Read 4 Hardcore Zombie Novellas for Free Online Page B

El Lobo cursed her and kicked her on the rump to urge her on. Nadif had to bite his tongue until he tasted blood so that he would not rebuke the filthy man. It was not easy to see in the dark, not even with the bright moonlight on the land but Nadif knew the woman had stumbled because she had been keeping her own wary eye on the wicked eye above, looking down on them with searing malevolence.
    El Lobo coughed, fitfully at first, then with increasing regularity until he had to bend at the waist in a veritable fit of non-stop coughing. He retched. He cursed. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Coughed some more.
    The party of sixteen souls had to halt to wait for El Lobo to recover from his coughing attack. When Nadif saw that the coyote was coughing up blood, he feared that one of the canisters had leaked and that El Lobo was merely the first among them to succumb to the virus. But no, the former Soviet scientists who had genetically manipulated and weaponized the virus would not have been so careless as to improperly seal the air-tight containers.
    Nadif warily approached El Lobo, who was now on his knees and still coughing. “Are you all right?” he asked.
    El Lobo growled at him and waved him away with a blood-speckled paw. “¡Estancia lejos!” Stay away!
    Nadif was going to stand his ground and remind the man that he had been paid handsomely to take him where he needed to go, but then El Lobo fell face-down on the ground and didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Nadif reluctantly checked the man’s pulse. He didn’t have one.
    “Él es muerto,” he said. Dead. Just that quick. Unnaturally quick, Nadif thought. He glanced up at the fearsome eye above. Then at his traveling companions. Now what? Did anyone else know the way they were supposed to go? A stout man in a baseball cap and dirty overalls said he could get them to the outskirts of Tucson.
    The woman who had stumbled and had been punished for it by El Lobo was suddenly seized by a fit of coughing.
    Nadif pulled the stout man aside and told him he would pay him two hundred dollars to get him to Tucson. The money was stashed in his sock. He showed it to the man and told him he would pay him upon reaching their destination. The man nodded.
    The coughing woman begged them to wait for her to catch her breath, promising that she would be able to keep up with them once she stopped coughing and could catch her breath. Nadif said she would not stop and that she was going to end up like El Lobo. Make peace with your god, he told her. You are already dead.
    He swatted a fly buzzing near his face.
    She coughed. She pleaded for them not to abandon her.
    Some of them said they thought they should give her a chance. Wait awhile.
    Nadif shook his head, steeled himself, then pulled his knife, grabbed a handful of her hair and slit her throat. He looked at the others and said, “Vayamos.”
    The woman died noisily. Blood gurgled in her throat and bubbled and foamed in the raw gash which made Nadif think of female sex organs and how unclean they were. He realized that he was still holding a handful of her hair. He let it go and her head thumped to the ground. She writhed. She clutched at her slit throat, eyes wide with panic and fear. The others silently watched her die, terror engraved in their moonlit faces.
    “Vayamos,” Nadif repeated.
Let’s go
.
    As if responding to Nadif’s command, El Lobo rose up from the ground.
    Rose from the dead
. Stood there unmoving for a long moment, and then lurched forward, reaching for Nadif.
    Nadif’s knife-hand shot out to stab the dead man’s throat even as his mind whispered to itself that there was no way El Lobo could be up and walking because the dead did not walk. He jerked the blade out and jabbed it back in.
    Out, in. Out, in. Jab. Jab Jab.
    And still the man stood, still reaching out so that finally Nadif had to take steps backward to avoid the dead man’s grasp and the feel of his cold fingers.
    “But he was dead,”