Survivors by Z. A. Recht Read Free Book Online

location,” Brewster said. He felt a trickle of sweat break out on his forehead and meander slowly toward his eye. It would be a matter of seconds before the infected located them. “Hurry up, man. He’s almost on us.”
    For a long moment, silence. Brewster glanced down at his radio and wondered if it had died on him. The quick shuffle of infected footsteps toward Brewster and Trev was the loudest thing they’d heard.
    A whine cut through the air, little more than a high-pitched zip, and the infected sprouted a blossom of blood and tissue, center mass.
    The infected let out a sigh, fell limply to his knees, and pitched over onto the pavement. Blood began to pool around the corpse. A moment after that, the crack of an echoing gunshot reached Brewster’s ears.
    “Nice shooting,” Brewster said into the radio, breathing a shuddering sigh of relief.
    “Gracias,” Krueger replied. “That’s a new record for me, by the way. Range finder said just over half a mile.”
    “Congratu-fuckin-lations,” Brewster laughed. “We’ll see if we can double that within the next couple of months.”
    “If it’s you that Sherman keeps sending out on these scrounging treks, I have no doubt of that,” said Krueger. “You’re always screwing up.”
    “Oh, fuck you,” replied Brewster.
    “Hey, now,” said Krueger. “I’m looking at you through the scope of a high-powered rifle. People in that situation don’t usually tell me ‘fuck you.’”
    Brewster held up a hand with an extended middle finger by way of reply. A wry chuckle escaped from the radio.
    Krueger had taken over a tower in an industrial park next door to the research facility the group had occupied several weeks earlier, and lived there almost exclusively these days. None of the infected could seem to master climbing, so Krueger was well protected at the top of his bare-steel castle, to say nothing of the commanding view of the landscape it gave the sniper. In the last month, Krueger had gone through nearly a thousand hard-won rounds of supersonic ammo. As far as his accuracy went, Krueger only ever made one boast: that he didn’t keep track of his hits, only his misses. (“It’s much simpler that way.”)
    “All right, head on back. I’ll keep an eye on you. My shot might’ve dredged up a couple infected closer to the Fac. Better stay on guard as you pass the tower.”
    Trev and Brewster picked themselves up and dusted off, carefully avoiding the spreading pool of blood from the dead sprinter. It was “hot” blood, teeming with the Morningstar strain. One false move and they could find themselves infected as well.
    Almost as an afterthought, as he walked by, Trev swung down with his snap-out baton and smashed in the side of the dead man’s head, making sure the figure would stay down forever.
     

     
    Finding supplies for their group of survivors was getting harder.
    At first it was easy enough—scavenging teams would only have to venture a block or two away to find a half-empty store to loot. After several weeks, though, the nearby larders had run dry, and they were forced to move farther into the infected city.
    Trev found the excursions exhilarating, while Brewster despised them. To Brewster, each foraging expedition was another chance he’d get infected and die, and he had no wish to try either of those things before he reached the age of fifty. Trev, on the other hand, saw it as his civic duty to remove each and every one of the infected he came across. That, Sherman said, was why the pair made a good team. Brewster provided a sense of caution, and Trevor the enthusiasm.
    Trev and Brewster began the trek back to their makeshift base, walking a bit apart, overlapping the areas they scanned while they traveled. Brewster’s forehead was furrowed in thought. All the time he’d spent with Trev over the last couple of weeks had him a bit out of sorts. He shook his head . . . that Trev chose an ASP baton, or sometimes two, as his weapon of choice