DEAD: Snapshot

Box Set 1

TW Brown

DEAD: Snapshot—Box Set 1

©2020 May December Publications LLC

The split-tree logo is a registered trademark of May December Publications LLC.

This book is a work of fiction.  Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual persons living, dead, or otherwise, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America.  Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author or May December Publications LLC.

Printed in the U.S.A.

Contents

DEAD: Snapshot – Liberty, South Carolina

DEAD: Snapshot – Portland, Oregon

DEAD: Snapshot – Leeds, England

DEAD: Snapshot – Las Vegas, Nevada

A moment with the author…

Welcome to the third installment of the DEAD: Snapshot—{insert town here} series. This is one of those stories that I am very excited about. Now, no spoilers, but this is another time I got to put a different spin on the normal zombie tale. So often, the destruction is total and complete. But what if a small town banded together to stand against the walking dead? That is part of the idea behind this tale. Also, I get to drop a bit of a morality story on you. I hope it plays out as well on paper as it did in my head.

I will say that, as a fan of the original Dawn of the Dead, I am of the belief that endings in a zombie story can often be a bit open and ambiguous. While there is certainly a lot to be said about a hard or solid conclusion, the zombie genre is not always best served by that approach.

I am a fan of how Fran and Peter are lifting off from that mall in the WGON chopper as the zombies pour out onto the roof. (Forget how they managed to suddenly learn to climb ladders.) I walked out of the theater and spent hours wondering what happened next. Did they find someplace safe? Did Fran crash when they ran out of fuel?

To that end, I want to give my readers a conclusion, but I also like them to be able to ponder the fate of the characters they have come to love or hate in the pages of this book. When reach the last page of this particular tale, I hope the story remains with you for a while. No, this is not the start of another series. This is a stand-alone title; just like all my other Snapshot books. However, I think we all know that “life goes on” so to speak after the story ends. Just like real life. Just something to ponder.

I do want to extend my thanks to the good men and women of Liberty, South Carolina. As this book came together, I was blessed to have a few of her fine citizens offer me some helpful tips. For instance…Liberty has a chief of police. Not a sheriff. That was an error that might seem small, but I bet to the people of Liberty, it would make a big difference.

I must say here that I have fictionalized the town to make it fit my story. All errors are my own doing. I had to create a few creeps, and that in no way reflects on the actual people of this little town in Palmetto State. So, if you from Liberty, please don’t be offended. This is, after all, a work of fiction.

I want to thank the real Stephen Deese for offering his town up to the apocalypse. I also want to thank Jamie Burns for her time early in the creation of this project. I would be remiss if I did not thank Sarah Gilstrap for her help getting a few of the facts straight and Jonathan Patterson for throwing his name in the ring to be used at my discretion.

To my Beta readers: Sarah, Jonathan, Miranda, Debra, Sophie, Heather, Tammy, Hope, Donna, Lynne, Todd and Amy, this book would not be nearly as good without you. I started with forty, and you were the hardy crew that lasted to the end. I thank you sincerely for your help, hard work, and constant input.

To those of you who are not aware, this is a spinoff of my 12 book DEAD series. Each of these is a self-contained story and yes, I do realize that each could become its own series, but that is the idea of a “snapshot” as the title suggests. It is one look into one location during the zombie apocalypse that lives in depth in my proper series. I sometimes drop teasers or Easter eggs that fans of the series will understand, but you don’t need to have read the series to enjoy these individual stories. (And I do hope that you enjoy them.)

As always, I do hope that you will leave a review (good or bad, don’t worry, I can take constructive criticism) after you read this book. Believe it or not, they do matter. Some people dismiss it, but I have seen a difference in the exposure of my titles with 50 or more reviews. So please, just take a moment when you’re done. You have my eternal gratitude.

Where neighbors become friends.

TW Brown

February 2016

For Stephen, Jamie, and the wonderful REAL people of Liberty, South Carolina

Contents

Welcome to Liberty, South Carolina

Impossible Things

The Dead Come

Worse than Expected

The Meeting

From Bad to Worse

Cliff

Securing the Town

“Where neighbors become friends.”

Regrets and Death

Casualties

“Thank you.”

As Time Goes By

Deliver Us From Evil

Supplies and Fortifications

Going Tribal

The Vote and a Slice of Normal

Tough Choices and Dark Clouds

1

Welcome to Liberty, South Carolina

Bruce Gibbs started to bring his big rig to a stop. The car just ahead was only partway off the highway and had its hazard lights flashing. Sure, he could have just drifted over to the left lane and shot past, but that simply was no longer in his nature.

Two months ago, Bruce had come to the Lord. After over a decade of drug and alcohol abuse, his sister had staged an intervention. It was then that she revealed she had been diagnosed with breast cancer and needed her big brother’s shoulder to lean on in the trying times that lie ahead. He’d started attending church with her every time he was in town, and was starting to feel better about himself than he had in years.

The big rig shuddered as it came to a complete stop and Bruce engaged the brakes before opening his door. The cool night air made his skin erupt in goose bumps, and he got a funny feeling that sent him to his favorite verse of scripture. It was the first bit he had ever memorized and it always calmed him when Satan tried to unsettle him, to lure him back to the bottle or the women.

“The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures…” he whispered as he approached the beat up old Buick. There was something peculiar about the rear window. As a car zoomed by, coming from behind him on the Calhoun Memorial Highway, better known to passing truckers simply as Highway 123, the rear window looked like it was melting.

“…You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil…” Bruce continued as he reached the rear bumper.

Almost immediately, there was a horrific smell that was foul and gagging. It was like feces mixed with spoiled chicken. This had to be serious. He finished his recital of Psalms Twenty-three and switched over to simply praying for the poor souls in that vehicle. He fished his cell phone from his pocket and hit the emergency button as he reached for the recessed handle of the front, driver’s side door.

“Nine-one-one…police, fire, or medical,” a bored sounding voice answered.

“I think all of them,” Bruce gasped as he gave the door handle a tug. “Oh, my God.”

In the front bench seat, a male was sprawled over and lying on his side. Crouched in the floor well on the passenger’s side was a child. He couldn’t have been older than seven. His face was a dark mask. But Bruce knew that the moment that face came into the light, the black stain would morph to red.

The man’s throat had been torn open and blood had sprayed all over the interior of the car. A good jet of it must have hit the back window; explaining why it had looked like it was melting. Bruce staggered back and dropped his phone. The tinny voice on the other end was now unintelligible.

Losing his footing, Bruce fell backwards—directly into the path of one of his fellow truck drivers. This particular eighteen-wheeler was hauling a full bed of thirty-foot poles and moving at just over sixty-eight miles per hour when it slammed into Bruce, killing him instantly. The impact was so great that there was very little of the poor man other than what dripped from the front grill of the semi.

The newly arriving big rig began to squeal as the brakes were applied much too hastily to be safe. The trailer heaved around and the rear end began to catch up with the cab. It drifted into the median and began to destroy the high-tension cable line that so many people in the area had complained was completely useless and needed to be replaced with an actual concrete divider that separated the east and westbound lanes.

An oncoming SUV with a family returning from a trip to Greenville after checking out the upstate campus of the University of South Carolina was coming east at that unfortunate moment. The oldest daughter was planning on attending USC next year if everything went well.

The family was cruising along at just over seventy when a dark shadow filled the entire lane directly ahead in the blink of an eye. All plans ended abruptly when the rear trailer full of poles smashed into the front of the SUV and sent the engine block all the way through the rear of the car, killing the mother, father, and oldest daughter, as well as seriously injuring the fourteen-year-old sister who was thrown out the rear of the SUV.

Nobody would know that her body lay broken and bleeding in the tall roadside grass. The living were so occupied with the terrible scene of the accident that nobody saw the three figures coming out of the trees as they paused and suddenly changed direction. Almost as one, they dropped to their knees and began clawing, biting, and tearing at the helpless girl who was fortunate to never actually regain consciousness.

Cars from both directions began to stop and people emerged from their vehicles; some to see if they might be able to help, others just to be able to get a better look. One boy ignored his mother’s reprimands and emerged from his parent’s car with his cell phone in hand. He felt his heart race as he neared the carnage. This was the first time he’d even used the new cell phone and he had to fumble a few seconds to get the camera function to start recording.

He approached a body that lay sprawled on the ground. There was a dark pool on the asphalt that he knew had to be blood. Another person was crouched over the body and twelve-year-old Ben Jones zoomed in on his screen so that he could see a little better. He expected to hear crying or maybe the crouched person trying to communicate with the individual lying flat on his back, but what he heard was a strange sound that reminded him of how his cousin Jenny ate spaghetti. There was a loud slurping noise and then what he thought to be open-mouthed chewing.

The long hair that hung down from the head of the crouched person prevented him from really seeing what was going on and so he took a few more steps closer. This is going to blow everybody away at school on Monday, he thought. A smell hit his nose as he took those final steps that put him in arm’s reach of the scene. It was possibly the nastiest thing he had ever smelt in his life. It was worse than going into the bathroom after his dad in the mornings.

“Is he dead?” Ben breathed as he got to within a few steps of the man who stared straight up with eyes that looked sort of strange. Ben noticed that they looked clouded over like the blind man who sat in the front row every Sunday at church; only…different.

The person who was crouched over the body paused whatever it was doing. For a moment, there was no movement, then the head began to crank around in slow, jerky, bird-like fits.

Young Ben Jones did not even realize that his phone slipped from his fingers. He was in shock as his brain struggled to make sense of what he was seeing. The man’s face was a dark mask around the mouth and something long and stringy dangled from one corner. The man’s long hair was dripping from where it had been dragged through the horrible and bloody open gash in the belly of the man on the ground.

The crouching figure began to move towards Ben, hands reaching and mouth opening in a low moan. That sound was the last straw for Ben’s bladder although he no more registered that fact than he had dropping his phone. He stood frozen in terror as the long-haired man stumble-crawled towards him. A hand grabbed his ankle and he simply watched the bloody face come to his leg. The stained mouth opened and then clamped down on the outside of his right calf. Now his bowels joined his bladder, but Ben registered nothing. He had already gone into shock and continued to stand unmoving as a piece of his leg was torn free.

At last, pain registered in his brain, but Ben did not scream, he simply let out a feeble whimper. His eyes had now fixed on the second man who had been sprawled on the ground; this person was sitting up with his insides spilling out onto the highway; and now he was coming for Ben as well.

Ben’s mother had jerked away from his father and stood outside the passenger’s side door. Much like her son, she could not believe what she was seeing. However, she did not freeze in shock, instead, her motherly instincts took control and she charged the two terrible men who looked to be attacking her son.

“Shondra!” Clarence Jones shouted as he now emerged from the car as well.

He heard a sound behind him and turned to see a child standing just a few feet away. The boy couldn’t be any older than seven or eight, and he was covered in blood and gore. The stink rolling off the child was enough to make Clarence take an involuntary step back. What began as a reaction to the smell changed to fear as a man came stumbling up behind the child with pieces of his face looking like they’d been chewed off.

His first thought was dog attack, but then his eyes returned to the child who had stopped advancing and was cocking its head first to one side then the other. The man behind the child made no attempt to slow and stumbled past the little boy, sending him sort of careening off the side of Clarence Jones’ car.

“You just stop right there,” Clarence warned.

At that same instant, his wife screamed their son’s name. Clarence turned his head to see Shondra lit up by the headlights of his car. She was on her knees trying to pull Ben free from two men. She didn’t even see the woman stumbling up behind her due to the blue-white glare of all the headlights. This creature was limping horribly from what looked like the left foot having been turned completely backwards and dragging along with a scratching sound as exposed bone scraped asphalt.

Clarence’s head whipped around when a strangely cold hand swiped down his face and landed on his shoulder where it grabbed hold with a peculiar firmness. He tried to jerk away but his feet tangled in those of his attacker and the two fell down with Clarence landing flat on his back and the strange, foul smelling man on top. The impact knocked the wind from him. In the end, he was only able to emit a feeble squeak as teeth tore into the flesh of his throat.

Pain slammed into him and he was almost certain that he saw a dark jet that had to be his own blood spray across his vision. He blinked once and opened his eyes to see the darkly stained face of the child leaning down over him. Its tiny mouth was open wide and came down to fasten on the bridge of his nose.

Clarence’s screams were just one of many as the unsuspecting living emerged from their cars and made for easy prey. Not one person in the midst of the carnage could fathom what was taking place. Nobody could force themselves to believe that the dead were getting up and attacking the living.

It was simply too ridiculous, a thing of pop fiction.

***

Mayor Jamie Burns sat at her desk and allowed her eyes to shut as she rolled her head in circles to try and ease the tension in her neck. She looked out the window of the tiny room where she had set up her office in the old Rosewood Center. The headlights of a car passing by on Main Street flashed in her window and then were gone. She pulled her headphones off and set them on her desk, the tinny sound of her iPod continued to play a song by The Judds until she hit the stop button and flicked off the power.

“Glad to see I’m not the only person awake at this hour,” she mumbled as she glanced up at the clock on the wall. It read just past three in the morning.

She hit the save button on her open spreadsheet file and started closing down her computer. She paused on her email and was about to close that as well when something caught her attention on the muted television sitting on the shelf to the right of the coffee pot. Opening her top drawer, she grabbed the remote and increased the volume.

There was a man holding a microphone with a large military truck as his background. The man looked nervous and kept glancing to his right, wincing from time to time as he spoke words she could not yet hear. That alone had not been enough to grab her attention. It was the banner at the bottom of the screen that had done the job. The banner read: Multiple fatalities at the junction of Highway 178 and 123 closes major route to all traffic. That was just a mile or so south of town.

“…have set up a perimeter just south of what I am told is 5 Forks Road near the town of Liberty. We are on the western side of the overpass, but military vehicles have just rolled in and an Army National Guard unit has joined with elements of the State Police to ensure that nobody gets past and enters what we have been told is a scene of unimaginable carnage.” There was a distant popping sound that Jamie heard on the television and then from somewhere outside just a split second later.

She walked to the door and paused to look in the full length mirror that she’d hung on it. It wasn’t often that she had to do anything in an “official” capacity when she was here at the center doing paperwork, but it never hurt to be prepared. It wouldn’t do to go out and look a mess.

Her long, sandy colored hair was only a little disheveled. She ran her fingers through it and it fell straight and at least presentable as it cascaded past her shoulders and came to rest on her dark blue blouse; the blouse made her light blue eyes almost look like smoky gray. Her makeup had held up nicely and all she would need to do is touch up her lipstick.

As she exited the office and stepped into the mostly dark hallway, the main doors to the center opened. She recognized the outline of the figure coming in—Chief Adam Gilstrap. His six and a half foot, two hundred and fifty pound frame made her just barely over five feet tall seem even smaller.

“Trouble out on the highway,” Adam said by way of greeting.

“I just saw it on the news.” Jamie patted her pocket for her keys. “We should head over there and see if there is anything we can do to help.”

“Army is shutting things down. I just came from out that way and the sumbitches turned me around. Told me to go back to town.” The undisguised anger in the large man’s voice was unmistakable.

Adam had been the Chief of Police in Liberty, South Carolina for as long as Jamie could recall. He had to be on the downhill side of fifty and she could remember him coming to her grade school for various functions and assemblies when she was a child. Still, for as old as the man was, he had kept himself in remarkable shape and seldom had to do little more than step out of his car if he arrived at any sort of disturbance.

“Yes, well perhaps if we go together?” Jamie hated that her voice sounded so frail and weak. She’d meant that to be a statement, but it had come out squeaky and ended up sounding like a question.

“Mayor Burns, I don’t like what I was seeing, and think it best that perhaps we sit tight like they said,” the fatherly tone in his voice was at war with the fact that he’d actually addressed her by her title.

At only twenty-nine, Jamie Burns was not the usual choice for mayor in a town like Liberty. As much as the world had changed and supposedly moved forward, Liberty still had a foot in the past; as did many towns in the South.

Jamie had gone away to the University of South Carolina, in the state’s capital of Columbia. That had not been a very popular choice in her home where everybody else bled Clemson orange, but she’d wanted to major in political science. She’d been fascinated with politics since she’d been just a girl of nine years old. Of course that had all started back in 1990 when her family had taken a vacation to Washington, D.C.

The family had been on a guided tour of the White House when a commotion up ahead had caused everybody to buzz with excitement. A group of men in suits with dark glasses had rounded the corner and the tour guide had stopped in her tracks.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are in for a rare treat…that is President Bush and his secret service detail,” the older woman had spoken in a hushed tone that had been very unlike her loud and grating tour guide voice.

The entourage had suddenly changed course like a flock of birds and was now coming directly at them! For Jamie, everything after that had been a blur, but she still had the picture on her desk of President Bush kneeling beside her with a huge smile on his face.

When she had returned to Liberty after earning her bachelor’s degree, she started attending city council meetings. Her face became a fixture and it was not long before she had taken a seat at that same council. Still, she had not even considered running for mayor. Howard “Skip” Merchant had been the mayor of Liberty for over sixteen years. He was loved by everybody; so much so that he’d run unopposed the last three terms.

Then came the cancer. It hit hard and fast; reducing the large, robust man to a sickly shadow of his former self within weeks. It had surprised just about everybody when he’d requested that she be his successor from his death bed. That had been just over four months ago and she still was not used to being called Madame Mayor or Mayor Burns when walking around in public.

“I think we should take your car and go see if there is anything that our town can do to offer assistance,” Jamie said as she struggled to maintain eye contact and stare up at the chief.

“I agree, it’s just…” Chief Gilstrap started, but his voice faded and he suddenly seemed unsure of what to say or how to say it.

“Is there a problem?” Jamie fought the urge to plant her hands on her hips. This was a time to be as professional as possible and prove that she had been the right choice for this job. If there was a terrible tragedy unfolding on their doorstep, the good men and women of Liberty were by-God going to help in any way possible.

“I saw something that I can’t explain,” Sherriff Gilstrap stated. He pressed his lips together tight and ran a hand through the gray stubble of his crew-cut. “There was a body…I made it out in the lights of one of the trucks. It was just lying there in the road, but it was missing an arm, and it looked like…” Again he paused and his face screwed up tight as if he had just swallowed something foul. “I can’t be sure, but it looked like the body was sitting up as the soldiers were sort of herding me back to my car. A second later, I heard a single gunshot.”

“But I could have sworn that I heard several,” Jamie finally spoke when it was clear that the chief was done talking.

“Yeah, me too.” The man nodded. “But those came just as I was pulling into the parking lot out front.”

“You aren’t saying what I think you are?”

“If what you think I am saying is that the army shot and killed an injured man, then yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“Then we have a duty to go and see just exactly what is happening this close to our town.”

Jamie edged past the large man and headed out the door. She heard his heavy steps follow and inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. Hurrying down the steps she went to the front passenger side door and waited for the chief to get in his car and unlock her side. She climbed in and glanced out her window as the engine turned over. She was startled by the crackle of voices on the radio.

“…falling back…”

“…where are they coming from…God there are six more…”

“…can’t stop them…”

A hiss of very loud static erupted from the speaker. A second later there was a bright flash in the sky to the south along with a ground shaking rumble and boom.

Sherriff Adam Gilstrap threw the police car into reverse, stomped on the gas, and sent the car backwards in a jolt. Just as suddenly, he slammed on the brakes and cranked the steering wheel, spinning the vehicle in a near-perfect hundred and eighty degree turn before flooring it again and rocketing out of the Rosewood Center parking lot.

In moments, they were cruising down Moorefield Memorial Highway; the road that was at the junction with Highway 123, and the scene of this terrible accident.

The television in Jamie Burns’ office had been left on. The image now playing was that of a pair of newscasters in the actual newsroom. They were staring back at the camera with looks of horror and astonishment at what had just played out a moment before, ending with a bright flash of light and then static as the feed from the field reporter had ended abruptly.

***

Ricky Porter tapped away on the keyboard of his computer. His parents would tan his hide if they knew he was up at this hour and on the computer, but he hadn’t been able to sleep and the lure of his favorite video game was simply just too strong. He’d been so close to beating the final boss on the last level that he’d absolutely had to give it just one try…then another…and another.

Thirty-seven tries later, he’d done it! He had eradicated the zombie king and beaten the game. Of course, now, he was bored out of his mind. His allowance would not let him buy another game for his computer for at least another three weeks. By then, he knew that jerk Mitch Henry would not only already own it, but would have beaten it and bragged to everybody how easy it had been for him to do so.

A pop-up in the lower right hand corner of his screen got his attention. It was his best friend, Lawrence Martin. Lawrence was a shoe-in to be the captain of the baseball team this year. That was already ruffling some feathers since Lawrence was two things Mitch Henry was not; first, Lawrence was not Coach Henry’s son. Second…and this was only a problem for some of the families that had called Liberty their home for generations going back a couple of hundred years—Lawrence Martin was not white.

What are you doing up so late? the message read.

Just beat Zombie Menace, then I couldn’t sleep, Ricky typed back. What about you? Try outs are tomorrow. You need to be on your game.

Dad got called away, something bad is going down over on the highway. I think it has something to do with that news report out of Kentucky three days ago.

How could something on the highway here have anything to do with that crazy story out of Kentucky?

Turn on the news.

That message was followed with a link. Ricky clicked on it and had to plug in his headphones so that he could actually hear what the reporter was saying. He recognized the man’s face, but it was not normal for any of the local stations to have local news on the air at this hour.

“Elements of the National Guard have set up a perimeter just south of what I am told is 5 Forks Road near the town of Liberty. We are on the western side of the overpass, but military vehicles have just rolled in and an Army National Guard unit has joined with elements of the State Police to ensure that nobody gets past and enters what we have been told is a scene of unimaginable carnage.”

A sound that Ricky was pretty certain had to be gunfire could be heard. First it came in a few sporadic bursts, then a barrage. The reporter on the screen flinched and turned his head, obviously in the direction of the sound.

WTF? Ricky typed. There was a long pause with no reply, so he hit the “question mark” and “Enter” keys a few more times. At last, Lawrence replied.

Sorry, phone just rang. Mom answered it. She sounded really upset and then she took off out the house. Didn’t even stick her head in to check on me or say anything.

Ricky was trying to think of what to say to his friend when the next message popped up on his screen.

I’m hopping on my bike and heading over to see what’s going on.

WAIT! Ricky responded. After a few seconds, he added, Lawrence? Six times he repeated his friend’s name, but there was no reply. He knew he would be in a whole mess of trouble, but Lawrence was his best friend. There was no way he could just sit here at his desk and wait.

Slipping out of his bedroom, Ricky pulled on his heavy coat and slipped out the back door. He made it down the stairs and to the garage. This was where it would be tricky. The side door to the garage needed some serious WD-40 on the hinges. Even worse, his parent’s bedroom window was on this side of the house and his dad always slept with the window open. It didn’t matter what time of year it was, he claimed that his body ran hotter than normal.

Turning the knob, he pulled the door about an inch before he froze with the first sounds of the high-pitched creak. He swallowed his heart that had somehow managed to reach his throat, and then opened the door another inch. It felt like it took an hour to get the door open enough so that he would be able to slip in and then exit with his bicycle, but at last he’d managed his goal.

Moments later, he was pedaling as fast as he could down South Peachtree Street, also known as 5 Forks Road. He could already feel his legs burning as he pedaled the long and gradual incline. The darkness made the ride even worse. His tiny headlight did very little to keep the dark at bay as he strained to reach the top of the shallow hill. He never ceased to be amazed at how such an easy hill as this that seemed like nothing in his parents’ car or truck felt like he was going up the side of a sheer mountain when he took it on his bicycle.

It felt like forever, but at last he reached the top and now began the trip on the downhill side. His hands kept squeezing the brake handle grips as he rode. On the uphill side, he’d run no risk of riding so fast that he could not see something and react well before he was close enough for it to matter, but going downhill was an entirely different matter.

Plus, for the first several minutes of his ride, he’d heard the sounds of continued and sporadic gunfire coming from the highway. He just realized that, at some point, the noise had ceased. For whatever reason, that did not leave him even the slightest bit comforted. If anything, the ominous silence only made things that much worse.

He was pedaling downhill as fast as he dared. Apparently that was still much too fast because he never spotted the person on the road until it was too late. Ricky jerked his handlebars to the right out of reflex, but he still collided with the figure and went sailing as his bike stopped suddenly.

He was momentarily grateful that he landed on the side of the road in the brush until the pain shot through his body, emanating from his left shoulder. He tried to move that arm but stopped when the jolt of agony threatened to make him sick.

Rolling onto his back, Ricky looked up to see…nothing. His tiny headlight had gone out. Its only power came from the bicycle being pedaled and now he was in the pitch black on an empty road.

But he was not alone!

Ricky heard the shuffle of feet in the blackness and thought that he could see an even darker outline silhouetted against the night sky. He was about to open his mouth. Was the person okay? Had he injured him or her? But then the smell hit Ricky and before he could stop himself, he leaned over and vomited.

A low moan sounded in response. Now Ricky was sure that he’d hurt whomever he’d hit with his bicycle. Had he made the person mess their pants…or was that him? He tried to get his mind off his pain enough to be sure that he hadn’t been the one to have the stinky accident.

After a split second of self-assurance, Ricky called out, “Hey? Are you okay?” There were a few heartbeats of silence and then another moan. This one was just a bit louder as whomever it was in the darkness turned to orient on the sound of his voice.

“Hey,” Ricky hissed again, sensing that something was in fact very wrong with this individual. “How bad are you hurt?”

Maybe this was one of those people from the highway. Maybe they’d been hurt before and had wandered into the woods. Only, from what little he had learned from the news report, the military had been called to deal with whatever was going on. Even Ricky knew that was not the usual way a traffic accident was dealt with.

Lawrence had mentioned Kentucky. Just the other day, there had been a story about some small town being totally quarantined due to what some folks were calling the “Blue Plague” or something to that effect; he hadn’t really paid it that much attention. Only, apparently Lawrence had because he had come to school the next day talking about how the entire news story had simply vanished. He had been unable to find anything online about it, and none of the news media had spoken of it since the initial report.

“The government is trying to hide something,” Lawrence had confided to Ricky that afternoon as they rode home from school.

“You watch too much television,” Ricky had laughed.

Another moan snapped him out of his thoughts. The sounds of shuffling were closer now. Ricky tried to sit up and scoot back; but only being able to use the one arm made that task next to impossible. He managed a few inches at best. He tried to get up and was struggling to his knees when something cool and peculiar feeling swiped across his face.

That had felt like a hand!

“What the—” was all Ricky managed before something collapsed on top of him, sending him falling backwards.

He was bent at a very awkward and painful manner since he had been on his knees when this stranger had attacked him. It had sent his body collapsing flat onto his back, but his legs were now folded underneath him and the pain was incredible.

He felt hands clawing at him, ripping at his jacket. There was the sound of cloth being torn and Ricky’s only thought was just how angry his mom and dad would be at him for ruining his best coat.

Cold hands found his skin as his shirt was torn away. Now Ricky was thrashing and screaming. He had no idea what this person was trying to do, but he’d watched the news. He knew about those creepy sorts who did terrible things to children.

Well, that was not going to be his fate. He brought his right fist up and punched the crazy person in the side of the head. He swung again and again, but it did not seem to be having any effect. The person wasn’t crying out or nothing. Ricky Porter might not be the biggest or toughest kid in town, but he knew how to throw a punch. This should be having more of an effect.

Something clamped down on his shoulder and once more he heard the sound of cloth being ripped.

This lunatic was trying to bite him!

Ricky opened his mouth to scream and felt fingers force themselves into his mouth. He gagged, and then a new pain came. It felt as if his cheek was being ripped away. Blood filled his mouth and Ricky choked on it. The warm, salty, coppery fluid filled his throat and went down the wrong pipe. Ricky started to choke and shudder as he began to drown on his own blood.

The next sensation he felt was that of teeth digging into the meaty part of his already injured left shoulder. He’d thought breaking his collar bone was painful; that didn’t hold a candle to the feeling of his flesh being ripped away from his body by hungry teeth as those hands that had torn at his clothing now began to rip open his belly.

As he faded out of consciousness, he felt a second and third set of hands begin to claw at his middle. His last thought was an impossible realization.

Zombies?

***

Stephen Deese put his truck in park, turned the key, and let the peace and quiet wash over him. The porch light still needed to be replaced. He kept meaning to get around to that, but he’d been working his butt off lately. With the seasons changing and spring right around the corner, folks were starting to put in orders for new windows and doors.

