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

cooked inside of their stalled vehicle. That slow, agonizing death was preferable to getting out of the car. The street was eerily quiet. Even the zombies seemed to have moved on, other than the dead birds which perched on the car, daring the family to open their doors or roll down a window.
    The family died in the shadow of Camelot Books. The building had once been an old GTE switching station, but Tony and Kim turned it into a bookstore. The walls were sixteen inches thick, and built to withstand hurricane force winds. A glass atrium, now blocked off with plywood and empty bookshelves, stood at the front of the store. Next door was an old United Methodist church.
    The family’s reanimated corpses got out of the car and surveyed the street. Eventually, they moved on in search of prey.
    Camelot Books’ thick walls prevented the zombies from hearing the screams coming from inside the store.
    Before they opened the store, Tony had once owned a gun shop. He knew how to defend himself. But defense was an impossible thing when you were handcuffed to a desk leg. Kim was cuffed to the other side. The minister from next door was duct taped to a chair. Other people, mostly store customers and parishioners from next door, were bound upright to bookshelves.
    They watched in horror and revulsion as the skinny man sliced the girl’s throat.
    The skinny man was sweating profusely, from both the stifling heat and his own excitement. His long, stringy hair clung to his shirtless back. He pushed his thick, wire-rimmed glasses up on his bony nose and licked his lips in anticipation. After a minute, the girl died, her life-blood covering her clothing and the floor beneath her in a wet spray. A few minutes after that, she began to move again.
    And then the skinny man selected a pair of wire cutters from his vast array of tools, and proceeded to snip her fingers off, one by one.
    The zombie cursed him in an ancient language. Tony cursed him in a more modern tongue.
    “Why are you doing this?” he shouted. “You’re as bad as they are!”
    The skinny man giggled. “I have been given the power of life over death.”
    “What?”
    “I can bring people back from the dead.”
    Kim coughed. “You’re insane.”
    “Am I?” The skinny man selected a filet knife, gave Tony and Kim a wink, and then moved on to his next victim, a middle-aged Hispanic man.
    “No,” the man pleaded. A wet spot appeared on the crotch of his pants. “Please. Please don’t do this. I’ve got a wife—kids. They’re still out there somewhere.”
    The skinny man leaned close to him and whispered in his ear. “They are dead, just like everybody else outside. But you don’t have to worry. I can give you something they will never have. I can bring you back.”
    The man closed his eyes. “Please, don’t. Please… please… please…”
    Sighing, the skinny man plunged the knife into his quivering victim. He twisted it savagely, and then sliced upward. The Hispanic man’s bowels spilled out onto the carpet.
    Kim screamed.
    “You should be grateful,” the skinny man told her. “You don’t know how lucky you are. All of you are. You get to be witnesses to the summoning.”
    Gritting his teeth, Tony strained against his bonds. The handcuffs cut into his skin, drawing blood. “You sick son of a—”
    “Ssshh.” The skinny man brought the bloody knife to his lips and kissed it. “Be quiet. Be still. Don’t blaspheme. Just watch.”
    The preacher, who’d fallen unconscious before the girl was slain, finally stirred. He looked around in bewilderment, apparently forgetting their circumstances. “What’s happening?”
    “I am giving you what your Savior couldn’t,” the skinny man said. “I am offering life after death. I am summoning these souls back from the other side.”
    Kim rattled her handcuffs. “But—”
    “Watch.”
    The Hispanic man stirred. Something looked out through his dead eyes.
    “Release me,” the zombie demanded. The skinny man