Here We Stand (Book 2): Divided (Surviving The Evacuation) Read Online Free

replaced the two spent rounds with the last cartridges from his pocket. He glanced behind. Helena had the 9mm raised and was edging toward the rear of the RV. It had stopped parallel to the road, with the front near the verge. Tom inched toward the cab. He passed the stalled car. There was a motionless figure inside, and four corpses lying between it and the RV. All four were undead. Three had been shot. The fourth, an overweight man wearing enough plaid to decorate a barn, had a machete embedded in his skull.
    The zombies must have been gathered around the car. The people in the RV had seen it. They’d stopped, but they’d been overwhelmed. Precisely how didn’t matter right now. Tom remembered the shot that the woman on the roof had fired at the far side of the vehicle. The other zombies would have to be dealt with before they could check whether she was still alive. As he edged around the cab, he saw that he was correct. There were other zombies. Eight of them.
    His first shot was rushed. It missed, but got the creatures’ attention. They turned their vacant expressions toward him. He fired again. A zombie fell. He shifted aim, trying to ignore the expression, the clothes, the elaborate butterfly tattoo on its neck. He fired. He aimed, trying not to look in those vacant eyes as his bullet smashed straight through the left, blowing away the back of its head. He had to take a step back, and around the engine. They were getting closer. Their heads bobbed up and down. He fired, missed, and was reminded just how small a target a head was. He fired again. The bullet caught the creature a glancing blow, tearing off a chunk of its rotting scalp. It spun around, and its flailing arms spun the zombie behind it backward. Tom backed up another step and fired, knowing that the hammer would hit a spent round. Click . He ran back a few steps. Looked around. Saw the machete. He grabbed at it, but it was stuck fast. He stamped down on the dead zombie’s face, pulling it clear with a wet, sucking crack.
    There was a shot. Helena had fired. He couldn’t see what she was aiming at, and when he looked for her, realized he couldn’t see her, either. She fired again. And again, and now she was out of ammunition, and the zombies would be heading toward her. She backed away from the rear of the RV, toward the truck, the empty gun still raised. Tom ran along the side of the vehicle.
    “No!” she yelled. “Watch out!”
    He stopped just as a zombie staggered round the back of the vehicle. He swung low as the monstrous creature threw its pendulous arms at his face. The machete slammed into its knee, neatly slicing through tendon and muscle. He ripped the blade free, and as the zombie staggered forward, it fell, toppling almost on top of him. Holding his breath against the rank expulsion of infected air, he threw the creature to one side. Unable to support its own weight, it fell. The zombie’s arms beat the ground as it tried to push itself onto a leg oozing gore from where it had been nearly sliced through.
    Before there was time for revulsion to sweep over him, another creature staggered around the edge of the RV. More tattered than the rest, its face was smeared with mud. Tom raised the machete, but before he could strike, Helena ran forward. She held a metal bar above her head and swung it down on the creature’s crown. Bone broke with a resounding crack that almost drowned out her feral scream. She swung again, and again, before he grabbed her arm and dragged her back.
    “It’s dead,” he said. “Dead.”
    She sobbed. Not with fear, but with absolute rage.
    “It’s dead,” Tom repeated. As if to give the lie to that statement, there was a guttural hiss from the zombie he’d crippled. He stalked over to the creature and hacked the machete down on its skull.
    “Now they’re both dead.” He walked around the vehicle, machete raised, but there were no more moving zombies. Nor were there any signs of survivors.
    “The woman,”