Free Nightmare of the Dead: Rise of the Zombies by Vincenzo Bilof Page A

hand, she was trapped.
    She couldn't move fast enough. Fiery pain raked across her back while she struggled to free her arm. She cursed herself for her foolish weakness; she'd put herself in perfect position to die.
    The remaining nightmare-hellion sat upon her bloody back. When warm blood gushed out of her shoulder, the sharp needles of pain in her body did nothing more than evoke a sense of anger; she was mortal, after all. Would this be her second death?
    After the sudden gunshot, the beast slumped forward over her. With her left arm trapped beneath her recent kill and her would-be-killer slumped over her, blood oozed out of her shoulder, and the black world blurred.
    The dead body was pushed off of her back, and her arm was freed while McPhee grunted from the effort.
    Stars danced in front of her eyes. She tried to see his face in the dark, but it was impossible. Instead, she grinned and tried to talk, "Figured you for a coward."
    Her thoughts became a jumbled puzzle of pain. Her hand ached and her shoulder bled. The adrenaline in her bloodstream crashed, and a torturous day of pain and terror dragged her down beneath heavy waves of exhaustion. Perhaps if she slept again, she would awaken in her home beside a slumbering husband. The nightmare would be over.
    "No need to thank me," he said. "I got no use for a wounded outlaw. You'll slow me down. As much fun as it was to meet a legend, I have to look out for myself."
    "You talk too much," she breathed through her teeth.
    "My wife used to say the same thing."
    McPhee's laughter followed her into unconsciousness.
     
     
    May 20th, 1863 : You Can See Me Now
     
     
    " A good soldier who will give anything for his president," Doctor Lynch affectionately stroked a swath of hair away from the young soldier's eyes.
    Inside the lab beneath the Confederate hospital camp, the machine labored to manufacture more of the doctor's macabre recipe. A crude mask that seemed more like a skeletal claw had been placed over the young soldier's lower face. It sucked and pumped each breath into an apparatus that had been fashioned out of spare metals and wood. The young man's festering, wounded stomach produced a foul odor from his rotting intestines. The production of the gaseous substances was the most crucial to the development of the recipe, although it wasn't the only required component.
    The youth's eyes fluttered open, and he writhed against the iron restraints.
    "The waking nightmare," Saul tittered while rubbing his palms against each other. "Yes, I know it hurts. I would like to promise that will be over soon, but I cannot."
    A long rubber tube that was connected to the man's penis filled with urine. The tube filled another jar sitting beside the apparatus. Saul gathered a towel stained with russet splotches and blotted the sweat that collected on his patient's forehead and neck.
    "We must begin the procedure," Saul said.
    A gust of wind howled through the tunnel while Saul labored in his cave. The entire laboratory had been built for him by engineers who'd been paid out of the Confederate war chest. Saul's bid to join the Nightmare Collective and complete his dream project was made possible by a demonstration he did for the president, and after Davis agreed, the Collective became interested. The hospital camp and lab were built according to Saul's needs, and he'd been fortunate enough that several battles happened close enough to his lab.
    Now, all he had to do was deliver.
    Lamplight illuminated the woman in the wheelchair beside the door, her head hanging limply beside her left shoulder, strands of greasy black hair falling in front of her eyes.
    The Collective wanted you to prove the dead can return to life. You've created something far worse. Meanwhile, you've abandoned…
    "I haven't abandoned her!" Saul shouted. He danced around the table and laughed while grabbing a knife and forceps from his case of tools.
    He'd lived with his mother's accusations his entire life. It didn't