America Offline: Zero Day (A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Series) (America Offline Book 1) by William H. Weber

Author:William H. Weber [Weber, William H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-02-29T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 24

Nate’s footfalls echoed on that hard, industrial flooring common to just about every civic building in the country. The school was dark. His hands were in the closest approximation to the Harries technique he could muster. Harries normally meant wrapping the weak hand with the flashlight under the hand holding the gun. It had been around since the 70s, but Nate was sure no one had ever used the technique with a cell phone light.

Pools of shadow vanished as he swung from left to right. He was in a corridor and coming to a t-intersection. Even looking forward, he couldn’t help seeing the trail of blood. Nate drew on his training as he slowly and methodically made his way past classrooms and lockers.

At the end of this blood trail was the thief who had stolen from them. Eagerly, he followed it down a flight of stairs. The droplets were large and bulbous, thickening around the outer edges. A slight film forming over the top. That told him the thug who had come this way had done so more than a few hours ago.

Nate passed more classrooms along with a teacher’s lounge, all of them eerily silent and devoid of life. Planting his feet, he aimed the light at the floor up ahead. The trail of blood led to a nearby room with a set of double doors, both of which stood ajar.

Heel to toe, Nate crept along in that direction, lowering the light as he drew closer. When he was a few feet away, he used a maneuver called cutting the corner. This meant angling into the room while at the same time limiting his own exposure to enemy fire. The blood led into a wide-open space that swallowed up most of the diffuse light from his phone. He noticed painted lines over the wooden floor. This wasn’t a cafeteria. It was a gym.

On the bleachers in the distance lay a figure in a grey winter jacket and dark baggy pants. Pooling beneath him was a dull liquid that looked from here like motor oil, but Nate knew better. The figure moved ever so slightly. This was no corpse he had stumbled upon. Corpses couldn’t shoot back, but even wounded men could be dangerous.

Nate put up his pistol, unslung his shotgun and pushed into the gymnasium’s ink-black darkness. You can’t hold a flashlight and use a shotgun at the same time, so Nate slid the phone into one of the front pockets of his jacket and pulled the zipper as tight as it would go, synching it in place. Where he turned, so too would the light, no matter how feeble it was at illuminating such a wide-open space.

He staggered toward the figure, wincing with every torturous footstep. By now the ache was no longer in his trick knee. Every bone in his body seemed to be crying out in protest, begging for him to find a safe, quiet place where he could lie down and replenish. Swinging to his left, Nate noticed items strewn about the floor.

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