The Fallen 3 by Thomas E. Sniegoski

Author:Thomas E. Sniegoski
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Published: 2011-09-07T05:00:00+00:00

Fred wasn’t sure how many bodies he had stored inside his basement larder, but the number of them standing in front of him now told him that he had far more than he’d thought.

The Corpse Riders had found their way into his food stash and were taking the dead for a spin. Several fully animated bodies ambled into the living room, and Fred could hear more still making their way up the stairs from the cellar.

A female corpse, missing half her face and with a large jagged bite taken out of her neck, shuffled closer, staring at him with her one good eye. He didn’t remember killing this one but guessed it must have been during the spring or summer because she was wearing a yellow sundress, now stained with dirt and dried blood.

“What has happened?” the woman’s corpse gurgled.

Fred tried to hide the blackened stump where his hand had been.

“Nothing,” the werewolf said.

The half-faced woman must have been their leader, seeing as she was doing all the talking.

“What do you hide behind your back?” the corpse pressed.

“I’m not hiding nothing,” he protested, but then he sensed—smelled—one of the other corpses behind him.

A heavyset man with a straggly beard grabbed his arm and yanked it up for the head Corpse Rider to see.

“Let me go!” Fred growled, pulling his pain-racked arm from the corpse’s grip. “I ain’t done nothin’ wrong.”

“You touched it,” the woman’s corpse said matter-of-factly. “You were told not to touch it.”

“Yeah, well, I was never very good at doing what I was told,” Fred said with a toothy snarl. “There it is, right where I dropped it.”

The woman lurched toward where Fred was pointing.

“Where?”

“Right there on the floor in front of you.”

The woman’s head bent at an odd angle, fixating on the harmonica.

“This?” she asked. “You believe this to be the object of vast supernatural power we seek?”

“Well, if it isn’t, why else would a harmonica burn my hand off?” Fred replied.

The corpse seemed to think about what he said for a moment, then she turned her attention to one of her other walking dead companions.

“Pick it up,” she ordered the animated body of a skinny youth dressed in a bright red jogging suit that hid most of the bloodstains. He wore only one sneaker, the other foot bare, as he awkwardly lumbered to where the harmonica lay innocuously on the living room floor beside the unconscious teen.

The corpse stared for a moment before bending at the waist and reaching his long, spidery fingers, which were missing bits of skin, toward the harmonica. He snatched up the prize and was preparing to present it to his leader when his body suddenly exploded into flames. The Corpse Rider worm inside cried out as it sizzled in the unnatural fire.

“I could’a told you something like that would probably happen,” Fred said.

The flames extinguished as the body disintegrated. The harmonica sat amidst the ashen remains, appearing as harmless as it had before.

“Silence, wolf,” the Corpse Rider leader warned.

A corpse missing his legs dragged his ragged torso across the floor with his spindly arms toward the leader.

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