Resurrection: A Zombie Novel by Michael J. Totten Read Free Book Online Page A

at all. He just reacted and suddenly found himself with Parker’s Beretta. He took a few steps back so Parker couldn’t grab it again, then set it down on the floor.
    “You’re a real stupid sonofabitch, you know that?” Parker said and raised his hands in surrender.
    “Okay,” said the tall man. “Everybody just take it easy. Bobby, Roland, put your guns away.” The two men holstered their weapons. “Now I’m putting mine away too.” He then tucked the pistol into the front of his pants.
    “Kyle,” Parker said and shook his head. He looked like he was about to say something else, but then he paused. He seemed to remember something, and Kyle thought he knew what it was. Parker had two more cleaned and oiled pistols next to the cash register in the checkout aisle. They weren’t visible from the door. Parker wanted to go for them. Kyle could sense it. And Kyle wouldn’t let him. He wasn’t about to tell the three strangers that there were guns over there, but he also didn’t want Parker picking one up and starting a shootout. So Kyle slowly moved to the checkout aisle himself and blocked the path to the register.
    Parker sighed. He knew what Kyle was up to.
    But Kyle was right to do it. The tension in the room had just been defused. He could understand why the three strangers came in with guns drawn. They had no idea who or what they might find in the store. The law had gone silent. There were no patrol cars out there, no sheriff’s deputies, no detectives, no jails, no judges, no justice. Everything and everybody was dangerous, including other survivors.
    Thanks to Kyle now, though, everybody’s gun was tucked away or at least on the floor. They could talk.
    “I’m Kyle,” he said, and stuck out his hand for the tall man. The tall man shook his hand and relaxed slightly.
    “Lane,” he said. “This here’s Bobby and Roland.”
    Bobby nodded curtly. Roland just stood there.
    “I’m Frank,” Frank said. “The big guy with the shotgun is Hughes.”
    Hughes eyed Frank sideways and nodded—suspiciously, Kyle thought—at Lane and his boys.
    “I’m Annie,” Annie said. “I’d say it’s nice to meet you, but—”
    “You’re covered in blood,” Lane said.
    “I’m not infected.”
    “You sure about that?”
    “She’s not,” Kyle said. He sure hoped he was right.
    Lane nodded, though a bit warily. He had no idea that the rest of them didn’t know Annie, that she was a stranger to all of them and had arrived for the first time just moments before.
    “Sorry for coming in here like this,” Lane said. “But it’s dangerous out there. I’m a police officer. You wouldn’t believe the things I had to deal with when everything was coming apart.” Then he checked himself. “Well, maybe you would.”
    “You were a cop?” Hughes said and tipped his head back.
    “Up in Seattle.”
    “Which precinct?” Hughes said he’d been a bail bondsman up there, so it stood to reason that he’d know some cops.
    “Fifty-seventh,” Lane said.
    “What do you think of Chief Berenson?” Hughes said.
    “The police chief?”
    Hughes said nothing.
    Lane shrugged. “He’s okay. Or he was anyway.”
    Everybody got quiet. Bobby and Roland’s body posture shifted an iota or two. They looked at each other. They looked at Parker. They looked back at Lane.
    Shit, Kyle thought.
    Lane nodded to Bobby.
    Bobby unholstered his weapon and pistol-whipped Parker. The gunmetal hit the side of Parker’s head with a hard and wet smack.
    Roland drew down on Hughes.
    Kyle took several steps back. Away from the hammer at his feet. Away from the Beretta he’d taken from Parker.
    Annie backed up too and covered her mouth with her hands.
    Frank said, “Sonofabitch.”

 
    CHAPTER THREE
     
    Parker woke and found himself crammed in a corner just past the cereal aisle with his wrists and ankles bound together with duct tape. Above him loomed a refrigerator stocked with warm cans of Red Bull. His head hurt like a bastard