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Back Up From the Grave Save as PDF
Chapters (52)
  1. Dedication
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. Contents
  4. Prologue
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. Eleven
  16. Twelve
  17. Thirteen
  18. Fourteen
  19. Fifteen
  20. Sixteen
  21. Seventeen
  22. Eighteen
  23. Nineteen
  24. Twenty
  25. Twenty-one
  26. Twenty-two
  27. Twenty-three
  28. Twenty-four
  29. Twenty-five
  30. Twenty-six
  31. Twenty-seven
  32. Twenty-eight
  33. Twenty-nine
  34. Thirty
  35. Thirty-one
  36. Thirty-two
  37. Thirty-three
  38. Thirty-four
  39. Thirty-five
  40. Thirty-six
  41. Thirty-seven
  42. Epilogue
  43. An excerpt from Halfway to the Grave
  44. An excerpt from One Foot in the Grave
  45. An excerpt from At Grave’s End
  46. An excerpt from Destined for an Early Grave
  47. An excerpt from This Side of the Grave
  48. An excerpt from One Grave at a Time
  49. About the Author
  50. By Jeaniene Frost
  51. Copyright
  52. About the Publisher

I repeated those until nothing around me moved. Then I shoved bodies into the hole to stop more bullets from peppering the room and ricocheting off the steel walls. When that was done, I let out a victory howl that ended when I realized I’d won, but I still couldn’t get out of the room unless someone opened the door.

Maybe I could get someone to do that. Seized with an idea, I grabbed the nearest dead guard and spoke into his communication system.

“Denise,” I shouted. “You’ve gotta find a way to open this door!”

“Who the fuck are you?” the voice on the other end snapped.

I didn’t care enough to answer. I heard background noise from him, which meant Denise should have been able to hear me, too, if she was still near this guy. From the fierce sound of fighting, she had to be.

Then a different voice blasted from a com device on another body.

“ALL units to Section 13! Situation critical!”

Aw, hell, Section 13 was where I was. The guards below must’ve called in the fact that I’d demolished the soldiers in the panic room.

“Hurry up, Denise!” I yelled into the com. Then I began to gather up M-4s that had the most ammo left before pausing to pull a Kevlar vest off a dead guard. Much more manageable than taking his body with me.

“I repeat, situation critical!” screamed the panicked voice through the com. “Hostile sighted and . . . oh God. What is that? WHAT IS THAT?”

I pulled on the blood-spattered vest, wondering what Denise had shapeshifted into this time. From the sound of the guard, could’ve been a Tyrannosaurus rex. She’d made it to my floor fast, too. Just moments ago, she’d still been in Section 6, wherever that was—

The thick titanium bolts around the door snapped back into the walls faster than they’d deployed. Then it didn’t open; it crashed inward, flattening a body beneath it with enough force to make something that looked like raspberry jam spurt from its sides.

But that wasn’t what made me freeze, my M-4 halting halfway up in its arc. It was the thing on the other side of the door. White hair framed a face that showed more skull than skin except for a set of blazing emerald eyes. Bullet-riddled clothes hung off a body that looked like old leather and dried meat wrapped around bone. When it bared its teeth in a hideous version of a smile, I instinctively recoiled.

And then it spoke.

“Hallo . . . Kitten.”

Eighteen

Eighteen

Later, I’d be ashamed that I didn’t run into his arms when I realized who it was, but at the moment, my brain refused to reconcile the half-rotted, walking corpse with the man I loved.