Read Online The Infected (Book 3): Nightfall by Joseph Zuko - Free Book Online

Alex
covered her mouth with her hands. The admission was too much for her.
    “Handsome?” Brea grabbed a
pillow and pulled it over her face. Tina smiled at her boy crazy girls and
turned to go check on her other big baby, before going back to being a doctor
out in the living room. She pushed open the door to her bedroom and found Cliff
with all of his tools tossed onto their bed.
    “What are you doing?” Tina
asked as she leaned against the door frame.
    Cliff had been tinkering
in his bedroom since Jim left. They didn’t own a garage so most of Cliff’s
tools stayed on his side of their walk-in-closet. He carried out a few scraps
of metal and a drill from the closet and set them on the bed next to the other
tools.
    “I’m trying to make my own
bladed weapon, like Jim’s spear.” Cliff scanned over his stash of tools and
scrap metal, plotting the design.
    “Just take down the wooden
dowel from the hallway closet and tape a knife to the end like his.” She made
it sound so simple. Cliff looked at her in disbelief, it was practically the same
face her girls had just given her when she told them to save themselves and not
wait for a prince.
    “What?” she said with a
smile.
    Cliff went back to work,
“I don’t want to copy him. I want to create my own weapon.” He picked up two
nearly identical lengths of aluminum that stood about three-feet high and two
inches wide. They were two solid, strong chunks of metal that wouldn’t bend
easily and would never corrode. If he put the two pieces together that would
make a really nice handle. That was a good start. Also on the bed was a brand
new, still in the package circular saw blade. A plan was forming.
    “Okay, I’ll leave you to
your inventing,” Tina said as she stepped away from the door frame.
    Men are so weird
sometimes. Why would he waste his time building a weapon when he has a cleaver
and a gun? Tina thought as she headed
back down the hall to check on her patient.
     
    Women are so weird
sometimes. Don’t they get how cool it is to build a sweet weapon with your own
bare hands?
    Cliff shook his head as
his lady walked down the hall. Then he took the largest drill bit that he owned
and slid it into the end of his drill. He held the aluminum handles over a
trash can. He centered the tip of the drill at the end of the handle and
started to make a hole. The little slivers of aluminum fell into the can. His
three children came running into the bedroom to investigate the sudden noise.
    “What are you doing
Daddy?” Eve led the charge into the room and hit him with the first question.
    Cliff paused for a moment
and looked up at his three girls. He had heard them playing in the other room
and heard the comment she had made about him saving them and being like a prince.
    “I’m making a weapon only
a Prince can use to save beautiful princesses.” He finished the sentence with a
big bright smile and the little girls melted over his answer.
    “That’s so cool,” Eve said
with a twinkle in her eyes.
    Cliff started again. The
children got bored watching their dad and they raced back out of the room. It
took him a little time to get through the metal and make a clean hole, but he
finally got it. Cliff drilled another hole at the other end of the handle he
was working on and did a matching set on the other half of his handle. With all
four holes cleaned out he opened the circular saw package and carefully set the
blade between the two handles. The teeth in the saw were so sharp that even
moving slowly with it he almost nicked his skin open. He lined up the two
halves of the handle with the hole in the blade and dropped a bolt through all
three of them. Cliff used two crescent wrenches to tighten the nut onto the
bolt. His powerful arms pulled against the handles of the wrenches until they
couldn’t move anymore.
    His weapon was starting to
come together now. He had the handle and the blade but the handle had hard
edges that were very uncomfortable on his hands.