DISEASE: A Zombie Novel by M.F. Wahl Read Free Book Online

in their infancy. Lot has done her best to hoard the community’s gasoline and other fuels, but those supplies are only used under extreme circumstances, and it won’t be long before they start going bad. Lot thinks light may become an exercise in creativity if she’s unable to secure the solar panels before winter begins.
    Above the mantle hangs a painting of the hotel’s exterior, when it was in its prime. The façade of the building is huge and overwhelming. Faceless guests arrive in luxury cars and forgettable doormen guide them inside. It’s like looking at the shiny side of a penny. Now the hotel has armored windows and an overgrown field. One day, she thinks, she’ll see this place reverted to its former glory, but right now she has other priorities.
    Spread out on the desk is the map Opie gave her. Its worn creases threaten to break apart under her hands. Lot contemplates a circle drawn on it with red marker, the ink spotted and dying. Written next to the circle is one word: children.
    Entire colonies of children litter this ravaged world—just like in the Old World, when bombs leveled cities whose names have now been forgotten, it was the children who managed to survive. Their parents gave up everything to ensure their offspring lived. They fed them when they themselves starved, clothed them from their own backs, and laid down their lives to spare the lives of their young.
    Now hordes of these children live in squalid conditions, hiding in just about every nook and cranny. They scavenge and steal, their agile young bodies carrying them quickly out of danger’s path when needed. They live only to lament the loss of YouTube and selfies. They are animals, uneducated and unhygienic. They are rats, holed up in walls, squirming out to root through garbage and spread disease. But those who have survived are tough, they are strong, and they are a readymade labor force.
    There are many communities that need bodies to till their soil, cook their food, and fill their beds. The children, thinks Lot, should be grateful. Many will find their new lives in servitude more satisfactory than living like wild beasts.
    Lot touches the red circle with her finger. It’s dangerous work to corral feral children, but fortunately there are a trusted few in her inner circle that can handle such matters. They see eye to eye with Lot when it benefits the community, and betters their own lives within it. Opie has a real knack for identifying such individuals.
    She sits back in her chair, its still supple leather supporting her gently, then folds the map and drops it into a drawer. It won’t be long before there’s no need to round up children from the wild—they’ll only be young for so long, but they can work, and breed, for a lifetime. She’s put plans in the works that will concentrate their efforts solely on the distribution side of the business, facilitating between the haves and have not’s.
    Lot slides the drawer closed, her touch lingering on the dark polished wood. Years ago she sat at a humbler desk in her home office. It was functional, and not much else, made of cheap particleboard and plastic coated veneer. Lot was sitting at that desk, working on her laptop and creating the monthly budget for her doomed commune, just a few years old back then, when Danny first came into her care. She’d just come into a large sum of money courtesy of his father, Oliver.
    The man was a mess. Wheelchair bound, barely able to get around. He had some vague hope that relinquishing everything to Lot’s cause would garner him mercy in the eyes of the Lord. That somehow, against all odds, a miracle cure would be found and he would rise healthy and vital from his rolling coffin.
    Oliver was a wilted and disgusting man with bedsores and a catheter, a man who relied on his son to feed and clothe his disease-ridden body. It was no life for a seven-year-old boy, watching his father waste away. What kind of person would do that to his own