Read Online Orpheus Born by Dan DeWitt - Free Book Online

between us and the truck, climb in, go, and let Anders work, or ...” I let that hang.
    “Or what?” Fish asked.
    Mutt finished my thought for me. “Or we look for survivors first. That's my vote.”
    We both looked at the youngest member of the team. “Oh, we're actually voting? Survivors. I haven't put myself in mortal danger for like a couple days straight.”
    I chuckled. “Sam?”
    Sam was in the corner, looking intently at something.
    “Sam?”
    “Hmmm? Like you have to ask. I was just losing myself in this guy's humidor.”
    I said, “I like where your head's at. Help yourself and let's do this.”
    “I'll let the white kid do it. It's not looting if he does it.”
    We all laughed, and Fish walked over and started stuffing handfuls of wrapped and tubed cigars into his cargo pockets. “Don't say I never did anything for you. That reminds me, you need a nickname. Maybe 'Papa Smoke' or something like that.”
    “You even try and I'll pummel you.”
    “Okay, Sam it is.”
    Mutt cracked the door and scanned the hallway. He closed the door quietly.
    “What's it look like?”
    “With the firepower we're carrying and the shitty mood we're all in but trying hard to not show? It looks a lot like therapy.”
     
     
     
     

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    Mutt hit the nail right on the head. We all had some shit to deal with. I know I did. Still do.
    Probably always will.
    So we went to work killing everything in that building, starting with everything in the hallway.
    We fired from the doorway, two guys per direction, and wiped them out in under thirty seconds. Only a few even had the chance to turn around. The zombies on the outside noticed the shots, and converged on the airport, but it was solidly built. We slipped back into the room and modified the plan.
    “Who wants to play sniper from the roof?”
    Sam jumped at the chance. “I thought you'd never ask.” Fish handed him his radio. “I'll be on channel, uh, six.”
    I said, “Only transmit if you have to.”
    “Got it.”
    “And have fun.”
    Sam touched off a two-finger salute to his forehead and climbed back to the roof.
    Mutt had a set of the night vision goggles, so he scouted every area we went in, and we killed nearly everything before they even knew we were there.
    My guys are good. Smart, disciplined, able to overcome their fear, and crack shots. I'm not a religious man by any means, but if something up there is responsible for throwing us together, he has my thanks.
    It didn't take us long to put everything that wasn't us down. We didn't check everywhere. There just wasn't enough time, and I wasn't going to put us at greater risk by searching unfamiliar areas and confined spaces. It was almost a certainty that we'd missed some zombies. During the outbreak, people would have been attacked, survived, and tried to hide, but it was the Scythe team's job to make sure the stragglers were put down. We'd made enough of a ruckus to make ourselves known to any survivors. The occasional bang from the roof told me some things were still wandering within Sam's range.
    Unfortunately, we didn't find any survivors. I tried to take solace in the fact that we'd, at the very least, put a lot of people to rest, but that didn't help much.
    I radioed Sam that we were going to raid the diner before we grabbed the truck. I didn't know if the people had already been here when the infection kicked off, or if they'd made it here hoping for an escape that never happened, but the end result was the same. We searched through the luggage in the restaurant, looking for anything interesting or useful. I saw Fish scrolling through the pictures on someone's cell phone, and I thought that maybe someone on the island had gotten video, a photo, a text, something that could help me find my family. It was a longshot, but occasionally longshots come in. We grabbed every memory card we could find; it's not like they took up a lot of room.
    We completely emptied several large suitcases and stuffed them