Shades of Gray Read Online Free PDF Page A

kick my own ass later.
    “Excuse me, sir?”
    The old man kept his hawk-eyes on me a few more seconds. His face was rugged and hard, one that had seen and been through a great deal in his however many years of life. They were clear and focused, and that said something about the mind behind them.
    I held my hands out to my sides. “My name’s Kasey. We’re really not─”
    “I don’t care who ya are, kid. Don’t care about yer business, either. I mind my own. So best you be on yer way.” He raised one eyebrow, the Colt stayed on my nose.
    “Okay, okay. We can do that. You mind lowering that gun?” I asked.
    “Kasey,” Mia hissed from behind me. I ignored her.
    The old man snorted a raspy chuckle. “I do mind. There’s bad folk out there. Sumbitches try takin’ what’s not theirs. Yer no different.”
    I snorted back. “Do we look like bandits?”
    The old man roved his eyes over us, one at a time, his gun hand never wavering, before finally settling them back on me. Jake and Mia had cussed and whispered my name again. I was focused hard on the man with the gun. When I thought he was going to pull the trigger and send me to that happy hunting ground in the sky, the old man barked out a laugh. Just one.
    “Tell ya what, kid. Yer a contrary little shit.” He studied the three of us, then jerked his chin. “Folks call me Pepper. Might as well come on up, sit a spell.”
    I breathed a silent sigh of relief. “Nice to meet you, Pepper. And don’t mind if I do.” I started forward and realized the other two weren’t moving. I turned around and shot them a look. “Well, what the hell you waitin’ for? C’mon.”
    “Aye, aye, Boss,” Jake answered, giving me the crazy look, yet following just the same. As I stepped around Pepper’s feet to take the chair next to him, I heard Mia complaining to him.
    “We don’t have time for this.”
    “We’re gonna make time. That old man’s the first livin’ person we’ve seen in how long, so we’re gonna make nice and sit on that damn porch for a spell.”
    Mia didn’t have a reply for that.
     
    * * *
     
    “That’s the dumbest damn thing I think I ever heard.” Pepper smeared another spoonful of homemade apple butter across a piece of bread (homemade as well), and stared at us from across the table.
    Just after sundown, the old man had persuaded us to stay the night. It really hadn’t been that hard to do; after sitting and talking with him for three hours, I’d already decided that if he didn’t extend the invite first, I was going to ask. Michael had adamantly protested to us staying, bitching so loud over the radio I had to go out back by the shed to talk to him. Eventually he gave in and let me have my way. Later, Jake told me that Pepper reminded him of an older and rowdier version of his own grandfather, Mr. McKinley. He also made the comment that he was very glad his grandma hadn’t been with us, or else we’d have never been able to tear her away from the old man.
    Pepper offered supper to us, and after we saw how well stocked he was, we took him up on it. He had canned goods coming out of his ears, I assumed from a well-kept garden over the summertime, and loads of homemade jelly and apple butter. He bragged for at a least half an hour over having made the bread himself. I suppose that, for an old man living alone through the Zombie Apocalypse, it was quite an accomplishment.
    The bigger accomplishment was the fact that not only had he survived as long as he had, but he was actually thriving.
    “It’s all true. We’ve been out there, we’ve seen it.” I wiped my mouth and crumpled the napkin into a ball. “You’ve been safe here, isolated. But out there?” I jerked my thumb behind me in the direction of the front door. “It’s a nightmare.”
    Jake and Mia added their two cents to our story as it was told. We’d been informing Pepper of the general state of shittiness the world was currently in. Unfortunately he refused to believe