LEFT ALIVE (Zombie series Box Set): Books 1-6 of the Post-apocalyptic zombie action and adventure series Read Online Free PDF Page B

listen to the world outside. There is a mild, constant breeze making the brittle branches of the rotting trees rattle like bones. I lean forward and look out the smeared windows and watch the drifts of dust and ash. There isn’t a mouse stirring out there. I figure it is late enough that everyone is either asleep or hunkering down for the night. Pulling myself up, I pack my stuff and I decide to risk it. After all, I am already up.
    It’s a few blocks before I discover a restaurant that is half caved in from a fire. It was called Happy Pizza at one time, the adjacent businesses it shared the building with had burned down, presumably after a fire spread from the neighboring gas station that now is a blackened pile of rubble with two charred pumps that look like tombstones in the darkness. I climb into the ruins and decide to take a look around. The pizza place has been hit pretty heavily. I find nothing among the charred ruins and as I claw my way through the gloomy darkness, I can’t help but curse myself for losing my flashlight in the brawl, but even without light something catches my eye. From the opposite direction I had come from, someone is making their way down the street, staggering from weakness or starvation. I freeze instantly where I am, certain that the newcomer hasn’t spotted me. I watch him for a few moments as he ponders the liquor store across the road. Personally, I am pissed now that I hadn’t stopped there first. Actually, as I think about it, I’m lucky I didn’t. He would have found me for sure. I’m in no shape for a fight.
    The young man turns and surveys the surrounding area. The pale moonlight illuminates his face and I see that he is not much older than my attackers on the road were. I wouldn’t be surprised if he is one of them, but I’m fairly certain he isn’t. This Kid has the look of a straggler, barely getting by. I watch him enter the liquor store. The doors had been left unlocked during the Panic. I find that odd. I grip my cleaver and watch the store for a moment. I feel like an owl watching a mouse in the darkness. Almost instantly I see a flashlight turn on. Envy swirls inside my mind as I watch him work.
    Suddenly, his light is moving frantically. I watch the darting light beam shining all over the interior of the shop before the doors burst open and the Kid stumbles out onto the sidewalk in a whirlwind of panic to regain his footing. I stand as still as a statue, as silent as a ghost, and as wide-eyed as that owl I had been picturing myself as. I watch as three figures emerge from the liquor shop. The one in the lead has a machete leaning casually on his shoulder as he strolls toward the Kid. The Kid produces a knife and brandishes it, trembling, trying to act bravely, calling for them to leave him alone. Their voices are deafened by the rubble surrounding me and the plate glass on the front of the pizza place, but they’re too calm for me to feel comfortable. I can sense that they’re playing with him. I swallow hard and listen to my pounding heart as I watch the other two men, one with a pipe in his hands and the other with some other sort of short rod, flank the Kid.
    They break his arms with the first blows, each audibly snapping as his knife clatters onto the street and screams fill the night air. The two men beat him to death with their pipe and what I think is a length of rebar, the sounds of their sickening blows passing through the walls and filling my ears with their horrid noise. There is a second, no longer than that, where I consider trying to help the Kid. It is a flash, like a dying lighter sparking in the darkness. It is as gone as quickly as it had appeared and I stand motionless, watching as the bastards beat him until his squirming ceases and he becomes completely motionless while his blood is snaking into the ashy film along the sidewalk. The Kid lays curled into a ball, a sad attempt to try and protect himself, but he is little more than ruined meat and