Read Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse (Book 3): Salvation for Free Online

way.”
    “Briana
helps.”
    “Nope.”
She took a seat atop a large boulder. “You do the planning. She just makes it
happen.”
    “I…
That’s not entirely somewhat true.”
    The
teenager pointed at a clump of cabins. “See how they put them? They don’t even
have roads or anything, just smushed grass and dirt where people walk. I bet
that gets real muddy when it rains.”
    “Probably.”
    The
people in Yellowstone National Park, like us, had constructed hundreds of
cabins but with two key differences. First, they favored single room buildings
while ours tended to have two or three. Even more obvious was that our town was
well planned with an ordered grid of streets. Our friends seem to have placed
their homes all willy nilly. I couldn’t see anything indicating a pattern, or
logic for that matter.
    “Not as
safe either,” she continued. “They don’t have cliffs and giant stone walls
surrounding everything.”
    “Safe
enough,” I countered. “They are miles from the roads, and the terrain is pretty
rugged. Just finding them would be hard, and as long as they aren’t surprised,
the people could move to one of their other settlements before the raiders
fought their way in. They have a lot of flexibility. More than us, I think.”
    “Our
town is still nicer.” Mary frowned. “So, what are we going to do about the
raiders? You know yet?”
    Tara
answered for me. “We shoot them in the head.”
    Her
brother nodded.
    “It’ll
be a little more complicated than that, but basically, yes, we do want to kill
them, all of them.”
    There was
a tiny minority who somehow believed we could work things out and come to a
peaceful resolution. This group of delusional men and women were almost all
recent arrivals, survivors we had discovered over the intervening months or
technicians flown in from the islands. Those with the misfortune to have lived
through the prior war with the raiders and the soldiers who had studied the
prophet’s tactics and behavior in painstaking detail were more inclined to
adopt a policy of genocide.
    Genocide.
Unfortunately, it would not be that easy. I was going to kill the prophet given
the chance, and I was going to kill anyone who rode with him. Yet, those
monsters were traveling with their families, including hundreds of children.
What was to be their fate? And how would they react, both long and short term,
when we did get around to slaughtering their parents? It was complicated, and I
had no good answers.
    “When’s
the meeting starting?” asked Mary.
    “Supposed
to be later tonight. As soon as the guide gets back, we’re going off again to visit
the last bit of the park that’s relevant to the discussions. They wanted us to
see the area we would likely be fighting in before talking strategy.”
     
    *
* *
     
    “Ideas?”
Captain Briggs looked around the room.
    “I don’t
like the layout,” I offered. “If we operate out of the settlements, even just
the one closest to where the raiders are supposed to be gathering, our supply
line is going to suck. We should leave the villages out of it completely and
just build a base near the edge of the park.”
    “We
already have cabins for storage and trails between all our little towns,”
commented an older man. I didn’t know him. “Everything needed is right here.”
    “Not
relevant. We’re all used to hiking through the wilderness, so we don’t need the
trails, best if we don’t draw attention to them in the first place. I really think
we should keep the settlements out of the fight, if at all possible. If we end
up in a stalemate or the prior peace somehow continues, then the people you
sent our way are going to return. They will be a whole lot safer and all around
better off if the raiders don’t know where they are living, and the odds they
will find out go up big time if we are going back and forth all the time for
gear or supplies. And, like I said, they are too far away from where we intend
on doing the fighting to