Free The Black Death by Aric Davis Page A

genitals, dropping it to its knees, and then punched the blade of the ax through one massive ham of a forearm and halfway through the beast’s neck. Blood jettisoned from the arterial wound as the brute screamed, and Matt yanked the ax free. Turning at last, he was able to see that three more lumbering zombies were set upon and dividing him from his friends of circumstance. Leading the three was the somehow even worse-looking Sally, and Matt went for her first.
    He took her unfortunate head off with one well-placed slice of the ax, severing it at the base of the neck and making her starved and meth-addled corpse look almost better without the overly made-up and rotting head. The other two zombies he dispatched quickly as well, their staggered formation a threat only if they had hit him from behind. Attacking like this, they wereeasy fodder with a few well-placed blows with the ax, and when the last of them fell, Matt returned to the fray.

CHAPTER TEN
    Free was firing the Glock now, finally having found the time to retrieve it from his jacket, and Matt saw him fell three attackers, one after the other.
    The crowd of attackers had been thinned, and Matt did his best to disable the few that blocked his view of Free and Danimal. Matt dropped the last of them with a blast from the ax, and it fell with the lower jaw still attached to the body, looking as though it were yawning as it dropped. It wasn’t until Matt called to Free that he realized Danimal was missing.
    “They fucking killed him, man!” shouted Free, a madman with the gun amid the pile of bodies.
    It was true. Danimal’s body lay at Free’s feet, and next to him was one of the whores. Danimal’s face had been battered nearly beyond recognition, and a stiletto stuck out obscenely from his neck. The woman had been shot three times, twice in her neck and once through the forehead, likely as she killed Danimal, from the look of things. Matt knelt and took Danimal’s pistol and then the keys from his pocket while Free looked on incredulously.
    “You’re stealing from a dead guy?”
    “We need this stuff more than he does.” Matt flipped the keys to Free. “You’re driving, back to town right now.” Matt turned, realized Free wasn’t coming, and spun back around. “Free, it’s time to go.”
    “We can’t just leave him, man,” Free said. “He was like a brother since we were little.”
    “Do your brother a favor,” Matt hissed, “and start listening. There will be plenty of time to mourn later, if we live.”
    “You mean there’s more of them?”
    “Please, get in the van, and I’ll explain. But we need to get to town, and we need to get there now, before it’s too late.”
    “Too late for what?” Free asked as they walked to the van, his legs finally moving. “Seems to me like the world has already done gone to pot. My two best buddies both died today.”
    “You’d be surprised, or maybe you wouldn’t after what just happened.” Matt swung the van’s passenger door open and climbed in. “But there could be a lot more where that came from if we’re not careful. What you need to do, at least for right now, is listen to me and do exactly as I say.”
    Free turned over the engine on the van and got Danimal’s rolling bucket of loose bolts into drive and away from the parking lot, then pulled onto the gravel road.
    “All right, I’ll listen,” said Free. “Can’t say not listening has ever done me much good.”
    “We’re going to the sheriff. Don’t talk. You’ll get a turn in a minute. We’re going to go to the sheriff, and you’re going to tell him where this Bucky asshole is, and if he’s not the one making this poison, you’re going to tell him who is...Because we both know that everyone around here is going to die if we don’t stop this shit from spreading.”
    Free was quiet for a few minutes, speaking only as they turned onto Main Street. The traffic light lay in the street, smashed, and the lights in all of the