Read Online Anno Zombus Year 1 (Book 1): January by Dave Rowlands - Free Book Online

our feet was a sickly shade of green, not the lush verdant green of spring, certainly not the honey-golden colour it usually is this time of year.  Instead it had the hue of wrong green, that is the only way I can describe it.  Like military green had been taken out the back, shot and left to rot over a month or two.  And then had been chundered on by someone who had been overindulging in crème de menthe straight out of the Chernobyl reactor.  The sheep were having trouble eating it, that was certain.
     
 
     
mid-afternoon
     
Finally, after the fourth service station we had tried, we struck it lucky at the fifth.  Only a few Dead around and the petrol tanks were almost full still.  Junior and I took care of the dozen or so shambling corpses that were wandering about the place while The Kid made sure the inside was safe, and rooted around for supplies.  He found a bunch of packets of potato chips, other assorted munchie-munch varieties of 'food' and a whole shitload of bottles of water.  When we first started bottling water for sale I thought it wasteful and stupid, but now I am sucking down some fresh spring water and loving every drop.  Hey, the world may have ended but fucked if I'm not going to take out a little bit of time to enjoy the little things!  If anything, the apocalypse makes it that much more vital to do so...
     
 
     
“Something strange is happening to me...”  The Kid said to me at one point as I filled the Valiant's enormous petrol tank.  “I haven't needed a shit in days, haven't had to piss either.”  He glanced downwards at his leg.  “Haven't felt hungry or thirsty either, for that matter.”  I still put it down to the close call we had with the bandits at the commune, but he was not convinced.  He wandered off, pausing occasionally to sniff the air.  All I could smell was motor oil and gasoline, but considering he grew up on the commune he was probably unfamiliar with the scent.  When he was out of earshot Apocalypse Girl approached me.  She didn't entirely trust The Kid.  Not that she was afraid of him, she didn't think he was going to be a liability to the group at all.  No fear that he would deliberately infect any of us at all.  No, she was concerned because she had noticed exactly the same thing that he had just broached with me.  Everybody else had felt these needs.  She just didn't want him eating anybody.  I doubted that it would come to that, but better to be aware of the potential for danger.
     
 
     
Since we were in a nice open area we decided to sleep inside the service station.  The Kid insisted on sleeping outside, since he was by far the least likely to attract any Dead attention, and he said himself that he might be a danger.  He looked scared shitless about causing another one of us harm.  Archer found a nice easy way of getting up onto the roof and set himself up there for the first watch.  Luckily it was a full moon tonight, so there was plenty of light by which to see.  I told The Kid to stay under cover until morning, as, bright thought the night was, it would be far too dark to distinguish Living from Dead.  He nodded.  I handed him Fat Dealer's shotgun and went inside.  Archer would wake me around ten for my shift, which could last until perhaps two in the morning.  It was hard to tell time without watches.  Nobody had a watch, out of everybody here.  Apocalypse Girl and I had been relying on our mobile phones to tell the time, but they had died on the first day, and so far we had not had time to even think finding some way of charging them.  The hippies on the other hand, had no mobiles, no watches, no clocks and no need for them.
     
 
     
I looked around on the shelves with the last bit of dying sunlight.  There were other basic supplies here that we would need.  I made certain to grab several containers of oil and coolant, and a couple of sets of jumper cables, putting them neatly out of the way near the front door so we