Free The Zombie Zovels (Book 1): Zombie Suburbia by D.K Lake Page A

Lane was always only a few feet away from me. I suddenly felt like
my shadow had come to life. I arranged the wood and Lane watched with over the top fascination.
“What?” I said.
“You know how to make a fire?”
“Of course, you don't?”
He shook his head.
“How do you warm anything up?”
“I don't, whatever I find I just eat straight out of the tin or carton.”
“What have you got to eat now?” I asked, silently praying he had some food in his bag. I didn't
really want to share my rations.
“Pack of mints and half a packet of dry cornflakes.”
“That's all the food you have?”
“We're not all trained in hunting and scavenging.”
“You just came from town, you telling me you didn't find one thing?”
“Were you not in the same town? That place was swamped, I didn't want to overstay my welcome.
Anyway, there's always the odd house along the way.”
“Yes, but most of the individual houses along the road have already been raided dozens of times by
people like us.”
I got the fire going and searched around in my bag, lifting out the canned tin of soup, then I pulled
out the small saucepan I kept at the bottom.
“What are you, Mary Poppins?”
“I like my soup warm.” I said, searching for my tin opener.
I tipped my soup into the pan and held it above the fire, it took awhile, but it was the way I had been
getting the job done.
Lane looked at the saucepan.
Really? I have to share my rations with him as well.
The only way I had made it this far was by learning to survive on my own the best I could, which
didn't mean sharing. Even when I had been staying at the high school I still had to go out and find
my own food during the day.
I ignored his stares and stirred my soup.
After seeing him drink out of the river, I didn't even want to share my spoon with him.
“I thought you would have been in the same facility as me,” he said.
“No, why would you think that?”
“Because there were others from our school there, your dad was ex-military so they would have
given him a place at the facility, did they not?”
“How do you know my dad was ex-military?”
Lane pulled out a comic book from his bag and settled across from me with his legs crossed.
“Lane,” I said trying to get his attention.
He shifted around and held his comic up higher, covering his face.
“Every time you had Biology I used to find a reason to visit my locker after class... and... I never
really needed anything.”
Lane's locker was right next to my Biology classroom. I waited for Pip which always took a few
extra minutes and Lane would always be waiting by his locker, always searching for a book, or
looking over his shoulder for his friends. And now he's just admitted he was secretly waiting to see
me. I had always wondered what he was doing there, as he always left his locker empty handed.
“Which facility were you in?” he asked.
“I wasn't in a facility?”
“What? Why not?”
“I don't want to talk about it.”
“Where were you?”
“Lane, drop it. I said I don't want to talk about it.”
“Alex-”
“Do I need to shoot you to prove my point?” I said talking over him.
“You're so hostile,” Lane said, pulling out a different comic book.
“Being chased by zombies every other day can do that to you. Usually, when I see something on
two legs I end up bashing its head in.”
I stirred the soup, and Lane didn't bring it up again.
“The facility I was in, it was one of the new builds...”
Lane decided that if I didn't want to talk then he would do the talking for both of us.
“I was there for nearly eleven months, but then some of the military started been reassigned to other
areas, outside was falling apart, the disease was spreading and it was getting into the facility, and
eventually they started moving some of us. I was on the second transport bus out of there, they
moved us to different facility in Oregon. I was there with my parents for another five months before
the contamination seeped into the facility