Read Emma: Part Three for Free Online Page B

truck waiting to head back to Purgatory for more survivors before rolling out to the Outpost.
    “I’ll stay here with you guys.” She wrinkled her dainty little nose as she glanced at the smoldering grass and crispy zombie bodies littering the ground. “This is going to be a long night. There’s a lot of cleanup and you could use an extra set of hands.”
    “You don’t have to—“
    “I want a deal,” she interrupted. “If I stay and help? You give me, my sister and Ember a year on the Outpost without forcing us to do whatever it is you do with women.”
    Max frowned down at her. “We don’t force women to do anything.”
    “That’s not what I’ve heard.”
    “I don’t care what you’ve heard. I’m telling you the truth. We don’t force women to stay with us. But—”
    “But?” she jumped on the word.
    “But we do require that human females on the Outpost join unions,” he clarified. “It’s an issue of security and rationing. We’re not a care facility, and we don’t operate on goodwill. I can’t give you a year. There’s no way the general will sign off on that. Six months?” He shrugged. “I can promise you six.”
    She held out her hand. “Deal.”
    Max grasped and shook it. He didn’t like to be suspicious but after tonight’s bombings? Everyone was suspect, even someone as helpful as Chloe. “Why is it so important that you and your sister get on the Outpost?”
    “You ever been hungry?” she asked boldly. “You ever been so cold that your bones hurt? You ever had to listen to your baby niece hack and cough all night? You ever had to watch your sister hold her little child and cry while she wonders if her sweet baby girl is going to survive the fever burning her right up?”
    Max had never imagined having a child, but with Emma now in his life? It was a likelihood that he would be a father someday. The thought of that future child freezing to death in winter or dying from a preventable disease chilled him to the core. “No.”
    “Well I have—and I’m not doing it again. Winter will be here soon. We lost our home and our business tonight. I’m not starting over in the cold and snow with a vulnerable little girl who needs hot food, a roof over her head and access to medicine.”
    “I respect that, but you have to understand that there are rules on the Outpost. Sooner or later, if you two sisters want to stay, one of you is going to have to become part of our family.”
    “I’m not afraid of being a cyborg wife.”
    Max noticed the way she immediately assumed she would be the one to mate with and pledge herself to some of his men. Eyeing her more critically, he asked, “How old are you?”
    “Old enough.” She picked up her ax and walked away, leaving Max to wonder about these strange and incredibly strong women who inhabited the Outlands.

3 Chapter Three
    After hours of backbreaking labor, a torrential downpour and high winds, Max grudgingly but silently acknowledged that Chloe had been right. They had needed every set of hands they could get. Between the dead cyborgs and civilians who had to be bagged, tagged and separated into cargo trucks and the still mobile Biters who had to be put down and pushed into the burn pits, there wasn’t an idle pair of hands to be found.
    As the last of the gathered up zombies were shoved into the final pit, Max stood back while one of the Zed boys blasted the doused corpses with a flame thrower. The rain had eased up a short while ago, but everything was so soggy they had to use heavy-duty methods to keep the pits going. Fuel had been siphoned from the broken-down vehicles to keep the fires burning hot.
    Max grimaced at the unholy smell rising out of the pits and retreated to a safe distance. He leaned his aching head against the cold metal panel of a transport truck from the base and closed his eyes. That blast kicked my ass good.
    “You look like you could use a drink.” Wearing a dust-colored shemagh, Chloe Morgan strolled up with