Dead Team Alpha: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller Read Online Free

ring the outpost tell him to steer clear. Cook knows corpses when he sees them, and in the zombie apocalypse, corpses don’t always stay down.
    The sound of the rain almost hides the approaching footsteps, but even nearing full exhaustion, Cook’s senses are dialed up to full. He spins around and slams a fist into a woman’s face just as her blade nicks him on the side. The wound doesn’t feel deep, but pain radiates up his side quickly. He staggers back, his hands clenched to the cut, his knees feeling weak. After only a couple of steps, he falls to his knees.
    “Who are you?” Cook asks as the woman stands over him, her hand wiping away the blood that gushes from her nose. “What do you want?” The light of the flames illuminates her features and Cook gasps. “Dear God, what’s wrong with your face?”
    His head tumbles from his body and rolls down the ridge towards the burning outpost. The rest of him doesn’t move for a good few seconds before the muscles give in and his body crumples into the mud.
    The woman stands over him, her face impassive, completely void of emotion. She reaches up and cuts herse lf just above her left cheek, directly on the occipital bone of her eye socket. She cuts the other side, leaving a matching slice in the flesh.
    Flesh that has been cut and scabbed over many times. Flesh that surrounds the dark holes where her eyes should be.

Chapter Two- Induction Junction
     
    As the sun rises and shines down on the lower slopes of the Rocky Mountains the cock crows, signaling the beginning of the work day for the inhabitants of the Stronghold.
    “SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU ROTTEN FUCKING BIRD!” a man screams out the window of his house. “FUCKING PISS OFF, YOU WORTHLESS CHICKEN!”
    The man –all sagging, sun-browned skin, average height, bald except for a couple wild patches of salt and pepper hair- stands at the window in nothing but a tattered pair of underwear. He scratches his ass, then lets loose with a wicked fart, sniffing his hand after catching a piece of it.
    “Classy, Dad,” Valencia Baptiste says as she pulls on a sweat er made of a surprisingly soft blend of wool and hemp over her t-shirt to fight the late spring chill that still clings to the mornings in the Rockies. “You think you could go sniff farts in your room where the neighbors can’t see you?”
    “Fuck Harmon and Juney Bel le,” the man, Collin Baptiste, sneers. “Couple of twats with sticks up their…” He scrunches his face as he searches for the word.
    “ Twats?” his daughter offers, grabbing a jug of water from the kitchen counter.
    “Yeah,” Collin nods. “Fucking twats.”
    “Well, I see Harmon is ready to have a morning discussion with you,” Valencia says as she quickly picks up her boots and opens the kitchen door. “Good luck with that.”
    Twenty-two, tall, blonde, dark brown eyes, and built like a dancer that’s all muscles and grace, Valencia Baptiste takes a deep breath of the cool, mountain air and sighs as she watches her neighbor walk toward her.
    Harmon Lindeloff is in his late fifties, short, thick, and “hairy as a badger” his wife, Juney Belle, likes to say. Recently retired from service in the Teams, he’s always taken a liking to Val Baptiste. And has always taken a severe disliking to her father.
    “Val,” Harmon Lindeloff nods as he steps over the bent and broken picket fence that separates the neighbors’ yards. “Gonna have a word with your dad.”
    “I figured, Har,” Val says as she hops on one foot while pulling on a boot. “Word of warning, he’s been drinking the hooch all night. Never went to sleep.”
    “Fuck,” Harmon frowns. “I thought Bullet was all out.”
    “Cranky just finished a new batch,” Val says as she works on the other boot. “Dad was first in line.”
    “Holy hell,” Harman says as he rubs his tired face. “How much did he get?”
    “I’ll be eating at the barracks for the rest of the month,” Val says, lacing both boots then