The Undead World (Book 5): The Apocalypse Renegades by Peter Meredith Read Free Book Online

was a miserable hike. The mud covering Neil only partially dried; he felt sticky and completely gross. And to add to that misery, for some reason he had accepted a heavier pack, leaving Deanna carrying little besides a few MREs and some spare ammo. His foolish chivalry meant he was forced to stump along at a glacial pace, while sweat streamed down his face.
    Very quickly, it became obvious they weren’t going to accomplish everything they had set out to do, at least not in the time left to them before the sunset. Regardless, Neil kept pushing them on, aiming for the nearest farmhouse, which was barely visible on the horizon even with binoculars. By the time they reached it, he was dragging behind the other two and panting.
    “Just a little rest,” he said between gasping breaths.
    Surrounding the farm were rank upon rank of winter wheat that would forever go unharvested. The wheat was high enough for Neil to walk normally and not be seen. Deanna, on the other hand, had to bob her head low and Big Bill had to walk with a pronounced hunch to go unseen.
    Halfway through the fields Bill stopped to stare across the land. “Maybe the little girl was wrong about there being so many people out searching for us,” he said. “I mean, where are they all?”
    “I guess you never once considered the possibility that I could be right,” Neil said, testily, blinking sweat out of his eyes. “Like I said before, there is a very good chance no one is out here. They could be back at the base battling it out.”
    Deanna raised a single eyebrow and he read the look easily. “Jillybean is not infallible. She could be wrong,” Neil replied sharply to the unstated doubt. It was true, Jillybean could be wrong. Then again, I could be wrong , Neil thought to himself. “But I’m not,” he said under his breath. The bridge was what held the city of Cape Girardeau together. Without it things would fall apart and quickly. He would’ve bet money that the city was bleeding people left and right already.
    Neil passed around one of the water bottles in his pack before he declared, “Break time’s over.” Once again he started tromping through the wheat toward the farm; the ground was soft beneath his feet and he was happy to see there were no tracks in the dirt…this didn’t last. After a while, they came across a lane through the wheat that was as wide as a road. It had been created by the passage of hundreds of feet. The prints were shoeless, which meant zombies.
    The tracks were heading southwest. Neil glanced in that direction before scurrying across the lane to lose himself in the golden fields.
    Farms on the western bank of the Mississippi dwarfed their smaller cousins on the eastern and it was a good half an hour before the three of them came upon the first of the outbuildings. By then the gloom of evening acted as a shroud in the air, hiding them.
    Neil had hoped for a full-fledged barn but received only a stunted version instead. It was long and low, housing not cows or horses but tractors and the like. Neil crept up to the building and put his ear to the door. The sound of zombies would have been obvious to the least observant person; Neil heard nothing, but he was still careful.
    Between the three of them they had only two guns; Big Bill held an AR-15 and Deanna had her Taurus pistol. Neil had a bat he had picked up in the barracks. He nodded Big Bill toward the door and the big man, slinking with all the stealth of a mastodon, crept up and pulled it back with a grunt. The screech of rusting metal on metal made them all cringe.
    Neither one of them questioned why the door was closed to begin with. It sat 12 miles south of Cape Girardeau. Had no one checked the barn in all this time? That would’ve been the question on Jillybean’s mind. Neil only thought he was getting lucky, while Deanna and Big Bill were so inexperienced they assumed that lots of doors to a lot of barns would be closed.
    Neil paused in the doorway, again