The City Series (Book 1): Mordacious Read Online Free

immediately and feel meek in the presence of authority with a gun. I force myself to straighten my shoulders—I’m no longer nine years old and I haven’t done anything wrong.
    “Stop pointing your gun at us,” I say. Grace squeezes my arm, and I bite my tongue. The old key-between-the-fingers trick makes me feel safer, but I’m certain it wouldn’t be very effective against a bullet.
    “Everyone just chill out,” the baby-faced cop says. He’s in his thirties, with a nameplate that reads Clark. He motions at Kearney, who holsters his gun unenthusiastically.
    “Can someone just explain this?” My voice has taken on an annoyingly desperate note. “Where are we going?”
    Kearney sets the elevator moving again with a jab of his finger. “This has taken up enough of my fucking time.” He turns to Jorge with a snarl. “That was the last time I leave the basement. I could’ve been killed trying to help those people. Wasted bullets trying to get a headshot for no good reason.”
    Judging by his uniform, helping is the better part of his job description. I know Kearney’s type. He likes to wield his power—how little of it he has—but he won’t do anything to earn it.
    “Hey, I didn’t send you up there.” Jorge turns to me. “We’re going to the cafeteria. The street and a lot of the floors are full of infected. We can’t leave until the cops clear them out.”
    “Thank you,” I say to Jorge, although his words don’t fully sink in until Grace whispers, “We can’t leave?”
    “Not yet,” Jorge says. “But we will.”
    The elevator is freezing, but that isn’t why I shiver. I have to ask the question, even if it’s preposterous. I keep my eyes on Jorge. “They’re really dead? The zom—infected?”
    Obviously, the infected attack others, maybe even eat them, but they can’t be zombies. They can’t be dead . That would mean we’ve morphed from reality into a full-scale horror movie. And that’s about as likely as Superman saving us from the zombies.
    Jorge blows out a breath. “That’s what they say.” I can see how reticent he is to admit it, how a little bit of crazy—alive crazy—flashes behind his gaze.
    “And no one in the basement knows that except for the staff,” Kearney says. “So keep your mouths shut.” His gray eyebrows rise in challenge. He doesn’t look like the kind of guy who jokes around. Maybe the kind of guy who tortures kittens, but definitely not the class clown.
    The hamster on the wheel in my brain dashes to keep up with this new information. They’re dead and they want to eat us . It’s called a dawning realization for good reason—the prickle of horror starts at my feet and rises until my entire body is flooded with it.
    The elevator thumps to basement level. Jorge holds a finger on the Door Close button. “We don’t want everyone to panic. They’re going to find out, but we want them to find out after the cops get here. So keep it quiet for now. All right?”
    The elevator doors slide open. I step from the recessed area of the elevator bank and into the hall on numb feet. At the other end of the corridor, a nurse bends over one of the gurneys that line the wall near the visitor elevators and a stairwell door. A few people sit on the floor. Every face is washed-out, no matter its previous skin tone.
    “Come sit down in the cafeteria,” Jorge says, and lifts his ID tag. “I’m Jorge, although you probably figured that out.”
    Grace and I mumble our names and stagger through the wide cafeteria entrance down by the gurneys. The large room has been cleared by pushing the tables to the walls of the windowless dining area, leaving an open space where over twenty gurneys sit in rows. The off-white walls are hung with posters promoting New York City services and a few prints done in cheap motel style.
    Nurses tuck patients into their beds. One table holds medical supplies, another food and cups and pitchers of water. A few people in street clothes sit