Where the Dead Men Lie Read Online Free

blunt knife, not even sharp enough to cut skin. But the tip of the blade would be enough to do the trick.

    I tried to imagine a scenario where I would need to use this knife.

    A last resort.

    Out of ammo.

    No one left.

    No one to help me.

    Not even Kenji.

    Just me, an infected undead monster, and a blunt flick knife.

    I prayed that I would never have to use this knife.

    I took the knife from Kenji and slid it in my back pocket. "Promise me," I said. "Promise, you won’t leave me. That I won’t have to use this knife."

    "You know I can’t," he said. "But I will do everything in my power to get you to safety ."
    "And then what?"
    "We'll be safe back home. You can stay with us. We can start over. Everything will be fine."
    "Your parents hate me."
    "No they don't. They're just; they're not very good around people. My dad spends most of his time buried in his work. And then my mother worries that's he's going to have a heart attack or something. But trust me, when we get out of this, everything’s gonna be fine."
    "If," I whispered.
    "What?"
    "If we get out of this."
    "Hey," he said, making eye contact. "We are getting out of this. I'm not gonna let anything happen to you."

    Even though it wasn’t the best of circumstances, I was happy to be back together with Kenji. Not ‘together’ as in boyfriend and girlfriend. Just together, as in occupying the same space. I know I shouldn’t be happy. Not in a place like this, not when so many people have died but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to tell him how I felt right then and there. It’s all I’ve wanted to do since I made it back here. But I stop myself. Like Daniel said earlier, we needed to keep our mouths shut and guards up.

    It was good advice.

    This wasn’t the time or the place to fall in love and expose your emotions and your heart’s desire for the whole messed up world to see. I needed to be focused. Kenji needed to be focused. So I kept my guard up, my mouth shut and my heart closed.

    And I’ve regretted that decision ever since.

    Kenji said he was going to check the ground floor and maybe the basement. He was about to leave, but then he turned, leant in and kissed me.

    "Sorry," he whispered. "I just had to do that. Before we went any further."

    Before it was too late, I thought.

    And then he left down the stairs.

    I moved back into the main bedroom where everyone else was sleeping. I continued to look out over the front paddocks. The road stretched from north to south, disappearing on the dark horizon.

    What a lonely road I thought.

    At some point during the night Maria woke up and sat with me.

    "Can’t sleep?" I asked.

    "Nah. I keep thinking about, well about everything. Sydney in ruins, the speed that the virus has spread around Australia, the death toll."

    "Yeah." I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. "It keeps me awake as well. When I was back in Los Angeles I used to get really bad night terrors. I had insomnia and everything. Funny thing is, now that I’m back here, I don’t get them as much."

    "How come?"

    "Don’t know. Maybe my brain is too tired. Maybe my subconscious knows I’m back in the line of fire and so it’s cutting me some slack or something. I don’t know."

    "Yeah. Maybe. The messed up thing is, it’s not just the Oz virus and the infected people that we have to worry about anymore is it? That monster, that mechanical spider thing or whatever the hell it was. It’s too much. The odds are stacked too high. It’s just not fair. What chance do we have?"

    Maria was worried and scared. You could hear it in her voice.

    "Hey, it’s going to be all right. I mean, we still have each other. We’re a strong group. We’ve come along away. We can make it."

    "I don’t know," she continued. "We haven’t seen any survivors at all. Shouldn’t there be at least one or two groups of people out here? We can’t be the only ones. And that letter we found in the kitchen. What if when we do find survivors,