THEM (Book 0): Invasion by M.D. Massey Read Free Book Online Page B

to my senses and remembered what had happened to my dad’s full-size Ford truck when he hit a deer doing forty. I doubted that my little truck could take that much abuse, no matter how tough it was.
    Moreover, I hated to think about what might happen if I got stuck on a pile of bodies. This truck had a lift kit and four-wheel drive, but I recalled a story a cop had once told me about a woman he arrested for murder. She had tried to run over another girl she had caught with her boyfriend in flagrante . The girl had gotten stuck under the car as she ran her over, and she’d dragged that girl three blocks before getting stuck on a curb. I could easily imagine getting two or three of these things stuck in my wheel well, and pictured what that might do to my axles and suspension. No thanks.
    As soon as I got the space I hooked around and headed back north for Highway 41. I figured that away from town there’d be almost no cars blocking the roads, and a helluva lot less deaders. Nothing but ranches and hills out that way, so the chances that I’d run into a herd like this one were minimal at best.
    Sure enough, I made good time all the way up to 41, and then it was more or less smooth sailing for the next eight or ten miles, up until 41 intersected with 83. Unfortunately, at 83 there was a four car pile-up with a small herd of deaders milling around and beating on an overturned minivan. I suspected that there were some survivors inside the vehicle, so I parked back up the road a few hundred meters and climbed on top of the camper with my rifle and a pair of binos.
    I couldn’t see much inside the car, but I got busy straight away and started dropping corpses like Ash Williams on speed. Once I’d dropped all the deaders that were milling about the van, I hopped back inside the truck and pulled up close to the crash, leaving me some space to get out quick in case I needed to boogie. None of the corpses were moving, so I decided to jump out and see if there was anyone left alive inside.
    As I crept closer to the van, I could see a couple of corpses sitting inside the vehicle. Both people, who I assumed to be husband and wife, were clearly dead. I snuck around the side to see what was causing the deaders to make all that fuss, and saw a tuft of white and brindle moving behind the window. Crouched down in the back amidst a pile of bags, suitcases, golf clubs, and other assorted crap was a large American Bulldog, shivering its ass off.
    Lots of people don’t know that animals shiver like that to burn off adrenaline, and not necessarily because they’re cold or scared. So when your dog freaks out and they start to shiver, it’s because nature is telling them to burn that shit off before they screw their brains up. We as humans have lost that capability, therefore we routinely experience shit like nervous breakdowns and panic attacks. Nature got it right the first time, though. There was a guy on the base where I was stationed who worked with soldiers who had PTSD. He taught them a form of exercise that would cause your body to shiver and shake just like that dog was, and guys I knew who did it swore by it. Crazy.
    Anyway, I wasn’t going to leave this dog here to starve. I went back to the truck, got some jerky and a bottle of water, and worked the back hatch on the van open. That freaked the dog out more, and it started shivering even worse. I knelt down by the hatch and started whispering to it, trying to soothe it and calm it down. Once it settled down a bit, I popped the top on the water and poured some out on the headliner of the vehicle. The dog gladly lapped it up. I poured out more and kept pouring until it was all gone.
    I reached in and let it sniff me. Once I got a sniff and a lick, I gave it the jerky. After that, it was just a matter of a few more minutes to coax it out. Once the dog got out of the van, I could see that she was a beautiful example of the Scott standard. Long and lean, but muscular and athletic, these