Resurrection: A Zombie Novel, - [ereader manga .TXT] 📗
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“Hey!” Kyle said.
Then he grabbed Kyle by the shoulders, planted a boot in the small of his back, and shoved him straight forward with all the might in his leg toward the edge of the cliff.
Kyle sprawled face-first into the grass, but he didn’t go over. He flipped onto his back and looked toward Parker, but he couldn’t see without his night vision. It was lying on the path. Parker could see the panic on Kyle’s face as his blind eyes darted around. Kyle instinctively crab-walked backward a step before remembering that the cliff was somewhere behind him. It was, in fact, less than twelve inches behind him.
Parker couldn’t believe what he’d just done. Some part of his brain misfired. Or the lizard part of his brain, the id part of his brain, the part of himself that had evolved on the African Savannah to deal with predators, prey, and survival, had just come uncorked. It spasmed. It erupted. But just for a second.
Like the one and only time he hit his wife Holly.
Jesus, he had actually tried to kill Kyle. Tried and failed.
“Shit, Kyle, I’m sorry.” He reached out his hand to help the poor bastard up, but Kyle couldn’t see.
“Heeeeeelp!” Kyle screamed. It was a horrible scream. A terrified scream. Even the horde across the water on Orcas Island must have heard him.
“Parker’s trying to kill me!”
“No, Kyle—”
“Help!” Kyle screamed again, his face flushed with raw animal panic. He didn’t even hear Parker’s apology. He thought Parker was about to kick him over the edge.
“Wait,” Parker said and took a step back.
“Help me!”
“Kyle, it’s okay. I didn’t mean it.”
The front door of the guesthouse banged open. Parker saw flashlight beams like green searchlights sweeping across the grass.
“Kyle!” Hughes said. “We’re coming!”
“Parker is trying to kill me!”
“Wait,” Parker said, panic rising in his chest. “Jesus, Kyle.”
“Kyle!” Annie screamed.
“Down here!” Kyle said. “Help me!”
There was nothing Parker could do. Nothing but wait for the others and apologize and surrender.
He heard three pairs of boots running on gravel, followed by the ca-crunch of Hughes’ pump-action Mossberg.
Kyle lay on his back, the rim of oblivion somewhere behind him and a crazed Parker somewhere in the dark out in front of him.
The bastard actually tried to throw him over the edge.
Kyle couldn’t see anything without the night vision, but he’d kick and punch and scratch and lunge and even bite the sonofabitch if only he could figure out where he was.
Flashlight beams swept down the hill. Annie called out his name.
“Down here!” he shouted. “Help me!”
Hughes, Annie, and Frank arrived within seconds. Parker was keeping his distance. He couldn’t try throwing Kyle over the cliff again. Not if he didn’t want witnesses.
Annie was breathless. “Kyle!”
“What’s going on?” Frank said.
Kyle couldn’t see the look on Hughes’ face, but he could tell by the man’s posture and general bearing that he was gearing up to break Parker in half.
“He ripped off my night vision and tried to throw me over the cliff.”
Annie gasped and looked at Parker, who was moaning and covering his face with his hands.
“That true?” Hughes said and pointed his shotgun toward Parker.
“Get him away from me,” Kyle said. “Take him somewhere and shoot him.”
Annie gasped again.
“Now hang on a second,” Frank said.
“Parker!” Hughes said and pressed the barrel of the shotgun at the side of Parker’s head.
Parker looked up and panicked. “I can explain.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Hughes said and grabbed the asshole by his shirt collar.
“No, wait!” Parker said.
Annie stepped toward Kyle. He squinted at the brightness of her flashlight, though it only seemed bright in one eye, the eye that remained adjusted to the dark while he wore the night vision. She recoiled when she saw how close he was to the edge.
“Did you or did you not try to throw Kyle over that cliff?” Hughes said.
“I—”
“It’s a yes-or-no question.”
Annie sat next to Kyle, though farther away from the cliff’s edge, and put her hand on his knee.
“We were walking up the path,” Kyle said, his breathing and heart rate beginning to slow. “And we got in an argument. He ripped my night vision off and tried to kick me over. Damn near succeeded too.”
Parker stood on the path and winced at the flashlights in his face. He still had the night-vision monocle over his left eye. He looked like a creepy robot-person in a bad science-fiction movie.
“All this time,” Kyle said, “we were worried about getting attacked by looters or the homeowner or another pack of those things. But the biggest danger of all was right here beside us. He’s worse than Lane. Lane never actually tried to kill any of us.”
Annie stood and helped Kyle up. He didn’t need help—he wasn’t hurt—but he took her hand anyway. He’d wanted to take her hand since he met her.
“We need to get rid of him,” Kyle said.
“Please,” Parker said. “Kyle, I’m sorry.”
Kyle wouldn’t look at him. It would only make doing what had to be done that much more difficult. He felt an enormous swell of an emotion he wasn’t familiar with. This was something new, something he realized now that he should have felt a long time ago.
Iron had entered his veins. Iron and ice. It felt exhilarating and right. No more fucking around. “Take him to the edge of the cliff and shoot him.”
“Agreed,” Hughes said and grabbed Parker again by his shirt.
“Wait,” Annie said. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
Hughes killed the boat engine when he and Frank made it halfway up Orcas Island’s main inlet. They’d need to row by hand the rest of the way so those things wouldn’t hear.
“This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Frank said.
“It could work,” Hughes said. “We won’t know until we try. And we have to try because this could change everything.”
They’d taken Parker upstairs in the main house and left him in a sealed room. The gag-inducing stench from the corpse downstairs had seeped into the walls. Kyle and Frank boarded up the windows from the outside and Hughes screwed some kind of lock onto the door from the hallway, most likely a sliding bolt from one of the bathrooms.
Not that any of that was remotely necessary. They’d tied him to a chair, his ankles bound together with rope, his wrists cinched tight with a second rope, his waist strapped to the back of the chair with a third, and his arms yoked to his ankles with yet a fourth. Parker could hardly breathe, couldn’t look up, and if they didn’t let him go or at least loosen him soon, his back would give out.
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