Edge of Fear: An EMP Post-Apocalyptic Survival Prepper Series (American Fallout Book 3) Alex Gunwick (free reads .txt) 📖

Kyle took a few steps back and stared down at him in horror. Liz regained enough strength to move. She staggered to her feet and scrambled for her rifle. She walked toward the cultist, leveling the barrel at the man’s chest.

“Look away.” She didn’t turn to see if Kyle had listened to her. She kept her eyes fixed on the prone man.

The cultist opened his mouth to speak, but his voice was drowned out by the loud crack of the rifle as Liz pulled the trigger. The man’s mouth hung open. Blood trickled out of a small hole in the center of his forehead.

Liz chambered another round and stood over the man. She pressed the barrel gun to his temple and pulled. A second crack echoed through the woods. When the sound of the gunshot faded, the woods were silent and still.

7

Two days earlier …

Luke squinted as sunlight reflected off the fresh snow, momentarily blinding him. When his vision returned, he spotted a doe drinking from the partially frozen river. A gunshot sounded from somewhere in the woods. The doe bolted over the river and disappeared into the forest.

Luke swore. She would have been good meat.

He’d heard gunshots from time to time. It wasn’t unusual, but it made him hesitate. Liz and Kyle were heading toward the Wrights’. It was impossible to tell which direction the sound had come from, but if he backtracked to check on his wife and son, he’d be wasting precious time that he could have used to search for his daughter. Liz and Kyle were on the main road. They carried weapons. They were probably fine. The gunshot could have been from another hunter for all he knew.

After another moment of hesitation, he continued down the stream, searching for tracks, human or animal. He couldn’t let his guilty conscience eat at him. It didn’t feel right to let them go off on their own with vengeful cult members nearby, but he had to worry about Sierra too. She was out there somewhere, alone. Liz and Kyle were together. They were most likely fine. Sierra wasn’t. He respected his wife and trusted her judgment. She had, after all, kept herself and their children safe while he was trying to get back to them. He’d been on a business trip when the bombs had dropped. He’d barely gotten out of there alive. Liz could take of herself.

Still, it had stung to hear her say it out loud earlier. He should’ve been there to protect them. That was his duty as a father and a husband. But he’d been too obsessed with his job, and he’d been putting his family second. He wouldn’t do it again. Not anymore. His family had to come first. He had to find Sierra. What good was he if he couldn’t protect the ones he loved?

He growled and shook his head. He tried to clear his mind and focus on the task at hand. He couldn’t change the past, but he could put one hundred percent of his focus into finding Sierra today.

As he stalked through the woods, he searched for fresh tracks in the snow. He found a couple of faint footsteps that appeared to be Sierra’s size, but the snow had mostly covered them up and made it difficult to tell. A second, larger set of footsteps followed the same path. Luke walked along the trail until the tracks disappeared at the edge of the river.

He checked the other side of the riverbank but there was no indication as to which way she may have gone. The tracks just ended.

Frustrated, he walked in ever-widening circles, searching for some clue as to where she may have gone. He tried to stay focused, but his mind drifted back to the sweet little girl Sierra had been before she’d morphed into an obnoxious teenager. Back before the hormone-driven shift, she would ask insightful, no-nonsense questions. She was really smart then, but she’d lost her damn mind the second she’d started thinking about boys. What a disaster.

He shook his head. It was better not to think about her teenage years. Instead, he remembered the day he’d surprised her at the cabin on her seventh birthday.

He was on a tour in Afghanistan at the time, but they ran into a stalemate of sorts, a kind of tenuous peace that lasted a few weeks. He called in a favor with his commanding officer and managed to wrangle a few days’ leave.

He told Liz when he would be home, and she agreed to bring Sierra up to the cabin on her birthday. They hadn’t known yet, but Liz was already pregnant with Kyle at the time.

The sixteen-hour flight home seemed like an eternity because he was so excited to see them. He managed a few hours of sleep on the plane, but it wasn’t enough. Coming home from being on the front line was never easy. But he couldn’t wait to see his wife and daughter.

When he finally got to the cabin in a rented Jeep, his heart leaped in his chest. He parked, then jogged up to the door. To try to maintain the secret, he knocked instead of walking right in.

“Who’s that?” His daughter’s sweet, high-pitched voice came from inside the cabin. He could hear her little footsteps running to the door.

“I don’t know.” Liz pretended to be surprised, and she choked up a little. “Why don’t you go find out?”

Tears sprang into his eyes when Sierra pulled the door open. She squealed with pure joy when she found him on the little porch. When she took a running leap into his arms, he scooped her up and held her tight to his chest. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

“Daddy!” She wrapped her little arms around his neck and hugged him close.

Through blurred vision, he could see his wife wiping at her cheeks. She gave him a huge smile.

“You’re really home.”

“For now,” he said.

That was one of the