Read The Dead Series (Book 4): Dead End for Free Online Page B

yourself inside your home or den, you eventually starved to death or were forced to venture out in search of food and water. Once away from shelter, anything living was easily outnumbered by the lingering zombies and was torn apart. Then, the ones that didn’t have their brain destroyed in this carnage got up to join their brethren. The only thing that didn’t get up were the animals, since the disease wasn’t able to jump the biological barrier between man and animal.
    After the entire population of the city was dead, in one form or another, the group moved on to the nearest population centers. With the bridge to the west gone, they headed east.
    Burkville and Newton , Texas, had had their own outbreak, so the dead from Jasper found little to eat. The groups of dead from these three towns merged into one and moved south, and then further east. After ravaging this region, they went back and forth through the area in a constant search for food, wiping hundreds of square miles clean of anything living. Now on their way back west to scour the bleak terrain once again, they would let no barrier made by man or nature stop them until they found flesh. The downed bridge had been a deterrent so far, but not anymore. The urge to feed was so strong that they would go over, under, or through anything that stood in their way.
    L ocated between the lake and the outskirts of Jasper as they trudged westward, the herd stayed on Highway 190 since it gave them an easier path than cutting through the forests and fields on both sides of the road. Coming to the edge of the lake, the road narrowed as it funneled them into a single column of tightly packed dead flesh that stretched from shore to shore as they spilled onto the causeway. Coming across the downed section of the bridge, without hesitation, those in the lead stepped off to drop into the water.
    The rest of the dead followed, looking like a collection of gruesome lemmings following the leader over a cliff. After hitting the water and sinking to the bottom, they slogged through the mud and silt that made up the floor of the lake, endlessly moving forward in a search for food.
    W ith their number at over twenty thousand, the dead in the lead were well ashore and moving off the causeway before the final zombie dropped over the ragged concrete and exposed the rebar that made up the edge of the blown bridge. It took hours, but finally the last of the stragglers made it across. These at the rear were not the walking dead, but rather the legless that had to crawl and the blind that made their way on all fours as they felt their way along. Dripping wet, they made their way on shore and moved forward, closer now than anyone at the mansion realized.
     
    CHAPTER THREE
     
    The Happy Hallow Insane Asylum:
     
    Sitting on the bed of an unused room, with his back against the wall and a map laid on his lap, Steve studied the unlit cigarette in his hand. His mouth already tasted like he’d scoured it out with oily steel wool from smoking too much, but the habit and the stress kept him wanting another one. It gave him something to focus on, something to think about other than the mess they were in. Instead of lighting it, he took a drink from the water bottle lying next to him. After screwing the cap back on, he said, “Fuck it,” and fished around in his pants pocket for his Zippo lighter. As soon as he took the first drag off the stale Marlboro, though, his body said, ‘No’, and he started dry heaving. Grinding the butt into the tile floor, he coughed and gagged a few times as he fought not to throw up.
    “Those things are going to kill you,” Heather told him from where she stood at the door.
    Halfway regaining control, Steve choked out, “I hope I live that long.”
    “We’re all going to live a long time,” Heather reassured him. “I just checked on Brain , and he said that he’s almost finished with the explosives.”
    Looking up in interest, Steve said, “I didn’t hear a loud