His gaze flicked to the patch of ground that ran alongside the house. The nice neat rows with stakes at each end were all Terri’s doing. His wife had an amazingly green thumb. He thought she could probably get flowers to grow in the middle of the desert.

He opened the driver’s side door and cocked his head to one side. He knew the sounds of gunshots when he heard them. An occasional pop or burst was one thing, but this was different. There was a barrage and then it dwindled to just a shot here and there. It lasted a long time and that had Stephen very concerned. There was simply no reason for that sort of thing to be happening; especially at this hour. Then the boom came.

He glanced at his watch and saw that it read just past three in the morning. He debated just brushing it away and going inside, but with the stuff that had been in the news the past few days, he could not dismiss the possibility that something serious might be happening just a few miles from his front door.

The sound of a car approaching fast was the last straw; he watched as Sherriff Gilstrap’s car rocketed down the road. He also thought that he saw somebody in the passenger’s seat.

Stephen hopped back in his truck, turned the key, and took off in pursuit of Sherriff Gilstrap. He switched on the radio and punched the button that ejected the CD he’d been listening to on his drive home.

“…expected to activate local National Guard units this morning,” a woman’s voice reported. There was a brief pause and what sounded like the microphone being bumped. “Are you sure?” the woman finally spoke as Stephen sped up to close the distance between himself and the taillights of the chief’s vehicle.

“We have just received this bulletin and I need to inform you that the emergency broadcasting network is set to assume control of the airwaves for more information and an important announcement within the hour. As for the bulletin, it has been reported that as of 3:27 AM Eastern Standard Time or 1:27 PM yesterday which would be the time difference between the East Coast and Tokyo, the entire island of Japan has gone silent. No communications have come from or been answered by Japan or any of its citizens.

“The same holds true for most population centers of Indonesia, both North and South Korea and China. The White House has not commented and we here at WTGR are trying to confirm the accuracy of these reports. Keep your radio here for further updates as well as the previously mentioned upcoming announcement from the Emergency Broadcasting System…”

Stephen turned the radio down as he came up on the chief’s car that had stopped short of where Hardee’s and the Spinx station cast their bright lights to guide passing motorists in from the Calhoun Memorial Highway for some fast food or gasoline. However, he was no longer paying attention to the chief’s car; his eyes had been drawn to the huge spotlights mounted on the back of what looked like a pair of drab tan military trucks.

The overpass showed signs of what looked like people moving about, but there was something odd about them besides the fact that they were apparently wandering around on a major highway. As he watched, a figure approached the guard rail and then simply toppled over it, landing hard in the middle of Moorefield Memorial Highway—the road he was on behind Sherriff Gilstrap and what he was now able to identify as Mayor Burns.

Both had emerged from the car just ahead of him and were apparently just as horrified at seeing the person do a belly flop on the asphalt. Stephen got out of his truck as well and rubbed at his eyes as the figure on the ground looked to be getting to his or her feet. That is impossible, he thought.

His gaze drifted to the grassy slope that came down from Calhoun Highway in the open space where the long on- and off-ramps ran. There were a handful of dark figures moving down those hills and heading his way.

He was having a tough time making sense of just what he was seeing. Taking a deep breath to clear his head, Stephen took a better look around at his surroundings. It was then that he realized that none of the establishments were occupied. There was no sign of movement coming from within or without any of them. Then his eyes stopped on something else: a body.

He wasn’t sure why, but he now felt that he needed to reach in and pull the shotgun down from the rack mounted on the window at the rear of the cab of his pickup. He absently hit the button that released the safety. He already knew that the weapon was loaded and gave it a pump to slam a round into the chamber.

“That you, Deese?” Sherriff Gilstrap’s voice called.

“Yep,” Stephen replied as he started towards the figure sprawled on the ground by the outermost island of pumps beside a white compact car. The hose and nozzle was on the ground as well. There was a dark stain around the body, but it was not gasoline; that he was certain of just by observing.

“This is Sherriff Gilstrap. I need you to stop where you are,” Stephen heard the chief call.

Stephen glanced over to see that Sherriff Gilstrap had come around to the front of his car. The mayor had wisely stayed behind the passenger door and was looking back and forth between him and the scene unfolding in front of her with the approaching group of people that all looked like they might be just a bit drunk. Their pace was slow and unsteady and they kept pausing, their heads twitching as they seemed to need to re-orient and consider where to take the next step. A couple had fallen as they came down the hill and were having a hell of a time trying to get back to their feet.

Stephen was now just a few feet away from the body sprawled on the ground. The harsh lights from the awning over the gas pumps cast everything in a brilliant light. His guess as to the stain around that body was now confirmed. A bloody handprint ran down the front of the closest pump and was obviously made by the outstretched arm of the inert figure lying face down.

He only turned his head for a moment to once again check on the situation between the chief and the figures stumbling down the hill in his direction. They did not seem to be inclined to heed the warnings being given. He turned back just in time to see the figure that he’d assumed to be dead start to move and struggle as if wanting to roll over.

Slinging the shotgun over his shoulder and trusting that Sherriff Gilstrap would soon have the situation under control, he knelt beside the body on the ground.

A nasty smell rolled off the man who was making a weak mewling and gurgling noise that sounded like he might be having trouble breathing. Recalling his first aid training from his days in the USMC, Stephen inspected the body and did not yet see the source of the bleeding.

“I’m going to help you onto your back, fella,” he said in a rush. “I know I probably shouldn’t move you at all with all the blood loss, but maybe if I get you on your back I can see what the problem might be.”

Gripping one shoulder and placing his other hand behind the man’s neck for support, Stephen took a deep breath through his mouth and hauled the man onto his back. He was at least five feet away and scooting on his butt before he even realized how instinct had caused him to react at what he’d seen.

The man’s throat was torn out, but he was still managing to move his mouth like he was trying to speak. If that was not bad enough, the man was now trying to sit up when, by all rights, he should be dead.

“There is no way that you are getting any breath,” Stephen gasped as the man turned his head in Stephen’s direction and regarded him with eyes that were unlike anything that he had ever seen, and during his time overseas, he’d actually seen more than a few dead bodies.

The man’s eyes were glazed over with a putrid, pus-colored film and they were shot full of black tracers. The man opened his mouth and a weak moan came, but it was what followed that made the hair on Stephen’s arms and the back of his neck stand straight up.

It was almost like a baby cry. In fact, if he were not staring directly at this man and hearing that sound come out of his mouth, he would be searching for the actual baby that had to be the source of that plaintive wail.

Pulling his shotgun back around in front of him, Stephen stood up and backed away from the man who was slowly gaining his feet. He was still trying to decide what to do when he heard a commotion from behind him.

“This is your last warning!” Sherriff Gilstrap barked with all the authority he could muster around what sounded like the man gagging. There was a pause and then a single shot.

Stephen looked and noticed the chief’s gun hand pointing skyward. The man had almost retreated the entire distance back to his car. The several figures stumbling towards the chief and the mayor made no sign that they heard and just kept shambling closer, arms outstretched and hands opening and closing as they drew nearer by the second.

Stephen returned his attention to his own problem and saw that the improbable man was advancing in bird-like fits and starts. It cried once more and Stephen brought his Browning 12-guage up to his shoulder and aimed for the center mass of his target. As soon as he heard the chief fire again—he knew Sherriff Gilstrap well enough to know that the man only gave one warning—he squeezed the trigger.

There was a flash from the muzzle and the round of buckshot slammed into the man’s chest causing him to stagger backwards and almost topple. Stephen could not believe his eyes. He knew his weapon well enough to know that there would be a hole at least the size of his fist at the exit wound on the man’s back. His insides would be jelly, and there was simply no way to survive a nearly pointblank round to the chest from a shotgun. Yet, the man took another step forward and reached for Stephen as that awful cry spewed from its mouth again.

Taking two steps backwards, Stephen brought his weapon back to his shoulder as he jacked another round into the chamber. He adjusted up slightly and gritted his teeth.

“Let’s see you survive this,” he whispered as he pulled the trigger.

The man’s head practically disintegrated. The body still managed to take one more step before realizing that it was now dead. It fell with a meaty slap, but Stephen was already turning to help the chief and the mayor.

The mayor had retreated inside the vehicle; for that, Stephen was grateful. The chief was just now finishing up firing the last round of his Beretta M9A1’s fifteen round magazine into the chest of the closest of the oncoming mob.

“The head,” Stephen called as he jacked another round and stepped up beside the man who had been the best man at his father’s wedding. The man who had met him at the airport the day he returned home from his tour.

Two minutes later, silence once again fell over the area. Bodies littered the ground and Stephen was sitting on the hood of the chief’s car passing him his lighter so that the man could light the cigarette dangling from his lips.

“Nasty little gash on your left hand,” Stephen said to Sherriff Gilstrap.

“Yeah, one of them damned things bit me while I was reloading.”

2

Impossible Things

Jamie sat in the front seat of the chief’s patrol car and could not believe what she was witnessing. One part of her mind screamed that this was all so terribly wrong. However, there was another part of her that tried to see things as they truly were.

The people that were converging on Chief Gilstrap and Mr. Deese all had a variety of terrible injuries. A few had bits of their insides hanging out. That was too much for her to understand and reconcile. Those people should not be alive, much less up and walking.

A still smaller voice in the back of her mind was doing everything in its power to be heard. That could not be possible, Jamie thought as she dismissed the nagging idea that was really trying to get her to listen.

“Zombies?” she whispered as she watched a bullet slam into the chest of one of the approaching figures. That person made no outward registration that he’d just been shot. When the second round caught him in the forehead, the man dropped in an instant. “No,” Jamie shook her head, “that is fiction…the kind of crap you see in bad movies.”

She’d seen a few zombie films over the years. She hadn’t ever actually sought one out; her having seen them was more of an accident. She thought she’d seen a couple at a Halloween party or with some friends during a Netflix movie binge after finals week. That was often when everybody took turns picking the next flick while a good deal of alcohol was being shared.

She knew a few of her friends who had really been into watching horror movies. Personally, she would much rather watch Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.

She saw Mr. Deese step up beside Chief Gilstrap as a pair of those things closed in with their slow, awkward steps. The chief was reloading and basically defenseless. She looked down in surprise at her hand. It had actually started to open the passenger side door of the patrol car.

“And what exactly would you do?” she mocked herself. “Give them a stern talking to?”

The loud report of the shotgun brought her attention back to the men. Mr. Deese had apparently shot one of the attackers and was bringing the butt of his shotgun up and slamming it into the face of the second one. The woman had stumbled back a few steps, but that was all. She did not react like a person was supposed to when a large man crushed your nose.

At last, the final members of the mob had been dealt with and the two men sort of backed up and sat down on the hood of the car. She scowled as they each apparently felt that this was the perfect time to have a smoke.

She reached over and turned the radio back up. It had gone silent just before they had arrived, but she thought that she’d just heard something. As the seconds ticked by with a terminal slowness, she began to lean forward as if being closer might inspire the radio to come back to life.

There was a hiss and a crackle, and then a weak voice spoke. “Anybody?”

Jamie threw the door open causing both men to jump, bringing up their weapons and spinning in her direction. She flinched, throwing up her hands.

“Sorry…somebody is on the radio. They sound like they need help.”

Chief Gilstrap holstered his pistol and came to the car, opening the driver’s side door. He snatched the mic from the holder and spoke, “This is Chief Adam Gilstrap of the Liberty Police Department. Is there somebody on this frequency?”

After a hiss, some more static, and then a loud pop, a voice came back sounding like he was speaking through clenched teeth. “This is Private Dan Cronin…umm…I can’t remember our unit designator. I’ve only been with this group since this morning. I am up on the highway near an overpass. There was a lot of shooting a moment ago and it made a bunch of those things go away, but there are still five of them outside my truck…and my weapon is on the ground with them.” He revealed that last bit after a brief pause and with obvious embarrassment.

“Stay put, young man,” the chief said, suddenly sounding very different from his normal gruff tone. “We are coming up. It will be me and another man. I want you to just be still until we get there.”

“I’m scared, sir,” the soldier blurted, sounding like he was on the verge of tears. “One of those things got a good piece of me. I think I got whatever it is that is wrong with them.”

“Last I checked, none of them was speaking,” Chief Gilstrap soothed. “You’re still talking. I am gonna take that as a good sign.”

“Yeah, but I looked in the rearview mirror and my eyes are already looking different.”

Jamie saw the chief glance at his hand. That was when she noticed that the man had been hurt. The light wasn’t the best, but it was enough for her to make out the clear outline of a mouth print. Had one of those people bitten him?

“I need you to just hang on, you hear me?” Chief Gilstrap dropped the mic onto his seat and glanced over at Jamie. “You keep talking to him, you hear? I will let you know when we have him and are heading back.” He leaned down and unlocked the pistol-grip shotgun that was secured between the driver and passenger seats. “You take this. Anybody comes, you give them one warning to stop and get on their knees. If they don’t comply, I want you to drop them.”

“But—” she started to protest.

“No time for this, Jamie…err, I mean…” the chief seemed to get a bit flustered.

“I know what you meant,” Jamie said with a nod. “Go on, y’all, see if you can help that poor man.”

She watched Mr. Deese and the chief take off at a jog. They crested the embankment at the edge of the highway and came to a sudden stop for a few seconds. They were nothing more than black outlines due to the lights up on the highway, but she could tell they were discussing something.

“Hello?” the voice came back on the radio; the query ended in a series of wracking coughs. “Are you still there?”

“Help is coming, Private Cronin,” Jamie replied. “Just hang in there.”

“They shouldn’t waste their time, ma’am,” the soldier wheezed. “I’m pretty sure it is over for me.”

“Don’t talk that way,” she scolded. Still, she could already hear a definite deterioration in his condition in just the few minutes since he’d last spoken.

“Trust me…I don’t want to die.” That reply ended in another series of horrible and oddly wet coughs that sounded as if he might be practically hacking up a lung. “It’s them things, ma’am. You can’t let ‘em bite you.”

Jamie listened, but what he was saying didn’t make sense. How could a person’s bite cause another person to become so violently ill…and with such suddenness? Once again her mind drifted to those scary movies.

“It’s worse than the folks in charge are letting people know. Just before we got here, somebody said that places like Tokyo are already gone. It’s worse than those movies…spreads fast.”

That comment made Jamie’s head snap up. He couldn’t possibly be saying…

“Zombies, ma’am. Plain and simple, that is what people are turning into. Just promise me that you won’t let me become one of them things. I don’t want to be a…” There was a pause and then another series of coughs that ended in a choking rasp.

“Private?” Jamie keyed the mic after a few seconds of silence. “Private Cronin, answer me,” she implored.

Silence.

Outside and in the direction that the chief and Mr. Deese had vanished there came a few pops as well as the deep booming reports of a shotgun. It was over in just a few seconds and then silence fell once again.

Another single pop.

“Mayor Burns,” the deep voice of Mr. Deese came over the radio. “He didn’t make it.”

She dropped the mic and sat back. The only consolation she could find at the moment was in knowing that the young private’s last request had been granted.

“What in the hell is happening?” she whispered as she stared out the window. She perked up at the sight of a set of headlights coming her way from town.

***

Sophie Martin rounded the corner and slowed. She saw a squad car sitting in front of the Hardee’s. She also saw a white pickup just parked in the middle of the road in front of the Spinx. Neither one of these vehicles belonged to her husband.

She edged around the pickup and came to a stop beside the police car. It was a little surprising to see the mayor sitting in the passenger seat staring out at her. It looked like the woman had been crying.

She parked her own vehicle beside the chief’s and opened her door. Right away she could smell something foul on the night breeze. Her eyes paused on several shapes scattered about just past the intersection. They looked like…bodies?

She heard the door open and the mayor calling her name as she approached the closest unmoving figure. It was a woman. She was on her back, her dead eyes were staring straight up, but there was something peculiar about them beyond just the fact that the woman was dead. A nasty wound just to the left from the middle of her forehead was visible; but it was the horrendous rip on her forearm that looked much more sinister.

As a nurse, Sophie had seen a few nasty dog attack injuries. This almost resembled a dog attack, but there was something different. She looked closer and saw an imprint of a bite mark on the right bicep that definitely did not belong to a dog. It was human!

“Sophie, is that you?” a voice called from behind her.

“Yes.” Tearing her eyes away from the terrible scene, she turned to discover the mayor just a few feet away.

“Jamie, what in the world is going on here?” Sophie Martin asked and then hurriedly added. “I mean, Mayor Burns.”

“We’ve been friends way too long for that.” Jamie came to stand beside her and look down at the corpse.

“Then can I count on you to give me a straight answer to my questions?”

“If I know anything, you bet. I came with Chief Gilstrap to see what was going on. There was a newscast about some sort of terrible accident. We came to see if there was anything that we could do to help…the citizens of Liberty I mean. We got here and then it got crazy in a hurry. These people came at the chief and Mr. Deese. Some of them were torn up so bad that there is no way they should have been walking, and I saw some take a few bullets without even slowing down.” The mayor paused and seemed to weigh her next words carefully. “You are going to think I’m crazy, but it was like those zombie movies…swear to God. The only thing that stopped these people from tearing apart the chief and Mr. Deese was a bullet to the head.”

“Clifton got a call about twenty minutes ago and hurried out here, I guess all the units from up in Pickens and over in Easley were dispatched,” Sophie explained. “He wasn’t gone five minutes before the hospital called me. Only, the nurse who called was Sharon Meyers and she told me that I might be helping more if I went to the scene instead of coming in like they were having everybody else do right now. Also, I guess the first ambulance that arrived had some sort of problem with the person they were transporting. At first the lady flat-lined, but the machines must have been on the fritz because she came to and attacked one of the paramedics.”

“I haven’t seen your husband, but then I haven’t been up to the highway. The chief and Mr. Deese went up there a few minutes ago. One of the soldiers was on the radio.”

Jamie seemed to pause for a moment as if she was debating on what she should say or how much to reveal. Apparently she decided to spill everything. She went on to give as much of a detailed account about the ordeal including what the poor private had said on the radio.

“My God,” Sophie breathed as the account concluded. She was about to suggest going up to the highway. Part of her wanted to see what all had gone on up there, but another part of her simply wanted to find her husband. However, just as she was about to open her mouth, a voice cut her off.

“Mom?” her son’s voice called from behind where she and Jamie stood.

Sophie Martin turned to see her son pedaling up. Her initial reaction was to give him a good scolding, but then she realized that she’d rushed out of the house without even saying anything to him or leaving a note. Still, how he knew to come here was a bit of a mystery.

“Lawrence, you should be asleep,” Sophie said with just a hint of motherly disapproval in her tone.

“I woke up when Dad got called. The television says that there is something terrible happening out here.” Lawrence brought his bicycle to a stop in front of her and gave a polite nod to Jamie. “Mayor Burns.”

At least she now knew how her son had figured out where to go, but that still did not totally get him off the hook for riding all the way out here at such a late hour. She glanced at her watch. Early hour? It was coming up on four in the morning.

“You still shouldn’t have come out here. It’s a school day. And don’t you have baseball tryouts this afternoon?”

The boy was about to open his mouth when a yell from up on the highway cut him off.

“Get in the car…we need to go right now!” It was the chief and Mr. Deese. They had both hopped the guardrail and were running down the hill for all they were worth.

***

Stephen moved along down the emergency lane. About a hundred yards away or so was the scene of a terrible accident involving a semi and what was left of a newer model SUV. But that was actually not the worst thing up here on this small stretch of highway in the middle of the South Carolina countryside.

Scattered around on the ground were at least fifty bodies. Some of those bodies had small clusters of what Stephen was now ready to call zombies. People were being ripped open and fed upon. Most of those being eaten were in uniform and were obviously part of the military support that had been sent to the scene.

He spied five South Carolina Highway Patrol vehicles parked in the eastbound lane. All of them had their lights on and doors open, but not one trooper was in sight.

There were two news vans parked just past the military roadblock, but, like the police, there was no sign of anybody in or around the vans. Just beyond the news vans was a military truck that was still ablaze. Something had caused the truck to catch fire, but it would be impossible at this point to even begin to guess as to what exactly had happened. He guessed that to be the source of the loud explosion that he’d heard and actually felt a touch of relief. His fear that some sort of heavy military ordinance had been brought into play could now be discarded.

“Deese, over here,” Chief Gilstrap called.

That caused a few heads to turn their direction, but the mobile bodies in the area were pretty well spread out and not of much concern yet. They seemed slow and uncoordinated. It should be no problem to take care of any that might come after him or the chief. He also noted that the ones feeding merely glanced up and then went back to their grisly tasks.

Stephen walked over to the military truck where the chief was standing. He’d already dispatched a handful of the walking dead that had been clustered around the cab of the truck. Inside, a single face stared out at them. The figure inside had skin that was a bluish-gray, and once again he was drawn to the eyes. They were glossed over with a milky, pus-colored film and shot full of black tracers.

The figure inside the cab reached up and slapped at the window and seemed to be trying to gnaw on the glass that separated it from him and the chief standing outside. The name on the shirt came into view. It read: Cronin.

“Damn,” Stephen sighed. “We can’t leave him like that.”

“Why not?” the chief asked as he stepped back and peered up the highway towards where the state troopers had all parked.

“It just doesn’t feel right.”

“He’s dead, Stephen.”

“He was a soldier. He deserves better. Wouldn’t you want me to put you down if you became one of these things?” He threw his hands up to indicate the dozen or so dark figures moving in their direction. He could not help but glance down at the chief’s hand. If this was in fact like the old zombie movies, then the chief was a goner. The bite was a guaranteed death sentence.

“I guess,” Chief Gilstrap agreed. He stepped back and shaded his eyes from the glare of the assorted headlights, spotlights, and the flaming truck. “But I think we need to hurry up and then get the hell out of here.”

“Why?” Stephen asked as he turned to see what the chief might be so interested in. “Holy crap.”

To the south of them, coming up the east and westbound lanes were perhaps a hundred or so dark shapes. Since they were walking along the highway, it was a pretty good guess that they weren’t just a bunch of folks out for an early morning stroll.

“How do you want to do this?” Chief Gilstrap asked, snapping Stephen back to the situation at hand.

“How about I open the door and you pop him.”

“Sounds like as good of an idea as any.”

“On three.” Stephen grabbed the door handle and looked up at the slack face of Private Cronin who stared out at him with those creepy eyes. The black tracers added an especially eerie factor to the man’s face, beyond the way that the skin seemed to sag and was now a gruesome shade of pale gray with just a hint of blue. Also, the man’s tongue was an even darker shade of gray to the point where it almost looked black.

“One…two…three!” He jerked the door open and was hit by another wave of stench as well as the body of Private Cronin tumbling out awkwardly to the pavement.

He could have sworn that he heard the sound of a bone snapping. When the thing that was no longer Private Cronin rolled over, the odd angle that his right arm hung confirmed Stephen’s suspicion.

The mic was dangling down to the floorboard and he stepped around the struggling body of the private. He could hear the voice of Mayor Burns saying something and reached in to pick it up.

Chief Gilstrap stepped forward and put his pistol just a few inches from the man’s left temple. He mumbled something and then pulled the trigger. A splash of black blood sprayed the side of the truck and the body collapsed in a heap.

“Mayor Burns,” Stephen said as he looked back to watch the chief end it for the young soldier, “he didn’t make it.”

Looking back up the highway, the mob was approaching and now he could hear an assortment of moans and possibly even a few of those pitiful cries. The two men took off at a run back for where they’d left the mayor. He only had a moment to register the fact that another car had arrived along with what looked like a kid on a bicycle. He and the chief cleared the guard rail and hurried down the slope towards the bright lights of the roadside oasis.

“Get in the car…we need to go right now!” Chief Gilstrap bellowed.

***

Jonathan Patterson sat up and slapped the top of his alarm clock. Four in the morning was not his normal wake-up time. Last night had been a freaking disaster at work. One of the pipes had burst and flooded out the Domino’s Pizza store.

He’d been the shift manager that night and was tasked with the less-than-pleasant job of calling the actual manager with the bad news. He’d had to shut down for the evening and clean up a bunch of water. It wasn’t just any normal water line. Nope, it had been the damn sewer line. They would be throwing out a whole bunch of product today.

That was why he had to get up at this ungodly hour. He and the manager would be going over the store with a fine tooth comb before the sanitation inspectors arrived. The only good thing about this whole clusterfuck was that he’d been approved for overtime. He had been saving since his eighteenth birthday for that trip to Las Vegas he’d always dreamed of taking. If everything went right, he would be waiting for Santa in a suite at the Bellagio.

Throwing off the blankets, he sat up and stretched. The room was cold and he scurried to the bathroom and turned on the shower so that it would get nice and warm while he emptied his bladder.

“Nothing quite beats that first piss of the day,” Jonathan mumbled. He flushed and then leaned over and turned on his tiny portable radio.

He was just getting lathered up and howling along with Van Halen when the tones of the Emergency Broadcasting System blared. He hated those stupid screeching bleats. Why did they need to ruin a good song to interrupt with another stupid test? He was about to lean out of the shower and punch the button to change stations when the announcement began.

“A state of emergency is being declared on a national level. The CDC has called for curfews to be executed. State and local officials are to stand by for instructions and all members of the military reserves are to report to the nearest depot for assignment.

“The president will be addressing the nation later on, but has asked that all citizens remain home for the time being as emergency protocols are prepared. In addition, a representative from the CDC has asked that if you or somebody you know has come into contact with a person who is acting irrationally and either appears bitten or scratched, you or somebody that you know needs to please bring them to the nearest medical facility.

“All hospitals are instructed to set up a quarantine area for anybody brought in suffering from a bite wound inflicted by another person. Military units will be arriving at major metropolitan medical centers as soon as possible to assist—”

Jonathan turned the radio off and ran to the bedroom to get his phone, punching his mother’s number in haste. As it rang, he turned on the television and muted the sound. The scene being played on the local news was that of a reporter standing in front of a large military looking truck. The words “Recorded Earlier” were in the upper left hand corner of the screen.

“Hello?” a frail voice answered.

“Mom?” Jonathan struggled not to sound agitated.

“Johnny Cakes,” the woman said, suddenly sounding cheerful. That nickname had been his since he’d been a baby. He hated it, and she’d stopped using it in public when he reached high school, but in private, that was her normal greeting.

“Good, you haven’t gone on your walk yet,” he sighed.

His mother went for a walk first thing in the morning no matter the weather. Her advanced age had not curtailed that activity one bit.

“I was just getting my coat on.”

“Yeah, well do me a favor. Can you hold off until I get there? I want to go with you,” he lied.

“But that will throw off the rest of my day,” Mildred Patterson groaned.

“I will be there in five minutes, just wait for me.”

“Fine,” the elderly woman huffed. “But I don’t understand. You never come with me on my morning walk. What’s going on, Johnny Cakes?”

“It’s just been a while since I’ve seen you and I have a busy next few weeks. I figured I could suck it up. Besides,” he glanced over at the mirror and turned sideways, “I can use a little exercise.”

That part was absolutely true. Ever since he’d gotten that job at Domino’s Pizza, he’d been putting on a bit of weight. He’d never been skinny. In high school he had been the anchor of the defensive line on the football team. He’d had dreams of being scouted and getting a scholarship to Clemson, but he hadn’t even merited a glance from a small college.

At just a shade over six feet tall and more than a shade over two hundred and seventy pounds, Jonathan had somehow let himself slip into the worst shape of his life. His eyes flicked to the three empty beer bottles on the nightstand next to his bed and the pizza box on the dresser.

He kept meaning to do something about the weight, but at the end of the day after a shift dealing with delivery drivers who could not find their own asses with both hands and a map as well as customers who thought the “30 minutes or its free” campaign still existed, all he wanted to do at the end of the evening was come home, turn on Sports Center, log onto his computer to get in some gaming, toss down a few cold ones, eat a few slices, and then fall asleep.

Something told him that he was going to regret not being in better shape in a very short time. He bumped his mouse to wake up his computer.

“Just promise me that you will wait for me,” Jonathan insisted.

“I won’t go any farther than the corner,” his mother said, sounding extremely inconvenienced and put out by the request.

“NO!” he barked. “I want you to wait inside the house.”

“But—” she started to protest.

“I mean it, Mom.”

“Fine.” The sigh at the other end of the line was overly dramatic.

