Rotting to the Core (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 2) by S.P. Durnin Read Free Book Online

biter's
face.
    While his blow sent the hungry ghoul skidding
some distance across the roof, when Jake let go of his weapon the
impaled zombie took a double-handful of his t-shirt and tried to
pull itself towards his throat. O'Connor managed to get his forearm
under the creature's jaw to hold it off, aided by the rounded end
of the crowbar that pressed forcefully against his chest, but he
realized it was a losing battle. He could barely keep the two he
had a grip on away. Bitey-ghoul was on its feet again and coming
back for another round, the forth was still trying to get around
the zombie Jake had by the neck, and…
    Something blurred through the air to hit
Bitey in the side of the head with a wet 'Thwap!'. Jake saw the
hilt of a slim knife protruding from the creature's temple as the
zombie took another step and fell, animation already leaving its
yellow eyes. Syrup-thick goop began leaking from the hole in its
skull onto the roof as Cho appeared over the rear zombie's
shoulder.
    While Jake shut the stairwell door and began
fighting the clustered dead, Kat finally came to a stop thirty feet
up their zip-line then slid back over their rooftop landing site,
cursing him quietly all the while. Yanking one of the knives from
her belt, the blue-haired ninja-girl quickly slashed the harness
away from her waist, and dropped the remaining five feet to the
surface of the roof. She landed in an easy crouch, flipped her
knife over the back of her hand, caught it again by the blade, and
then sent it winging through the air like a deadly hummingbird
where it spiked Bitey-ghoul in the temple. Snatching another knife
from her belt, she sprinted towards the human/zombie free-for-all
at top speed.
    By the time she reached Jake and the
remaining creatures, Kat was in
I'm-Going-To-Kill-The-First-Fucking-Thing-I-Fucking-See mode. She
wasn't messing around tonight. Normally, she'd toy with them for a
bit, since engaging the corpses was barely a challenge when it came
right down to it, unless they attacked in large numbers. But now?
Nope. Kat was deadly serious as she pounced on the first zombie,
viciously shoving her blade up between its occipital protuberance
and the Atlas of its spine. The knife severed the horror's brain
from its spinal cord, effectively turning it into a still-snapping
mouth attached to two-hundred and ten pounds of unresponsive
meat.
    Pushing the limp creature to one side as it
fell, Kat moved on to her next target. The one Jake had by the
throat. Not waiting for it to notice her presence, Cho put a hand
on the rear of its skull, grabbed its chin firmly with her other
and wrenched the zombie's head forcefully one-hundred and eighty
degrees to the rear. Doing so broke the zombie's neck and, in her
anger over the nasty thing trying to chow down on someone she cared
about, dislocated its lower jaw. The zombie's mouth hung open
uselessly, and its dead eyes still oriented on Kat as she
stiff-armed the corpse over the roof's edge.
    With Kat basically saving his bacon yet
again, O'Connor experienced an unreasonable moment of
embarrassment. No, it wasn't a sexist, caveman-must-kill-mammoth,
thing. He just didn't want any of his companions to feel as if he
couldn't handle himself when it came to dangerous situations. Being
hip-deep in a zombie apocalypse was bad enough; he didn't need to
be labeled as the group idiot to boot. Growling through clenched
teeth, Jake gave up on pulling his crowbar from the zombie's neck
for the moment. Instead, he slapped its grasping hands away and
swept its legs. As the ghoul dropped, Jake yanked his K-Bar from
the door frame and slammed it into the top of the creature's head.
The zombie made a sound resembling a very wet hiccup and its eyes
crossed, as if trying to see what had killed it (again), then it
collapsed.
    Little known fact: removing a blade that's
been rammed through bone, rotten or not, is a pain in the
ass. Jake learned this as he strove to free his knife from the
zombie's skull. He was