Read The Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Line for Free Online Page A

was right. It wasn't an option. 'We could go without them,' he said, though he had to force it out as if it was too taboo to even suggest.
    Shane didn't react; he'd already thought about it. It would be a lot easier to leave the girls safe in the museum, come back for them later with help, if they ever found it. 'It's a one-way trip,' he finally said. 'You know as well as I do that we're not coming back this way. It doesn't matter if we find what we're looking for. It doesn't matter if those jets are parked up on some military runway where there are other survivors. We head south, we stay south.'
    'That's what I thought,' Terry said. He glanced across the room to where Marla and River slept soundly with the sepia blanket draped across both of them. 'Not that they would let us entertain such a thing.'
    Shane shook his head in dissent. 'Not a chance. Marla would hunt us down and kick both of our asses, and I don't think River is one with whom to fuck, either.'
    Terry smiled at the thought of being chased by the girls. 'No, I'd rather take my chances with the fucking lurkers ,' he said, scratching at his silver beard with roughly-gnawed fingernails.
    'River seems to like you,' Shane said as he screwed the lid back onto his water-bottle.
    ' Like me. She practically cut me up this afternoon. Even my bruises have got bruises. I'll tell you, she's feisty. I don't know how she got to be so good, but I almost had a coronary just trying to keep up with her.'
    'Blame her dad,' Shane said. 'If he were still alive, I think we'd owe him some gratitude. I don't know who needs who more.'
    'I'm just glad she's on our side,' Terry said, considering the alternatives. He hated himself for picturing River as one of the undead, but he had to wonder whether the girl would remain just as knowledgeable about fighting if she were a lurker. Some of them certainly showed signs of past-life recollection. Only a few days ago, Terry had watched a traffic-cop stamp a bloody palm on a Ford Focus windscreen. Instead of a ticket, all that was left behind was a crimson smear, but it only further fuelled his belief that, though the lurkers were just empty shells, their brains retained certain attributes from before they became that way. If River had been a lurker when they ran across her, they would have stood very little chance of getting by her without losing limbs, or far worse . . .
    'You're a man of faith,' Shane said, as if from nowhere.
    Terry shrugged. 'What's left of it. Look, Shane, I'm just an old fart who believed in God for so long, it's too late for me to change my mind. Don't want to be an old fart that wasted his entire life on something that wasn't real.'
    'But you still believe?' It wasn't a question, not really.
    'I still have to.' He reached into his pocket and pulled out his bible. Jabbing at the cover, the gilt-edged cross that took up the majority of the book's front, he said, 'I don't want to be the guy to admit that I was wrong. If I do that, I might as well have been reading Lord Of The Rings all this time. So I accept . I accept that this is what I have to believe in. When we were in that prison, this little thing got me through some tough times. Did I always believe that what I was reading was true, that it all happened verbatim? No. Did I trust myself not to take it too literally and take from it the message instead? You're damn right I did.' He held the book aloft; Shane couldn't stop staring at the golden cross on its cover. It was hypnotising. 'So whether I believe is not important. What's important is that without this, I would have died in that cell years before you even came along, before any of this shit happened. Divinity comes in many forms, Shane Bridge.' He lowered the bible, signalling an end to his little speech.
    Shane wanted to believe. He had never been overly religious, but things had changed him; Megan being turned had changed him.
    Really, what he wanted to ask was if Terry thought there was an afterlife, somewhere