The Zombie Saga (Book 2): Burn The Dead (Purge) Read Free

his head,
“we’ve got five hardworking Cleaners in our branch, so what’s the fascination
about becoming our sixth member? I mean, it’s dangerous, underpaid, and quite
frankly very unappealing for anyone—let alone a woman. There must be hundreds
of jobs out there for a pretty young girl like you.”
    Nice.
    “Well, Mr Davies—”
    “Call me Roger, sweetie,”
he corrects me, his patronising tone causing my clammy fists to clench as they
rest on my thighs.
    I force a good-mannered
smile. “Okay. Well… Roger , all my life I’ve wanted to be a Cleaner. Ever
since I was a little girl, I’ve wanted to protect people. And what better way
than to work in this field. I mean, there’s nothing like it. It’s the
frontline. The most important part of the fight.”
    He nods along. I can tell
he thinks I’m full of shit, that I’m just talking the talk. He picks up a sheet
of paper from the desk, glances at it and then squints his eyes. “Says here
that you’re twenty-three years old. Is that correct?”
    I nod. “Yes, that’s right
Mr—I mean, Roger. Twenty-three last month.”
    “Aren’t you a little bit young to be out on the frontline? Risking your life?”
    “Well, if I may, Roger ,
a lot of soldiers risking their lives on the frontline are younger than me.
Some as young as eighteen.”
    “Yes, but you’re not a
soldier, Catherine.” He squints again at the sheet of paper, which is clearly a
copy of my CV. “Says here that you dropped out of the Territorial Army after
just two years of service.” He locks his eyes on mine again. “Why was that
Catherine?”
    “I injured my knee playing
hockey,” I say, rubbing my left knee. “Twisted it pretty badly. Had to have
surgery. So I spent the next few years getting my strength back. But it’s fine
now. Good as new.”
    “So why didn’t you just
re-join? I’m sure they would have been more than happy to take you back.”
    “I wanted to, but I got a
full-time job in the restaurant, which meant working most weekends, so there
was just no way to commit to re-joining.”
    “Okay, that’s
understandable, Catherine, we all need to work. However, you may have to carry
heavy equipment. Is that going to be a problem with a dodgy knee?”
    “Absolutely not. As I
said, it’s as good as new. But I’ll be fine with any heavy inventory. I’ve been
training hard for the past few years; strength training, lots of uphill
running, cycling.”
    “Some of the inventory
might be extremely heavy. Are my guys going to be stuck carrying your
workload?”
    “No, Roger. I can carry my
own inventory. I promise.”
    He groans, and then takes
another look at my CV. “Says here that you’re born and raised in Ammanford.
Will it be a problem for you travelling all around South and West Wales? Some
days we’re not back until the early hours of the morning.”
    “Not at all. This is
something that I’ve always wanted to do. I know it’s a tough job, but that’s
one of the reasons why it’s so important to me. I love a challenge. And I’m not
scared of anything.”
    “Well you should be. This job is not what the papers say. They make out that it’s all glamorous,
that it’s going in all guns blazing. But I can assure you, Catherine, that it’s
most definitely not . I’ve lost three good men over the past five years,
and every one of those men had families, friends. But one tiny mistake, one
unpredictable situation they couldn’t control, and that’s it. Gone ,” he
clicks his fingers, “just like that.”
    “I promise you, applying
for this job was not something I took lightly.”
    “Well, you did a little
more than just apply for the job, Catherine. Thanks to your many letters
of complaint to the government, which were handed directly to me, we’ve had to
change our policy on employing women. Now I know it may seem sexist to
you, and probably to all women out there. But Catherine, let me tell you that
nothing is ever black and white. If our department