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

thick wedge of George’s Pizzeria pizza loaded with extra cheese, onions, bacon and pepperoni. It almost broke my heart to open my eyes.
    “What’s going on, Cruze?” I said, yawning as I glanced at my watch.
    She shut the door to my room and nodded toward Jo who’d gotten back into her sleeping bag and was sound asleep.
    “She knows,” I said. “Everyone except for Sid and Doug know about the broadcast.”
    “You told Kate and Kenny?”
    I shook my head and handed her Sgt. Green’s letter. “Mel did … have a look at this.”
    She opened the letter and I gave her a moment to read through Sgt. Green’s final instructions. Cruze made a grunting sound a few times and then handed it back after she was finished.
    “Interesting,” she said.
    “What?”
    “Green said we should head to the mountains and I’ve sort of plotted out a spot where we could go to if we decided against heading to Sanctuary Base.”
    Cruze dropped to one knee and pulled a map out of her pants pocket. She unfolded it on the floor and I swung my legs over the edge of the cot and leaned in to take a look. It was a map of Western Canada and Cruze had marked a red star to show our location and a blue X that was smack dab in the middle of a forest. I leaned closer and saw the words PRINCE ALBERT NATIONAL PARK printed in black ink just above where she’d marked the X.
    Cruze had been busy. There were small red X’s scratched over the cities of Airdrie, Red Deer, Wetaskiwin, Camrose and Edmonton which made sense as those were built-up areas and if we were going to head northeast, we’d want to avoid them. I looked on the western side of the map and saw a series of blue lines that meandered through secondary roads leading into the mountains and she’d drawn a big red circle around Lake Louise, a tourist destination for skiers in the winter time.
    “So yeah … Sanctuary Base is secluded enough but according to the coordinates in the radio message they’re in the middle of a freaking forest … they could be anywhere in that park.”
    “The middle of a forest!” I groaned. “Not exactly the best place for line of sight defense.”
    “The mountains are nothing but forest,” she said, pointing to the big circle at Lake Louise. “But a ski resort is the high ground; I mean you’re on the top of a mountain. It would be harder for creeps to get up there and we could pick them off if it came to it.”
    I nodded. “High ground matters. But assuming we made it there, we’d be completely on our own. Sanctuary Base sounds military, they’d be well-armed. There’s strength in numbers, right?”
    Cruze exhaled heavily. “Or it’s a trap.”
    “That’s what Jo said, too.”
    “Smart kid. Look, Dave … there are risks associated with both places and about the main benefit to Lake Louise is that it’s only a couple of hundred miles from here. Sanctuary Base is a hell of a lot farther away.”
    I glanced at the map. “Yeah … our carriers wouldn’t make it so we’d have to go scrounging for fuel or alternate transportation. There would be enough fuel to get us to Lake Louise for sure.”
    We sat in silence and just stared at the map. I was leaning toward Lake Louise but the lure of attaching ourselves to another military unit seemed too good to be true. There might be medical care and better organization. They could have set up a ton of defensive traps in the woods and more importantly there would be a rigid chain of command to follow. There would be real full-time military leaders with way more experience than a bunch of weekend warriors.
    There was also the issue of selling a move to a secluded spot in the mountains to the team. We’d be well and truly on our own if we managed to get out of the city. We’d have to learn how to hunt, how to trap and how to survive in the bush. Sure, Sgt Green had recommended we head to the mountains, but he didn’t know about Sanctuary Base. I wondered if he would have recommended we head there had he