Storm Orphans: The Beginning Read Online Free Page B

were out there, they could be getting closer. He knew if the things heard him and his family in here rummaging through this mess, they’d attack without hesitation. He needed to find some protection.
    “Keep looking,” he said as he got to his feet and headed back out to the main section of the store. “I’ll be right back.”
    Jenny looked worriedly at her father as he walked away and then to her mother. “Where is he going?” she asked in a whisper.
    Renee just shook her head. “I don’t know,” she answered. “Do as he says.”
    It felt like her husband had been gone for at least 10 minutes, but it probably less than five when Renee found what they’d been looking for. She pulled the white and red labeled box from a pile of dozens more that looked almost just like it and read the name printed on the front with a smile of relief. She held up the box to show her daughter and just as she did, Curt stepped back behind the counter. He had a can of soda in his hand and a trio of walking canes under the other arm.
    “You found it?” he asked breathlessly.
    Renee nodded and then pulled the bottle from its box, tossing the cardboard back into the pile it came from.
    “What are those for?” she asked, nodding toward the red and blue colored aluminum canes.
    “It’s all I came up with for protection,” he said. “But it’s better than nothing.”
    Renee opened the bottle of pills and shook one out into her palm before offering it to Jenny. “Take this before we go, honey,” she instructed.
    Curt popped open the soda and handed it to his daughter to wash down the medicine. “I couldn’t find any water,” he explained sheepishly. “It’s warm, but at least it’s wet.”
    Jenny dutifully swallowed the pill along with a few sips of soda before taking one of the canes from her father.
    “What am I supposed to do with this, daddy?” she asked.
    Curt handed a cane to Renee and then held his own up in the air as if it was a club. “Probably nothing, but if anything tries to hurt us, you hit them with it like this,” he stated before bringing down the cane with a quick slashing stroke. “Can you do that?”
    Jenny nodded, wide-eyed and scared.
    “It’s going to be okay,” Curt assured her. “We’re going to walk home just like we walked here. Chances are, we won’t see a thing we haven’t seen already. Think you can do that?”
    Jenny nodded again and Renee tried to give her a confident smile.
    The three of them made their way back to the store’s entrance and after Curt scouted the parking lot and the street just beyond it, they set out on their way home.
    There was no getting used to the eerie feeling of walking through an abandoned city that had once been so full of life. It was so quiet that when a crow cawed from its roost atop one of the dead wires that stretched across the street, Jenny nearly yelped in fright. The big black bird merely tilted its head slightly and looked at the humans below with idle curiosity. People were so rare these days, Curt momentarily wondered if they were the first the crow had ever seen.
    It was as his brain was briefly toying with this question that the ragged and torn member of the Afflicted suddenly launched itself from behind the oxidizing Subaru that was jammed between a wrecked mini-van and a late-model Ford in the lane nearest the curb. The monster looked like it had once been a skinny Hispanic kid, maybe 18 years old with tattoos on both arms, but now it was one of the murderous zombies that the plague had left in its wake. The former teen’s face was covered in open sores, its eyes milky and its black hair matted in blood and god-knows-what-else.
    It grabbed Renee by the arm before she could even react and bit deeply into her neck. Blood immediately began to spurt from the wound, coating her attacker’s face and splattering Jenny where she stood just a foot or two away. The girl shrieked as she watched in horror.
    Curt leapt to the rescue, bringing the end