The Defectors (Defectors Trilogy) Read Online Free PDF

dead animal they could eat or a piece of granola bar a cyclist had dropped. They didn’t speak. All I could hear was the wretched gurgle of their breathing.
    I lay perfectly still for what felt like an hour. The carriers moved slowly, and it took them a long time to decide there was no food along the trail. Finally, I heard their footsteps dying away. They were moving on.
    I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. My muscles ached from being tensed so long, and my hands were shaking.
    I hadn’t ever been that close to real carriers. Since the mandatory identification bill, the PMC had managed to contain the carriers within city limits. They were trying to mitigate disaster after what happened in New York and Los Angeles.
    When the virus first broke out, it spread rapidly from person to person, overtaking entire cities. No one had seen anything like it before. First people became sick, and then they lost their minds. They became more violent, disfigured, and uncontrollable as the virus ran its course. Then they died.
    Speculation ran wild about how it was transmitted, but still no one had identified patient zero. People locked themselves in their homes, afraid to venture outside or shake hands with a stranger.
    There was no cure, and the federal government froze, unsure how to proceed with a virus we knew so little about. Congress brought in the Private Military Company to round up the carriers who were wreaking havoc all across the United States. The food shortage and the oil crisis came to a head, and the country began its plummet into chaos. It was the perfect storm and a perfect opportunity for the PMC to reach for power.
    The country desperately needed resources and a safe haven from a virus that showed no signs of stopping. The U.S. reached out to the Canadian federal government for aid, but there was no way to guarantee the containment of the virus.  
    Finally, an American scientist developed a vaccine, and Congress passed a bill requiring every man, woman, and child to be immunized. As proof, the Citizen Identification Device was inserted to guard against identity fraud and the misidentification of people who might be infected. The PMC was charged with enforcement.  
    Plenty of people refused the vaccine. To some, rights of privacy were more important than protecting themselves from the virus, even if that meant imprisonment.  
    I didn’t have the courage to resist. The virus terrified me.  
    But now that I had my CID, it felt like a noose around my neck, tightening a little more every time a rover latched on to my identity. It came with a heavy fear I carried inside — fear for Greyson, fear for my parents, and fear for myself. It was a high price to pay.

    Now the fear was all I had, and I used it to drive me forward. I used to run marathons, and now I ran until my legs were too tired to carry me. I managed about fifteen miles a day. I probably could have done more, but I rested frequently and took walking breaks to avoid injury.
    I was moving at a good pace, and my lungs no longer burned. At least, I no longer took notice. When my eyes grew weary of searching through the trees or glancing over my shoulder to check if I was being followed, I looked up at the patch of sky that snaked over the trail and listened to the cadence of my feet on limestone. The sound comforted me.  
    My biggest worry was that, by day three, I was already running dangerously low on food. I had started with two bags each of beans and rice, a bag of nuts, dried fruit, and — stupidly — a bag of M&Ms. When I had left, I hadn’t taken very much, and the added weight of my pack was already extremely difficult to run with. But I was burning so many calories that I had consumed the food twice as quickly as I had estimated.
    I needed to restock, but now I was surrounded by farmland, and the towns along the way were mostly deserted. The few times I chanced leaving the trail to seek out some food, the gas station and general