“Promise.”

“I said—” she began but he cut her off.

“I said promise.”

“I promise, Johnny Cakes.”

He didn’t wait for her to say anything else. He hung up and stared at his screen. Sure enough, he had two emails waiting for him. Both were from the same person.

“Okay, Fumio, whadda ya got for me.”

One of Jonathan’s gaming buddies turned out to be a fourteen-year-old from Tokyo. He’d been blown away when he’d learned that the guy he’d been going into the arena with for over six months was almost half his age.

One day after his ass had been pulled out of the fire no less than a dozen times by this one person, he’d sent him a message of thanks and added his personal email. The next day he’d received a reply and learned the identity of his battlefield savior.

Thirteen-year-old (at the time they’d met) Fumio Koguchi from Tokyo, Japan. The two became the modern-day equivalent to pen pals. It didn’t hurt that Fumio was oddly impressed that Jonathan was a manager at a pizza place.

Last week, Fumio had missed their regular gaming session. The next day, there was an email from him with a file attached. It was a video that took his computer forever to download, but when he finally played it, he was initially confused. Why was Fumio sending him a clip from a Japanese horror movie?

The video was taken in the hallway of what looked like a hotel to Jonathan. A man was on his knees in the middle of the hall and ripping the insides out of a young Japanese girl who was kicking and screaming her head off. Jonathan thought she might be overacting a bit.

After a few seconds, the camera jerked around and a young boy’s face filled the screen. Jonathan recognized him instantly. Was Fumio in a movie? If so, that was more than a little cool. The boy began to speak in halted and very heavily accented English.

“Jonathan-san, something very terrible is happening. They have tried to hide it, but it is now out of control.” The camera jerked again and things were blurry for a moment until the hand holding it steadied once more. The scene now was a long street. It looked like hundreds of people were wandering aimlessly. They did not seem to have any direction or actual destination and often changed their paths on a whim. The camera jerked again and Fumio’s face filled the picture once more. “I am afraid. It is impossible to leave my home. My parents have not returned in three days.”

The sounds of screams could be heard in the background. A few were just like that one girl in that they were unlike anything Jonathan had ever heard before. Not even the old classic movie “scream queens” could match these poor souls. That was when it sunk in. These were the screams of real people being ripped apart.

Once more the camera jerked around and the hallway came back into focus. The person that had been hunched over the poor girl had gotten to his feet and was staggering towards Fumio.

“Get out of there,” Jonathan had whispered impotently.

He breathed a sigh of relief when it was obvious that the boy was moving away. He paused, and the sound of a door being jostled could be heard. The creak of hinges almost seemed comical if not for the fact that this was really happening and not the trick of some foley artist to add tension to the scene. Just before the camera jerked away again, Jonathan had seen the girl on the floor begin to stir.

The rest of the video consisted of scenes outside the high rise apartment that Fumio Koguchi called home. There were plumes of smoke rising into the sky in every direction. The streets were packed with people wandering about. Having no knowledge of Tokyo, Japan other than what he saw on television, he would have not seen anything out of the ordinary. Only, there was one thing that nagged at him about what he was seeing; he simply could not place it. After the third replay, it struck him.

There was not one single motor vehicle moving in the streets below. The only traffic was that of pedestrians milling about.

He had not known what to do with this footage. He was considering trying to sell it to one of those tabloid television shows. Then Kentucky happened.

The government had to believe that the American public was nothing more than a bunch of idiots. Unfortunately, that turned out to be a fairly accurate assessment.

When the first reports of the quarantine broke, it was not greeted with an overwhelming degree of alarm. After all, unless you lived in whatever the name of that Podunk town was, then it wasn’t your problem. In fact, Jonathan remembered his own reaction.

“Sucks to be them,” he’d said when he had pulled into work that evening. And then he’d shut off his engine and walked in to start his shift.

He had thought nothing of it until one of his drivers mentioned the next day that nothing further had been reported about that small town that had been quarantined. Even then he’d just brushed the comment aside. But that night as he watched Fumio’s video once more and debated between a tabloid and one of the big cable news networks, he had remembered.

A quick search revealed absolutely nothing. There was not one single mention of a town in Kentucky or anyplace else in the United States having been quarantined. He popped into the lobby of his favorite game and typed in a single word: Kentucky.

There were over a hundred rooms with Kentucky mentioned. He popped into one after another and read line after line of nutjob conspiracy theory crap. Only…maybe this wasn’t all a bunch of crazy talk.

He’d finally weighed in and started recounting what he’d seen on Fumio’s video. He was deep into it when an instant message popped up on his screen. Whoever this user had been, he was obviously more than just some casual gamer, his user name was nothing more than a scrambled batch of bizarre symbols. The message was very direct.

SHUT UP. IF THE GOVERNMENT SEES THIS, THEY WILL COME FOR YOU.

Jonathan waited for anything else but nothing came. A feeling of paranoia crept over him and he logged off, shut down his computer, and turned off all the lights…as if that might help.

“Yeah, Jonathan, that would stop a team of covert operatives. Just shut off the lights…that way they won’t be able to see you.”

That had been two days ago.

He opened on the first email from Fumio and clicked on the attached file. The second email did not have anything attached and so he opened it while he waited for his computer to do its thing.

Jonathan-san, I apologize for how short this will be, but I know I don’t have long. They have been outside my door for the past day and I fear it will not hold up much longer. Plus, power has been going off and on the past several hours and I fear it will not last more than an hour or so. I hope my video reaches you. You must tell somebody. Do not let your country hide this as mine has.

Fumio

He looked at the bar that indicated the status of his download. The countdown timer declared that he still had over ten minutes. He knew very well that his mother would not wait that long. He would simply have to watch it after he went and picked up his mother.

“And then what?” he asked himself out loud.

He didn’t have the slightest idea, but he knew that he had to go get her. Once she was safe inside his home, he would figure out his next move.

Grabbing his keys from the kitchen table, he hurried out the front door, locking it behind him and then hurrying to his beat up Toyota wagon. He paused and sniffed. Taking a look at first the sole of one shoe and then the other, he sighed in relief that wherever the nasty pile of dog shit might be, he hadn’t stepped in it.

As he pulled away and sped down the street towards his mother’s house, something moved in the bushes beside his porch.

3

The Dead Come

Jamie stared out the window of her modest two-bedroom home on Clay Street. She was trying to remember the happiness that she’d felt the day she’d been handed the keys to her house. The green roof had been what first caught her eye.

The fenced yard was just waiting for her to get a dog. She’d been meaning to look for a puppy, but she was always too busy and had kept putting it off. The chief and Mr. Deese were still out on her porch. They looked to be involved in a pretty serious conversation. If not for the night she’d already had, she might be curious. As it stood, all she really wanted to do was stumble into her bedroom and flop down on the bed.

“Instant coffee all you got?” Sophie called from her kitchen.

“Yeah, I ran out of the regular stuff yesterday. I keep the instant for emergency situations.” Jamie turned and headed into the kitchen to join Sophie and her son Lawrence.

The boy was at the back door staring outside much like she’d been doing out the front. Surely there couldn’t be any of those things in town. Could there?

“I have tried the hospital at least four times,” Sophie said softly as the two women took their cups and walked back out into the living room leaving Lawrence to continue his silent vigil.

Jamie hadn’t seen Sophie in a few months. It seemed odd for that to happen in such a small town, but with her hectic schedule as she tried to get a grip on being a mayor as well as the office manager for a land developer based in Greenville that was now expanding out towards Liberty coupled with Sophie’s shifts as an RN over in Pickens at Cannon Memorial Hospital, the stars had just not lined up.

Sophie looked better than ever. She’d always been beautiful, but there was something else. Her light brown skin was absolutely radiant and her hazel eyes practically glowed. Her tall, athletic body had a grace that Jamie had always envied. The two years that they’d played on the high school basketball team together had been the thing that built their friendship. Sophie was everything on the court that Jamie was not. In fact, after the first day of practice, Jamie had considered dropping out. It had been Sophie that sat beside her in the locker room and told her that she needed to use her speed and forget about how tall anybody else on the court might be in comparison.

Her thoughts were broken up by the sound of Sophie’s phone ringing. She snatched it from the counter and thrust it out at Jamie.

“It’s Clifton’s partner, Terry Gibbs. I can’t…” Sophie’s voice trailed off and the tears welled up in her eyes making them even shinier.

Jamie took the phone and answered. “Hello?”

“Sophie?” a voice said, sounding confused.

“No, Cliff, it’s Jamie Burns.” She knew the man’s deep, rich voice and let out a breath that she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “She’s right here, hold on a sec.” She handed the phone to her friend and stepped back as Lawrence hurried in and put his head next to his mother’s so that he could hear.

“I went to the highway. You weren’t there…I thought that was where they sent you…no…uh-huh…WHAT? Don’t you dare!...No, I can’t.”

There was a long pause and Jamie could see tears start to well up in Lawrence’s eyes as well. She had no idea what was being said, but it was obviously not good news. She recalled her radio conversation with Private Cronin and how his voice had sounded so bad. It had been clear that he was sick. Clifton had sounded fine.

“Clifton? Hello?” Sophie pulled her hand back and stared at her phone like it had committed the ultimate act of betrayal.

“What is it?” Jamie asked. “Is he okay?”

“No.” Sophie set her phone down on the counter and lifted an arm to allow her son to nestle in for a hug. The two stood clutching each other. Jamie wanted to know what was going on, but she didn’t dare ask and break up this moment for the mother and son.

“He’s at Cannon Memorial,” Sophie finally said through a throat that sounded tight like she was fighting back a flood of tears.

“Is he hurt?” Jamie asked as delicately as she could manage.

“No. The big dummy is fine. They transported an injured girl who seemed to code just before they arrived at the hospital. Just as they pulled in, she started trying to get free from her restraints. She managed to bite Terry. That is why Clifton called on his partner’s phone. The army had already arrived at the hospital and I guess they grabbed the girl from the bay and then insisted that Terry go to some special quarantine wing that was being set up. Terry gave Clifton his phone and asked him to call his wife and let her know that he was okay.”

Sophie was quiet for a moment and Jamie started to fidget. There was obviously more going on. Cliff had said something at the end of the call that had upset both Sophie and Lawrence.

“He is apparently helping in the emergency room. I guess they are already so overwhelmed with people being brought in that he felt it was important to stay and help,” Sophie said at last.

“How did this get so bad so fast?” Jamie asked nobody in particular.

The front door opened and Mr. Deese stuck his head inside. “Mayor Burns, you need to come out here.”

Jamie heard the tone in the man’s voice and her stomach twisted into a knot. Taking a deep breath to steady herself for whatever fresh hell was about to ruin her morning just a bit more, she walked to the front door. The large man stepped back and she joined him and the chief on her porch.

“Oh, my God,” Jamie gasped.

***

Stephen kept looking at the chief. He seemed as healthy as always. He wasn’t sounding tired or sick in any way, shape, or form. In fact, that run had reminded him that this was the year he’d promised Terri that he would quit smoking. And so what had been the first thing he’d done after they had taken down all those people (he kept going back and forth on completely accepting them as zombies)? He’d lit up. And then after they had run from that mob that was coming up the highway, he’d had a smoke in his mouth before the truck had even left the lights of the Spinx station behind.

“I don’t see how this has gotten so out of control so quickly,” the chief was saying.

“Easy,” Stephen replied with a shrug, crushing out the half-smoked cigarette he’d been dragging on, “nobody wants to believe it. I just saw it with my own two eyes and already my brain is trying to find something that will help me make logical sense of it.”

“But there is no way a person can take a magazine full of .45 caliber slugs to the chest and keep walking. And while not all of them were torn up, I saw a few that had their insides dragging on the ground or hanging out.” Chief Gilstrap took off his hat and rubbed his stubbled head. He jammed the hat back on and then glanced down at his hand. “You think I’m gonna turn into one of them sumbitches, don’tcha?”

Stephen looked away and pressed his lips together tightly. That had been almost exactly what he’d been thinking. Still, he wasn’t going to say it; no way in hell. Then his eyes lit on something and he stood up a bit straighter.

Coming up the road was a single figure. That alone wasn’t a big deal, but he’d seen that limping drag-step walk before. It was one of them. He stepped down off the porch and felt his skin pebble for what seemed like the hundredth time that morning.

From the direction of the water tower he could make out at least twenty or so more shadowy figures. It was like a scene from an actual horror movie. The sun was rising at his back and the shadows were being chased away; the morning mist that swirled a few feet above the ground was winding around the knees of these horrific individuals.

For a moment, he had to wonder if perhaps he’d driven past some of these things on the way home from work. Southern Vinyl Window was not far past the trees. He’d driven right by the water tower on his way home. As slow as these things moved, they couldn’t have come from all that far away.

He sighed and reached for his shotgun which had been set on the rail of Mayor Burns’ porch. The chief put a hand on his shoulder.

“Let’s try not to use our guns. We don’t really know what is bringing them. If they are attracted to sound, we will just be ringing the dinner bell.” He looked around and then pointed back to the house. “Go ask the mayor to come out here.”

Stephen did as he was asked and escorted the mayor out to her porch. She seemed confused until he pointed.

“Oh, my God,” she gasped.

“Yeah, well, we need weapons to go and deal with them. The chief thinks it would be best if we tried to avoid using our guns.” He wasn’t entirely enthusiastic about that idea. At the moment, his top priority was staying alive and getting home to his wife.

He’d called her on the way to the mayor’s house. Apparently she was already up. She had been watching the television and was less than pleased that he had gone out to the highway. Considering what he knew now, he saw her point. When he’d asked if he should hurry home, she told him that she would be fine as long as he didn’t take too long. She had access to his wide selection of pistols, rifles, and shotguns, and said that she was more than capable of holding down the fort.

“What sorts of things do you need?” Mayor Burns asked.

“Well, since it looks like we have to go for the head like in the movies, something that will bust a skull would be nice.” He noticed that the mayor got a funny look on her face when he’d mentioned the thing about this being sort of like the movies. He wondered briefly if perhaps she had come up with the same idea.

The mayor pinched her lower lip for a moment and then her face brightened. She bounded off the porch and ran to the small metal shed beside the house. She fiddled with the combination lock and then threw the doors open wide with a clang.

Stephen was right behind her and following her in when the chief called out, “I think we can safely assume they are drawn to sound.”

“What?” He turned to regard the older man who had come down the first step of the porch and would not take his eyes from the approaching danger.

“As soon as young Miss Burns threw open those doors, they all seemed to re-orientate on this location.”

Stephen backed up and craned his neck so that he could see better. Sure enough, he watched as a few of the stragglers were altering their course just a bit to bring them towards the mayor’s house. The only problem that that would present for several of the undead was that many would run into the cyclone fence. On the plus side, many were now being split away by a long wooden fence that sectioned off the back yard of the corner house one block over on Jackson Street.

He turned back to look inside the shed and a smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. “What the hell?” was all he could manage to say as he counted a dozen machetes hanging on one wall, two large splitting mauls, three hand axes, five picks of varying sizes, a short-handled and long-handled sledge hammer; and a bundle of what appeared to be fiberglass replacement handles for the mauls, picks, and the long-handled sledge.

“I was storing these for the scout troop. They were going to help clear some of the grounds on the far side of the football field next month,” Jamie said as she cut the twine that held together the bundle of spare handles.

Stephen grabbed one of the heavier machetes as well as one of the spare handles. He hefted it and was happy with the way it felt in his hands. He stepped aside as Chief Gilstrap moved in and selected the short-handled sledge.

The two men turned to start for the oncoming group of undead. Mayor Burns caught up brandishing her long, yellow fiberglass handle.

“Umm…” Stephen began, but the look the mayor shot him made it clear that there was not going to be a discussion.

The three of them spread out and Stephen was the first to reach one of the zombies. This one had been a very skinny man in his fifties or sixties. His gray hair had been pulled back in a long ponytail that was coming undone. It looked like whatever had attacked him had grabbed him by his long hair; a large flap of scalp hung down the left side of the man’s face and a dark stain ran down that side. Stephen had to swallow a bit of rising bile as he realized that he could actually see a bit of the man’s skull. He quickly recovered and chose that area as his target.

He swung the large handle-turned-bludgeon and felt a horrendous stinging in his hands. It was so bad that he lost his grip on the handle. To add to his misery, the skull had not shattered or appeared to have even cracked from that first heavy blow. The old man had tumbled, but that was a shallow victory as two more of the things were closing in.

Drawing the machete, Stephen hacked down hard, cutting into the man’s temple. He had to step down on the now lifeless corpse to jerk the weapon free and did so just in time to spin and swing wildly at the first and closest of the pair of walking dead. He took a hand off just above the wrist and stumbled back a few steps to get some room between himself and these zombies that were suddenly a lot scarier now that he wasn’t holding his shotgun.

He thought he heard somebody yell something and risked a look either way. Both of his companions had paused as well and the mayor actually looked as if she might cut out and run back to her house, but then another zombie stumbled up to her and she returned to the grim task at hand. Chief Gilstrap barely seemed to break stride and was right back to dealing with the situation in front of them.

Stephen turned his attention back as well and drove the tip of his machete into the eye socket of the one-handed zombie, jerked back much easier this time, and repeated the move on the other one. With three down, he scanned the scene and made certain that neither the mayor nor the chief was in trouble. He felt a bit embarrassed to see that it looked as if they were having no problems whatsoever. Returning his mind to the task at hand, he stepped in and dropped two more with almost no effort. He was feeling a little better until he turned to face the owner of the long shadow that was coming at him from the left.

Stephen Deese froze and staggered back a step. The little girl was perhaps no older than four or five. Her blond hair was hanging down past her shoulders and he imagined her to have once had blue eyes; but now, only those glazed over, tracer riddled orbs stared back. Her left leg dragged behind her and he could see that she’d had a nasty chunk torn from it as well as a hideous bite on her left hip where her shirt was shredded and stiff from the dried blood.

“No way,” he gasped, not noticing that his machete had slipped from his grasp and fallen point down to stick into the ground.

***

Sophie drained the cup of instant coffee and grimaced. She watched Jamie follow that Deese fellow down the stairs of the porch and vanish around the corner of the house. She recognized the man, but hadn’t ever really gotten to know him. She laughed sometimes when she would speak to a friend or relative from one of the larger cities like Greenville or Charleston. They assumed that everybody in a small town knew each other. They had this idea that with only three thousand or so residents, the entire population of Liberty was on a first name basis with everyone else.

She might have seen him in the hospital. She did know that he had been in the Marines. She also was pretty sure that he was a member of the volunteer fire department.

She went to the porch to see what they might be doing when a sound from the kitchen made her spin on her heel and rush through the house. The kitchen door was wide open and her son was gone.

She hurried out onto the back stoop and saw her son sprinting across the yard. She thought she saw something emerging from some of the trees and hedges. Like Jamie’s house, the one that bordered the back yard had a fence. However, it was obvious that a section had been knocked down.

Then she saw them.

They were mostly obscured by the greenery, but she thought she could see at least two people kneeling on the ground. Coming off the porch, she moved so that she could better see. Her son had stopped at the fence and was now gripping it, his head dropping. Even from here, she could see his body shudder. Her son was crying. Whatever he was witnessing, it had to be terrible to make a fifteen-year-old boy actually cry.

At last she had moved enough so that she could see, and her hand came to her mouth to stifle a gasp. There were, in fact, five people on the ground. They were all clustered around a furry figure. She saw the rear legs still twitching and thought she might have heard a small whimper. She recognized the tail as belonging to what she was almost certain had to be a Golden Retriever.

Suddenly, Lawrence vaulted the fence and landed in the back yard. He sprinted past the cluster of people that were busy ripping out chunks of something and stuffing it into their blood-stained mouths. A few heads looked up, but then returned to their grisly task.

Sophie took off after her son and stopped when she reached the back fence. Her son was now on the porch and kneeling at an open sliding glass door. When he turned, she saw that he was holding a small child in his arms. The child was crying and this now had more than just the casual attention of the group that had been gorging themselves on the body of the dog.

The group all began to get to their feet and turn in the direction of her son. Sophie ignored the fear coursing through her body and vaulted the cyclone fence in a graceful bound. She hit the ground running and was almost to her son when she saw a figure staggering out of the open back door of the house where her son had snatched the child.

“Mom, go!” Lawrence yelled as he slowed down just enough to shove aside a woman who was covered in blood and had a tuft of crimson fur hanging from the corner of her mouth.

Sophie was not about to abandon her son. She stood her ground until he arrived and then snatched the baby from him. “Get over the fence and I’ll hand her to you.”

Lawrence went over fast and spun to his mother with his arms outstretched. She thrust the bundled child back to her son and then went over in a hurry, this time just a little less gracefully as her pants leg caught and she flopped forward, dangling upside-down. From her current and awkward position, she could see an inverted view of the group of nightmares staggering and shambling her way.

She felt something tug at the leg that was hung up and then heard a rip. Falling, she was able to catch herself and roll to avoid any serious damage. By the time she managed to get to her feet, five horrifying caricatures of what had once been human beings were at the fence; all of them had their arms outstretched as they strained to get at the living beings just a few feet away.

Sophie took a moment to really inspect the assorted injuries on these people. It did not take her long to assess and determine that none of these individuals should be up and walking. One of them, a man who was completely naked, had a rip in his abdomen and strands of intestine were dangling from the wound. It was clear that they had been ripped in several places and were dripping the last of their vile contents in clumps and smears down the man’s bare legs.

She also realized that she did not recognize a single one of these individuals. However, she did recognize the woman who had emerged from the house and was now making her way to join the rest of these abominations. She spun on her son and pushed him back towards Jamie’s house.

“What on earth were you thinking, Lawrence Fredrick Martin!” Sophie continued to prod her son’s chest with every syllable.

“Mom, I couldn’t sit there and do nothing.”

Sophie cocked her head and demanded an explanation. Her son explained that he had been simply watching out the back door when he spied the neighbor exit the house with the dog. Obviously she was taking the dog outside to do its business. She must not have had a clue what was going on. The dog started barking and Lawrence saw a group of individuals move up the side of the woman’s house. The gate must not have been secure because they got in just as the woman rushed over to see what the dog was carrying on about.

“It happened so fast, Mom,” Lawrence sobbed. “Two of them had her before she knew what happened. The dog lunged and tried to protect her but then the rest of the pack fell on the dog.” He shuddered and wiped at his eyes before continuing. “The woman managed to get away, but she was all torn up and holding her side as she limped up onto the porch. She made it inside the house and shut the door, leaving the dog to be finished off.”

The boy was quiet for a moment and then glanced down at the little girl in his arms that had miraculously fallen asleep after all the chaos. He went to the living room and laid the toddler on the couch and adjusted the blanket she’d been gripping so tightly through the whole ordeal.

“I heard a baby cry and I just couldn’t stand here and do nothing,” Lawrence finished. “I was afraid that…” Sophie saw her son’s face change. He seemed hesitant to finish what he’d been about to say.

Putting an arm around his shoulders, Sophie hugged Lawrence and kissed him on the temple, leaving her face against the side of his. “I know, baby. I’ve seen them too.”

***

Jonathan pulled into the driveway of the Senior Center. He hated the fact that his mother had decided to move into this place. It wasn’t like her little house on Clay was that big.

As he got out of the car he paused again and looked at the bottoms of his shoes. Nothing. Getting down on his hands and knees, he looked underneath his car. Maybe he’d hit something, or perhaps a critter had crawled up inside his engine area and gotten itself killed. Now it was rotting. Satisfied there was nothing dangling from the underside of his car, he went around and popped the hood, yanking the little kickstand thing that kept it up so that he could get a closer look.

Still seeing nothing, he leaned down and gave a good sniff. He wasn’t a mechanic, but it pretty much smelled like an engine should smell. He pulled the thin metal rod free and wedged it into its place and then let the hood drop with a loud clang.

A low moan from behind him caused Jonathan to spin around, the hair on his arms and the back of his neck already standing on end. He’d heard that sound before in Fumio’s videos.

Three figures were coming his direction. He knew exactly what he was seeing, but that did not lessen the degree of fear that grabbed his bladder and gave it a good squeeze. The coppery taste of adrenaline soon followed and he reached in the open rear window of his car and grabbed the L-shaped lug wrench.

“No way,” was all he could manage as the first of the trio actually stepped into a long beam of the rising sun and came into full and gruesome detail.

The woman was wearing the remnants of a nightgown that did little to cover her massive frame. She still had rollers in her hair and one foot was clad in a fuzzy slipper that looked like it might be glued in place by all the blood that had poured down her body from where her throat and right shoulder had been savaged. She had dingy brown hair and the bits that had come free of the curlers hung halfway down her back. Her face showed no emotion as she approached, but her hands were reaching and clutching at the air while her mouth opened and closed almost with hungry anticipation, causing her teeth to click together, but it was the eyes that had Jonathan transfixed.

He’d seen something in the eyes of the video that Fumio had sent, but it was something else altogether to see them in person. They were covered in a pus-yellow coating and the capillaries were shot with black that really stood out against the film.

“Hey,” Jonathan called. The way they all stopped and then twitched and jerked around a bit to re-orient on him was a more than a little creepy.

Then the full force of the smell hit him. It was unlike anything he had ever experienced. Of course, he’d never been near a dead body except for his dad. And that had been at the funeral. That was the day he decided that he wanted to be cremated. It had been so odd looking inside the casket and seeing that body with all the makeup to try and make him not seem dead. He knew that his dad would have hated it. Even more, he would have told everybody to “quit their bellyaching and fussing and get back to doing something productive.”

The woman staggered closer and the two men behind her sort of bumped against each other as they started towards where Jonathan stood beside his car with his tire iron in hand.

Suddenly he felt like an idiot. If this was really the start of a zombie apocalypse, how was he going to survive with nothing more than a little piece of metal? What he needed was a gun.

Suddenly, his nerve left him and he began to work his way around his car so that it was between him and the approaching…

“Zombies.”

He almost felt stupid when he heard that word. He even looked around to see if perhaps it had come from somebody else. It just couldn’t be possible. Zombies were not medically or scientifically able to exist. He and his friends had beaten that dead horse into the ground anytime they got together and saw one of the movies or played one of the video games.

Zombies simply could not be.

Yet…here they were. The woman staggering up the gentle slope of the entry drive to the Liberty Senior Center could not be living. Glancing at the two men; neither could they. One of them had a strange looking piece of himself jutting from a hole in his side. His clothes were torn up and he was even bloodier than the woman, and the other man was missing his nose, for crying out loud.

“Johnny Cakes?” a voice called from behind him.

Jonathan spun to see his mother standing in the doorway to the senior center in her purple and pink jogging suit that he’d bought her just this past Christmas. She was alone, and for that he was actually a bit thankful.

“Hurry up and come get in the car,” he barked, his voice sounding harsher than he’d intended.

“Don’t you use a tone with me, young man,” Mildred Patterson shot back. “You might be grown up, but you will not speak to your mother in that manner. Do you understand?”

Jonathan spun on his mother and pointed to the car. “Get. In. Now.”

As soon as she stepped off the porch of the senior center, it was clear that she could see the trio of approaching zombies. Only, it was not clear if she actually could see them for what they were.

“Jonathan…those people…” her face was screwed up with a look of total confusion and horror.

Now he knew that his mother was upset; she never called him Jonathan unless he was in trouble or she was very troubled. In fact, the last time that she had called him Jonathan was when she had called him to tell him that his father had died of a heart attack.

Giving the terrible trio an appraising glance, he guessed the time he had to be very little. It would be close. He dashed to his mother and scooped her wispy body up into his arms. He was briefly thankful that she was not the size of that female zombie that was now just a few steps away from the rear bumper of his car.

He reached his Toyota and gave the rear passenger side door a jerk. He hissed as he yanked hard on the handle only to have nothing happen. He almost never used the back seat, so the doors were almost always locked; which, considering how he almost always left the windows open, was sort of ridiculous.

He reached in and unlocked the door, pulled it open, and did his best to stuff his mom inside without hurting her. Ignoring her stammers, protests, and attempts at questions, he hurried around the front of his car and arrived at his door just a step ahead of the female zombie.

The lug wrench in his hand was basically forgotten. Instead, he lashed out with one foot and kicked the woman hard in her ample middle. She barely even staggered back a step. He was surprised, thinking that, as unsteady as she seemed on her feet, she should topple over easily enough.

