Surviving The Evacuation (Book 2): Wasteland Read Online Free PDF

pulled my wrist free. I grabbed at the creature, my hand closed around a handful of dank rotting hair. I twisted my grip, half turned and slammed its head into the brick wall of the house, again and again and again until it stopped moving.
     
    I felt around on the ground for the chisel, found it, stood and listened for the next creature. Torchlight came through the window to illuminate the grounds. I turned.
    “You al...” the woman began, then the torch in her hand shone down on my wrist. “Oh, hell,” she murmured softly.
    “What?” I looked down at my wrist. The bite wasn't that deep. “It's OK. I've had worse.”
    She looked at me with an expression of pitying disbelief. Then I realised why.
    “No, really it's OK. I’m immune,” I said into the silence, as I fumbled in my pockets for a bandage. I tied it off. It was a crude affair but sufficient for the moment. Then I rolled up the sleeve of my other arm. “There, see,” I said, and waited until the torch was shining on the unmistakable, though no longer fresh, teeth marks. “So...” I waited a moment. “Look, this isn't the time to explain more. Help me in, or I’m clearing off.” I tried to say it bluntly, but even to my ears it sounded petulant.
     
    “I'm Kim. That's Cannock,” she said, pointing the torch at the body when I was inside in the room. His right hand, still gripping a pistol, was almost severed at the wrist, a thin strip of flesh and gristle all that kept it attached. “Sanders is the one upstairs,” she added, as she bent down over the body.
    The scream must have come after that first blow nearly severed his wrist. The second blow had killed him. The hatchet was still embedded deep in the man's skull.
    “Is there anyone else here?” I asked.
    “No. Just them and me,” she replied, as she fished in the dead man's pockets. She pulled out a set of keys. That was when I first looked at her. It was too dark to make out her features, but I could see that her clothes were ragged, torn and ripped into wretched shapelessness. Around each ankle was a pair of handcuffs, cuffed together in the middle.
    “Who was he?” I asked.
    “Cannock? Ex-military. Or claimed to be. He was a good shot, so who knows. Sanders... He's just...” she unlocked the cuffs. “He's...” she stalled again, unable to find words to describe the man upstairs.
     
    I looked around the room. It was beyond Spartan, it was bare. There was no furniture, not even a blanket. There was nothing to secure the window with and nothing to keep us here a moment longer.
    “Come on,” I said. “We should go.” I walked over to the window. With the torchlight flickering around the room it was difficult to see far, but I could just make out the slow moving silhouettes making their way towards us. “Not this way,” I muttered. “Sanders, he's in one of the bedrooms?”
    “Top floor. Corner bedroom,” she said, bending over the body once more. She gripped the hatchet and tugged at it. It came free with a sucking wet sound unlike anything I had heard from the bodies of the undead.
    I didn't like the feeling of being unarmed. I walked over to the corpse stepped on the hand until the fingers popped, and the gun was released. I picked it up. It felt unfamiliar, flimsy compared to the hefty weight of the weapons I had grown used to.
    “I think there's a back door,” I said, “in the kitchens on the other side of the building. We should be able to get out there.”
    I’m not leaving Sanders here,” she said.
    “You want him to...” I stopped. I was going to ask if she wanted him to come with us, but I could see in her eyes that was not what she meant.
     
    I don't know why I stayed. Why I didn't just find a door and leave. It would have been easy. It would have been sensible. But I didn't. I moved the pistol into the torchlight, and checked where the safety-catch was.
    “You know how to use that?” she asked. I hesitated and looked down at the gun. It was an automatic,