The Mortis Desolation (Book 1): Mortis by Logan Rutherford

George, but it was directed toward everybody.
    "I don't think you're understanding, Miles," Darren said with a smug laugh. He began to walk closer toward me. "If you don't hand it over, we'll take it from you. We'll kill anybody who resists, and those who don't, will be Rove slaves." He stopped just a foot away from me. So close I could deck him hard. "So if you don't shut up," he said. "That's exactly what we're going to do."
    My entire body shook. I wanted to say something. Wanted to do something.
    But I couldn't. Darren won. If I said anything, they'd start killing. I couldn't have the people of Jefferson Memorial's blood on my hands.
    Was this it? Was I giving up?
    I had to. As much as it killed me, I didn't have a choice. I knew Darren wasn't bluffing. The Roves would kill them. I was having a hard time believing they didn't take the bank by force in the first place.
    I looked at the ground, but then decided to look Darren in the eyes. I wanted him to see how much I hated him. "Fine." I wanted to say more, but that's all I could get out.
    Darren smiled. "Good, Miles. Good." He reached out his hand, wanting me to shake it. He was asserting his dominance. Letting me know he'd won.
    I just turned around and walked away.
    He may have won this time, but he'd issued an ultimatum.
    A war was about to begin. A war for Jefferson Memorial. A war against Darren. A war against the Roves.
    That was the first battle.
    And as I walked away, I began to prepare for the next.
----
    D aniel , John, Rachel, Julia, Peter. Those were the five people who stood before me. They had their packs on their shoulders, filled with precious supplies. Things we would need to survive out there.
    “Are you all ready?” I asked them.
    They nodded their heads.
    I let out a deep breath. “Okay, let’s do this.”
    We stood at the back door of the Jefferson Memorial Bank. We stayed close to the wall, and made our way to the edge of the building. I poked my head around the corner, and made sure there were no Roves standing around it. As I expected, there weren’t. There were a lot of zombies to deal with, so most of the Roves were out taking care of them. The only two that weren’t were standing in the back of their trucks, watching the front gate.
    There were still only ten of them at Jefferson, but the cavalry would arrive in the morning. But we’d be long gone by then.
    We dashed under the cover of night toward where all the vehicles were parked. Julia unlocked the van with her remote and the lights flashed twice, signaling it’d done as it was told.
    I hissed and held my breath, afraid someone might’ve seen. Nobody did, however, and I scrambled into the passenger seat of the van. Everybody besides me and Julia climbed into the back.
    Julia started the car, and I looked toward the guards in the trucks. They’d heard us, and raised their guns in our direction.
    “Go, Julia, go!” I yelled at Julia as she stomped on the gas.
    The tires spun in the dirt for a second before gaining traction and propelling us forward.
    The guards fired their guns at us, but we were far enough away that most of them missed us. A couple of bullets, however, tore through the side of the van toward the top, creating the most frightening pinging sound I’d ever heard.
    I rolled the window down and fired a couple of bullets behind us, trying to get them to back off. It didn’t matter, though. We were getting away. We shot out the hole in The Wall that the Xenomortis made just a few days before.
    Everybody was made aware of us then. We turned left, our headlights lighting up the darkness. There were a couple of people out there running back from killing zombies in the trench. They dove out of the way of our speeding van and whooped and hollered at us, happy that we were escaping. Some of them even tried chasing after us, but we had no time to stop and pick them up. We’d be back, though, no doubt about it.
    New holes appeared in the left side of the van as the Roves that