Back From The Dead: My Apocalypse Level-up System novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Day Zero

By noon the radio had stopped playing music.

By one, it had stopped playing anything.

Conroy and I stood in the yard with twenty people looking at us, and I told them what I had to.

"Nobody leaves the gate. Nobody opens it for anyone, not for family, not for a friend, not for a voice you know. If they're hurt, they can sit outside it until I come."

"What if they're bleeding?" the nurse asked.

"Then I'll come, and I'll look, and I'll decide."

"That's cruel."

"It's the only thing that works."

She held my eyes for a moment, then nodded.

Hattie's brother gripped his two kids' hands.

Conroy had gone to bring the truck around.

I walked to the gate and unlocked it.

I hadn't told anyone my plan.

I wanted one thing before the rest, and it was not on the farm.

He pulled up and leaned across to open the passenger door.

"Where?" he said.

"The interstate overpass at exit nineteen."

His hand went still on the wheel.

"Why?"

"There's a boy in a gold sedan," I said. "Ten years old. His mother's going to turn in the front seat, and last time the truck that stopped for him was Brent's. I saw him."

I had.

He'd been the boy beside Lacey on the tailgate.

I had seen his face over her fingers.

Conroy looked at me for a long moment.

"All right," he said.

We drove down empty county roads while smoke rose in the east.

The interstate ahead of us was a solid wall of cars.

Every lane was packed, horns dead, doors open, and between the bumpers, people were walking and running and falling.

Some of them got up again.

Conroy stopped the truck two hundred yards from the overpass.

"We go on foot from here."

"I know."

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