Siege (As the World Dies #3)(79)

He had felt as though he was on the edge of losing his mind. Working hard and keeping focused on what needed to be done kept him from thinking about his family. But at times, he would find himself alone weeping until he felt he would die of the pain.

A week later, the Senator showed up with the retired Major General. The Major General carried orders from the President giving him the power to run the FEMA rescue stations in the area. Kevin had stepped aside, not knowing what else to do. He was at a loss how to run a rescue station or how to keep things running. Or so he had thought at the time. Now he wished he had never relinquished authority. The Major General obviously had his eye on a political career and wanted to be in good standing with the Senator. Kevin just wanted the people to be safe.

When he told the fort leaders of the Senator’s plans, he saw his own horror reflected in their faces. He told them honestly about her disregard for the survivors and her regard of them as “assets.” He was brutally honest about her ambitions. It felt good to speak of her so harshly.

It was hard not to cry, remembering what he had seen, but he knew they had all seen their share of horrors. When he finished telling his story, his voice low, his eyes full of tears. He could see that that the people in the room believed him by the tears in their eyes.



“I just want to do what is right,” Kevin finished. “I want to give those people a good home. I failed them once. I don’t want to fail them again.” “And you won’t,” Travis promised him. “Let’s bring your people home.”





3. A Terrible Thing

Katie stood holding her father’s letter in her hand, listening to Kevin tell his horrible story, her fingers slowly tracing the edges of the paper. Her tears were dry now, but she felt them close at hand.

It was too wonderful and too miraculous to fully accept that her father was still alive and yet, she held a piece of paper with his easily recognizable scrawl covering it.

Looking up, she could see the weariness in Kevin’s face. The months in the mall had probably aged him a bit. She didn’t think he was actually as old as he appeared. His shoulders were stooped slightly as if with the great burden of protecting those people in the mall weighed them down. The other soldiers had a weary look about them as well.

“I appreciate this more than you know. We are getting low on ammunition and the gates won’t hold forever against the zombies,” Kevin said. “The crowd gets a little bigger everyday,” Valerie added.

“For awhile we would thin them, but ammunition became an issue when the National Guard armory fell to the dead,” Kevin continued. “So we’ve been holding the line up until now.”



“Did you consider trying to get the people out before now?” Nerit asked.

“Honestly, yes. I talked to the Major General and Senator Brightman. The Senator told me to make sure the zombies didn’t get in and that was the end of that. Every time we went out for rescue with the helicopters, we’d try to find a new location, but nothing was really workable.” “Zombies are thick the closer you get to the cities,” Greta agreed. “We stopped trying to even go within seventy miles of any of the major cities.”

“The bigger towns are just as bad. Most of our rescues have been from small towns,” Kevin said with a weary sigh. “We knew supplies would become an issue soon, so we sent out scavenging raids. We lost people when we went east, so we started coming out this way, west. That is when we realized someone had been there before us. We found this one group in a grocery store making a meth lab in the back. They were seriously messed up. We interrogated their leader. He is the one who told us about the fort. He said his group had tried to join yours, but had been refused. That you had attacked them instead of helping them.”

“The bandits,” Curtis hissed.

“We could tell his story was fishy, but the minute the Senator heard about the fort, things became very intense. She’s been trying to get her free pass to the compound where the President and the remaining government are ensconced. Her goal was to make the mall seem like an asset to the President so that we would receive more assistance. But it was clear to me that the powers that be considered us a lost cause. But the fort changed that. With the farmland and ranches around here and the lower population of undead, this area is now seen as a viable supply outpost. The Senator is determined to take over and implement some FEMA plan.” Kevin shook his head. “When you realize that your superiors see the surviving human population as assets, that is when you know that the country has truly fallen. She even came up with some crazy invasion plan that had us invading the fort to seize control.”

“So what do you suggest we do?” Katie asked. “Don’t you think the Senator will try to block you coming here.”

“She probably has about twenty military people on her side. They’re scared. They want out. Some of them are from East Texas. I think they are hoping to find their families. Desperate times bring out the fear in the best of people. She’ll try to stop us, but we have more military on our side.”



Travis sighed. “Will her side respond with violence?”

Valerie and Kevin exchanged glances. Thomas laughed. “If they’re stupid they will. C’mon. This place is heaven compared to the stinking shithole we’re in.”