Wayward Pines: Nomad (Kindle Worlds Novella) Read Online Free PDF Page B

jerking, and the two abbies holding her let go. She slumped to the ground onto her knees. Holding her bleeding belly.
    He ejected the spent shell, jacked a new cartridge into the chamber, locked down the bolt. Stared back through the scope at Beth staring back at him.
    She closed her eyes, nodded once, and he squeezed the trigger again.
    Her head snapped back a half-second after the Winchester kicked against his shoulder and the report echoed across the clearing.
    The four abbies, first confused by the gunfire, suddenly went wild. They started jumping around the dead body, screaming and screeching their outrage.
    Tobias felt in his pocket for the other rounds he had brought. Three more. Those plus the rounds still in the rifle might be enough to finish the rest of these abbies if need be. Assuming they didn’t charge at him all at once. Assuming there weren’t more on the other side of the clearing, just waiting to join the swarm. His best bet, he knew, was to make a break for it while he still could.
    Standing up, he stared once more into the clearing, at Beth dead and bleeding on the ground, at the four abbies circling her body, and turned away.
    Carl stood directly behind him. In his hand was a pistol.
    Tobias thought, Shit , and began to raise his rifle up in defense.
    But Carl lowered the pistol to his side. He nodded his head once, just like Beth. “Thank you,” he whispered.
    “We need to leave.”
    “No. You go. I…I’m going to stay.” He lifted his other hand, showing Tobias what was there. “Go,” Carl whispered. Tears were still in his eyes. “Just…go.”
    In the clearing behind Tobias, the tone of the abbies’ screams and screeches had changed. He glanced over his shoulder and saw them coming now, charging for their location.
    Tobias didn’t say another word. He stepped past Carl and started running. He only glanced back after a couple seconds, moving backward, watching Carl walk out through the trees into the clearing.
    Carl fired the pistol at the approaching abbies, but the shots were wild and none of the creatures went down. That didn’t matter, though, because what Carl had in his other hand was what would do the trick.
    Tossing the empty pistol aside, Carl pulled the pins from the two grenades, one after the other. Still walking forward, slowly, as the abbies charged at him. Twenty yards away. Fifteen yards. Ten yards. Five.
    Tobias turned away at the last moment. The blast was deafening. And then…silence.
    Still not looking back, Tobias shouldered the Winchester and kept moving forward.

    No lanterns were still lit inside the shelter. If Tobias wanted to descend the ladder and venture down the tunnel to retrieve his things, he would be doing so in complete darkness.
    The stink wafting up from down below was almost too much to bear. If he waited until morning, the stink would become a stench, and there was no telling just how much it would soak into his stuff.
    The night had come on fast and strong. The sky was clear, and above the trees the stars sparkled in the void. An owl hooted somewhere close by. Crickets chirped.
    Tobias shouldered the Winchester, turned and placed his foot on the top rung of the ladder. Waited a beat, and then made his descent.

    He took short strides. More of a shuffle than anything else. He had the rifle back in his hands, aimed at the ground. If anything moved, he would shoot it.
    Past the dead abbies, down the short tunnel, the darkness thickened. Fortunately the space wasn’t too large.
    He started toward the right, where Carl had been going through his backpack.
    His imagination told him he wasn’t alone in the dark. That one of the abbies wasn’t completely dead. That another abby had stolen down here while he was gone and was waiting in the corner to make its move.
    Shuffling forward, leaning down, he kept going until he found the backpack.
    Searching for the zipper, finding it, opening the backpack, he began rummaging through it for his flint and steel.