by Joe McKinney
Nate straightened and blinked away the pain.
This was for posterity. It had to be good.
He said, “I think about the two great men I’ve known in my life—Ben Richardson, who I just told you about; and Dr. Mark Kellogg, who used my blood to figure out a vaccine for the zombie virus—and I want to weep for all that we’ve lost. So much goodness, so many great minds . . . just gone.” He smiled bitterly, and shrugged. “The world is passing on to mediocre men who remember great men. We are only echoes of them, and not very good ones.”
“Nate,” Avery called to him. She was coming up behind him, breathing hard from the climb up the hill. “You almost ready? Dr. Fisher says we need to get going before the day gets too hot.”
“Yep,” he said. “Almost.”
He focused on the iPad again.
“Time to wrap this up. This is Ben’s book that I’m trying to finish here, so I might as well leave you with something Ben said to me a few days before he died. He said we all do the best we can, and that most of the time, that’s good enough to get the job done. And if it doesn’t do the trick, well, we still own it. We may have lost the old world, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find a new one. We just stagger on, zombie-like, one foot in front of the other, and trust we’ll get there eventually. And you know what? I think we will.”
He shrugged, then smiled.
“That’s it. That’s all the wisdom I got.”
He leaned forward and tapped the screen to stop recording.
Avery, wearing a sundress borrowed from Dr. Fisher’s wife, stopped a short way off and waited for him.
“What are you doing up here?” she asked.
He turned.
Richardson was standing on a small rise behind her, facing east, watching a golden haze looming in the trees down by the road.
“Ben . . .”
Avery followed his gaze, her brow wrinkled. “You okay?” she asked. “What are you doing up here?”
Nate stood, favoring his broken ankle as he slid the crutches under his arms. “Can you help me with the iPad?” he asked.
“Sure.” She tucked it under her arm and stood next to him. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah, that’d be nice. Thanks.”
“You didn’t tell me what you were doing up here.”
He gestured at the iPad with his chin. “Just finishing up something for Ben. Something I promised I’d do.”
She smiled uncertainly, as though she didn’t quite know what to say. “Are you ready to go? Dr. Fisher wants to go.”
He looked over at the next rise, but Ben was gone.
To Avery, he said, “Yeah, I’m all set.” And together, the two of them walked down to the camp in the late morning sun.
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2012 Joe McKinney
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-0-7860-3053-8