Hissers II: Death March Read Online Free PDF Page A

we hit my mother’s we can reassess things. Maybe I don’t get you all the way to San Diego, but I’ll get you closer . C’mon, let’s pack some bags and hope there’s safety for us somewhere out there.”
    Connor followed her back inside the trailer, once again glanced at the metal pole. “Hey, Olive?”
    “Yeah?” She rummaged around in her small bedroom and began packing a duffle bag with clothes.
    “Why were you in the woods this morning?”
    “I was driving back from town. I went in to get supplies, talk to people, but the town was abandoned. I saw a handful of those monsters racing around, chasing a couple stragglers, folks that didn’t get out quick enough, them things looking like wild animals. I figured I’d be safer at home, since they was all focused on inspecting the buildings, looking for people. Took the dirt road back through the woods and suddenly had to take a piss. Then I heard all that noise, them sons of bitches chasing after you and I heard your pleas.”
    “What pleas?”
    “You was making a lot of noise begging for help, even if it wasn’t actual words. I could tell.”
    “Thank you again.”
    She emerged from the room, her bag packed up. “We’ll grab what food I have left and hit the truck stop down the road, see if there’s gas. If not we’ll have to siphon it. Unfortunately I don’t have enough left to get very far.”
    “What if those zombies are there?”
    “That’s where this comes in…” She took a rifle out from behind a small bookshelf near the kitchen and handed it to Connor. It had a large scope on top. “You’re gonna be recon. And whatever comes running that isn’t human, you shoot it dead.”
     
    TUESDAY, 9:34 AM
     
    The ground outside the tent rumbled as mortar shells and grenades exploded, decimating spider monsters and hissers attempting to break though the camp’s perimeter. Soldiers squatted on plywood watchtowers firing waves of bullets at the creatures’ heads. The unlucky ones that had been working outside the fences when the attack came had been swarmed and killed and were now joining the enemy. Amanita watched through the tent as a once young and handsome Lance Corporal spit and growled at the ground, his mouth covered in blood from a fresh kill. A round of automatic gunfire cut a slash across his chest, severing his arm clean off. Not him , thought Amanita, it . It wasn’t human anymore, just a biological killing machine. The hisser was completely unfazed as it stared down at the detached arm. Another grenade hit nearby and the hisser dropped in a mist of blood. But a second later it stood back up, its arm now jutting from its back, and its feet from its chest. That’s what they do, Amanita thought, they just keep mutating and attacking.
    “Am, get away from the door!” her mother shouted.
    Her mother and father were huddled under the picnic table, two Marines on other side of it, fear in their eyes. Marshall and Wilcox, if she remembered correctly. They’d been in the tent all morning, talking about the difference between New York and Chicago pizza. Now they held their guns out, waiting for hissers to burst into the tent. The rest of the people who’d been in here had already raced outside, but for what, Amanita wondered. Where were they going to go?
    The radios warbled on the Marines’ chests. “Trucks are loaded. Let’s get these people outta here now! Move!”
    “Okay,” Wilcox said, “everybody outside and into the transport trucks. This is not a request.”
    Amanita’s mother rushed up and took her by the elbow, led her outside. He fat her was behind them, flanked by the young Marines. Outside, smoke clouds were wafting across the air, pluming from the machine guns being fired beyond the perimeter fence. Three trucks were already loading up passengers, and another was pulling in now to pick up the rest. Two Humvees sped by in front of Amanita and her mother and almost hit them.
    “Mom?” Amanita cried, feeling her mother’s