Read The North: A Zombie Novel for Free Online Page A

it?”
    She nodded but kept her eyes fixed firmly on her rubber boots. “We’re not safe, David. The creepers got Mom … they’ll get all of us.”
    I folded up the letter and dropped it on the floor, leaned forward and gently placed both hands on Jo’s face. I turned her head and rested my forehead against hers. “Jo … I’m your big brother and I’m going to protect you. We’re getting out of here – we’re going to go somewhere safe. That’s what Sgt. Green’s letter was about. He put together a plan for us to get out of the city. We’re going to get as far away from civilization as we can get. We’re going to start over.”
    “But there’s so many creepers – they’re everywhere. We’ll get swarmed and then …”
    I lifted her chin and stared hard into her eyes. “Jo … we’ve got lots of ammunition. We’ve got food and supplies. We’ve got each other – we’re a family.”
    She pursed her lips together tightly and I allowed her a few moments to absorb what I’d just told her. I wanted her to hope even though hope was always something we’d tried to keep at arm’s length. If the last six months had taught us anything it was that hoping would always come back to bite you in the ass. But Jo was eight and she needed something to believe in.
    “How are we going to get out of here?” she asked as she bent down and grabbed Sgt. Green’s letter.
    “The armored personnel carriers,” I said calmly. “When we’re hatches down in those things, those monsters can’t touch us. We can blow right through them like bowling pins.”
    “But where will we go?”
    I brushed her hair away from her eyes. “We’ve gotta figure that one out still. Sgt. Green said we should head to the mountains where there is fresh water and game for us to hunt, but there’s another place … maybe.”
    “Where?”
    I told Jo about the radio broadcast from Sanctuary Base. I told her that it was about a thousand miles from the city and that it was supposed to be zombie-free, and all the while Jo nodded silently. She didn’t smile. She didn’t jump up and down on my cot to celebrate that we were going to be leaving. She was processing the information the best way she could, and what she said next took me by surprise.
    “They might be bad guys,” she said coldly. “They might be trying to trick us. They could be getting people to go there and then they might kill them and take their stuff.”
    Wow. Six months of living in hell had given my kid sister a brutally practical outlook on our new reality. I didn’t know whether to bust out bawling that an eight-year-old was talking like a combat veteran or to hug her for having the sense to recognize a very real threat to our survival.
    “It’s possible,” I said, matching her tone. “We need more information. We need a backup plan and we need to make a decision as a team.”
    “How much longer will we stay here?” she said with a hint of anticipation in her voice. Her eyes flashed over to her carbine fixed against the wall above her cot.
    “Not much longer,” I said quietly. “We’re going to have a team meeting and I’m going to simply tell everyone what has to happen.”
    She gave me a big hug and then she flashed me a toothless grin. “Good – you should be in charge.”
    Her vote of confidence lifted my spirits. Jo believed in me when I was having trouble believing in myself.
    I glanced at my watch, it was 04:10 and the broadcast from Sanctuary Base would be in a little more than two hours.
    “Okay, kiddo … you’re part of the team. We’ll gather around the radio on the sentry tower and we’ll hash out our next move. And Jo?”
    “What?”
    “Thanks for believing in me.”
    She gave me another hug and then planted a big wet kiss on my right cheek. “You’re my brother, dummy. Of course I believe in you.”
     
    ***
     
    Cruze gave me a hard shake. “Dave, get up … we need to talk.”
    I’d been dreaming about pizza of all things. A nice,