The Orphans (Book 4): White Lie by Mike Evans

and brains to paint the snow ten feet away. The Turned around him started falling impossibly fast. Greg looked around, confused and thankful at the exact same time. Greg searched and finally saw Shaun alive and standing on top of the roof firing as quickly as he could. Greg shook his head, happy Shaun was alive and ready at the same time to kill his best friend for making him think that he was dead and gone. Greg started firing saying aloud to himself, “Of course he’s on the effing roof Greg, why, because only you are stupid enough to be on the ground in the middle of an effing zombie circle.”
    When those Turned who had populated the parking lot were all taken down, Shaun released his magazine and replaced it with a fresh one in the rifle, not worrying about putting the used one in his bag. He surveyed their handy work. The once crisp, white snow was now looking more like the painting of a very disturbed individual. The parking lot was covered with the dead. Their brains, hair, gore, and other unidentifiable parts were strewn about as the after effects of the bomb blasts.
    The middle was the starting point in which the multiple grenades had blasted holes into the parking lot and were now the only spots which were not covered with snow. The smell of flesh was distinct and strong in the air. It was still sizzling and cooking on the fallen Turned’s bones. The smell was strong enough to make both of the boys stomachs do backflips. Shaun deemed the parking lot temporarily safe and ran across the roof to meet Greg in the front of the store. Looking down to his friend he asked, “Where is Ellie? Is she ok? What are you doing out here?”
    “Hell if I know. I’d have to say no, Shaun. She still won’t respond, she isn’t awake and she’s pale on top of everything. I’d ask who she’s been hanging around with but I know you were a choir boy before her. Or at least you didn’t have any opp-”
    “We need to get out of here Greg!” Shaun yelled. “This break in the dead is only going to last for so long. We have to find somewhere else that we can stay. Somewhere that none of these things will be able to break into. This place just screams for the Turned to come and after that display of firepower, we are only going to have so much time. This building is too vulnerable”
    Greg said, “Then maybe you shouldn’t have thrown off a group of grenades Shaun.”
    “At the time it seemed like it was the only option that I had. They were going to break through that glass at the front of the store. I figured if I could take out the immediate threat, that it would buy us some time. I knew that more would come but they wouldn’t know that something was on the inside and that if we kept away from the door we could hide in the back hopefully.”
    “Wait, so now you do want to stay here?”
    Shaun said, “I don’t know what I want. I want all those effers dead and I want shit back to normal, that’s what I want.”
    “Right, but since that isn’t going to happen today, do you have any other ideas?”
    “I say that every hour on the hour we start rolling through all the channels on the radio until someone sees that we are gone and they decide to start checking radio signals. It’s the only thing that I can think of.”
    Greg said it before thinking about it. “You realize how many channels there are, that’s going to take forever Shaun.”
    “Well if you wouldn’t have lied to your best friends about having the permission needed to leave, then this probably wouldn’t be an issue Greg. So until you come up with some other plan, this is the plan.”
    Greg was sick of this even though he knew the blame was definitely all his to take. “What the hell Shaun, do you think I had plans to have this happen? I figured we’d cruise into town, get a few supplies, and could see if there are any survivors and bring them back or at least make arrangements with them to get a bigger group and bring them back later.”
    “I just