Read Zombie Killers: AMBUSH: Irregular Scout Team One Book Six (Zombie Killer Blues 6) for Free Online Page B

wheezed as I tried to sit up. Hopefully none were broken, but shit that hurt.
    I half expected to see Red in the cell next to me, but it was empty. What I did see was a guard sitting on a chair outside the cell, shotgun sitting propped up while he leaned back and read a magazine.
    “Well now, you look like shit,” he said, in a not unkindly manner.
    “Feel like shit,” I answered, but it came out more as a croak. My throat was severely dry. Taking off his gun belt and slinging it across the back of the chair, the guard took a bottle of water from the table next to him and opened the cell door. I took it gratefully and sipped at it.
    “How long was I out?” I asked, once my voice came back.
    He took the empty bottle back and said “None of my business. I’m just here to keep an eye on you, and to let Captain Burns know when you’re awake.” He picked up a Motorola radio that was clipped to his pocket and keyed it.
    “Jimmy, this is Rich, down at the jail. The prisoner is awake.” Something unintelligible came back over, and he scowled at it. “Of course I haven’t said shit to him.” Clipping it back to his belt, he turned around to me.
    “Captain Burns will be down to see you in a bit, Sergeant Major. Till then, how about we just let the questions wait, OK? I don’t want any trouble. Man’s got to get by in the world.”
    I could see that he was scared shitless of whomever “Captain Burns” was. Fair enough. I need some time to get my stuff together. I ran a functions check on myself. My shoulder hurt, but seemed to have been well taken care of. The bandage was clean, and I could see the marks of an IV needle on my arm. I guess they actually had a doctor, since I probably had been given some blood, or at least fluids. My ribs hurt, and so did my cheekbone, where someone had kicked my face. My left eye was still swollen, though I could see through it. My prosthetic leg was gone, but I knew that already, remembering how the bullet had smashed into it. So much for escape, though. I wasn’t going to hop my way out of captivity.
    My musings were interrupted by an outside door opening and then closing. Into the cell walked a man wearing what I recognized were the remains of a New York State Corrections uniform, with the shiny two bars of a captain on his collar. Where the patches would normally be nothing showed. He wasn’t a big man, and there was grey in his hair and in his mustache, but he looked hard as hell.
    “Captain Burns, I presume?”
    He grunted and took a chair, turned it around backwards and sat down, leaning on the backrest and gazing at me.
    Finally, after a full minute of contemplation, he spoke. “Sergeant Major Nicholas Agostine, of the famed Irregular Scout Team One. Where’s your wife? Ms. O’Neil?”
    “Probably back home cursing up a storm at me. She wasn’t exactly happy about me going on this little recon.” 
    “Ah, the married life. Tried it myself, three times. Finally gave up. Cigarette?” he offered, and when I shook my head no, he lit it and put it in his own mouth, then blew the smoke in my face. Asshole.
    “So, Sergeant Major, what, exactly, am I going to do with you? Way I see it, I’ve got a few choices.” He held out thick, blunt fingers and counted off.
    “One, I can turn you and your friends back to the Feds and we can write it all off as a misunderstanding. I trade with the soldiers down on I-684 often enough, I could have you all there in a day.” He shook his head, said “Somehow I don’t think that will work. Too much blood under the bridge, as they say.”
    “Two, I could just kill you, bury your body, and act all sweet and innocent when the Regular Army comes looking for you, like I know they will. Loyalty and no man left behind bullshit. Probably my smartest choice, but I have to answer to my own people. Do you have any idea how many men we lost in that ambush?”
    “A few, I hope” I answered, and cursed myself for even letting that ambush happen.