Her hands reached for him and two fingers snagged the sleeve of his shirt. He brought one arm up defensively and batted the hand away and then jabbed outward, catching her in the shoulder. Once again his blow had basically no effect.

Jonathan pulled his door open and he now found himself forced to actually take a step closer to this foul monster in order to get inside his car. His right arm came up, and later, when he would replay this moment in his mind, it seemed as if the tire iron weighed about a hundred pounds.

He swung down hard, his blow connecting at the base of the woman’s neck. She had not made a sound. Her hands were still reaching for him and now one of them had purchase on his sleeve down near his left wrist.

Jonathan jerked away and re-adjusted how he was holding the weapon in his hand. He had spun the sharp end used for prying off a hub cap so that it pointed away from him. With one massive thrust, he had driven that end up under the sagging jowls of this woman. The feeling had been strange and he swore he felt it as the tip plunged through the soft meat, burst through the mouth and then drove through the bone of the roof of the mouth and up into the brain pan.

It was as if somebody had hit the “off” switch. The woman collapsed in a heap, yanking the lethal weapon from Jonathan’s hands as she did so. He made no effort to retrieve it and hopped into the car. He took off, making a hard left onto Old Norris Road and heading home to his little place on Cooper Street.

He looked in the rearview and saw his mother’s expression. He slammed on the brakes and craned around to face her.

“Are you okay, Mom?” he asked with as much calmness in his tone as he could manage.

“That woman, Jonathan…you…you…you killed her.” Tears streamed down his mother’s cheeks and she was looking at him in a way that he’d never seen before.

Mildred Patterson was afraid of her son.

That look was like a slap to his face and stung inwardly a great deal more than any physical blow. Mildred Patterson was a small woman. Her son was easily two and a half of her if they were on a scale. Since he’d been thirteen, he had towered over the woman. Yet, she’d never hesitated to grab him by the ear and scold him if he got out of line. She had always known that he would never strike back at her. Not that she’d been a physical disciplinarian; she stopped using the switch when he’d turned twelve.

But right now, she was looking at her son and seeing a total stranger. She’d just witnessed him basically drive a piece of metal through a woman’s head.

“Mom, you don’t understand…” he began, and tried to reach back and put a comforting hand on his mother. She jerked away and let out a frightened shriek as if she feared that he might make her his next victim.

“Don’t you touch me!” she yelped, Her hands went for the door and she forced it open and tripped over herself trying to get out so fast.

Jonathan put his car in park and jumped out as well. He came around the front of his car as his mother was scrambling to her feet. She threw her hands up defensively and began to wail.

“Please…somebody!”

Jonathan stopped and put his own hands up in the air. He thought it over for a second and then knelt on the ground, lacing his fingers behind his head.

“I won’t hurt you, Mom.” He unlaced his fingers and reached down slowly into his pocket with one hand. He produced his phone and slid it to his mother. “Call somebody. I won’t move. But believe me when I tell you, I didn’t murder anybody. It isn’t what you think.”

Very slowly, Mildred Patterson picked up the phone. Her eyes were wide and never left those of her son. She swiped at the phone and held it to her ear. A look of confusion came to her face. She pulled the phone away and stared at it, then tried again.

From his knees, Jonathan looked around at where they were. He felt his stomach drop. Just to his right was the cemetery.

“Oh crap,” he whispered.

4

Worse than Expected

Jamie spun after cutting down the last of the terrible figures that she’d faced off against and turned to see how the two men were doing. The chief was just taking down his last one as well. Her eyes found Stephen and she felt her stomach try to turn inside out.

The man was walking backwards. Even from this distance, she could see the glisten of tears on his cheeks. Looking at the small figure that he kept simply trying to shove away, she understood exactly what had reduced the man to tears.

The little girl could not be any older than four or five. Her tiny hands kept reaching out for the much larger man who apparently could not bring it on himself to finish her like he had the other zombies. A voice in her head told her that she needed to rush over and help him. However, her feet simply refused to obey that command. She remained rooted in place and could not bring herself to go to his rescue.

She felt the lump in her throat grow larger each time the child swiped at the large man. At some point he had obviously dropped or lost his weapons and was fending off the attempted attacks by doing nothing more than pushing the child back.

Chief Gilstrap must have witnessed it as well, because at last he rushed up from the side. His body blocked her view, but when he moved again and turned to face Mr. Deese, the child was no longer standing and was nothing more than a crumpled heap on the ground.

Slowly, Jamie’s feet began to move forward. She approached the two men and then slowed to a stop when the details began to come into focus regarding the small child. That was not a sight she cared to see any closer than necessary.

“How is this happening?” Jamie broke their relative silence.

“I got no idea,” Chief Gilstrap said with a heavy sigh as he removed his hat, wiped his face with his hands, and then slapped the hat back on. “Been hearing rumors, but it is sorta like Kentucky. You hear something, and then it is gone the next day and the person stops answering your queries. Had a chief over in Clemson shoot me an email last night about a nasty bit of business that happened at some big apartment complex near the college. The next day, it was like the man had vanished off the face of the earth. Sent him an email a few hours later and it came back saying the email address did not exist. I know for a fact that’s a bunch of crap.”

“That poor soldier mentioned something about this being worse than his chain-of-command was letting on and there was word that all of Japan and places over in that area going totally dark,” Jamie offered.

“How could an entire country, much less that whole part of the world go dark and nobody hear about it?” Stephen scoffed.

“I’m just sharing what he told me.”

“Yeah, well he was probably delirious. That is the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard. Sounds like a bunch of that crazy internet talk.”

Jamie locked eyes with Stephen Deese and saw that he couldn’t maintain contact. She doubted he believed his own argument.

“Sorta like flesh-eating zombies walking around attacking people?” the chief said, obviously picking up on the other man’s struggle to come to grips with what they had all just witnessed. “I hate to say it, but this is exactly why the problem might be worse than we think. Nobody in their right mind is gonna believe it. And if the government is trying to keep it off the public’s radar, then we might be much worse off than we realize.”

“You think?” Jamie blurted, her hands gesturing to the bodies scattered on the ground around them.

The trio stood in silence for a moment, each obviously lost in their own thoughts as they took in the horror that lay as physical evidence before their very eyes. Jamie’s gaze returned back to her house, but somehow, everything suddenly looked different. It was as if the world had grown darker. Her little town felt less safe, and extremely vulnerable.

The thought hit her like a punch to the gut.

Her town.

She was the mayor of Liberty. It was her duty and responsibility to see after the best interests of the citizens. She needed to act now and ensure that her tiny community was as safe as possible.

Her mind fast-forwarded through what little she knew of the movies. Just as quickly, she tossed all of what little she knew into a file in her head and promised to return to it later. Right now, she was only able to focus on one thing: everybody always died in those movies. It was on her to make sure that did not happen here.

“Gentlemen,” she said, getting the attention of both men, “we need to get everybody in town together right away. This is not voluntary. Do what you need to, enlist anybody that you think will help, and get the word out immediately. I want everybody gathered…” She considered her choices and then came up with the most logical location that she could think that would be able to allow the entire town to gather in one place. “Tell them to be at the high school football stadium at 11 AM.”

***

His eyes continued to flick back and forth between his mother and the cemetery. So far, there was no sign of any movement coming from the sprawling graveyard. Meanwhile, his mother had continued trying to get the phone to work. At last, she regarded him with a suspicious look.

“What have you done to the phone, Jonathan?” She thrust it towards him with accusation dripping from her words.

“I haven’t done anything. What’s wrong?”

“It won’t work. I can’t get it to call nine-one-one.”

“Here, let me—” he began, but her squeal of fright and stumble backwards to get away from him froze Jonathan in place. He very carefully knelt back down and re-laced his hands behind his head. “Mom, I wish you’d listen to me.”

“Listen to you?” Mildred Patterson snapped. “I don’t even know who you are!”

Jonathan felt his stomach twist into knots as he watched tears trickle down his mother’s face. Her disappointment and sorrow was clear. She was not seeing him; instead, she was seeing a cold-blooded killer. How was he going to convince her that there was something terrible happening and that he was just trying to save her?

Why couldn’t a zombie show up now when he needed one? He was still mulling that over when his mother’s expression changed. She cocked her head to one side and it struck him that she was listening to something. He couldn’t believe that her hearing had been that much better than his and dismissed it to the fact that he’d been pre-occupied.

A car was coming. They were just a bit past the bend in Old Norris Road and that car would be coming around it from behind his mother. What he now feared was that it might actually hit his mother. She was just standing in the road, and it was clear that the oncoming vehicle was moving a bit faster than it should.

“Mom, hop in my car and pull it over…quick!”

Despite her advanced age, Mildred Patterson was no decrepit old lady. Her morning exercises had obviously kept her quite a bit more agile and spry than many people her age. She did as she was told, but her eyes still never left him and they narrowed a bit when he got up and moved off the road himself.

Did she expect him to just stay in the road and get run over? Better yet…is that what she wanted? All of these thoughts evaporated when he spied the vehicle rounding the corner. Despite everything, the last thing that Jonathan Patterson wanted to see at this exact moment was Chief Gilstrap’s patrol car.

The vehicle slowed and came to a halt, the chief rolling down his window rather than actually getting out. The man stuck his head out of the window and Jonathan actually had to squint and rub his eyes to make sure he wasn’t imagining things. There were dark flecks all over the man’s face as well as a blackish smear on the right cheek that looked almost like it may be dried blood!

“Is there a problem here?” the chief asked, sounding absolutely exhausted.

“Umm…well…” Jonathan was not sure how to answer. In truth, yes, there was absolutely a problem here. However, the last person he wanted to reveal that to at this moment would be the Liberty Chief of Police.

“My son killed a woman!” Mildred Patterson stumbled forward, one arm outstretched and a finger pointing accusingly at her son.

The mood changed in the blink of an eye. Chief Gilstrap practically exploded from his car, gun drawn and pointed at Jonathan.

“On your stomach…NOW!” the man barked.

Jonathan did as he was told, a sick feeling growing in his gut. However, it was not just due to the fact that he would likely be booked and thrown in jail, it was what would happen in the weeks to come when this zombie problem grew worse and there was nobody to bring meals. He would die of starvation, locked in a tiny cell. Being bitten and turning into a zombie was suddenly gaining in appeal.

“Sir, I didn’t kill anybody!” Jonathan protested as he felt a knee come down firmly in the middle of his back. The metallic clink of handcuffs followed, and he felt the cold metal tighten on first one wrist and then the other.

“Yes he did,” Jonathan’s mother insisted. “He did it right in front of me. He jammed a tire iron up through the poor woman’s head!”

Jonathan was jerked onto his knees and spun around to face Chief Gilstrap. This close, it was clear that the flecks and the smear on the chief’s face were, in fact, blood. Also, he could not help but let his eyes drift down to the man’s hand where a near-perfect bite mark stood out on the skin. It had been wiped off, but blood still oozed from the wound and one rivulet was trickling down the man’s thumb.

“Alright, ma’am,” Chief Gilstrap said, the tone of his voice softening just a bit. He nudged Jonathan and locked eyes with him. “Did you kill a woman by driving a tire iron through her head?”

“She was already dead,” Jonathan blurted.

Mildred Patterson stammered and appeared to be unable to string any coherent words together. The chief made certain that the woman was staying put and then turned his attention back to the Jonathan.

“What do you mean she was already dead?” he asked in a hushed whisper. The officer’s eyes narrowed, but Jonathan did not think it was in anger or even disbelief.

“This is gonna sound stupid—” he started to explain, but the police chief cut him off with a mutter that Jonathan did not think he meant to blurt out loud.

“After tonight, you’d be surprised.”

“The woman that I put down was torn up. She had most of her throat ripped open. And the two that were with her looked even worse. One of ‘em had his guts hanging out. I know it sounds ridiculous—”

Again the chief cut him off. “Can you take me to them? Show me?”

Now it was Jonathan’s turn to sound like he was confused. He had expected a number of possible reactions, but this was certainly not one of them.

“Umm…yeah, sure.”

“Ma’am,” the police chief turned to face the elderly woman who now looked as confused as she did horrified, “you can ride along with us, or you can take the car and return home.”

Jonathan explained that he’d been picking up his mother at the senior center, so perhaps it might be better if she either returned to his house, or (and this was his preference) perhaps the chief could make her come along in the back so that she could see that her son wasn’t a murderer.

“I don’t have time for a lot of nonsense,” the chief snapped as he spun and returned to his vehicle. “Ma’am, I need you to get in the car right now and come with me.”

“I won’t ride anywhere with that…that…monster!” Mildred crossed her arms across her chest and planted one foot for emphasis.

“Fine, stay here.” With that, the police chief climbed into his patrol car.

Jonathan rushed over and stood at the front passenger door. He waited a moment and saw the chief glaring back at him like he was an idiot. He turned around and waved his cuffed hands as an explanation. A string of expletives erupted from the car and Jonathan heard the door open. As he waited to be for the cuffs to be removed, he saw his mother move meekly to the rear driver’s side door and wait for the grumbling, cursing police chief to finish with her son and then come back to get in the car. He paused long enough to open the door for his mother and then close it again once she was inside.

After a very jerky and much-too-fast-for-comfort turn around, the police car was rocketing back up Old Norris Road towards the senior center. Jonathan was just starting to whisper a silent prayer that those other two zombies would be present so that he didn’t end up being thrown in jail when the pair appeared directly in the middle of the road as the cruiser rounded the bend.

“Hang on!” was all Chief Gilstrap had a chance to shout before being drowned by the shriek of tires and the heavy and meaty thud of one of the walking corpses being slammed into head-on at over forty-miles-per-hour.

***

Stephen stood beside his wife Terri and watched the lady step up to the podium. The banner at the bottom of the screen read: Dr. Linda Sing, CDC spokesperson.

Stephen turned the television up just enough so that he could actually hear what this woman had to say. He noticed immediately the absence of any reporters blurting out questions. She was obviously not taking any.

“This ought to be a doozy,” Terri sniffed as she leaned into her husband.

“I have been asked to address the issue of a peculiar illness that is apparently sweeping the country. While we are still in the preliminary stages of trying to figure this out, I want to make one thing clear.” The woman leaned forward at the podium a bit and made it a point to almost glare into the camera. Her mirthless face looked as if she had perhaps not allowed a smile to creep across her lips in many years. The bright lights only washed out her features that much more, giving her a look that Stephen thought seemed very much like that of the zombies he’d just finished dealing with not more than ten minutes ago. “Those rumors of the dead coming back and attacking the living are beyond ludicrous. Ignoring the pure physiological impossibility, there is simply no way this can be considered with any seriousness.”

“And that is how we are going to end up going the way of the unicorn and the dinosaur,” he muttered as he muted the television. “I’m sorry, honey, I can’t listen to this.” 

“I don’t want to seem like I’m not supporting you, Stephen,” Terri began, seeming to choose her words carefully, “but are you absolutely certain about this?”

“I know what I saw.”

Stephen walked into the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee. He looked longingly at the plate of bacon and eggs sitting at the breakfast nook. Today was supposed to be his Friday. Terri always made him a hearty breakfast and spent a little time with him before she headed over to the elementary school where she was a third grade teacher.

Today would be different. He really wanted to sit down and eat, but the mayor had been very emphatic that they get everybody rounded up. He had been given a key to one of the patrol cars and was told which neighborhoods to take where he would be driving up and down the street announcing an emergency meeting at the high school. He’d also enlisted his wife’s help. She was supposed to go in to work and have the school use its emergency call program to notify all parents with school-aged children.

They knew that a few people would slip through their fingers, but if they could get a majority of the town gathered, then they could rely on everybody else to get the word to those few who might miss what was going to be said this morning.

“And she wouldn’t actually share the plan with you?” Terri was asking as Stephen filled his travel mug one more time and got ready to head back out.

“She wouldn’t say a word, only mentioned that we were not going to go out like they did in those ridiculous stories.”

Terri kissed her husband as he walked out the door and climbed into his truck. He waved to her as he backed out and gave a much closer look around just to be sure there was nothing out of the ordinary. Yes, he’d made certain that she had his entire arsenal laid out in their bedroom, the kitchen, and the living room, but that did not lessen his degree of apprehension about leaving her alone.

He turned on his stereo system and quickly tapped the CD back into the player when he recognized Dr. Linda Sing’s voice. That woman could talk as long as she liked about what nonsense it was to think that the dead were returning and attacking the living, but she obviously hadn’t seen what he and the others had witnessed.

“One of them sumbitches bites you in the ass and you’ll change your tune,” he muttered as the twang of a rowdy country song filled his cab.

He reached the parking area where Chief Gilstrap had told him a car would be waiting. Sure enough, a police car sat parked in the lot next to city hall and the fire department. He pulled his truck into the space beside it and hopped out. Just as he locked his truck, a blaring siren caused him to jump. He’d gotten out of his truck with his shotgun in his hand and brought it to his shoulder almost out of instinct.

He tasted the adrenaline in the back of his throat and his stomach roiled, having only been filled with bitter coffee up to this point. The roll-doors on the fire department went up and one of the large red vehicles crept out, soon followed by the red Ford pickup that the fire chief often drove.

Both vehicles turned right onto Front Street and sped away from him, hanging another right on what looked like Hillcrest Street. The sirens began to fade and Stephen was just unlocking the police car when a thought struck him.

He jumped in the car, turned the key and took off out of the parking lot with tires burning rubber and sending up a cloud of acrid blue smoke. He reached Hillcrest and turned right just as he flipped the switches that activated the lights and siren of the vehicle. It wouldn’t do for him to run over some poor pedestrian, and considering the hour, it could very easily be some kid on his way to school.

“That got dark fast,” he muttered, scolding himself for allowing his mind to drift to the worst possible scenario so quickly. Still, it might not hurt to keep that part of his mind functioning if things shaped up like they looked to be.

He slowed as he pulled up to Liberty Elementary School. Both emergency vehicles had pulled up in the drop-off lane and still had their lights flashing. Just as he pulled up behind the red pickup, he saw the last of the responding firemen duck inside the main entrance to the school.

He jumped out and considered his shotgun. In the end, he could not simply walk away and leave it behind. He tried to shove it under his coat but thought that might look even more suspicious.

Jogging up to the entrance, he paused for just a second when he heard a terrible scream come from behind him. He was already thinking of what to say to whomever it was that was blowing a gasket about his carrying a weapon into the school, but when he turned and the scream sounded again, he realized that it was across the street in the direction of the church.

He fought over what to do and decided that he would have to trust the firemen to not do anything foolish. His brain was already berating him before he’d gone two steps. Wasn’t that the basic job description for firemen? Go someplace dangerous that nobody else would want to go and then risk your ass to save somebody else? For some reason, an image of a fireman climbing a stairwell against a tide of people trying to go down flashed in his head as he sprinted across the street and then ducked through some trees.

He would be approaching the church almost from the back. Just as he started up the little hill before reaching the small parking area in the rear of the church, he heard another scream. He put on a burst of speed and sprinted for the front of the quaint little brick church with its white steeple where the bells rang every Sunday to announce service.

As soon as he rounded the corner, he knew that he was too late. A small set of legs could be seen kicking in their final fits on the walkway that ran along the front of the church. A woman in a pair of jeans and a dark tee shirt was hunched over the small figure. The screams were now gurgles and weak whimpers; but that only allowed for the wet slurping and rending noises to be heard that much more clearly.

Walking up behind the female figure that had gotten down on all fours now and had its face buried in the midsection of a little boy that Stephen unfortunately recognized as Timmy Darcy, Ned and Stacy Darcy’s boy, Stephen brought up his shotgun and leveled it at the back of the woman’s head. He had a finger on the trigger when he remembered how the chief had said that it looked like these things reacted to sound. Reversing the gun, he raised the butt of it and brought it down hard on the back of the woman’s head. A lot of folks did not realize that the front of the skull was designed to endure a heavy impact. The rear of the skull was the equivalent of an egg shell; sure, a bit thicker, but not anywhere near the strength of the front.

He brought it down twice more before it broke open. Shaking out his hands to rid them of the buzzing feeling, he grabbed the woman’s body and jerked it off the Darcy boy. He was trying to figure out what to do when the eyes fluttered and opened. He looked into that filmed over gaze and tried to tell himself to end it quick. He raised his weapon to bring it down and once again faltered. This had been someone’s child. Even worse, he knew the kid. He’d seen him at church, spoken with Ned in the store as this same child stood peeking out behind his dad’s legs.

The child began to struggle to its feet and Stephen backed away. He warred within himself about what to do. The logical part of his mind screamed for him to put this thing down; it insisted that he was no longer looking at the Darcy child. The emotional part of his mind, a part he’d become adept at stuffing away during his time overseas but had worked hard to nurse back to health since his return, told him this was still just a child.

Across the street was the church’s family center. There in the parking lot was a small trailer. He started backing away from the child and waited for it to follow. The zombie of Timmy Darcy was now on its feet. It cocked its head and regarded Stephen with its terrible gaze, but it made no move in his direction.

“Hey!” Stephen hissed. The zombie actually took a step back. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

He snapped his fingers and still received no response. With a sigh, he brought up his weapon and steeled himself for the horrible task that he looked like he was going to be forced to act out. It was like a switch had been thrown. Without warning, the child lurched forward, hands coming for him and teeth gnashing.

He staggered back a few steps and angled himself towards the small trailer across the street. The entire time, he kept looking every direction for signs of anybody—living or dead.

Nothing; he wasn’t sure if that was a blessing or a curse.

When he finally reached the trailer, he had to break open the locked doors.

“Now for the tricky part,” Stephen said to the child as it stumbled closer.

He judged the child’s movements and then dove in, grabbed the kid by the hair and slung him into the open trailer. He slammed the doors and pulled his belt off to secure them and prevent the child from escaping.

“Now what, genius?” he muttered.

As if in response, terrible screams came on the morning breeze from the elementary school.

***

Jamie stared at the screen of the television in disbelief. She knew Greenville well enough to recognize the downtown skyline such as it was. Plumes of smoke were rising from several locations in the background of the field reporter who looked to be stationed on the span of a bridge. She turned up the volume and crossed her arms as she listened.

“…as reports of unrest are coming from all over the city. Police and fire department resources are being stretched beyond capacity and the nine-one-one centers report that they are overwhelmed. From our position here on South Academy Street, we just watched a convoy of what appeared to be military vehicles roll past.

“There is still no word from Sky-chopper Four. As we reported earlier, they landed on the top deck of the parking lot across from Wellness Arena when they spied a woman trapped in her vehicle and surrounded by what appeared to be at least a dozen angry rioters.

“Wait…I am just now being told that reporter Cole Simmons is requesting to cut in. Cole?”

There was a flicker and then a new image came into view. This was at street level and Jamie immediately recognized the Greenville Health System and Sun Trust Bank building in the background. Smoke was pouring from several windows and sounds of shouting and screaming could be heard in the background.

“Thanks, Chet,” the square-jawed man said as he looked into the camera with eyes that had just the slightest squint to them. “I am here on the corner of Spring and McBee just a few blocks away from where a crowd of the rioters has been reported. I can tell you that we have witnessed three separate auto accidents in just the past few minutes, and one woman just ran up to us bleeding from a terrible wound on her right arm. She said something about somebody biting her before running off.

“The mob should be coming into view shortly, and we hope to be able to share images with our viewers. I do want to repeat that, unless it is absolutely necessary, you should avoid downtown Greenville at all costs today.” There was a shudder in the picture as the camera swung away from the reporter. Cole paused for a moment and then resumed his narrative.

“We have the first images of this mob, and as you can see, initial reports of this being some sort of racial issue are inaccurate as we see, people of all colors…” Cole Simmons’ voice trailed off.

There was another moment of chaotic background noise and Jamie was certain that she heard the pop of a gun at least twice before the reporter resumed speaking.

“Brad, can you tighten up the picture on the leading edge of this group?” Cole’s voice could be heard over the background noise.

The picture blurred for a moment and then came into horrifying focus. The leading edge of the oncoming mob instantly made Jamie think of those zombie movies again. There was a variety of injuries that no person could withstand and keep walking. A casual observer might dismiss this as some sort of flash mob hoax, but Jamie already knew better.

“Okay, can somebody in the studio please help sort out what we are seeing here?”

Jamie heard the annoyance in the reporter’s voice. She had a feeling that he might be dismissing what he was witnessing with his own two eyes. After all, this was simply not something that anybody with one foot in reality could accept as fact…until it came up and bit you on the ass, a voice in her head mused.

“Cole, maybe you should pack up and get out of there,” a female voice offered, obviously from the relative safety of the newsroom. “We are hearing reports all over town about people being attacked by violent mobs. The governor has just called for a press conference that is set to begin as soon as the president makes his address.”

“C’mon, Brad,” Cole’s voice barked.

Jamie felt herself breathe a sigh of relief until the image of the reporter appeared and was now headed directly towards the oncoming group of what Jamie was certain had to be the walking dead. She felt a stinging sensation in her hands and looked down to see that her nails were digging into her palms.

“C’mon, you idiot,” she breathed.

“Hey!” Cole could be heard shouting. “Can one of you…”

Jamie refocused on the television. The camera was a good fifteen or twenty feet behind the reporter who had closed about half the distance between himself and the crowd. She could hear heavy breathing and then a gagging noise.

“What in the world?” Now the reporter was staggering back a few steps. “Brad, are you smelling that?”

The reporter turned to face the camera. He had an arm up over his face in an obvious attempt to ward off the smell. Jamie’s memory sent a sympathetic blast of that stench trickling down the back of her throat. She knew very well what the man would be smelling. There was nothing quite like it.

“Now run,” she urged.

Her heart hammered as it dawned on her that the reporter now had his back to the approaching group of undead. He was still refusing to accept the evidence that had literally been right in front of him.

“I don’t know what exactly might be going on, but let me reiterate the point that this is not something that appears to be based on some sort of racial division. The group of rioters seems to be a mix of all races, but for some inexplicable reason they have the look of one of those zombie-walk groups…” Cole’s voice ceased reporting for a moment and then quickly resumed. “This is like that one group Kaley Chisholm reported on a few months ago that was raising money for local food banks. Only, apparently these people are not acting out of charity…” Cole turned back to face the oncoming group and his words died on his lips.

Jamie knew that it was too late. The first of the zombies was now within an arm’s reach. Hands clutched at the man who now stood stock still, apparently rooted in place by fear as a pitiful squeak was almost drowned out by a chorus of moans.

The cameraman continued to shoot the scene, but it was also apparent that he was backing up. The reporter was now being dragged to the ground and the scream that came was enough to peg the audio and turn it into little more than a roaring sound that ended suddenly with an electronic shriek of feedback.

The image blurred again and then there was a moment when it looked as if the world was spiraling crazily. The cameraman had apparently tripped and fallen over backwards. The image of the reporter being savagely attacked was now replaced by a sideways view of the street and a nearby curb. A hand planted on the ground at the edge of the shot and then a pair of feet raced by in a blur.

There was another moment of just the skewed image of the street and then a studio shot that revealed three people standing behind a long news desk, staring to the left with varied expressions of horror etched across their faces. Somebody off camera must have gestured or done something to get the attention of the trio as they all three started and then began trying to compose themselves as they looked straight ahead at the camera.

At last, the woman on the left who Jamie actually recognized as being the traffic and weather person cleared her throat and began to speak. “Umm, I can’t be certain as to what we just saw, but I believe this is far worse than we’ve been told. Do we still have the clip of that CDC doctor? Can somebody get that queued up, please?” The woman straightened and looked to her fellow news people and then continued to speak when it was clear that neither of them were going to do so. “I advise you to reconsider the words spoken by…” She squinted down at a stack of pages in front of her on the desk, rifled through them and then nodded in satisfaction. “Dr. Linda Sing of the CDC. Despite her denials and refusal to consider the possibilities, I think what we have seen just now flies in the face of her words. I advise—”

The screen flashed and then a picture of a sunny day in downtown Greenville with the station call letters, logo, and network affiliation popped up. The strains of a familiar tune being performed by an orchestra drifted from the television’s speaker.

“Muzak?” Jamie laughed harshly. “The world is coming to an end and they are playing Muzak?”

Well, she was not about to let Liberty, South Carolina go down like that. This was her town. She had a plan, and if she could get everybody on board fast enough…they might just be able to ride this out until somebody got a handle on things. And, if they never did and this became the extinction event like in the movies, well then, they would not just survive…Liberty would thrive.

