23 Hours Read Free Page A

until I was sure most of her teeth had been broken. Feeling somewhat vindicated, I jumped to my feet and took her head with one swipe of the blade.
    I backed up as her body flailed about. The pus flew from her open neck, barely missing my worn out shoes. As I jumped back, I saw a slight movement out of the corner of my eye.
    “No,” I yelled as the boy neared the stroller. I hadn’t meant to yell quite like that, and half expected him to break into tears, but he didn’t cry; he didn’t seem even the slightest bit fazed. Instead he just stopped dead in his tracks and stared at me.
    I moved to him and could see he was still fine, well as fine as he had been, and I could have just picked him up and walked away but as much as I wanted to do just that, there was one last thing I had to do.
    “Stay here,” I told him before taking the last couple steps towards the carriage. I tried to steel myself for what I was about to see, but as I peered inside I realized nothing could have prepared me for that. The old woman had went to town on the poor little thing, chewing through half its torso and even into it’s skull. Those wounds were bad enough, but the virus seemed to be attacking the infant even quicker than it did an adult. I wasn’t sure how long ago she had started on it, but already the virus had taken one of its eyes.
    As the little thing started squirming, staring up at me with its one milky eye, I was tempted to turn and run, but the old woman’s body flopping one last time reminded me exactly what I had to do. Excalibur easily sliced through the tiny neck and the stroller at the same time. Now I’d killed many infected, but that time I had to turn away before I could see the death flail; that was one sight I didn’t want etched into my brain.
    If the boy knew what had just happened, it didn’t seem to bother him. I wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or concerned about that. But at that point it didn’t really matter so I cleaned off my blade, picked up the boy and then continued back down the train tracks in hopes of making the Town before dusk.
     
     

Chapter 3
     
    Several miles passed without incident, and the typical noises of nature returned, but as the sun continued to travel across the sky I realized that the little diversion with the old woman had messed with my schedule and thanks to Willie’s watch I knew exactly how much time it had cost us. Even though the bite on my leg was killing me, I tried to channel my anger into energizing my walk. Pushing myself harder than I probably should have, I found the miles passed quickly. The kid and I made it to the Town just before five. I had really wanted to be there and gone by that time but there was nothing I could do about that. Thankfully, though, the crowd of degenerates looking for a chance to escape into blissful debauchery hadn’t arrived yet.
    At one point I had been one of the regulars and the guards knew knew me well but regular or not, they still wanted to know you’d be buying something before they’d let you in, so I pulled out a couple forks and spoons before we even reached the gate. I made sure they were decent ones, nice enough to impress them but definitely not the best I had. You start flashing around too many nice pieces and you get a reputation that could get you killed. Upon seeing the pieces the sentry waved us on through without a second look; it really was all about the silverware.
    We moved through a large roll up door leading into a garage filled with decommissioned military trucks. Everyone knew of Big Mike’s collection; it was his pride and joy but he’d sell any of them for the right price. Hell, he’d sell his left nut for the right price. It was hard to say if any of the trucks ran or even had gas, but I couldn’t afford one even if they did, so I quickly moved on, heading straight to Ned’s to get us a little food. The boy hadn’t said a word about food since that morning, but I knew he had to be starving. I