LovewithaChanceofZombies by Delphine Dryden Read Free Book Online Page A

slightly
unfamiliar in her hands, and that was unsettling.
    The ride was uneventful, and the farm was peaceful under the
midday sun. From the rear window Lena spotted a few isolated workers, but the
farthest fields were quiet as the grave. The northwest corner was deserted,
nothing to see but rows of slender plants that formed a wall of green higher
than Watson’s head when he stepped out of the van to scan for prying eyes.
    A few seconds went by, Lena and Lucas waiting while the van
ticked and creaked, settling around them. The knock on the back door made them
both jump, and they shared a sheepish grin as Lucas leaned to turn the handle.
    The farm was even quieter, in its way, than the lab. Lena
followed Nye, who strode purposefully toward the fence that stood about thirty
feet past the last row of hemp plants. She could see the repair, a tangle of
barbed wire coiled in a lethal spiral between two posts that looked new. The
wood was still bright, unweathered, and the whole section stood out clearly
between the adjacent lines of horizontally strung razor wire.
    “They’ll be fortifying the whole thing tomorrow,” Watson
said from behind them. “For now, they’ve just stuck in whatever they could
find.”
    “The forest must be a quarter mile from here,” Lucas said,
lifting a hand to his forehead as he gazed toward the distant tree line.
Zombies liked forests, with their indigenous snacks and soft soil for digging
into at night. “They came all this way when the sun was already rising?”
    “So the guards said,” Watson confirmed. “Lucky their patrol
took them past here when it did, or things could’ve gone a lot worse. They’ve
increased the frequency of the patrols along here, but that may not cut it.”
    Lena had slung her rifle to her back while she walked, but
she gripped it automatically as she looked out at the trees. “This doesn’t make
sense, sir.”
    Watson tilted his head, ready to hear. Lena pointed at the
fence line and then off to the woods. “The sun had risen when the stragglers
got this far, and the report said the patrol arrived on the scene and stopped
the zombies when they were already crashing the fence. But look how far it is
to the trees. It must have been nearing dawn when they left the cover and
started this way, and they just won’t do that if they don’t have a reason.
They’re slow and sleepy by that time, and the sunrise would’ve stopped them if
they weren’t highly motivated. There’s food in the woods. Maybe not their
favorite, but they weren’t likely starving. So if the patrol guys weren’t
visible, what was the motivation?”
    “Which direction was the wind blowing?” Nye asked. “Is there
a weather recorder here?”
    It was an agricultural station. Watson was sure there was a
weather recorder, so he returned to the van to radio while Lucas and Lena
walked back more slowly to the line of hemp stalks. Lucas took out a
pocketknife and started scraping samples from the closest stalk, plucking a
leaf here and there.
    “Move over,” Lena said after watching a few seconds of that.
Pulling out her boot knife, she sawed straight through the fibrous stalk about
halfway up then presented the three-foot section to Lucas like a giant green
nightmare of a bouquet.
    “Thanks.”
    “Do you need any of the roots?”
    “Sure.”
    He seemed pensive, staring out past the fence for a few
seconds then closing his eyes and turning his face up to the sun. A faint,
bittersweet smile crossed his lips. Lena glanced away, feeling as if she was
intruding on something unbearably private.
    She thought Lucas was wrong about himself. He really was a hero, a better person than most, inherently admirable. In the face of certain
death, he was giving up a few of his remaining days trying to solve one last
puzzle for the people he would leave behind. He was even trying to do his
part—better late than never—to contribute to the future existence of the human
race.
    Lena didn’t know how he