On Top of the Dead
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About this ebook
Benny Slade came out of his vault one fine December afternoon to find the world changed. Something had instantly killed almost everyone in the city, including his two employees. The death wasn’t limited to just the city. The event had killed almost all the humans on the planet. Benny had to figure out how to survive in a city full of dead bodies. And maybe help build a new future for humanity.
Bestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith is the author of over ninety novels and hundreds of short stories. Not only has he written for Pocket Book in the Star Trek universe, but did the only two original Men in Black novels for Bantam Books. He has been an editor and a publisher and is currently writing thrillers under another name.
Another story set in this same world, only in Portland Oregon with survivors there three years after the event is called “Shadow in the City.” A novel set after the event called Dust and Kisses will be out in the fall of 2012.
If you liked “On Top of the Dead,” you might also like these other stories:
Shadow in the City
Playing in the Street
Between Showers
Husband Dummies
Dean Wesley Smith
Considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction, USA TODAY bestselling writer, Dean Wesley Smith published far over a hundred novels in forty years, and hundreds of short stories across many genres. He currently produces novels in four major series, including the time travel Thunder Mountain novels set in the old west, the galaxy-spanning Seeders Universe series, the urban fantasy Ghost of a Chance series, and the superhero series staring Poker Boy. During his career he also wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, the only two original Men in Black novels, Spider-Man and X-Men novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds.
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On Top of the Dead - Dean Wesley Smith
On Top of the Dead
A Benny Slade Story
Dean Wesley Smith
On Top of the Dead
Copyright © 2012 by Dean Wesley Smith
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover Design copyright © 2012 WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © Philcold/Dreamstime
Smashwords Edition
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Chapter One
Somehow I survived everyone else in the world dying.
One minute everyone was alive, the streets of New York were teaming with all sorts as is the case with this fine city; Then I went into my old steel vault at Benny Slade’s Personal Loans to get some cash for my next loan, and when I come out, everyone was dead.
Car alarms were going off and the street in front of my place was a mess. Bodies littered the sidewalks, dead people filled wrecked cars, slumped over their steering wheels, or heads back, bodies held up by their seat belts.
And both Madge and Maggie, my two right hands, were both face down on my newly installed brown carpet.
Madge, who looked more like my old mother used to look before she got hit by that cab, had fallen next to her desk; while Maggie, about two years younger than my thirty-five years of age, had sprawled in the middle of the floor, her short skirt riding up and showing me a little of those wonderful white panties of hers that I liked so much.
I called out to Maggie and checked her first, then Madge. Both were dead. I sat back, feeling that cold, hard feeling come over me like it did when I had been in a firefight in the Gulf. Emotions got shoved back and I just stared.
It took me a minute to figure out what was different, what was wrong besides two healthy women being suddenly dead. There was no blood. Nothing. Now that I had turned them over, they just lay face up, eyes wide open, completely dead.
My first thought was gas attack, so I scrambled back into the vault; but I had left the vault door slightly open when I came out, so if it was some sort of terrorist gas attack, I was as good as dead as well.
After a minute sitting in the dark, I got disgusted at myself. Come on, Benny, get it together,
I said out loud. Madge had always