5

The Meeting

Jonathan barely had enough time to put his arms up and grab the dashboard to brace for the impact. The body of the undead man folded over hard and slammed into the hood, rolled up and smashed against the windshield, and then flipped up and over the car.

Chief Gilstrap had turned reflexively but much too late. The car veered left and plunged off the road, nose-diving into the shallow ditch that ran alongside the road before coming to an abrupt stop with enough forward momentum that the rear end lifted a good three feet off the ground before coming down hard, blowing out the right rear tire in the process.

“Holy crap,” Jonathan groaned and then hissed in pain as his brain became flooded with messages about his many injuries. He glanced down at his right wrist and saw it cocked over at an odd angle. His vision blurred and he used his left hand to wipe his eyes. It came away coated and slick with bright red blood.

“Are you…” Chief Gilstrap let the words die when he glanced over and got a look at Jonathan. He craned his neck to look in the back seat and paled.

That reaction made Jonathan forget his pain. He tried to turn, but couldn’t, and went to work on his seatbelt which seemed to be stuck. At last he heard the click and wriggled free of it as he climbed onto his knees and looked in the back seat. His mother was leaning back, but the odd angle that her head sat on her shoulders gave away her condition.

“Mom,” Jonathan cried.

The slap of a hand on his window made him jump and he spun back around in his seat, banging his fractured wrist in the center console of the police car. His vision swam as the pain returned with a renewed vengeance. Once it cleared, he could see the undead face of a man staring in at him. It brought a hand up and slapped at his window again in a futile attempt to get at the living being on the other side of the glass.

Torn between the grief of his mother’s death and the anger at the undead creatures outside the police car that had caused this accident, Jonathan let loose with a howl of frustration. He reached down with his good hand to open his door and felt something grip his shoulder.

“Stay put, son,” an authoritative voice spoke from behind him.

A piece of his brain reminded him that he was in the police chief’s car, but he was currently incapable of rational thought. His mother was dead just a few feet away. Her last thoughts of her son had been that he was something terrible…a murderer. Tears began to well and drip from his eyes, mixing with the blood that ran freely from his busted open forehead.

The sound of a car door opening drifted into his jumbled thoughts. He turned to see the chief force his way out of the car. It looked like he tried to shut the door behind him, but was unable to do so. Jonathan could only watch as the man worked his way around the front of the car where a hint of steam now drifted up from the edges of the crumpled hood. He had a machete in his hand.

“Where did he get that?” Jonathan mumbled, unaware that his voice was a bit slurred.

He continued to watch as the chief jerked the zombie away from the passenger side and shoved it to the dirt. The angle of the car prevented him from seeing the zombie on the ground, but he was able to see the chief bring the machete up and then chop down hard. He jerked the weapon free and then moved down the vehicle. Glancing in the rearview mirror, Jonathan was able to make out a twisted and broken figure in the middle of the road several feet behind them. The chief walked to it with an odd calmness. The man stopped and seemed to study the twitching figure on the road for several seconds before raising the machete and binging it down once more, burying the heavy blade in the skull of the zombie.

Once again, the chief appeared to pause and study the corpse for a minute until he planted a boot on it and jerked his blade free. The man came back to the car and worked to pry the passenger side door open.

“Can you walk?”

Jonathan gave a weak nod and allowed the chief to help him climb out of the car. He started to turn and felt firm hands grip his shoulders.

“It’s best you not look.”

“But it’s my mom,” Jonathan insisted.

“I am so sorry,” the chief apologized. “There is nothing you can do for her and we need to get moving before more of those things show up. Your car is just back the road a piece. If you give me the keys, I’ll get us out of here.”

“My mom has them,” Jonathan managed around a throat that was growing tighter with each passing second.

The chief returned to the car and Jonathan stood there in the middle of the road. This wasn’t anything like the video games or movies. He’d nearly died in a car crash. His mother had died and was now just a few feet away and they were going to leave her behind. A thought occurred to him.

“Why can’t you call somebody on your radio?” Jonathan asked.

“You broke it with your left hand, and the antennae is lodged in the throat of that zombie we hit. And before you ask about phones, cell service is basically shot from what I have been able to see,” the chief explained.

Zombie. Jonathan actually felt his eyes grow wide at the sound of that word. The police chief had used it like it was no big deal.

“You know what they are?” Jonathan asked meekly.

“I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, and I don’t much enjoy watching those types of movies, but I haven’t lived under a rock my whole life. I can’t figure what else you would call ‘em.”

Jonathan felt a surge of relief. Then he felt nauseous. Then…he passed out.

***

Stephen had just started back for the school when a terrible thought gripped him. Terri was supposed to head to the school and help with notifying the town.

“Please don’t be there…please don’t be there,” he chanted as he took off at a sprint back towards the elementary school.

He reached the back side of the church and paused. The fire truck and the red pickup were still as he’d last seen them. His police car was also right where he’d left it. There was no movement coming from the building. Deciding that noise was now second to survival, he cleared the safety on his shotgun and jacked a round into the chamber.

He was just across Hillcrest and jogging up the gentle hill between the road and the drop-off lane when he heard another scream. It was shrill and impossible to tell if it belonged to a man or woman. He fought the urge to charge in blindly; knowing that to do so might end up with his running into something he was not ready to handle. That would punch his ticket in a hurry.

“You can’t be squeamish about this one, Stephen,” he told himself as he approached the covered walkway that led to the entrance of the main entry hallway.

The door was still open and he paused just inside and listened carefully. A low moan could be heard to his left and up the first hall on the right. He hugged the wall opposite the hall he could hear noise coming from and moved slow, leaning forward enough to try and get a look. At last, he reached a point where he could see.

On the floor was one of the firemen. He’d taken off his jacket for some reason, and it was tossed to the side against the wall next to a pushcart with a large, plastic trashcan on it. There was a broom on the floor just a bit beyond the cart. Kneeling beside a woman in a skirt was a man in dark gray coveralls.

“Keeshawn,” Stephen whispered, instantly recognizing the janitor.

Keeshawn Moore was a forty-seven-year-old African American man who’d been a janitor at the elementary school for over twenty years. He’d been born with severe autism. The one place he felt safe and comfortable had been the elementary school. He was often the first person to arrive and stayed until the last staff member left for the day. During the summer, a few of the teachers rotated and took turns coming to the campus and unlocking the door so that Keeshawn could sweep floors and wash windows whether they needed it or not.

As if he heard his name, the figure crouched on the floor raised its head and twitched around a few times until it found Stephen. Opening his mouth to moan, a piece of something fell out and landed on the linoleum floor with a splat.

As Stephen started down the hall, the body of the fireman began to twitch. Knowing that the sound would be thunderous in this long, empty hallway, Stephen considered trying to just crush the man’s head, but when the body of the teacher on the floor began to twitch as well, he dismissed that idea and brought the shotgun to his shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered as he pulled the trigger.

The top part of Keeshawn Moore’s head almost vaporized as the shotgun shell slammed into him at close range. A dark and chunky spray painted the wall behind the zombie as it staggered back and slid down with legs splayed out in front of the corpse with the body somehow coming to rest in a sitting position.

Stephen didn’t have time to dwell on such things as he turned to the fireman. He winced as he saw yet another familiar face. He quickly banished the name from his mind and tried to force anonymity on the reanimated corpse with a big chunk ripped from the left side of the neck and a few large chunks torn savagely from the chest where the mangled Liberty Fire Department tee shirt now hung in tatters. The zombie staggered forward two steps and Stephen brought the shotgun up and fired into a face that was only a few inches from the barrel when he pulled the trigger.

He jacked another round and kicked the feet out from under the female teacher. Standing over her, he blinked away the tears that threatened, and pulled the trigger again. The boom was deafening and a dark slurry of brain, bone, and teeth sprayed in an obscene halo on the floor around the little bit that remained of the woman’s head.

At last, it was simply too much. Stephen dropped to his knees and vomited. He heaved again and again until there was nothing left in his stomach. When he finally felt that he was done, he wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt and headed for the exit.

His ears were still ringing as he emerged from the front door of the school. A familiar car pulled up and he saw a look of concern on Terri’s face as she emerged, appraising him with eyes that knew him better than any other.

“That bad in there?” she said as the two met and embraced.

“Keeshawn.” That one word seemed to hang in the air and add a chill to the world.

“Do I dare venture inside?” she finally asked.

“We need to do this and stem the losses before we are too far gone.”

“How can it be this bad?” she asked, her face buried in his chest.

“People like that CDC woman telling everybody that what they are seeing is a lie. By the time somebody fesses up, I think it will be well past the point of no return.” Stephen paused and surveyed their surroundings. He wasn’t about to have one of those things creep up on him. “That Kentucky story was over a week ago, and Chief Gilstrap says that he heard something from one of his police buddies in Clemson. When he sent a reply asking for details, the email address came back as not existing and he hasn’t heard from the guy since. If my memory serves, I think there was a story in the news about five weeks ago about some city in China being wiped out by a terrible plague. Their government refused international aid or something. This could have been building for weeks. The funny thing is that we have gotten so used to pop-up sicknesses and conspiracy theory loonies that we could have heard a dozen stories telling us there was something going on and we just ignored it.”

“That’s what I love about you, Stephen,” Terri said with a soft chuckle as she pulled away from her husband.

“Oh? What’s that?”

“You are just such a ray of human sunshine.”

His wife grabbed a pair of handguns from the front seat and handed him his favorite .38. That particular gun had been his first gun. It had been given to him by his daddy for his tenth birthday and just felt like it fit perfect in his hand.

Armed and as ready as they could be, given the circumstances, the pair headed into the school to start notifying the citizens of Liberty about the big meeting. Less than ten seconds after they entered the building, the echo of a handgun being fired sent a handful of birds skyward from one of the many nearby trees.

***

Jamie and Chief Gilstrap stood next to each other in the middle of the high school football field. The stadium bleachers were filled on both sides, people milled about on the track as well as the field itself.

Two fire trucks were parked at either end and over two dozen men with rifles were perched on top of the press box as well as around the perimeter. Chief Gilstrap had been very selective in his choices and given specific instructions as to what to be on the lookout for. Jamie winced at how he had convinced these men of the danger they faced. Apparently Mr. Deese had managed to capture one of the zombies over by the elementary school. It had been little Timmy Darcy.

According to the very brief recounting of the incident that the chief had given, five of the men he’d initially picked had walked away after he put two rounds in the young boy’s chest to illustrate his point. She had worked very hard making her mind wipe away the images of that scene that it tried so hard to construct and play.

She looked out at all the people gathered. Some had apparently seen the report from Greenville, but others were absolutely oblivious to what was going on in the world around them. The four large screens, which had been set up by some very enthusiastic members of the high school A/V group, were about to provide a harsh introduction. Even more impressive were the files on the computer of poor Jonathan Patterson.

The chief was eating a lot of self-recrimination about the death of that man’s mother. Sophie had been the one to go out and pick up Mildred Patterson’s body with a pair of newly deputized bodyguards. When she returned and took care of Jonathan’s injuries, he had spoken of some videos that he’d received from a kid over in Japan that he played video games with on occasion.

She had watched them, but it was what was on the last video that might haunt her forever. Apparently Jonathan hadn’t seen it yet, because it had caused the man to gasp and then turn away. She had looked over and seen the man clearly trying to fight back tears; then she just as quickly looked away, not wanting to embarrass him by having her witness him cry.

Unfortunately, that left her watching the video. The young boy on it was very clearly emaciated. His eyes were hollow and his lips were cracking to the point that red wisps of blood could be seen to leak from them when he spoke.

He was in a small apartment, and after showing some footage of the massive and catastrophic destruction of what she guessed to be Tokyo, the camera returned to the front door. A jumble of flimsy furniture had been stacked against that door, but the zombies had managed to claw through and create a gaping hole large enough for the occasional face of one of the undead to fill as they worked relentlessly at the barricade to get at the one living person inside.

In the final minutes, after a period where the camera had obviously been shut off to conserve its battery, the boy spoke one final time.

“Jonathan-san, they will be inside soon. I hope you have shared what I sent you, but I will never know. I am afraid there is nobody left alive here. I have not heard a scream in over three days. Mine may be the last one.

“I do not have time to send this. The power keeps going off and on, so I am hoping that somebody may find this and email it to you if power returns, otherwise this will be all for nothing. If they do not act soon, that will be impossible. The power has been off and on for the past two days. It just came back a short time ago, but I do not know if it will last. That is the only thing that gives me hope. Every time that it comes back on, that means to me that there must still be somebody out there trying to survive.

“I have kept a written journal, but my last pen went dry this morning. I had just enough time to write a note that now hangs on my wall above my computer.” The image blurred, came to rest on a wrinkled piece of yellow legal paper with something scrawled on it in what must be Japanese, and then back to the boy’s face. He flashed a weak smile.

A loud crash caused the boy to flinch and the camera jostled around to show that the door and barricade had finally given way to a horde of undead. The zombies pushed through, some trying to shove past or crawl over each other to get at the boy.

The camera fell to the floor and ended up facing a wall. In some ways, Jamie thought that might have been merciful; however, it also allowed for the imagination to go into overdrive and create its own imagery.

The sounds of whimpering and what, despite it being in another language, was obviously pleading and begging could be heard. There were moans and even some very peculiar sounds that were almost like that of a crying baby. Then came the first howl that turned into a scream of pain. From that point on, the screaming became worse and turned into something that could not be compared to anything that Jamie had ever heard in her life.

The sounds of wet slurping and greedy chewing were present and became even louder as the scream mercifully ended in a wet, gurgling sob. Then a spray of blood painted a section of the wall that had been visible during this last terrible part of the recording in a runny slash. For several seconds, the tape showed the blood as it dripped and ran, accompanied by the nightmarish sounds of zombies feeding.

Then, something apparently kicked the camera and it shut off. The next thing to happen was the surprise. A woman’s face came on and filled the screen. She spoke in Japanese and the only recognizable word was “Jonathan-san.” So far, nobody had been able to translate, but apparently this person was the one who sent the last email with this file as well as the goodbye email that Jonathan had received.

Jamie shook her head clear and once more turned her attention to the growing crowd. Despite Liberty’s small size, when you gathered pretty much every man, woman, and child in one place, it was fairly impressive.

Chief Gilstrap gave her a nudge. “I think this is pretty much it. Go ahead, Mayor Burns.”

Jamie stepped up to the microphone and tapped it experimentally. The sound boomed almost like thunder and she jumped back. After quickly composing herself, she stepped up once more.

Faces were all turning her direction. It was as if she could feel the energy from every pair of eyes; it was boring into her soul, causing her heart to flutter and her stomach to twist into knots. She pushed back the sudden urge to pee and then forced a smile onto her face.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for coming,” she began. That sent a ripple through the crowd and then everybody hushed and now focused solely on her. “I don’t know any good or decent way to say this, so please forgive me. I am going to be very blunt. Here it goes.”

Jamie paused and tried to put together the right string of words to convey what she believed the town of Liberty was facing. She needed to prepare them for what they would see on that video, and she needed to keep everybody calm.

“For those of you who have already seen it on the news, there is something terrible happening. I will share the details with you in just a moment, but first, I wanted to let you know that this is worse than what we are being told on television.” That sent another ripple through the crowd. “This morning, I saw with my own eyes…things…things that have no logical explanation. So, before I continue, I want you to watch on one of the screens that we have put up. You need to know that this is not some sort of joke. It is not fake. This is very real. You may want to prepare yourself…and those with small children, now is the time where you may want to go over to the soccer field. A screen has been set up there along with sound so that my address to you all will be shown there after this particular bit of unpleasant business is dealt with. ”

Jamie stepped back and Chief Gilstrap got on his radio to help coordinate getting those with children who chose to leave the football stadium over to the soccer field. The fire department had brought in two more of its trucks to that location and a handful of the Liberty Volunteer Fire Department was ready to keep the kids occupied.

Once the first video started, Jamie tried to keep herself busy going over her notes and the things that she had prepared for the speech she would give. She had about an hour between all of the videos being shown and tried to block out the sound. She did okay until that first scream. It was just not like anything that she’d ever heard in her life. It carried not only the horror, but the excruciating agony that must come from being eaten alive.

The skin on her arms pebbled and a twisting feeling deep in her gut was enough to make her almost double over. It seemed to take forever, and a few times she looked up at the crowd almost expecting to find that everybody had left. There was a quiet that should not exist with this many people gathered in one place. There were a few times when she heard a person cry out, and more than a dozen times she heard somebody get sick. When the Greenville footage rolled, she heard even more gasps and cries of “Oh, my God!” coming from the crowd. Yet, through the entire presentation, not one soul left the Liberty High School stadium area.

When it was finally done, Jamie stepped back up to the microphone. All eyes were locked onto her. Many were red-rimmed or still in the act of shedding tears.

“Just before this meeting was called, there was an incident out on the highway. The military was already there and trying to deal with the situation. That tells me that this is not only worse than anybody in charge is saying, but also that it has come to South Carolina. We can’t sit here and wait, that has never been the way of the people of this great state. Right or wrong, we have been leaders, not followers.

“I will be returning to city hall after this meeting to start making preparations to secure this town. My first priority is to all of you. Unfortunately, there is simply nothing in the books about how to prepare for what might actually be the zombie apocalypse.

“This might seem ridiculous, but I am asking for any of you that might be…” Jamie paused, this was the part she had struggled with. She didn’t want to alienate the very people that she needed most at this moment. “I am asking for those of you who may have been fans of this sort of thing to come forward. I believe that there are those of you here that are fans of zombie movies, novels, and comic books. Chances are, you have sat around with friends and discussed what you would do in this situation. Right now, I am not lying or over-exaggerating when I say that there are no bad ideas. We will have to come together, and this plan is not going to be conventional in the slightest.”

She paused and looked up from her script and notes to see the reactions in the faces of her people. The expressions varied, but the one thing she did not see was a look of disbelief or even the slightest doubt. Despite how fantastic this scenario seemed, she had shown them that it was very real.

The A/V team had managed to come up with a copy of the news report out of Greenville where that one reporter had died. She hadn’t asked how because she had tried to find it on the internet right after the station went off the air and come up with absolutely nothing—more proof in her mind that the government did know what was happening, at least to some extent, and were doing their best to hide it from the American people. Seeing this in someplace like Tokyo might be one thing, but to have seen that clip from just up the highway in Greenville was another matter entirely.

“I am going to ask all of you to return home and begin finding things that can be used as weapons. I can confirm that, just as in the movies, a head shot is the only way to put one of these things down. I can also tell you that it seems as if the bite is the way the infection spreads. Less than three hours ago, a spokesperson from the CDC denied that this was possible. You have seen for yourselves that this is very real. We are faced with the possibility of the entire world being wiped out by this. I do not intend for the citizens of Liberty to fall. We will come together and we will stand against this threat.”

A single cheer set off an explosion of echoing cheers and a wave of applause. Jamie waited for it to settle down before continuing.

“When you return home, besides weapons, I think that it is important that you gather all food and be prepared to ration. To prevent a run on the grocery store or any of the markets, I will be creating a team that will head to all locations in Liberty to get full inventories. Also, those of you with gardens, I am going to ask you to help your neighbors. The delivery trucks are probably not coming from this point on and so we need to plan as if we are totally cut off from the rest of the world…and that may actually be the case.”

“Also, despite our holding this meeting in the stadium with a boost from the speakers you see mounted on the stands around you, we believe that sound might be something that attracts these things. That is why you see the armed presence around our perimeter. Also, we will have roving patrols and if you feel like you can be a help in that department, we could really use your help.”

Once again Jamie paused. She hoped that this message was sinking in. She needed everybody to be on the same page. She’d already called the manager over at Ingles Markets. That conversation had been much easier than she had anticipated. Of course it helped that the manager had been watching the news in his office just before her call. He’d seen the situation in Greenville. He had already closed the doors and said he would ask for all of his employees to return immediately after the mayor’s speech to help with writing down every single item in the store.

She had no idea how long the power grid would hold, but the window was probably a lot closer to being closed than she would like. They needed to do whatever they could to find a way to extend the life of perishables.

“I know all of you probably have questions, and I wish that I could take the time to address them all, but I think we need to start acting now. Every minute is precious, and we won’t have nearly as long as we think before things go very badly. We need to come together and be a source of strength for each other. I am afraid that the trials ahead will push us beyond what we ever dreamed possible. No matter your beliefs, I will pray for us all, and ask for God to watch over us in what will very definitely be our greatest hours of need.”

Another even more thunderous round of applause followed Jamie as she stepped away from the microphone. Chief Gilstrap was waiting for her and fell in by her side as they walked to the car. Mr. Deese and his wife stood beside it. The four climbed in, Jamie and the chief sitting in front.

She waited for the comments, questions, or perhaps criticism that she had convinced herself would follow. None came. The foursome drove to city hall in silence. Later, she would reflect on that drive and cherish those few moments of peace and quiet. It would be a long time before she had any of those sorts of moments again.

***

“I know what you said about no bad ideas, but that kid is barely fourteen years old,” Chief Gilstrap argued.

Jamie sat back in her chair and regarded the man over steepled fingers that she rested against her bottom lip. They’d been at this all day. She was exhausted. If she looked anything close to how the chief looked, then she had to be an absolute fright. Just that thought made her brush her hands through her hair.

“He has some very good ideas,” Jamie said as she stretched and cast a longing glance at her empty coffee cup. “Sure, a few of them are a bit silly, but he does make one very good point that all of the adults have missed up to this juncture.” She arched an eyebrow at the chief and then spun her chair to look at the map of Liberty that was tacked up onto the wall.

Chief Gilstrap moved up and leaned against the edge of her desk as he studied the map as well. He traced his finger along a route and then pursed his lips.

“It’s not a bad idea,” Jamie insisted.

“Tell that to the people who have to leave their homes.”

“It isn’t going to happen overnight. But something tells me that the next time some of those things show up, folks are going to—” She didn’t get to finish her sentence before the door flew open and a handful of heavily armed men entered.

“We have a bunch of them coming in from the woods just past the baseball field at the elementary school.” The man who spoke had his left arm wrapped in a heavy bandage.

“What happened to your arm?” the chief asked, sounding much calmer than Jamie felt.

“Somebody…” The wounded man let that word hang in the air. One of the other men dropped his head; the others sort of took an involuntary step back as they distanced themselves from the apparent offender. “Somebody was a bit trigger happy.”

“Mayor Burns, I think that you might need to issue a warning to the citizens about guns being a last resort,” Chief Gilstrap said as he glared at the man who continued to stare at the floor. “Scared citizens and an enemy that pretty much looks like one of us…hell, used to be one of us…that is a lethal mix waiting for bad things to happen.”

“And I guess that moves up the list of things we need to figure out,” Jamie replied with a laugh that sounded a bit too sarcastic than she’d intended. “We are already unable to use our phones. They may come back, and there may still be periods where we get spotty service, but we obviously can’t count on them. We need to be able to communicate with each other.”

“Well, maybe one of those folks out in the lobby has the answer,” Chief Gilstrap said as he started herding the group of men back out the door. “You are going to have to deal with this on your own for a while. I am going to head over to the elementary school and see to this new problem.”

The door shut and Jamie fell back in her chair, sighing heavily. She’d only been out of her office a couple of times in the past ten hours; zombie apocalypse or not, a girl had to answer nature’s call when it came.

“Howard, why did you have to go and die?” She looked over at the picture on the wall of the man who she had replaced. Getting out of her chair, she walked over to the photo and brushed it with her fingers. “I bet you would have a plan in motion and already be at home sitting down to dinner with the wife.” She wiped the tears that welled up and flowed over the cusps of her eyes. “I don’t think I can do this…I don’t think I am the right one to lead these people through a zombie apocalypse.”

“I bet you never thought those words would come out of your mouth,” a friendly voice said from behind her.

Jamie turned to see Sophie standing just inside the door. Thankfully, she had shut it behind her after coming in.

“How much did you hear,” Jamie sniffed, wiping away the last of the tears.

“Enough to know that you are just as scared as the rest of us.” Sophie crossed the room and hugged Jamie. The two women stood that way for a moment. At last, Sophie broke the silence. “You are doing fine. You already have the entire town mobilizing.”

“And apparently shooting each other.” Jamie could not hold back a bitter laugh. “The zombies won’t have to kill us, we’ll take care of it for them.”

“This town needs somebody to rely on. They need a leader that will keep them moving and doing everything they can to survive.” Sophie took a step back and held Jamie at arm’s length.

“Maybe the chief is better—”

“No!” Sophie snapped. “He is a great person, an excellent police officer. But this town needs somebody that can listen, plan, and then encourage others to act. I heard what that last boy proposed, he was talking about it before he came in to pitch it to you. I also heard the chief shutting it down before the poor boy was out your door. He isn’t going to listen to anything off the wall, and I believe that it is just that sort of idea that will save us.”

“You really think I can do this?” Jamie asked meekly, but feeling a bit of encouragement flow into her and refresh the resolve she felt in regards to saving the town.

“I know you can.”

“Thanks, Sophie.” Jamie returned to her desk and took a seat, adjusting herself so that she was sitting up straight with her hands folded in front of her. “Go ahead and send in the next one.”

“Right away, Mayor Burns.”

6

From Bad to Worse

“Please, mama, help me, for the love of God!” Jared Crawford’s voice went higher and higher as he begged for a mercy that would not come.

Chief Adam Gilstrap would have ended the man’s suffering if he weren’t up against the ropes himself at the moment—figuratively speaking of course. Ducking under the outstretched arms of the zombie in a soldier’s uniform, he kicked out sideways and took at least a little bit of pleasure in the satisfying crack as the knee buckled inwards in a direction that it was most certainly never designed to go.

On the plus side, it dropped the zombie to the ground as its leg would no longer hold the weight of the body. On the negative, now the damned thing was crawling towards him and trying desperately to get its groping fingers on the chief’s ankles. He swung the machete sideways and buried it in the side of the head of the female zombie that was just about to lean down and take a bite out of his forearm. Jerking free of her slacking grip, he stomped down on the hand that was about to grab his left ankle and then jerked his machete free of the woman’s head as the corpse fell to the ground—all in a fluid series of motions.

He shoved the closest zombie to him into the trio that was right on its heels. That did not quite have the effect he’d hoped for and only the one that had been shoved and the scrawny looking girl-zombie almost directly behind it were knocked back enough to make a difference. Still, it was enough for him to move sideways past the fallen tree that had been between him and poor Jared Crawford.

The man was no longer screaming, and his legs were barely twitching when Chief Gilstrap approached from behind the five zombies that were all on the ground, ripping bits and pieces of the poor young man from his middle. One of the zombies that was actually facing in the chief’s direction lifted its head to regard the approaching intruder. It apparently did not feel the need to stop shoving what looked like a long strand of misshapen sausages into its mouth and bite down. The brownish sludge that trickled down its chin as it chewed told the chief that those were likely Jared’s intestines.

“So nasty,” he breathed as he moved in behind the trio that had their back to him.

Using his belt knife, he drove the point of the blade upwards at the base of the skull, yanked free, and repeated the move as quickly as possible. He reached across and stuck that same knife into the open and emotionless left eye of the intestine muncher and then finished the fifth and final zombie in the same way.

Looking down, he saw the ruins of Jared Crawford’s body. The young man’s huge belly had been ripped open and blood was everywhere along with a variety of what remained of Jared’s insides. Jared had been the fire house Santa for the past four years, stepping in on short notice and to honor his dad who had passed away suddenly from a heart attack just days before the Christmas holiday. All he’d had to do was get a can of that special paint for spraying his hair and beard silver. He’d been a good boy with an easy smile and a kind word for anybody he passed on the street.

Kneeling beside Jared, Chief Gilstrap drove the tip of his knife into the boyishly youthful face before one of those crystal blue eyes opened to reveal that horrible film and the black tracers. He looked up as footsteps approached and winced when he saw the third zombie child he’d encountered during this hellish melee.

The child had just stepped past a tree and spotted him. Once again the chief had a difficult time reconciling the behavior that he was witnessing. Unlike any regular zombie (a phrase that would strike him as funny if he had the chance to think about it), the children seemed to hesitate. Once, a little girl of perhaps nine or ten had actually tried to turn around and move away from him. There was something peculiar about the child version of the zombie, but for the life of him, he could not understand it. Just then, two more of the adult zombies stepped up beside the child and pushed past. As soon as they spotted him, he was out of time to observe. It was time to return to the gruesome business of killing.

