Read Wild Strawberry: Book 3 Ascent for Free Online Page A

the light.’”
                  “We are all going to die soon enough, I’d rather face the End as myself: not as a monster every bit as merciless as those zombies down there.”
                  And so the argument raged endlessly into the night, occasionally drowned out by the noise from the creatures below.
                  On and on they argued.
                  There was a dull ache in Neil’s scratched leg, and the shouting and snarling was making his head hurt too.  He shrouded himself in the blankets, squeezing his arm over his ears, and trying to sleep as blood pounded in his head.
     
    *   *   *
     
    Neil was back in the campsite.  Had they decided to go back?  Had Helena and Rob thrown them out of the service station?  He couldn’t remember.  He recalled driving away in the first place, a farm, and a service station.  But he couldn’t remember how he had returned to the lakeside.
                  Someone had re-pitched the tents; last time he had seen them they had been trampled underfoot by zombies and fleeing survivors.
                  He was in the shower block, peering out at the site through a chink in the door.  There were people walking about, but he couldn’t tell if they were alive or undead.
                  It was dark, and there was thunder.  He looked upwards, somehow the roof had gone.  Had they used it to repair the fence?  Drops of rain started to land around them.  They washed the surface of the sinks, turning the brown grime to a swirl of fresh, clear red, translucent as watercolour paint.
                  His hands also started to run red.  He looked at them as they crumbled, like the roof, like the walls around him.  Everything was rotting and wasting away.
                  “This is all wrong.  Everything’s wrong.  It’ll never be right again.”
                  He turned around, looking for some sign of hope.  All the doors had fallen off the cubicles and all the occupants were exposed.
                  There was Jesus sitting and smiling benignly.
                  Next to him sat a bearded stranger, and further on was a very fat, bald man.
                  “I think,” Neil began, “that you guys really let the side down.”
                  “Who do you think is responsible for all this?” Said Jesus, waving his hand around to indicate the state of the world.
                  “Even if you didn’t do it, you still let it happen.”
                  “I could say the same to you.”
                  “Oh Jesus!”
     
    *   *   *
     
    Neil woke to see Rob’s bearded face looking down at him.
                  “I’m sorry, son,”  Rob looked awkward, “I’m really sorry, but you can’t stay.  Those scratches...  You know…  They look like they may be...  I’m sure you’re OK, but we have to be careful.”
                  Misha heard them talking, and came over to join in. “Wait!”  She protested, “You can’t send us out again.  We’ll die out there.  You’d be murdering us!”
                  “Oh no, no, no, we wouldn’t be sending you out too.  You’re not infected, you can stay, it’s only him .  Neil.  So sorry.  But what can we do?”
                  “Helena!”  Misha protested to the other survivor, who was in one of the back rooms, below the others.
                  Helena climbed up, her face defiant.  “I know what you’re going to say.  But it’s no good, we have no choice.”
                  Rob looked pleadingly from Helena to Neil.  He felt sick.
                  Finally Neil cleared his throat and spoke,  “I have no idea if I’m infected or not.  I’m sorry to be the cause of this.  I understand.  I don’t want to end up