Zompoc Survivor: Odyssey Read Online Free Page A

the truck jerked from impact. Behind me, I could hear Amy cursing, then I heard the camper shell’s rear window opening. The Mossberg boomed, and the car behind us, a late model red Mustang, swung into view in my side mirror. Its front windshield was starred and white around a hole the size of a dinner plate almost dead center in the glass.
    “Aim for the front grill next!” I yelled over my shoulder. She didn’t respond, but I heard the shotgun boom three more times in rapid succession, and the next time I saw the Mustang, it was stopped in the middle of the road with steam billowing from the hood. Then the first figures ran out from the houses on the left, and I looked to the road ahead. I couldn’t honestly say I felt bad about leaving them to their fate, but it wasn’t one I felt like watching. It also wasn’t one I felt like making Amy watch.
    “Good shooting,” I called out to her. “Close up the window and come back up front. I need your help getting out of town.” The road merged ahead and I followed it west across an old truss bridge over the Delaware River as she slid into the rear part of the cab.
    “Looks like that whole getting out of town thing pretty much just happened,” she said.
    “We need to head north, and get away from the railroad tracks,” I told her as I handed her the map. “We have places to be…and to not be.”
    “Where to be or not to be, that is the question,” she said.

Chapter 2
    Rule 23
    ~ Yes, how many times can a man turn his head/Pretending he just doesn't see?~
    Bob Dylan, “Blowin’ In the Wind
    “I’ve never shot anyone before,” Amy said over her dinner.
    “I’m pretty sure you still haven’t,” I said after I swallowed the bite of fried Spam I’d just taken.
    “Are you quoting Firefly lines at me, or are you serious?” For all that she was troubled, her appetite wasn’t suffering any. She had finished the Spam and spooned the last of the corn from the can she’d just taken off the fire onto her mess kit plate.
    “Not intentionally,” I said. “I mean it, I think you scared them more than anything with that first shot. There will come a time when you’re going to have to shoot someone, though.” I watched her face as I set the Kelly Kettle on the base and dropped a few twigs and leaves down through the chimney. The little fire inside blazed up and showed me the frown that creased her brow.
    “How do you deal with it?” she asked. Gone was the enthusiasm she’d shown that afternoon for shooting zombies. I looked around the barn we were in, remembering how fast she’d been in nailing the ghoul that had rushed us as we pulled into the farmstead. Then she hadn’t hesitated. If she was going to survive, she needed to be ready to pull the trigger just as fast with a living person when the moment called for it.
    “I know what I’m willing to die for,” I said after a few moments of thought. “Once you know that, you know what you’re willing to kill for, and you can make peace with it.”
    “Sounds too simple,” she said.
    “Simple doesn’t mean easy. I don’t like hurting people; it bugs the hell out of me. But if someone is trying to kill me or my people, they’re going to get the same right back.” I stood up and went to the tailgate of the truck, not sure I wanted her to see my face just then. When I had to think about it, I was less sure about what I’d done today. In my head, I’d already convicted the man I’d shot of who knows how many crimes, when all I really knew was that he pointed a shotgun at me. I had imagined him shooting other drivers before me, and assumed he liked it. I had assumed the worst of him, and I’d been completely confident I was right. Rule Twelve was pretty simple: Assume people suck after shit hits the fan, and that they’re after your stuff. I had created the next rule to counter the tendency to become that kind of person: Don’t be one of the people who suck after shit hits the fan. But was I telling