He checked to his left and saw three more of his men locked in battle with at least a dozen more of the things, but it was now looking as if this might be the last of this little mob or herd or what-the-hell ever you called a large group of zombies. To the right, he saw a lone straggler. He considered letting it go until the larger group was dealt with and quickly vetoed that idea. If he lost track of it and it got into town, anybody hurt or killed by that thing would add to the weight already on his shoulders.

After one more glance to ensure that none of the other men were about to suffer Jared’s fate, he stalked over to the zombie, machete at the ready. As he approached, something started to nag at him. Two steps later, he froze in his tracks.

He recognized this zombie. At least he was pretty certain that he recognized him. Moving around so that he could get in front of it, he got a better look that confirmed his suspicions.

“Son of a bitch,” he breathed.

Now he was certain of this man’s identity. He was staring at the zombie incarnation of Deputy Mark Reilly. He knew the man from just up the road in nearby Pickens. In fact, one of the first things he was planning on doing was trying to reach the Pickens Police Department and warn them.

And now…

“This is worse than we thought,” a voice said from behind Chief Gilstrap as he was just about to end the zombie version of the Pickens deputy.

He turned to see his men coming through the woods. All of them were splattered with the blood and gore of the battle. He finished the grim task of putting down Deputy Reilly and was wiping off his blade when something about one of the men caught his eye.

“Jeff, can you step over here,” the chief said, doing his best not to sound like he was about to explode from the frustration that was building exponentially with every new horrible discovery.

The man edged past the others looking both confused and concerned. As soon as he stepped into a beam of sun that was fighting to get through the canopy of trees overhead, Chief Adam Gilstrap winced as if he’d just been punched in the gut.

“Did you get bit by one of them things?” the chief asked, his eyes scanning the man for any sign of an injury. Unfortunately, the man was splattered with so much blood that it would be impossible to tell.

“No, sir,” the man replied. He obviously picked up on the concern in the chief’s voice because he began searching himself frantically.

“Just take it easy, son.” Chief Gilstrap reached into his years of training and dialed in the voice he used when talking to an accident victim. “I just want you to be still. We’ll get you back to town and get you cleaned up. Then we—”

“Jeff’s one of them things!” Isaiah Newkirk practically screamed as he backed away from Jeff while tugging at the field machete that he had been using.

“Shut up, Isaiah!” the chief barked. “You hear any of them things trying to talk?” The young man dropped his head sheepishly and shook it.

“Why do you think I’ve been bit?” Jeff asked. He took a step closer to the chief who moved a step back out of sheer reflex before he could catch himself.

“Your eyes, man!” Isaiah blurted. “They got them squiggly black lines in ‘em just like them monsters.”

“I said shut up, Isaiah!” Chief Gilstrap barked, spinning on the younger man.

He was immediately hit with a thought that gave his conscience a pang of guilt. In that instant, he’d wished it was this stupid, loudmouthed kid who was showing signs of being infected instead of a man like Jeff. His reasons were perhaps justifiable, but that did not make him feel any better about such thoughts.

Jeff Tucker was a family man with a wife and three kids. He was a regular fixture at various town events and an assistant coach for the Liberty Red Devils varsity football team. He was a leader for the men’s group at his church and even volunteered during the holidays to deliver food and gift baskets to those who were having tough times.

Isaiah Newkirk was nineteen if the chief’s memory served him. He wasn’t a bad kid, and hadn’t been in any real trouble that the chief could recall, but he would take one Jeff Tucker for every ten Isaiah Newkirks right about now.

“Let’s just get back to town and have somebody take a look at you. It’s probably nothing.” Chief Adam Gilstrap swallowed the bitterness of that lie and felt his stomach churn. He thought he might be telling a lot of those sorts of lies in the next few days.

The men waded out of the woods and emerged on the back side of the elementary school. Looking up at the sky, Chief Gilstrap guessed it to be around dinner time. The shadows were getting long and a damp chill was settling in the air. Clouds rolling in from the east looked to be carrying a lot of rain. It was going to be a long night.

Like last night wasn’t? a voice in his head mocked.

By the time they had reached the parking lot beside the school where they had all parked, he’d made another decision. He altered his course and put a hand on Jeff Tucker’s shoulder. “Why don’t you ride with me? I want to take you to get looked at.”

“Ah, man, can’t it wait?” Jeff groaned. “Sheila and the kids ain’t seen me since this morning. That town meeting probably has her scared out of her wits. Let me at least stop in for a minute and see them.”

“I can’t do it, Jeff.” Reaching over and opening the back door of the cruiser, he gave a nod. “This is for the best. We can see a doctor and then I will take you home personally.”

Jeff glanced down at the back door that was open and waiting. He looked back up at the chief with eyes that almost appeared to grow worse in the span of a few seconds. There was a hint of sadness that warred with the fear that had pushed through.

“You’re a lousy liar, Adam. That’s why we always invite you to card night.” Without another word, Jeff ducked into the back of the police cruiser and pulled the door shut.

Chief Adam Gilstrap looked around. Liberty, South Carolina was a quiet town. Sure, there were dust ups and a few bad eggs, but for the most part, this was a good town full of good people. There had been lean times and plentiful; but what lay ahead was something so beyond belief that he wondered how these everyday men and women would fare. This would be a test that none of them had studied for, and he was certain there would be failures.

He looked down at the bandage on his hand. Since nobody had reacted, he was certain that his eyes had not changed. But if his hadn’t and Jeff’s had, what did that mean? How would they know if Jeff was infected? How would he know that he wasn’t?

“Something tells me this is going to go from bad to worse in a real quick hurry.”

The chief opened his door and climbed in the car. He turned the key and his radio went crazy. He turned it down so that he could hopefully get a better grasp on what the voice on the other end was screaming.

“…just tell my wife that I love her, and that I’m sorry!” a voice said through what sounded like clenched teeth.

***

Clifton Martin pulled the phone from his ear and looked at it with a scowl. It had taken him almost an hour to get his call to go through. He knew that Sophie was going to be worried sick.

If she’d seen even a fraction of what he’d already witnessed, she would be absolutely terrified. But if she had gone down to the highway, then perhaps she knew more than he was giving her credit for. She was a smart woman, and despite the improbability of what was happening, she would not take long to connect the dots and figure things out for what they were.

When there’s no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the earth. That classic movie line echoed in his head as Clifton “Cliff” Lawrence stuffed the phone belonging to his friend and fellow paramedic partner Terry Gibbs into his back pocket and took one more look around.

He was outside the emergency room entrance to Pickens Memorial Hospital. The sun was just coming up and he knew it was going to be a long day. He tipped the paper cup to his mouth and downed the last of the absolutely repugnant hospital vending machine coffee and grimaced.

A line of military trucks were filing into the parking area. Already a series of white tents were up and at least a dozen more were in various stages. The past several people to arrive at the emergency admittance area with bites or scratches had been sent over to the tents. That was not what was troubling Cliff. His eyes drifted over to the long, dark green tents with the big trailers in a row behind it.

In the past ten minutes while he’d been outside trying to get his call to go through, he’d seen at least twenty people carted into that long tent. They had the sheets all the way up in that universal sign for being dead, yet he kept seeing movement at the far end that looked like people being escorted to the trailers by men in full HAZMAT gear. The ones being escorted were being goaded along at the end of those types of poles that you see alligator wranglers use.

With a sigh, he headed into the hospital. It was almost like hitting a wall as the sounds of people crying and moaning and screaming came in a massive wave. The waiting room was absolute chaos. It was unlike anything that he’d ever witnessed in his life. This sort of thing might happen in the big cities, but in someplace rural like Pickens, South Carolina, that was just not the case.

A soldier in one of the doorways saw him enter and waved him over. “You need to stay inside from this point on, sir,” the fresh-faced young man said.

“I told the captain that I needed to let my wife know I was okay. He gave me the go ahead to go outside and use the phone.”

“Yes, sir,” the soldier said curtly. “And now the new order is that all personnel are to remain indoors until further notice. There is a concern that this might be spread through airborne vectors.”

Cliff knew a line of bull when he heard it. There was absolutely no indication that whatever was causing this bizarre illness could be spread in such a manner. Somebody was reaching, fabricating an excuse to keep them inside. That meant they were starting to get scared. They damn well should be, he thought as he simply gave the soldier his most polite smile and nod before edging past and entering the emergency room.

If the lobby was chaos, then this was perhaps a window cracked open to the pits of hell. There were doctors and nurses flitting about from one sectioned-off patient to the next. Many were splattered with blood and swapping out of their dirty gear and into fresh stuff with a speed of a super model backstage at a fashion show.

The orderlies were doing their best to keep the supplies of fresh gloves, scrubs, and other assorted necessities as well stocked as possible, but it was a losing cause. Shouts for more gauze, gloves, alcohol and any other number of items echoed off the walls in a steady thunder. Interspersed under this madness were the sounds of heart monitors. Some were beeping, but others were sounding the “flatline” alarm.

People were dying faster than the soldiers could wheel them out. Almost on cue, two soldiers in protective gear hurried past with a gurney. The body was fully covered with a sheet. The pristine white linen was marred by a huge, dark red stain near the left shoulder.

“All I need now is Sarah Polley in a set of scrubs,” Cliff whispered as he stopped at the first curtained patient area on his left and glanced at the chart sticking out of the fiberglass holder with the corresponding number. He scanned the assessment.

Patient reports being bitten by wife…

He grabbed the next one.

…injuries on left forearm consistent with human bite…

The next.

…three separate sets of teeth marks consistent with patient’s account of having been bitten by three young women…

One after another they all told pretty much the same story. This was way too similar to the zombie movies that he’d seen over the years. People were being bitten by others and then becoming drastically ill, dying, sitting back up, and continuing the cycle. Add that to what he had seen with his own two eyes in the ambulance, and he was almost certain that he knew what was going on—despite how improbable or fantastic it might seem.

This had all the makings of the zombie apocalypse. So why in the hell was he still here in the hospital? Why wasn’t he hauling ass for home to be with his wife and son? Did he think he was going to be the one person to come up with some magical answer and solve this fantastic problem, set the world right, and then become a global hero?

Heroes die way too often in these little horror stories, he thought as he took a more sharp-eyed look around the emergency room. And that brought up another thought: he always hated when some father or parental type decided that it is more important that they try to help everybody else to the exclusion of his own family. He had always called bullshit on those moments.

“No dad is just going to bail on his wife or kid to go help a bunch of strangers because he wants to set a good example in the middle of the freaking apocalypse,” he would argue.

And yet, here he was. In the emergency room of the hospital getting ready to wade in and hold clamps for people that were going to either bleed out or just up and die only to reanimate in a few minutes and attack anything around them that was still living.

He glanced at the door that led back to the waiting room. That was a bust. The soldier he’d had brief words with about being outside the hospital was standing there with his rifle slung over his shoulder and hands on his hips like he was something important.

Turning away from the curtain, he headed past the nurse’s station and ducked around a corner that led to the x-ray and ultrasound area. He was amazed when he discovered gurneys lined up and down the right-hand wall. All of them had occupants with visible wounds in a variety of places.

“Hey, mister?” a scared voice called him from the second gurney that he passed. Looking down, he saw a girl who looked to be around ten years old.

Cliff stopped. The girl was strapped down to her gurney and had two very nasty bites on her left shoulder and right forearm that had been cleaned and bandaged. However, there was something else about her that grabbed his attention. The girl’s eyes were shot full of black tracers that gave her a sinister appearance despite her being just a child.

He took a step towards the girl when a scream from back in the direction of the emergency room snapped his head around. A moment later, that scream was joined by others. The sounds of pain were nothing new to Cliff. His years as a paramedic had helped him become accustomed to such things but this was different. The person—people, he corrected himself as other such screams begin to join the first—doing the screaming were expressing a level of pain he’d never heard in all his time in the field.

He looked back down at the girl and staggered back a step. Her eyes had shut and she was now coated in a greasy looking sweat that had her blond hair stuck to her forehead. Her breathing was coming in short pants and the pallor of her skin was unhealthy and waxy.

“I have to get home,” he stated out loud more to convince his own feet to start moving.

Stepping his speed up to a jog, Cliff Martin wove through the windowless maze of this section of the hospital and came to one of the other lobbies. He skidded to a stop when he saw a pair of military trucks parked right outside the series of doors that opened to an area that was curiously empty.

This was the general reception lobby of the hospital and would never be empty during normal weekday working hours. Of course it wasn’t technically empty at the moment. He counted ten soldiers stationed in the open lobby. A pair of them were heading his way and he ducked back down the corridor he’d come down to reach this point.

Stopping at the stairwell, he gave the door a tug and sighed in relief when it opened. He stepped inside and started up. He was now on pretty unfamiliar ground. Sure, he’d come to this hospital countless times, but he certainly had not been wandering the corridors.

When he reached the second floor, he opened the door and stepped into a long hall that was lined with rooms on either side. He spied the nurse’s station and felt his heart sink. Two soldiers were already there and one of them had looked up when he opened the door. There was no chance for him to get away without being seen.

“You aren’t supposed to be up here,” one of the men said, getting up from his seat behind the desk.

“I was—” he began, only to be cut off.

“Save it, pal. You and I both know that whatever was about to come out of your mouth was a big lie.”

Cliff raised his hands when both soldiers brought up their rifles and aimed them in his direction. As they started toward him, he noticed that one of the men had an arm that was bandaged up. His heart came up to his throat when the man came close enough that Cliff could actually see the man’s eyes clearly. They were just like the girl’s downstairs.

“Were you bit?” Cliff asked trying to keep his voice as calm as possible.

“Barely broke the skin,” the soldier scoffed.

“You may still be infected,” Cliff pointed out. “How long ago, and are you feeling okay?”

“It was a couple of hours ago. Like I said, barely broke the skin. Damned thing got my hand as I was changing out magazines.”

“So you have already been fighting with these people?” Cliff asked

“Stow that comment, private!” the other soldier barked before the private could answer. “This is still need-to-know material.”

“Why would you think I am infected?” the private’s voice showed just a hint of concern. His companion and apparent supervisor moved around in front of the agitated private, effectively turning his back on Cliff.

“I said stow it, Private Fenton!” The man put a finger under the other soldier’s chin and started to say something else when he apparently noticed what Cliff had been pointing out. “Our orders…Jesus Christ! Okay, I need you to set down your weapon and hand me your radio.”

“What? Why?” the private practically whined. He took a step back and started to shift his weapon.

There was a very loud report as the other soldier acted first and shot the private in the forehead. From his angle, the entire scene played out in a surreal slowness as he saw the flash from the muzzle, a sudden dark circle appearing just a bit off center of the private’s forehead, and then an explosion of brain, bone, and blood as the bullet exited the back of the private’s skull in an explosion of gore.

Cliff started back a few steps, but the remaining soldier spun on him with his weapon raised. “Don’t you move an inch.”

“Look, I don’t want any trouble. I don’t know anything, I didn’t see anything, I—” Cliff babbled, his mouth suddenly dry and his need to urinate growing by the second.

“Shut up!” the soldier barked, jabbing his gun forward for emphasis. “And you could tell anybody you damn well please, but it wouldn’t matter. We have standing orders to put down anybody we encounter that might be infected.”

Cliff heard the emphasis on the word ‘might’ and felt his stomach tighten. If he wasn’t careful, he would have a very unfortunate accident. Only, at the moment, that was way down on his list of things to be worried about. The barrel of the gun pointed at him seemed like the mouth of a cannon.

Do cannons have mouths? he wondered briefly. That thought filled his mind with the most peculiar images, and now he started to laugh. He was pretty sure that his sanity was cracking under the pressure and he was losing his mind.

The soldier cocked his head to the side as he regarded Clifton Martin. “You think this shit is funny?”

“Not at all,” Cliff managed as he struggled to get his hysteria under control. “I think we are screwed seven ways to Sunday. My question to you is how long are you going to just follow orders blindly. You have to be seeing what is going on. Hell, you probably know better than me.”

The soldier considered Cliff’s words for a moment and then looked around like he expected somebody would suddenly burst onto the scene and catch him doing something he shouldn’t. He lowered his weapon.

“You aren’t a doctor.” That was a statement, not a question. “You a medic or something?”

Cliff glanced down and realized that he had taken off his jacket at some point. His light blue shirt and dark pants lacked any sort of patch. He’d been meaning to put them on his new shirts, but he’d been in a hurry when he left earlier this morning and had grabbed what was clean without realizing that he was technically out of uniform.

“I’m a paramedic from Liberty,” Cliff said. “My partner and I had just transported a girl. She coded on the trip and then sat up. She got a bite out of my partner before we could restrain her. They took both of them as soon as we arrived.”

“Then you won’t ever see them again,” the soldier said flatly. “Nobody has come out of quarantine in any of the locations that I have been in contact with over the past few days.”

“Past few days?” Cliff shouted and then continued in a volume closer to normal after getting a grip on himself. “You mean this has been going on for a while and nobody is hearing anything about it? How the hell is that possible?”

“Since Kentucky, the orders have been for us to move fast and leave nothing behind. The plan is to make a statement when we get this under control.”

“I don’t think that is going to happen.”

“You have no idea,” the soldier said with a sadness that seemed like it was more of a thought that was mistakenly revealed out loud.

“It’s that bad?” Cliff gasped.

“Worse…way worse. Word just came in few days ago that we have lost all contact with Japan.”

“You mean like our embassy?”

“No.” The soldier looked Cliff in the eyes and his lips pressed tight as if the words themselves were painful. “I mean the entire country.”

“That’s not possible.”

Cliff had always been quick to dismiss conspiracy theory nuts. He’d actually started boycotting The History Channel when it started showing a series of UFO and ghost hunting programs. Maybe a channel like SyFy could get away with that sort of thing, but when he turned on The History Channel, he wanted…well…he wanted history. Real history.

“Oh, the façade doesn’t have much longer before it shatters. You can only put your finger in so many holes before the dam gives way and the waters crash through. Rumor has it that a Special Forces team has been dispatched to Ohio to get the president’s daughter.”

Cliff realized that he had staggered back and ended up sitting in one of the chairs against the wall for people to use as they waited for prescriptions. His head popped up and he looked to the right, past the dead body sprawled on the floor in a pool of blood that almost looked black on the dark blue tile. The sign on the wall with the arrow almost grew before his eyes. If this was everything that he believed it could become, then…

“Are you going to shoot me?” Cliff got up and took a step towards the soldier.

The man seemed to consider it, and then he slung his rifle over his shoulder. “You got any ideas?”

“For starters, we need to get away from this hospital. I give it less than an hour before it becomes a place of nightmares.”

“A bit dramatic, don’tcha think?”

“Considering what is happening and how exponentially fast it will grow? Nope. I think I am about as cool and calm as I can be.”

“Okay, so how do you think you are going to get out of here?” The soldier walked to the big floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto the large parking lot below. “Looks to me like the place is pretty well secured.”

“The tents!” Cliff finally blurted after thinking it over. He glanced over at the body on the floor. “If we put your friend there on a gurney and wheel him to the quarantine tents. You can be like my escort. Once we get there, I am sure we can slip out and duck into the woods.”

“You’re dreaming, pal. The tents are where the security is the highest.”

Cliff considered that statement. He looked outside as well and saw all the trucks that were parked around the outer edges of the parking lot. There had to be at least two hundred soldiers jogging back and forth or setting up what they probably considered a secure perimeter.

After a moment, an idea came. It was a terrible idea. It would be risky, but it was also perhaps his best chance to get out of this place alive. He wasn’t sure that the soldier would go along with it, but Cliff was a realist. The movies might always offer some sort of way to sneak out, or perhaps the guy playing his part might be a master of martial arts and be able to karate chop his way out of this place. Clifton Martin was none of those things. And he couldn’t outrun a bullet. He had no choice but to share his plan and hope that this soldier would come along. It was the only way he saw that would offer him even the slightest chance of seeing his wife Sophie and their son Lawrence again.

As he laid out his idea, Cliff saw reluctance and skepticism slowly turn to hope and enthusiasm. It was going to be risky, and the easiest part would be the first part. After that, it was going to be a roll of the dice.

“I never even asked your name,” the soldier finally said as the two men opened the door to a small custodial store room full of cleaning supplies.

“Clifton Martin, but my friends call me Cliff, so I guess you can too,” he tried to joke. The soldier considered the statement for a moment and then gave a shrug. “And you, how about your name.”

“George Hoyle.” The soldier glanced down at the insignia on his collar and then sighed. “Just got my promotion to sergeant, but I doubt that will be worth a damn in a few days.”

“Under the circumstances, you may be more valuable than you believe.”

“Says the guy with medical training,” George snorted.

“If this goes as bad as it’s looking, you better believe that order and everything that has held us together will decay and crumble. A man who knows how to think with a tactical mind is going to be pretty valuable if we have to start defending ourselves from raiders, looters…and worse.”

“You make it sound like we’re gonna end up living out some sorta Road Warriors scenario,” George chuckled as he settled down on the floor with his back against the inward opening door.

“Actually, I think it will be worse than any movie could hope to portray. Hollywood had to worry about offending people and putting butts in the seats. I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to the news, but there are some sick bastards out there.” Cliff couldn’t help but shudder.

“I got news for ya, pal,” George said with a grimace as he closed his eyes and did his best to ignore the screams that were now starting to grow in frequency and intensity. “They’ve always been out there. We just hear about them more because somebody decided that more folks would stay tuned in to the news if they knew a terrible story was coming up after a commercial break.”

Cliff winced as another scream tore from somebody’s throat as they begged for anybody to help. He reached over and switched off the light. Sitting down, he wondered if maybe he wasn’t much better than some of those horrible people. Sure, he wasn’t out there victimizing others, but he wasn’t lifting a finger to help those who so obviously needed it.

***

“…here at World Wide News have just been given the following statement from the White House.”

The person behind the desk had the haggard look of a man who’d been up for several hours and not seen a razor in a day or two. His button-up shirt was open at the collar and the tie had been pulled loose. He leaned forward as if he might be having trouble seeing the teleprompter.

“A state of martial law has been called for by the president and is now being approved by Congress. State officials will be given instructions as soon as the vote, which is expected to be approved with almost no opposition, is complete. Until then, residents are now urged to remain home unless you or a loved one has been injured by a person showing the most commonly reported signs of infection which we will keep up on the right hand side of the screen for reference. You are to bring them to the nearest local emergency room or mobile military medical unit. Several such locations have been set up and your local stations should have a list of these places. Do not attempt to care for the injured person by yourself. The later stages of infection are the most dangerous. This is the time when the person infected may lash out or attack friends and loved ones. It is also when the chance for infection is apparently greatest. The president still intends to address the nation this evening and give a statement on actions being taken and how best to avoid becoming infected.”

The newsman sat back in his chair and rubbed at his eyes. A look of fear crossed his face as he glanced to one side for just a moment.

“Fine, I’m reading it, just relax,” he muttered and then sat up straight again, doing his best to look professional, but the camera had zoomed in tight and a bead of sweat could be seen trickling down from his left temple.

“Due to such a high volume of calls, networks across the country have overloaded, and as you may have noticed, there is almost no cell or landline service. You are asked to refrain from using these services while repairs are being made and service is being restored.

“If you are in need of help, or if a member of your family has possibly been exposed to this infection and you are unable to reach one of the emergency shelters or medical centers, you are asked to hang a sheet in your front window. That will alert the patrols in your area of your need for assistance and they will render aid as soon as possible.

“Additionally, due to the high volume of individuals affected by this outbreak, area power companies are operating with skeleton crews in many cases, so you are asked to minimize your power consumption. These measures are temporary, but your cooperation will help as civil leaders strive to get things back to normal as soon as possible.”

The reporter once again looked off camera. He leaned over as if trying to hear something and then pushed back from the desk and walked off camera leaving a wall of monitors behind him that normally played a variety of field clips, but now were strangely blank except for the test pattern. There was a pause as the cable news network’s logo filled the screen and then the message was repeated where it would run on a loop for the next hour.  

7

Cliff

Cliff’s head jerked back as he came awake with a start. It banged against the wall with a dull thud and he winced, his hand coming up to rub the spot.

“Welcome back,” a voice whispered in the darkness.

It took him a minute to catch himself up, but slowly it all came back to Clifton Martin. He recalled the girl that had died in transit and then sat up and bit his partner Terry Gibbs, the apparent military takeover of the hospital and how Terry had been sent to a quarantine area, his decision to try and help in the chaotic emergency room and the much-too-late realization that it was an exercise in futility. Then he’d met Sergeant George Hoyle; a soldier who had not taken much convincing to abandon his post as the sounds of screams began to echo through the hospital.

That felt as if it had been so long ago. At one point, he remembered hearing screams coming from what sounded like right outside the door of the janitor’s closet where they had hidden. He forced down the pangs of guilt over simply hiding out as the zombies overwhelmed the people in the hospital. But then he reminded himself that it was freaking zombies for crying out loud. He knew how this story was going to end and had decided to try and give himself a chance at getting back to his wife and son.

“You snore, by the way,” George Hoyle quipped. “I had to reach over and plug your nose twice. I was afraid you would bring those things down on us.”

“What time is it?” Cliff asked, his voice a bit scratchy. He needed water.

A tiny glow that seemed incredibly bright in the relative darkness flashed for a moment as George checked the watch on his wrist. “Almost eighteen hundred hours.”

“You think it’s safe for us to try and make our way out of here?” Cliff pushed himself up to his feet and stretched as much as he was able in the confined space.

“I haven’t heard any screams or shooting in a few hours,” George yawned as he made it to his feet as well. “There were a couple of them things pawing at our door a while ago, but they eventually went away. Which brings me to a point, you don’t just go to sleep. You freaking die. I swear to God, a bomb could have gone off outside the door and I doubt that you would have budged.”

“Remind me to tell you about the time I apparently slept through my mom and dad kicking in the front door because they were locked out and I slept through their banging on it, ringing the bell, yelling until they were hoarse.”

“How big was your house?” George said with a chuckle.

“Not that big, but I was asleep on the living room floor about eight or so feet from the door, so it could have been a mansion, that doesn’t really affect the outcome.”

“More good information to have,” George whispered as he opened the door just enough to let in a sliver of light. After he paused and was apparently happy that there was nothing that posed an immediate threat, he opened the door the rest of the way to reveal a lobby that now looked more like the killing floor of a slaughter house than a hospital waiting area.

There had been an unpleasant odor that, up to this point, Cliff had tried to dismiss as being perhaps something that one or both of them had gotten splattered with or stepped in from earlier, but when a wave of it rolled in through the open door causing both men to gag and cover their mouths and noses, he knew better. He’d been around his fair share of dead bodies. Heck, he’d even been on the scene of a lady that had apparently died and remained undiscovered for a few days until a friend made the awful discovery. None of that was anything like this. He could not recall anything in his life that could even remotely compare…except maybe the hint of it that he got when he was driving the ambulance to the hospital and his partner had called out that the girl in the back that coded was trying to sit up.

“Holy…” George’s words died in his throat as two figures stumbled in from the hallway to their left. Both were wearing army uniforms.

“That is the way I came from. The ER is that way. Maybe we could—” Cliff’s suggestion was cut off as three more came in from the right.

This group looked like one doctor and two patients. His eyes could not tear away from the doctor who looked as if perhaps he’d been leaning down close to one of the undead when it lunged and caught him. His entire nose was gone, leaving a hideous hole and a face that was a mask of blackening blood.

“Well, I didn’t figure we’d get out of here easy,” George finally said as he unslung his rifle and brought it up to his shoulder.

Cliff saw the action and reached over, slapping the weapon down. “You want to tell the world we are here?”

“They’re dead,” George snapped, jerking away angrily.

“Yeah, but if anybody managed to survive and is still in the area, they will hear us.” Cliff paused and looked over at first the twosome, then the trio. “They’re slow and uncoordinated. I don’t think we want to head back towards the emergency room because that is where the biggest concentration of people was from what I saw. If we can move around behind the information desk and lure those three in a bit, we should be able to scoot out the other side and make it to the hallway with no problems.”

George gave a shrug. “Fine, we can try, but what do you suggest we use as a weapon if we actually do have to take down any of these things?”

Cliff reached into the custodian’s closet and pulled out a pair of push-brooms. He handed one to George who stepped back like he was being offered a venomous snake.

“What the hell do you want me to do with that?” the man exclaimed.

