Infected 8: Impulse: A Whole New Day by P. S. Power Read Free Book Online

she was busily escorting might end up being caught. If she'd been alone, she would have gone into the place the tall and decently fit looking boy was pointing to. Even if it meant fighting her way out against a horde of equally hungry military men, the idea of stuffing her face with shelves full of snack treats sounded heavenly at the moment. Her tummy had stopped grumbling a while back, and had moved all the way into simply hate stabbing her with cramping.
    Luckily she wasn't working very hard at the moment. If she'd been running at top speed, or fighting full out, it would have been a lot more intense. Eventually, or at least the theory went, if she didn't eat enough, she'd die. True, everyone else had that problem too, but the doc's back at the old base had told her that she wouldn't make it three days without food, unlike regular people. That meant the call of that little store was powerful for her. In fact, she nearly got up and dashed over, and would have...
    If she weren't the one in charge at the moment.
    Grinning, and trying to fight the urge to be a moron, she nodded, showing Will that she got that he'd motioned to the place, doing what she'd said. She really wanted to keep that idea going. Even better, she noticed that there were five soldiers inside of it, illegally looting the place for their own snacking pleasure. That was a war crime. It pissed her off a little, seeing that. Not that she would have been morally better than they were, if she'd been the thief, but at least she had a real reason to do it. These jerks were just eating her lunch. Right there in front of her.
    Gesturing, trying not to seem pissed off about it, she got them all heading out again. They were mainly ducking, which was a lot faster than trying to get them to crawl the distance. It was about a mile and a half to the end of the woods, or, more exactly, to the end of town. There was dense growth past that, if in patches that had been planted by someone a while back. They were open to being seen as they walked, trying to seem calm and relaxed, strolling right down the sidewalk near the end. There was no cover in the area, for a good while, not there. The woods they wanted to get too were about five miles past that, but once they cleared the area, none of the military amassing seemed all that concerned about a bunch of kids.
    Not even guilty seeming ones.
    The trick there, she realized, was letting Will and Charity do the talking for them when they were stopped, while pretending to be a lot younger than she actually was. Famous or not, none of the men in green camo noticed her all that much. They were busily looking at Charity and Deidre the whole time.
    Because the taller girls looked to be nearly in the dating age range of the young men that were there. It wasn't really true, unless they wanted to break some moral codes, but it still looked about right.
    The man that stopped them pretended to be stern. Scared and a bit like he wanted to shoot someone. After a second though the weapon moved away from them and pointed back toward where they came from.
    "Did you get caught up in there?" He gestured toward the town, his face aimed toward the sound of gunfire. It was in the distance behind them, not close.
    Bridget nodded, trying not to call too much attention to herself, while alerting the others not to say too much. Will glanced back from where they came, and just nodded, too.
    For a half second, before talking.
    "Yeah. What the fuck happened? We were all at school when the freaking world exploded. We hid, but decided that we needed to move away from the blast area. There was shooting though, so we had to crawl through the brush, to try and not be seen." There was a shrug and a legitimate look of worry on his face.
    It worked though. The men there seemed to buy that they weren't a bunch of Infected people, or aliens at least. Just the kids they seemed like.
    The man in charge shook his head a bit.
    "We don't know much. It seems like someone