Eaters by Michelle DePaepe Read Free Book Online

sandwich?”
    “No, smartass. I’m just concerned about the smell if it starts to go bad. There’s a lot of meat here to spoil if the power is off for too long.”
    Mark came back over to her while Gary shouted to his crew to get some trash bags to use as a tarp to move the woman’s body and some rags to clean up the floor, so no one would slip in the blood. He started to guide her back to the booth where they’d been before, but stopped and grabbed his cell phone out of a shirt pocket. She saw that there was no signal before he snapped it closed.
    “Has anyone here gotten through to 911? To the police? To any authorities?”
    There was a round of groans.
    “I heard a lady in the corner talking on her phone to someone. Maybe she’s found out something.” Cheryl pointed him towards where she’d heard the voice then followed him over.
    “Ma’am?” he said to the woman sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall. “You able to get through to anyone?”
    She was sobbing. It took a moment for her to stop crying and talk in a warbled voice. “My mother. She’s got my kids. They’re trapped in the house…”
    Cheryl didn’t have any family close by. She thought about her father, and her aunt, many miles away in Arizona. She could only hope that everything was all right in that part of the country. She leaned down and put a hand on the woman’s arm. “Has she heard anything on the news? What part of town is she in?”
    “She’s on the east side. She hasn’t heard anything. There’s no TV. There was radio until just now. Some DJ was holed up downtown, still broadcasting from a barricaded office, but he stopped talking about an hour ago.”
    “What about a shelter?” Mark asked. “Have any shelters been set up?”
    “For the sick?”
    “No. For us…”
    “I haven’t heard nothing.”
    Her sobs returned full force, and it was obvious that the interrogation was over. There would be no more news forthcoming. Cheryl and Mark retreated back to the booth. They leaned on each other, trying to take a mental and emotional break, even though that wasn’t really possible.
    After a moment she said, “We should have let more people in. We could have saved some others maybe.”
    “No. We barely made it in here ourselves. You saw the other stores. They locked the doors. They were so scared…they weren’t letting anyone in. We were lucky to get in here.”
    “Yes, but…” she trailed off, and sat up. “Listen…it’s quieter outside.”
    “You’re right.”
    She followed him to the window.
    It seemed like just a few minutes had passed since she was outside walking on her lunch break, but it had actually been a few hours. The shadows were long and thin on the sidewalk, giving it a zebra striped effect. And amongst the patterns of shimmering light and bands of purple shadow, there were bodies— lots of bodies . She couldn’t believe that just a short time ago the motionless lumps had been people, walking, talking and going about their day.
    “Look at all of them…” Cheryl watched, wide-eyed at the number of Eaters still roaming and shuffling about. They didn’t outnumber the dead, but there were a lot of them. She guessed there were dozens within her view that stretched from the shop to the park across the street, but given the wall of figures that she’d seen in the park just before they ran into the shop, there was probably an army of them out there.
    “Yeah…not good. What we can see from here is probably just the tip of the iceberg.”
    She pulled him away from the window, but kept him close enough to cup a hand over his ear and whisper. “Mark, how do we know that some of the people in here aren’t infected? I mean, remember that guy at work? Paul, the jerk I told you about before? Well, one minute, he looked a little… off. Then it was like he was dead, and then, like a lightning bolt, he just went nuts. It happened so fast. If there’s a virus causing this, what’s the incubation