The Coalition: Part 1 The State of Extinction (Zombie Series) by Robert Mathis Kurtz Read Free Book Online Page B

understand why the normal rules of exertion failed to apply to them. What he did know was that they would come at you when they saw you and that nothing but bashing their brain in would stop them. And God help you if one got its mitts on you. The absence of pain meant that they knew no limitations when it came to combat. Their hands were like vises; Cutter could account for that from too many personal experiences to list.
    “You sneaky fucker,” he whispered to it. Already it was halfway across the street. A half dozen other admirers of the jewelry store’s wares came staggering out of the shadows of the broken storefront. Off to his rear , the tens of others that he had initially spotted had finally turned to see what excitement was going down and as one; they gave out with that hideous wail a crowd would always give up.
    The chase was on, and there was nothing to do, but to go with the flow.
    Cutter ran. The sun was up, high in the sky. The weather was really bad for this kind of shit, but you couldn’t choose every situation. Sometimes you just had to bite the bullet and run. What he needed were a couple of those canisters of propane. Ron made his own rounds these days and he had to have a good fuel source to smelt his lead and brass. He was running low on the fuel and it was a must-have item. If not now, then later, and nobody knew what another day might bring.
    If he could keep the dead at his back, he could make a good go of it. It was when they put you into a gauntlet situation where you found the odds stacked almost totally against you. If all you could do was run from one clot of deads to the next, fighting and shooting, creating more noise and attracting more of them, then the situation could deteriorate into an end game from which you most definitely could not emerge. Ron had seen better men than him fall when that happened. They would put up a good fight, but in the end, the numbers would win out. He had to keep that from happening.
    The street in front of him was mainly clear, so he headed off at a good clip in that direction. He seemed to ring as he trotted. No matter how well you secured your gear, as long as some of it was metal and plastic it always sang when you had to move fast. He could only hope that the sound of his movement wasn’t going to attract any attention from quarters he had to pass. At least , he had a good start on the monsters behind him, and he had a several safe houses and panic rooms secured and stocked in the immediate vicinity. They weren’t long-term security, but they would serve as refuge in an emergency. Of course, he preferred avoiding having to use them.
    With a quickness that the dead sometimes showed, and which always bothered him , even if it no longer surprised him, Ron watched as the buildings along the route he wanted to take suddenly disgorged of what looked to be an entire company of the walking corpses. They were of every shape and size—enormous hulking women who had been hideously overweight in life, to raving males with pendulous beer guts moving side to side, to what looked to have been the remains of some kindergarten class demoted to undead status. Young kids, especially, seemed to be able to move quickly in the zombie state. In seconds, the street before him was a crawling wreck of a space, moving with the stinking animated meat.
    “Goddamn it,” Ron hissed. He was almost surrounded. Cutter had, perhaps, a couple of minutes to make a decision, and then all choice would be out of his hands. It was obvious to him that the zombie population in this part of Charlotte had increased in the days since he had decided to hole up and rest in his favorite spot. If he had gone out on a few patrols he would have noticed the ballooning population and been better prepared for it. They were spilling out of the countryside now, headed toward the looming spires of what had once been a busy metropolis. Despite what everyone in the burbs claimed, they actually subconsciously