The Dead Walk The Earth (Book 3) Read Online Free Page A

riot line, but the majority stood fast, realising how desperate the situation was and the consequences that would befall the city and its inhabitants if their shield walls were overwhelmed.
    More of the reanimated arrived from all directions, and it was not long before a breach began to form in the hastily erected defences. The dead poured through, dragging the traumatised soldiers to the ground, clawing and biting at them. The streets echoed with the crackle of gunfire, but very soon the small amount of ammunition that had been issued to the men and women who were charged with holding back the infected had been expended. More of the dead burst through into the rear areas, trapping the units in a ring of horror that tightened with each passing minute.
    The soldiers panicked and ran, trampling the fallen and adding to the confusion as the turmoil spread to neighbouring units. Gunfire blasted from all quarters while screams of pain and fear rang out through the streets. Eventually, despite the efforts of the commanders, it became impossible to shore up the front, and a total collapse began as more troops retreated in terror. The reanimated corpses crashed through like a rogue wave.
    Tina had witnessed the carnage first hand. She had seen many of her friends brought down by the ravenous ghouls and watched as their flesh was ripped from their bones. She could still hear their screams. They rang out inside her mind like the bells of a cathedral, over and over. Their cries for help and howls of pain rasped at her nerves while their pleading, terror filled eyes burned deep into her soul. She felt guilty and ashamed because she had been unable to save them. She could clearly see their faces and still smell the blood that gushed from their wounds, even now while she was awake.
    “Hold the line,” was the order that continued to echo through her mind.
    She had bolted, like so many others had done. Only a handful of her unit had managed to escape from the rout, and everyone she had served with was now dead. She soon found herself alone and unarmed, running for her life.
    Snorting back the emotions that threatened to overcome her, she sat with her head in her hands for a few minutes, fighting back the tears. The faces of her friends continued to linger before her, eventually becoming replaced by the grotesque and twisted features of her mother. Tina had arrived home to find her lying in her bed and snarling back at her, having died from the flu a number of days earlier, while her brother, Christopher, sat outside the bedroom door whimpering and unable to gather the courage needed to end his mother’s torment. The deed was left for Tina to carry out. It had been hard for her to deal with her mother in the way she had done, but she knew that there was no one else willing to do it, and she could not have left her suffering in that way.
    Christopher, she thought. The bastard.
    He had shot her but failed to complete the job. As the crowds of corpses closed in around her on the car park of the industrial estate, she had unwittingly stumbled upon an avenue of escape. Dragging her tormented body away from the approaching infected, desperately trying to gain some distance from them and the precious extra moments of life it would allow her, Tina hauled herself towards the nearest of the warehouses. The door at her back, she soon realised, had been secured with a cheap quality padlock, fastened through a flimsy looking steel hook. After a number of heavy swings from her hatchet while struggling to remain upright, she was able to drag herself through into the dark building and secure the door again from the inside. She was alone and hurt, but her desire for revenge upon the man who had done this to her was stronger than any other emotion and cancelled out all the pain she was suffering.
    Fuck you, Chris.
    Shaking her head, Tina reached across to the bedside cabinet and scooped up the three bottles containing an assortment of pills that the doctors