Dead Air (Book One of The Dead Series) by Jon Schafer Read Free Book Online

occurring in California, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and a handful of other states. On the other hand, the Internet was reporting that this was a catastrophe on the scale of biblical proportions and was spreading like wildfire. To his way of sorting things out, this meant that it was a moderate problem that might have spread in a patchwork fashion as far as Mississippi and Georgia. This meant he had plenty of time to bowl a few games before heading to his local civil defense shelter to duck and cover.
    With Ginny , of course, to keep him warm.
    "Let me get the end lane," Steve told Jax. "If anyone with munchin' madness comes in, tell them to bite me."
    Jax found this hilarious.
    Steve was well into his second game, and had just converted a difficult split, when he looked up and saw Heather in full cop regalia standing by the scoring computer.
    Pleased to see her, he asked with a smile, "Am I under arrest?"
    Heather gave him a serious look and replied, "Not yet, but I’ve dealt with you radio guys before and sooner or later you will be."
    Raising an eyebrow, he asked, "When I do get busted, can I get strip searched by someone like you?"
    With a smug smile , she said, "If you want. I can get pretty nasty with people who resist though.”
    "Well I have been bad lately and I need a spanking," Steve replied, "so this might work out well for both of us."
    Heather couldn’t help herself and started laughing. She was a good-looking woman in her early thirties, and even though they both knew that the other was in a relationship, they still flirted shamelessly with each other.
    "I can always count on you for a good laugh," she said. "And tonight I can use a few."
    "A little quiet tonight," Steve commented on the lack of people in the bowling alley.
    At this, Heather's good mood went away fast and she said, "That's why I'm here. We're going around to places where people congregate and asking them to go home voluntarily."
    Steve felt a wave of apprehension at hearing this. If the police were going around and breaking up public gatherings, then munchin' madness was worse than he originally thought.
    "Martial law?" He asked loudly in disbelief.
    Heather shushed him and looked around to see if anyone had overheard. Quietly, she said to him, "Not yet."
    "Yet is an acronym for You're Eligible Too .“ Steve replied.
    Heather started at this and then studied Steve as if she was trying to decide something. Finally, she said, "If I tell you a few things that are going on, you have to promise me that you won't broadcast them. By tomorrow night it's going to be all over the news anyway but we don't want to start a full-blown panic before we get our people into position. We don't need Joe Citizen running around getting in the way. The press has been down playing the whole situation since this all started but it's gotten so bad that now they have to report on what's really going on."
    Steve wasn't a journalist so he felt no moral or ethical obligation to put out a story just so that the public could be informed. Many times this caused people to go into a panic, and while he hated anyone who controlled the press, he absolutely loathed the fear mongers who hyped a story, not caring how it affected the public. To his way of thinking, those reporters seemed to do more harm than good.
    Holding up his hand in the Boy Scout salute , he said, "I promise not to tell." Loyalty to KLAM came through a bit so he added, "But let me be the first to break the news."
    Heather took a deep breath and held it for a minute before slowly letting it out. "Right now the Governor is working on a plan for when Florida needs to declare Martial law. There have been ten reported cases of the HWNW virus in Orlando and a few dozen in Miami. Things in Tallahassee, Jacksonville and Pensacola are already getting pretty bad and there's talk of relocating the capitol until after the crisis has resolved itself."
    Relocating the capitol? Steve suddenly felt the need to sit down, but it