The Failed Coward by Chris Philbrook Read Free Book Online

pitch, and taking a few breaks to run to the windows after hearing gunshots, I politely told him I wasn’t interested in moving, and Gilbert said the same. After a quick exchange, Patty and Abby both said they had no interest in going anywhere as well.
    I then started to send a sales pitch Mike’s way to have them come here. As great a place as the school they’re in now is, I think ALPA is better. I gave him the pros and cons, and just like me, he politely declined. He also pointed out that he wasn’t the leader, and no matter what, he’d have to go back to Lisa to get a more official decision.
    That’s when Abby spoke up. She suggested that we maintain and occupy both places, because they both had value. They were safe, defended, and far enough apart that it was highly unlikely that both places would fall should something happen. She made a good case for both locations, but made a strong point in that populations were vastly different, and that because ALPA was a much larger place, with plenty of open housing, we should have more people here.
    Peeling off a handful of people from Westfield would lower their burden there both on food, electricity, and water. We have plenty of electricity and water, as well as a fair amount of food. Once spring hits, we can start our crops here on the athletic fields, and she suggested that Lenny could give us or trade to us enough chickens to start our own mini-farm, that way instead of relying on a single location for milk, eggs and poultry, we had two. It wasn’t about trade, it was about survival. I mean shit, this is a literal moment of having all our eggs in one basket.
    She went on and on and even came to the enlightened conclusion that we could easily take on as much as another six people here with no problem. She’d done the math on her own apparently, and she was convinced we had enough food to make it to fall with no problem. The more I thought about it, the more sense it made to me. We could use extra hands to get things done here, and I’m sure there are Westfield people itching to get the fuck out of that high school. Who the hell wants to go back to high school?
    Mike had to agree with her at least on some levels, and he conceded that he’d bring the idea to Lisa. Mike was certain that there would be some people that would want to get out of there, but we needed to move slowly on this for plenty of good reasons. Look at what happened the last time a place took new folks in. Ka-boom.
    Gavin and LaFrenz returned shortly after that and said they’d killed two more undead wandering near the bridge. The weather the past few days has been cold and raw. The two guys were shivering their nads off as they told us the story. It was cute when Abby leapt to Gavin’s rescue with a warm towel and a hot chocolate. Those two are adorable together. I actually watched Patty’s face intently as the two youngins did their little dance of romance. Patty actually looked happy as Abby attended to him. I think she might finally be seeing this less as Abby being taken advantage of, and more of Abby being happy. It’s been a long time since that girl was genuinely happy.
    I can virtually guarantee you who the first person to sign up to move here is. I’m no Nostradamus, but the writing is on the fucking wall about those two.
    Plans moving forward. If campus and Auburn Lake Road remain reasonably silent in terms of zombie movement, we’ve got a lot to do. We need to get gasoline pretty ricky tick here. We’re not out, but our barrel reserves here are low enough to make my asshole itch. I’m uncomfortable about it to say the least.
    Tomorrow morning if all is well, Patty and I are going down to the nearest gas station heading towards town. It’s right near the spot in the road where Brian and I had our meeting and he flipped out over the fire trucks. Maybe two miles from the gas station Sean torched. We are going there to assess a few things.
    Is the gas station surrounded by undead? If