Read Online Lost in the Apocalypse by L.C. Mortimer - Free Book Online

Not really. Emily had been alone for most of her life. While Melanie had always had large groups of friends and enjoyed the company of boys and girls and gone to parties, Emily had been focused on studying. She had been focused on her writing. She had been focused on creating a career that would put her stories in bookstores and get her appearances at conventions.
    The loneliness had never bothered her.
    Now Emily worried not about being alone, but that if she was left at her cabin by this group of survivors, she would simply think about her sister until she picked up the gun and joined her.
    She couldn’t give up that easily. Not after all they’d overcome.
    Emily turned back to the group.
    “Where are you guys from?” She asked.
    “Not really the time for small talk, princess,” Robert grunted. Emily glared at him.
    “I’m asking so I know where you guys have been. I’ve been that way,” she pointed north, toward Howe. “It’s four miles from here to Howe. Road blocks. Broken cars. Abandoned houses. Some Infected, but not many.”
    “What was the population pre-infection?”
    “15,000,” she said.
    “And that’s not many to you?”
    “My sister was in Worthington,” Emily said. “I went there and back. Howe is nothing compared to Grimsby.”
    Neil let out a long, low whistle. Everyone stared at her for a minute. Finally, Kari spoke.
    “We came from the west,” she said. “I-70 isn’t nearly as desolate as it should be. Lots of farms and empty spaces, but some of the small towns have banded together to either kill anyone who tries to come through or to scare them off. No one wants to share resources.”
    “We got lucky a few times,” Butter commented. “But only at the beginning. The more time went on, the stingier people got.”
    “With what?” Emily prodded.
    “Information, food, everything.”
    “Your base was out that way?” She turned to the west, as if she could picture where they had come from.
    “In Colorado, across the border.”
    “So north is out, and west. We can go south, but there’s not really anything there. I suppose it depends on whether we want to find a place to shack up or whether you guys are on some special quest to figure out what started the apocalypse and how you can save humanity.”
    Neil glared at her.
    “I’m no hero,” he said. “We go east.”
    Surprised there wasn’t any arguing or discussing, Emily silently grabbed her bag and followed the rest of the group down her driveway and up the road. At the first intersection, they began walking east on a gravel road Emily had only driven down a few times.
    The group walked in silence for about an hour. Their pace was steady, but tiring. They weren’t running, by any means, but Emily’s exhaustion was beginning to catch up with her. It was difficult to keep up with the airmen. It was difficult to accept the fact that she didn’t have as much training as them. She had never considered herself to be out of shape, but soon, every step was a struggle. Her feet were sore and she was sweaty, but the group pressed on.
    Nobody talked.
    It gave her plenty of time to think about what she wanted to do with her life and how she had failed up to that point.
    Who was she going to be now?
    She had been on “go” mode for the last month. Since the first reports of a deadly infection had started to roll in, Emily had barely slept or eaten. Her clothes were baggy and her hair was stringy and greasy. She suspected she’d have dreadlocks before long.
    All she wanted to go was curl up in front of a fireplace with a kitten and just sleep until the world came back.
    Only the world wasn’t coming back.
    “These roads are shit,” Cody observed after awhile. He kicked a loose piece of gravel and it went careening into a ditch. Only a month, and it was already overgrown from rain. The road looked much more abandoned than it actually was. It looked like no one had driven down it in years: not