Read Book of the Dead for Free Online Page B

coating of white slime.
    The girl beside her didn’t seem to have any skin at all. Had she been peeled? She was black all over except for the whites of her eyes and teeth—and hundreds of white things as if she had been showered with rice. But the rice moved. The rice was alive. Maggots.
    The last of the five girls approaching from the front was also black. She didn’t look peeled, she looked burnt. Her body was a crust of char, cracked and leaking fluids that shimmered in the firelight. She bore only a rough resemblance to a human being. She might have been shaped out of mud by a dim-witted child who gave her no fingers or toes or breasts, who couldn’t manage a nose or ears, and poked fingers into the mud to make her eyes. Her crust made papery, crackling sounds as she shuffled past the fire, and pieces flaked off.
    A motley crew, thought the girl cuffed to the limb.
    She wondered if any of them would have enough sense to find the key and unlock the handcuffs.
    She doubted it.
    In fact, they didn’t seem to be aware of her presence at all. They were limping and hobbling straight toward the Reaper.
    Whose shriek now shattered whatever fragile force had allowed Jean to stay outside the cuffed stranger. She tried to keep her distance. Couldn’t. Was sucked back inside the naked, suspended girl. Felt a sudden rush of horror and revulsion… and hope.
    Whatever else they might be, they were the victims of the Reaper.
    Payback time.
    He was still shrieking, and Jean looked down at him. He was on his hands and knees. The scalped girl, also on her knees and facing him, had his head caught between her hands. She was biting the top of his head. Jean heard a wet ripping sound as the girl tore off a patch of hair and flesh.
    He flopped and skidded backward, dragged by the rock thrower and the one with the slimy skin. Each had him by a foot. The scalped girl started to crawl after him, then grunted and stopped and tried to pick up the pliers. Her right hand had no fingers. She pawed at the pliers, whimpering with frustration, then sighed when she succeeded in picking up the tool using the thumb and two remaining fingers of her other hand. Quickly, she crawled along trying to catch up to her prize. She scurried past Jean. One of her buttocks was gone, eaten away to the bone.
    She gained on the screaming Reaper, reached out and clamped the pliers to the ridge of his ear and ripped out a chunk.
    Halfway between Jean and the fire, the girls released his feet.
    All six went at him.
    He bucked and twisted and writhed, but they turned him onto his back. While some held him down, others tore at his clothes. Others tore at him . The scalped one took the pliers to his right eyelid and tore it off. The burnt one snatched up a hand and opened her lipless black mouth and began to chew his fingers off. While this went on, the armless girl capered like a madcap skeleton, her trapped lung bouncing inside her ribcage.
    Soon the Reaper’s shirt was in shreds. His pants and boxer shorts were bunched around his cowboy boots. The scalped girl had ripped his other eyelid off, and now was stretching his upper lip as he squealed. The rock thrower, kneeling beside him, clawed at his belly as if trying to get to his guts. Slime-skin bit off one of his nipples, chewed it, and swallowed. The girl who must’ve been skinned alive knelt beside his head, scraping maggots off her belly and stuffing them by the handful into his mouth. No longer shrieking, he choked and wheezed.
    The dancing skeleton dropped to her bare kneecaps, bent over him, and clamped her teeth on his penis. She pulled, stretching it, gnawing. He stopped choking and let out a shrill scream that felt like ice picks sliding into Jean’s ears.
    The scalped girl tore his lip off. She gave the pliers a snap, and watched the lip fly.
    Jean watched it too. Then felt its soft plop against her thigh. It stuck to her skin like a leech. She gagged. She stomped her foot on the ground, trying to shake it