The Dead Walk The Earth (Book 4) Read Online Free Page A

vehicles would need to have been protected from the elements and secured inside the large storage units found at most depots because anything left outside would have long since seized up and would be of no use to anyone. They both knew full well that their task was a long shot and likely to bear no fruit, but they needed to try. Things were becoming desperate for the survivors, and it was only a matter of time before they needed to abandon the base.
    For a number of months, the base had been in communications with another group of survivors who claimed to be living safely on a small island off the English coast. However, they would not specify which island. Everyone knew that most of the islands around the UK had been occupied by the remnants of the government and the British military in the first years following the outbreak, but war between different factions had engulfed them, and only a few had escaped the onslaught.
    Back at the base, they were sure that the survivors they were talking to could not possibly be on the Isle of Wight or Jersey or any of the other Channel Isles for that matter. Since London had been flattened by a ten-megaton nuclear warhead over ten years earlier, and thanks to the prevailing winds, the English Channel was considered as being radioactive and uninhabitable along with much of the south of the country. However, even with little information and the people on the other end of the radio reluctant to give their exact position until they were sure they could trust the people in the FOB, the survivors needed to begin their own preparations for an evacuation.
    For years the base had been surrounded by the dead that were laying siege to them. Fresh water and food had become scarce, and people were reluctant to venture out from the walls in order to conduct scavenger missions. All the food within a large radius of the fortress had either been scavenged or had rotted away, and raiding parties, usually led by Al and Tommy and other veterans, were having to venture further out from the protection of the base. There was nothing left now but desolation and the never-ending fight for survival.
    Some teams failed to return from their missions, and it had been some years since anyone came back with anything resembling a significant find. The people of the FOB were no longer viewing themselves as the living, but as the dead with a stay of execution. With all their resources close to exhaustion, it was time for them to leave.
    The main problem was, three weeks earlier the base HF—high-frequency—radio had packed up on them. Despite their efforts, they were unable to fix it. The silence, after communicating with other survivors and feeling a degree of hope, sent many into despair. They were desperate for information and clung to the prospect of joining other survivors in a safe place where they did not need to cower behind thick, high walls.
    The only other HF radio set that they knew of and could still be in working order had gone silent three years before. A team out on a supply run had gone firm at the top of a multi-storey car park building. The last that anyone had heard from them was that the men had been surrounded and were trapped and with no way off the roof. It was a long shot, but Al and Tommy hoped beyond hope that the radio would still be there and remained serviceable. With no one else willing to step forward, the two veterans had volunteered to search for the vital piece of communications equipment as their primary objective.
    Tina herself had intended to join them, but a mini-mutiny had broken out between the three of them, with Al and Tommy refusing to go if she insisted on accompanying them. It was not that they did not trust or value her abilities. On the contrary, she had proven herself just as many times as they had over the previous twelve years. Their insistence for her to remain at the base was because Tina was their leader and the one person that everyone turned to in a crisis.
    When Al