Man Eaters Read Online Free Page B

cowgirl at heart. I don’t know jack about monsters or movies or man eaters. So, what now?”
    Einstein rose and audibly gulped. “In the games, as well as in the movies, the biggest mistake people make is trying to go home to their loved ones, who are usually already infected or dead. Berkeley is definitely out and we need to get the hell out of here, so what about you, Roper? Where do you live?”
    “In Livermore, on a forty-acre ranch.”
    Einstein’s eyes brightened. “Perfect. Guns?”
    She cocked her head. “I’m a cowgirl. What do you think?”
    He smiled. “I say we head to your place. See what lies the media has spread and the government’s spin on this, and then we can go our own ways or figure out what our options are.”
    Dallas cracked the door open and peeked out. “What are our options, Einstein? Really. What can we expect to see?”
    He tapped his chin as he considered the answer. “By this time tomorrow, if the snipers didn’t kill every single one, you can safely assume that for every man eater alive tonight, there will be at least twenty more tomorrow.”
    “Twenty new ones for each one who made it across the bridge?”
    Roper shook her head. “And besides the three dozen or so we passed—”
    “They’ll be coming out of the surf as well.”
    “So basically, we’re fucked.”
    Einstein shrugged. “At this point, it’s all about containment. They’ll have their hands full containing it to the city, but if they don’t stop them before they come through the tunnel or through Oakland...”
    “What?” Roper asked anxiously “What will happen?”
    Einstein shrugged again. “It will be apocalyptical...it could very well be our death knell.”
     
    ****
     
    When they’d exited the warehouse, they slowly rolled by dozens of people shot in the head; none of them had the telltale blood on their mouths or wounds on their bodies that would indicate they had been man eaters. The military had just started shooting people. Uninfected people. It was insane.
    A police blockade had been erected across the freeway, but they were too late to block the back roads Dallas was cruising on.
    Dallas took the back roads and frontage roads toward Livermore—her gloved hands gripping the bars so hard it hurt. It was only a twenty-five mile stretch, but the back roads were full of tight twists and people scurrying here and there like rats on a sinking ship.
    She couldn’t shake the scene they’d just left behind. The snipers had been busy shooting everyone who was out on the road, everyone out in the open...everyone. The whole thing was madness, and yet, she somehow understood why the military had reacted so swiftly. Time was no their friend. If Einstein’s calculations were correct, and this virus got out of control, it would make the Black Death look like a walk in the park.
    She could feel the fear in the air, and by the time she hit the 680 freeway there were no moving cars on the road. Everything was blocked off, but not by police vehicles—by military units cruising past each vehicle and inspecting them.
    Einstein had been right. They were in trouble. Whatever this was, it was something well beyond the government’s control. She knew when a government leaned too heavily on its military it was grasping at straws, and as much as she wanted to go home, she knew it wouldn’t be long before the infected entered Berkeley. She wanted to call Lisa, but the phone towers were always busy. She could only hope her family in Houston would be safe from whatever this was.
    As she drove through the winding roads, passing cattle and sheep along the way, Dallas suddenly felt very cold. One minute, she was going to the city, the next, she was running for her life with two people she’d just met. It was as if she had lived her entire life in a snowglobe that someone decided to violently turn upside down and shake.
    What else could happen?
    She was about to find out as a line of four men stood in the middle of the