Read Dead World (Book 1): Dead Come Home for Free Online Page A

distant. He figured Ryan was just getting up to answer the door … but after a few minutes passed, he still hadn’t come.
    “Hey, Ryan,” Joseph yelled, pounding on the door again. “You going to work today or you want me to tell ‘em you’re still under the weather?”
    The unmistakable sound of glass breaking reached Joseph’s ears. He tried the doorknob … it turned easily.
    “Ryan, you ok in there?” he asked, opening the door and stepping inside. Being indoors, for some reason, wasn’t making him feel any safer.
    The main room looked like a disaster area. A large, heavy blanket lay in tatters throughout the room, as though it had been thrown around by a rabid animal. The 32-inch TV had been knocked to the floor, the screen now a pile of thick, glass shards. A lamp lay on the floor at the foot of the table it once sat upon.
    Joseph jerked as a jar shattered on the floor of the kitchen. Joseph instinctively turned to face the noise and saw Ryan, standing awkwardly off balance, in the center of his kitchen. The hard, white fluorescent light cast an eerie aura over his skin, which now seemed to have almost no color. The white undershirt that stuck tightly to his torso was transparent with sweat, reddened in spots with blood. The bandage Ryan wrapped over his hand the previous evening had obviously not staunched the blood flow for long, and had either fallen or been ripped off.
    Ryan suddenly realized he wasn’t alone in the apartment. He looked up sharply with a predatory expression that made Joseph’s stomach turn.
    Joseph barely had time to register Ryan’s blood shot eyes before the sick young man was too close for comfort. Without provocation, the rabid figure that had once been Ryan Sheller lunged at Joseph, wrapping him in a bear-trap grip, his mouth agape as though trying to bite off his face. Joseph wedged his left forearm into Ryan’s throat, pushing his chin up. He managed to get an arm’s distance between them, and gripped Ryan’s throat with his hand before being pushed back by the unexpected strength with which Ryan advanced. It took less than a second for Joseph to find himself being forced out the door, his back against the breezeway railing. As he struggled to keep Ryan’s gnashing teeth at bay, he managed to work his right hand down into his jean pocket. His fingers felt cool metal, and he pulled one of the expensive chrome pens that he kept with him at all times. Without thinking, he reared back with the pen in his fist and jammed it as hard as he could into Ryan’s left ear.
    Ryan reared back growling in pain and rage. Joseph took advantage of his assailant relaxed grip, rolling to the right like a boxer coming out of a corner before shoving the back of Ryan’s head.
    Joseph felt his attacker’s weight pitch forward. Ryan twisted as his body went over the rail. He reached out at Joseph as though trying to catch himself. Joseph saw that he was close enough to stop him from falling … and he took a step back. He was well aware that were he to act in that instant, Ryan would not fall. A part of him, the civilized place in his mind, screamed at him to help. But, in that split second, the instinct to survive won.
    As Ryan flipped over the balcony, Joseph saw that his angle of descent would certainly hurt him badly if it didn’t kill him outright. He watched Ryan disappear and heard the dull, wet thud as the careening body’s head slammed into a car windshield below.
    Joseph felt as though he might throw up. He had never intentionally done anything to hurt anyone, not since a childhood day long ago when he nearly killed his friend by pushing him out of a tree house. The sound of Ryan’s impact now ripped open the memory of that day.
    Joseph’s mind and body were on edge as his survival instincts kicked into high gear.
    He flew down the stairs three at a time and into his waiting car. He wasn’t hanging around this city one second longer than necessary.
    He pushed the boundaries of