Read Zombies! (Episode 5): Sinners and Saints for Free Online Page B

morning, the crowd fell silent. As one, they looked toward the church. Then the chatter started again. The news people began conversing with their cameras while the newspaper people exchanged ideas with their digital recorders. Bystanders began to weep.
     
     
    “The sanctuary's clear,” Culph reported. “Moving deeper.”
     
     
    “Second squad, move in,” Heron ordered, turning his attention toward Spinelli's camera. Then, as an afterthought, “Frank double check that kill.”
     
     
    Culph's camera tilted down as he passed the body. Pulling his knife, he plunged it once into one eye socket, angling it toward the other. Then repeated the process from the opposite side. Both he and Heron knew that they wouldn't have that opportunity if they were swarmed. Heron began to wonder what it meant, a swarm of zombies. He shuddered.
     
     
    Inside the church, Culph moved back behind the stage. Here there was a short corridor and a series of small rooms. There was an office for the priest as well as a small library. There was a conference room, small, and a door that led into a basement. All of the doors were closed except the basement's. That meant that those rooms were probably empty but they needed to be checked anyway. The basement was a different issue entirely. Based on Dominguez's story, the zombies had been downstairs. The one Culph had killed had probably come through this door.
     
     
    He signaled to Harrison and Rollins that they should flank. Harrison stepped forward and crossed to the other side of the open door. Culph swung around and positioned himself with his gun pointing down the stairwell. The lights were on; that was good. He had a clear view right down to the bottom. Along the stairs were two zombies. The closer one was one of the four officers sent in a couple of hours before. It was all he could do to restrain himself. The zombie was no threat. He clung to the staircase, about six steps down, with his gloved hands. His mask was ripped but his face looked mostly intact. So intact, in fact, that Culph could see the fearful expression with which he'd died. He was like that, mostly intact, right down to the waist. His belt was still threaded through the loops of his pants and buckled. Everything seemed to be there except his gun, which he must have dropped while fleeing. Below the waist, he was a mess. About halfway down his ass, there was nothing but tattered fabric and chewed up meat. Bone and blood trailed the stairs below him where the second zombie sat gnawing on the cop's legs.
     
     
    “Are you seeing this, lieutenant?” he whispered.
     
     
    “Yeah,” Heron whispered back, barely able to find his voice.
     
     
    Reaching into the stairwell, Culph took hold of the knob and closed the door. “Keep it covered,” he ordered Harrison.
     
     
    Then he went to check the other rooms. They were all empty. The closed doors had been closed before the zombies invaded and remained closed during the invasion. Still, they did a thorough check of each room. When they were done, Culph turned his attention back to the basement.
     
     
    “Are we saving any today?” he asked Heron.
     
     
    “No,” Heron said back.
     
     
    Culph opened the door and pointed his gun down the stairs. The cop zombie had managed to come up a couple of steps. Given another forty five minutes he might have reached the top. Culph fired once and put it to rest. The shot alarmed the one at the bottom. This one was a kid, a teenage girl in a sweatshirt and black stretch pants. She wasn't much to look at anymore. Culph put her to rest also.
     
     
    “Don't bunch up,” he ordered the squad as he moved into the stairs.
     
     
    It was narrow in there and they couldn't feasibly stand two abreast. Harrison moved in behind Culph and Rollins after Harrison. With four more men between them, Lorenzo brought up the rear. As they moved down, Heron ordered the second squad into the back of the church. He told them to make sure the dead