Read Dead: Siege & Survival for Free Online

them.
    As he reached the ground, Al arrived. Juan managed to keep his cool, but April let the cat out of the bag with a gasp. “Your eyes,” she breathed.
    Al looked to Juan for confirmation and received a curt nod. He slumped to the ground and buried his head in his hands. Before Juan could say anything, the four motor boats came roaring into the little inlet where they had originally been tied off.
    “Hey, you guys might want to hop in,” a young boy called as the engines dropped to an idle.
    “You make it a habit to offer rides to strangers?” Juan asked as he stepped habitually in between these new arrivals and April.
    In unison, the dozen occupants of the four boats drew an assortment of weapons that would make an action hero blush.
    “Huh,” Juan snorted for lack of anything else to say.
    “What?” April peeked her head around Juan’s large frame. “Oh.”
     
    ***
     
    “So what is the plan?” Chad stepped out into the hall with Scott. It had taken a few hours and a lot of crying, but finally, Ronni drifted off to sleep. He was only mildly surprised that several of the people who had been there when he first returned to his room from the mockery of a trial remained just outside of his door.
    “This place is splitting into factions faster than we anticipated.” Brett stepped out from between a pair of older men who reminded Chad of the men from the balcony on The Muppet Show . “Word is that we hold this hotel and the other group is in the lodge where the trial was held. If you can believe even half of what is flying around, folks are killing each other in the street.”
    “What in the hell triggered all of this madness?” Chad asked. Surely , he thought, this can’t all be over me killing the men who were trying to rape my daughter .
    “Somebody let it slip that we are almost out of the dry stores in the hotels,” a man Chad had never seen before stepped out from the bunched up crowd. His light caramel skin tone was only enhanced by the well-kept goatee and pencil-thin mustache. “The fight at the trial was just the match that was needed to blow this powder keg straight to the moon.”
    “That doesn’t make any sense,” Chad said as he shook his head. “Why would everybody go all Hatfield and McCoy like this when we obviously need to come together and pool our talents and resources?”
    “Because those guys you went after had managed to gain access to the store rooms. They were setting themselves up with a sweet little black market operation. They would have had all the food, which would have meant that they would have had all the power. When the folks went to their rooms during the investigation, some of the supplies were found. That guy you killed in you room was the ringleader.”
    “Still not following you…” Chad paused. “I’m sorry, but I don’t seem to know your name, and you have an awful lot of information.”
    “Clark,” the man said with a warm smile. “Michael Clark.”
    “Okay, Mike—”
    “My dad was Mike…I go by Michael.”
    Chad felt himself bristle a bit. He chalked it up to the events of the past few days. “Okay… Michael …how come you know so much?”
    “Because I was in on the deal.”
    All heads whipped around his direction at once. None of the expressions were all that friendly.
    “You want to run that by me again?” Scott stepped up next to Chad, his hand on the handle of the blade strapped to his leg.
    “Look, folks,” Michael held up his hands, “it ain’t like it sounds.”
    “Really?” Chad snapped. “Because right now it sounds pretty messed up.”
    “I didn’t sign up for what these guys were pulling.” Michael kept his voice calm despite the fact that the crowd had closed in around him. “They came to me and said that they were going to force a rationing plan…that food was being wasted, and that we wouldn’t make it through the winter at the rate we were going. They wanted me for security.”
    “Security?” a few voices