Read Online The Dead Series (Book 4): Dead End by Jon Schafer - Free Book Online Page A

and put it against her shoulder , the barrel moving around a bit as she looked down the sights and searched for her target. Finding it, she steadied herself and then squeezed her eyes shut.
    Seeing this, Tick-Tock said, “You’re pulling a Brain.”
    She laughed nervously as she thought of the story he had told her of how Brain thought shooting was aiming in the general direction of a Z, closing his eyes and pulling the trigger until he was out of ammunition.
    Resettling the weapon, she aimed again and jerked the trigger. The shot went high and struck a dead thing standing behind her target in the arm.
    “Damn it,” she said out loud, “I missed.”
    “Squeeze the trigger,” Tick-Tock said gently.
    “I was worried about the kick when I shot, but there’s hardly any,” she commented as she looked down the sights again .
    It took her three more tries, but the Z finally went down in a small spray of black pus.
    She let out a little squeal of delight and said excitedly, “I did it.”
    “That you did,” Tick-Tock told her. Turning to Steve, he said, “Mark another target for her and let her go at it. She’s got six more rounds, so let’s see if she can get six more.”
    “I know I can,” she said confidently. “This is easier than I thought.”
    “Then get to it,” Tick-Tock told her before moving on to the man standing beside her with his rifle at the ready.
    For the next two hours, the air around the mansion was filled with the sounds of gunfire.
    ***
    Steve entered his room and fell into bed with his boots still on. Coming through the door behind him, Heather said, “I don’t think so, buddy. Get those things off. We’re not barbarians .”
    Reluctantly, he sat at the edge of the bed and started untying them but stopped suddenly as a thought hit him. Looking at Heather, he asked, “Have you seen Grimm lately?”
    “Not since you went up on the roof to help Tick-Tock,” she replied. After a second, she said, “Come to think about it, I haven’t seen Thing one and Thing two for a while either.”
    “ They were with Brain in the kitchen when I went down there earlier, but I haven’t seen them since. We still need to find out what Grimm’s going to do,” Steve said. “It looks like Igor is along for the ride, and she knows she can come with us, too, but the last time we brought the subject up, she said she was going to stay.”
    “We can’t let her stay,” Heather said. “When that herd coming from the east hits this place, they’ll overwhelm it.”
    “We can’t force her to come,” Steve said. After a second, he added, “And I don’t want to be the one to try it and end up with the pointy end of that scythe up my ass for my efforts.”
    “I’ll try to find her and talk some sense into her before I go on watch,” Heather said as she plopped down in a chair and removed her boots.
    “I’d like to get her input on the escape route we picked , too,” Steve said.
    Heather sighed and said, “We just spent an hour going over those maps , and I swear I’m seeing double.”
    Lying back on the bed, Steve asked, “How many of me do you see ?”
    With a familiar half -smile, Heather said, “One, and that’s more than enough.”
     
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
    Russellville, Arkansas:
     
    Doctor Hawkins led Sergeant Cain into the basement of the farmhouse as he briefed him on his latest orders from Washington. “The Joint Chiefs are pleased with the latest report of the Malecton’s effectiveness and want to start mass producing it as soon as possible.”
    Cain nodded and said, “Might get a little tight in camp with all the extra people coming in to work on it. We don’t have a lot of extra space.”
    Hawkins snorted and said, “No, we won’t be staying here. In fact, we’re almost rid of this wretched place. An instrument of this importance needs to be treated in a manner befitting it, so I sent a request to Washington to have my lab moved to Virginia. I received the approval only a few