DEAD RAIN: A Tale of the Zombie Apocalypse by Joe Augustyn Read Free Book Online

when the deep winter weather hit would the weekender traffic stop. Business would drag to a halt and Mary Ellen would coast a few months on unemployment.
    No time to hit the gym tonight , she told herself as she hurried to her car. My forty-year-old ass will have to wait ‘til tomorrow. But I will be in bikini shape this summer.
    Her aging Civic sputtered to life. It desperately needed a tune-up, but her brother-in-law Billy had been swamped with work and wouldn’t be able to get to it for another week. She knew if she gave in to his not-so-subtle advances he’d be all over it, but she couldn’t do that to her sister.
    Still, she couldn’t say she wasn’t tempted. Bill was ruggedly handsome, and she longed for the touch of a man. It had been two years since her husband was killed in a freak accident, and she’d always had a high sex drive.
     
    ***
     
    Five minutes later she rolled into the driveway of her modest suburban home.
    Seventeen-year-old Ryan opened the door to greet her.
    “Jesus Christ, mom. I was about to send out the Mounties. I thought you got lost in the fog.” He was joking, but the hint of genuine concern in his voice pleased Mary Ellen.
    Ryan was a good son. Smart and obedient and easygoing. Unlike his freckle-faced brother, he’d inherited the Italian good looks of his maternal grandfather.
    “Sorry,” Mary Ellen said as she stepped from the car. “ Ross made me restock the shelves for the weekend. The city folks must have their booze.”
    Grabbing the bag of hoagies she hurried into the house, eager to shed the nippy fog. Shrugging off her coat she gave Ryan a kiss on the cheek, then glanced at her younger son Kevin, who was sitting on the living room floor playing X-box. “I got you guys hoagies for dinner. Ham and cheese with the works for your brother, Italian for you.”
    “With extra peppers?”
    “What’s an Italian without extra peppers? Hot, sweet and roasted, just like your mom. How was school today?”
    “School is school,” Ryan shrugged.
    Mary Ellen smiled as she saw the lone dimple curl one side of his mouth. With his clear skin and dreamy brown eyes he could be a model. A real dreamboat , as she and her schoolgirl friends would have said, a long, long time ago in what seemed another lifetime.
    “I talked to the coach about playing basketball. He said I can try out but there’s no guarantees.”
    “Of course not,” Mary Ellen said sourly. “You’re white.”
    Ryan grinned. He found his mother’s marginal racism somewhat laughable but disturbing. He worried she might go over the deep end someday. She used to be a diehard liberal, but after his dad died and she became the breadwinner, she started devolving into some kind of reactionary. Bitching about how Section Eight housing was destroying the country. How welfare was passed down from one unwed mother to the next. Her ranting got worse in the dead of winter, when the heating bill decimated her savings. He’d tried to nip her new attitude in the bud by making her watch John Stewart and Bill Maher on TV, but her rightwing co-workers bombarded her with daily propaganda in the guise of humorous emails.
    Mary Ellen pulled her dinner salad from the bag and handed the sandwiches to Ryan. He deciphered the scribbling on the wrappers and tossed one to his eight-year brother.
    “Think fast!”
    Kevin caught the sandwich with one hand, never taking the other off the game controller.
    Mary Ellen rolled her eyes. “Hey. I just vacuumed the rug before I left for work this morning. I don’t want to spend my evening cleaning up a mess.”
    But she was secretly impressed with her young one’s reflexes. Kevin was nimble, with eagle eyes and lightning hands. He had a good chance to make the school football team when he started junior high next year. Maybe she had another Joe Flacco on her hands. A budding local hero who would finance her retirement in the comfort she felt she deserved.
    The boys unwrapped their hoagies and began