco. “Everyone just keep calm. Grab a seat in the lobby here and stay together.”
    More people head over to question the cop then.
    A woman with cropped blonde hair and a business suit leans on the desk and scowls at Marco. “What happened to everyone?” She glances at the wound on his leg. “Are