Read Sometimes We Ran (Book 2): Community for Free Online Page B

trying to force myself to relax, and accept the help, but something kept gnawing at me.
    Not as fit as you think
, Odegard had said. Not fit for what? Not fit to survive? Maybe not fit to be cooked and eaten? My head hurt at the possibilities. Claire and I could be in danger and not even know it. We both needed to stay alert.
    I thought about my secret knife in my backpack.
    They had taken my guns and tomahawk, but they might have overlooked my secret knife. It was sewn into a flap of fabric in the bottom of my old backpack. Small and easily concealed, it might have been missed. The little knife wasn’t much: a carbon-fiber handle with a sharp blade that folded, but it was enough to defend myself. Just go for the jugular. Cut them and they’ll bleed to death in just a few minutes. I had taught Claire where to cut as well.
    As I sat at the black plastic table contemplating the trouble Claire and I might be in, the door beeped. Wallace stepped into the room.
    “Are you decent, John?” he asked, slurring his speech a little. My senses went into overdrive. It looked like he had been drinking. He still had his huge silver revolver at his hip.
    Wallace came over to the table and sat down in one of the chairs facing me. He didn’t say anything as he stared me in the eyes. “No guards tonight?” I asked.
    Wallace waved his arm as if to dismiss my question. “No. I know you’re not going to turn.” He breathed a heavy sigh, and leaned forward. “I’ve come to talk.”
    “About what?”
    Wallace waved his hand again. “Anything you want. Actually, I wanted to ask you a few things.”
    I leaned forward in my chair. I stared in Wallace’s eyes trying to read his mind. His eyes were steel gray, with a hint of sadness. It was a look I was familiar with: Most survivors had the same look in their eyes these days. “What do you want to know?”
    “Well, it’s where we found you. Here’s Chattanooga,” he said, drawing an imaginary line on the table. “Here’s Atlanta,” as he drew another line with his finger below the first. “And let’s say this is Valdosta and the Georgia-Florida border.” He drew a final line on the table, south of the Atlanta line. “We found you guys here.” Wallace circled a space southwest of Atlanta where we were picked up on the interstate. “You two were on the interstate scrounging for food.”
    “So?” I said.
    Wallace leaned back. “It’s just that the whole damn state of Georgia is a dead zone, I figure. Along with parts of Alabama, the Carolinas and Tennessee. And don’t get me started about Florida. It’s all dead.” He paused for emphasis. “I’ve sent patrols as far south as Panama City. They reported that there isn’t enough life left in these areas to fill a school bus.”
    “What do you want to know, General?” This was a different Wallace than before. He seemed more serious. He was building up to something.
    Wallace stood up and began to pace around the table. “How did you survive? A former telecom engineer and a college student, surviving all this time out in a dead zone.” He stopped pacing, and turned to face me. “No training, yet you survived among all those reanimates. How did you survive?”
    I remembered the hard times with Claire on the road. Survival hadn’t been easy. We got lucky. A mild winter, along with some careful scrounging and rationing, had allowed us to stay alive. We had started moving southwest looking for warmer weather and greener pastures. Running for our lives helped a lot, as well.
    I looked at Wallace, and smiled. “Just lucky, I guess.”
    Wallace smiled back. It was sinister. A real slick little grin. “No. It’s something else. My scouts watched you for a while. They said there was something different about you two. I have to agree. When they brought you in here, I saw a real fighter. A guy that would do anything to survive. Usually we put people in these rooms and they tear the place apart.” He shook his head sadly.