Read Judgment Day -03 for Free Online Page A

met.”
    “Thank you,” he said with a wicked smile. “That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a long time.”
    “No, really. You’re scarier than Frankenstein.”
    He chuckled.
    “You’re so scary that a great white shark would put on tennis shoes and run up the beach to get away from you.”
    His chuckle turned into a laugh.
    “I mean it,” she said, getting into the spirit of it. “If the boogey man was in your closet, he’d stay there until you left for work.”
    “Okay, okay,” he said, holding up one hand while trying to stop laughing. “I got it. When we find the girl, you can do the talking.”
    She nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”
    Tanner saw the sign for I-77 ahead. A long string of cars jammed the on-ramp, but the off-ramp was relatively clear. He drove over the median and started up toward the interstate. As they came to the top of the ramp, he brought the Escalade to a full stop. All four lanes were filled with cars. A narrow path had been pushed through the automotive bedlam, but it was by no means straight or easy to follow.
    “Do you think we can get through this?” she asked.
    “If others can, we can,” he said, easing the car forward.
    “We’ll have to go slow, or we’ll end up walking... again.”
    “Hey, that was one time. And I was new to this whole apocalypse thing.”
    “You almost got me eaten.”
    Tanner rubbed a small scab on his face.
    “We’ve all had our close calls with hungry critters.”
    She turned to him with a serious look on her face.
    “Promise you won’t ever let anything eat me.”
    He glanced at her.
    “And what exactly would you have me do?”
    “You know,” she said, biting her lip.
    “You’d rather I put a bullet in you than let zombies munch your brains,” he said, trying to lighten the mood. “Is that it?”
    She nodded. “Promise me.”
    He gave her a long look.
    “Okay, I promise.”
    “Do you want me to do the same for you?”
    “Unh-unh.”
    “Why not?”
    “If something’s going to eat me, I want it to have to work for its food.”
    “You probably wouldn’t taste as good as me anyway,” she said in a very matter of fact way.
    “What makes you say that?”
    “In all the horror movies, monsters always want to eat the children. I figure they must know that we taste better. It’s only logical.”
    Tanner shook his head. He had become accustomed to conversations with Samantha going in odd directions, but her quirky comments never failed to amuse him.
    She rolled down her window and took a deep breath.
    “Ugh! It smells like dead people.”
    “I can’t imagine why.”
    Tanner noticed something in the road up ahead and gestured for her to take a look. Pieces of roadkill were spread along the yellow center line, hunks of meat and bone run over so many times that they were no longer recognizable. An RV sat parked on the side of the interstate with long black skid marks extending behind its rear tires. A human leg, with a bright blue tennis shoe still attached, lay beside the RV. A little further up was an arm. Beyond that rested what was left of the torso. Splashes of blood were everywhere, as if the famous expressionist painter Jackson Pollock had gotten busy with a bucket of red paint.
    “Gross,” she said, making a face. “What do you suppose happened here?”
    Tanner slowed the Escalade.
    “Nothing good.”
    They eased by the carnage, searching for clues.
    “I bet the dogs did this,” she said.
    Tanner looked to his left and saw the naked body of a woman staked to the ground in the grassy median. A heavy piece of rebar protruded from her stomach like the flagstick at a golf course.
    “No,” he answered, his voice cold and hard. “This wasn’t dogs.”
    Without further explanation, he punched the gas and sped past the bloody massacre.
     
     
    Parked on the shoulder of I-77, Tanner and Samantha sat inside the Escalade, finishing a lunch of freeze-dried spaghetti and a powdered juice