A World Alone (Dead World Series Book 1) Read Free Page B

hunting the moon.
    I'm an idiot.
    A suicidal idiot.
    Every step brings another reproach.
    Another scream, closer this time, much closer. I slow to a halt before
moving any further, rethinking my abrupt decision.
    It's always a risk dealing with other survivors. Especially so soon after
they've died. And from the sounds of those screams, she's either dead or very
close to it. I still have some food and water, but she might have more. She
might even have the keys to a working car! The last three corpses I've come
across barely had anything useful on them. But they had been dead for a while.
This woman has probably dropped all her belongings right where she died.
    Ripe for the picking.
    All I have to do is get to her corpse and maybe wait awhile for the infected
to finish up with her. Or maybe if I'm lucky, she had a bag that she dropped in
her panic to survive. That way I can scoop it up without having to wait or deal
with any unwanted attention.
    She screams again.
    The sound forces me to move out of habit and I find myself taking three
steps before I manage to restrain myself.
    I need to wait for her to die.
    I glance around the street, my heart burrowing deeper into my chest at every
shadow that waves. The bright moonlight casts a ghastly glow along the road,
deepening the darkest shadows surrounding it. The night doesn't agree with me.
It wants me to hide in its embrace, along with the monsters it veils.
    The woman wails again, longer this time. I need to get to her soon before
every infected in this town does.
    She must be at the end of the road.
    A small distance away that is cordoned off by the dark of night. I move off
the road and into the tall bushes by its side. They rustle as I move against
them, a sound incomprehensible against the tormented calls of the dying siren.
    My steps crunch amidst discarded leaves as I slowly make my way up the
street, the woman's screams growing closer with every step. As I approach, the
darkness recedes, allowing me to see her grave site.
    A gas station on the corner of an intersection.
    Not the most glamorous of places to die and definitely not where I would
have wanted to drop – but you get what you're given I suppose. I step around a
tree and behind a bush, pushing aside a few of its leaves so as to get a better
view. My fingers curl at what I see.
    Shit, I think as my nails dig into my palms.
    Sitting outside the gas station is a bright yellow jeep. The same bright
yellow jeep that saved my life not even a few hours ago. Its brightly painted
exterior emulates the surface of the sun and wards off all the darkness
surrounding it, acting as a beacon in the night. Standing beside the jeep is a
man. I squint my eyes to try and get a better look at him, but his features
remain indistinguishable in the night. Shadows trace every curve of his face
and hide his identity.
    But I don't need to know what he looks like when I already know who he is.
    He's a wanna-be-hero. Hard to find in this day and age. Most of them have
already died out due to their heroic (or idiotic) acts of sacrifice. Only the
clever ones still remain. And he must be a clever one. Heroic enough to risk
damaging his car to save me, but smart enough not to stop and risk giving me a
lift.
    He's probably doing the exact same thing that I'm doing; waiting for the
woman to die so that we can salvage her corpse. Any other survivor and I'd probably
have to fight them off or make a deal with them. But a hero, well, if I play my
cards right he just might be nice enough to let me have all the loot to myself.
    Pushing aside the small prickly branches I step out from the bushes and back
onto the open road. His back is towards me as I approach him with small steps,
his height increasing with the closing distance between us. Large muscles seem
to tense beneath his clothes as my foot scrapes against the skin of the road.
He turns his large body towards me in a quick swing, a gun coming along with him
and resting at a level with my