Free Z Children (Book 2): The Surge by Eli Constant, B.V. Barr

and
seemed to push harder against the girl to assure her that he wouldn’t ever let
her down.
    Once
Bonnie was seated in the back with Ranger beside her—Bonnie applying Ranger’s
sunscreen in big, generous white dollops—I looked at the cart that was now
toppled over; all but one of the jugs busted and leaking fuel. Sighing, I
grabbed the only surviving container and poured its contents into the tank. Not
even three gallons after all that effort. We needed the diesel to get the hell
out of dodge. What now?
    Maybe
it would be enough—at least to get to the hospital, to find JW…and Chris…if
either were alive. One thing was definite. We couldn’t stay in one place.
    Ranger
may have drawn the monsters off, but they wouldn’t stay gone. Not for long. My
instincts—for what they were worth—were screaming at me to get in the vehicle
and drive.
    With
all the doors closed and the windows up, the heat inside the Hummer was
oppressive. How the hell soldiers used these things without air conditioning
was beyond comprehension. Heat-related injuries in the military must be through
the roof. Thanks to JW, I knew there was a way to let in fresh air by pushing a
lever, but my mind was a total blank and I couldn’t remember where it was
located. I doubted opening a vent would do much anyways. The outside air wasn’t
arctic by a long shot.
    Pulling
the collar of my shirt away from my neck and waving the material briskly, I
tried to cool off my skin, but I only succeeded in warming it further so that
sweat began to gather between my breasts. Some days, I’d like to slice them
off; tits can be such a nuisance.
    Turning
the ignition switch part way, I waited for the warning light to flash so I
could fully turn it to actually start the hummer. It was a maddeningly slow
process to me, even though it only took fleeting moments. As soon as the
vehicle rumbled to life, I put it into gear. It only took a minute of driving
the big vehicle to learn that slow and steady won the race. One rev of the engine
and Z kids and adults started to appear. Fast movement and noise drew their
attention quickly—I should know that by now, be smart enough to avoid things
that attract them. Yet, a slow-moving vehicle wasn’t always ignored either.
Only sometimes.
    Again,
as I depressed the gas pedal only low enough to allow the large truck to creep
along the asphalt road at a snail’s pace, I was hit with the stark reality that
I wasn’t JW. I was just me. And me wasn’t the kind of person that survived
these situations. I wasn’t made for war or physical extremes.
    The Z
kids we passed did not retreat or advance; they only studied us as we moved slowly
by. The look of them, and their perceptive stares, sent shivers up and down my
spine. God, everything about them was so unsettling. Even more disturbing was
that they seemed to realize that the military-issue vehicle was too fortified
for them to attack. I wondered if they were contemplating other ways to get at
us.
    They
shouldn’t be that intelligent.
    They
should all be like the adults—shambling things with little focus.
    Although…the
adults were distressing in their own ways—how they seemed to still stay
slightly ‘themselves’ for a time after infection. My mind jumped backwards to
Bonnie telling me about her grandmother. She’d shared just a few sentences on
the subject, only enough to understand how important the woman had been to the
girl and how she’d saved Bonnie from a group of Z children… after becoming
one of them herself.
    Once
we’d made it a block, I realized I was holding my breath. Forcing my body to
exhale, I focused on the hospital in the distance. My plan was to get close to
where the explosion had been, close to where JW had entered and then wait.
Hopefully he would come out the same way he’d gone in and I would be there with
rescue. Not that it was a very good rescue—especially if the beast of a vehicle
ran out of fuel too quickly.
    Thanks
to JW, the back of