Cliff snapped his handle in two pieces over his knee after quickly unscrewing the head from the four foot long wooden shaft. He walked up to the closest zombie and drove the broken tip into its eye socket and jerked back as the thing crumpled to the floor in a heap.

Not waiting for the soldier, he moved to the pair that were relatively close together and repeated the gesture on each in quick succession. By the time he’d dropped all three, George was at his side.

“I don’t understand how this is getting out of control so fast,” Cliff remarked as the pair started down the long hallway, being careful at every intersection and open doorway. “These things are slow and pretty easy to take down.”

They rounded a corner and he felt that last comment die on his tightening throat. Up ahead was a long, brightly lit hall that ended in another open waiting room of some sort. Wandering around in that room had to be at least forty of the walking dead; mixed in amongst them were several children between the ages of as young as three or four up to their early teens.

“The pediatric ward,” Cliff groaned. “Maybe we should turn back and try the other way.”

“I thought that you said the ER was a nightmare and likely with the heaviest possible population,” George reminded.

Cliff could not force himself to move forward. He suddenly understood how this had perhaps grown so out of control in such a short span. The thought of driving his makeshift weapon into the face of some child was just not fathomable.

“Don’t you go and check out on me now,” George hissed, giving Cliff an elbow in the ribs for good measure. “What’s on the other side of that area?”

Cliff thought about it for a moment. He brightened slightly. “There is another hallway, a nurse’s lounge, and then the cafeteria which has doors opening to outside.”

“Then that is where we need to go.” The soldier looked at him and scowled. “Look, Cliff, them ain’t real kids…not anymore they ain’t. They are monsters just like the big versions.” When it was clear that Cliff was still unsure, he added, “If it makes you feel any better, I’ll take down any of the little ones who get close. You just take down the adults. Clear?”

Cliff felt his face grow warm with embarrassment, but he nodded. Deep down, he knew that those things staggering around up the hall were not living people; but that didn’t make his heart ache any less. That had always been his biggest problem in the field. He hated when his calls involved a child. It was the stuff that gave him nightmares.

The pair started up the hall and were not halfway to the open area when one of them obviously noticed the two living beings coming towards it. It was a woman in olive drab fatigues, an empty holster at her hip. Cliff veered towards her and ignored the fact that she had most of her throat ripped out and her left arm savaged down to the bone almost all the way from her elbow to her wrist to the point where he could see the ulna and the radius amidst the tattered remains of muscle that hung in strands.

He ended her quickly and then his eyes spied something that made his pulse quicken with a little positive excitement. A large knife was still in its sheath at the woman’s hip. He knelt down to grab it but had to stop when two more of the adult versions came his way.

“Loot later, we just need to get to the exit!” George barked.

“I wasn’t looting,” Cliff grunted as he jabbed his wooden weapon up under the chin of the closer of the two zombies. “I was…ouch!” Cliff yanked his right hand back, shaking it vigorously. When he’d stabbed the zombie, the piece of broom handle had gotten caught and turned his wrist fiercely as the body fell like somebody had just pulled the plug.

“Son of a—” George started to curse, but Cliff cut him off.

“I didn’t get bit. I just got my wrist turned wrong when my poker got stuck in that damn zombie’s head.”

Cliff still had the one section of broom handle and adjusted his attack to be sure to avoid repeating the same mistake again. He jabbed and poked his way across the open lobby of the pediatric area, doing everything in his power to avoid looking at the zombie children. He was doing fine until he had reached the nurse’s desk. That was when he literally tripped over a little girl that was hunched down almost on all fours. At first, he thought that he’d found perhaps the one sole surviving needle in this hellish haystack. Then his eyes saw the busted ribs jutting from the child’s torso and the nasty rip in her belly. That brought the rest of her into focus and he did not see how he had ever thought, even for a moment, that this child could have been alive. She was covered in drying blood and her eyes had the look he now associated with the giveaway sign of the undead—besides the fact that they walked around with life-ending injuries, that is.

Then it struck him. This child did not attack. In fact, as he scooted away from her and tried to scramble to his feet, she simply remained hunched down. She watched him, her head twitching and cocking from one side to the other. Then she surprised him even more by scooting away from him.

Getting to his feet, he took off at a jog towards the hall that would eventually lead to the exit. They took two turns as his eyes kept watch for the signs and arrows that pointed to the cafeteria. At last it came into view and his heart felt like it fell through the floor.

The doors had been ripped off the hinges at some point. Inside, there were well over a hundred of the walking dead roaming about. Some were so badly damaged that they couldn’t walk as they were missing one or even both legs. That was of little comfort.

“Son of a bitch!” George groaned again.

The two men turned and only made it to the first corner before they skidded to a stop once more. All the zombies they hadn’t killed back in the lobby of the pediatric wing had fallen in behind them in pursuit. Also, it looked like they had picked up some company along the way. To Cliff’s dismay, it seemed there were now twice as many child zombies as there were adult.

“Now what?” Cliff almost choked on a sob of frustration as he posed the rhetorical question.

“The hall is too constricting. We have a better chance trying to get through the cafeteria,” George answered, not realizing that Cliff hadn’t actually expected a response to what seemed to him to be a hopeless situation.

Cliff felt fear start to paralyze him, and he could not move as he stared at the approaching horde led by children including the little girl that he had tripped over. He wanted to run, but nothing his brain did could make his feet react. A sudden stinging pain to his cheek made him blink his eyes and shake his head clear.

“Don’t you fucking quit on me, man!” George was in his face. “This was your plan, and we are going to get out of here, but you need to pull it together. Now c’mon.”

George jerked his arm and they retraced their steps back towards the infested cafeteria. It actually looked worse the second time he saw it. Right in the doorway was a man who had been ripped in half by the looks of things. Actually, all that remained was his upper torso with the head and right arm still intact. There was an almost black trail streaming away from the abomination, and it ended at what remained of his lower half.

One zombie still sat on the floor munching on what Cliff was going to assume had to be the left arm. It was paying them no attention whatsoever as they approached, but that lone zombie was the minority. Despite their having moved quietly, several heads turned their direction when they reached the mangled entry doors.

“On three, we break left and right and run like mad,” George breathed. “Staying close won’t help us here. And maybe if we split up, it will confuse them or something.” The soldier laughed, but it sounded forced. “If one of us goes down, the other has to keep running. The first one out hops into the first military truck he sees and gets the engine running. Wait as long as is safe, and then haul ass if the other one doesn’t make it out.”

“They leave the keys in the ignition on those things?” Cliff asked dubiously.

“Actually, none of them require keys. The last thing you want to worry about if you need to roll out in a hurry is finding the keys. They have a master switch. So jump in and get the baby running if you get out first.”

Cliff nodded and looked at the best possible path for him. He was on the left and that meant he had the checkout counter. If he could make it there, then maybe he could run along the back side of the food shelves.

George patted him on the shoulder and then gave the countdown. Cliff took off at a fast jog. He did not feel safe going at an all-out sprint simply because the floor was a minefield of spilled food and pools of blood. If he slipped and fell, he might suffer more than just a sprained ankle or a bruised ego.

He reached the cashier’s station and peeked behind it to make sure there wasn’t one of those things on the floor. He breathed a sigh of relief and then scooted along down the narrow alley between the food counter and a wall with a series of windows where food was often passed through to re-supply things as the day wore on.

He could see the door and a new rush of adrenaline had him speed up a little bit more. He was a mere few steps away when he heard a yelp. He actually slammed into the door—he’d been moving too fast—but as he pushed it open, he glanced to his right. George was between a pair of tables and was kicking at something that apparently had him by the leg.

“Run dammit!” the soldier hollered as he brought one foot up and stomped down hard on whatever had a grip on his leg.

Cliff looked outside and saw even more of the undead wandering the open lot. Several of the tents had come down and many were stained with blood. Two of the vehicles were now smoldering hulks, and the entire area looked like some of the scenes he remembered from the evening news when some city or town in the Middle East had been the location for some horrible firefight.

Unable to help himself as another scream came from the cafeteria, Cliff looked back. What he saw almost caused him to double over and be sick. One of the zombies had gotten behind George and bit down hard on the meaty part of where his shoulder connected to his neck. There was a spray of blood and he swore he could see the sinews of the man’s flesh stretch and then tear away. Another pair of the creatures had him by the arm on the same side and were biting and tugging. The limb tore free and the soldier screamed in a way that hurt Cliff’s heart it was so horrific.

The soldier made eye contact with him and Cliff saw the man’s mouth move. “Run,” he gurgled just before blood dribbled from both corners and then flowed down his chin.

Cliff backed out of the cafeteria and into the chilly open air of the evening. He had to shove away one of the closer zombies. This one had been a soldier. Cliff’s eyes lit on the man’s belt and saw another amazing looking knife. He would have preferred a gun, but it was likely that most of them had been dropped at some point. The problem being that that point was apparently not in this general vicinity. He took the zombie down in short order and jerked the knife free, not risking the time he would lose if he tried to remove the belt or the sheath

He spotted the closest truck but had to avoid that one. A soldier that had turned into a zombie was sitting in the cab. He could probably yank it out and hop in, but there were three other trucks not too far away and they all looked empty.

Taking off at a run, Cliff no longer felt the need to be cautious. The ground was relatively clear, and the blood stains on the asphalt were not likely to cause him to slip and fall. He ducked, dodged, and sidestepped every zombie along the way and finally reached the door of one of the large vehicles.

Yanking it open, Cliff climbed into the driver’s seat and searched for the button to start the engine. He pulled the door shut as the powerful engine roared to life. Putting the big vehicle into gear, he started across the parking lot towards the exit.

He was veering around the zombies as much as possible, wincing when the bumper on one side or the other would clip one of the creatures that now all seemed to be converging on his location. He was just about to exit the lot and hang a right onto W G Acker Drive when a figure stumbled into the path of his truck.

Instinctively, Cliff slammed on the brakes. Up until now, he had been able to dismiss the zombies as anything human—with the exception of his problem with the child versions. They were just anonymous monsters that he had to get past in order to get home to his wife and son. Yes, the child versions had been a problem, but he still felt he’d been able to see the creatures mostly for what they truly were; until now.

Standing directly in front of him was the man who had been his partner in the field for the past four years. While there was an obvious transformation, and the face seemed to hang a bit slack on the skull, he still recognized Terry Gibbs.

“Oh, Terry,” Cliff barely choked out his partner’s name.

The man with whom he’d spent almost more time with than his own wife was standing there just staring at him with those horrible dead eyes. The bandages were now black and looked filthy. His mouth was a mask of darkness from where he had apparently attacked somebody.

Cliff considered what to do. If the situation were reversed, he hoped that Terry would do him the kindness of putting him down for good. That was exactly what he had to do now. He had to put the man down. It would not be like he was killing his former partner despite how this felt.

That was not Terry Gibbs any longer. That was a monster wearing a distorted version of Terry’s face. Cliff put the truck in park and glanced around to gauge how much time he had before things might get a little bit dicey. He decided that, if he hurried, he could do this one last thing for his former co-worker and friend.

Opening the door, the first thing that hit Cliff was that smell. With the walking dead all around, it was permeating the air. He did not think he would ever be able to get that stench out of his nostrils.

Gripping the knife he had just liberated, he approached the zombie that had handed him a cup of coffee this morning and complained that it was looking like it might be a long day. With each step, he felt his resolve waver. Yes, he needed to put his friend to rest; but was this still his friend in any way, shape, or form?

“Stop trying to chicken out,” Cliff whispered to himself.

Zombie Terry was now making its slow, awkward way towards him. Looking around the parking lot, he could see so many other dark shadows milling about. This was well beyond being out of control.

It no longer mattered how this had happened. As far as he was concerned, it was now a point of simply accepting it and trying to survive.

He took the last few steps towards his target and brought the knife up. He initially intended to just stick it into one of those milky, tracer-riddled eyes. His hand started to shake, and he had to swat away dead hands that reached for him. His resolve was about to fade when one of those cold hands brushed the back of his warm, live ones.

That isn’t Terry, a voice screamed inside his head. Terry is dead, and that thing is an abomination to his memory.

“Rest in peace, partner,” Cliff said with a sob as he gripped the zombie by the shoulder and then drove his blade into the temple.

Terry fell to the ground, eyes still seeming to stare up at him. Cliff knelt and brushed a hand down the man’s face, closing those eyes forever.

“I’m sorry I can’t take you back…give you a proper funeral. I don’t think anybody will be getting one of those for a long time.”

Cliff turned and started back for the truck. He winced at the bits of gore and viscera that clung to or dripped from the front bumper. He stepped around the door that he’d intentionally left opened and started to climb up into the cab.

Something clutched his ankle. To Cliff, it almost felt as if the world slowed down to slow-motion. One moment, he was climbing up, the next, he was tumbling backwards, his arms pin-wheeling for balance. He landed flat on his back with a painful expulsion of air. His head bounced back with an agonizing crack that caused his vision to blur.

It took him a few seconds to get his bearings and realize that he was now sprawled on a parking lot with perhaps hundreds of the walking dead converging on him. He rolled over onto his side and saw the culprit; crawling from underneath the truck was one of those pathetic zombies that had lost its lower half.

A hand was reaching desperately for his leg and grabbed him as he struggled to overcome the pain and disorientation of his fall. He had to get to his feet and get inside the truck. Moving was not coming as easily as it should and, while he had not had all the wind knocked from him, he was still hurting badly.

Forcing himself up to a seated position, he was ready to stick his knife into the top of this zombie’s head. He looked at his hand with amazement. It was empty. The zombie brought its head down to his right leg, hiding its ghoulish face as it bit down on his ankle.

Cliff tried to scream in pain but it was more of a weak mewling as he continued to struggle to suck oxygen into his lungs. He felt a white hot fire explode from that ankle as he watched the zombie’s head lift when it tore away a strip of flesh. He tried to kick free, but his effort was feeble and he only managed to shove the scrambling corpse back a mere few inches. It went in for another bite as Cliff tried to wriggle free and this time got a chunk of his calf as a reward. He was on his belly now, and starting to regain some of his sense and ability to move. He made it to his elbows and lunged forward, pulling free from the creeping death that craved another bite of his flesh.

Trying to get to his feet, Cliff saw them converging from all over the parking lot, drawn perhaps by the sounds of his struggle, or maybe the smell of his blood. He had no idea which might be true, but he knew that if he didn’t get into the cab of the truck, he would be torn apart. His screams would be like those he’d heard when the hospital fell, when the soldier had been pulled down in the cafeteria.

He managed to gain his footing, although he had to favor the injured right leg that dragged uselessly behind him now. He looked down at the half-corpse that was almost about to grab his foot once again. If it did, and it pulled him down, he knew that he would never make it back to his feet.

He hopped sideways and then past the outstretched arms and was now on the step that allowed him to climb up into the truck. Using all his strength, he heaved himself up and in, slamming the door behind him as he did so. He glanced out at the approaching mob and saw that he had just made it as dead hands slapped against the driver’s side window.

The faces that looked in at him were all slack and emotionless except for their hideous eyes which seemed to convey an evil menacing. Other than that, they could be wax figures for all the feeling they showed. There was no anger, pity, or remorse. They simply wanted to get to him and feed.

He had to shift a bit to get his left foot to the accelerator since his right was practically useless. He put the truck into drive and started forward, dragging along the ones that had been able to get a handhold and shoving aside others. He finally broke free from the cluster that had managed to reach the truck and turned right, exiting the hospital and heading for Highway 178.

He reached up to adjust the rearview mirror and his foot slipped off the gas pedal. The truck began to slow, but Cliff didn’t notice. The eyes staring back at him were his…but not. He could see the dark squiggles already appearing.

“No,” he whimpered. But he knew better.

He pushed on the accelerator again when he realized that the truck had come to a complete stop. The road ahead was dark with shadows and he turned on the headlights. He just needed to get home, but it wasn’t long before he knew that he would never make it. His vision was blurring and his body felt like it was on fire.

He slowed and looked around realizing that he was the only person on the road. That seemed impossible, but looking ahead and behind, he could see no signs of approaching headlights coming from either direction. Glancing down, he spied the communications radio and switched it on. There was a hiss of static and then nothing. He had to force himself to focus as he searched for the frequency that he knew emergency vehicles in Liberty used.

“Hello?” he said as he keyed the mic.

Once again there was a hiss of static, and then nothing. He tapped his forehead a few times to try and regain his focus and then tried again. The frustration grew as silence remained the only reply. A figure staggered across the highway at the edge of his headlights but did not seem interested in him and continued on.

He knew he had only covered about five of the ten miles that would bring him into Liberty. Home. His head dropped and he forced his eyes back open. There was a foul taste in the back of his throat that was very similar to the stench he associated with the undead. It made him gag, but he swallowed hard and tried the radio once more.

“Who is on this frequency?” a voice finally answered.

“This is Clifton Martin. I’m a paramedic from Liberty just coming south on Highway 178 from Pickens Hospital. The military failed to secure the location. There were mass casualties. The hospital has fallen, and I doubt there are any survivors…that includes the emergency and military personnel that were on hand.” Cliff’s thumb slid off the key and he leaned back in the driver’s seat. A shiver rippled through his body and his teeth began to chatter.

“Cliff? This is Ivan Potter.”

Cliff recognized the voice now. Ivan Potter was one of the members of the Liberty Police Department. He was Chief Gilstrap’s right hand man and his scrawny stature had earned him the nickname “Barney Fife” when he put on his badge. Most people that knew Ivan also knew that appearance was where the similarities ended.

Three years as a state wrestling champ, Ivan could tie up men twice his size with a graceful effortlessness that earned him the respect of anybody who saw him in action. He was about six feet tall and maybe a hundred and sixty pounds right after eating Thanksgiving dinner. He had jet black hair that he kept short and parted down the left side. He had dark blue eyes and a nose that even he called a beak due to its size and shape. None of that mattered the slightest to his wife Hannah who was considered by most to be perhaps the prettiest woman in town.

“Ivan…you need to warn everybody. It’s bad…very bad.” Cliff gasped and felt a surge of heat ripple through his body, followed by a chill that had him shivering. He knew this was just about all the time he had left. “I know this might seem impossible…but the dead…” His hand lost its grip and he had to struggle not to drop the radio’s mic. He knew that if it fell he would lack the strength to be able to pick it back up.

“Where are you, buddy?” Ivan asked calmly.

“On the highway. Took 178, but I just can’t keep going. I can’t see the road. I don’t want to crash and hurt somebody else.”

Cliff watched as a half dozen more of the terrible things crossed the road. One of them paused and turned his direction. Its mouth opened and Cliff imagined that it was moaning, but he couldn’t really hear anything over the buzz. It took him a few more seconds to realize that the buzz was the voice on the radio. He knew that voice. It was familiar. Only, now he couldn’t place it.

Another thought came as he stared blankly at the radio that now seemed to be shouting at him. The face of a woman filled his mind. She looked at him and smiled. A boy stepped up beside her and nestled under her arm. He knew that he should recognize them, but just as his own name had slipped from his memory, so did theirs.

It was like a surge of electricity jolting him awake. The names came and he knew who they were.

“I tried to make it home. I let people die just to give myself a chance. I failed. But I tried as hard as I could.” Tears ran down Cliff’s cheeks as he felt a new surge of fiery heat course through his veins. The terrible taste in the back of his throat now filled his mouth. “Please…just tell my wife that I love her, and that I’m sorry!”

More voices came and filled the cab with noise. He wanted to respond, but the strength seeped from his body and his hand finally lost its grip on the radio. Clifton Martin shut his eyes.

His breathing became short panting gasps. At last, he shuddered violently, all of his bodily functions firing off almost at once. A line of thick drool escaped the corner of his mouth; his eyes flew open one final time as he cried out.

Clifton Martin died. Ten minutes later, he opened his eyes.

***

Chief Gilstrap cursed and smacked the dashboard of his car. He would have to add Sophie Lawrence to the list of women he would be paying a visit to tonight to let them know that they were widows. As he pulled onto the road he wondered if maybe those who were dying now might not be making out with the best deal.

This was only going to get worse. As if to confirm his thoughts, Jeff Tucker let a soft moan slip from his lips.

“Adam, I swear to God I wasn’t bit,” the man croaked. “But I don’t know if I’m gonna make it. Don’t let me turn into one of them things.”

“I won’t.” He quickly got on his radio and called for Ivan to meet him in town.

Chief Gilstrap drove the short distance, his eyes scanning the streets as darkness fell and the lights began to come on. Eventually, he pulled up to the rear of the Baptist church across from the elementary school. Despite the relatively short trip, he had driven the entire way with one eye on his rearview mirror where he kept a watch on Jeff Tucker.

By the time that he reached the parking lot, the man had already slipped from consciousness and was covered in sweat. His body was being wracked by tremors and his teeth were clicking audibly.

He climbed out of the car just as another patrol car pulled up. Ivan emerged and shot a wary look in the back seat.

“You positive about this?” Ivan asked.

“No, but I am pretty damn sure.” Chief Gilstrap opened the back door.

The two men reached in and pulled the unresponsive body of Jeff Tucker from the backseat. Together, they carried him to the door of the church. Pastor Johnson opened the door and ushered the men inside.

“The news has finally mentioned there being no communication coming out from most of Asia. Also, there are riots in London, Berlin, and even Moscow. This isn’t just us. I guess that means it probably ain’t terrorists,” the pastor said in a rush.

“I still wouldn’t count them bastards out,” Ivan grumbled.

The three men made their way into the chapel. They laid the shivering body of Jeff Tucker down in the plastic tarp that the chief had told Ivan to request when he called the pastor.

“You should step out, pastor,” the chief said as he knelt beside the visibly ill man.

He was actually surprised when the pastor only retreated as far as the door. Looking up at Ivan, the chief saw that the man was standing with his head bowed, eyes shut, and lips moving in prayer. He doubted it would help, but he didn’t think it could hurt.

It took another five minutes, but suddenly, the body of Jeff Tucker began to convulse, and then, surprising all three of the living occupants of the room, sat bolt upright. The man threw his head back and his mouth opened in a silent scream before collapsing with a long, rattling exhale.

“I made him a promise,” Chief Gilstrap muttered more for himself than anything else. He removed his coat and put it over the head of the body. Drawing the knife that he now figured would probably be a constant companion from here on out, he placed the tip where he believed to be the location of Jeff’s temple and then gave one solid thrust.

8

Securing the Town

“…reports out of Washington say that the president and a select group of government officials have left for Air Force One…”

***

“…attempts in Ohio to secure the daughter of the president have reportedly failed…”

***

“…rogue elements of the armed forces led by a Major Wanda Beers have broken away and have not been heard from in over three days…”

***

“…be the first to share this footage. If what we are seeing is true, then God have mercy on our souls.”

There was a moment when the reporter simply stared ahead at the cameras, then the footage began to roll and filled the screen.

“Am I on?” the doctor asked whoever was operating the shaky, handheld video device.

“Yeah.” It was one word, but the voice made it clear that whoever was holding the camera was agitated.

“Good. To whomever is watching, I am Dr. Linda Sing of the CDC. I am here to reverse my earlier statement that these people that are instigating attacks are not the dead come back. After detailed observation of a specimen that had no vitals and had been declared dead, I was witness to that individual sitting up and attacking another person.

“There can be no doubt that this person was dead only moments before. However, after the specimen was restrained, numerous things were done that a living person could not endure, much less remain conscious during. Additionally, I can confirm that massive brain trauma seems to be the only method of dispatching these…individuals—”

“They’re fuckin’ zombies, you stupid bitch!” somebody off-camera yelled.

Dr. Sing glanced to the left and pursed her lips before continuing. “Simple decapitation is not entirely sufficient. While the body will become inert, the head still seems to function and a bite that transmits the infection can still occur.”

With that last statement, the doctor removed her glasses and leaned forward. It was not a necessary gesture. The dark traces in her eyes could be seen quite clearly.

“One of the telltale symptoms is the appearance of the darkening of the capillaries in the eye. If you are infected, I suggest you turn yourself over to the nearest FEMA center or military checkpoint. The only chance we have to contain this rests in your swift response—”

“That went out the window a long time ago while you fucking scientists sat on this information, you stupid bi—” another voice off camera hollered, but was cut off as the video ended abruptly.

The scene returned to the reporter at the news desk. He gave a nod to somebody off to his left and then sat up straight and looked directly into the camera.

“We here at the Global News Network apologize for the language heard in this clip, but felt that it was important to run the raw footage as we received it in order to hopefully convince those final holdouts who refuse to believe this to be what can now be termed…a zombie event.

***

“…and as day eleven since the confirmation by the CDC that this an actual zombie event comes to an end on the East Coast, we here at World Wide News want to express our sympathy to the friends and family of President Bransen.

“Washington has issued a statement that, due to the growing threat of large groups of what many are now commonly referring to as zombies, no effort can be made to salvage the crash site of Air Force One. They did confirm that recordings indicate an unnamed member of the Secret Service detail turned in flight. Before that individual could be subdued, the president was reportedly bitten by that agent on his left arm. Gunfire was heard during the last transmission. The location of the crash is being withheld for security reasons…”

***

Mayor Burns watched as the heavy machinery gouged large sections of earth from the ground and deposited it where it would become an interior berm that would act as another defense measure. You couldn’t look anywhere and not see the citizens of Liberty sweating and toiling under the hot sun of what should be a beautiful spring day.

It had been an easier sell than she expected. Of course the deaths suffered early on had gone a long way to help illustrate her point. But it had been the arrival of that poor Ricky Porter that sealed the deal.

The boy had been ripped apart and barely recognizable; but enough people were able to identify him for it to resonate. He’d been walking through the field adjacent to the Liberty Church of God of Prophecy. Several people had been searching for the boy after Lawrence Martin got home and saw the open instant message dialogue he’d been having with his friend before taking off to the highway himself.

At first, only the crashed bicycle and a lot of blood had been found. Still, there were those who had refused to believe what they had seen with their own eyes on television and even in town as a few of the stragglers arrived those first few days. It took seeing one of their own stumbling along with his insides torn out and his face an absolute mess for it to strike home in everybody’s hearts.

Now, the entire town was mobilizing to secure itself in the best way possible. It had been agreed that there was simply no way they could hope to seal off the entire area of Liberty. Instead, they had marked a sort of triangle that ran the length of Ruhamah Road from Highway 123 up to the train tracks which acted as the northern border all the way to Highway 178 and back down to Highway 123.

The sounds of several large semis snapped her back to what was going on around her. As the lead truck of a seven truck convoy came to a stop with it front bumper pressing against another big rig that had been parked earlier, the mayor made a note in her book and hurried over to greet the chief and his team.

“We found these up towards Easley. The highway is a mess that direction. Looks like folks trying to leave Greenville just decided they didn’t care which lane they drove in as long as they could try to get away.” Chief Gilstrap took off his gloves and stuffed them into his back pocket. The mayor handed him one of her pouches containing disinfecting wipes and he started cleaning his hands as he continued. “Looks like a butt load of them things came onto the road and started in on all the people stuck in their cars. The next trip up is gonna be nasty. We might want to head over to the quarry and see if there are any trucks out there first.”

“How much stuff do we have in the trailers on these rigs?” the mayor asked. She cast an anxious glance at the emblems and slogans plastered on the sides of some of the vehicles that were just now being opened by the teams assigned to unload anything brought in by the men and women venturing out.

“Well, one of them is a dairy truck which is damn near useless. The refrigeration was obviously shut off for the past few days. We pulled over and dumped the contents as soon as we got clear.” Chief Gilstrap looked over his shoulder. “That Walmart truck is full of clothes. Most of it is for spring and summer, but the manifest has underwear and socks noted as well, so that will help. Other than that, the rest were busts. Produce and stuff that all went bad. That’s actually what took us so long. We circled around to that area by the sewage treatment facility and dumped it all in that field across the highway. Figure it would do to start laying down some compost.”

The mayor nodded her agreement. It wasn’t a great haul like those first few when they’d brought in a truck full of canned goods, but they were making the most out of everything they did find.

“I figure another three weeks at least until we can get enough cars and trucks in place for the outer perimeter,” Jamie said as she looked at the marks on her laminated map.

The plan was actually working. The fact that it came from a teenage boy had sat wrong with a few people for a while, but eventually folks started seeing the simple logic.

