Z 2136 (Z 2134 Series Book 3) Read Free

estimating its speed and accounting for the slight breeze and the angle of her shot—skills Katrina had taught Ana during the long months leading up to their mission.
    Ana squeezed the trigger and, without waiting to see if she hit her target, quickly turned the rifle toward the second van . . . but it raced by in a blur through her line of sight before she had a chance to shoot.
    Ana took her eyes from the rifle and looked down as the tires of the second van ripped into the strips. The first van, the one she’d shot at, screeched to a stop, meaning she probably hadn’t killed the driver—or the man in the passenger seat was quick-thinking and reached over to slam on the brakes. The second van kept going before sliding to a stop on the right, putting about 40 yards of road between the two vans, which made Ana’s job harder as it was now impossible to see both vans at once through her scope.
    Her heartbeat somehow found a way to speed up even more. Ana wished she could get closer to the road, where she might be able to do something useful.
    Instead, she raised the rifle and trained it back and forth between the two vans, watching and waiting for doors to open, men to emerge. Ana hoped Liam and Katrina, racing from the trees, would reach the drivers before either had the notion to harm Adam or any of the other passengers.
    “Get out!” Katrina yelled, firing her blaster at the first van. The window and driver disintegrated into a bright shock of dust. Ana scowled from the top of the hill, hating that someone else was doing her job.
    The helmeted passenger got out of the van with raised hands, likely begging for life.
    Liam approached the second van with his rifle aimed, yelling, “Get out!”
    Ana noticed how much darker the windows were on the second van—dark enough that both driver and passenger were barely suggestions.
    The gnawing in her gut tightened.
    She flashed back on the zombies pouring from the transport truck during last year’s failed mission . . .
    “Something’s wrong,” Ana said into the radio.
    “What?” Katrina asked.
    “The windows of the other van. I’m having trouble seeing through them.”
    Liam seemed not to hear and stepped closer to the van, rifle raised. “Get the fuck out!”
    Ana turned her scope back to the passenger of the first van, frozen behind Katrina’s aim. His gloved right hand was shaking ever so slightly above his head. At first, Ana thought maybe her nervous hands were shaking the view. Then she zoomed in and saw that his hand held something—a small black square with a blinking red light.
    She remembered the driver they’d pulled over, how he’d opened the truck doors to unleash a horde of zombies.
    “There’s something in his hand!”
    Ana yelled so loudly that the passenger turned to her spot on the hill. Time started crawling, as if to amplify Ana’s distance and inability to intervene. She watched as the man’s fingers curled around the device—one pressing down on the flashing red light.
    For a moment Ana could only hear the rapid pulse throbbing in her ear.
    Then the suspicious van exploded.

CHAPTER 2—ADAM LOVECRAFT
    Adam was dead.
    At least he wanted to be. His father, Jonah, had been murdered in front of any citizen who cared to watch the cruel display on the ample widescreen monitors plastered across all six cities, murdered by a man whom Adam had looked up to almost as much as his father—Chief Keller.
    Since that moment every breath had felt harder to draw. Yet strangely, Adam had not cried.
    Prison had withered his tears. Time felt borrowed but was a debt he didn’t care to repay. His strongest recurring thought was the aching certainty that Ana was still alive somewhere, pursued closely by a bruised and ever-swelling need for revenge.
    The Darwins were coming. Adam didn’t know why he hadn’t been cast outside The Walls with an army of cameras already, but the trip was inevitable. What happened to his father was all the more powerful