Read Online THE SAGA OF THE DEAD SILENCER Book 1: Bleeding Kansas: A Novel Of The Zombie Apocalypse by L.ROY AIKEN - Free Book Online

gone; I figured you’d left already!”
    I go to the freezer and get some breaded chicken tenders. I wish I’d thought to put these in the refrigerator to defrost last night but moving all those twisted-faced corpses turned me off all thoughts of food. I was too happy to grab my new gear and get out. Last night was no good until I got a fresh, non-corpse-carrying luggage carrier up to my room and moved everything down to the second floor. Then I could finally work on my growler of high-end draft before passing out.
    “Look,” Tanner says. “Like it or not we need each other. Our best chance for surviving is to have someone on shotgun at all times. Alone, we don’t stand much of a chance. We have to sleep. Those things don’t.”
    I pull my large oval plate close for the eggs. Something’s missing. Orange juice? I drop the first round of chicken tenders into one fry vat, a bag of onion rings into the other. The crackling and steam causes Tanner to step back.
    “ There’s probably an optimal number of people who could expect to make it safely through the swarms of dead and bands of marauders,” Tanner says as the racket dies down. “Right now it’s just you and me. But we need to build on this. We’ve got to trust each other!”
    “It doesn’t occur to you that trust might have gone out the window when you let that zombie cougar have at me last night?”
    “What? You’re going to hold that against me?”
    “Unreasonable as it sounds to a n arrogant, sociopathic fuck like you, Tanner, yes.”
    “Okay, okay! Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about but I obviously crossed a line somewhere. I’m sorry! It won’t happen again. Will you accept my apology?”
    “No.”
    “You’re not accepting my apology, then.”
    “I just said I wasn’t. That you don’t know what you’re apologizing for renders it invalid.”
    “All I heard was cursing and my name.”
    “Then we’re done! Look, this might be the last time any of us will see eggs, bread, and fried cheese sticks, and I’d like to say a proper goodbye! So—” I jerk my head in the direction of the door.
    Tanner opens his mouth to say something but shuts up. He turns and leaves the kitchen. I hear the TV come on in the lobby.
    I’ll give him credit. He could have pulled his gun. And the more I think about it—goddamnit, he’s right. We both need a wingman. The hell of it is someone like him won’t entirely have my back. And you could fill a fleet of Luxury Tanks with the fucks I don’t give for him.
    Which brings home how long it might be until I have eggs again. The monsters were eating the family dogs at the mass burial; will chickens survive this? Cows?
    All of a sudden I flash on my wife. My son and daughter. Our cats.
    I feel the heaviness upon me. Just a s it was when I woke up, writhing within the constricting black coils of an anxious pre-dawn hour before I managed to fling my legs over the edge of the mattress. I try telling myself I would have left my wife well cared for before I began furnishing my new house in Kansas City.
    Right. I was still leaving her to grow old and die in that crumbling little starter cottage in that crumbling old neighborhood in crumbling north Colorado Springs.
    Which she did anyway.
    My wife of 22 years.
    My son. My daughter.
    Goddamn, and those poor fucking cats! (Yes, the cats!)
    The timer beeps over the fry vat. I pull up the basket, bang it to the side to knock the oil off, and hook it to drain. The snap-clicks as I shut off the fryer and the grill—I wish I had something less trite than “sounds like the slamming of coffin lids” but it’s all I got.
    I hear the TV outside in the bar. I look around the kitchen. The bright overhead lights. The fry vats and electric grills. Humming. Buzzing. Functioning.
    Like regular TV programming, this is all going away.
    I doubt there was even an evening shift to relieve at the power plants this a.m. How about the water and sewage treatment plants? How many