The Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Weight Read Online Free Page A

tried pulling again. This time it worked, but something was stuck to the end. The chunk of hull was moving away, but he must have broken off a piece of fiberglass that had gotten stuck on the hook shaped gaff. He readjusted his grip then heaved up and over his right shoulder to see what it was. A shape emerged from the dark water, and when he saw what he’d hooked, he almost fell back onto the deck.
    Blackened and covered in seaweed, the zombie had both hands wrapped in a death grip on the pole. Its burned face grinned up at Steve and Heather in a rictus of fury as it let out a high pitched keening noise at the sight of food. Its nose and ears were gone, revealing gaping holes in its skull. With its lids burned or rotted away, its eyeballs looked huge. Water poured from its mouth as it gnashed its teeth and whipped its body back and forth, almost pulling Steve into the water.
    He tried to push the end of the pole into the thing’s face, hoping to knock it off, but the Z’s grip was so strong that it only moved a few inches and stopped short of contact. He was about to rear back to give himself more room for a forward thrust when Heather’s pole shot forward like a spear, its end punching through the Z’s eye socket and rocking its head back. From behind them they could hear Tick-Tock yell for Brain to get his ass up on deck.
    Heather s hook the now dead Z off the end of her push pole and called out, “We’re good. We don’t need Brain. We got this.”
    “You may have that,” Tick-Tock said , and then pointed to their left adding, “but you don’t have that .”
    Looking to the port side of the boat , Heather and Steve saw what Tick-Tock meant. The pass was bottlenecked by the enormous amount of debris that had been pushed into the Gulf of Mexico. It created an interlocking surface on which thousands of the dead were now staggering and crawling across. Some were burned and charred like the hitchhiker they’d just sent to the bottom of the bay, but most seemed intact except for wounds and gouges leaking putrid, black puss. A few were clothed but most were naked, their clothing worn out or torn off since they were turned into the walking dead months ago.
    As Heather watched, one of the Z’s fell between a gap in the flotsam and disappeared. Another’s leg dropped into a hole and staggered it. Extracting itself, it crawled along until it could regain its feet, ever moving toward its food. Looking beyond at the shoreline, she could see thousands more dead emerging from the destruction that had been Texas City.
    Coming on deck, Brain took one look at the mass of dead flesh approaching and uttered, “We are so screwed.”
    “Not yet we’re not. Take the wheel.” Tick-Tock shot back at him as he picked up his M-and called out toward the bow, “Steve…”
    “I’m already on it,” Steve replied, even as he and Heather started attacking the flow of trash that locked them in place. They worked with frenzied speed, managing to clear a path that kept The Usual Suspects moving forward at a slow but steady pace.
    B ut the approaching wave of dead was faster.
    Tick -Tock opened fire, taking out the closest of the Z’s. More were coming at them from the shoreline ahead and to their left, so he called for Sheila and Connie. If the dead got in front of them, they’d be cut off. The three of them took up positions on the bow and started picking off the dead. Heather had taught everyone to shoot, but with the amount of fire being poured into the wall of zombified flesh, Connie soon had her hands full just keeping their magazines loaded. Pep followed the women up and raced around the deck. As if knowing what they were trying to do, he pointed his body in the direction of the nearest creature and barked at it until someone shot it through the head.
    With only a thin wedge of debris standing between them and safety, Steve could see they were close to open water and safety. There were still a few of the dead in position to cut