Trepidation Read Online Free

thought . Just freaking great. 

Chapter 3
    S evered heads with decaying skin and round, white, filmy eyes viciously snapped at me, then landed back on the floor. Luckily, I was high enough that they couldn’t reach me, but I knew that wouldn’t last long. I stared at their vacant eyes and rotting flesh and wondered how Z could be so cruel.
    “Hi, Dean,” a voice said in a tone similar to a hiss.
    Speak of the devil.
    “I can’t believe you’re alive,” Z said. “I left you for dead in that warehouse, yet here you are.”
    I didn’t say anything, as I couldn’t think of anything pleasant to say, and I wasn’t about to give him the pleasure of hearing me beg for my life.
    “My people treated you well, fed you like a king, gave you nice clothes, and showed you their...Southern hospitality,” he continued, “and for what? So you could spy on us!” He grabbed a broom and swept several zombie heads out of his path, just so he could reach over and punch me right in the gut.
    I sucked in as deep a breath as I could in such a compromising position. Before I knew what had hit me, I felt a blow to my back. I couldn’t breathe as pain shot through me.
    When the zombie heads inched toward him, he backed up into the safe zone.
    Glaring, I met his gaze. “Where’s Claire?” I demanded.
    “She’s alive,” he answered snidely, “barely.”
    “I’m gonna kill you!” I roared.
    “Yeah? I got those same empty threats from Claire too.”
    I yelled through the pain radiating down my back. “Let her go! You’ve got me now.”
    “You certainly do fight for the girl, Dean. But I’ve done a little recon, and I know she’s your brother’s woman, not yours. I also know you’re all new to the group.”
    “If you’ve done your research,” I said, groaning and struggling to breathe, with the blood rushing to my head, “you know I wasn’t with those scientists.”
    His face twisted as he contemplated my words.
    “Why are you doing this?” I asked.
    “You’re with that crazy nut, Max. And being associated with him makes you my enemy.” He looked at the group of men who were next to the rope that was holding me. “Fellas, I think Dean wants to talk to the Talking Deadheads.”
    “He’s fish bait for the piranhas,” a man said with a laugh and a grunt. 
    “No!” I shouted. “Why don’t you just put a bullet through my head? Let me die like a man.”
    “Aw, that’d be way too easy. Besides, if you had died like you were supposed to, been incinerated back at the warehouse, we wouldn’t be going through this now, would we?”
    The rope lowered, and I stared into the milky, white eyes and snapping jaws, knowing full well that if they even nibbled on my face the slightest bit, I would be a dead man. My heart lurched as they lowered me close enough to smell the rotting scalps, a stench that made my stomach clench. I’d smelled it before, but my current predicament already had my stomach in knots, and as I vomited, my tormentors only laughed. “Just shoot me!” I shouted. I didn’t want to die, but I would have rather taken a bullet to the head than to feel those things bite my face apart, chunk by chunk. I lifted my body into the air, doing a suspended sit-up, of sorts, but I didn’t know how long I could hold that position. I knew Z was going to kill me, but the sick part was that he wanted to watch me suffer. It sickened me all the more to know he got some sort of rush to watch me squirm. I didn’t have much time, so all I could do was try to toy with his sense of empathy, if he had any at all. “Look, Z, I took down that lab, my friends and I. We went in there and took it out, just like you wanted. We even helped to free some of your people. I’m sorry I spied on you. Truly, I am, but surely I made up for that. We almost died in that lab, trying to get your people out.”
    A woman approached and I noticed it was Sandy. I had chatted with her when I was undercover in Z’s warehouse. She was really