Will to Survive Read Online Free

trying.”
    â€œThat doesn’t strike me as the best backup plan.”
    â€œIt’s not much different from the plan you had to crash this aircraft—except with me it’s only a backup plan.”
    The rising sun was revealing more and more below us. While I had no hope of spotting Brett or his men, there was so much I could see. Below us on the shadowy landscape were houses—some of whose owners had banded together to form small enclaves with fences and barricades. Other houses were nothing more than burned-out shells. Streets were without movement but not without vehicles. All modern cars and trucks had been rendered useless when the virus hit and their on-board computers self-destructed. Hundreds, thousands of computer-dependent vehicles were still scattered down there, littering the roads, unmoving and unmoved.
    Within some of those houses a few families or random clusters of people remained, struggling to survive somehow among the chaos and violence that had washed over everything.
    Soon those people would be out getting water or working on their gardens. I just hoped none of them—innocently trying to just stay alive—were met by Brett and his band, who wouldn’t hesitate to take everything they had, including their lives.
    â€œI understand Brett wanting to kidnap me, but I’m just not sure why he wanted to kill you so bad,” I said.
    â€œI think it was meant as a compliment.”
    â€œHow is him wanting to kill you a compliment?”
    â€œHe saw me as a threat and he wanted to eliminate the threat by eliminating me. I guess in some ways that’s what I’m trying to do right now, return the compliment.”
    â€œDo you think he’s already at the compound?”
    â€œIf he and his crew managed to hijack a vehicle, they could be there. On foot his trek will take between five and six hours, so in that case he won’t be there until long after we’re gone,” Herb said.
    â€œThen we won’t kill him.”
    â€œBut what we do might result in him being killed,” Herb said.
    â€œHow so?”
    â€œThis bomb will cause major destruction and take out many of the men at the compound.”
    â€œI still don’t understand. If Brett isn’t even there, how will it kill him?” I asked.
    â€œWhen he finally does arrive to a scene of carnage I’m hoping they’ll feel he’s responsible—and then they will react.”
    â€œAnd turn on him.”
    â€œThat’s the hope. And I don’t think any of the survivors at the compound are going to be thinking about giving him a fair trial or jail time. I’m hoping he’ll be greeted by a bullet in the head as soon as he walks in.”
    â€œAnd you think it was our mistake for not simply killing him instead of arresting him?”
    â€œNo, it’s my mistake. I should have done it the night we confronted him, put an end to all of it.”
    â€œBut you couldn’t,” I said.
    â€œOh, I could have. I should have. Those guards and their families paid the price of my indecision, my weakness, my—”
    â€œYour fairness and compassion,” I said, cutting him off.
    â€œFairness and compassion can be a weakness. Compassion stops you from pulling the trigger. Instead of killing, though, you get yourself killed. We still don’t know the full price we’re going to pay for my mistake.”
    â€œMaybe he’ll just leave us alone.”
    â€œHe will never leave us alone until either he’s dead or we’re dead, or the neighborhood is destroyed.”
    â€œYou can’t be certain of that,” I said.
    â€œI’m completely certain. I know how people like him think, how they feel … or don’t feel. Only a six-foot-deep grave is going to stop him from coming back to haunt us, so I hope we can help put him into one.”
    I’d never heard Herb sound so angry and bloodthirsty.
    The leading edge of