Zommunist Invasion | Book 3 | Scattered Picott, Camille (best ereader for pc .TXT) 📖

lights of the ATV illuminated the cozy cabin and the front porch.

The first thing she saw was a pile of dead mutants off to one side of the clearing.

Amanda slammed on the breaks and stopped breathing. She stared at the pile of bodies neatly stacked in the darkness. She hadn’t thought mutants could find the Cecchino cabin. Or anyone else, for that matter.

Stephenson. Nonna. Amanda tried to call their names, but her throat had stopped working.

“Holy shit.” Dal jumped off his ATV. “What happened here? Nonna? Nonna, Stephenson, are you here? Nonna!”

“Where’s Nonna?” Lena jumped to the ground beside Dal, panic straining her voice. “Dal, where’s Nonna?”

“I’m here!” Nonna’s voice sounded somewhere from the trees.

Amanda nearly collapsed with relief when a second voice chimed in.

“Lena, Dal, we’re here,” Stephenson called.

The two of them burst from the tree line. Nonna had a machine gun in her hands. Though she usually preferred her rifle, seeing the little old lady armed wasn’t an unusual sight. At least not to Amanda.

It was the sight of Stephenson that stunned her to her core.

She’d been friends with him since freshmen year when he joined the chess club. He did everything with her and Cassie, including the occasional sleepover. He was practically a blood brother.

On a scale of one to ten, if someone had asked how well she knew Stephenson, she would have given herself a nine.

She hardly recognized the boy who came out of the darkness with Nonna. It was Stephenson, no doubt about it. She’d recognize that disheveled, sandy hair and lanky body anywhere.

But it wasn’t the same boy she’d hugged goodbye two days ago.

For starters, he was covered in blood. He looked like he’d been in a wrestling match with a mutant. More than one of them, actually.

The fact that he was still alive was a shocker. The guy didn’t have an aggressive bone in his body. Or at least, not that she had ever seen. He’d survived the war this long through sheer dumb luck.

He must have undergone a transformation. When the chips were down, he’d found the strength to fight for his life. She hadn’t thought it possible, but here he was: proof that he’d found the courage to fight, to live.

But that wasn’t what had her feet welded to the ground in shock.

Stephenson, tall and lanky and covered with blood, with a gun in one hand, was dressed like a girl.

Part III

Survivors

27

Snow

“Help me, Valé!” Luca grabbed her around the waist and dragged her in front of him.

Valentina screamed as two snowballs smacked into her—one in the face and one in the chest. Cold powder singed her exposed skin and found its way past the collar of her jacket.

“Luca!” she screamed.

Her older brother burst out laughing as he released her. Valentina snatched up a handful of snow and flung it after his retreating form, but she didn’t have the strength to throw very far. Luca cackled and kept running.

“Sorry, Valé! I was aiming for Luca.” Her cousin Marcello sprinted past her in hot pursuit. “Come with me, let’s get him!”

Grinning despite herself, Valentina scooped up another armload of snow. The boys were twelve and she was only eight, but that didn’t stop her from trying to keep up. Her little legs churned through the frozen white in a futile effort to catch them.

Marcello was big and fast. He caught up to Luca by the blackberry patch. Luca tried to cut around the patch and dash through Mr. Spada’s olive tree orchard, but Marcello grabbed the collar of his coat. He and Luca fell to the ground in a tangle, wrestling with one another in the snow.

Luca, a stocky boy and strong for his age, managed to get Marcello on his back. A handful of snow went into Marcello’s face.

Valentina caught up with the bigger boys. She dashed up behind Luca and dumped her snow down the back of his jacket.

Luca bellowed. Valentina shrieked in delight as he wrestled her to the ground and shoved her face into the snow. Marcello joined the fray. The three of them laughed and yelled and flung snow at one another.

They raced through their sleepy Italian village like wild dogs, chasing one another and throwing snowballs with tireless abandon. They didn’t even notice when snow started to fall and dusted the tips of their eyelashes. By the time they returned home to supper that night, they were muddy, sopping wet, cold, and full of smiles.

It was one of the best days of Valentina’s life.

Her birth name was Valentina Julietta Trione. As a girl, she went by Valé.

At the age of seventeen, she became Julietta Valentina Cecchino. On that day, Valé ceased to exist. She became Valentina, the name her husband always called her.

Today, she was known as Nonna. She liked this name most of all.

Valé had been a liar. An unfaithful liar who turned her back on family.

Valentina had been a coward. A coward, and a runaway.

But Nonna.

Nonna was made of stronger stuff. She was everything Valé and Valentina were not. She never let fear dictate the decisions she made. She took care of those she loved. No matter what.

She ran a strong household and had raised a damn fine son. In due time, she’d helped raise three fine grandchildren. She’d even killed zombies when they threatened her family. Nonna was glad the world had made her strong.

Being strong meant she kept a cool head when Anton, her youngest grandson, got it into his mind to sneak away on a hopeless mission to Rossi.

She knew what waited for him in Rossi. She held out hope the young idiot would get his head on straight before he blundered and got himself killed or captured.

Being strong also meant she didn’t weep when her eldest grandson rode away on a mission to blow up a bridge.

Nonna was no fool. She knew there was a chance she night never see Leo or Anton again. Even though the very idea made her insides clench, she didn’t