Hell's Children: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller by John L. Monk

Author:John L. Monk [Monk, John L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2016-06-07T16:00:00+00:00

The next day, shortly after dawn, Tony and Jack returned without Brad to the house with the homicidal girls and their mutant dog.

“Man, all you gonna do is get shot,” Tony said for the tenth time. He even sounded bothered by the prospect.

“We’ll see,” Jack said, tired of his constant needling.

Tony was only slightly less irritating than Pete—half the reason he’d given them the bulk of the scavenger duties, so they’d be out of his hair. Despite that, there was truth in his words. He could get shot. He would have done this alone, but if something happened, he wanted Lisa and Greg to know. For some reason, this was vitally important, his friends knowing how he lived and how he died. He didn’t want to be forgotten like so many others who’d wasted away on their death beds, or starved to death in the city streets, alone and unmourned.

Jack turned the lumpy rock over in his hand, studying it. About as big as a baseball, he’d sealed it in a freezer bag with a neatly folded note inside proclaiming their intentions. Namely, to trade food and other supplies in exchange for one of their cows. Lisa had written out the note the night after they’d gotten back. He and Brad agreed she was a natural diplomat and praised her sparkling penmanship. Lisa—nobody’s fool—called them out for being lazy and foisting more work on her after a long day in Gainesville.

“Here goes,” Jack said as they approached the house. “Hit it.”

Tony pressed the horn as they passed, loud and long (despite being told to make it sound peppier), and waited for the front door to open. Jack threw the rock onto the lawn, then ducked down as they sped away. Nobody shot at them, and a minute later they were far enough that they could stop and turn.

“Now what?” Tony said, breathing heavily for some reason.

“Now we wait. The note said we’d be back in an hour to talk. Why don’t you put on some music?”

The younger boy snorted. “Thought you hated that stuff?”

Anything’s better than listening to you right now, Jack thought glumly.

“It’s growing on me,” was all he said.

Tony laughed and turned on his pop music, then leaned back and closed his eyes. Jack leaned back, too. Instead of closing his eyes, he took Churchill’s memoire from under his seat and continued reading. It was pretty good. He admired how the man had pulled the country together during their national crisis. He’d organized supply-lines from the United States, an island-wide communication network, an underground command center, and rallied the civic defense against day and night air raids by German bombers—all while launching attacks and counterattacks in Africa and plotting with FDR and Stalin on how best to defeat Hitler.

As awful as the war had been, the events had been made more tragic by the Sickness. All those lives lost, all that struggle, and so many accomplishments and inventions—all of it swept away like it had never happened.

“Tony,” he said after closing the book.

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