Ground Zero: A Zombie Apocalypse (24 page)

Eventually Cutter ripped the boards off one of the windows and smashed the stained glass. He hoisted Samantha in through the opening and waited
impatiently on the front steps for several minutes until the heavy doors were suddenly flung open.

Samantha was smiling.

“It’s all here,” she said, her voice a mingle of excitement and relief. “Everything we could ever need.”

Built into
the polished timber floor of the church was a square hatch, and beneath it a set of solid stone steps that led down into a dark Aladdin’s cave. Cutter reached for the lighter in his pocket.

The area was about thirty feet square, with shelves lining each wall, divided and sorted – and even labeled. There were rifles and pistols and snub-nosed machine guns with boxes of ammunition for each. And there were the basics of survival: cart
ons of bottled water, rows of canned and dry food, water purification tablets and even packets of seedlings. There were tools and some basic farm equipment. And there was a generator alongside jerry-cans of fuel.

Cutter found a flashlight on a shelf and swept it around the room. The final wall of shelves was stacked with blankets and lanterns, pillows and sleeping bags.

Cutter went to the shelf and pulled two of the thick sleeping bags down. He offered one to Samantha.

“Where do you want to sleep?”

She took it with an impish smile, but there was something altogether more smoldering and womanly in her eyes.

She looked around them at the
supplies that would give them life and hope in their new home – the new Garden of Eden – and she reached out for Cutter’s hand and pressed it against the heat of her body. “Together,” she said.

The End.