Savages Read Online Free

area. If the sniper had been anywhere in the vicinity, he was hamburger.
    I searched some more and waited. I still did not see the sniper. No shots came my way. At the very least, we had forced him to keep his head down. Hopefully he would stay that way. Shifting position, I turned my attention to the horde. The big gun had eliminated all but maybe thirty or forty undead, only one of them rigged. They seemed disoriented, walking in wide, unsteady circles. I wondered if the concussion from the blasts had thrown off their equilibrium. The undead hunt primarily by sound, so maybe the gun had blown out their eardrums. An interesting theory. I lined up a shot at the last ghoul rigged with a bomb and detonated its vest. Its limbs were still pinwheeling through the air when I hit my belly and started crawling back to Delta’s position.
    “Horde is toast,” I told Ethan. “Only a few dozen left, none of them rigged.”
    “Good. Thanks, Eric.”
    “Anytime.”
    He got on the radio and gave a sitrep, then told us we were to head south to meet the other half of First Platoon en route via Chinook.
    “Expect the southern horde to be rigged as well,” Sergeant Kelly said. “Riordan, try to detonate as many vests as you can. Everybody stay behind the Howitzer on the way down there. Never know if there might be another sniper. Let’s move.”
    The mobile artillery piece pivoted in place and turned toward the south wall at the speed of a slow run. As we followed it, I said to Thompson, “What about Fuller?”
    The lines of his face were tight and sharp. “We’ll come back for him.”
    I spared a glance at the fallen soldier. He lay where we had left him, no breathing, no nervous twitches, no movement at all. The total stillness of death. 
    Rest easy, amigo. Your fight is over.

 
THREE
     
     
     
    Half an hour later, the southern horde was a scattering of dead bodies in a field.
    The Apache, Second Platoon, the Ninth TVM, and a contingent of town guardsmen had eradicated the horde pouring in from the north. But it was only a temporary reprieve. The battle had been loud, and every walker within ten miles was undoubtedly on its way to Hollow Rock.
    While First Platoon trudged behind the Howitzer toward the north gate, I said a quick goodbye to Thompson and set off at a run for the southern wall. Once there, I hollered until a guardsman noticed me, recognized me, and lowered a rope ladder. Climbing over the wall was not the safest way to get into town, but it was the fastest. And it put me on the ground a few hundred yards from my house.
    The streets on my side of town were lined with houses and trailers in roughly equal proportion. Looking around, it did not appear as if any of the artillery shells had landed nearby. All the smoke and shouting came from the north, closer to the gate.
    I surmised the north gate had been the suicide troops’ primary target, the buildings behind merely collateral damage. And it was a lot of collateral. The north gate was the entrance for trade caravans. Consequently, new buildings had popped up close to it to serve the needs of visitors and traders. There was a livery, three outfitters, food stands that served grilled meat and roasted vegetables, a clothing exchange, public latrines and showers, a feed and tack shop, a guardhouse, and more than a dozen trading stalls. Gabriel and I owned two of them. One for general goods, and one for weapons and ammunition. They were not manned today, being that no caravans had been spotted heading toward Hollow rock for the last week and a half. But there was a strong possibility both my stalls, and the inventory inside several metal lockboxes, had been destroyed. I did not care. The only thing that mattered was finding Allison.
    My boots crunched in the gravel driveway as I sprinted to the door. I tried the handle and found it locked. For a moment, I debated unlocking the door and going inside, but decided against it. Allison was not home. If she had been when