The Undead Day Nineteen Read Online Free PDF

spill from her eyes.
    ‘About last night,’ Maddox says, lowering his voice another notch.
    She swallows, blinks and looks back up at him, waiting and expecting the worse. ‘Just don’t hurt Billy…please…I’ll go if you want but…’
    ‘I don’t know how to do this,’ Maddox says.
    ‘I can leave,’ she rushes the words out, ‘I’ll take Billy if you want…I’ll go but please, Maddox, don’t hurt Billy…’
    ‘S’hard,’ Maddox whispers with a gentle shake of his head. ‘You get me.’
    ‘Maddox,’ the tears stream down her cheeks, ‘Please…Billy’s lost everyone…’
    ‘All those kids have lost everyone,’ Maddox says, turning slowly to stare over at the vehicle ramp and the shapes of the children and adults gathered at the top.
    ‘Maddox, please…he’s my brother,’ she holds the sobs inside but the tension in her throat reflects in her voice made rough and hoarse. ‘He’s my little brother…don’t hurt him. Hurt me…shoot me…he didn’t do anything. I did it.’
    ‘Shoot you?’ Maddox looks back sharply with eyes that take seconds to focus.
    ‘Do it outside,’ she nods, almost urging him. ‘So Billy doesn’t see. Tell him I left. Tell him I died in the fires but please don’t let him see…I won’t try and run…’
    ‘Lilly,’ Maddox says stepping closer, ‘I’m saying I don’t know how to do this,’ he waves a drunken hand at the mess and destruction around them, ‘ this… all of this…not shoot you. I know…how…I can shoot but…what? ’
    She blanches, showing confusion and terror on her face. Her hands wringing in front and her eyes constantly glancing to the ramp and her brother at the top. Maddox closes his eyes, trying to think clearly but his own mind whirls with as many strands of thought as Lilly’s. A fug inside his mind. His muscles ache like hell from the repeated shocks of the tazer. It hurts just to stand up. He tries to remember what he was saying but falters and sways on the spot without realisation of his own motion.
    ‘This is mess.’
    They both look at Lenski stood with her arms folded across her chest. The defiant Polish woman glaring past them to the filth, ‘This is mess. Everything. Everything is mess.’ She tuts, shakes her head and tuts again with an angry blast of air pushed out through her nose. ‘How we fix hole in wall? Where we put bodies? The burnt tents, they go yes? We get new tents yes?’ She nods while speaking, asserting her decisions on the other two with equal glances between Maddox and Lilly. ‘We no give children guns, yes? You have gun,’ she nods at Maddox then taps her own chest, ‘I have gun, Lilly have gun. No one else have gun.’
    Lilly have gun? Lilly blinks in surprise but stays silent and watchful.
    ‘If new people they come. You see them,’ she says to Maddox. ‘We no give guns to children. The Bossman not here now, yes? The children they all die now. Dead. Darius is dead…’
    ‘I know…’
    ‘No crew chiefs. No crews. No number one number two number three number four…no more, Maddox.’
    ‘Okay,’ Maddox says quietly.
    ‘Howie is gone, yes?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Lilly, you stay, yes?’
    ‘I er…’
    ‘Good. This is good. We fix this. We fix mess. Lilly, you shoot gun?’
    ‘Pardon?’
    ‘You shoot gun, yes? You know how gun works, yes?’
    She nods, ‘Nick showed me…with a er…with a handgun…’
    ‘Maddox. Give Lilly gun. Give me gun. No one else has gun.’
    ‘Okay,’ Maddox says, nodding at everything she says with a look of relief washing over his features.
    ‘Small gun,’ Lenski barks, ‘Lilly and me we have small hands. Not big hands. We have small guns. We fix this mess.’
    ‘Lilly?’ Maddox says, purposefully widening his eyes as though fighting sleep.
    Lilly watches him. Studying his face and manner. She sees a man not many years older than her.
    ‘We make decisions together,’ Lilly says with a glance at Lenski, ‘All three of us have to