End of the Line Read Online Free Page B

possible.”
                  “I might be about to go tonight for a couple of hours,” she said then coughed.
                  “In the freezing cold? I don’t think so. Harlan will do some extra hours, I’ll have Ashley, Jim, or Dave on sentry duty.”
                  “I feel useless.”
                  “I’ll have Harlan give you some rifle magazines to load.”
                  CostKing didn’t sell guns; there was a burnt out Smile-Mart in the same shopping center, where we got rifle rounds, but we only had three rifles, two shotguns and a handgun that only had 20 bullets, and we had eight boxes of shotgun shells. That gun and one shotgun were locked in the pharmacy. Princess brought two of the rifles and two suitcases filled with rifle ammo that we were about a third of the way through. She kept one of those rifles with her at all time. Her favorite. I think she slept with it. We only let the sharpshooters have the rifles. The rest of us use weapons of choice, baseball bats, tire irons, crowbars and golf clubs. We even sharpened the edges of broom handles as long reach weapons. A few people had their own guns and kept them. I know Mindy had her own handgun with only a four rounds in it. It had been Tom’s gun originally. He gave it to Mindy as some kind of morose present.
                  Annemarie didn’t look satisfied but seemed too sick to complain.
                  “Doc,” said Jim’s voice from outside the curtain. “We’re ready.”
                  “Take care,” I told Annemarie, then left the infirmary. I would check up on her and the others later.

Chapter 2
                  We created a makeshift meeting room between the store and the automotive repair shop. The room had originally been the food court. This area and the repair shop gave us extra space between us and the outside world. Before this happened the two spaces were separate because they closed an hour earlier than the store. The food court had been stripped clean of food a long time ago but still had a slight smell of decay. We put together several tables from the food court and Jim put five chairs around it and one chair in front. The rest had been stacked up behind us. Robert would move that stack in front of the door when we were done.              
                  Eli, Ashley, Robert and Princess were already in the room. Princess looked bored. I came in with Jim. We sat at the table with Princess looking decidedly non-menacing behind us.
                  We would interview them one at a time, talk no more than 10 minutes and then vote. Robert opened the door to a young white man with greasy shaggy brown hair, wearing a puffy coat, who looked like a college student. Robert shook him down and recovered a crowbar.
                  “That’s mine,” he said. “I wasn’t gonna use it on you, just the zomb’s.”
                  “Yes,” I said. “We know. You can have it back. Sit.”
                  The man obeyed especially when Robert looked at him. Robert was sweet and far less threatening than princess , but big enough to look scary.              
                  “My name is Rachel. Behind me is Princess. Don’t let her looks deceive you. She was one of the police’s best sharpshooters. She’ll kill you before you are even a threat.”
                  The kid looked a little spooked. Princess was never in the police but it sounded better than winner of the Northampton young women’s gun club award three years running. Something she proudly told Abe when she first arrived.
                  “I ain’t here for trouble, just to survive.”
                  “What’s your name?”
                  “Henry.”
                  “Henry, what can you offer