Camp Zero (Book 2): State of Shock Read Online Free PDF Page A

in six months.”
    He glanced at me. “You’re telling me.”
    I caught my reflection in the window. My hair had grown back. The only trace that I had been one came from the tattoo on my wrist. I had considered using ballpoint ink to get rid of it; instead I just used my sleeve.
    We passed by numerous bodies on the way. Some looked fresh, others decayed with nothing more than bones protruding from chewed clothing. How many had tried to flee on foot from towns and starved to death? How many had attacked each other in their attempts to flee? This world had changed overnight. Now only a fortunate few survived.
    I felt another wave of rage for those that had killed our family. That’s what they had become over the last six months. As a tight unit, we looked out for each other and every single one of us performed a task. Whether that was cleaning, hunting or keeping an eye out for intruders. We had survived six months because we worked together.
    As we fishtailed it around another bend, Luke slammed on the brakes. Further up the road there were military personnel on horses. There had to have been at least ten. Their horses were tied to trees while they smoked, relieved themselves and removed barricades from the back of a truck. We watched them position them in the center of the road.
    “What do you think?”
    Over the past three months we had given a lot of thought to the fact that military would have started going town to town and checking on survivors. What their instructions were would be unknown, at least for now. Dan kept droning on about martial law and how there was no way in hell they would let citizens carry weapons after such an event. That would have been at the top of their to-do list. Seize weapons, round up citizens and place them in FEMA camps, and if required, use force where necessary. Was that what had happened? Had they stumbled across our camp? Had Dan kicked up a fuss and refused to hand over his weapon? One thing I had learned in our time bottled up inside that coffin was that Dan had a short fuse. Several times he and Murphy knocked heads. We thought they were going to beat the shit out of each other. They never did but it wasn’t long after that we ventured out.
    As four of the men turned and raised their rifles at us, Luke slammed the gear into reverse and did a huey in the road. The tail end of the truck leaned back into the ditch, and the wheels spun frantically as we tried to gain traction. I glanced back to see the soldiers jogging towards us.
    “Come on!” Luke smashed his fist against the wheel.
    “You better get that moving.”
    A round hit the truck and my pulse went into overdrive. In that instant the rear tires gained traction and Luke gunned the engine out of there. I glanced back and saw the soldiers stop running. Within a minute we were back around a corner and Luke pushed the engine to just over ninety. I kept looking back expecting to see the soldiers pursuing but they never came.
    Once we returned to camp, my heart was still racing. I think Luke and I were paranoid that the men would return as we kept looking back down the trail even after we were out and had joined the others.
    “Did you see them?” Ally was the first to ask.
    “No. But there were hostiles near the town, a few miles outside of Hayden. Best guess, they’ve been taken there.”
    Tears began to flow. “No, they are dead. They have killed them.”
    She curled over as though she was going to vomit. Tears streamed to the ground before she placed her head in her hands and sobbed hard. It was hard to see all of them in so much pain. The strange part was I didn’t cry for Brett. In two years I had never really formed a close bond with him or Jodi. As much as they reached out to me and called me son, I never felt like one. I had grown to respect Brett over the months together inside the shelter but there was always this distance. Perhaps when he looked at me in the weeks after losing Jodi, it only reminded him of those