Book of the Dead by John Skipp, Craig Spector (Ed.) Read Free Book Online

off. It kept clinging.
    It’s just a lip, she thought.
    And then she was throwing up. She leaned forward as far as she could, trying not to vomit on herself. A small part of her mind was amused. She’d been looking at hideous, mutilated corpses, such horrors as she had never seen before, not even in her nightmares. And she had watched the corpses do unspeakable things to the Reaper. With all that, she hadn’t tossed her cookies.
    A lip sticks to my leg, and I’m barfing my guts out.
    At least she was missing herself. Most of it was hitting the ground in front of her shoes, though a little was splashing up and spraying her shins.
    Finally the heaving subsided. She gasped for air and blinked tears out of her eyes.
    And saw the scalped girl staring at her.
    The others kept working on the Reaper. He wasn’t screaming anymore, just gasping and whimpering.
    The scalped girl stabbed the pliers down. They crashed through the Reaper’s upper teeth. She rammed them deep into his mouth and partway down his throat, left them there, and started to crawl toward Jean.
    “Get him ,” she whispered. “ He’s the one.”
    Then Jean thought, maybe she wants to help me.
    “Would you get the key? For the handcuffs? It’s in his pants pocket.”
    The girl didn’t seem to hear. She stopped at the puddle of vomit and lowered her face into it. Jean heard lapping sounds, and gagged. The girl raised her head, stared up at Jean, licked her dripping lips, then crawled forward.
    “No. Get back.”
    Opened her mouth wide.
    Christ!
    Jean smashed her knee up into the girl’s forehead. The head snapped back. The girl tumbled away.
    A chill spread through Jean. Her skin prickled with goosebumps. Her heart began to slam.
    It won’t stop with him.
         I’m next!
    The scalped girl, whose torso was an empty husk, rolled over and started to push herself up.
    Jean leaped.
    She caught the tree limb with both hands, kicked toward the trunk but couldn’t come close to reaching it. Her body swept down and backward. As she started forward again, she pumped her legs high.
    She swung.
    She kicked and swung, making herself a pendulum that strained higher with each sweep.
    Her legs hooked over the barkless, dead limb.
    She drew herself up against its underside and hugged it.
    Twisting her head sideways, she saw the scalped girl crawling toward her again.
    Jean had never seen her stand.
    If she can’t stand up, I’m okay.
    But the others could stand.
    They were still busy with the Reaper. Digging into him. Biting. Ripping off flesh with their teeth. He choked around the pliers and made high squeaky noises. As Jean watched, the charred girl crouched over the fire and put both hands into the flames. When she straightened up, she had a blazing stick trapped between the fingerless flaps of her hands. She lumbered back to the group, crouched, and set the Reaper’s pants on fire.
    The pants, pulled down until they were stopped by his boot tops, wrapped him just below the knees.
    In seconds they were ablaze.
    The Reaper started screaming again. He squirmed and kicked. Jean was surprised he had that much life left in him.
    The key, she thought.
    I’ll have to go through the ashes.
    If I live that long .
    Jean began to shinny out along the limb. It scraped her thighs and arms, but she kept moving, kept inching her way along. The limb sagged slightly. It groaned. She scooted farther, farther.
    Heard a faint crackling sound.
    Then was stopped by a bone white branch that blocked her left arm.
    “No!” she gasped.
    She thrust herself forward and rammed her arm against the branch. The impact shook it just a bit. A few twigs near the far end of it clattered and fell.
    The branch looked three inches thick where it joined the main limb. A little higher up, it seemed thin enough for her to break easily—but she couldn’t reach that far, not with her wrists joined by the short chain of the handcuffs. The branch barred her way like the arm and hand of a skeleton