In The End Box Set | Books 1-3 Stevens, GJ (story books to read TXT) 📖

I turned and found the rifle butt filling my view. I quickly stepped between the passenger window and Alex. The air rifle looked so slender compared to its big brothers scattered across the blood-soaked tarmac.

“No,” I repeated in a stage whisper. “You’re a locksmith and that’s your plan?” I said, looking her up and down in a vain search for the tools of her trade, or at least a bulge in her trouser pocket to show she’d brought something useful with her.

“I didn’t get time before the place burned,” she said, struggling to keep her volume from rising through gritted teeth.

“No,” I replied as she again raised the butt high. I turned along the road to check I hadn’t disturbed the withdrawing masses.

The creatures still crowded, scratching at the Freelander, its hazard lights blinking and electronic beat pulsing out. Each blink drawing the creature’s gnarled hands open, clicking their teeth together as they groped at the metal.

The sound soon dulled, in my head at least, as if heard through cotton wool ears. My gaze fixed on the clustered olive drab vehicles and the hint of the house where I’d been taken. Where I’d been held. Where I’d been betrayed.

“No,” I said again, snapping back to see her withdraw the butt, confusion thickening on her brow as it lowered. “It’s alarmed. You’re just going to bring them this way and I need the van, the satellite equipment.” I slowed my exaggerated nod up to the roof as her confusion melted, eyebrows raising as she processed the information.

“So where are the keys?” she said as she scanned our surroundings, shaking her head.

Turning to the side, I peered past her to look beyond the flailing mob and stare at the house where I’d last seen Toni.

To the house where she’d died.

To the house she taunted me from.

Her words came back slow and exaggerated.

“No way.”

I turned to Alex, eyebrow raised as she spoke again, giving a slow shake of her head.

“You are kidding right?”

I didn’t reply. I didn’t lower my brow. Instead, through my distraction, I watched as she seemed to contemplate with her eyes unmoving from mine.

“So we’ll need another distraction?” she eventually said with her brow furrowed.

I could have hugged her. I could have wrapped my arms around her tight.

I didn’t. Instead I left my gratitude to a shallow smile, cheeks bunching as my face relaxed.

I watched her sling the air gun over her shoulder and pick her way around the dead soldiers to pluck a rifle intertwined with its former owner.

“Go around the edge,” she said, pointing in the direction a copse of trees the other side of the road beside the church yard. “I’ll draw them away,” she added, as she raised the long gun and peered through the optical sight.

“No,” I replied. “We should stay together.”

She didn’t listen and was already climbing the ladder bolted to the back of the van, her hands soon on the cold metal rung at the top and pulling herself up by the steel supports of the folded satellite dish.

“No,” I repeated. “You should come with me,” I said, gripping the wood of the bat as I crept around the back of the van.

She didn’t reply, leaving her concentration to lower herself to the roof as she scanned the horizon through the sight.

Pausing for a moment with my eyes closed, I steeled myself as I listened to the background of low-pitch moans and gnashing teeth to take my first steps.

Walking along the temporary fence-line, I stopped only to stare at a soldier’s feet as I peeled a pistol from his cold fingers. My first fleeting glance told me his face had gone. I couldn’t linger on what was left behind for the sake of my dreams.

I didn’t look back toward the van more than once, instead holding my concentration fixed at my feet whilst trying to give as little sight to weave around the bodies.

With my head full of memories I was trying not to make, I hoped Alex had heard my last words as I disappeared into the trees.

Hunger, the type everyone experienced I hoped, left a cavity in my chest and in my stomach as I walked, peering between the thick trunks with the pistol out in front. I fixed my view to the line of houses on my left, trying not to get distracted by the car alarming, its flashing lights barely seen through the crowd five or more deep as they surrounded it.

The alarm halted. I couldn’t help taking in the view and notice the lights not stopping their flash. I paused my breath and step, watching as the crowd lost interest without the wail of the alarm and they spread out in what seemed like random directions.

The pain in my chest grew, but I knew it wasn’t real. I knew it was just a sensation.

The hunger perhaps?

No.

Anger, maybe, but I didn’t have time or the inclination to interrogate the cause.

On my own again and I knew I should have been pleased. Back in charge of my destiny, not reliant on any other. So why did I feel like something was missing?

An alarm took off in the distance and cleared my head as I watched the crowd draw their slow, ragged steps in its direction like fish to food dropped in their tank.

She hadn’t needed to stay behind. She hadn’t needed to play the hero. She should have been at my side.

I kicked myself as the thoughts returned.

The alarm ceased and my head once again flooded with a dreaded void. The silence broke with each twig snapping, each rustle of the thick undergrowth sounding the dinner bell, but not for me.

I’d known her for less than a day. My ex had been dead for the same time. I couldn’t bear