Read Online Resurrection (Apocalypse Chronicles Part II) by Laury Falter - Free Book Online Page B

smiling at me. I smiled back and felt his eyes on me as I moved toward the pine dining table. Canned food was already placed in a cluster on its edge. Next to it was a manual can opener.
    Doc sat beside them, spooning heaps of chili into his mouth, while Mei was hunched over canned chicken next to him. Beverly stood near the sink, harboring the luckiest find of all…a tin of chicken soup.
    “Mmm…mmm…mmm,” Doc mumbled excitedly from his seat on the table. He slid off, gesturing maniacally to me before nearly shoving me to the pantry. He opened the door and stepped aside for me and Harrison, who had followed out of curiosity.
    Peering in, my first instinct was to mindlessly grab Harrison’s arm. Then I gasped.
    It was stocked. Soups, fruit preserves, beans, vegetables, chicken. Stacked four, some five, deep. It was a treasure trove.
    His mouth full of food, Doc tipped his head back to contain it, and gurgled, “Thought you’d like that…”
    I immediately started to salivate, and then I realized what was missing.
    Raw meat.
    “Harrison…,” I exhaled and my hand dropped to my side. From his expression, he’d realized it too. “Damn it, Harrison, I’m so sorry…”
    Doc swallowed quickly, waited for it to slide entirely down, and chuckled, “Damn nothing. Got something for you too, Harrison.”
    He pushed aside the blinds, making Beverly jump and glare in the process, before jabbing a finger at the window.
    “Through the trees,” he advised.
    We narrowed our focus to just beyond a cluster of red birch to find something slow and large lumbering into view.
    “A cow,” I muttered and then realized what I’d said. “A cow!”
    “No…cows-uh,” Doc corrected. “More than one.
    We missed them the first time, having been so conscientious of the house instead.
    “That’s right, buddy,” Doc said slapping Harrison’s shoulder. “Fresh, raw meat.”
    Amazed, Harrison hadn’t shifted his eyes from the view since they landed there. Unadulterated relief swept his face and seemed to have planted itself in place. “They must be downwind,” he muttered, as a smile crept up. “Downwind…”
    “You know what I think?” Doc asked.
    “I think you better rest up because training starts tomorrow.” He laughed to himself, stood to his full height and walked to the kitchen door.
    “Starts?” Beverly said through a scowl. “Uh, in case you forgot, it already did and I whooped some booty this afternoon with my rod.”
    Harrison opened the door and walked down the steps while answering her over his shoulder. “The first lesson wasn’t about weapons.”
    “What was it about then?” she called out before the door could close.
    “Teamwork,” he shouted back.
    The door shut but that didn’t stop Beverly.
    “Where are you going?” she demanded. “Where’s he going?”
    “He’s going for dinner,” I said.
    Disgusted by the thought of it, she turned away, frowned, and forgot all about his comment on teamwork. But I hadn’t. I felt my lips turn up in a smile as I watched Harrison stride confidently across the yard and into the trees. It wasn’t until then that I understood what he had been attempting to accomplish, standing in the woods, badgering us to attack him with metal rods. That lesson had essentially ended in the cone but we had learned it regardless. That was when we came together to defend ourselves against the Infected. We had leaned on each other’s strengths to survive, and we had started to form a team.
    True to his word, over the next several days, Harrison trained them. Hard. He worked them on cardio, surveillance, hand signals, and tested them to think strategically on how to get out of situations they might end up in. Each night, he’d stand guard over the house while we slept.
    I followed along even though my cardio was at its optimum level, surveillance had been branded into my subconscious by my dad, and thinking strategically came as second-nature to me. The hand signals were