Dead: Winter Read Online Free

into the woods where anything could be lurking without me there to protect them.
     
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    “…then Jake let me string a trip wire for a line of flares!” Emily hardly took a breath between each word as she described the events of their excursion. “And when the two zombies came, Jesus took their legs out and let me point blank one!”
    My head snapped around so fast I heard the tendons in my neck pop in protest. “Excuse me?” All the conversation at the dinner table ceased. Emily’s mouth closed with an audible click of teeth.
    “It wasn’t any big deal,” Jesus spoke first. “The zoms looked like originals…one of them didn’t have a shred of clothing except for the band of his skivvies. I chopped the legs and let Emily hit it with the spiked club. She did a damn fine job, too. Only took her three swings to crack the egg.” He gave the girl a playful tussle of her hair, ignoring the fact that I was so pissed I could feel the flames crawling across my face.
    “Jake said he wanted me tested for stair roids,” Emily said with what was obvious pride, despite not knowing just what he had meant by such a comment.
    “What in the hell were you thinking!” I finally found my voice…and apparently the volume knob. A few people actually jumped in their seats.
    “I was thinking,” Jesus looked up at me with unapologetic eyes, “that these two girls need to be able to handle their bus i ness.”
    “You don’t get to make that call!” I snapped.
    “Whoa,” Jon Saunders, the Marine sergeant who had joined our group, bringing Jake Beebe and Jesus Sanchez with him, raised his hands in a placating gesture. “Now I’m sure Jesus made certain that there was no danger.”
    “When did zombies stop being considered dangerous?” I blurted. “Everybody seems to just think that things are all good in the world now. Those things wiped out most of human i ty…we are the lucky few who still survive. Has everyone forgotten that horde that almost overwhelmed us a few weeks back?”
    “Nobody has forgotten anything,” Jon said in his too-calm-for-his-own-good voice.
    “And if you are so damn concerned about the zoms, you should want the girls to be able to hold their own,” Jesus added.
    “Just playing with wooden swords and shooting paper targets ain’t gonna help,” Jake piled on. “Cracking the skull on one of those things is just not something a person can simulate. Teaching the girls not to see those things as anything human takes exposing them to the real thing in order to make them see them as monsters. It means stripping away fear and replacing it with the desire to survive.”
    “What the hell are you talking about?” I fumed.
    “Steve,” Dr. Zahn leaned forward, “perhaps we can discuss this a little later.”
    I followed her meaningful gaze; Thalia and Emily both looked like they were on the verge of tears. At some point, both girls had moved away from me and were now huddled against Meli s sa.
    “Weren’t you just saying something about us not taking this stuff with the zombies seriously?” Teresa ignored Dr. Zahn’s glare.
    “What does that have to do with those two,” I pointed at Jake and Jesus as I pushed away from the table and struggled to my feet, “taking my girls out and risking their lives needlessly.”
    “You can’t have it both ways,” Melissa piped up.
    Great , I thought, let’s put our dirty laundry on the table for everybody to sniff.
    “I didn’t risk anybody’s life,” Jesus met my eyes with his own unblinking stare. “I watched over them like they were my own hermanitas .”
    “Do you really think we would put the girls in danger?” Jake added.
    “You took them into the woods!” I exclaimed. “That isn’t putting them in danger?”
    “We took them in to a controlled situation,” Jesus said calmly. “Had there been the slightest i n clination that something serious might happen, one of us would’ve brought the girls back while the other dealt with the