Chaos Theory: A Zombie Novel by Rich Restucci Read Free Book Online

the other guys didn’t like that too much. He didn’t want to keep talking into the radio because it gave away their position, and he didn’t know who else might be listening. The woman said she didn’t make the rules and the guy had some choice words for her.
    I had been staring down at the work bench listening, and when I looked up Ship was holding the notebook toward me. We leave in twenty minutes.
    I was going to ask him if he was, in fact, nuts, because of his head wound, the heavy packs, the cold, and the zombies, but he beat me to the punch. He flipped the page, and I continued reading.
    We’re directly north of Wilson’s farm. They’ll see the smoke and come right here, where they’ll find their dead friends. It won’t take long for them to see the shed, then they’ll kill us. I don’t have the tools to take them all.
    Shit .
    He grabbed two of the radios with earbuds and we each tested one. I spoke to him and he gave a thumbs up. He used the squelch button, which, previous to that moment I could never figure out what that was for, and I heard him fine.
    We gathered some more gear and it was time to go. I kept the weapons I had taken as spoils of war, and asked Ship if he would pass me one of the M16s from the bench before we left. He held up four fingers, and I told him there were only three M16s. He shook his head no, and wrote a single letter and number in the notebook:  M4 . Then he pointed to my gun. I got it and asked him what the difference between an M4 and an M16 was. 12 was all he wrote, and I swear I never got that until right now.
    He left the door unlocked, but he also left some nasty surprises for the hillbillies. The explosive kind. I asked him what if a kid found his way in here before the rednecks, and Ship wrote that blowing up was better than being eaten or subjected to whatever the bad guys would do. I had to agree.
    We exited the shed and moved to another. I helped him clear some snow from in front of the other shed’s door and inside was a two-seater snowmobile. Later, Ship would tell me that he had a horse, but it had been at the vet when the plague cropped up. He had been on his way back from the vet’s when he stumbled upon me and my dead pals chasing me. I guess the horse had been a meal for a bunch of those things, including the undead vet.
    After we had maneuvered the snowmobile out of the shed, Ship set another trap. He started the machine and I almost shit myself it was so loud. We both mounted it, and without a backward glance, we split that scene.
    We travelled west for a long time. I don’t know how long but it had gotten dark, my face was frozen, and we were flying across the snow when I saw something weird in front of me. The snow was lit up in spots for just a moment at a time. I squinted, but kept seeing it. Realizing that the spots were moving with us, I couldn’t comprehend what it could be. It made no sense until I looked back over my shoulder. Three lights were screaming through the frigid darkness behind us. Snowmobiles most likely and they were about a half a mile back.
    I leaned forward and yelled to Ship that we had grown a triplet of tails, and he stiffened. You know, his body, I was hugging him. In the most manly and extremely hetero way possible, I was holding on to him as we zipped over the frozen ground.
    The big guy altered our course and he headed north. The lights behind must have been following us (shocker) because they did the same and bore down on us.
    Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you’ve just killed a bunch of inbred bumpkins that were intent on stealing your stuff and then murdering you to death during a zombie apocalypse in a frozen setting. Let that sink in. Now imagine the buddies of said bumpkins are aware of the purge and you see lights behind you in the dark as you flee. What would you think? I’ll tell you. You would think that the bad guys were on their way to finish the job their friends had started. Nevertheless, you