Read Omega Pathogen: Despair for Free Online

safety and wait for Jim to come get him or for a signal indicating it was okay to approach. He’d watch for Jim to retreat and be ready to assist.
    Jim took a sip of water, sloshed it about in his mouth and spat it out. His mouth had grown dry from nervousness. He shook hands with Royce through the open driver door window and walked toward the road.
    Jim couldn’t have been more than fifteen feet or so from the pickup truck before Royce had already lost sight of him in the rapidly growing darkness.
    Jim kept a slow cautious pace towards the red pickup, deciding to stay in the middle of the road. Normally it would be wiser to stay near one of the edges of the road, or even off of it entirely, but with most of his attention on the red pickup truck in the distance, he didn’t want to walk right into any infected that could be concealed in the brush.
    Jim constantly switched his gaze from the pickup truck to the spotty patches of brush near the sides of the road and checked behind him. He heard some faint voices from inside the pickup’s enclosed steel bed: a male voice that grew louder and seemed agitated, and then the faint sound of metal squeaking. Jim took a knee and quickly checked his surroundings and watched the truck. 
    Jim saw the smaller man stand up through an opening in the enclosed truck bed. The man would quickly look around one side or the other of the roof hatch and the trees between their pickup and the MRAP with what looked to be binoculars. Jim’s anxiety increased when he realized they weren’t regular binoculars but hand-held night vision optics.
    Jim waited and watched for several long minutes and found that the man never looked in other directions with his optics. He concentrated only on the MRAP.
    As Jim stood to a crouch to continue forward, the man looked down into the truck and said something. Jim froze. In a second or two what looked to be an AK-47 or SKS rifle was handed up to the lookout man.
    The man sat the rifle on the roof beside him and resumed his pattern of quickly looking at the MRAP through the optics and hiding behind the hatch.
    Jim moved toward the pickup truck again. He was even more careful than before; if the man on lookout happened to look to his right, he knew he’d be spotted.
    Jim angled his direction of approach toward the rear of the pickup and to the shoulder of the road on the opposite side of the truck. He tried to stay out of easy sight of the man standing watch, but the man still only seemed to be interested in watching the MRAP whenever he quickly poked his head around the side of the hatch.
    A little smile formed for a second on Jim's face as he watched the man. His family had done well. They took out one of the threats and had those remaining too fearful to approach. Then thoughts of his younger children, Berk and Kayra, flashed through his mind. The fear they must have felt when these scum had attacked them outside the hospital and forced his wife to flee. He pushed his anger and thoughts of his family to the back of his mind and focused only on where he was and what he was doing.
    Jim angled further toward his left and into the shallow ditch on the opposite side of the road of the pickup. He lay prone, close to the fresh grave of the man buried earlier in the day. Further to his left he could now see water and noticed several alligators feeding on a human corpse. The large reptiles weren’t as active during the winter months, but in Florida a day or two of cold weather could be followed by several warm days. They took advantage of the warm winter night and the easy meal. Three alligators, varying between four to eight feet long, clamped down on different parts of what remained of the body. As each one bit down, their death spin quickly followed and ripped away hunks of flesh and bone.
    Jim heard low voices once again and saw movement from inside the bed of the truck, as silhouettes passed in front of small gaps in the metal box covering the truck bed. The man