Free Only The Dead Don't Die by A.D. Popovich Page B

Scarlett down on her back. It landed on top of her with coveting eyes, eyes of hunger, eyes of lust. It was all Scarlett could do to hold its corpse-like, flesh-rotting head back inches from her face. Its saliva felt deadly as it dripped onto her cheek. Scarlett couldn’t hold it back much longer. Frantically, she scanned the garage for a weapon, something within her grasp that she could use. Anything?
    As they struggled on the floor of the garage, Scarlett used her last burst of energy to roll over, dragging the creature with her. Now Scarlett was on top of it. Its hands clawed at her neck while its deadly teeth snapped repeatedly. Snap—Snap—Snap!
    Scarlett eyed the bicycle wheel next to the work bench and grabbed it. She rammed the wheel against the thing’s head, knocking the creeper to the side. But to her horror, it suddenly bellyflopped—on top of her, knocking her down on her back again. And, once again she was face to face with snapping teeth. Scarlett somehow managed to shove the mountain bike wheel between its face and hers as it flopped on top of her, convulsing and growling.
    Scarlett had the eerie feeling it was ferociously trying to rip-out her throat, but the bicycle spokes were her shield, and she tightly held onto the sturdy wheel. When Scarlett realized that the wheel could be used as a shield, it gave her a renewed sense of power. She took a deep breath, gathered all her strength and with a sudden thrust, pushed the creature over, and Scarlett was on top of it once more.
    Scarlett firmly shoved the wheel down on its nauseating face, the metal spokes slicing into its decaying flesh (like a perfectly sliced cheesecake), leaving a gruesome imprint of the wheel’s spokes on its once human face. Scarlett managed to regain her strength and pulled herself up using the workbench for support and vigorously stomped on the wheel. She put all of her weight into each skull-squashing stomp. And she did not stop until she had crushed the horrid thing’s skull—crushed it to a mush of grisly splintered bone.

Chapter 8
    September had come and gone. October thankfully arrived with the offering of cool delta breezes. Initially, Scarlett had only intended to stay a day or two to re-energize and devise a reasonable plan of action. But she had been too petrified to leave the security of the townhome after that dreadful incident with the creeper in the garage.
    She refrained from venturing outside: where the creepers lurked. Instead, she often found herself pacing the narrow hallway deep in contemplation. For some reason, she could not stop thinking about Miss Purlie, and the hermit neighbor, and the woman in the garage. Those cryptic words Miss Purlie had declared minutes before her death, “Only the dead don’t die,” still tormented Scarlett’s thoughts. Now she understood. Well, not so much . . .
    According to the stack of mail, the home belonged (or had belonged) to Katrina and Nicoli Katovich. Were they from the Ukraine or Russia she wondered? She often found herself thumbing through their family scrapbook. It must have been Katrina in the garage that day; although, it was difficult to tell, for its flesh had melted into a bloody-bubbly ooze, devouring Katrina’s once beautiful complexion. It made her queasy whenever she thought about it. Scarlett had actually killed a person, a human being. No, it was already dead—right?
    Scarlett tried to convince herself that she had done the right thing. Sometimes she found herself wondering what had ever become of Mr. Nicoli Katovich. Had Nicoli come home one day to find that his beautiful wife had mutated into a repulsive, deadly creature?
    At least she wasn’t thinking about Kevin every flippin’ five minutes of the day. Time had a way of numbing her broken heart (the true love she thought she had found with Kevin) that had soured to something close to hatred and was now a fleeting phantom pain in her heart: a dull ache that had been replaced by something else.