The Undertakers: End of the World Read Online Free

raspy wheeze. This dude’s vocal chords were rotted mostly to dust at this point.
    “You know it,” I told him. “Catch!”
    Then I threw the extinguisher at him.
    To his credit, he tried to catch it, but it slammed lengthwise into his sunken chest and knocked him backward and into another deader, who actually uttered a yelp of dismay. Then they both went down again. One of their heads—I couldn’t tell which—snapped off and went clattering down the corridor, bouncing off the ruined walls like a grotesque soccer ball.
    That left just three. But three were deadly enough.
    I pulled out my pocketknife.
    About six inches long and made of weird golden metal, this wasn’t the kind of gadget you can pick up at an Army Surplus. It was given to me by Amy—Future Amy, I mean—under conditions that, at the time, were hardcore mysterious. Now that I was actually here , in the “tomorrow” from which the pocketknife had presumably come, maybe I’d finally learn its origins.
    Of course, first I needed to survive the next few minutes.
    The pocketknife had eight buttons. I hit numbers 3 and 2 together. This caused the five inch blade to pop out of one end, and the Taser—yeah, a Taser—to pop out the other.
    As the first deader lunged for me, I ducked under his grasping arms and tagged him in the small of his back with a hundred and fifty thousand volts. Then, as he stiffened and toppled forward, I rammed the blade deep into the sweet spot at the base of his skull.
    Down.
    Another, a female this time, lunged for Emily, seizing her by the wrist. My sister cried out in alarm and tried to pull away, but the Corpse held her fast, grinning savagely with her gray, lipless mouth.
    Terror flashed across Emily’s face.
    I stepped up and kicked the side of the deader’s knee, using the edge of my foot to shatter the Corpse’s patella, or kneecap. Dead Lady felt no pain, of course, but her knee buckled and she toppled sideways.
    Up until now, you’ve all probably been thinking that I’m some kind of super soldier. I mean, there were a dozen of them and one of me, and I’d managed to whittle their numbers way down in only the first minute of combat, right?
    Well, the truth is that a lot of what I pull off in combat situations—seriously, a lot of it—is luck. I got lucky that these were Type Fours and not something fresher and harder to fight. I got lucky that the fire extinguisher had been where it was. I got lucky that it was the right kind of extinguisher and that it even worked. And I got lucky with how many of the Corpses I’d managed to incapacitate before the rest regrouped.
    But now my luck had run out.
    I’d been hoping that Dead Lady would release Emily’s arm as she fell. She didn’t. Instead, she managed to hook her free hand into my hair and drag us both to the floor. I landed first, with the Corpse atop me and Emily atop the Corpse.
    Not good.
    Emily kept screaming and beating at the dead hand that still gripped her wrist. Meanwhile, Dead Lady’s attention had now fixed on me, her milky eyes bright with predatory hunger. This close to her face, I could see maggots still nibbling at the flesh below her skin. Her fingers remained tangled in my hair, twisting and pulling until pain and tears half blinded me.
    Worse, the last Corpse standing was now reaching down for me with gray, gnarled hands.
    My own hand, the one with the pocketknife in it, had gotten pinned beneath me. Desperately, I fought to pull it free.
    Meanwhile dead fingers grabbed at my other arm. A dead mouth moved down toward me, rotted teeth snapping open and closed.
    I got my hand out and, ignoring the final Corpse’s attack, rammed the point of my knife deep into Dead Lady’s left eye.
    She hissed, her mouth opening, revealing rows of loose, yellowed teeth. The smell of her hit me like a wall, nearly gagging me. Nevertheless, I shoved the blade in deeper, putting as much force behind it as I could muster. Her body bucked and writhed atop me, but