Trepidation Read Free Page A

about flying off the road. When I hit a rut, the car rattled. I gritted my teeth, fighting to keep control of the automobile as we swerved left, then right. The tires squealed, but I accelerated and drove like a madman through the slush and snow. The speedometer shot up to sixty, but I continued to floor it. A cold chill ran through me when I felt the car skidding around the turns.
    Speeding rapidly in pursuit, the truck continued to gain on us, likely having a lot less trouble since it was probably a four-by-four with rear-wheel drive.
    I took a deep breath to calm myself and wiped the beads of sweat from my brow. The car suddenly jolted when the truck slammed into our back bumper. I gasped and jerked my head back around.
    “They’re trying to run us off the road!” Claire shouted, horrified.
    The tires spun, and the wet brakes squealed. My stomach lurched, and white-knuckled panic flooded through me when we hit a patch of ice too fast and completely spun out like some crazed amusement park ride gone wrong. With no traction in the snow, we swerved violently to the right, then veered off the side of the road and flipped over into the ditch. I shuddered as the car filled with smoke from the radiator. My vision was blurry, and I was a bit confused, but I saw Claire’s airbag deploy; mine, on the other hand, didn’t. Pain exploded in my head from slamming my skull into the steering wheel. Stars spun in my vision, and I wiped blood off my forehead, but my only concern was my passenger. “Hey, are you okay?” I asked, releasing my seatbelt and leaning down to look at her.
    “Yeah. How about you?”
    “I’m fine.”
    I helped Claire unbuckle her seatbelt so we could make a quick escape, but we had no such luck.
    “Get ready! They’re coming,” Claire said, letting out a long breath and reaching for her gun.
    “Hold on now, Dirty Clairey,” I said. “Like you said, we’re outnumbered, and if you go on a shooting spree, telling everyone to make your day, it will only make things worse.” The whole brutal scene brought back horrible memories of when I’d killed a man in self-defense. I was a survivor, not a murderer, and his death would always haunt me, even if he had tried to cause mine. I knew I’d have to shoot to kill again if the gangsters left me no other choice, and that was a reality that was difficult to face. Killing the undead was a far cry different than killing a living, breathing person, no matter how vile.
    “Okay, I’ll hold off, but I’m not gonna surrender!” Claire said. “If we do, we’ll be eating bullets.”
    “Let’s just calm down and see how it all plays out,” I advised. “We may not have to go out in a blaze of glory after all.”
    “You honestly think we can talk our way out of this, Dean?” she retorted. “I’m sure they killed our comrades back there, and we’re gonna be next if we don’t take ‘em out first. I say we shoot first and let God sort ‘em out.”
    “You sound like every eighties action movie I’ve ever seen.”
    “Yeah? Well, Rambo lived through all those sequels, and I plan to do the same.”
    I shook my head and held my gun steady. I really didn’t want to fire at them, but dying wasn’t on my itinerary any more than it was on Claire’s, and I would fire if I had to. “If they start shooting, I say it’s game on, but let’s wait and see what happens first.”
    She nodded. “Fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn ya.”
    “We just wanna talk,” yelled a man with a deep voice. “Drop your weapons and get outta your car.”
    “No! Giving up our weapons is suicide. We’ll be unarmed, and they’ll slaughter us,” Claire said.
    “We blew up the lab!” I yelled. “We even saved some of your friends and family.”
    My heart thundered as sudden gunfire erupted like we were in some kind of warzone. We both instinctively ducked down as glass shattered and we were sprayed with a cascade of glittering shards. Once all the windows were shot out, I