Free Bones: The Complete Apocalypse Saga by Mark Wheaton

mistress of the house, her jaws pulling meat directly from Jesse’s now skin-free ribs as he lay prone on the floor. Ryan, meanwhile, was bashing away at the man of the house with a skillet as the flesh-eater cornered him on the sofa against the living room wall, Ryan’s barrage having little effect. Between the parents were two child flesh-eaters, torn between their desire to join in the attack on Ryan or to devour the already safely disarmed Jesse. The decision was made more difficult by the fact that all four of them were connected as a single, four-headed organism made up of four torsos, eight legs, and, effectively, five arms, as that was one of the primary areas where their bodies were fused. When the father went to strike at Ryan, his left arm was the same as his oldest child’s right arm, meaning that he virtually had to pull the whole creature forward with him in order to attack the boy. This fact was probably the sole reason Ryan was still alive.
    As Bones stared at this bizarre sight, a whole host of new smells filled his nose, and he recognized, for the first time, that there was a subterranean component of the house.
    A basement.
    Though the woman was clearly dead, her perfume was still thick in the air, serving to mask the cadaverous odors coming off her body and the bodies of the rest of her family, though the fresh scent of Jesse’s blood, suddenly made to oxide into the air, was stronger yet. Bones could tell there was something
else
, too; he just couldn’t make out what…
    “Bones!!” screamed Ryan, terrified. “Help me!!”
    Bones snapped into action and leaped at the dead father, jaws sinking into the arm he shared with his oldest son and forcefully yanking him back from the sofa. Unfortunately for the shepherd, this brought on an attack from the younger child—a daughter—who kicked at Bones and leaned down to try and bite him in his wounded shoulder. It was only the fact that she was still attached to her feasting mother that kept Bones from being bitten.
    Ryan leaped off the sofa and ran for the fireplace, grabbing a poker. The father-end of this strange creature wheeled around after him, the mother finally realizing a fight was on and momentarily leaving Jesse to join in.
    “You killed my friend!” Ryan screamed at the four-headed monster, waving the poker around like a sword.
    All four mouths moved at once in a great half-hiss, half-growl, which Ryan answered by jamming the poker directly into the open mouth of the father. As the poker snapped teeth aside, stabbed through his upper palate, and entered the dead man’s brain, the flesh-eater flailed wildly with his one free hand, staggering backwards and comically taking the rest of his family with him as he tumbled to the ground.
    From just behind them, Bones prepared to make his own move, a lunge straight for the woman’s throat, but he suddenly got a second whiff of the one scent he couldn’t quite pin down. Sensing an approach, he turned and came face to face with a pair of house cats, one gray and one tiger-striped brown, which had joined their masters as denizens of the recently deceased. The cats were moving straight for Bones, their fangs bared and backs arched. Bones immediately started barking as the undead felines crouched, preparing to attack.
    The gray cat leaped straight for Bones’s back while the tiger-stripe went for his throat. Bones was bigger than both cats combined but didn’t have the same level of craven bloodlust on his side. He backed up quickly, trying to throw off the gray cat as it sank its claws into his already wounded shoulders. The attack made Bones yelp in pain, and he jerked his head around, clamping his jaws on the one part of the gray cat he could reach—its face—and flinging it off.
    Bones turned his attention to the tiger-stripe just as it reared up and was lunging at his face, the claws of both forepaws flared. Bones ducked down and arrowed his snout directly into the cat’s soft underbelly