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

listening. There was an expectancy to the air; it made him nervous when there wasn’t any reason to be. He pushed the feeling deep down into his chest and stepped in. Silence enveloped them. He whispered into it, “Deanna, stay here and guard the door.”
    She raised an eyebrow. “Guard it against what? There’s nothing around.”
    “I don’t know. Just in case.”
    “Maybe you should guard the door, Neil,” Bill said. “After all, she’s got a gun and you don’t. I’d rather have her by my side than you and your bat. No offense.”
    “I say we all go,” Deanna said. In the semi-dark she squinted at her Taurus and then clicked off the safety. “Really the door was so loud we would know already if anything was in here with us.”
    “I suppose,” Neil replied. He looked around the interior of the barn; it was very dark and smelled of oil and wheat dust. The front area, where they were currently standing, was a bay that held different machines, only one of which Neil could name: a tractor. The others were extremely large and looked dangerous to operate. The back half of the barn sat behind a set of double doors that were twelve feet in height.
    As Neil was taking this all in, Big Bill started forward with his AR-15 up to his shoulder.
    “Not so fast,” Neil hissed. “We clear this room before we go on.”
    Bill blinked and stared around at the shadows. “Why? There ain’t no stiffs in here. We would’ve been able to hear ‘em already.”
    “We do it because it’s smart,” Deanna said. “Better safe than sorry.”
    The big man shrugged as if this was nothing to him. The three moved out; Bill in the lead, Deanna on his right, and Neil bringing up the rear. They went around each of the vehicles and inspected the corners before sidling up to the double doors.
    “I’ll do the honors,” Neil said, taking hold of one of the handles. He hauled back on the door thinking that what lay beyond would be more blackness, however the area was lit relatively well by one of the few windows in the low-slung barn. What was more surprising however was the smell that smacked them full in the face.
    Decomposing wheat was enough to make a man’s eyes water. There were mounds of it everywhere. It might have once been stacked in rectangular bales, now the bales were soft blobs with nasty pools beneath them.
    “What happened here?” Neil wondered. He had no clue about the chemical interactions involved in farming. He lived under the illusion that wheat was a soft gold in color and would remain that way near on forever.
    “What do you mean?” Bill asked. “The wheat? This is what it looks like if you let it sit for too long. You ever mow your grass and let it sit in your trashcan? If you leave it for a couple weeks, it’ll stink just like this.”
    “Were you a farmer?” Deanna asked. Her pretty face was contorted by the foul odor and she tried to hide her nose behind her hand. When that didn’t keep out the smell, she pulled the collar of her shirt up to a level just below her eyes.
    “Naw, I was a lineman for TCO, however I grew up on a farm in Tennessee. This smell ain’t nothing new to me.”
    Neil didn’t know what a lineman was and assumed it was some sort of sports reference. He ignored that part of what Bill had said, but he was very eager to hear all he could about farming. He hated the constant danger of scrounging. It was his hope that one day he’d be able to give it up for good; farming was the one obvious method he had to drop his current lifestyle.
    “Is it difficult?” he asked. “You know, farming, I mean. The plants just grow on their own, right? I mean once you’ve put down the seeds.”
    “Put down?” Big Bill asked with a smirk. “Do you mean planted?”
    “Yeah, sure,” Neil said. He didn’t care about the exact terminology; he just wanted to know about the process.
    Bill shrugged. “It depends on the scope of what you’re trying to accomplish. Are we talking a garden or 2000