Free Ground Zero: A Zombie Apocalypse by Nicholas Ryan

point. He had two other makeshift spears already completed. He stretched the cramped muscles across his back and shoulders.
    The woman held out her hand. “Glenda,” she said softly.
    “Cutter. Jack Cutter.”
    The woman’s hand was small and delicate. She had long sculptured fingers and nails that were painted pink. Her skin was smooth and soft, but her grip was surprisingly firm.
    The others in the group had drifted to all parts of the warehouse. Several women remained in the lunchroom, seated around the table. The television had been turned off, but the women sat chatting in a desultory hush, perhaps drawn by the comfort of the bright overhead lights. Others had taken books from the shelves and sat in quiet corners reading. John Grainger was pacing the room, walking between the rows of high dusty bookcases, measuring each step as though the monotony of walking was a hedge against his panic, while by the boarded-up shipping door at the rear of the building, Jimmy was preparing more weapons. Apart from the hammers, he had found a fire-axe and a short lump of lead pipe that he hefted like a club.
    Cutter watched them with a kind of detached fascination. Every person was handling the crisis in their own way, internalizing their fears and panic – blocking out the nightmare images – and trying to ward off the crushing despair of hopelessness that seemed to fill the very air.
    Only Hos seemed to be driven by a purpose.
    The big man was sitting at the foot of the stairs that led up to the steel door. He had the black bag at his feet, quietly going through the contents, checking and re-checking equipment. In the gloomy lighting he was just a vague shape, but every once in a while Cutter sensed the survivalist’s eyes upon him – watching him in stealthy, brooding silence from the darkness.
    Cutter tur ned back to the woman. She was sitting close beside him – so close that he could sense the warmth of her body and smell the faint lingering muskiness of her perfume. She had her head tilted back against the wall, her eyes closed in an attitude of weary fatigue, exposing the long soft lines of her throat. She had unfastened the top button of her blouse, and as Cutter followed the line of her neck, he could see a glimpse of pale cleavage. He looked away and stared fixedly off into space, then sighed.
    “I never dreamed this day would come,” he said softly. “I just never thought it could ever happen.”
    He sensed the woman’s eyes opening and her face turning to him. “None of us did,” she said softly. “There have been so many predictions about the end of the world. Who would ever have thought it would come unannounced, and without any time to prepare?”
    Cutter grinned wryly. “Hos,” he said. “He’s a survivalist. The bastard has been waiting for this day to come. It’s the moment he has spent his life preparing for.”
    Glenda nodded slowly. “When he first started work here at the bookstore, he used to creep me out,” she confessed in a whisper. “Just the way he acted and the things he said. All he ever talked about was guns, you know,” she shrugged. “I thought he was going to end up on the news – one of those crazy guys holed up in a house somewhere surrounded by police cars.” The thought made her giggle, and the sound was such a shock that Cutter turned to her so their faces were just inches apart.
    “Well he’s the one who is laughing now,” Cutter whispered. “He’s the one guy we need to have any chance of surviving Armageddon – and he’s the only one who doesn’t need any of us to help him.”
    Cutter’s thoughts drifted back to the horror of the day and he felt a cold sense of clammy despair clutch at his heart. Was their really any point in trying to survive? Why couldn’t he just lie down and die – maybe end it all right now by chewing on a bullet?
    He closed his eyes and asked softly, “Did you have family?”
    “No,” Glenda said sadly. “Not really. I was an