Apokalypsis | Book 6 | Apokalypsis 6 Morris, Kate (cheapest way to read ebooks TXT) 📖

Brutus was there. Steph was asleep in the basement with the dog.”

“Right,” Avery must’ve remembered. “So they’ve been gone all night, possibly.”

“Yeah, all night,” Tristan echoed. “He was supposed to go over and stay with Maureen, though.”

“Gyles said since he was under the weather that we should just send Stephanie, so she was the only one who went with Alex. We figured we’d send him this morning. That’s how we found out he was gone. Went up to get him and the space was cleaned out. Took a lot of Jane’s dad’s stuff, too. Blankets, pillows, the things her dad gave him when we first came here. Asshole.”

Everyone was silent a moment while they waited for a solution or answer to this dilemma. Of course, Tristan spoke first, “Roman, you should take a short circuit of the area. At least go northwest to the county border. Jane or her dad would probably know the way he would’ve gone in order to head out for Columbus. Take Jane.”

He was upset by that proposition. Roman wasn’t exactly thrilled with Jane at the moment. They hadn’t even spoken since yesterday morning when he’d seen her kissing that snake Noah. And as far as the bullshit story of being in love with Bianca, Roman knew the little weasel was lying to them, probably to that poor girl, too. He was probably too scared to go to Columbus by himself. When he’d been hatching this plan and had time to put it all into motion, though, Roman couldn’t know. He, unlike Noah, had been so busy working hard, looking for supplies, traveling to towns and cities to do so, and taking care of Gyles’s home and setting up perimeter fencing and noisemakers that he didn’t have time for anything but all of that. He was so pissed. He wanted that coward in front of him right now.

“Right?” Tristan asked him.

“Huh? Sorry,” he answered.

Tristan looked at Spencer as if he weren’t sure of Roman at the moment.

“It’s fine. I’ll take Jane,” he said, assuming they were talking about that. “I’ll do what I can.”

Spencer said, “Maybe we’ll get lucky, and they broke down or something before getting too far.”

“Or got stuck in the snow,” Avery worried. “I don’t like the idea of the girls going with him. It’s so dangerous out there.”

“I think he probably convinced Bianca pretty easily,” Renee said. “I mean, we all knew she wanted to leave anyway. Why the other girls left, too, I don’t know.”

“They seemed to like it here,” Abraham remarked.

“Yeah, true,” Renee agreed.

“People are looking for any sort of hope to grasp onto right now,” Tristan said. “If it sounded like a utopia to them, they probably agreed to go because of that. People want normalcy back, not this.”

“But they were safe here,” Avery said.

Tristan just frowned. “I know. While you’re gone,” he turned to Roman again, “I’m going to look for the tracks for whoever attacked Jane’s mother.”

“Okay, yeah,” Roman agreed.

“I’m taking Gyles and Abraham. Spence will stay here in case you call back or get a message to us if you run into them.”

“I will.”

“Come back here when you return,” he ordered. “We’ll have a meeting. Hopefully, you’ll find them. Bring them back at gunpoint if you have to, Roman. He’s not taking those girls. He wants to go? Let him. Those girls are all underage. He has no right to take them.”

“Yes, sir,” he said and left the group to drive back and pick up Jane, who was waiting already dressed. It looked like she’d made breakfast for his little brother, who was sitting at the small table with Gyles eating scrambled eggs and drinking milk, care of the Miller’s contribution.

“I’ll take Connor with me when I go with Tristan,” Gyles told them after Roman revealed the plan. “He can stay with Avery and the other kids over there. Maybe we can get the younger Miller kids to come over there, too, so they can hang out.”

“Thanks, Gyles,” Roman said with a nod. “I really appreciate that.”

“You kids go,” her father said. “Better get a move on. Maybe you’ll actually track that little shit down.”

Roman offered a lopsided half-grin of agreement of the assessment of Noah. Then he ducked his head and took Jane to the truck. She rushed ahead of him and opened her own door, which he normally preferred to do for her.

The truck was already warm from him going back and forth to Tristan’s place, but Jane still rubbed her bare hands together.

“Forget your gloves?” he asked as he got to the top of her father’s steep driveway and pulled out onto the road.

“Yeah. Stupid me.”

It bothered him, even though he was furious with her, that she was still berating herself all the time. Instead, he pulled his gloves out of his coat’s deep pockets and handed them over.

“Take mine. I don’t need them.”

“Th-thanks,” she answered, her voice wavering.

“Your dad said you knew which way to go, but Tristan said to head to the next town over or the county border and stop. We can’t afford the gas chasing down this idiot.”

“Right. I agree,” she said quietly. “Although I feel bad for the girls.”

“Bad or jealous?” he asked as he swung out onto the main road and drove north at a slow pace. This road was way worse than theirs as far as snow buildup and deep drifts went since Tristan had at least plowed theirs once. There were deep tire tracks in it from vehicles using it with too little frequency. A car was in the ditch in one spot, forcing him to swerve around since the front-end was actually still up on the road. They must’ve spun out and ended with their rear wheels buried in the deep ditch. It probably happened days ago, though, because the burgundy vehicle was covered in snow, and one of the doors was standing wide open as if the person or persons had abandoned all hope of ever being towed out and set out on