“Go on,” he spoke to her quietly. “You get out of here.”
“Peter . . .”
“I said you get out of here.” His face was set with grim determination, and Fran didn’t dare question him any further.
Fran was in a panic. She didn’t want to leave without Peter, but she could see his stubbornness setting in.
“Oh, Jesus, Peter . . . please . . .”
“I don’t want to go,” he said sadly. “I really don’t . . . you know that? I really don’t.”
Suddenly, the door flew open and the advancing creatures lumbered in.
Fran started to scream. The puppy cowered in her arms. She practically crushed it.
“Stephen, Stephen . . .” she started for her lover, but Peter raised the supergun, a slight, enigmatic smile curling on his lips, and he shot the zombie clean through the head.
As Stephen fell, Fran startled to reality.
“Move, woman,” Peter commanded, rushing her to the ladder. She grabbed the sacks, and with the puppy under her arm, she climbed the ladder to the roof. Peter picked up the derringer that he had hidden by the ladder and covered her as she made her escape.
The creatures advanced on Peter, and he managed to lead them away from the skylight, toward his room. They crashed through the carefully set up living room, upsetting the furniture, overturning lamps, crushing the knick-knacks.
On the roof, Fran ran toward the helicopter and threw the sacks in, securing the puppy in his cage, which she had installed in the back of the passenger section. She jumped in the pilot’s seat and sat staring at the controls. Then she moved into action and started the copter up.
Peter backed into his room, the creatures gaining. He slammed the door in their faces. Just as he was about to raise the small handgun to his head, his mind flashed on Fran, sitting alone in the copter. He stared at the gun in his hand and then violently kicked the door open. Suicide would never be his cup of tea. The sudden movement scattered the zombies and allowed Peter a clear path to the ladder. He made his escape as if he were a quarterback running for the winning touchdown.
Fran had waited patiently at the controls, idling the engine. But so many minutes had elapsed that she was sure now that Peter was not coming and lifted the copter off the roof. The puppy yelped in the back, hating his confinement. A sudden movement below caused Fran to look down. She could hardly believe her eyes. Peter had rushed up onto the roof and had made a leap toward the landing apparatus of the copter. He had managed to grab a hold and was hanging on, his legs kicking and thrashing as he made his way to the passenger side door. Fran could hardly contain her joy as he squirmed his way up and into the passenger seat as she lifted off the roof.
The little vehicle jolted as he swung into place beside her.
“Do we have enough gas?” he asked, scanning the parking lot below as the zombies looked up in the sky at the disturbance.
“Very little,” Fran said, as the little bird puttered away into the welcoming arms of dawn.
GEORGE A. ROMERO is a legendary American filmmaker and screen-writer whose fifteen directorial credits include the horror classics Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), and Day of the Dead (1985). The New York Times named Dawn of the Dead as one of “The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made.”
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Gallery Books
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1978 by the Dawn Associates
Copyright © 2015 by the MKR Group, Inc.
Introduction copyright © 2012 by Simon Pegg
Originally published in 1978 by St. Martin’s Press
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First Gallery Books trade paperback edition May 2015
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Cover design by Anna Dorfman
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ISBN 978-1-4767-9183-8
ISBN 978-1-4767-9184-5 (eBook)
Dawn of the Dead Page 22