End Times, Surviving with My Beastly Army novel Chapter 353

Chapter 353 Not Waiting

Wait until morning?

This was exactly the kind of thing that couldn’t wait until morning.

Finished:

Donald pushed his case with everything he had. “Please, just hear me out. This really does have to happen tonight. Mr. Neel might wake up on the wrong side of things, but I promise you, once he hears what I’m proposing, he’ll be glad I came.”

The watchman wanted nothing to do with it, but Donald’s persistence wore him down like water on stone, and the man finally gave a stiff, irritated nod. “Fine. Fine. Mr. Neel’s in that tent over there. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. His temper when he wakes up is something else entirely. You’d better say something he actually wants to hear, or he’ll put a bullet in you before you finish your second sentence.”

Donald felt his stomach drop straight through the ground.

But he thought about the plan he and Rolf had built together, and he shoved the fear down somewhere deep and dark where it couldn’t slow him. “Understood, understood. Thank you, really. I won’t forget this.”

2

He reached into his pocket and pressed a small bag of chips into the watchman’s hand before he could second–guess himself.

It hurt to part with them, genuinely hurt.

Before the collapse, chips had been the kind of snack you’d find in every corner store, the thing kids begged for at checkout lines without a second thought. Now they were a currency unto themselves.

The watchman blinked, clearly not expecting that level of social grace. He glanced around to make sure no one was watching, and his whole manner warmed by a noticeable degree. “Get in there, then. If you really think you can put him in a good mood, you’d better talk fast.”

“Understood. On it.”

With the watchman’s blessing secured, Donald crept toward Jack’s tent like a man walking through a

minefield.

Inside, Jack was deeply, completely asleep.

Γ

The slow, heavy rhythm of his breathing rolled out from within the tent, and Donald felt a stab of thoroughly ungracious envy.

This was what it looked like to lead a powerhouse base. Jack slept with the deep, unbothered confidence of a man whose people could handle whatever crawled out of the dark.

Donald hadn’t slept that soundly since before the world ended.

He stepped inside with exaggerated care and gave Jack’s shoulder a light tap. “Mr. Neel? Mr. Neel?”

Jack didn’t so much as twitch.

Donald tried again, a little firmer this time. “Mr. Neel?”

Chapter 353 Not Waiting

Finished

Jack’s brow tightened in his sleep, and he rolled over with a grunt of displeasure, turning his back on the

disturbance.

Donald shifted his position to match and pressed harder. “Mr. Neel, wake up…”

Jack’s frown deepened with every prod, and it was clear he had absolutely no intention of cooperating. But Donald refused to stop, buzzing away at him with the maddening, relentless persistence of a fly that simply would not leave. Jack finally ran out of patience, snapped his eyes open, and reached under his pillow in one fluid motion.

The watchman’s warning rang in Donald’s head like a bell. His hand shot out on pure reflex and locked around Jack’s wrist.

Sure enough, the thing Jack had pulled out from under that pillow was a gun.

His reaction time was the only thing that had kept him breathing.

Having his draw interrupted only made Jack angrier. He followed it up with a kick that connected with Donald’s midsection and launched him clean off his feet.

Donald hit the ground and lay there, the air completely gone from his lungs, his stomach turning over in slow, miserable rotations while he waited to remember how to breathe.

The kick, at least, took some of the edge off Jack’s fury.

His voice was still layered with irritation when he finally spoke. “You’re… you’re the one from Tyrant Base?”

“It’s the middle of the night and you’re in my tent. Did Robin send you to finish me off?”

The gun came back up as he said it, his anger reigniting just from the thought.

Staring down that black barrel from

the floor, Donald’s composure evaporated entirely. “No, no, no, you’ve got it all wrong, Mr. Neel, I’m not here to hurt you, I swear it! I came to make you a deal!”

“A deal?”

Jack’s eyes narrowed into something sharp and contemptuous. “Your base has nothing worth dealing over. And Robin is one of yours, which means I have absolutely no reason to believe a word that comes out of your mouth. Do I look like someone who falls for this kind of thing?”

“Mr. Neel, I’m completely serious about this deal!”

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