Free Assuming Room Temperature (Keep Your Crowbar Handy Book 3) by S.P. Durnin Page A

windows, save in the lead drive section. Its nose was an eight foot tall, vertical wedge, like a snowplow, which flowed seamlessly into its main body. Mel had no problem envisioning that blade pushing aside the dead, good sized automobile wrecks, and maybe even ramming its way through a cinder-block wall.
    As she followed Kat and Rae to the Screamin’ Mimi’s rear, clam shell-style hatch, the pretty brunette explained some its added benefits. “This vehicle was originally designed for use during possible civil unrest, when everyone was flipping out over Y2K in the late 90’s. The technical term for it is a MATTOC That stands for: Mobile Armored Troop Transport and Command. It can hold nearly a month’s worth of food which we resupply periodically from caches along our route west, enough ammunition to take over a small country, and has room inside to sleep twelve in relative comfort.”
    “Why is it pink?” Mel asked incredulously.
    “Well, from what I’m told, the SEP skin outer coating—that means Synthetically Electrified Polymer, by the way—could only be produced in one color. That would be ugly-as-sin, lawn-flamingo, Pepto-Bismol pink.” Rae laughed as they stepped close to the rear hatch. “Run your hand across the hull. Don’t lean against it, just brush it.”
    The teen did as Rae instructed. “It feels slick.”
    Kat nodded. “That stuff was produced by NASA, believe it or not. Once it’s applied? It dries into an almost frictionless surface. If you tried to stand on top of the Mimi, you’d just slide right off. Nothing clings to it, which is a good thing really, considering we all know how sticky zombie goop is. I’ve had to toss almost a dozen of my best Hello Kitty shirts because I couldn’t get the icky stuff out of the fabric.”
    Mel laughed and Rae went on. “Our blue-haired friend here has the right of it. The SEP skin is virtually impervious to damage. Bullets, rocket propelled grenades, pretty much anything short of a nuclear bomb— maybe even an armor piercing shell from a Mark-8 battleship gun—just bounces right off. The infected can’t get a grip on it either, let alone penetrate its surface.”
    “So the zombies attack and you can just stay inside? That’s amazing!” Mel followed the two women up into the transport and ogled at the pair of motorcycles strapped to its hull on the right, just inside the hatch. Large storage lockers lined the starboard side as well, competing for space with a small medical station. The port side (or left) hull was lined two-high with seven-foot long, horizontal hatches that resembled oversized coffins. “What are these?”
    “Sleeping bunks.” Rae confirmed as the three continued on into the second module. They passed through a pair of double-thick, quick-locking, airtight, steel hatches, each more than capable of sealing off the cabins beyond, then moved yet deeper into the armored machine. “Strange, I know. The engineers modeled them after budget-style rooms in Japanese hotels, which are really just like oversized coffins. They’re better than rolling out a mummy bag on the floor, but just barely.”
    “That’s debatable,” Kat murmured. Personally, she hated being confined in the bunks, and actually did sack out on the floor near the Mimi’s rear hatch on one of Foster’s extra sleeping bags.
    Mel continued to follow them into the tight confines of the drive unit at the front of the vehicle. She wasn’t surprised to find it looked much like the rest of the rolling fortress. Conduit lined the walls along the steel bulkhead and the awesome transport’s frame remained largely uncovered. There was a communications station on the left as they entered, possessing everything from a basic short-wave radio to a portable computer and scanner/printer set up. The girl didn’t know how much good a large database would do them, seeing that the World-Wide Web was surely a thing of the past. There were six comfortable looking swivel chairs in