Free The Walking Dead: Invasion by Robert Kirkman

specimens for Jeremiah’s new army. In fact, Jeremiah is about to kick off a motivational discussion of the walker horde and their purpose in the Rapture when he’s interrupted by the voice of Stephen Pembry.
    â€œBrother Jeremiah!”
    The big preacher jerks with a start, stricken silent before getting out a single word of his litany, twisting around to gaze back over his shoulder at the four men emerging from the adjacent woods. Breathing hard, eyes hot and wide with urgency, they come from the north. Stephen is first, his windbreaker zipped up to his throat, his stocking cap pulled down over his bandaged forehead. He wheezes profusely in his agitated state, his ragged breath coming out in raspy honks.
    Behind him, the other men hustle to catch up, hauling huge plastic containers of fuel, their faces shimmering with sweat and excitement.
    â€œCalm down, Brother,” the big preacher admonishes while rising out of his chair and gently handing the slumbering child back to her father. He shoots a glance at Chester and Rory. “Why don’t you fellas take the little girl back to her mama, give me a second to talk to these boys.”
    Each of the two patriarchs gives a nod and hastily trundles off toward the other side of the camp as Stephen Pembry approaches breathlessly. “You ain’t gonna believe … what we just saw … about maybe ten miles from here.… They were … they were … huntin’ for something.…”
    The young man twinges, holding his tender rib cage, struggling to get air into his lungs. The others gather around the preacher. Holding up his huge hands, Jeremiah says, “Okay, calm the hell down, I can’t understand a word you’re sayin’. Take a damn breath!”
    Stephen Pembry looks at Reese Lee Hawthorne, who is setting down his fuel container with a grunt, swallowing hard, licking his lips as though measuring his words. “They’re still alive, Brother.”
    Gooseflesh breaks out on the preacher’s thick neck and he fixes to ask them who the hell they’re talking about, but he already knows.
    *   *   *
    It turns out to be quite a story, and Jeremiah listens intently to the whole thing in the privacy of his RV as the two original members of the Pentecostal People of God pace and hyperventilate through their blow-by-blow account of setting out at dawn that morning, zigagging up the tobacco fields of south-central Georgia, searching for untapped gas stations, checking out farmhouses and barns, and just generally combing the countryside for whatever drops of fuel they might find.
    For hours they searched in vain. Every truck stop, service station, farm implement store, and storage barn was either empty, picked over, or lousy with walkers. Finally they got lucky just south of Carlinville, not far from the very place in which they got pinned down many months ago—in that god-awful chapel, a festering hellhole Stephen and Reese will not soon forget.
    It was there, about five miles south of the township limits, that they came across a dairy farm with a high chain-link fence somebody had erected in recent months to keep the walkers out. The buildings inside the fence looked deserted, decimated by fires, many of them scorched ruins. But out behind one of the empty barns were rows of aboveground fuel tanks that appeared to be untouched by flames.
    For the next hour, they went from tank to tank, siphoning gasoline into their containers. They came to the conclusion that there must be thousands, maybe tens of thousands of gallons of pristine unleaded fuel in those tanks, enough gas to power the convoy for months. It was one of those rare, magnificent finds—a real head-scratcher, which begs the question: How the hell did everybody else miss this?
    In fact, they were so excited about their unexpected windfall that they nearly missed the two figures way off in the distance, moving along a high ridge