This Rotten World (Book 2): We All Fall Down Read Online Free

the man in and he was bitten, there would only be one thing to do, put
something to the head... either a bullet or a boot. Either way, that would
bring attention that they didn't need. They heard banging on a door down the
hallway from where they hid. They heard the splintering of wood, and then they
heard more footsteps, different from the ones that came before. They were
shuffling movements, sliding through the refuse of the tenement's hallways.
Then the screaming came.
    They stood in silence as an
entire building of people became an entire building of the dead, except for the
two of them. Zeke didn't know how long they stood in the quiet, but the room
had heated up as the sun rose, baking the corner apartment on the third floor.
The smell of decaying corpses had grown, and his body was covered in sweat.
They had to get out. It was time.
    "You ready?"
    Lou, who had been silent for
most of their watch, nodded his head, sweat pouring off the smooth brown skin
of his bald head. Zeke pushed the door open slowly and stepped out into the
dimly lit hall of the tenement. Though it was the middle of the day, most of
the windows had been broken and boarded up. Sunlight and heat filtered into the
hallways in scattered rays, and the dead lingered. Zeke breathed deeply, trying
to rid himself of the odor of the nightmare they had left behind. The smell in
the tenement hallway wasn't much better; it still smelled of urine and the
deceased, but it wasn't nearly as strong.
    Through the narrow corridor,
they moved like cats stalking prey, Zeke taking the lead. He inched forward,
heel to toe, avoiding the scattered refuse that littered the floor of the
hallway, discarded syringes, empty baggies, and fast food wrappers. The door to
the first room they came to was boarded up. That was good. They slid past it,
watching where their feet went.
    As they approached the next
door, they heard the sound of it first. A subtle creak in the floorboards, a
disturbance in the air pressure, something was in there, and the door was
hanging off of its hinges. This must be the room where the unlucky screamer had
tried to hide. Zeke brought the sight of the gun up to eye level, and turned
quickly, taking in all the information he could, as fast as he could. Three
bodies, two squatting over the form of another, their backs to the door. Good, he thought. Let's keep it that way.
    Zeke glided past the door, his
gun at the ready, and then he motioned Lou forward with a wave of his hand. His
breath caught in his throat, as Lou moved past the door, but he made it without
incident, and he exhaled silently through his nose, a long deep breath. If the
zombies didn't kill him, the damn stress would.
    They continued through the
hallway, approaching the landing of the third floor, a murky square room that
had been populated by drug-abusing trash on couches with stained cushions and
exposed stuffing the last time they had come through. Down the hallway that led
to the other half of the third-floor, Zeke could see one of the dead, standing
in a corner as if it had done something wrong. The sight of Zeke's gun never
deviated from its head, even when he chanced a peek around the corner to scope
out the landing.
    There was no one there. The
things seemed to appreciate the path of least resistance. There were few of
them on the third floor, but you could be damned sure the second floor and the
first floor were literally crawling with the things. Zeke heel-toed out into
the landing, sweat beading on his brow, Lou two-feet behind him, the way he had
told him to be. The wild part of Zeke, that instinctual being that was locked
away in his brain, screamed for him to lay the creature out, lay them all out.
He knew it wouldn't be any good. They were in a city of the dead, with a few
handfuls of ammunition and nowhere to run.
    He moved forward across the
stained, red carpeting and looked over the edge of the landing, trying to see
what was awaiting them. There were none on the stairs;