Free The Rising: Selected Scenes From the End of the World by Brian Keene

I’m waiting.”
    “Waiting? For what?”
    The Viking’s eyes turned glassy, and King realized the man was fighting back tears.
    “I had a job at the Ford stamping plant, just south of the city. Wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life, but it was okay. Fed my family. Had a wife, Paula, and four kids. My son’s twenty-one. My daughters are fifteen, fourteen, and five months.”
    The Viking paused, and despite the tears welling up in his eyes, he smiled.
    “I think raising my boy was easier than the girls.”
    King nodded.
    Chino shifted from foot to foot, his finger flexing around the trigger. Was King just going to talk the guy to death?
    “I was at work when it happened. I heard it all started in Escanaba, but it spread to Detroit fast. By the time I got home, Paula and the kids were gone. No note. Nothing. The evacuation order didn’t go out until a day later, so I don’t know what happened.”
    His face darkened, and then he continued.
    “There was blood in our kitchen—a lot of blood. I don’t know whose it was. And one of the windows was broken. But that’s all.”
    “Sorry to hear that,” King said.
    “I spent the first twelve days looking for them. But then I got an idea. We used to come here. I’d sit on this bench with my daughter, Erin, and we’d play patty cake. So I’m waiting, see? They’ll come back. Paula wouldn’t just leave like that. She knows how worried I’d be. I’m waiting for my family. I miss my kids.”
    “And just shooting zombies?”
    “Yeah. I’ve become a pretty good shot. Used to have a kick-ass pellet gun.”
    “What about the birds, man? How you gonna shoot them?”
    “Haven’t bothered me yet. And my family will be here before the birds show up. You’ll see.”
    King glanced at Chino, then back at the Viking. He tried swallowing the lump in his throat.
    “Sure you won’t come with us?”
    The Viking shook his head.
    King slowly approached the bench. Chino tensed. Here it came. King had the guy off guard. Now he’d pop him, they’d grab the shit, and get the hell gone before more zombies came back. But King didn’t waste the guy. Instead, he shook his hand.
    “Good luck.”
    “Thanks.”
    King turned back to Chino. “Come on. Let the man wait in peace.”
    Chino’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Say what?”
    “You heard me,” King growled. “Let him be.”
    King trudged across the grass, and Chino ran to catch up with him. He grabbed King’s arm and spun him around.
    “The fuck was that all about? We could have smoked him.”
    “No,” King said, his voice thick with emotion.
    “We ain’t touching him.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because,” King sighed, “I miss my kids, too.”
    An artillery shell whistled over the city. The explosion rumbled through the streets. Beneath it all, they heard the Viking playing patty cake.
    * * *

IF YOU CAN SEE THE MOUNTAIN…
    The Rising
    Day Fifteen
    Hawera, New Zealand
     
    There were nine of them inside the water tower; Mean, Charlie, Ross, Greenberg, Sally, Rachel, Sid, the unconscious old man, and the Maori, unable to tell them his name because his tongue had been ripped out by a zombie. Mean didn’t know them, having only recently moved back from England. The old man was a dairy farmer, brought in by Sid. Rachel and Charlie were teenagers; Ross a butcher, paunchy and asthmatic; Greenberg an accountant; Sally an American on vacation (visiting the locations where The Lord of the Rings was filmed). The zombie plague was slow to strike Hawera. The first week, the townspeople watched it spread to other parts of the world, horrified—and perhaps a bit annoyed that the coverage preempted rugby.
    Slowly, it infected their little corner of the world, first with dead animals, then with people. When the creature’s numbers increased enough to launch a full-scale assault, the town—population 10,000—collapsed within an hour. Home by home, street by street, they eradicated the living, further swelling their