Zombies! Episode 3 - Love Bites Read Online Free Page A

held twice the
equipment of a patrol officer, including a second set of handcuffs,
a mallet, and extra ammunition for his rifle. The gloves were
bulky, but not so bulky that his fingers weren't nimble on the
trigger. He felt like something out of GI Joe. And for all it was
worth, he'd probably find some doped up teenager with the body of
the missing super.
     
    The radio in his ear buzzed a test and he
responded.
     
    "Police," he called into the gloom. Al Henry
came in behind him and flipped on the lights. That was as far as
Henry would go. He wasn't dressed for the op.
     
    The lighting was decent, illuminating a short
set of wooden stairs which led to a dusty floor. Shelves stood in
neat rows throughout the room. They were filled with clearly
labeled boxes of fuses, light bulbs, light switches, pens, pencils,
beef jerky… All of the necessities of a Manhattan apartment
building.
     
    Culph called out a second warning and then
moved deeper into the basement. Whatever strange noises the caller
had heard, they were now silent. Culph waited and listened but
there was nothing. Breathing deeply, calm in spite of himself, he
proceeded forward, checking the shelves and the corners. It was
probably rats.
     
    Then he heard it. It was the sick flow of air
through dead lungs. He'd heard it once before. Two days after the
incident at Sisters of Charity, two days after he'd been
made second in command of the zombie task force, two days after his
world and his personality had utterly transformed, he had taken his
first call. He'd been in charge, Heron having been in surgery for
his lung cancer. He'd fielded the call without a plan and without
experience and he'd been damned lucky not to get bitten. But that
sound, the sound of them "breathing"… It was like nothing he'd ever
heard before. It caused them to moan and their larynxes
reverberated with the passage of air. They uttered this mournful
sound that his ears and his brain had found offensive. To Francis
Culph, it sounded as if the zombie was mocking life.
     
    Rose had mouthed off to him that night and
he'd damned sure let her have it.
     
    At this point, he didn't necessarily like
himself. There were aspects of his personality that had always been
understated but were now coming to the fore. Police work, he
believed, was a gift from the devil. He loved the work, craved the
danger, even though there rarely ever was any. Emotionally, though,
it had left him rigid, like a piece of glass that teeters on the
edge of a precipice. He'd needed that fall. He'd needed that break.
And the job given to him by Naughton and Heron had presented him
with that opportunity. But now that he'd shattered himself, he
didn't know where to turn so that he could put all of the pieces
back together. He couldn't wind down and the cost had been high.
What would he one day become?
     
    He saw the zombie before he smelled it. That
was one of the drawbacks of the protective clothing. With his nose
covered, he couldn't really smell anything except from up close. He
should have been able to detect it as soon as he opened the door.
Al should have been able to smell it, too, but was probably too
scared to smell anything past his own sweat. The zombie was pinned
underneath a shelving unit. Most of the boxes had toppled off and
scattered around it and the unit itself didn't look that heavy. It
was one of those industrial steel jobs that you can fasten together
by putting screws into any one of a thousand different holes. They
were light and sturdy. The zombie had its foot hooked into one of
the shelves. The ankle may have been broken but it didn't matter.
It was just enough to keep the thing from wriggling away.
     
    It was not the missing super. This zombie was
a male anywhere from forty five to sixty years old. It wore a gray
suit with an understated striped tie. The shirt and jacket were
stained with blood and there was a gash through one leg of the
pants. Some of its hair had fallen out, literally fallen out.