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

into her. A bloom of red appears on the back of the man’s head and he falls, pulling the woman with him. The Guardsman runs over, points his rifle down and fires.
    “As you can see over here,” we hear the reporter’s voice over the image, “victims of bites from these reanimated bodies need to be put down, too. No matter how slight or severe the wound, the person bitten will sicken, die, and rise to bite someone himself. Reports of this phenomenon in other cities have indicated that the lower brain stem must be destroyed to drop the reanimated ones.”
    The air crackles with the pop-pop-pop of gunfire. “It’s not just here in this park!” the reporter yells over the blasts.
    “This is happening with the burials at other parks! This is why eve ryone was supposed to stay home! ” The camera finds the reporter at last. He’s got his back to the trench, where one can see hands waving over the lip of it. There were other bodies wrapped in sheets waiting to be put into the trench. They writhe and twist like oversized grubs. Legs begin kicking free, arms thrust stiffly out. “Many of the dead are getting free,” says the reporter, “either from the sheets or from loved ones who think their deceased have miraculously recovered. The ones in the trench aren’t likely to get out, as it was dug a solid six feet. The dead are utterly mindless on top of very uncoordinated. They don’t—”
    A scream close by cuts the reporter off this time. The camera pans right to show a Guardsman taken down from behind by a big woman in a pink muu-muu and a pale, thin teenager dressed in what must have been his prom tuxedo. They each have an arm upon which they batten down. They gnaw and tear furiously at the tough cammie sleeves. The Guardsman is young and fairly robust yet he can’t break the grip these people have on him. The fat paws of the big woman close so tightly you can see the Guardsman’s flesh bulging white between her fingers.
    The camera turns back to the reporter in t ime to show two dirty figures ambling up behind him. There’s an animal  hnnnnnnnh!  and the camera’s eye is jerked backwards. It bounces once, rocks, then settles for a view of the clear blue sky. The screams are so loud and close the mic is distorting. Beyond the screams the background is filling with the sounds of weird moans, a low growling. And more screams. A dog yelps and cries over and over….
    The slurping and smacking noises are the worst. And the hungry   mmmmmm!  you hear as they tear into another bite.
    God knows what took them so long to switch back to the studio. One man at the news desk, no spiffed-up female counterpart. He eventually looks at the camera, his forehead creased as if weighing what he’s about to say next.
    Finally:
    “Homeland Security told us to make sure no one was frightened or otherwise led to believe that this situation was out of control. Well, you all saw what we saw. If you have Flu sufferers in your house, you have a decision to make. How do you want to remember them? You can either finish it now and put them out of their misery—or you can try and finish it while fighting for your life. Fighting against what has to be the devil’s cruelest trick on humanity since—”
    The anchor swallows hard. “For our viewers, however many are left out there, please stay indoors like they’re telling everyone now—but   don’t  trust the authorities to get this under control anytime soon, if ever. Not only are people still dying from the Final Flu, a lot have died already—and not all of those bodies made it to those burial sites. As you could see from the live feed we had earlier, most of these wandered in from—”
    The screen goes to a generic blue “Loss of Satellite Feed” page.
    “I can’t believe it took them that long to cut him off,” Tanner says. “This is looking to be much worse than anyone thought.”
    “The people you talked to knew about all of this and thought they could contain