After: Red Scare (AFTER post-apocalyptic series, Book 5) Read Online Free PDF Page B

mountains and a large unit with grenade launchers and heavy machine guns. Their leader, Sgt. Shipley, could deliver some serious damage if he wished.”
    “That’s not doing us any good right now, is it?” Danny choked up on the baseball bat, eyes darting around. “If we could just get all these guys to revolt right now, we’d be in business.”
    “We’d be dead within minutes.”
    The parking lot was littered with bodies, and many of them were Zapheads, judging by their ragged clothing. Jorge saw a fallen form in a blue jacket, the same color as Rosa’s, and his stomach tightened. He bolted from cover, running to the body while glancing around for Marina.
    “Hey!” Danny shouted after him, but Jorge barely heard him over the shouts. A column of thick smoke drifted from the school building, adding to the confusion, and the air was thick with the fumes of burning plastic and wood. But that didn’t mask the stench of the thousands of bodies piled in the Zapheads’ open mausoleum.
    Jorge bumped into a Zaphead that spun and clutched wildly at him. Jorge ducked and drove a boot into the Zaphead’s knee and knocked it to the ground. As he stepped away, one hand caught him by the ankle, and he stomped hard with his free foot. Bones crunched underneath his leather sole and the fingers lost their grip.
    As the Zaphead grappled for him again, he drove his makeshift spear into the mutant’s belly and left it planted there like a flag on territory he’d just claimed for country and king.
    When Jorge reached the form in the blue coat, he saw right away that it wasn’t Rosa. It was a dark-haired woman, a survivor instead of a mutant, but much older than his wife. This woman had been one of the more maternal ones of their group, soothing the other women and encouraging the children. While she hadn’t been assigned a Zaphead infant of her own, the mutants must have sensed her powerful place in the group.
    They’d let her live, for a while.
    Then he noticed the hole in her jacket, and the dark red fluid welling up from the fabric. She’d been shot by the soldiers.
    Maybe Sgt. Shipley thinks we’ve willingly joined the Zapheads. He’s just insane enough to kill us all.
    Something thudded to the pavement twenty feet away, and he turned to see Danny flinging blood from his baseball bat. A teen-aged Zaphead girl lay at his feet, her head smashed open.
    “Grand slam,” Danny said with a gap-toothed grin.
    A shot sounded farther away, in the outskirts of town to the west. The battle must have shifted that way, unless the few troops scattered when the Zapheads made their counterattack.
    The Zapheads in the parking lot headed in the direction of the shot, apparently not noticing or caring that he and Danny had just attacked two of their kind. Jorge approached the stadium, dread still hanging heavily on his heart. It was clear the original attack had taken place here, as two dozen bodies were sprawled around the concourse and ticket booth. Most of them were Zapheads, but several humans were dead as well.
    One elderly man groaned and reached up to Jorge for help. “Please,” the man croaked, their eyes meeting for a moment.
    Jorge shook his head and continued into the stadium.
    “Damn, that’s cold,” Danny said, bending to help the man.
    Jorge didn’t care. The humans brought to Newton by the Zapheads had never organized to rebel or even attempt to improve their conditions. Like Rosa, most had eased into a numb acceptance of their situation. They’d rather be well-fed slaves than scavenging, desperate survivors. It made Jorge admire Franklin’s willful independence all the more. If there was any American value worth adopting, it was a willingness to fight and die for freedom.
    More bodies dotted the football field and the metal stands. The cloying odor of decayed flesh made it hard to breathe, as if the air was thick with tiny particles of death. Most of the fresher bodies appeared to be in the stands on the far side of