Live Free or Die Complete Series Boxed Set: Age Of Madness - A Kurtherian Gambit Series by Hayley Lawson (pdf e book reader .TXT) 📗

he had caught Leandro trying to use the toilet. I’m going to rip his vocal cords out one day to shut him up.

Carter tried to break the tension between them and the wolves because they needed to get past them. Carter gingerly walked around them with his hands away from his axes to show the wolves that he had no intention of harming them.

They let him pass. It appeared as though they were only after the Mad, which was a good thing for the Merry Men. They all slowly walked around the wolves and the Mad, who were pulling themselves along the ground toward them like they wanted to bite down on their fresh flesh.

Massimo was the last person to walk around the Mad, and they moved quickly in his direction. Massimo stood his ground and snarled at them with his fangs on display. The Mad didn’t even stop. They weren’t scared of a vampire.

Which annoyed Massimo.

“I really don’t have the effect on the Mad I was hoping for,” Massimo complained.

One of the wolves snarled and darted at the Mad, then pulled on its leg tendons which stopped the Mad from getting any closer to Massimo. They were stopping the Mad. It looked gross, but Ryder was glad they were helping.

Leandro chuffed his thanks to the wolves. They looked at him and then kept chowing down on the bloody tendons.

These animals are wild weirdos.

Leandro slowly walked away from the wolves and the Mad, following his pack.

When they reached the settlement, there was a fight going on between the mountain people and the Mad.

There were no kids there, so Ryder glanced around, terrified she’d see them on the ground. They weren’t present, but there were dead Mad wherever she looked. There had already been one hell of a bloody fight, and it wasn’t over.

Ryder glanced back. The wolves had followed them.

“Stop him,” Maxwell, the leader of the mountain settlement, yelled as a Mad staggered away from the fight toward the watering hole where Ryder had washed her clothes.

“I’ve got him,” Ryder called back. She nocked one of her cloth-wrapped arrows and dipped it in the alcohol. Shit, I need someone to light it. Before she could ask anyone, Carter was by her side. He took the flint and made a spark, and it was enough to light the arrow. Ryder aimed for the staggering Mad and let the arrow fly. It landed in the Mad’s back and his dry, bloody shirt caught on fire.

The Mad dropped to the ground. He wasn’t going anywhere now.

An oncoming Mad had his throat slashed before Ryder could shoot him and fell to the ground, cut down by Maxwell. Louis and Andrew, who’d guarded her shack, joined them.

“Nice to see you again,” Maxwell said as he fought alongside Ryder. “I wish it was under better circumstances.”

“Me, too. Where are the kids?” Ryder asked. Carter leaned into the conversation as the three of them fought off the Mad.

“They are safe,” Maxwell told them, and Carter left out a breath of relief.

A gurgle came from behind Ryder, and she turned to see the body of a man lifting itself up off the ground. His leg was in a weird position; it was broken and looked painful. His eyes were going red. He had the Madness.

Other bodies started to move. Some were even more beaten up than the man in front of Ryder. A few had limbs missing, but that wasn’t going to stop them. They were all getting to their feet, and their eyes were all red.

Everyone around them was Mad.

The Mad on the ground weren’t dead. “They weren’t two-tapped,” Ryder told Maxwell. “Headshots. Try to save your bullets when you can.”

Then all hell broke loose. The Mad came at them, guns were fired, and bodies fell to the ground.

They were too close for Ryder to use her bow and arrows, so she used her knives instead, slashing any Mad that dared come near her. She wished she had Koda’s spear. He was able to keep them at arm’s length, whereas Ryder needed them to be closer for her to attack them. Koda stabbed the Mad with his spear, pulling it out and moving onto the next.

“Oh, fuck,” Carter said abruptly.

Ryder glanced at him. He looked fine, and was fighting off Mad with his axe. Ryder scanned the area. Yes, they had a lot of Mad to kill, but there weren’t any crazies running at them. They could handle this. They’d been through a lot worse.

“What?” Ryder asked during slashes.

“I’ve lost a bow,” Carter said in a panic.

Ryder was confused since Carter wasn’t an archer. “A bow?”.

“Yeah. It was one of Jessica’s favorites. She’s going to be pissed.” Carter was disappointed in himself.

Oh, a bow from his beard, Ryder realized. “She’ll forgive you.” Ryder smiled.

“I don’t know. You know what girls are like,” Carter said.

Ryder raised her eyebrow. She’d rarely been referred to as a girl. “What do you mean by that?” Ryder quizzed. Time to have a bit of fun with Carter.

Carter paused. He wasn’t sure what to say and didn’t want to end up at the end of Ryder’s knife. “You know, touchy about their stuff.”

“Hey, Vicky! Have you heard this? Apparently, us girls are touchy about our stuff,” Ryder yelled over the noise.

A crunch came from the skull of Vicky’s latest Mad as she swung. “Which dingbat said that?”

Ryder laughed. “I’ll give you one guess.”

Carter looked nervously at Ryder and Vicky, both women no one should fuck with.

“Carter,” Vicky ground out.

Ryder smiled. “Yep, the one and only.”

Carter gulped as they killed the next Mad.

The wolves went for the Mad, gripping their throats and not letting go until the Mad dropped to the ground. They quickly moved on to their next Mad.

Willard threw his knives into the oncoming Mad. Ryder knew he’d be useful at the bunker.

Fluffy went for a Mad who was heading toward Ryder and knocked him off his feet, then leaped onto the Mad and tossed him around like