Free Books of the Dead (Book 1): Sanctuary From The Dead by R.J. Spears

be twenty minutes before they even left the building.  The subtext was obvious.  Our team would have to provide the first on-the-scene support (and maybe the only support). 
    We always knew that this was a possibility.  While weren’t used to interlopers, we were no longer taken by surprise when a group wandered into our territory.  Some of the parties were low-key, get-in-and-get-out-as-fast-as-they-could with whatever they could grab.  They were dubbed “Nomads.’  Others came locked, cocked, and ready for battle.  We called them Marauders.
    Only one of these marauding groups had come into town since the Outbreak.  They en the bridge entered the city in an intimidating convoy over leading from Kentucky.  Their vehicles were covered with homemade armor and they brought weapons.  Lots of them.  They had one Army Humvee with a .50 caliber machine gun and all the other vehicles were filled with heavily armed people.  They camped out one day in the downtown area and fortunately didn’t venture our way.  On the way out of town, they shot up a couple houses and killed off a number of zombies for us.  In a “town hall” meeting, Greg said that we would have been no match for them.  It was a sobering reminder that while the undead were a fearsome enemy, the living could be real sons of bitches, too.
    We had no idea what we were driving into.  Logan had his hands full trying to survive so he couldn’t tell us much.  What we did know was sketchy at best.  There were two vehicles and anywhere from eight to twelve armed.
    “Can’t we go faster?” Brandon asked.
    “No!  We don’t know what we’re getting into.  can’t drive into ,” Mike said.  “My platoon tried that in Somalia in ‘93 and we almost got wiped out.  These aren’t the undead.  These guys will shoot back.  We’ll recon the situation first but rest assured, if things getting any worse, any faster, and we’ll do what we have to do.  Everyone put your weapons on auto.  Joel, set mine.”
    The interior of the SUV filled with the clicking sound of guns being switched from single shot to automatic.  Mike navigated in and out of abandoned cars, pushing the SUV along at a good clip.  As we got closer, we saw a few zombies heading in the direction of the gunfire.  One stumbled in front of us and Mike did nothing to avoid it.  The impact with our right front fender sent the thing sailing against a picket fence, smashing down a section of the fence and impaling it.  When I looked back, its arms pin-wheeled helplessly in the air as it tried in vain to free itself.
    We drove for a couple more blocks.  The gunfire was closer now and Mike brought the SUV to a full stop.  We listened intently trying to pinpoint the origin of the shots.
    “It sounds about two blocks away in that direction,” Mike said pointing to the west.  “Everybody out.”
    Mike led us around to the back of the SUV where he opened the hatch and started handing out extra goodies.  Each us got two grenades and two extra magazines.  He handed Brandon a walkie-talkie.  
    “We don’t need to do a John Wayne,” Mike said. “We just need to get them off Logan and his team.  Understood?”  He took each one of us in with a hard stare.  “Let’s go in as quietly as possible so that we have the element of surprise.  If you see any zombies, you know what to do.  We’ll head in as a group, but we may need to split up.  Let’s go.”
    And we headed off to war.
     
    “They’re just a bunch of rednecks with rifles and shotguns,” Brandon said , as we looked from behind a row of evergreen hedges in a yard a block away.
    “That doesn’t make them any less dangerous,” Mike said.  “Logan already has two people down.”
    Logan and his team were holed up in a two story red brick house.  Most of the windows were shot out and the bricks showed evidence of gunshot damage.  We could see three groups of men with weapons huddled behind cars along the