State of Panic: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller Read Free Page A

stared around at the others. Some of them I had got to know, most kept to themselves and just seemed as if they wanted to get through the program. Corey, Billy and Luke were the only ones that came from the same area as me. The other eight were from surrounding towns.
    Before my arrival, I’d head about the place. Camp Zero had earned a name for itself as the location parents sent their kids if they wanted to see real change. I’d seen Murphy around town picking up supplies or having breakfast with Dan. I just never imagined I would end up here.
    “So what’s the deal with the women? Why aren’t there any babes in this place? No offense, Kate,” Billy said.
    “None taken.”
    Kate was rolling out a sleeping bag. I eyed her from across the fire. To us, she was Officer Shaw. However, Billy liked to call her by her first name. The few times I had seen her outside of the station were when she was patrolling our sleepy little town. She was a single mother who had lived her entire life in Mount Pleasant. Her daughter Kiera was one of those sporty cheerleader types who tended to spend more time cheering the jocks on and wiggling her tush more than anything else. I often wondered if it was just a front. With her mother as a cop and all, I imagined she had to keep up appearances, say all the right things and look as if she was excelling. The community of Mount Pleasant was big on keeping up appearances. Town hall meetings every Wednesday usually got quite a turnout, signs up and down the streets were cleaned on a weekly basis, and people mowed their yards to keep up with the joneses. It was sad to think that at one time all those adults had been like us in one way or another.
    “There are usually girls here but this last intake we had more guys. We rolled the girls over into the next program.”
    “Just my luck,” Billy said before taking his pot down to the water to rinse out.
    “Try not to fall in this time, Billy,” Dan said.
    “Fuck you,” Billy replied.
    “That’s one more stone.”
    Billy picked one up. That was another rule. If you swore out here you had to pick up a stone and put it in your bag. Of course this would make it heavier and in turn cause untold frustration, which usually led to more cursing. So far it had turned into a bit of a competition as to who had collected the most stones. Billy currently had taken the lead.
    Dan Adams wore a coonskin hat and a checkered shirt. He had one of these odd-looking mustaches that drooped down the sides of his mouth and off the edge of his chin. He looked every bit at home in the wilderness as would a squirrel. A longtime friend of Murphy’s, Dan had been a medic in the military; he usually would recount stories of his time in the war. Some of the crazy things he had seen. Guys with arms and legs blown off weren’t the worst, according to him. It was seeing toddlers sent out towards a convoy of troops with C4 attached to them. When he wasn’t making us want to chuck up what we had for dinner, he was cracking jokes.
    “So listen, guys. You’ve been out here a month now. I know for most of you it has been probably the hardest thing you have ever done but I want to tell you that we are proud of you.”
    “Oh great. Does that mean we can go home now?” Corey asked in a joking manner.
    “Sorry, Corey. Not for a long while. We have you for another month and believe me a lot is going to happen in that time. We like to ease you guys into this. That’s what the first month is about. Getting you adjusted to taking responsibility. For some of you this is the first time in your life you haven’t been filled up with drugs or tobacco and I want to hear from you what that feels like.”
    “Shit. Yeah, that’s about it,” someone muttered.
    “Well, I doubt Luke here is going to have much to say,” Billy remarked before laughing.
    “Screw you, Billy.”
    “Luke, give your mouth a rest,” Dan said.
    “Who wants to go first?” Shaw asked.
    No hands went up. There