Free The Mortis Desolation (Book 1): Mortis by Logan Rutherford Page B

are,” Daniel said.
    Mila took her eyes off the road, and looked at the zombies that we passed. She returned her attention to in front of her. She tightened her grip on the wheel. “It’s fine,” she said. Her eyes darted around the road. “It’s nothing we can’t handle.”
    There were about twenty behind us who began to follow our car. I could see a couple every few hundred feet until I couldn’t see past the curve of the road.
    “It looks as if their numbers are getting thicker,” Daniel said as he leaned into the front seat and pointed.
    Mila said nothing. She pulled up the center console of the Range Rover and retrieved a large black walkie-talkie. “We should be in range by now,” she said as she took her hands off the wheel for a split second to turn it on. “Come in, Brinn Base, come in. This is M-Squared, copy, over.”
    Static.
    “Come in, Brinn Base, this is M-Squared, over,” she said again.
    More static.
    “Brinn Base, come in, over.” Fear crept into her voice.
    “Are you sure we’re in range?” I asked, praying she’d say yes.
    She nodded. “I’m sure, but Sean might not have his walkie on. He’s a bit all over the place,” she said with a nervous chuckle.
    “Typical Sean,” John said with a sarcastic tone and an exaggerated eye roll. I appreciated his attempt at lightening the mood, but it didn’t do much.
    We continued our drive in silence, everyone’s eyes peeled to the road, watching as the zombies numbers grew.
    Mila turned on the radio again, and pushed the button to talk. “Brinn Base, this is M-Squared, please come in, over.”
    Static.
    And then it stopped. Someone on the other side pressed the button.
    “He-hello?” the voice of a young boy said in a whisper so full of fear, it made me go cold.
    Mila pressed the button. “Hello?!” she shouted. “Hello? Who is this? What’s going on?”
    “Is this Mila?” the voice asked in a whisper.
    “Paulo? Paulo, is that you?” Mila’s voice shook. Her knuckles turned white as she gripped the steering wheel tighter. She had just as bad of a feeling about this as I did.
    “Mila,” Paulo said as quiet as he could be. He began to cry, but tried doing so without being heard. “I think they heard you.”
    Static.
    “Paulo?” Mila shouted. “PAULO!” She screamed as loud as she could.
    Julia screamed from the backseat, Mila’s shouting having woken her. I turned in my seat to look at her. She had been sitting in the middle of the middle row.
    “Guys?” she said, her voice groggy from having been so suddenly woken from her painkiller slumber. She raised her right hand and pointed out the windshield. “That’s a shit-ton of zombies.”
    The car slammed to a halt, the tires screeching. I turned around quickly to see what was going on. About a mile away, I could see Brinn and its bunched-up buildings that once were the town-square of the small town of Horst.
    And about a hundred zombies spread out that had brought down the first layer of their chain-link fence, and were working on the second.

Chapter Twenty
    “ T here’s a back entrance through an old newspaper building we can go through, but we’re going to have to be quiet,” Mila said.
    “No shit,” I mumbled under my breath. She shot me a look, but I ignored it.
    We sat in the vehicle, a little ways off the road, away from the zombies. The ones meandering down the road were too focused on the congregation building around Brinn to worry about a Range Rover sitting in an old church parking lot, watching the commotion.
    “What about us?” Peter mumbled, but he sounded a little more sober than earlier. The mass of zombies caused him to come to his senses little by little, the pain meds wearing off.
    I turned and look at Rachel. “You alright with staying here with Pete and Julia?”
    “Leave me a gun and the keys in the ignition, and I will be,” she said.
    “Of course,” I told her.
    Mila inspected her pistol, making sure it was loaded. “Alright, we’ll