Sometimes We Ran (Book 3): Rescue Read Free Page B

light flooded my face. The sun had made a rare appearance. A stiff, cold wind assaulted our faces. It was refreshing, and chased the bad smells from my nose. We stepped onto the porch, dragging Zombie-Boy behind us.
    I held up my hand to stop Elizabeth for a second. I had forgotten something. “Lisa! Ben...but especially Lisa! It's John and Liz,” I called out, into the yard. “We got the zombie, and we're coming out. Don't shoot us.” I waited until I saw our friends approach the porch, then we exited the house with our kill in tow. We were back out into the cold again.

Chapter 3: The Report
    “W e didn't hear any shots. How did you get him?” Lisa said, as she ran up to greet us in the yard. Elizabeth and I dropped the covered corpse on the lawn to take a little break. It fell to the ground with a sickening thump.
    “John got him with his knife. I screwed up, and it almost killed us,” Elizabeth answered. She turned to walk away to the infirmary.
    Lisa grabbed Elizabeth's arm. “Screwed up? How?”
    Elizabeth pulled her arm away, and started walking up the street. “Ask John,” she said, as she disappeared into the fog.
    Lisa turned to talk to me. “What happened?
    I didn't want to go into it. Lisa could be a little harsh to her little sister. “Nothing. The bad guy was a little more livelier than anticipated. With the close quarters in there, we couldn't get a shot off.”
    Ben was taking a look under the sheet. “Ugly sucker. What do you think, John? Twelve, thirteen years old or so?”
    I looked at our recent kill. Ben was right. Zombie-Boy sure was ugly. The knife wounds were still weeping black blood, and green fluid had begun to run out of the eyes and nose. The Red-Eye's mouth was set in a permanent grimace of pain. “No...younger. Also a lot fresher. Probably recently turned.”
    “How can you tell?” Lisa asked.
    I pointed to the creature's jaw. “The teeth are still kind of white. This zombie hasn't eaten too much raw meat yet. The older ones have a lot more remains stuck to their teeth.” I pulled the cover over the dead boy. The smell was making me sick.
    We picked up the sheet and began to drag it to Lisa's fence kill that was still lying in the road. It was a long walk back, but eventually we reunited the two corpses. Someone had wrapped Lisa's kill in another sheet with stars and planets all over it. All of us were breathing hard in the cold air, so we took another break for a quick sip of water. I wasn't looking forward to dragging these heavy zombies all the way to Doctor Connelly's infirmary, but her orders were clear. The doctor wanted to look at all the zombies we killed. She was trying to find clues to the source of the infection.
    I wasn't comfortable with that. I'd rather burn them in a big pile and be done with it.
    As we stood there, a pair of powerful headlights and a sound like a motorcycle approached us through the winter gloom. It was our Chinese-built, utility all-terrain vehicle, with two residents of Cannon Fields on board. Someone must have thought this was an emergency because the ATV was never used unless things got bad. It cut into our dwindling gasoline supply.
    The camouflaged, 4-wheeled beast of burden slid to a stop on the front lawn, and the occupants leapt off their seats and into action. One was Big Thomas, a hulking country boy who hadn't met an animal he couldn't hunt down and kill. His skill as a hunter was invaluable to Cannon Fields. Thanks to him, we always had something to eat.
    The other person was a bit more diminutive than Thomas. Standing five-foot-one and weighing in about a buck-ten was my good friend, Claire. Before I was a resident of Cannon Fields, Claire had been my companion on the road. Her small size masked her toughness. Claire could be a wrecking machine. She jumped off the ATV, wielding her favorite weapon: an aluminum baseball bat. I think she had a rack of them at her house. Her shoulder-length auburn hair was still damp. Must be bath