Dead Highways (Book 3): Discord Read Online Free Page B

ups and downs of a pretty woman with blue eyes and big breasts.
    Keep your cool.
    Don’t ask her.
    Let it go.
    Pay attention.
    Stay focused.
    Don’t ask her.
    She’ll tell you when she’s ready.
    Keep your cool.
    “Are you sure you’re okay?” I whispered to Peaches.
    Way to keep your cool.
    I wanted to punch myself in the face.
    “It doesn’t matter,” Peaches said, and sighed loudly, indicating my nagging was starting to bother her. “Just stop.”
    “It matters to me.”
    I waited, but she had nothing further to say on the subject. She shut off and ignored my desperate stares—my pathetic pleas for answers. She should have punched me in the face.
    Ted, not briefed on my woman problems, kept up the friendly chit-chat—the question and answer session.
    He wanted to know everyone’s favorite movie.
    Favorite sport.
    Favorite food.
    Favorite Johnny Cash song.
    I kept to myself, much like Peaches, and let the others play along.
    Once we reached the clubhouse, the chatter came to a screeching halt.
    We stayed to the east of the large pond and quietly passed by the building. Not quiet enough, however, as the two zombies Ted had spotted earlier under the tree line suddenly appeared from around the back of the building and began shambling after us. For a moment, we all sort of stopped and stared at Ted, looking for guidance. Naima, unarmed and quick of foot, ran to the front of the line, furthest away from the approaching dead.
    “Should we keep going and ignore them?” Robinson asked.
    I had my bowie knife out and ready. Sally was on my hip, if needed.
    “Better take them down now,” Ted replied. “But quietly.”
    Quietly.
    That meant with the knives.
    “Everyone branch out,” Ted said. “Draw their attention away. Let’s give ‘em some space.”
    The two zombies, one male, one female, teetered on their feet trying to follow us as we made a wide circle around them. Given their advanced state of decomposition, and their desire to make us their breakfast, it was easy to forget that these two decaying monsters before us were once human beings. Not so long ago they breathed the same air as we did. They loved people and had people who loved them. Maybe they were even a married couple, or engaged to be married, or had only just begun to get to know each other before everything changed. These thoughts didn’t make killing them any easier, that’s for sure, but if killing them would bring them peace, allow them to finally move on to some other world, or at least be spared of this undead existence, then I would do what I had to do.
    This time, I didn’t have to do anything. Ted was already on it like a fly on poop.
    The female, with hair long and dark and matted with blood, lurched, arms extended, toward Aamod.
    “Dad, watch out!” Naima cried out, hiding behind her father.
    The Indian man, not appearing the slightest bit concerned, raised his shotgun with glowing delight in his eyes.
    “No!” Ted shouted.
    Aamod lowered the shotgun and took a few steps back. The female wobbled toward him, her jaw open abnormally wide, moans escaping from her throat.
    Just as Aamod started to raise the shotgun back up, Ted slipped behind the female and jabbed his bowie knife through the back of her skull. The sharp pointed end made a second hole in her forehead. After Ted reclaimed his knife, the female collapsed face first to the green grass. Her male friend, tall and skinny, wearing tattered jeans and a flannel button-up shirt covered in dark red bloodstains, wanted to take a bite out of crime and went straight for Bowser.
    Ted spun around to go for his second stealth attack, but Bowser had this one covered. The burly black man side-stepped away from the infected man’s reaching claw-like hands, and with gruesome power, buried his knife up though the zombie’s jaw. It was an uppercut from hell. Bowser pulled the knife out with the same powerful force he had put it in. The zombie hit the ground a second later and lay