Read Dead Legends (Book 1): R.I.P. Van Winkle for Free Online Page B

but, to Rip, it felt like an eternity. Before the smoke settled, nearly a dozen zombies lay lifeless—permanently.
    Rip stalked over to the man who had rudely removed him from his horse. He brusquely spun the youth around, shoving the business end of his M4 in the young man’s chest.
    “As I was saying—I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but I am not someone to be fucked with right now. I’ve had a pretty bad fucking day, and it’s not getting any better.”
    Rip’s chest tightened; it felt like he had an elephant on it. The unsettlingly familiar face of the man wasn’t making him feel any better. The man grinned ever so slightly and put his hands up in surrender.
    You fool! Don’t you recognize your own blood?
    What the hell are you talking about?
    The oppressive voice in his head was correct.
    The young man slowly lowered his hands and pushed the rifle away from his chest.
    “Hello, Dad.”
     

CHAPTER 5
    Dad.
    It was amazing how a single word could change the course of a person’s life. For Rip, it was the singular word that he thought (hoped?) he would never hear again. It was a reminder of something familiar and yet altogether alien to him. The boy—no, the man, that stood before him was most certainly his own. The striking good looks, the musculature, the ability to take someone his size to the ground—oh yeah, this was his son.
    Rip stood, nearly breathless. Of all the things that he had to wrap his mind around in the last few hours, finding his son this fast was not one of them. It was no surprise that his son survived the end of the world. Even at the young age of eleven, he had shown promise in the extracurricular activities that his mother had insisted on; they kept the child’s mind away from Rip’s constant deployments. The boy had shown promise in karate from the time that he’d started at the age of eight. His mother thought it would be a good way to let some of his stresses out, and it kept the child from being a couch potato. She thought that it would be healthy for him to otherwise occupy his mind… and keep his father out of it. His name was, or is the same as Rip’s.
    He is Geoffrey Irving, Jr.
    “So you just gonna stand there like a broke-dick dog? Or you gonna start explaining where the hell you’ve been for the last ten years?”
    Rip lowered the M4 and furrowed his brow. “Your mother teach you to talk to me like that, Junior?” Rip looked around. “Where is she at nowadays?”
    Geoffrey Irving Jr. glared at his father. “No dad, she’s dead. She’s been dead for eight years, no thanks to you. She had a stroke arguing with someone over food; food that she was trying to get for me.”
    Rip dropped his rifle to the ground. It clattered hard against the road, startling the Marshal’s men, as well as Jake. He stepped forward and confronted his son. The two men stood face to face, their noses nearly touching. Beads of sweat popped up on Rip’s brow and his face began to turn a bright red. He raised his right arm, as if he meant to backhand his son, but instead he pointed a crooked index finger at the boy.
    “No thanks to me ? It wasn’t my fault that I passed out in that barren fucking shithole. I can’t believe my own son blames me for what happened.” Rip turned his head, facing the side of his son’s face. Irving Jr. just stared blankly ahead. Rip lowered his voice. “I wake up a couple hours ago and all of a sudden, the world is infested with goddamn zombies. The fucking world ended while I was knocked out for those ten years, and I am having a very fucking hard time coming to terms with it, so cut me some fucking slack. What the hell is your problem, boy?”
    “First off, my name is Jeff. Second off, you have no right to get in my face over your drunk-ass problems.” Jeff met his father’s icy stare. “I bet you got shitfaced and passed out, didn’t you?”
    Rip’s notoriously short temper could bear no more. With a surprising quickness, he landed a