Read Online Life After The Undead (Book 1) by Pembroke Sinclair - Free Book Online Page B

what had happened in that time. From what I’d been told, most of the country had been abandoned. Cities lay in ruin, and bodies were left to rot in the streets. The power on the East Coast had been redirected to Florida so the survivors could live in comfort. There were some stories that pockets of survivors stayed in the West, eking out a living on the sparse reserves that were left. I wasn ’t sure if I believed it all. The country had been populated by millions of people, it was hard to believe only thousands of them were left. All I knew was I was leaving Florida. I was going to be free.
    Liet stared at me out of the corner of his eye, so I pulled myself out of my thoughts and turned toward him.
    “So you ’r e a general, huh?”
    He nodded.
    “How did you get that position?”
    “No one else wanted it.”
    “Really? Why not?”
    “They ’r e scared.” He glanced at me. “You haven ’t been out for a while, but the world is a much different place than what you remember.” He focused his gaze back on the road. “Life won ’t be easy in North Platte. In fact, it ’ll be hell.”  He smiled and looked at me sideways. “ You ’r e lucky. I’ll be there to take care of you.”
    “I don’t want you to take care of me. I want you to teach me to fight.”
    “Oh, you ’l l learn to fight. You ’l l have to. Or you won ’t survive.”
    “I hear you ’r e an ex-con. Is that true?”
    Liet snorted a laugh. “Yeah. I t’s true.”
    “What did you do?”
    He shrugged one shoulder. “Does it really matter?”
    I stared at him for a second. “Probably not. Did you escape from prison or did they let you go?”
    His knuckles turned white as he gripped the steering wheel and his jaw muscles tighten. “What kind of question is that?”
    “I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just curious.”
    “I did my time. I paid my debt to society.”
    “Okay. I’m sorry. I didn ’t mean to offend you.”
    His grip loosened and his face relaxed. “It’s okay.”
    I decided it was best to change the subject. I didn’t know what that was about, but I was pretty sure I didn’t want to see it again. “Tell me about North Platte.”
    “What do you want to know?”
    “What does it look like?”
    “Nothing much. The town still exists, and we ’v e set up camp in the most viable buildings and houses, but most are in ruins. When the threat got out of hand, the people tried to burn the undead down. You can’t kill a zombie like that . You have to destroy their brain. All you do when you light them on fire is make them a walking torch. They light everything in their path until they can’t walk anymore.”
    “Have you killed a lot of zombies?”
    The right side of his mouth pulled into a smile and he looked at me. “More than any man you ’l l ever meet.”
    “Are they hard to kill?”
    “Nah, not if you know what you ’r e doing. Like I said, you have to destroy the brain or behead them. After that, the re’s nothing to ‘e m.”
    “If there’s nothing to them, and they ’r e so easy to destroy, how did they get out of hand?”
    “Because they have numbers on their side. You see, your average zombie isn’t very smart. They have one thing on their mind, and that is to eat. And you don’t want to get bit. If you do, you have about twenty-four hours before you turn into the walking dead. They don’t move very fast because they ’r e dead and their bodies are falling apart. So we have that as an advantage, but where the re’ s one, you can bet in a few minutes there will be more. If you can remain undetected, you ’l l be fine. If you see one, make sure you kill it before it can summon its friends.”
    “How do they summon their friends?”
    “With the most godawful moaning you have ever heard in your life.”
    I thought back to the night my family and I had hid in the attic and shivered. “How do they track you?”
    “I don’t know. No one knows. We’re not here to study the darn