The Walking Dead: Invasion Read Online Free PDF

y’all have noticed, but a person’s odds ain’t too good out there all alone.”
    Silence.
    Jeremiah smiles at her. “Well, you ain’t all alone no more.”
    The woman gives Jeremiah a look. “You is a big one, ain’t ya?”
    â€œYes, ma’am.”
    â€œHeard them callin’ ya ‘Brother’ and ‘Rev’—you a preacher, too?”
    â€œYes, ma’am, guilty as charged.” He sniffs, tries to put the tumult of the past few days into words. “I had a grand vision once, and the Good Lord decided it didn’t measure up, and He left us all behind.”
    She cocks her head at him. “You one of them Rapture preachers?”
    â€œRight at this moment, I don’t rightly know what I am.”
    She shudders. “You sure seemed to know what you were doing down there in that chapel.”
    â€œI’m sorry you had to see that.”
    She chews on the inside of her cheek, thinking, pondering. She gives Jeremiah a strange look. “Can I trust y’all?”
    Jeremiah looks at the others, then looks back at the zaftig choir mistress. “Yes, ma’am, you can trust us … you got my word on that.”
    The black woman purses her lips. “Reason I ask … I might know a way we can improve on our situation a little bit.” She looks around the room at each man. “It’s a long shot, but if y’all are up to it … we just might make it.”
    She takes their silence as a sign of mild interest, so she explains further.

 
    THREE
    It takes them the rest of that day to find enough fuel to get them where they need to go. They pack a wheelbarrow and three large satchels with supplies, including a twenty-five-gallon container of gasoline from the toolshed behind the building. By the time the light in the southwestern sky has begun to soften, fading from pale gray to pink over the coastal backwaters of the panhandle, they’re ready.
    They slip outside through the rectory’s side door and creep single file along the edge of the property.
    Jeremiah takes the lead, periodically glancing over his shoulder for any sign of the herd that had crossed the highway around the state line. He carries his Glock with a full magazine. Crickets roar, and the dusky air gets clammy and cool on the back of Norma’s neck as she follows them toward the abandoned Escalade.
    They hurriedly climb in, stowing their provisions in the rear cargo bay. Jeremiah kicks the engine on, and Norma settles down in the passenger seat next to him, unfolding a dog-eared map. “They usually stick pretty close to the ocean,” she says, almost to herself, calculating the mileage between them and the gulf. “Probably should start our search down around Perry or Crawfordville.”
    She senses movement ahead of them, through the windshield, on the road, and glances up in time to see a couple ragged shadows emerging from the woods about a hundred yards away, drawn to the noise of their engine. The garbled growls can be heard above the drone of crickets, the smell like a faint trace of garbage on the breeze.
    Norma feels a slight hitch of chills in her solar plexus. Considering the fact that the world has been infested with these things for almost two years now, she still hasn’t seen that many of them out in the open like this. She feels like Rip Van Winkle—as though she’s been asleep inside that church for a hundred years—and now the light and space of the outdoors is making her dizzy.
    The preacher gooses the accelerator, and the Escalade lurches away.
    Norma sinks into her seat as they roar down the road, swerving to avoid the half a dozen or so walkers now skulking out of the woods and blocking their path. They sideswipe one of the creatures, tearing a chunk out of its shoulder and the side of its face, spattering gore up across the glass of her window.
    â€œYou get used to it, sis,” the preacher