District: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Read Online Free

to forget the question.
Ordered it to not even go there. Because if the number of enemy he had seen on
the videos beamed by Nash to his laptop the day before were any indication as
to what he and the team could be facing downrange, he didn’t want to ponder the
big picture. Better to take small bites from the enemy. Hit them head on with extreme
violence of action, spit them out destroyed and mangled, and move on to the
next obstacle. Best to keep it all compartmentalized; like his emotions
had to remain.
    A woman’s voice calling his name loudly enough to be heard
through the closed metal door ripped him from the battle being waged in his
head.
    “Cade!”
    Heidi?
    “Hear you loud and clear,” he bellowed back. “Be there in a
moment.”
    Eschewing the crutches, and risking an ass-chewing from
Brook if she saw him in the corridors without them, he rose and made his way to
the security pod, again testing his bad wheel’s load-bearing ability.
    Upon turning the corner, he was confronted with the blonde
who had hollered his name. Heidi’s arm was outstretched, a thin black sat-phone
clutched in her small hand. On her face was a smile Cade guessed to be derived
entirely from the satisfaction she must be feeling from having not missed the
incoming call—regardless of who might be waiting on the other end.
    Making slow progress toward the offered phone, Cade lifted
his brows and whispered, “Who is it?”
    Can’t be good.
    “A woman,” Heidi replied, making no effort to lower her voice,
thusly completely destroying any chance of Cade buying a few minutes to think by
having Heidi tell the caller a little white lie.
    Waving Heidi off, Cade mouthed, “Tell her I will call her
back,” and began a slow backpedal toward his quarters.
    “It’s Nash, I think,” Heidi said, a little louder this time,
all the while flashing a careful what you wish for smile and pumping the
hand holding the phone at Cade—universal semaphore for take the damn call!
    Hell!
    “Nash … oh, good,” Cade replied loudly, laying it on thick
while at the same time giving Heidi a mild case of stink eye. “Can’t wait to
hear what she has to say.” Definitely a white lie.
    Smile fading fast, Heidi relinquished the phone and turned
back to the flat-panel. One ear cocked, she feigned intense scrutiny on the
feed showing Brook and Duncan in the motor pool conversing with Daymon and
Oliver. Someone—probably Jimmy Foley—was working under the Chevy’s hood, only
his backside showing.
    Cade’s fingers curled around the phone much tighter than
he’d meant them to. Before putting the handset to his ear, he stole a look at
the monitor and saw the same scene Heidi was presented with: a good old-fashioned
jawing session with Duncan occupying center stage. And that meant good money
was on Brook not coming back anytime soon.
    “Cade here,” he said, turning his back to Heidi.
    There was a short delay during which he heard only the usual
electronic hiss as his words were bounced up into the stratosphere, relayed through
one of the few remaining military satellites and returned to Earth, presumably,
at Schriever Air Force Base four hundred and twenty-five miles south by east as
the crow flies.
    Finally, a female voice said, “ Wyatt … you avoiding
me?”
    Effin Jedi mind reader.
    “No, Major,” Cade lied. “Just collecting my thoughts, that’s
all. What’s up?”
    Right to the point. Nash said, “Change of plans.”
    Cade said nothing. Sweeping his gaze back to the flat-panel
monitor, he slid a folding chair out and took a seat.
    “We underestimated the enemy’s speed of advance. When I
finally got real-time satellite reconnaissance back on station, finding them
took some time. When we reacquired, we found that they had split in two.”
    “I watched the drone footage,” Cade replied. “Even if it split
… it’d be impossible to miss a column of that size. Especially from orbit
considering the Key Hole’s advanced optics.”
    “You