The Undead World (Book 6): The Apocalypse Exile (War of The Undead) Read Online Free PDF

more capable than I gave you credit for.”
    Neil went a shade of...the color was indescribable except to say his disfigured face wasn’t helped by the blush of red beneath the yellowed purple. “Thanks...uh, that’s nice and all, but that doesn’t help me decide which way to go. The wrong choice could mean we’re screwed.”
    “We might be screwed with either choice,” Deanna said, trying to be helpful.
    It wasn’t helpful. Neil wished he had more time to think through the situation, however, the horseman was getting impatient, sighing loudly, and the renegades kept looking at Neil, expectantly. All of them, except for Jillybean. Gently, she reached out and picked something up and brought it to eye level. It was a butterfly with wings of orange and black. It flapped its wings in an easy, lazy manner but did not fly away. It sat on the fairway of the little girl’s palm, looking contented.
    Out of the blue, Jillybean slapped her other hand down on the insect, crushing it. She then peeked her hand back so she could see the destruction she had caused. There was a smudge of orange and black on one hand and in the other was the crushed butterfly. It lifted one of its once beautiful wings slowly and then died.
    Neil had seen his share of senseless killings since the coming of the apocalypse but this was one of the worst. It seemed to him that two innocent creatures were killed by the single blow.
    “If I were leader, we’d take the shorter path,” Grey said. “So far, I’ve found that the further we go the more crap and the more evil we have to deal with. I don’t trust Brad, but I think the most he will do is screw us on the cost. He’s not going to ruin his ability to trade with the people of Colorado.”
    Deanna raised an eyebrow at this. “Do I need to remind you that we thought the same thing about the River King?”
    “That was different,” Grey answered her. “The River King knew who we were. This guy doesn’t. As far as he knows we’re just travelers heading to Colorado. As long as that’s all he knows, he has no reason to try anything untoward.”
    “Maybe,” Deanna said.
    Grey gave her a shrug. “Yes, there’s always a “maybe,” or a “perhaps,” but we can’t live like that or we’ll get nowhere. If we go with Brad, what sort of bargain can we strike?”
    Neil watched the two, quietly. Their conversation had as much to do with the obvious vibe between them as it did the question of the route. Both were almost formal in the way they spoke to each other, as if they were afraid of hurting the others feelings by disagreeing with them. From Neil’s perspective their courtship, which neither would ever admit was actually happening, was comically sad. Grey was so chivalrous and deferential concerning what Deanna had done to survive, that he was nearly robotic around her, while she wrapped herself in such a stiff, crooked form of feminism that her tone of voice practically screamed: Don’t touch me! to any man who came near. Yet neither could hide the look in their eyes.
    They both so clearly wanted to give up the charade, that there was a sort of office pool going on among the renegades. The first public display of affection won the prize: the last can of Dinty Moore soup. Neil had 7pm, five days from then and he liked his chances. 
    Neil considered the likelihood of a good bargain with Brad and said: “We’re not in a good position to bargain. We have slightly more than two-thousand rounds of ammo and slightly fewer than nineteen hundred cans of food, and not enough fuel to get to Colorado going straight through. It would help if we lost two of the trucks. It’ll be pretty cramped, but if we take all the diesel from one of the five tons and the Dodge pick-up, that’ll extend our range by about twenty-five percent.”
    “That just might be enough to get us to Colorado if we go straight through,” Grey said.
    “But it won’t help us with food or ammo,” Deanna said. “If we figure