Saving the Dead Read Online Free

to free themselves as the daughter pounced like a spider.
    Ramirez's floundering legs caught her as he twisted around.  She fell towards him, her bloody knife glinting in the dark.  He reached out defensively and caught the wrist of her knife hand.  She tried to claw at him with her free hand.  He drove his elbow into her, but his arm was tangled in laundry diminishing the power in his strike, but still enough to stun her.
    "Fuck!  We’ve got a runner now!" shouted Drifts.
    Ramirez heard another pair of feet running from the bedroom and the cold reality occurred to him: he hadn’t neutralized the mother.
    He saw the old woman's fleshy carcass running into view with a speed her body had not known in years.  The zombie’s yellow teeth were working to chomp through the intubation tube, and the blackened circle on her forehead from the hot-drill resembled a charred third eye.  She was almost on top of them.
    Drifts lunged over all of them, catching the zombie in a diving tackle.  The two of them hurtled out of Ramirez's range of vision, crashing down on the floor beyond.  The impact of them striking the floor woke the daughter from her temporary stunned state.  She turned to the sounds of his partner's struggle with the zombie and threw herself at Drifts's back, tearing free of Ramirez's already precarious grip.
    Ramirez sprung after her desperately. Ramirez crashed down on the daughter’s back as he grabbed her knife arm with both of his hands, stopping her short of sinking it into Drifts's back.  She released an angry scream as she writhed beneath him.  He slammed her knife hand to the ground again and again.  Her battered knuckles opened.  Ramirez awkwardly grasped the knife’s handle and threw it.  It clattered as it disappeared in the cluttered darkness.
    Justin, no longer pinned by their combined weight clambered to his feet.
    "Someone, help me with this bitch!" shouted Drifts.
    Drifts's arms were shaking as he wrestled her.  Her bloody teeth had bitten through the tube and were inches from his exposed neck. His grip was slipping on her naked flesh, and her savagery overwhelmed him.  He was getting tired, but the dead did not tire.
    The daughter disarmed, Ramirez reached Drifts at the same time as Justin did.  The two of them pried the dead woman’s clawing fingers off of Drifts and helped him to his feet.  He stumbled several steps and toppled backwards over the wall of junk with a muffled, “Fuck!”
    The naked zombie, still on the floor lurched for Justin's leg.  "Whoa!" the student screamed as he jumped back kicking.  His boot caught her in the teeth, snapping them and knocking her head backwards. He brought his foot down and tripped on more debris causing him to stagger back a few feet.  As he regained his footing he saw a metal handle gleam on a shorter knocked over heap.  He snatched it up and a light flooded the room as he discovered Drift's flashlight.  Justin raised the flashlight over his head like a hammer.
    Ramirez backed towards Drifts, keeping his eyes fixed on the dead woman as he hauled his partner back to his feet.
    "No!" screeched the daughter. She stood up between the EMS crew and her mother eyeing them warily as she held her arms out to ward them off.  Behind her the zombie rose.
    Ramirez shouted for her to move, and he and Drifts rushed her in unison, but the zombie reached her first.  Dead fingers latched on her neck and hair yanking her backwards.
    "Momma?" The daughter half-turned as the dead thing sunk its teeth into her shoulder. "Ay!"
    It tore off a chunk of flesh as they reached her.  They broke the mother's hands as they freed her daughter.  She collapsed bleeding and sobbing into Drifts, who pulled her backwards.  It lurched towards them.  Ramirez brought his flashlight up, but Justin was already there swinging Drifts’s flashlight.  He brought it crashing down on the zombie’s head.  The metal tube glanced off its head and struck its collarbone,