Free Desperate Souls by Gregory Lamberson Page B

the Chinese man continued to bang on Jake’s office door. Then he stepped back and raised the machete in both hands.
    Jake saw his shadow fall over the man’s gray skin. “Looking for me?”
    The Chinese man spun around and glared at Jake. A milky white sheen covered his black eyes.
    He’s dead all right.
    Jake squeezed the Beretta’s trigger three times. Muzzle fire flared through the silencer in the dim lighting, and the Chinese man’s body jerked as each round tore into his torso, but no blood flowed from his wounds. Instead, little puffs of discharge, like sawdust, clouded the space before him.
    Without so much as looking at the bullet holes, he charged at Jake, who backpedaled in surprise. The Chinese man brought his machete down in a powerful arc, and Jake leapt backwards to avoid the blade, which struck the floor seconds before Jake’s back did the same. Staggering forward, the Chinese man raised the machete again.
    Jake leveled the Beretta, took careful aim, and fired again. This time his shot penetrated the Chinese man’s forehead, and liquefied brain burbled through the hole. The Chinese man dropped his machete and toppled to the floor. Then his flickering soul shot through his cratered head, blinding Jake before fading from view.
    I should have tried that first,
Jake thought. But he had wanted to find out what would work against these things and what wouldn’t.
    Scrambling to his feet, he ran over to the corpse and examined it. He set his gun on the floor and searched the Chinese man’s pockets. No identification. No money. Nothing to suggest who he had been or where he came from.
    Or why he
wanted to kill me.
    They had gone through an awful lot of trouble on short notice to come after him.
    Jake sensed that the black man had reached the fourth floor even before he turned around. To his horror, the dead thing stood only a few paces behind him.
How the hell did it get up here so fast?
he wondered as his heart thudded in his chest.
    The black corpse raised its machete as the first one had.
    Jake reached for the Beretta on the floor, but the machete whistled through the air, and he snatched his hand back just as the blade struck the gun.
    Son of a bitch!
    With his survival instincts kicking in, Jake leapt over the Chinese man’s body and rolled across the floor. He came up in a crouch, his back against his office door.
    The black man stared into his eyes from ten feet away.
    Does he even see me?
Jake’s chest rose and fell.
    The black man slid his machete into his belt at an angle, then reached behind him and pulled a Glock from his waistband.
    Make up your mind!
    As the dead man raised his gun and held it sideways, gangsta style, Jake whipped his own Glock from its shoulder holster and fired. The round missed the black man and shattered a portion of the wired window at the far end of the hall.
    Goddamn it!
He had hoped not to leave any evidence of the battle.
    The corpse fired its gun, the ensuing shot deafening. The round flattened against the office door.
    Jake returned fire, and the dead thing’s face disintegrated into pulp. It collapsed onto the floor, and Jake waited for it to rise again. It did so, on its hands and knees, and stared at Jake with one eye.
    Jake rushed forward, pressed the silencer against the thing’s head, and squeezed the trigger. A hole the size of a baseball opened up in the dead flesh, and the corpse struck the floor. The black man’s soul rose from the wound and faded.
    That leaves two.
    Scooping up his Beretta, he headed downstairs.

    As Jake stepped onto the second-floor landing, he encountered the third zombie on its way upstairs.
    Shifting his machete from his right hand into his left, the Hispanic man reached inside his shirt and drew out a gleaming .45.
    Jake froze with one foot planted on the stair below him. Even as he brought up his Beretta to fire, confusion rained down on him. He had seen the Hispanic man go into the basement and had expected to run into the