Free THEM (Book 0): Invasion by M.D. Massey Page A

inside.”
    I held out my hand. “Deal. Now, show me how to get up there.”

    The kid’s route up was really simple, to be honest. If I’d have thought about it, I would have gone in that way instead of messing with the doors. Almost all of these places had some sort of roof access, and it wasn’t a stretch to think that they might have external and internal access routes. We walked around the side of the building away from the street, and the kid showed me a makeshift ladder he’d made out of three of old shipping pallets. Nothing fancy, but it’d do.
    After he showed me how he planned to get on the roof, I pulled my truck up to one of the pumps, just in case I needed to make a fast getaway. Then I followed the kid up to the roof. Once we were topside, he steered me to an access hatch with a huge hardened lock on it. “Tell me that you have the key for that, kid.”
    “Duh. Who do you think put that lock on there, one of those things downstairs?” He held up a set of keys that looked like they once belonged to a janitor. I knew immediately what I was looking at; there were a ton of keys for soda machines and other vending machines, which would make it easy to steal change and the contents of any such machine, whenever and wherever you wanted. I knew, because I’d done the same thing when I was a kid. I also saw some bump keys, and a small case that I assumed held a set of lockpicks.
    I smiled and shook my head. “Well, you’re just full of surprises. So, how did you like juvie, kid?”
    He shrugged. “It was okay. Once the older kids figured out that I could get them anything they wanted, they pretty much left me alone.”
    “Sorry I asked. Why don’t you go ahead and pop that thing open so I can gas up and get the hell out of here?”
    He smirked at me. “Alright, alright‌—‌chillax, dude.” He selected a key from his keyring and opened the hatch. “After you.”
    I sighed and headed down into the darkness of the store, whispering to him before I dropped. “You could have left some lights on in here.”
    The kid looked at me like I was nuts. “What, and attract attention to the place? No way, man. This stuff has to last me a while, at least until I can figure out a way to get it all to our trailer.”
    I didn’t even bother gracing that with a response, thinking hard about some deader sneaking up and gnawing on my dangling legs. I lowered myself as far as I could, then I dropped down inside the place, landing on a stack of boxes and making enough noise to wake the dead, literally.
    “Sorry about that!” I heard the kid whisper from above. I heard a chorus of groans and moans coming from the front of the store, so I ignored him and switched on the taclight I had mounted to the front rail of my rifle. Dead or not, I didn’t want to shoot anyone if I didn’t have to, so I decided to see if they’d come looking for me. Sure enough, the first one popped around the corner in short order, a girl of about 17 wearing a black and red polyester smock that said, “Traci” in cursive red letters. The predatory look in her rheumy eyes and the way she snapped her jaws at me allowed me to instantly overcome any hesitation I might have about killing these poor bastards.
    “Sorry Traci, but I think you’d probably thank me for this if you could.” Feeling a slight twinge or regret, I planted a round right between her eyes and she went out like a light. As she dropped I moved forward rapidly, remembering seeing three of them through the window and wanting to avoid getting boxed in. I rounded the corner toward the door where the kid had attracted them earlier, and saw one still rocking back and forth and banging lightly on the glass. I shot him in the head, and then scanned around to see where the third one had gone.
    Nowhere to be found. Shit. I started to pivot around to scan my six, but before I could make the turn I felt a hand grab my shoulder with a near superhuman grip to pull me backward. So, I went