Snatchers (A Zombie Novel) by Shaun Whittington Read Free Book Online Page B

over the Great Lakes, ignited the forest, spurred global cooling and killed a lot of species like mastodons.
    Since the fifties, nuclear threat had always been around; that threat had diluted somewhat since the fall of the Soviet Union, but it was still there from other sources.
    Despite David trying to get his head straight, he was finding it hard to fathom that some kind of virus was spreading through Britain like wild fire. The Spanish flu killed the same amount of people in two years than what the Black Death did in two hundred, which was only a matter of decades ago, but back then, bodies weren't coming back to life and attacking other people.
    He sniffed hard and could feel the mucus running down the back of his throat and spat into the sink to clear it. Stop acting like a pussy. He splashed his face once more, turned the tap off and jogged back upstairs.
    He had a family to protect.

Chapter Nine
     
    Karen Bradley looked around her house carefully; her body shook as she strolled through to the living room but there was no sign of Gary there. For some reason, her instincts were telling her not to call him. She walked with gentle and careful feet from the living room to the kitchen, and content that there was no presence on the ground floor of the house, her thoughts focused about going upstairs.
    He had been out the night before and she wondered if he was in at all. It wouldn't be the first time that Gary had got so drunk that he ended up on a friend's settee, or even a prison cell for the night, which happened the once—not a great move for a young lawyer.
    She crept upstairs and was half-sobbing once she appeared on the landing. She stood motionless and couldn't stop thinking about her neighbour. She then heard a thump coming from her bedroom, as if someone had fallen out of bed. She blew out her cheeks and was now convinced that her boyfriend had made it home and was now getting up, possibly with a sore head and probably needing some TLC from Karen. But after witnessing the demise of Sharon Henderson and knowing that there was a killer on the street, she'd be lucky if she slept at all for the next few days. As soon as she talked to Gary, she promised herself that she would try the police again.
    She stepped carefully toward her bedroom door, and gently pushed it open with the three fingers of her left hand. The door opened soundlessly and she saw Gary in the corner of the bedroom with his back to her. She shook her head, convinced that the naked man was still drunk and had only got up for a pee.
    She was unsure. About what, she didn't know.
    Something wasn't right.
    She called out his name with a whisper and he turned around. He looked awful; his skin was ivory, his eyes looked bruised and sunken, his overall physique looked…dead, and he didn't look that much different to the crazed man out in her street. What the hell is going on? As soon as he saw her, he released a groan and quickly shuffled toward her, which forced out a gasp from Karen and a gallop in her heartbeat.
    "Gary, what's wrong?" was the only three words she could muster.
    He was yards away from her, and his demeanour alerted her senses to run, she didn't know why, but she responded to those senses. She ran away from the naked, lifeless soul and galloped down her stairs.
    Wait! What the hell was she doing? This was her boyfriend. This was Gary!
    The same Gary who had proposed to her only a month ago, the same Gary who cried when she told him that she would marry him, and the same Gary who massaged her feet until she slept every time she came off nightshift.
    She stood at the bottom of the stairs and could hear him stumbling about upstairs and in no time, he appeared at the top, and he looked unsure whether to go down or not. She looked up at him. Her confused psyche made her gasp once she looked at his naked body again. It was strangely riddled with blue visible veins, and covered in contusions. That was the man she wanted to spend the rest of her