Zombie Rules | Book 8 | Who The Hell Is That? Achord, David (most popular novels of all time .txt) 📖

a fine young man. His wife, Kelly, is a wonderful young lady. I would have been proud to have either one of them as one of my kids.”

It appeared Gil was considering this. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his chin a moment before leaning forward and staring directly at Bob.

“You’ve said what you have to say, now get the fuck out of here.”

Bob straightened slowly and returned his stare for a long five seconds. “There is one last thing I have to say before I leave. Your days here as our president are numbered. Yes, it is a threat, but it is also a promise.”

With that, Bob walked out, closing the door behind him. As he walked away, he had the pleasure of hearing the distinct sound of something being thrown against the wall.

Chapter 51 – Gil Declares War

Gil stared several minutes at the remnants of the wine running down the door. When he saw the doorknob turning, he grabbed the bottle and was going to hurl it at whoever walked in the door. Fortunately for Ruby, the president’s grip slipped off the bottle before he could throw it. She had instinctively ducked, and now looked at Gil.

“You okay, boss?” she asked.

“Where have you been? Get in here.”

Ruby stepped in and closed the door behind her. Seeing the remnants of the broken glass and spilled wine, she frowned in concern.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Nothing. I need you to surreptitiously gather up our people…”

“Syrup what?” Ruby asked.

Gil frowned, once again reminded of Ruby’s low intellect. “I need you to secretly round up our people for a meeting later. Let’s say a couple of hours after dinner.”

“What are you going to do?” Ruby asked.

Gil leaned forward, his jaw muscles tense. “I’ll tell you what I am going to do. The same thing that Lincoln did when the southern states seceded from the union.”

Ruby’s jaw dropped. “You’re going to declare war on somebody? Who?”

“Marcus Hook,” he declared.

“Marcus Hook? Did they recede?”

“Secede, yes. They made it official today, but they’ve probably been planning it for months.”

Ruby’s jaw dropped in wonder. “What are you going to do, have them killed?”

“In a manner of speaking. I’m going to order Smithson and Crumby to assemble a force, go to Marcus Hook and kill anyone who does not immediately surrender.”

“I bet Zach’s hiding there. He ain’t really in Oak Ridge,” she said.

“No. My contact there has searched everywhere. He’s not there, but I think that claim of him being in Oak Ridge is a lie. He’s close, but he won’t stay hidden forever and when I find him, I’m going to see him executed.”

Ruby’s face became flushed. “I get so wet when you’re like this.”

Gil stared and leered. “That idiot husband of yours is in the cafeteria? Are you sure?”

She gave him a sly smile. “He’s in the party room getting high with that Freitag dude and a couple of others. He’ll be there for a couple of hours.”

Gil absently licked his lips. “Lock the door.”

Chapter 52 – Closing Fort Detrick

“I’m kind of going to miss this place,” Stretch commented. “What about you?”

She, Justin, and Shooter were the last people at Fort Detrick. They were performing final shutdown procedures and inspections. It was the hope that it would be reopened one day, and Justin wanted to minimize any damage from a lack of use and maintenance.

“Mmm, I suppose,” Justin replied.

He mostly agreed. Since being assigned to run the place, he’d developed an intense love-hate relationship with the place. It was called a military installation, back before, but that was a stretch. While it was true there was fencing and security checkpoints, that was about it. They’d put in numerous hours to transform the installation into a viable post-apocalyptic living facility. Plus, they’d gotten the labs up and running so the scientists could run their experiments.

Justin had spearheaded most, if not all the work. It was his baby. It was far from complete though. Several buildings remained vacant and unused. He never had an adequate amount of manpower to do everything, so they had three working buildings, the labs, and fairly adequate defense works.

Justin felt Stretch staring, but he ignored her. If he started talking about closing the place, he might become emotional, and that would not do for a Captain in the Corps.

“Are we not going to do anything to the labs?” Stretch asked.

He felt his lips tighten and turned to face her now. Stretch was Justin’s number two in charge at Fort Detrick and they had a close working relationship. One drunken night it went a little bit further. They were both embarrassed the next morning and agreed on two things. One, it must never happen again and two, they must not tell anyone. Ever.

“I think what we have done will be adequate enough,” he said.

She nodded in understanding. Justin could not bring himself to destroy the labs, which is what the president had ordered. Instead, they had welded steel plates to the entry doors. Somebody would need a cutting torch to gain entry.

“I doubt he’ll ever visit this place anyway,” she said. “He’s more of a guy who sits in his ivory tower and issues memos rather than being a hands-on president.”

“Yeah.”

“He’s ruining everything, isn’t he?” she asked.

Justin could not help but sigh. “He’s certainly not helping.”

He thought about the directives meted out by the president in the short time he had been in office. Some were humorous, like an order to reinstitute casual Fridays. Some were weird, like the memorandum he sent out reminding people to thoroughly chew their food, especially corn, to keep the Mount Weather sewer system from becoming clogged.

Justin thought about how life was going to be as he located the subpanel for the second floor and began flipping off circuit breakers.

“Maybe it won’t be so bad,” Stretch said.

“We’ll have to make the best of it,” he replied.

He had given it a lot of thought. He’d be glad to be back and have all his Marines