Read The Loss (Zombie Ocean Book 4) for Free Online Page B

cultish god.
    Other times Julio told stories to the hallway at large, to entertain himself, and hurt them when the mood struck him. He entertained his whims and spoke to a woman's sharp voice in the air. He read the comic again and again, sometimes working himself into rages over the role he was given.
    "Five panels!" he'd cry out. "Only five!"
    He'd flail and lash out and wave the comic around, though each time before he fell to sleep on his pitiful and filthy bedding he'd smooth the pages carefully and set the comic reverently down on a little wooden altar.
    Then Cerulean came.
    He was brought, and for the week afterwards that Julio ignored the rest of them, forgetting to feed them, bringing no more tortures or rape. Peters could feel things building to a climax, the date Julio had been waiting for, as announced by the woman in the ceiling, until at last, one early morning, it happened.
    The red demon woke up. It pushed its way from its glass cage and spewed bile into Julio, turning him into a red beast as well. It spewed bile into Cerulean and others, then Cerulean turned and attacked it.
    At that point in the story Anna gasped. Lara took her hand. I urged Peters on.
    Cerulean fought the Julio-demon and tore its head off. He killed the others that had been infected and fought the demon to a standstill, forcing it back into its glass cage. He broke the shackles of all the victims and roared a warning at them.
    "Go to Amo! Warn him."
    As Peters gathered up Abigail and ran for the ladder, he had no intention of going to Amo. He hated the man almost as much as he hated Julio. His cruelty was the reason for all of this; the terrible things he'd done to Julio had now been visited upon them. Then, as he passed the giant, swaying red body of Cerulean, something changed. He looked into the strange beast's sad red eyes and understood something profound.
    He was a victim too. He was Cerulean from the comic, a paraplegic who had lost everything and survived, who with his dying breaths had just fought a demon to save them all. He was surely dying even now.
    It was enough to turn Peters around, turn both him and Abigail around and send them back to the others, to the victims who, when they fell from their chains, lay uselessly on the cold stone. They had no muscles left, no power to move themselves. So Peters and Abigail lifted them up, helped by others, and together they worked the winch to get them out.
    Over ground for the first time in perhaps half a year, barefoot in the snow Peters dragged their shivering bodies through the white fields, to the white van Julio had brought them in.
    Together they filled it up, bodies stacked on bodies on the stained mattress in the back, then he got into the driving seat, turned the key waiting in the ignition and tore away. Explosions rang out all around them, bombs falling from above with the woman's anger, and once the van was almost blown off the road and down into a gulley, but he managed to keep them moving until the worst of it was over.
    After that the journey was a blur. They must have stopped but he didn't remember it. Some times Abigail drove or one of the others but he didn't remember changing over. The road stretched on and on and they must have collected gas and food a dozen times but he didn't know how or when.
    Then there was LA. Road signs from another world led them there, to here, looking up into his old enemy Amo's face, and realizing he was a friend.
    "Thank you," Peters said, as he finished talking. "Thank you for being here and for trying to save my Abigail. Now we have to run. The red demon is coming. He wants to kill us all, just like he killed Cerulean."
    I look at him, and I look at Lara and Anna, then round at the lobby and all the people in it. Then I pat Peters' hand, tell him thank you, and walk out of the Chinese Theater into the light.
     

 
     
    3. CERULEAN
     
     
    I walk along the Pacific Coast Highway, unable really to think at all. I reach Santa Monica