Emma: Part Three Read Online Free PDF Page A

I’ve got them tucked away in a safe spot but one of them took a gut shot. He’s bleeding out bad. The other one took a round to the thigh and one to the knee.”
    After re-arming his weapon, she stuck her head into the small window between the cab and bed of the truck and gave Chloe directions back to the site where his men were waiting and wounded. “And make sure you swing us wide around, Chloe! We’re right in the line of fire between the town and this attack. The sooner we clear out, the sooner the folks back at Purgatory can let loose.”
    “There!” Leila shouted and pointed to a position just north.
    “I see them.” Max could just make out the shape of one man firing from behind a boulder that he was using as cover. As the vehicle pulled in front of them, Leila took over at the big gun and Chloe stepped out of the cab and began firing shotgun blasts to try to suppress the swarm of zombies heading right for them.
    A dog the size of a damn pony snarled and growled until Leila shouted, “Grim! Quiet!”
    The dog yowled loudly and paced back and forth. Hackles raised, the great black beast seemed to sense that danger was all around them.
    “Butler’s out cold,” Butch shouted as Max jumped down to help. “The truck came out of nowhere. Someone fired a shot from the back of it. It was a big round, boss. It tore him right up!”
    Max surveyed the damage done to one of the Zed squad’s finest soldiers. The bloody mess hanging from his gut wasn’t survivable, not tonight. They were too far from a hospital and medical evacuations wouldn’t be possible until they got the security situation under control. Butler was going to bleed out and die, probably in the bed of the truck.
    “Leila! Cover us!” Chloe Morgan had backed her away around the front of the idling truck, firing round after round from that shotgun until she was right near the two downed cyborgs. She grimaced at the sight and smell of Butler’s mortally wounded body. “Sweet Jesus.”
    “Help him into the front seat,” Max ordered with a quick gesture to Butch. “I’ll get Butler.”
    Chloe nodded and hurried to Butch’s side. She gave him the support he needed as he limped to the truck and slid into the front seat. When she returned, Chloe didn’t utter a peep of protest when Max gestured for her help with Butler. She climbed into the truck first and helped slide the man’s injured body onto the bench seat and then scrambled into the driver’s seat.
    Max slammed the door closed and jumped into the bed. The dog followed him, landing with a heavy thud in the back and smartly getting out of the line of fire. He nuzzled up against his mistress and whined at her.
    Max took over at the gun and asked Leila, “Can you give my soldier aid?”
    “Yes.”
    He grabbed her arm, stopping her before she had a chance to get too far. “We’ve got air support coming in hot and fast. We need to get some place safe and out of the line of fire. I don’t think we can make it back to the town, not with all these zombies surrounding us.”
    Leila bit her lip. “I know a place.” She glanced at Butler. “But I don’t know if he’ll survive the move.”
    “We have to try.”
    “All right.” She stunned him by wiggling her way through the small window along the rear of the cab instead of hopping out of the bed and using the door. “Chloe, drive us to the tombs!”
    Judging by the string of expletives that left Chloe’s mouth, she wasn’t thrilled by that idea. Nevertheless, she hit the gas and they sped off into the night. Max fired at everything and anything that moved. The transmitter embedded in his brain continued to feed updates from Rafe and the incoming pilots ready to rain hellfire down below.
    “Hold on!” Leila called out. “We’re about to take a hard turn.”
    Max braced himself two heartbeats before Chloe wrenched the wheel. The vehicle nosed down as it descended an old washed out creek bed. Grim slid across the bed, his nails