The Coalition: Part II The Lord Of The Living (COALITON OF THE LIVING Book 2) by Robert Mathis Kurtz Page A

nothing but a pile of rotted and infected meat at which to stare, perhaps to contemplate a similar fate in days to come.
    Inside, Ron was already busy. He hauled out a jug of mild disinfectant from a closet. It was something lemon-scented and not filled with either ammonia or chlorine. In a few minutes , he had mopped up the worst of the gore and the rooms now smelled more of citrus than of rotted meat. Only then, did he and the others pause to sit. Ron dragged a chair to the center of the main room and unfolded two lawn chairs for the others. For the first time since leaving the spot across from the Trust Building, they felt able to breathe easy.
    “What was this place?” Jean asked. She sat, leaning back in the chair, exhausted both physically and emotionally. Raising one arm, she examined the dark stains left on her jacket where the flesh of a dead man’s reanimated corpse had peeled off on the fabric.
    “It was a shipping office,” Ron told her. “Used to be full of phone banks and bills of lading, clip boards, that kind of thing. They didn’t store anything here but temporary paperwork. That’s why the little loading dock is out back. Truck would pull in and pick up the records a couple times a week. The warehouse was somewhere else. Don’t know where it was or what the fuck they were selling. I don’t fucking care.” Ron stopped talking, his face a scowl. He looked at Jean and Oliver.
    “I’m sorry,” he told them. “Didn’t mean to…” He stopped trying to get a handle on what was going through his mind. “I’m just trying to cope,” he said.
    Jean finally sat up and leaned forward. Then she was on her knees beside him, her arms around Ron as she pulled herself close to him. “That’s okay,” she told him. “We’re okay. We’re going to be okay. All we have to do is lay low for a little while.” She turned her head, surveying the space in which she’d found herself. She realized that the lighting was coming from above, a skylight in the ceiling that allowed sun to filter in through a thick, dirty lens of Plexiglas set in an aluminum frame.
    “You’ve got provisions here, right?” She blinked those green eyes. “If not, we carried in enough food and water in our packs to last a couple of days. More if we have to get serious about conserving our stuff and laying low.”
    “Yeah.” Oliver felt the need to add to the conversation. Ron grinned as he saw the boy smiling, still a kid even after the horror they’d just experienced. “We don’t have to be scared of anything in here.”
    “Oliver’s right,” Ron agreed. He reluctantly disengaged himself from Jean’s welcome embrace. Standing, he walked across the room to a cupboard made of particle board and overlaid with cheap tiles. Opening the cupboard doors, he examined the contents. There were five-gallon water jugs stored inside, all of them still filled, the water sparkling through plastic walls. Drawing another pair of doors open , he revealed a stack of boxes, one of which he dragged out on the floor and opened. Inside were various other containers that revealed its contents to be military meals-ready-to-eat, boxes of crackers, and various other emergency supplies. He nodded at the box and then to his family. “We’ll be just fine,” he told them.
    But in fact , he just wasn’t sure.
    For the first time in over a year , he didn’t know where he stood with the world.
    **
    The sun finally began to set. Ron had opened the various vents in the little safe house and had turned on the fans powered by the minor solar array on the roof. There was even battery power for use, the batteries fed and charged by the trickle system he’d taken the time to assemble months before. He had installed LED lights that were wired to the corners of the rooms. Once they’d finished cleaning the gore from the floors and wiped away the stains from where the muck had spattered the walls, they were breathing relatively fresh air. They could breathe