Read The Hungry 5: All Hell Breaks Loose (The Sheriff Penny Miller Series) for Free Online Page A

back at Crystal Palace have anything to do with their free time besides to try to run us down and blow our collective shit to bean soup?”
    That’s kind of a rhetorical question, Miller thought. Before Sheppard could speak, Miller filled in for him. “And it gets worse.”
    Scratch coughed dust. “Oh? How so?”
    “Crystal Palace didn’t send them, Scratch. There’s no runway there. That’s just a helicopter base. They had to have come from somewhere else.”
    Scratch walked closer. “Then from where?”
    To Miller’s surprise, she, Rat, and Sheppard said, “Mountain Home,” in total unison.
    “What, are they reading our minds too now?” Scratch looked at Penny for a long moment. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Penny—well, same thing with you, Rat—but exactly who the hell can read your thoughts? Can anybody on their side? I mean, now that you guys are, like, zombie whisperers? Maybe that is how they tracked us down so quickly this time. If so, they already know where we are right now. What’s next, an anti-bin Laden bunker buster bomb?”
    Sheppard clapped Scratch on the shoulder. “No one is reading their minds, Scratch. I can guarantee that.”
    Rat said, “Mountain Home won’t know much. Not yet, anyway. All they’ll know is we’ve gone to ground in this general area.”
    “How can you be so sure?”
    Sheppard took one step forward in the darkness. “Well, that telepathy thing between super soldiers, Scratch? It only works when they’re accelerated. It’s a very short range effect. As you know, I was in charge of the latest program and ran it from the beginning. Penny and Rat are fine. I can assure you no one is reading their thoughts, at least not right now. But that doesn’t mean they won’t be coming after us and soon.”
    Scratch leaned up against the rocky wall of the cave. He crossed his arms. “Okay, but I bet I can read Penny’s mind right now.”
    “You can?” asked Miller, suddenly nervous. Scratch sounded sincere. Both Rat and Sheppard stared at him too. Scratch enjoyed the moment and then put his fingertips to his temples as if concentrating.
    Miller smiled, not sure anyone could actually see it. “Go for it.”
    “Okay,” Scratch said. “I hear you loud and clear, Penny. You’re about to say that now that our rides have been destroyed, and because all our gear is burnt toast, we’d best go find some new resources and weapons or we’re going to be seriously screwed.”
    Miller couldn’t help but smile. “Gee, was I thinking it that loudly?”
    Sheppard had puffed up like a kitten reacting to a mirror. Scratch had gotten him genuinely worried. For some reason Miller found that fact amusing. Sheppard said, “That was just a lucky guess. Scratch was never accelerated, after all. He couldn’t possibly be reading your mind.”
    Miller ignored Sheppard. He’d missed the joke and was just covering his own ass with that remark.
    “Jesus, Karl. That was just a joke.” Scratch was still on the last conversation. He put a hand on Sheppard’s shoulder. “You need to chill, amigo.”
    Sheppard stared ahead of them and down into the darkness. He finally said what everyone else had been thinking. “Do you think that any of Father Abraham’s cannibals are still around?”
    “I doubt it,” said Rat.
    Miller nodded. “If they had any sense, they ran away right after Terrill Lee blew Father Abraham’s brains all over the desert. We warned them about the bomb. I mean, who would be stupid enough to stay?”
    “When the end-times nuke didn’t go off on schedule,” Scratch added, as if trying to convince himself as much as anyone, “and they finally started running out of food, the rest of them would have headed for what’s left of civilization. That would have been their only sane move, right?”
    “That’s what worries me,” Sheppard said, “They weren’t sane. And there are only so many little towns in the area to raid for food.”
    Miller shook her head. Her