Page 25 of After the Burn

Boots scraping pavement.

Another distant gunshot echoed, accompanied by the sound of an infected body being dragged toward the trench.

All of a sudden, a bark came from somewhere inside the perimeter.

Short.

Sharp.

Max.

Relief hit so fast it almost hurt.

They were alive. I knew it as well as I knew the sun rose in the east. But before I could move toward the sound, metal suddenly rattled loudly somewhere behind me.

I whipped around instantly.

Lila stood frozen near a stack of old fencing, one loose piece still swaying beside her.

“Run,” I snapped immediately.

Too late.

A floodlight slammed across the trees hard enough to blind me for half a second.

“Well, well,” a male voice called near the gate. “Looks like we found ourselves more strays.”

Every muscle in my body tightened.

“Let Gideon know we’ve found more females.” Another man said, his voice holding authority.

I saw a pistol held to Lila’s temple. Shit! If it were just me, I’d fight, but there was no way I’d take that kind of risk with her life.

I raised my hands in surrender. I guess this was one way to make contact with the two idiots… just not the one I’d have chosen.

CHAPTER FOUR

BECK

This piece-of-shit town almost looked normal after dark.

Behind curtained windows, soft light glowed warmly as generators hummed steadily somewhere deeper in the settlement, their low vibrations faintly trembling through the pavement beneath my boots. Smoke curled from chimneys. Men laughed around burn barrels, and nearby, faint music drifted through the air, quiet enough to be soothing.

I leaned back in my chair near the fire pit and watched another patrol move down the street for what had to be the fourth time in the last hour. I sneered at the ragtag group of men who had probably once been upstanding members of their communities.

Adrian sat opposite me, attentively observing his surroundings, monitoring security measures, and searching for vulnerabilities in their routines.

“The north patrol overlaps every twenty minutes,” he mumbled, his eyes narrowed.

I took a slow drink from the beer Gideon’s men had handed me earlier and immediately regretted it. Warm and flat. Still, it was better than no beer at all.

“Good for them.” I was still salty about him guilting me into this trip.

Children had always been my weakness, and the unfeeling bastard used it to his advantage. He knew the twins were the only thing that could persuade me to leave my Fox.

“They protect the generators more heavily than the armory.” He kept his eyes trained on two men heading to fuel up the generators near the courthouse.

My eyes shifted toward the building at the center of town, where lights burned brighter than everything around them. “Meaning?” I grimaced as I took another sip of the warm beer.