Read Online Hell's Children: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller by John L. Monk - Free Book Online Page B

guns,” Pete said. “We’re not grownups.”
    “Even though he’s talking like one,” Tony threw in, laughing and looking around to see if anyone else laughed, too. No one did.
    Jack glanced from him to Pete. “We’re not old enough to drive, either. Time to face the facts: we’re the grownups now. We need to act like it.”
    Lisa pointed outside to the party room. “I’m not kicking out those children, Jack, and you’re not either. We have a duty to protect them and anyone else who needs it.”
    He raised his hands in a calming gesture. “Nobody said anything about kicking anyone out. But we have to be realistic. There’s a murderer out there named Blaze, and he’s snapping up all the teenagers he can. What’s more, he’s sucking the area dry of what little food there is. Once he’s done, he’ll have to branch out or his people will mutiny.”
    “Can’t mutiny on land,” Pete said.
    Everyone turned to look at him—calmly, as if studying a strange bug that had crawled into the room—then looked back at Jack.
    Greg said, “How long until that happens?”
    “No idea. When he raided my house, they got enough food to feed three people for a year. Mom had quite the survival pantry. Who knows how many other houses like mine he’s found? Or how many people he’s killed?”
    Jack went on to describe the scene with the gang at his house, the journey with Pete, and the eventual killing of one of Blaze’s own people. He left out that it had been with his rapier. In an odd way, he felt … not responsible for it, exactly, but connected to it on a personal level.
    After he finished, Tony said, “What if we joined him? We’d be safe then, right?”
    Jack pulled a leaf from his learning excursions with his dad and paused, pretending to think about it long and hard.
    “Nobody’s safe anymore, least of all them. Blaze is like Stalin in World War Two. He thought everyone was out to get him, so he started killing his generals and replacing them with idiots. I’m not joining a guy like that.”
    “Stalin?” Tony said. “I get it. He’s like a drug cartel boss.”
    Jack didn’t know much about drug cartel bosses, so he said, “ Exactly like a drug cartel boss.”
    The younger boy seemed to deflate. “So if we ain’t joining them, then what?”
    Jack smiled. “I thought you’d never ask.”

9
    T heir immediate problems , Jack said, were food, secure shelter, manpower, medicine, and a safe and dependable water supply. When Greg pointed out they had a giant pool of water out back, he asked how long it would stay clean when rodents inevitably fell in and drowned. Better if they had something they didn’t have to boil every time they got thirsty, like a natural spring, or a well with a pump (though he had no idea how they’d power it).
    Jack had a few ideas about how to get more food beyond simple scavenging, but didn’t go into that. For now, their hoarded food would have to last them.
    Medicine, he said, would have to be scrounged from homes and any pharmacies that hadn’t already been looted. He figured looters would have gone for the painkillers, and even then, he wondered how many survivors in the area were pill poppers. He didn’t know anything about drug addiction, though he suspected it was one of the reasons his parents hadn’t wanted him going to high school.
    In addition to drugs, the doctors and dentists of the world were all gone. Broken arms could be splinted. He could learn how to pull teeth. But fillings and root canals and the like were now a lost science. Going forward, he asked that everyone maintain a strict no-sugar policy, and that brushing came second only after staying awake on watches in terms of priorities.
    “If I had my way,” Jack added, “we’d limit carbohydrates, too. The Inuit never had to brush their teeth. All they ate was blubber and protein and organs, and they had near perfect dental health.”
    He’d learned that from his mom, who taught in the biology