Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 3): Mitigation Book 3) by Sean Schubert Read Free Book Online

going to restore life to how it had been.
    He looked at the road to their right and thought to himself that the cracks and the breaks in the pavement would likely never be fixed. The partially burned gas station where they had left their stricken friend Dr. Caldwell would likely never be rebuilt. If he allowed it, the sense of permanence with their current state would be overwhelming. As it was, their immediate needs and his concern for those who were counting on him were pressing enough to push any other thoughts from his present considerations. Quite simply, he had too much to worry about today to give much thought to how things will or wouldn’t be tomorrow. After all, if every day was a fight for survival, what did it matter that the Department of Transportation wasn’t repairing potholes on the Seward Highway?
    In front of them, the railroad tracks entered a much larger staging area where tourists had once boarded passenger cars en route to Whittier and Seward. Everything seemed so gray to Neil. The tracks sat in a sea of cinder-colored fine gravel. There were patches of grass and weeds fighting for space here and there, but it was evident the struggle was futile. The sulky ashen color was determined to set the mood. The small building seemingly floating atop the gravel tried its level best to add a splash of color but it too failed miserably. The sky, the ground, their path, the imposing mountain faces immediately to the left and the water of the Cook Inlet off to the right all seemed eager to embrace melancholy.
    Maybe the two of them wandering off like this wasn’t such a good idea after all. He was decidedly unable to focus and Emma was too busy coming to terms with recent events to be watching their surroundings. Neil was about to say as much when Emma stopped dead in her tracks. Neil’s breath rushed out of his chest as fast as adolescents escaping from school at the end of a very long Friday. His feet were forced to make room for his stomach in his shoes as well. He stopped too, trying to determine where she was looking, although there weren’t a whole lot of options.
    He looked at the station building and tried to see what she was seeing. Parked out front were three cars, all of which appeared to be abandoned and in fairly bad shape. There didn’t seem to be an intact windshield on any of them.
    “Either my eyes are playing tricks on me,” she said, “or I just saw someone duck around the back of that building.”
    “Duck around? You mean like they’re hiding?”
    “I guess.”
    Neil was as confused as ever. “But zekes don’t hide.”
    “Well, that’s the theory anyway. What do we do?” Emma asked, never taking her eyes off of the building and its surroundings.
    Neil said bluntly, “Shit, I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure out zombies and now I gotta work on.... If you said someone, then that might mean we’ve got a live person down there.”
    “Remember Claire’s story,” Emma warned. “There might be bad people still out there who wouldn’t think twice about robbing us or maybe even worse.”
    “But if they think the same about us and run off... Okay. I’m gonna keep going forward. We can’t let them just leave. I want you to wait about twenty paces and then follow,” said Neil as he began to walk. He didn’t want to appear threatening but he wasn’t a fool either. He un-slung the shotgun from his shoulder and had the firearm in his hands. He looked over his shoulder to verify that Emma had done the same and she had.
    Neil felt like he was a rat dropped into a snake pit. His sense of vulnerability was close to incapacitating, but somehow he continued walking. He tried to walk without letting his unease affect his gait but each step showed his apprehension. He could very well be walking into an ambush. For the briefest of seconds the thought occurred to him that he would prefer to be shot than chewed to death. He had to admit, though, he wasn’t really interested in