Zombie Killers: Ice & Fire Read Online Free PDF Page B

him.”
    “You have my permission. Think you can still use that hand to get down?”
    “Yeah, I’ll be OK.”
    I walked over to Collaton. “You heard her. Next time you play grab ass, she’ll shoot you.”
    “I was just trying to have a little fun.” he mumbled.
    “I don’t care. She’s your teammate, hands off.” He gave me a pissed off look, then reached down to shrug into his own harness. Hernandez stepped over to help him.
    “Smooth move, bro.” I overheard him say. I wasn’t sure about the reply I heard, but it sounded like “Screw that Bitch”.
    One day into the mission, and we already had problems. A possible broken hand and a definite attitude problem.
     

Chapter 11
    We moved out slowly through the burnt out factory. Milling machines lay in rusted and slagged heaps. Only six months since the breakdown, and everything that the world had run on was falling apart. Of course, the fire didn’t help.
    I put Collaton on point, and kept Brit towards the back. Problems between people in such a small unit were one of leaders’ worst headaches.  Like a piece of sand in the gears of a machine, it will wear away until the whole works stop, usually violently. I couldn’t afford that; I would have to sit both Collaton and Brit down and talk to them. Later, when we had settled down for the night. Right now my main concern was getting a place to fort up, so we could check out the rest of the factory tomorrow in the day. I didn’t want lights to show, even in a snow storm.
    We stopped a t the fire exit of a stairwell. The door led out into a parking lot; across the street there was a row of sturdy brick row houses, ideal to spend the night in. We pushed open the door gently, but it still screeched a bit on the hinges. I cringed, but nodded to Collaton to move out into the steadily falling snow. Hernandez knelt just outside the doorway, scanning the buildings with an infra-red sensitive scope. Collaton moved about fifty meters, then Ahmed passed me. Reaching Collaton, he moved out another fifty meters. In this way, we crossed the parking lot, keeping each other separated if we happened to stumble across a Z. We would lose only one man, and have time to take them both out, but close enough that we could quickly form a coherent defense if attacked by a group. On the bad side, you were on your own if you did happen to run into one, oh well. Hopefully someone else would take them down for you, but grouping up to provide a base of fire had been a hard lesson to unlearn. I rolled up the rear of the column, joining them at the doorway to one of the houses.
    “Hernandez , Collaton, O’Neil, you stay here. Watch our six.” Brit shot me a dirty look, but tough crap. She would have to deal with it, and I was pretty sure neither of them would try anything stupid with her in the middle of clearing a house. I led the stack, shotgun at the ready. I had a suppressor the size of a coffee can screwed onto the front, and it would still make a loud coughing noise, but hopefully that wouldn’t carry over the snow. The rest of the guys carried their pistols down in the low ready.
    The fear that always gripped me when we entered an unknown building was building up inside again. I felt Ahmed’s hand on my shoulder, and tried to push the fear back down inside. No matter how many times I had done this, it always felt like a knot in my stomach. Inside could be anything, from a howling undead to a survivor pointing a shotgun back at me, to nothing at all. I flicked on the flashlight and reached over to check the lock. I would have preferred to be able to lock the door later once we had settled in, but this one was locked already. I raised the shotgun and fired directly into the deadbolt, blowing the door open, then stepped inside, into a dark hallway.
    I knew that smell. Rotted, undead meat . Undead. I covered my sector, sweeping the shotgun from left to right, but nothing showed. I didn’t have to say anything to the rest of the guys,