Life Among The Dead (Book 2): A Castle Made of Sand by Daniel Cotton Read Free Book Online

force him to double back. The streets are worse now than
when he first ventured home early this morning. He had seen the
flashing lights of the police cars and ambulances and heard their
sirens wail in the night, but now all is quiet save for the
occasional pop of gunfire in the distance, or explosions elsewhere.
He now wishes he had joined the other two, or at least had his
driver, because he’s lost on the wrong side of the tracks. Even
before the world went mad, before the dead learned how to walk,
this part of the city was no place he’d ever be caught dead in, but
he fears now that he just might be.
    “Christ! The only white person
here,
other than myself, is the illuminated fellow on the crosswalk
sign,” the comedian laments as the sign goes out. “Even he has
abandoned me.”
    His soft top convertible stops at yet another
blocked road, behind a large yellow school bus. Randy lays his head
on the wheel. He’s grown tired of this and doubts that he will ever
find the hospital. He is certain the place can’t be as dangerous as
the psychopath chaperoning his wife says it is. He hopes to find a
physician there with a liberal interpretation of the Hippocratic
Oath. One who might give him the medication he wants for a moderate
fee.
    He knows he obviously will never get there if
he just sits behind a bus full of his true nightmare, children, or
as he calls them in his act, useless vermin.
That’s
exactly what he gets. Before the Brit can put his transmission in
reverse, the emergency door on the back of the bus pops open
spilling ‘tweeners all over the hood of his car. He emits a rather
lady-like scream and is unable to function for a moment. Once his
trembling fingers find the steering wheel, he attempts to back away
from the young-adult zombies that rise to their feet all around
him.
    “Why’re you all going to school so early,
tell me that?” he screams as he hits the accelerator.
    He had entered an alley of cars, but the
opening he now backs towards is sealed by more of the walking dead.
Seeing what these things can do to a person first hand, his
neighbors in their own convertible, he had the presence of mind to
close the top before departing the estate. The strong fabric
writhes above him. He knows he has unwanted passengers up there,
but he has no idea how long it can keep them out.
    Randy Russell has to move, so he exits
through the passenger side of his beloved car before the dead can
surround him. He sprints to the curb and vaults a sedan parked at a
meter. Already lost, he runs down streets he’s never been on,
determining what turns to take at intersections by capitalizing on
the safest choices.
    Randy comes to a dead end once more, and the
zombies are on his heels. A few police cruisers have been pushed
against one another by a large fire truck. The building to his
right is burning out of control since the responders are now gone.
He desperately cups his hands around his face as he looks in the
squad cars for a weapon, finding nothing.
    He has to keep moving or else the dead will
have him. The angle at which the red emergency vehicle is situated
allows him to crawl beneath and along its undercarriage. He wants
to put the dead end to good use, and hopes his pursuers aren’t as
smart as he is.
    “Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” he
says, once again standing on wet asphalt, surrounded by more
corpses.
    Many are firemen from the very vehicle he has
just crawled under. They advance toward him on broken limbs. Some
crawl, unable to use their legs. More zombies are arriving from the
connecting streets. He’s trapped.
    “Hey, what’s going on out there?” a voice
calls from somewhere.
    Randy searches for the source and comes up
empty. He has his back against the burning building.
    “Down here, man.”
    Two eyes look up at Randy from a basement
window. The glass portal is opaque with spray-paint on the inside
and pushed outward. Though the place is on fire, Randy dives in
through the tight