On Top of the Dead

By Dean Wesley Smith

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

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Feb 2, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458023704

Dean Wesley Smith

Considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction, USA Today bestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith published far more than a hundred novels in forty years, and hundreds of short stories across many genres. At the moment he produces novels in several 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, a superhero series starring Poker Boy, and a mystery series featuring the retired detectives of the Cold Poker Gang. His monthly magazine, Smith’s Monthly, which consists of only his own fiction, premiered in October 2013 and offers readers more than 70,000 words per issue, including a new and original novel every month. During his career, Dean 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. Writing with his wife Kristine Kathryn Rusch under the name Kathryn Wesley, he wrote the novel for the NBC miniseries The Tenth Kingdom and other books for Hallmark Hall of Fame movies. He wrote novels under dozens of pen names in the worlds of comic books and movies, including novelizations of almost a dozen films, from The Final Fantasy to Steel to Rundown. Dean also worked as a fiction editor off and on, starting at Pulphouse Publishing, then at VB Tech Journal, then Pocket Books, and now at WMG Publishing, where he and Kristine Kathryn Rusch serve as series editors for the acclaimed Fiction River anthology series. For more information about Dean’s books and ongoing projects, please visit his website at www.deanwesleysmith.com and sign up for his newsletter.

Book preview

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