Free The Coalition: Part II The Lord Of The Living (COALITON OF THE LIVING Book 2) by Robert Mathis Kurtz

Lieber.
    “She was screaming so loud that I could hear her from all the way up here. I knew that the walkers would zero in on her in nothing flat. Best thing was for me to provide her with covering fire, but I don’t think she’d have seen it like that. Or she might not have noticed at all.”
    Then he dropped his hands and stared at the Colonel. “Why didn’t you stop me? I know you were in the building. I noticed when you came up the staircase from street level. Felt the air pressure equalize when you opened that door. Missed it today, apparently, but not that day. I knew you were there, somewhere. Why didn’t you stop me?”
    Dale stared hard at his patient. “I didn’t get to the 30 th Floor in time. By the time I heard your fire, I was just opening the door here. I was about ten minutes too late. But I stopped at one of the rooms to look down and see what it was you had done. Then I left, to see what I could do to help her.
    “Fortunately, someone else was already there with the family by the time I hit the street , and together we got them free of the shamblers and…well…to safety.” The soldier stood and moved in close to Lieber. “You understand what you’ve done to her, to their children, don’t you? They’ll never be the same. Not if they live a long and peaceful life from here on out. They’ll have the image of Mr. Lund going to pieces right in front of their eyes. You’ve ruined them, Lieber.”
    The hacker stared straight ahead, his eyes wet with tears that would not quite fall. “I know,” he admitted.
    **
    They came out of the building and into the subdued light of the alley on the west side. Ron had led the way, negotiating the darkened hallways and ruined spaces of the offices vacated of humans and now home to invading birds, rodents, and raccoons. A possum had barely noticed them as they’d used one room to access a stairwell, looking up only briefly to gape its jaws at them and hiss. In a bit of a surprise, they hadn’t encountered any deaders, at all. Each of them had assumed they would have to at least outpace a zombie or two, if not having to actually kill any.
    As it was , they made it down the staircases and through rooms filled with paper bloated by rain and moisture, pushing aside wrecked furniture and finding the way to the alley. At the very last, Cutter found the door leading to the outside partially blocked by some errant metal trash and he had to push hard to open that last door.
    Metal screeched against concrete and asphalt, making much more racket than Ron liked. Any noise was trouble, but that one was particularly bad. Sounds like that almost always drew in the shambling dead.
    He drew his .45 and came out, prepared to fight if he needed to. There was nothing threatening nearby that he could see and he motioned for the others to follow. First came Oliver, who was going to remain always in the midst of the two adults (they had decided that this would permanently be the case), and Jean came out next, pausing for a second to let her eyes adjust to the brighter light.
    Once again , Ron had to remind himself that she was real. She really was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. Would she stay with him? How would he handle it now, if she left for more security? These were thoughts that wouldn’t stop nagging at his psyche, try as he might to put them out of his mind.
    “We don’t have far to go,” he said.
    “Not even a block,” Oliver told Jean. “It’s in a really neat spot. I stopped there once when I had to rest.” The boy smiled up at Cutter. “The door has a combination lock instead of a key lock. And Ron painted the combination on the door in case anyone got in a bad fix and needed to use it. Put it right up there in red paint.” Olive smiled.
    “Well, that was mighty thoughtful of you, Ron,” Jean insisted with no trace of sarcasm. “You’re quite the good Samaritan.”
    Looking up and down the dirty, cluttered alley, Ron looked Jean in the