Alaskan Undead Apocalypse (Book 4): Resolution Read Online Free PDF Page B

to dry a bit. There was no food to be had, but the
rest was very welcome. While they waited, the snow stopped falling
and a peaceful quiet settled over them. The sun even managed to
stage a surprise visit through a wide opening in the dark
clouds.
    The likelihood they had been followed by any
of the ghouls was slight, but that didn’t mean they could afford to
get too comfortable. Jerry and Emma kept a watchful eye on the path
behind while Neil kept looking ahead. The mountain was serene and
calm, with nothing stirring in the freshly fallen snow. Neil
understood why hermits had always been rumored to retreat to the
mountains to seek their isolation. It was easy to get lost in the
quiet.
    Danny, Jules, and Nikki stayed close to the
fire, warming their hands and feet in the sparse blaze. Jess was
preoccupied with a picture of her daughter Syd, staring at it
intensely, and saying nothing though a few, quiet tears managed to
escape.
    Danny finally mustered the courage to ask,
“Who’s that a picture of?”
    Jess said, her emotion absent from her
voice, “My daughter. Sydney.”
    “Is she... I mean do you know if...?”
    Jess merely shook her head and put the
picture back in the inside pocket of her coat. She stood up and
walked away from the fire and the possible next line of questions
for which there were no answers.
    Danny felt a pang of guilt for asking about
the photo but was unsure about what to do about it. He turned his
attention to Jules and Nikki, hoping to help them get both warm and
dry. He scouted around a bit and brought back sticks and twigs that
Jerry had neglected to grab. He never could get the fire big enough
or warm enough. Danny wanted to be useful and do his part.
    In a short while, they were back on the
trail. With the passing of the storm, the going was easier and,
thankfully, they were traveling downhill again. Jules began to
enjoy the snow. She kicked at it and scooped up handfuls to throw
into the air. It wasn’t much, but it was the most joy she had felt
in quite some time. She wished that she could share it with her
parents. In that moment, she missed them as much as Jess missed her
daughter although her sorrow didn’t linger for her the way it did
for the quiet Jess.
    Not long afterward, Jules had started to
play her game of jumping between snow patches. Her levity lightened
everyone’s mood, especially when the other children joined her game
and they all laughed.
    The laughter ended when they came up over a
final rise and beheld Whittier.

Chapter 4
     
    Months earlier ...
     
    Abdul Manneh arrived in Anchorage from
Gambia, West Africa a little more than a year earlier. He felt like
he stepped off the plane, got himself into a cab, and hadn’t gotten
out since. Driving a cab had become such a major part of his
identity. He drove his cab for the early morning rush, arriving at
Anchorage International Airport and then again for the redeye
flights later in the evening. He got them both coming and going
from the city that he had taken to calling home. After a year, he
could claim to be a local, he reasoned. He knew the city better
than most, having driven to the best and worst that Anchorage had
to offer.
    He didn’t allow himself much in the way of
free time because his family was still in Gambia. The only leisure
activity he pursued was his weekly kick-arounds with his friends
out at the soccer fields on the Park Strip. He and a group of other
immigrants from Africa and some locals who knew about it would
gather every Sunday evening to play some pick up matches until the
ground was too frozen to play. Those two to three hours weekly were
his only release from the week’s toil.
    He’d seen some pretty strange things in the
short time he’d been driving his cab. Through all of it, he just
kept his head down and his hands on the wheel. He stayed alive and
made a living by staying out of people’s ways and definitely out of
their business. He didn’t need to know why the woman carrying