Read Dead City - 01 for Free Online

afternoon, it was sunny and eighty-six degrees, but it felt more like fifty while I was standing in that yard.
    There were no dogs barking. I thought that was really strange. The only thing I could hear was the noise of the crowd from the top of the hill, and then that died away too.
    I stopped and listened to the quietness that had descended on the street. Strobes filled the sky, but everything had grown very still and the only noise at all was the wind washing through the leaves of the trees above me.
    The further east I went down Chatterton, the heavier the tree cover got.
    The houses closest to the elementary school were a little larger than the rest of the subdivision, and they had the biggest lots with the largest trees.
    Those houses were still pretty close to where I had left my car, and the cover they provided made them seem like a natural place to observe the street before I made the final dash to my car.
    As I walked through one of the front yards, I came across a huge Spanish oak with a canopy almost as large as the house it stood in front of. It had never been cut back, and its outer branches sagged to the ground, making it look like a gigantic dome tent.
    A sharp, gusty wind blew through the top branches, tossing them back and forth. The huge oak creaked and groaned under the sudden urgency of the wind. It was strange and beautiful music.
    I walked around its canopy and saw an opening where one of its larger branches curved down to the ground from the central bole.
    There was enough room for a man to walk under it and the space seemed to form a quiet sanctuary, a cave with walls of leaves. I swung open the curtain of leaves and entered it, thinking that if nothing else I could catch my breath there.
    But I saw immediately that it was no sanctuary. A man was already there, on his knees, eating large pieces of viscera from a gaping hole in a dead woman’s abdomen. A long, lumpy rope of intestine dangled from his fingers.
    He wore a blue button-down shirt and his face was soaked in blood. His pants looked brown and very dirty. He wasn’t wearing shoes. His mouth hung open, forming a mean, vacant hole.
    But the most awful part of his expression lingered around the eyes. They were milky white and opaque, a perfect image of death.
    Blindly, I felt for the curtain of leaves behind me and grabbed them, steadying myself for support. I kept my eyes on the man’s eyes, not wanting to look away, and backpeddled into the yard.
    But as I moved, so did he.
    A piece of dark meat fell from his teeth. He stood up slowly, gangly and rickety on his damaged legs, and came after me.
    “What’s wrong with you?” I asked, but didn’t expect an answer.
    What I was looking at was simply impossible. It was wrong in every way. I wanted to yell out at the man that he was an abomination, but when I opened my mouth to speak, nothing came out.
    I felt like I was headed for a meltdown. My heart was beating so fast and so hard it hurt. I could hear the blood roaring in my head. I wasn’t breathing.
    “No,” I said. “You need to get back.”
    I let the branches fall from my hand and I stumbled backwards into the yard, still staring at the oak tree that no longer seemed beautiful, but mangled and unnatural.
    The man appeared from the veil of leaves and came after me.
    The battle I had just escaped didn’t seem real. The crowds of people walking into a wall of armed policemen, fighting with their bare hands and teeth, hadn’t seemed real. But that man, that gore-stained monstrosity, he was real. Looking at him, I no longer had any doubts I was looking at a zombie.
    I reached for my gun.
    As I backed up, I pulled it from the holster and worked it into my grip.
    I saw the green glow of the night sights and centered the front dot on the man’s forehead.
    He never even acknowledged the weapon. The void in his eyes never changed to recognition of the danger. He walked straight at me, and his face remained blank right up to the end.
    I