Zombies in Paradise (Love in the Age of Zombies Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

back on it, he wasn’t sure who brought up the idea of his making the trip. It must have been introduced in passing, but the idea grew in him and took hold. Before long it lifted his depression and filled him with anticipation. The anticipation wasn’t all positive, however. He knew he was risking his life. He had no idea what lay beyond the confines of his property, other than what he had heard from Kevin. He knew there were zombies; he knew there were people who would quite willingly murder him just to take his supplies. But otherwise he had no idea what to expect in this remote part of the state and knew things could be utterly chaotic.
    Even so, he was excited about the trip. He looked forward to having a face-to-face conversation and sharing a meal with Kevin and Michelle, even if it was a meal of canned goods and dried beans. He also looked forward to having a spot of Kevin’s bourbon, a libation he’d run out of months ago.
    He finally reached the fence running parallel to the road, took a quick glance around, then hopped out of the truck and opened the gate blocking the two track. He drove through the gate, then closed and locked it behind him. While he might leave his cabin open, he wasn’t going to invite trespassers by leaving the gate open.
    As he closed the gate, he noticed someone had defaced his NO TRESPASSING sign. They had crossed out TRESPASSING and replacing it with ZOMBIES . He could just imagine some kid thinking it was funny early on in the Collapse, but it didn’t seem all that funny now.
    He pulled onto M-33 South. The lanes showed no signs of having been used recently. Small branches lay undisturbed among the fallen leaves layering the pavement, the winter snow having packed them down. While it was still easy to tell where the road was, he surmised it was only a matter of time before leaves and branches accumulated, slowly composted into soil, and sprouted small plants and trees. Soon it would be a long stretch of young growth between sides of mature hardwoods; eventually it would be nearly impossible to tell where the road had been.
    He was glad he’d been enough of a pack-rat to keep all his maps. Some of his younger hunter friends teased him about it as they keyed their destination into their GPS. But Doc liked the tactile sense he got when running his finger along a proposed route. The map he held was solid and real, it wasn’t nebulous. They also made fun of his CD collection in the Jeep. Some of them didn’t own a single CD; everything was either stored on the cloud or on their device. Holding up a disk, he’d say, But I own this. It’s solid. It’s real. You only have digital ones and zeros. And sometimes they’d say, If you lose that disk, Doc, you’ll have to buy it again. I’ll never lose my songs on the cloud. I can access them anywhere, anytime. Only it turned out anytime didn’t factor in the apocalypse. He still had his CD collection; he doubted iTunes or the cloud was still working.
    Life had reverted back to the pre-digital age. Paper maps were the only way to navigate, assuming there was anywhere worth navigating to. Driving down the familiar country roads, he felt both at home and a stranger. The men who owned these fields, some of them good friends, were likely dead or worse. This was not his land anymore. It belonged to the creatures. Until we no longer have to live in hiding, fighting for survival, we will live in fear of those monsters. Living in fear is not living free.
    And he hadn’t even seen one yet.
    Just as that thought crossed his mind, he spied a young man leaning against the outside edge of a barbed-wire fence lining the road. He slowed down to see if the guy needed help. As he rolled to a stop, the man turned, revealing a torn and bloody sleeve. His arm had been ripped off just below the shoulder. Bits of flesh and bone, stained with old dried blood, stuck out from under the sleeve. His walk was ungainly and stiff. Doc noticed a huge gaping wound in his