Free The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. by Geo Dell Page B

minutes went by slowly.
Occasional squawks of directions came from the radio, and in the
distance the sound of both trucks could still be heard. The silence
broke all at once.
    The radio squealed in
Mike’s hand. One word jumped clearly from the static… “Jesus!” … Mike couldn’t
tell from whom. A crashing sound accompanied it, and in the far
distance gunfire erupted in the still, previously quiet morning
air.
    The squeal from the radio
abruptly cut off and it fell back to low static. In the distance
the sound of gunfire continued for what seemed like ten minutes,
but was probably no more than thirty or forty seconds in reality.
Mike keyed the radio, “ Candace,” he screamed. “Candace?”
    Gunfire broke out again in
the distance. The fast… POP, POP,
POP of semi automatic gunfire, but the
sharp crack of a heavy rifle too. No answer came back over the
radio. Janet Dove made a small strangled sound in the back of her
throat and a low sob slipped from her mouth. “No, God, no,” she
whispered.
    “ It’s alright, Jan,” Mike
told her. He didn’t believe it himself, but it was what you said.
It was how you lied to yourself when you were pretty sure that
things were far from fine. Life didn’t work that way in his
experience. The gunfire had stopped, but the radio maintained its
teasing static as his mind continued to assure him that nothing at
all was right and nothing ever would be again. Just as he had the
thought, the radio in his hand squawked once again.
    “ You guys okay?” a panicked sounding Bob asked.
    “ We’re good… We’re good,
base. We’re all good. Everything’s okay,” Tom answered.
    Beside Mike, Janet broke into a sob. He
reached over and pulled her close to him. “It’s okay,” he soothed.
“They said they’re all okay,” Mike repeated dumbly, like the words
were some magic mantra.
    “ I need you to come over
here,” Bob said over the radio in a tight,
controlled voice. Fear quickly spiked in Mike’s heart.
    “ Yeah… Uh, you need… Uh,
yeah… Okay… We’re coming… We’re on the way,” Tom replied.
    Mike pressed his button down. “What is
it?” he asked. He spoke with more calm than he felt. “What’s going
on?”
    “ Mike… Mike, we got a
little problem here… Give me a second and I’ll get right back to
you,” Tom told him.
    “ Standing by.” Mike forced
himself to say. Now Janet was hugging him and the fear gripped his
heart hard, refusing to let go.
    ~
    “ I’ll kill you. I will,”
The kid said. He held his gun sideways like some banger kid from a
bad Hollywood movie. Blood trickled slowly from one nostril, as
well as from several deep cuts up the left side of his face. His
eyes were focused and hard.
    “ No,” Candace said quietly.
Her own forty five was held in both hands aimed at the kid’s chest.
He looks like he’s only about thirteen… Fourteen, she
corrected.
    The kids lip curled at
her. “You think I won’t do it, Bitch? I
will… I will, Bitch… I’ll do it.”
    “ No,” Candace repeated
quietly. “I drop it and you shoot anyway. No way, Kid. No way.” She
watched as Bob shifted to his right, drawing farther away from
Candace so the kid couldn’t keep both of them in sight.
    “ Stop fuckin’ movin’! Stop
fuckin’ movin'!” the kid suddenly screamed.
The gun barrel wavered a little, nervously jittering up and down,
the kid’s finger lightly, compulsively caressing the trigger as
Candace watched.
    Tom and Lydia worked their way up
silently behind the kid, past the bodies that lay on the ground,
one a young girl.
    Behind Tom, Lydia dropped the barrel of
her gun and sighted on the kid's back. Tom stared at her dumbly for
a second and then followed suit.
    The seconds played out as the blood
continued to slowly leak from the kids face. His tongue darted out
and tasted it where it ran from his nose. He tried to push it away
from his lips where it ran and dripped down onto his
chin.
    “ Last chance,
Bitch,” he said. He