The Last Outbreak (Book 3): Desperation by Jeff Olah Read Free Book Online Page A

dirty money and how he’d made close to a million dollars while sitting in his college dorm room. He then moved back in time and detailed his first years in foster care and how he’d attended six different high schools.
    Without missing a beat, Goodwin threw back what remained in his glass, set it on the table to his right, and finally met Dalton’s eyes.
    “We’re you aware of how I came to be a child of the state?”
    Dalton had heard rumors, but he figured they were constructed out of fear and jealousy. “I’m not sure that I do.”
    There was no hesitation, no halted thoughts. His voice came out slow, with each word drawing on the momentum of the one before. Goodwin wanted to tell his story and he was now lost to the experience.
    “When I was ten years old, my father killed my mother while I sat on a sofa less than ten feet away. He then turned the gun on himself and blew his brains all over our living room.”
    Dalton sat up quickly in his chair, but fumbled for a response. He couldn’t adequately process what he was feeling. It wasn’t necessarily shock and his only thought was to escape the moment. “Mr. Goodwin, you don’t need to—”
    Goodwin continued before the younger man could finish. “I’d hated my father long before he killed my mother and himself. He knew this and wanted me to feel pain every single day of my life. Did you know that my father once told me that it made him happy knowing that I was afraid of him? That he enjoyed seeing the fear in my eyes?”
    Pausing, Goodwin bit into his lower lip and let out a long breath. “The funny thing is, I’d often pray that my father would die. That he be taken from our family. Every time he put his hands on me, every derogatory insult about my weight, every comment about not being worthy of being his child, pushed me closer to wanting to end his life myself. I just never had the courage.”
    Dalton wanted to speak, to change the direction of the conversation, to somehow find his way out of this rabbit hole he was currently falling through. But instead, he stared back at the man who had shed only a single tear and waited.
    “If I’d have done it myself, put that gun to my father’s head and pulled the trigger, my mother would still be alive. Although not much about my own life would have changed. As a child, I would have spent a few years in prison, possibly a few more in therapy, but as it stands, I ended up doing those things anyway. Unfortunately, I also had to lose my mother in the process.”
    Shifting in his seat, he fought for the right words to end his awkward confession. “I was afraid of that man, and because I couldn’t manage to pull together the strength to do what I needed to do, my mother paid the price. Two days later, while sitting in a hospital bed, I told myself that I would never let fear have control over my life again. It had taken from me something that could not be replaced, but would never do so again.”
     
     
    It was Goodwin’s last statement that stayed with Dalton to this day, the reason he was almost too patient with the man who may have just ended all of humanity. And as he drove across the tarmac heading for the jet, he watched the crowds begin to descend on their ride home. Taking in a deep breath, his hand shook as he reached for the pistol sitting in his lap.
    “Mr. Goodwin… are you ready for this?”

10
 
    Snow had once again started to fall. They’d been granted nearly two straight days of moderately fair weather, but it appeared that the storm that had devastated the area a week earlier had now returned. The quarter-sized flakes drifted slowly from the sky, gently collecting along the windshield as Frank cocked his head to the left and watched the dark blue mid-sized SUV slide to a stop, not thirty yards from where his friends had entered the treeline.
    Running his hand over his face and attempting to make sense of the multiple voices pinging off the interior, he slid the Remington 700 from between