Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 3): Mitigation Book 3) by Sean Schubert Page B

foot, but his leg was broke. He was facing right at us. I think he may have even seen us, but I can’t be certain. He yelped like a wounded animal when he fell. He tried to crawl but the angle of his broke leg made it impossible to move. It was terrible. One of them uniformed boys walked over to the man and said something like, ‘In the name of the new order of law’ or something, and shot the man in his back. Then the militia boy nudged the man with his boot until he groaned. So the boy shot him again, and laughed when he seen the man’s legs twitch a little. It ain’t never easy to see a man die.
    “About then, a big, black Humvee pulled up on the street. More of the uniformed boys piled out and stood around waitin’ for something to happen, but the man in the passenger seat of the SUV stayed where he was. He was the boss, so he didn’t have to get up for no one. At least that’s how it looked to me. He sat in his comfy, padded seat and told everyone else what to do.
    “I heard them talk about what happened. I guess the two bike riders were suspected of, get this, looting . The militia, being the new authority in town, was enforcin’ the laws that seemed important I guess and looting is now a capital offense, but when they searched the dead bodies they didn’t find nothin’ on either of them. D’you know what the son of a bitch sitting in the Humvee said then? He zipped up his coat until the metal teeth almost pinched his neck skin and he said, ‘ Well, let that serve as a lesson to anyone who might be thinking about looting then. ’
    “I see a couple of them uniformed boys goin’ through a couple cars on the road and lo and behold they found themselves some beer in a cooler in the back of a truck. Another one of ‘em had a woman’s garter around his forehead. Ya know, the kind of garter that guys get at a wedding and hang around their mirrors. They just rummaged around the cars grabbin’ anything they could get their hands on. Looting ? I guess not much changed with the changin’ of the guard. The ins are always sticking it to the rest of us.
    “Pretty soon, all the noise them fellas was making got the attention of a bunch of those things. Probably twenty or so of the monsters started to come at them from the high school across the street. Remember how I said them boys had been preparing for all of this? Well, they showed me just how thorough they had trained. It was just a few seconds and a lot of shooting before all those things were piled in the middle of the road. There was more of them off to either side of the road and some more still comin’ from around both sides of the school. I was afraid to look over my shoulder to see if there was any behind us. Hell, I didn’t know what we would do if there were. We had Ricky’s gun but if we shot or even stood up to run, them militia boys woulda’ filled the three of us full o’ holes too.”
    It must have been time for a commercial break in the action, because DB paused his story as he stirred the fire again. Darkness was falling all around them, making the small fire glow all the more.
    Meghan sighed incredulously. “Jesus.”
    Della, whose eyes shimmered with the fire’s reflection, said from behind them, “I think we can leave Him outta this,” and then finally sat down, joining the others around the warming flame. She opened her hands above the fire, letting the heat circulate through her body like a boiler filling pipes and radiators with scalding water to warm its host. She almost betrayed the soothing sensation with a smile, but stopped just short of actually doing that.
    Della realized that all the eyes around the campfire were on her and waiting for her to speak again, however, she felt no need to rush into saying anything more. She was not one of those people who felt that every quiet moment needed words or sounds to fill it. Sometimes silence was enough to fill the void in and of itself.
    Della’s hands warmed significantly; she