Read The Living Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Coast for Free Online Page B

and Kamakhya
    AP: Estimated thousands of ecstatic worshippers have converged on temples of the Hindu goddess Kali in the last week, celebrating the rise of the dead in honor of “Mother Kali.” Devotees claim the Mother has called them to surrender to death in order to rise in a new, ‘deathless’ body.
    Death cults are nothing new to India. The cult of Kali (members are known as the Thuggee) has existed in India for hundreds of years. Members of the cult were known to befriend and attach themselves to groups of travelers prior to killing and robbing them, supposedly as a sacrifice to the goddess. The traditional method of sacrifice was by strangulation.
    Approximately 200 years ago the British Raj launched a military campaign to wipe out these practitioners of holy homicide/robbery throughout India. The cult was considered largely extinct by the 1860’s but evidence has surfaced at various times and places that indicates it was never completely wiped out but merely went deeper underground.
    On Tuesday, millions of onlookers watched as thousands of devotees scaled the walls of several compounds where victims of the Z-virus pandemic were quarantined, dropping their screaming children into the infected masses before leaping joyfully in to join them. The outbreak appears to have originated among the untouchables in the slum areas. Large areas of the city were barricaded then burned in an effort at sterilization. Anyone caught fleeing was shot on sight. Despite these efforts the disease has proved impossible to contain and satellite images show large groups of refugees migrating to the border with Nepal while others are attempting to board ships and flee by sea.
     
     
    Bea clicked on the video embedded in the article and watched mobs converging on tall, mud-brick walls, throwing up rickety ladders and climbing up, most holding shrieking babies in their arms and throwing them over the walls as enthralled crowds cheered them on. It was difficult to see a lot of detail for the dust kicked up by the crowds but in one shot a larger than life-sized painted image of a naked, many-armed woman wearing a necklace of human skulls was clearly visible on a wall. A long, red, pointed tongue lolled from her mouth and she held a curved sword in one of her hands while severed human heads dangled from others.
    An update noted that the worshippers succeeded in overwhelming the guards at one of the compounds and released the infected into Tarapith and were believed to still be spreading throughout the entire state of West Bengal.
    “Anything interesting?” Homer set two bowls on the table and sat down. She joined him.
    “Gruesomely so but not helpful. At least the internet is still working so we know some technology still exists.”
    “A lot of it is automated of course. It will run until some component breaks down and no human is there to repair it.”
    “I just hope some people with those kind of skills and education survive all this. This has to end at some point and we can start rebuilding.”
    “Maybe we’ll survive and maybe we won’t. As a species I mean.”
    “We’ll survive.” She wouldn’t consider any other option. Her brother was going to get the chance to grow up.
    “I’m not so sure. I think it’s a do over. Mother Nature got sick of us and she’s exterminating us. Like the dinosaurs.”
    “That giant asteroid killed the dinosaurs.”
    “Nope. Just finished the rest of them off. Most of them were already dying from some kind of super-parasite growing inside them. Mother Nature plays nasty when she wants to.”
    Bea sighed. “She’s definitely playing dirty now. Thanks for the meal. I can’t tell you how good warm food tastes after days without it.”
    “That’s the last of what I found in the cupboards. My ex isn’t the kind to stock up for an emergency. I was really hoping to get out of here today.”
    He left. Bea placed the bowls in the sink then looked through a crack in the curtains at the back yard.