The Passenger (Surviving the Dead) Read Online Free PDF

Fights where they had lost friends, men who were so familiar, who had shared so much terror and hardship, that they were like family. Brothers, all of them. Private Smith shuffled his feet and remained silent. He had been assigned to Delta after his predecessor was killed in the line of duty. No one had told him the circumstances of the man’s death, but he knew the other soldiers of First Platoon had taken the loss hard. And none harder than the men around him.
    “You all did well,” Jonas said. “That was a good, fast response. Especially you, Cole, you’re a goddamn nightmare with that SAW.”
    The gunner grinned. “You know what they say, sir. Do what you love , and you’ll never work a day in your life.”
    Jonas barked a short laugh. “Damn right. All right then, looks like we’re squared away. ” He gestured at Ethan. “Staff Sergeant, round up the other squad leaders and get reports from them. Command is going to want to know what we just expended valuable ammunition on.”
    “Yes sir.”
    “The rest of you keep your eyes peeled for trouble. Holland, put that scope of yours to use and watch our back trail. Those raiders might find their spines and decide to pay us another visit. If they do, I want warning well ahead of time.”
    Holland nodde d. “Want me to get the other DMs to do the same, sir?”
    “No, just you and Sergeant Kelly for now. Rotate out with the other two in a couple of hours.”
    “Will do.”
    Ethan watched the l ieutenant open the door and step back into the command car. He caught a glimpse of the cot along the wall, and the chair bolted to the floor in front of a small desk. It would have been mean accommodations under other circumstances, but standing there in the bare passenger car, he felt like a character in a Dickens novel staring through a window at Christmas dinner. The door shut, and the room was lost to view. He sighed, shoulders slumping.
    Time to round up the other squad leaders. Time to write a report.
    Goddamn, I hate paperwork .
     
    *****
     
    Hamlet passed by to the north of the U-trac much the same as any other town.
    Ethan watched the outlines of buildings in the distance as they slowly drifted from left to right, little more than grey and brown husks against the blue morning haze. Even from this far away, he could see the empty, yawning holes staring out from behind shattered windows, the black scorch marks left behind by long-ago fires, and the sharp, stabbing fingers of I-beams, support struts, and shattered concrete pillars where office complexes and government buildings had once stood. All collapsed now. All reduced to great, mountainous heaps of forgotten rubble.
    Across the depressing expanse between the town and the tracks, littered like corpses on a battlefield, lay houses, businesses, long-dead industrial facilities, and sagging structures that seemed to have no identifiable purpose at all. Every visible wall was crowded with vines and creepers that swarmed over rooftops in choking, skeletal tangles. Autumn’s chill had turned everything brown and dead, and blanketed the landscape in an ocean of endless beige beneath a cloudy, pewter-colored sky. All seemed still. Abandoned. Quiet.
    Ethan knew better.
    There were eyes out there. Many eyes, and none of them friendly. They watched the tracks, he knew. They watched, and they would remember. He would not have been surprised if word of the brief, bloody firefight had already reached the marauders holed up in that shattered ruin of a town. Nor would it have surprised him to learn their plans for retaliation were already in motion. It was what they did, these marauder bands. They fought. They killed. They took from others. And if they were attacked, their response was never proportional, never just an eye for an eye. They were vicious, savage people with no regard for anyone’s lives other than their own. Often, they even fought amongst each other, robbing, raping, and stealing.
    It was a well-known fact in