No Flesh Shall Be Spared by Thom Carnell Read Free Book Online

The Dead were like sharks in that respect. Once they got their teeth in you, you were done.
    Caught. Cleaned. Cooked.
    The team had been on a House-to-House for the past few weeks, ever since their unit was called up and told that big shit was brewing over in Cress County. The Dead had come back to Life was the story they’d heard. None of them believed it, at first. After all, who would? Who’d ever heard of corpses getting up and eating the flesh of the Living outside of a goddamn horror movie?
    Seriously… what the fuck was that all about?
    The whole concept seemed fabricated by a combination of over-active imaginations, irrational fear and blatant stupidity. Any one of those things by itself was a dangerous thing. Add them all together and you had a catastrophe of biblical proportions.
    Lance looked over toward Sgt. Masterson, the team’s leader, and saw the big man rattle off a series of commands by way of a combination of intricate hand signals. His movements were practiced, concise and instantly understood by the men. One by one, they all dutifully complied.
    Masterson was from the old school. He was a burly man in his mid-thirties with a dark flattop you could cut paper with and when it came to things like family and friends, it seemed that he’d made his choice a long time ago. The Corps had been his life and his love for as long as he could remember. There never seemed to be a good enough reason to change that. He readily admitted to being what was often referred to as a "lifer" and he was proud of that, however now that The Dead had come a "callin’", it looked more and more as if that life might just be the death of him.
    Masterson motioned for the big black man known as "Ray Dog" and the guy they’d picked up on the road who called himself "Slider" to take Point. The Dog waved the M-60 in his hands in front of him like a divining rod and made his way past where Lance was crouched.
    "’scuse me, Brutha…" Ray Dog said in his deep baritone.
    Slider rose up and fanned the Mossberg shotgun back and forth as he came up on the right. Slider came to be a member of the squad when they’d run into him at one of the bivouacs popping up on the roads along the way. He’d been traveling west from Jersey when the shit hit the fan. The fact that he happened to have the Mossberg and a shit-load of ammo in the trunk of his car pretty much bought him a place on the team. His ability to clear a room with the weapon and keep his head while doing it kept him there. His nickname, he said, came about as a result of his love for White Castle burgers. If all the food in the world disappeared overnight, it would be those greasy little hockey pucks that he’d miss the most.
    The two men crab-walked past the group and crouched near a split-rail fence for a second to get their bearings. Then they ducked under the strut and made their way carefully across the field in a fast moving crouch. The barrels of their weapons swayed back and forth, following each soldier’s ever-wandering gaze. The rest of the squad dutifully followed along, each checking both the path in front of him and the one behind for even the slightest signs of movement.
    Midway down the knoll, a dirt road cut across the field and angled down toward what looked like an old farmhouse. The building was still a good distance away, but its eaves could be made out over the tops of the trees. You could just see through the foliage that the structure was flanked by a small utility shed on the left and a large barn on the right, near the back. The barn looked to be set up for horses or cattle, maybe sheep. In another time, it would have been a place where folk could live out their entire lifetimes in peace. These days, it looked like a death trap.
    Reaching the dirt road, the men stood up and let a little of their tension ease. Keeping their eyes moving and assessing their surroundings, they regrouped. Masterson made a few more quick hand signals and they turned as one and