Read THE SAGA OF THE DEAD SILENCER Book 1: Bleeding Kansas: A Novel Of The Zombie Apocalypse for Free Online

want to see the service. We still have some cheese sticks and chicken wings here. Might as well make supper out of it.”
    “I like the way you think!” says Tanner.
    Thank God for small favors.
    The coordination of the media is impressive. Each of the local stations has their assigned neighborhoods and their parks to cover. They have their separate theme music, even separate logos and titles but the narrative is the same: a straight-out-of-nowhere summer cold somehow became the Final Flu and now the world takes historic pause to bury their first wave of dead from this once-in-a-century epidemic. “Like in the days of the 1918 Spanish Flu we all look forward to getting back to more-or-less normal,” I hear people on two different channels say word for word. “Of course, the new normal will take some getting used to!”
    The other satellite channels show documentaries on the Spanish Flu, with nods to plagues past. I suppose if you watched some of that for long enough you might come to accept that one out of three people dropping dead is perfectly natural.
    This channel shows the surviving members of Congress and the Senate praying on the Capitol steps. “We encourage everyone watching to tune into their own local channels for coverage of what’s happening in their own areas,” says the voiceover. “We know it seems out of the ordinary to ask viewers to turn away but it is imperative we stay in touch with our local communities and do what has to be done to normalize issues specific to our respective localities. Every community has its own issues with the Flu, and its own requirements for taking care of the remains of the deceased. Meanwhile, we’ll show scenes of faith from around the globe….”
    The clips they’re showing from inside churches could just as well have come from coverage of Easter services in any given year. The voiceover repeats the script. “Worldwide catastrophe” is a phrase that turns up now and again. 
    So, good citizens that we are, we click on to the coverage on the parks closest to our area. The solemn bumper music plays as they come back from break—the break being a list of the stations to call to have your deceased removed for you, based on ZIP code, school district, etc.
    The narration is hushed as the camera follows a Guardsman pulling a little bundle in a sheet from the back of a canvas-covered truck. “The flu was extremely random in its selection of victims,” says a male narrator. “Whereas the Spanish Flu of nearly a hundred years ago targeted young, healthy adults and spared the very old and very young, this flu took infants, the elderly, the young, middle-aged—everyone. Every family has been affected. My family, my co-host Andrea’s family, Jeff the cameraman’s family, our producer, Jean, in the van.  Your  family, too.”
    I’m sliding off my stool to pour myself a beer when I hear the firecrackers again. I go to the plate glass doors and try to make out where it’s coming from.
    “Sound to me like its coming from one of the problem areas,” Tanner says.
    “Problem areas? How is anything a problem with almost everyone dead and the National Guard on the streets?”
    I’m aware of Tanner looking me over, wei ghing my capacity for frankness. “There are certain cultures,” he says carefully, “that resist having their deceased taken away from them without a proper viewing period.”
    “ So they’re shooting them?”
    “W e’re in the midst of an epidemiological emergency. Two days ago it was a bunch of people with colds. Now people are dead. A lot of people.” Tanner nods toward the TV. “This is about getting a biohazard good and buried before we lose what’s left of us.”
    We see shots of the canvas-covered flatbeds pulling to the curb in various neighborhoods. The volunteers in their Day-Glo yellow vests walk up to the doors on either side of the street. They don’t use gurneys but stretchers. Once they have the body they jog to the back of the