Hell's Children: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller Read Online Free PDF Page B

he’d once played a little at a mutual friend of Greg and Lisa’s. It was really cool ducking around things and sneaking up on people, or trying to hide from people so they didn’t shoot him. Weeks later, his dad asked why he enjoyed their hunting trips so much, and Jack made the connection.
    He shook his head. “Fine. Listen, these kids out there—they’ve lost their whole world. They don’t have video games anymore, or adults to tell them to leave people alone. Just the opposite. If you were listening, this Blaze freak is telling them to go out and bring home the dinner. You ever get bullied in school? Someone ever hit you in the arm a bunch of times because you were littler?”
    After a brief hesitation, Pete nodded.
    “Those are the people we’re up against,” Jack said. “Except these kids have guns, cars, and hunger. They probably wish they’d died but don’t know it yet.”
    Pete shivered in the darkness. Though the house was just as cold as outside, at least there was no wind.
    “If you’re right,” Pete said, “what can we do?”
    “We leave. The high school is about five minutes away by car. That’s five to get there, five to gather more people, and five to come back. You want something from here, I suggest you go get it. I recommend a blanket. That jacket of yours is kind of skimpy.”
    In barely more than a whisper, Pete said, “Maybe we should have gone with them.”
    Jack was about to snap something back when, from out of the darkness, a girl’s voice said, “Can I come too?”
    Both boys whipped around and stared at the figure of a young black girl crouched behind a sofa chair, blinking in the beam of Jack’s flashlight. About eight or nine years old, she had on green pants and a puffy pink jacket, and her hair was collected in a cascade of glossy tails bound in fat white beads.
    “Who the hell are you?” Pete said, fists raised protectively.
    “Ease up,” Jack said. He took a knee and smiled. “I’m Jack. What’s your name?”
    “Mandy,” she said. “My mom and dad died.” She said it flatly, as if delivering a trivial piece of news.
    Jack nodded sadly. “Mine too. Do you live here?”
    She shook her head. “Uhn uh. All the doors are open, but everywhere stinks inside.”
    Jack looked at her closely. She was thin like Pete, except more pitiful for her youth, and he felt guilty for having eaten so well during the Sickness.
    “Are you hungry?”
    She nodded vigorously. “Do you have something?”
    “Sure,” he said. He nudged Pete, who got a protein bar from his bag and handed it to her. “Now listen, Mandy, we need to get out of here. But we can’t take you. Lots of hard walking ahead. You need to group up with the other kids your age and—”
    “And what?” Pete said in a sharp tone.
    Jack glared at him.
    Mandy’s eyes welled with sudden tears, and her face grew tense. “I had a friend named Courtney. She did my hair like this. Then some boys got her and she told me to run. When I came back, she was gone.”
    Pete said, “You hear that, man? You just gonna leave her?”
    “No, Pete. Obviously I’m going to save the world. Is that what you want to hear?”
    Immediately, he regretted his tone. Bringing anger to the situation wouldn’t help.
    Mandy watched the exchange with a frightened fascination on her face, as if everything hung in the balance. Which, in the new way of things, it did.
    “I can keep up,” she said. “That’s how I got away. ’Cause I’m fast.”
    “You need to be,” Jack said, already working out how they could do this. “You’re not a pacifist, are you?”
    Mandy shook her head, no.
    To Pete, he said, “Hurry with that blanket, and meet us out front.”

    * * *
    P ete came out with the makeshift bag wrapped in a blue blanket snagged from upstairs. Instead of Santa, he looked more like The Grinch after he’d stolen Christmas.
    “We can’t walk with her the whole way, not through those woods,” Pete said. “And also, hey: I’m