The Orphans (Book 5): Civil War by Mike Evans Read Free Book Online Page A

couldn’t match his hate for the Turned even if he tried. He had accepted the way the world was. If they threatened him, a friend, or a future loved one then he would kill them with no problem. If they could hunt them until the point they could be safe that was fine too, but he didn’t have the hate and feelings of responsibility that Shaun did. Greg said, “But your head has to be doing good now with Ellie ready to get released, right? I mean you are going to be able to handle your shit. I know it’s been a few months since you’ve had to kill one of the Turned but you aren’t jonesing for it, right?”
    “I'm good, I just want to do this and get back to her. There’s nothing else I want. I’d stay here but I refuse to put someone else in my spot so that I can stay behind and be safe with her. It is selfish and that isn’t how I roll. I'm not going to put that kind of stress on someone else.”
    Hammond stepped up and said “Right, but don’t you think that someone else would like to get off base? At some point it would be nice to have some other people that have the experience that you do.”
    Shaun stepped up close to Hammond. “Look, Hammond, I'm going. We can leave you here if you’re going to be an issue. When the rest of the people have all of the training that I do, and don’t need to be reminded of the simplest of things with their rifles, then they can have enough time going out on trips and find people as much as they want to. Until they can do that I don’t want anyone giving me any guilt trips. I have other shit going on and I'm not going to worry about taking a bunch of people who don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground. You got it?”
    Hammond nodded slowly, he was doing everything in his power to blink away the tear that was trying to force its way out. He needed no help remembering what he’d done to Shelman because the sound of the blast echoing followed by the screaming in the Humvee that day had been the fuel of his nightmares since they’d gotten back. “You don’t have to be a dick about it, Fox.”
    Shaun pushed past him and said, “Grab your gear, and let's go. Aslin is going to be ready soon and he isn’t going to want to wait around.”
    Greg ran to keep up with him. He said, “Christ, man, do you need to rub salt in the wound?”
    “I do when people won’t let something go. I mean think about what you would do if you had to worry about the people on the crew as much as the dead trying to kill you. We’re going to have enough to worry about going there. We haven’t been to where we’re going, at least not since the dead started coming, and now on top of that he wants to bring a shit ton of people who don’t have any experience. I'm sure that taking others out on runs is definitely a smart idea but if we do that we need to be calculated and ready, and taking them to a gigantic warehouse isn’t going to do anything to help them.”
    “The number of people that I trust to have my back is growing slimmer with every kill. The more people we bring on this base the more we have to worry about. I don’t fear those that we brought back the day that we went with you but anyone after that makes me nervous.”
    “Dude, relax, we picked up a bunch of freaking kids last time. How bad can it be?”
    Shaun shrugged and said, “You take away our guns and put us in normal clothes like the old days and I doubt that we would look very scary but what if we got our hands on some guns; then do you think we’d be something to be a little more nervous about?”
    Greg thought of the hours he’d spent driving around the base practicing with the roof mounted machine gun and knew that Fox was no one he would ever want on the opposite end of a rifle while he was angry. “Just relax on the paranoia, man; it is okay to trust people once in a while. If you don’t trust anyone then eventually you are going to end up on the short end of the stick.”
    They made it back to the motor pool