Eaters by Michelle DePaepe Read Free Book Online Page A

period?”
    He shook his head. “I don’t know. It was always villagers that got it. None of my squad got sick. But we were popping a lot of vitamins, smoking a lot of weed, even doing some herbal stuff like ginseng and ephedra to keep our energy and immune system up. I don’t know if that had anything to do with keeping us well.”
    So many questions…so few answers as to how this epidemic had spread so quickly and why some got sick and others didn’t.
    The generator did not power the air conditioning. Cheryl realized that she was sweating, and the heat made her tired. She fumbled her way across the room to get a bottle of water from the counter then returned to her spot and leaned back in the booth while Mark started chatting with a man nearby.
    As she sipped her water, she looked around the room. The light was even dimmer than before, but she could tell that there was quite a diverse lot of people holed up with them. There were more men than women, but the split was close, probably sixty-forty. She saw the woman with the young girl that they’d let in earlier lying in a booth with her daughter asleep in her arms; the store manager and his employees huddled together like a three-man football team; and there was an assortment of men and women, young and old, in business and casual dress. The one person she didn’t see was the obnoxious woman who’d been smoking earlier. Maybe, she was in the bathroom . With a mischievous grin, Cheryl figured they should consider locking her in there if she got out of hand again.
    She thought that it would be easier to see the people better— inspect them— in brighter light. Then they might have some warning if someone started to show signs of infection. If it happened, she hoped it wouldn’t be someone sitting close to her, and that Mark would be able to stop them before anyone got hurt.
    She nodded off for a few minutes and when she woke, water was spilled on her lap and she could hear Mark in a heated conversation.
    “How about you just listen to the man with the gun?”
    Cheryl was appalled. Was this her Mark?
    He wasn’t talking to the bald guy in the plaid golf shorts anymore; it was Gary, the manager.
    “We don’t want any more trouble in here. Why don’t you just put the gun away?”
    Mark shook his head. “You don’t get it. This isn’t a movie. This is real. There’s a virus going around. Once it infects, it kills people, but they don’t exactly die—they just turn into rotten, flesh-eating monsters. If I hadn’t shot that woman, there might be several of us lying on the floor right now. I saved your ass. A thank you might be more appropriate.”
    The argument abruptly ceased when red and blue lights began strobing on the other side of the blinds. The man closest to the window went over and looked out.
    “Hey! There’s a police car out there! We’ve got to let him know we’re here.” Before anyone could stop him, he grabbed the cord, raised the blinds, waved his arms, and started pounding on the window.
    Now that she could see out, Cheryl could tell that he was wasting his time. The policeman leaning out of his car door with a handgun was young—probably a rookie in his first year. He began shooting randomly at Eaters like it was some crazed sport. Trying to get his attention was about as useless as waving at a jet pilot 30,000 feet up in the air, because his mind—whatever might be left of it after so much trauma—was beyond reaching, and he was very focused on his futile task.
    They all watched as the worst-case scenario eventually happened. The gun ran out of bullets, and the Eaters closed in on him. They scrambled over the top of his car, beating on the windows with their fists, the protruding bones of their arms or legs, even with large rocks and the broken wood slats from park benches, a terrifying sign that they truly weren’t all just mindless zombies. Some of them still had some violent intelligence at work propelling them towards their