Dead Series (Book 3): A Little More Alive by Sean Thomas Fisher Page B

here.”
    Curtis arched a
sandy blond eyebrow at him. “You think it’s a trap?”
    “Colorado?”
    “They know we have
weapons. We told them we were here.”
    “We have to be
ready for anything, but at this point, we also have to assume Brian was telling
the truth. We can’t just let them die. We need them.”
    “I didn’t say that.”
    Paul tipped his
head back and stared at the dangling vent door again. Part of the ceiling around
the vent had broken under the girl’s dead weight, sending her crashing to the
floor and throwing back the floodgates for the fiends crawling close behind. “How
did we not hear them come in?”
    “And why is that
vent so fucking big?”
    “Jesus Christ.”
Paul rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “Just when I think we’re getting a leg to stand
on...”
    Curtis studied the
dead woman on the floor. She was young and had a big dent in the side of her
head from where she met the concrete floor after a headfirst fall. “Yeah, this just
upped the ante a little,” he said, taking a step back from the blood pooling
around her head.
    Exhaling a weary
breath, Paul shifted in his bloody Adidas, sidearm jiggling against his right
leg. “How did they even know to come in this way? I mean, how is that even
possible? They’re…braindead.”
    “I’m starting to
think it’s all an act to lure us into a false sense of complacency.”
    “You may be right.”
Rubbing his chin, he blurred the dead woman’s mushy head into an inky blob.
“Reminds me of this guy who hid in the attic of this house we crashed at somewhere
in Texas”
    “The Chevelle guy?”
    He nodded. “The
guy was definitely still firing on a few cylinders.”
    “Wendy said he
almost killed you and then you almost killed her and your butt-buddy, Dan.”
    “I didn’t almost…”
Paul blew out an irritated burst of air. “Sonofabitch snuck up on me when I was
taking a nap.”
    Curtis wiped blood
from his face and flicked it onto the broken mirror above the sinks. “Things
are like rats. They’ll find a hole to get in.”
    “We should pack up
and get the hell out of here right now before they come in through a cellar
door or something we don’t know about.”
    Curtis checked his
watch. “Sun’ll be coming up in a couple hours. We should wait for the light.”
    Paul sighed and
turned back to the woman at their feet. Curtis was right. It was too dangerous
to go anywhere in this world at night if you didn’t have to but the clock was
ticking for that family in Colorado and who knew how many more ways there were
to get inside the mess hall. The place was huge and just as foreign to him as
all the other haunted houses and go-kart tracks they’d squatted at over the
past month.
    “What’re we going
to do about Rebecca?”
    Hanging his head,
he stared at his shoes. Beecher’s Grocery whisked through his tired mind, sending
a stabbing pain into his side. The twisted irony of the whole thing did not
escape him. “I don’t know,” he said, walking away.
    “Yes, you do, Paul.”
    He stopped and
slightly turned his head before continuing out into the cafeteria, where it was
quiet and smelled like gunpowder and dead. Calvin sat in a far corner on the
floor, slowly rocking Maria’s lifeless body in his bloodstained arms while
Rebecca sobbed at a table with a towel pressed against her wrist. Curtis was
right about her too; there was only one thing they could do to help her now and
it sent a cold shiver running down his spine. Stephanie watched him from the
other side of the room, long dark hair hanging in her face as she calmly
reloaded her gun.
    “You want me to do
it, boss?” Billy whispered, standing off to the side with a foot resting on a
chair. The police utility belt they took from the dead fat cop in Oklahoma was
back on his waist and Paul barely looked at him as he passed by.
    His legs were so
numb it felt like he was gliding on an airport moving walkway and the closer he
got to Rebecca, the more he wanted to turn and