Free POW! (Book 1): The Zombie Days by Peter Wonder

responsible, good guy.
    "You've been blown up and shot and nearly attacked by a wild animal. I'd feel awful if anything else happened to you on my account," she said with sincerity in her voice.
    "And if any of this had happened to anyone else, I'd feel worse than I do now, so, if you don't mind, I'll carry on and see how this all plays out. Maybe we’ll get lucky and I’ll be the only one with any scars to show off after this is all over." I stuffed my mouth with a spoonful of what looked like chewed up, spat out dog food.

Chapter Nine
    By the time everyone had finished eating, my leg was feeling a little bit better, despite the injury having happened so recently.
    "And I believe that just about concludes our lunch portion of the tour," I announced as I stood with my all natural crutch. "If you could please follow me, we must be on our way." I was enjoying playing my own little game of tour guide.
    After a couple of miles I decided that I would do just fine without the crutch, so I let it go. After dropping the crutch, which went back to its boring old life of just being a regular stick again, I tried my weight on my leg. It seemed like it would be good enough to go on without the aforementioned severed tree limb. 
    "Hey, Carolina? Mind if I get my piece back?"
    "If you think you're okay, then here you go."
    We traded weapons. I had a feeling we were getting closer to the bottom of the hill and that there would be more of them to keep us busy soon.
    I issued a gesture asking them all to hold still so I could listen to see if we could hear any of them in or near our area.
    There was nothing but silence.
    We continued onward.
    ***
    Unfortunately, our luck of silence would not continue much longer. We could hear the shambling walk of the undead as we neared the base of the hill. With less incline they’re able to walk around more freely. Back in town it had been some time since we've encountered an actual “horde” of zombies greater than five, but that streak was about to be broken.
    I climbed up a tree—using mostly upper body strength, thanks to my injured leg—to get a visual on what exactly it was that we were hearing. It looked like there were about 25 of them headed on a path that would intersect ours. Not only that, but I could see rooftops. I could see roads. I could see the town. We should be able to make it there before it gets much darker. But we would have to deal with the mini-horde before we could make it there.
    I slid down from the tree and informed the others of my new intel. I had to keep them focused. I gave them the plan. "Kyle and Carolina, you go behind that cluster of boulders over there." It was about twenty yards farther from the zombies than our current position. "Evelyn and I will go up this tree, it's stable and we'll be secure up there. Don't fire until I do. I'll take out the one about five deep in an effort to take most of them out while knocking the rest down. After that, we can start picking off the rest of them. Hopefully, the initial explosion will leave them disoriented."
    Everyone knew their roles in the battle that was soon to take place, and so retreated to their places.
    Nestled high up in a tree, I could see Evelyn had fallen into a false sense of security. Her body looked relaxed even though her face looked thrilled to see the monsters up close like this.
    "I hope you understand that our plan is to re-kill all of them," I said, remembering our first encounter with one another.
    "I'm not an idiot, Peter," she said. "Our conversation earlier really helped me out a lot, actually. Almost like if you weren't such an asshole you could have been a therapist in another life." She let out a cute giggle.
    "This isn't something I say often, so don't take it lightly: this is no time for joking. We are about to battle a large group of the undead, and each of them has the potential to kill all of us and, even though they are dead already, we are killing them in a way."
    "I'm trying to make