After The Virus by Meghan Ciana Doidge Read Free Book Online Page A

hands and knees staring at his bile mixed with the Infected’s brains.
    “We’ve been gone way long,” One Ear rambled. “I’m real tired of walking ‘cause we got to drag It with us, and we’re super low on blood packs.”
    Will really didn’t feel like engaging in woe-is-me conversation, so he kept quiet and listened for a way out, but One Ear wasn’t forthcoming on that topic.
    “Point is, it needs feeding, and excepting your blood immunity, you’re no value to us.” One Ear finished with an almost friendly toe nudge.
    Will didn’t doubt the truth of those few words, but he’d never heard his self-worth laid out so precisely and with such doom saying before. One man could repopulate the earth with enough fertile women. He wasn’t that man. ‘ Course, in a generation, inbreeding would be a problem. He continued to keep quiet.
    The Infected didn’t seem to be doing well without its missing brain chunk. The right side of its face was running down into its neck.
    “Shit, this guy don’t know,” the buddy whined.
    “Of the two of you fools, why Hal had to be the one to get his head bashed in,” One Ear griped. “He doesn’t ask questions, not about us, who we’re looking for, or It, means he knows or has heard about the Infected, about us.”
    “Right.” Despite his agreement, Buddy didn’t get the drift.
    As he hunkered down beside Will, One Ear twirled his gun, once, like his wrist ached.
    “You’re going to want to bind that bite, before you lose so much blood —” One Ear got his gun grabbed as punishment for his near friendliness. Will twisted One Ear’s wrist to the breaking point, got his own finger also over the trigger and the barrel up One Ear’s rather wide nostril. One Ear was more angry than scared. It bothered Will that, even with the upper hand, he just pissed people off. At least Buddy freaked out.
    The Infected, done with the packed blood, sniffed the air and started pawing the ground in his direction. One Ear smirked. ”It takes two of us to hold it.”  
    “How do you know, with me and my bloody wound so near, it won’t take a bite of you by mistake? It don’t seem to hold its relationships too close.”
    One Ear looked uneasy at that line of reasoning, and they slowly negotiated a standing position that placed One Ear’s back to the Infected and Buddy.
    “I’m just passing through, you’re just passing through,” Will suggested. “We continue on, forget we met, and you two try to not get eaten.”  
    “You don’t get it, Cowboy,” One Ear nasally explained. “The Boss don’t accept no empty hands or, worse, excuses.” He indicated his lack of ear.
    “Listen,” Will countered, getting frustrated, “I think we —”
    “They aren’t going to listen to your negotiations, Will.”   Rhiannon, armed and dangerous, stepped into the alley.  
    The Infected groaned and strained at its neck chain enough that Buddy’s feet slipped a bit in the packed dirt.  
    He felt his blood pressure spike, but not in a good way, at Rhiannon’s appearance.
    “Hello, dolly! Remember me?” One Ear practically beamed.
    “Sure do,” Rhiannon answered, and then, leveling her shotgun, blew the Infected’s head off.
    The close-range blast destroyed what was left of its brain.  
    It crumpled.
    Buddy, shrieking, dropped the now useless chain and pawed at the splatter of brain remnants on his face.
    One Ear’s mouth hung limp even as his eyes bulged. He shoved the gun away from his nose, and, still staring at It on the ground, let out a keening moan.
    In a step, Rhiannon had Buddy knocked down with her foot on his chest.
    “Will, have you got the asshole covered or not?” she demanded.
    One Ear had fallen to his knees by the Infected and seemed to be having some sort of breakdown. He began wailing and practically foaming at the mouth.
    “Jesus, oh, Jesus, oh Jesus,” Buddy, completely terrified by One Ear’s behavior, blubbered. He didn’t get what the hell was going