Read The City Series (Book 1): Mordacious for Free Online

from a lifetime of experience this is all the sleep I’m getting.
    I make my way to the hall bathroom. The toilets still work, thankfully, and I use the travel toothbrush I keep in my bag. Back in the cafeteria, Maria and the young nurse with the braid stand beside a gurney. The moans I heard must have come from the security guard, who lies under the sheet, face flushed and chest hitching slightly. Maria sticks a syringe into a bottle, then a different bottle and another, taking up a bit of each. She deftly turns the guard’s head and places her fingers at the base of his skull.
    “Right here,” Maria says. The needle slides into his hairline, the contents injected with a push of her thumb. She picks up his hand and uses her stethoscope to listen to his chest, then gently sets his hand down and nods at the young nurse. “Keep watching but don’t worry.”
    Maria sees me watching and pads close. “You’re wondering what that was about.”
    I’m fairly certain I’ve just watched them euthanize a human, and it doesn’t upset me as much as it would have yesterday. I’ve seen the alternative. “He was bitten?”
    Maria nods. “A small bite on his arm. We didn’t want to scare everyone. We’ll move his body to the freezer in the kitchen.”
    Whatever was in the morgue is now in the hall where we left the bodies. The doors are locked and have no windows, but if you knock you get an answer, although it’s more of a body slam. I make a mental note not to eat anything frozen. “Won’t that…infect the food?”
    “No, we’ll wrap him up first. He won’t touch the food.”
    I imagine them laying him on a counter next to one of those industrial-sized rolls of Saran Wrap and spinning him around. It’s completely inappropriate and hysterically funny at the same time—in the hysteria sense of the word. I bite my lip so I don’t laugh aloud.
    “That injection is how we took care of them once they finally told us there was nothing else to do,” Maria says. “It destroys the brain stem so the virus can’t take hold. They waited too long. If they’d told us sooner, maybe…” Her shoulders raise and drop almost imperceptibly. “You should rest.”
    “I can’t sleep. I can help, if you want.” It’ll be better than sitting and thinking. I’m not much of a joiner, but I like to pitch in.
    “You can check on the patients, give them water, and get one of us if they need something. It would be a big help. Thank you.”
    I remember she’d said something about her girls. “You have daughters? Did they leave the city?”
    “Two, about your age. They should be gone already. They had somewhere safe to go. I hope they listened.”
    She clasps her hands so tight her fingers whiten. It must be nice to have a mother who worries about your own welfare more than hers. Who calls to keep you safe rather than to ask for money.
    “Why wouldn’t they listen?” I ask.
    “My younger daughter is…stubborn. Her sister will make her go.”
    “I’m sure they left.” I don’t say it just to make her feel better—I can’t imagine why one wouldn’t get the hell out of New York if they could.
    Maria rests the back of her hand on her forehead and closes her eyes. “I hope so. I’m going to get some sleep.” She pats my arm and walks to where the nurses sleep in shifts on the floor.
    I spend the next hours touring beds with the young nurse, Olga. I bring patients sips of water while trying to ignore things like surgical wounds closed with staples. Although, after today, I’ll take an open wound on a living person over a zombie. People once boasted about how they’d be super-fighters and run around cracking heads when the zombies came. But now that the once-fictional creatures are a reality, I’m pretty sure most of the world isn’t doing anything of the sort. They’re either dead or running or hiding.
    “Nurse?” a voice asks.
    It belongs to a teenager. I thought he was older from a distance, but up close I see