Building protective walls was certainly a must if they were going to stay safe against the undead. The trick was securing an area large enough for all the people of Liberty to occupy somewhat comfortably. Nobody liked the idea of abandoning their homes, but the reality was that there was no way to secure that much open territory.

The location they had selected would have to do. Folks were asked to open their homes and others began to turn the high school into living quarters. The main roads would be the first line of defense as vehicles were brought in and parked almost on top of each other. Wooden pallets and sand bags were then shoved and packed underneath to keep anything from making it through. The vehicles were going to be three or four deep if they could manage to locate and bring in that many abandoned cars and trucks.

Also, tomorrow, a team was headed out to try and locate trains. It would be preferable to use rail cars to barricade the train tracks. Plus, there was a lot of hope that perhaps some of those rail cars might still be full of useable goods.

Just inside that line of defense, heavy tractors and the like were being used to dig a trench several feet deep. The earth from that trench would then create a berm. Once that was done, then they could get to the task of actually building a proper wall/fence. Nobody expected this to be finished any time in the near future, but since it had become clear that there would be no help coming and the government was basically dissolved, the people of Liberty were going to do all they could to stand against this so-called zombie event.

“When do you and your team leave?” the chief asked after he took a long drink of water from the bottle he had in a pouch on his hip.

“Tomorrow,” Jamie replied.

“Don’t you figure that place has been emptied?”

“Maybe, but there may be some cargo trucks in the area that didn’t make it to their final destination. The longer we wait, the more likely it is that anything and everything of use will already be scooped up.”

The chief seemed to think it over for a few seconds, but finally added, “I still think going to that Superstore is no less dangerous and foolish than hitting a mall. This ain’t the movies, kid.”

Jamie smiled. Her title of mayor was pretty much a relic now. Sure, she was now part of the core group of people making decisions to try and help the town, but to say that she was the head honcho in charge? Not so much anymore.

“If you want the big rewards, you have to take the risks,” Jamie parroted one of the chief’s own phrases back at him. That had been his response when she asked why he felt it necessary to go practically to Greenville to locate the trucks they were bringing in to help create their defensive perimeter. He’d gone on to explain that the roads were probably going to yield a lot more of that sort of thing nearer the bigger cities. She hadn’t been able to argue with his logic.

“But I still want to see if we can’t push closer in to Clemson. The big box home improvement stores are probably packed full of the stuff we are going to need to get the produce farms up and running. We should at least be thankful that this is happening just heading in to spring. We will have a full season of planting and harvesting before winter comes,” Jamie said, sounding overly optimistic even to her own ears.

“Yeah,” the chief snorted, “I realize that the Titanic is sinking, but at least we have plenty of ice.”

The pair headed over to the high school stadium where booths had been set up for people to sign in each day and fill the various work crews. That was one thing that had been decided upon quickly. Pretty much everybody able to walk was put to work. There was no job too small, and everybody was pitching in.

They stopped at the roving patrol sign-up booth and the chief grabbed the list of names. He had been put in charge of the town’s security force.

“That reminds me.” Jamie nodded to his list of names. “We will look for anyplace that might have ammunition. Sporting goods stores, the Walmart—”

“I keep tellin’ ya that I am willing to bet that place has been emptied of anything useful.” The chief rolled up the list of names and tucked it in his shirt pocket.

“Agree to disagree,” Jamie said as she patted the man on the shoulder and headed over to grab the roster of those who would be joining her on this little journey.

***

“I realize this is your mission,” Stephen Deese did his best not to sound annoyed as he squatted down in the tall grass beside Jamie Burns and brought his binoculars up to his eyes. “I just think you might be pushing the envelope a bit too much.”

Jamie did not respond as she looked through her field glasses as well. The smoldering ruins of what had once been a Walmart Superstore sat in the distance, smoke still curling up from it as well as the other smaller stores that shared the large lot with the mammoth building.

The group of ten were just to the right of another building that had been a casualty of a fire: The Waffle House. Jamie had pulled their convoy over just as they came off the highway despite it being what Stephen considered an obvious waste of time. He could tell from a few miles out that there was not likely to be much waiting for them when they arrived.

“Then we press on closer to Clemson. The Lowe’s is not far. Hopefully we will have better luck there.” Jamie got up and stalked away.

It was obvious that she was more than just disappointed. She seemed to be angry. He would do as the chief had asked and keep an eye on the young lady. She was plenty smart when it came to running a town and implementing plans. He was not as confident in her ability out in what was fast becoming an apocalyptic wasteland.

Everybody piled in to the large trucks, Stephen driving the huge flatbed that they hoped to load to capacity with goods. As they drove, he saw zombies along the way; many would obviously take notice of the convoy and turn to follow.

Shortly after passing the Clemson City Limits sign, they exited the highway and turned right. The Lowe’s stood at the head of a large entry drive. The parking lot was almost entirely vacant and the store was intact. Stephen glanced skyward and offered a quick thanks to whomever or whatever might be watching over them.

As they pulled into the lot, he spun the truck around and backed up to the large, home and garden gate. That seemed to be closest to what they were actually here for. Glancing around, he only saw a couple of lone zombies making their way for the new arrivals. He looked over at the young man in the passenger seat and considered if it might not be a better idea to handle it himself, but at last decided that he would be more helpful if he took part right away in the loading of things onto the truck.

“Go take down those stragglers,” Stephen told the young man as he hopped out of the cab. He half expected the guy to gripe or complain, but it seemed that the zombie apocalypse was shaping people up in a quick hurry.

He watched the young man draw his spiked club and jog over towards the closest zombie. Satisfied that the job was in hand, he walked over to the other eight people standing around the locked metal gate to the massive, open garden area.

“What seems to be the problem?” Stephen asked as he joined everybody.

“Locked,” one of the women groused.

Stepping past the small group of people, Stephen pulled a foot long metal bar from his hip and jammed it into the lock, after a few good jerks, the lock popped and the door swung open. He stepped aside and threw up his arm in a flourish. “The store is now open.”

He saw sheepish looks being exchanged by several of the group—including the mayor. Despite people coming to grips with the fact that the dead were getting up and attacking the living, people were still having a problem overcoming certain social norms. The chief had made a joke after his first trip out for trucks that he had never arrested anybody for grand theft auto, and now he was committing the crime several times a day.

“We are going to have to readjust our thinking on what constitutes good and bad,” Ivan Potter had chimed in.

Slowly, the group headed in to the open aisles of the lawn and garden area. The first priority was seeds and fertilizer. He paused when two of the ladies stopped at a carousel displaying a huge variety of vegetable seed packets. They were picking through and putting the packs in the basket they had each snagged. Stephen stepped past them, grabbed the entire display and started carrying it to the truck.

Things started moving a lot faster after that.

It was only a moment or so later when the young man he’d sent to take down the stragglers came jogging back. “Hate to be the bringer of bad news, but I think some of those things followed the truck. I would guess around thirty or forty.”

“Alright, everybody,” Stephen called. “We got incoming. I need four people to come with me to take them down while the rest of you keep loading the truck.” He felt his jaw clench a little when his eyes met those of Jamie Burns.

She was glaring at him, and he actually knew why and saw her side of it. This was her operation. She had planned it and made the list of people to come along. Here he was stepping in and calling the shots. The thing was, he just could not get past seeing her as a young lady fresh out of college with almost no life experience and a whole bunch of education that meant absolutely nothing in this new world that was unfolding before them.

“Hey, Burns, if you have a handle on things here, I will give you as much time as possible.” Stephen mentally crossed his fingers and hoped that little offering was enough so that she felt like she was still running the show.

“Yeah…fine.” The woman didn’t even bother glancing back as she headed for the glass double-doors that opened to the actual store.

He wanted to suggest that she confine this run to what they could get out here in the open lawn and garden showplace, but he figured he’s stepped on her ego enough today and pointed to the group that he would be bringing with him to take on the small pack of approaching zombies. Still, something was nagging at him about what she was doing. Yes, he’d been to this store a few dozen times and knew that there was a wall of gardening tools just inside that side entrance to the actual store that would probably come in handy. The thing was, most folks in Liberty had that sort of equipment lying around, or in their garages and sheds.

He and his group were halfway across the huge, open parking lot when the sounds of an alarm began to blare. He skidded to a stop and spun back to face the store. That had been what was bothering him. Sure, it wasn’t like there would be any police dispatched to the scene; but in this new level of quiet that had fallen over a dead world…sound carried much farther.

“Screw it, ladies and gentlemen,” Stephen shouted. “Everybody back to the vehicles. We are out of here.”

“But we can still take these down and give the group enough time to fill up the trucks,” the young man that he’d initially sent to deal with the two zombies called back.

“And perhaps get trapped by who knows how many more of those things that are now heading this way because of that alarm?” Stephen shook his head.

While not all of them seemed convinced that they needed to abandon this run, the group turned around and started back for the store. As they reached the open gate, Jamie and the others were all rushing out with pushcarts loaded with as much stuff as people could stack and still be able to move.

“I didn’t think,” Jamie said, her face crimson with embarrassment.

“None of us thought of that,” Stephen replied, hoping that might smooth over her feelings from earlier.

It wasn’t that he felt he needed to coddle her. It was just that, if they were going to have a chance at surviving this disaster, then everybody needed to work together and get along as well as possible. He knew that from his time overseas. He’d been with a squad that did not get along with each other, and it had damn near gotten all of them killed out in the field.

Everybody began tossing things up to the two people who had climbed up into the back of the flatbed. It was not long before they had everything loaded. Stephen looked at the pitiful haul they had managed to acquire and did his best to push aside his disappointment.

Still, they had at least come away with something, and up to this point, nobody had been hurt or killed. He had a feeling that was something they needed to be happy about. It was definitely going to get a lot harder from here on out.

The trucks rolled out of the parking lot, swerving and weaving to dodge the undead that had come in behind them. They hung a left on Issaqueena Trail and then north on Highway 123.

***

The four big Harley Davidson Ultra Classics roared out of the Cottages of Clemson development and turned right on Old Shirley Road. Curls of smoke were just starting to rise up from a handful of the residences at their collective backs. The foursome stopped at the intersection and one of the riders raised his hand, giving the signal for the others to kill their engines.

Pulling off his helmet, the one who signaled cocked his head to the side and listened. The other three did likewise and all turned to the left towards the sound. This man was the tallest of the gang, standing just over six foot three. His eyes sparkled with mischief and he always seemed to look like he was thinking of something humorous as a smile continuously played at the corners of his mouth.

“Somebody set off an alarm,” the rider who had called for the stop snorted as he checked the pistols he had on each hip. “That means walkers will be coming from every direction. I guess we bail on this little slice of heaven.”

“Damn, Kevin, and we just started having fun,” one of the riders grumbled.

“No worries, Trunk. We can—” the sounds of diesel engines up the road caused Kevin to stop talking. He eased his bike forward to get a better look at a small convoy rolled out onto the road in the distance and headed towards the highway. “See, Trunk?” Kevin turned to the man who had voiced his displeasure. A big grin split his face and his eyes crinkled with devious joy. “Looks like a new game just made itself available.”

Mark “Trunk” Trees was by far the largest of the foursome. He looked like he spent a good deal of time in the gym before the zombies came. His arms were massive and veins ran like cords down his biceps as he unconsciously flexed his hands. His hair was a high and tight that would make any Marine proud. What little neck he had was hidden by massive shoulders that capped off his broad chest which he liked to show off; that was why he always opted for wearing an open leather vest with no shirt underneath.

“I hope it is more fun than the last one,” another of the riders grumbled. He glanced over his shoulder from the gated community they were leaving. “Those college boys were a bunch of sissies. That last one started crying before we even hit him.”

“Give the kid a break, Animal,” Mark chuckled. “He had just watched three of his friends get pulled apart.”

“Yeah, well that brings me to another point,” Joe “Animal” Spencer said as he absently rubbed the leather saddlebag of his bike. “I get a leg next time. The arms come off too fast.”

“No problem, Animal.” Kevin nodded.

Joe “Animal” Spencer was tall and lanky. His arms and chest were covered with a variety of tattoos. His brown hair was shaved on the sides and the center was styled into a mohawk. He always wore a smile, but those who took a second to really look at the man’s expression could tell that it did not reach his eyes. The eyes gave the impression that true happiness had not touched his soul in a very long time.

Kevin glanced over to the fourth rider who had remained silent through the entire exchange. Bob Capka was not one for too many words. In fact, the last few people who had heard him speak had started to cry after he pulled away from where he had been whispering in their ears. Kevin had no idea what the man said, and if he ever gave it a second’s thought, he would quickly tell himself that he didn’t want to know.

Bob Capka was the shortest man of the foursome. His slight frame was deceptive and secreted under baggy clothing that hid a well-muscled frame. He had long curly hair that often hid his face when they were not on their bikes. Even before the zombies, Bob was never much of a talker. At least not out loud where a lot of people could hear him.

Kevin recalled their most recent stretch in the Greenville County Detention Center. One of the loudmouths in their pod simply could not keep his mouth shut in the day room where the television was mounted. Bob had gotten up from his seat and walked over to the kid that Kevin guessed to be in his late teens or early twenties. The kid had started to “nut up” when Bob approached. It was clear that he thought a fight was about to break out. But Bob had just stared at the kid, arms folded across his chest. Eventually, when the kid had run out of steam and began to get nervous, Bob had gestured for the kid to lean forward. It was like watching a damn hypnotist, Kevin remembered thinking. Bob had whispered in the kid’s ear, and then just returned to his seat.

The kid had left the day room. Not a peep was heard the rest of the night. When it was time to cell in for count, that was when things got crazy. All of a sudden, the cops were running into the pod after the one doing count had called for assistance. The kid had hung himself. Since he’d been alone in his cell, there was nobody to officially blame and it was called a suicide. Kevin knew better.

Nobody in the pod said a word in the day room during television time for the rest of the duration that Kevin, Joe, Mark, and Bob were in the lock up. Kevin couldn’t swear, but he thought he actually heard a few people sigh with relief when the four were done with their time.

“I say we follow those trucks,” Kevin announced cheerfully. “I bet they are heading back to someplace with more people. Besides, I think Clemson is burned out. It took us four days to find that last little group that was trying to hide out. Hardly worth the time and effort.”

“Sounds good to me,” Mark said with a shrug.

“Beats doing nothin’,” Joe chimed in.

Bob popped his bike into gear and started off in the direction that the trucks had gone. Kevin smiled and jammed his head back into his helmet. “I guess that’s a yes from Bob.”

The four bikes roared along until they neared the driveway that the trucks had exited. Dozens of zombies were stumbling out, obviously drawn by the departing trucks that had just left.

Bob had already stopped, shut down his bike, and climbed off. He was standing in front of a lone zombie. It would reach for him with slow, clumsy attempts and he would bat the arms down and push it away. This part always sort of creeped Kevin out.

For some reason, Bob always wanted to toy with the first zombie he was about to kill whenever they encountered a group. The way he tilted his head first one way and then the other was a lot like the zombies themselves; which made what he was doing even a bit more creepier.

Joe was second to arrive and got off his bike. He had a huge knife in one hand and a three foot long metal spike in the other. As he passed Bob, he jammed his spike into the zombie’s temple.

“Jeez, Bob, just kill the damn things,” Joe snorted as he stepped up to the next one and brought his knife up under its chin, driving it to the hilt and then jerking free in one swift motion.

Kevin held his breath for a moment and watched Bob. The man had turned and was watching Joe wade in and start taking down the leading zombies of this small mob. After a moment, Bob headed over to one of the walking dead, an elderly woman who was reaching with her gnarled hands as he stepped up to her with his aluminum baseball bat. With one swing, he snapped the knee inwards and sent the body to the ground. Moving methodically, he stood over the downed figure and then used the barrel end of his bat like a pile-driver and smashed it down once…twice…three times until the skull burst open like an overripe melon.

Kevin let out the breath that he had not been aware he was holding. Setting the stand for his bike, he hopped off and turned to look at his array of weapons. Besides the pistols he wore at his hips (and only used in an emergency since gunshots seemed to bring out zombies by the hundreds), he had three machetes, a very nice saber that he took off a zombie that had been dressed up as some Civil War re-enactor, two batons removed from a pair of zombie policemen that he had left dangling from a bridge by a length of cable around their ankles, and a briefcase full of assorted knives.

Cupping his chin with his right hand, he absently stroked his reddish-blond goatee as he considered his options. At last, he decided on the saber. It was just too nice not to get some serious use.

Clipping the scabbard to his heavy leather belt, he drew the weapon and slashed at the air a few times to warm up his arm. Lunging and dancing back and forth like any of the swordsmen he had ever seen on television or in the movies, punctuating each movement with a “Ho!” or a “Ha!”

“You gonna screw around all day, or are you gonna step in here and get to killin’?” Mark snapped as he grabbed a teenaged boy version of the undead by his hair and drove the knife in his hand deep into the side of its head.

“Oh…sorry,” Kevin laughed.

He jogged over to the closest zombie and went into a whirling spin just as he got within range. His saber bit deep into the shoulder of the zombie. The man in the tattered business suit did not even seem to notice as he reached out for Kevin with grasping hands that brushed his heavy leather jacket.

“Crap,” Kevin muttered as he brought up a booted foot and kicked the Business Suit Zombie away.

Taking a step back and gripping the weapon with both hands, he raised his arms and then brought them down hard with an overhead chop. The blade split the skull at enough of angle that the left third of the zombie’s head came away, exposing the dark gore of its putrefying brain.

It took the four of them just about five minutes, but eventually the entire little mob was sprawled all over the entrance to the parking lot of a Lowe’s. The alarm had continued to ring the entire time and now shadowy figures could be seen wading out of some nearby trees as well as coming from both directions along the two lane road that the signs called Issaqueena Trail.

“Mount up!” Kevin called.

“But there’s more of them things coming,” Joe complained.

“Dude, I don’t think we’ll be running out of zombies any time soon,” Mark guffawed as he swung a leg over and brought his bike alive with a roar.

Bob walked past Joe, not even bothering to glance at the man as he wiped off his bat and slid it into its place before mounting his bike and starting the engine. Easing forward until he was next to Mark and Kevin, Bob paused to grab a band from his wrist and pull his hair back into a ponytail.

Joe looked around, his eyes almost seeming to give off a longing as he watched the approaching zombies. Kevin didn’t think that the man had ever been quite the same after that one had grabbed him by the arm and bit down on his shoulder while they were looting that senior center.

Kevin also believed that the only thing that had saved Joe was the fact that the old man hadn’t been wearing his teeth. The gums had nibbled ineffectively on Joe’s denim shirt, leaving a gross stain of drool, but that had been the extent of the damage. Ever since that incident, Joe had been on some sort of mission where he gave the impression that he wanted to single-handedly rid the world of every zombie.

Twice the man had peeled away from the formation when he spied a small cluster of the walking dead. Kevin and the others had always gone after him and stepped in to help with the kill, but Kevin didn’t think the man noticed…or cared. He was so solely focused on bringing destruction.

That had been demonstrated to the fullest one time in particular. Joe had pulled away and actually just dropped his bike on its side to go wade into a group of eleven walkers. Kevin had sighed and then turned his own bike to go render assistance. He parked and was just climbing off when a hand grabbed him. It was Mark. The big man shook his head.

“Just let him do his thing,” Mark Trees had rumbled.

Kevin had pulled away and taken a step towards the melee, but then stopped and found himself waiting and watching. Joe had been like a very tall Tasmanian Devil as his arms whipped around in a flurry of head strikes and crippling shots that would take a zombie off its feet so that he could move in for a killing blow. When it was over, the man hadn’t even acknowledged the trio who had stood by watching the ordeal. He had simply walked to his bike, pulled out a fresh batch of wipes and given himself a good cleanup.

As they drove down the highway now, distant specks on the horizon marked their quarry. The little convoy seemed to be driving the speed limit. Kevin’s smile widened as they drew closer by the minute.

“Slow down!” Mark yelled, pulling up close to Kevin. “We might spook them. I don’t care what the TV shows say, a motorcycle doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in Hell against a truck.”

Kevin nodded and let off the throttle. He hadn’t survived that breakout from the jail’s intake center, a shootout with a handful of state troopers, and a very large horde of the undead that had surrounded them in that diner (where they had crashed for the night that one time) just to become road kill for a bunch of scared little country mice that took off at the first sound of a useless burglar alarm and a small mob of zombies that numbered fewer than a hundred.

Yes, Kevin Staley thought as he smiled big despite the bug that had just flown into his teeth with a crunchy splat, I have the whole zombie apocalypse in front of me, and I’m going to milk it for all the chaos I can manage.

9

“Where neighbors become friends.”

Chief Gilstrap kept his lips pressed tight in order to keep himself from saying “I told you so.” Jamie was pacing back and forth in the small counselor’s office that had been converted into their new version of city hall. This room was plastered with maps of the area and showed the regularly updated progress of the outer defenses.

“…like he was in charge of the whole thing,” Jamie ranted. She took another pull on the bottle that had been pulled from the drawer. “This was my operation. How would you like it if he just ran roughshod over you on one of your excursions out there?”

She seemed to consider the bottle in her hand. She held it out to the chief with a nod. He accepted it and allowed a small sip. He handed it back, expecting her to cap it and shove it back in the desk. What he hadn’t anticipated was her taking a few more large gulps.

There was an uncomfortably long silence; and that is when the chief realized that she had actually posed that to him as a question. He spoke slow, making sure to pick and choose his words with care. He was of two minds on the subject. Part of him agreed that Stephen shouldn’t volunteer for somebody else’s op and then take charge, but he also needed to stress to Jamie that this was a new world and things changed on the fly.

People needed to be able to accept input in all situations if somebody might have a valid understanding of what needed to be done. He had recently learned that lesson when a boy young enough to be his grandson offered up what proved to be the most doable and reasonable defense plan for the city.

“I’ll talk to him, but you need to be more open to outside input, Jamie.”

The young lady threw her arms across her body and cocked her left hip as she leveled her stare on him. She seemed to waver a bit on her feet. She opened her mouth twice to retort, but then snapped it shut.

“You’ll really talk to him, Chief?” she slurred just slightly.

Adam Gilstrap hadn’t noticed until Ivan pointed it out that pretty much everybody in town had dropped the use of titles. Even the mayor was simply called by name even when she was operating in an official capacity, but nobody had gotten to the point where they called him Adam.

“Hell, you been chief here longer than some of these folks been alive,” Ivan had laughed when the chief had asked the man why he thought that might be.

“As soon as I get the list of folks that are coming with me tomorrow. We are heading out first thing in the morning and I got a couple who keep putting their names on the list and…well…there’s just no way I’d bring ‘em out there with me. People’s lives are on the line and I’m not going to reduce our chances of survival by bringing along idiots who think this is just some giant video game.”

He opened the door and almost ran into Jonathan Patterson. The kid still looked like crap. His right wrist was in a cast and his forehead was practically one giant scab from where he’d busted it open in the crash.

“Hey, Chief,” Jonathan said, his eyes immediately going to the floor. “Umm…there’s some new folks just arrived.”

“Okay?” He let that word drag out a bit to make it more of a question.

Why was he being told this? There was a group that was in charge of new arrivals. They would get their information and find out what sorts of skills these people might have that could be of use. So far, they had only gotten a trickle of folks from up around Pickens, and they were all mostly just relatives of folks here in Liberty, so they weren’t exactly strangers.

“These guys came in on Harleys. There is something about them that is kinda creepy. You may want to come see for yourself.”

“Look, Jonathan, folks have probably been going through hell out there trying to survive.”

The first night after all the madness, Adam Gilstrap had done something he hadn’t thought he would ever do. He had sat down and watched a handful of zombie movies. He’d had no idea there were so many, but he’d gotten a list of recommended titles from Sophie Martin’s kid, Lawrence.

“I still think you should come see for yourself.” Jonathan turned to go, his shoulders slumped and his head down.

“I’ll give a look see, okay?” Chief Gilstrap did his best not to sound annoyed. He knew that Jonathan was still upset over losing his mom. He blamed himself for not telling people about the video files he’d gotten from that kid in Japan. The young man had the crazy notion that his telling somebody could have stopped this whole thing from happening.

“I can go if you want to go check your list,” Jamie spoke up.

He saw the glance from Jonathan. Well, that was just another thing that people were going to have to get used to in the new world. While he was not what some might consider a “liberated” male, he was cognizant enough of the situation to know that men and women were going to have to shift back to Pioneer days where both sexes busted their asses and did what it took to keep everybody alive.

“Yeah, that would be a big help,” Chief Gilstrap said as he left the room before the young man could say anything.

If Jonathan wanted to scowl, he could go right ahead; Jamie was not in the mood for any crap right now. She would tear him a new one in short order if he dared question her ability to function in his stead. And with a little bit of a buzz, her tolerance might be down a few more notches than normal.

Walking outside, he could hear the sounds of approaching dusk almost as if he were camping. The world had grown so quiet so fast. He looked skyward and was not surprised to see the lack of any contrails. In fact, there hadn’t been any since the day it was reported that Air Force One went down. He figured the wisdom was probably along the lines of, if it can happen on the president’s plane, then it could certainly happen on a commercial aircraft.

That thought gave him a shiver. Now that he’d seen those things up close a few times, he had to imagine that the smell in such close quarters would be worse than any elevator fart. And how would somebody take one down at thirty thousand feet? Unless there happened to be an armed sky marshal, he figured that folks would be pretty well screwed.

Walking up to the row of sign-up booths he smiled and nodded appropriately at the greetings he received. He paused once to help Granny Criss into her scooter chair. As he did, he wondered how much longer they would have power. It was already spotty, and today it had gone out just before Jamie and her people returned and just come on a while ago.

Too bad for her it hadn’t gone out while she was breaking in to that Lowe’s store, he thought.

He picked up the list and sighed in relief when the two names he’d hoped would not be there were absent. Part of him felt bad, but he’d had issues with Reverend Jonah and his brother Chuck. The two seemed to constantly be on about how this was the “End Times” and people needed to stop building defenses against zombies and worry about defending their immortal soul.

Heading to his car, he had just opened the door when everything went considerably darker. He glanced up at the street lights and saw that they were all off.

“That’s what I get for thinking,” he said with a sigh as he climbed into his car and headed out to do his last drive around the perimeter for the day.

***

Jamie followed Jonathan. She hid her annoyance at the man since she undeniably saw the look he gave her at Chief Gilstrap’s suggestion that she be the one to join him in checking out these new arrivals.

She considered the bit of a buzz she felt growing, but shoved it aside. She was more than fine to go see four new arrivals. The fact that Jonathan had come and not one single member of the actual team assigned that task told her that it was probably just him being over-dramamtic.

She walked outside and headed for the small north parking lot where they had determined that newcomers be brought back to when they arrived. That was when she had optimistically believed that they would become some sort of Mecca that people would flood to when the word got out that Liberty was shoring up a good section of town with the full intention of surviving this “zombie event” (as the media had coined it).

She was halfway there when the lights went out. Pausing, she reached inside her shirt and took out the small jogger’s light. It was an orange disc that clipped on to her shirt and allowed her to see at least the area directly in front of her. She had a head-mounted light back in her cubicle in the dorm where she now lived, but this would do for now. It took her a few times to get the button to work, but she was fine. And besides, it wasn’t like she had all that far to walk. Her new residence was literally a stone’s throw away.

Jamie had given up her home to three families. She had wanted to show everybody that she was not going to ask the people of Liberty to make sacrifices that she was not willing to make her own self. That didn’t mean she liked it; she missed her house and hoped that maybe someday she would see a time when she could reclaim it.

She hid a smirk when she heard Jonathan curse up ahead as he stubbed his foot and almost tripped over the small curb. Just as fast, she shoved her snarky thoughts away and tried to remind herself that Jonathan had been instrumental in helping show people just how bad this zombie event was on a global scale.

When she arrived at the intake area, she was almost glad it was a bit dark. The four men who stood waiting under the glare of a few hanging Coleman lanterns looked like a cross between a heavy metal band and a biker gang. The long-haired one in particular gave her the shivers. His eyes looked deader than any zombie’s, and he didn’t seem to notice that there was a crowd of people standing in a small semi-circle examining them like they were slides under a microscope.

Screwing up her courage a few notches and pasting her best smile onto her face, she dismissed the bad feelings as being influenced by a mix of Jonathan’s paranoia and the whiskey. Making every effort to conceal her slight inebriation, she stepped into the light of the lanterns to greet the strangers.  “My name is Jamie Burns.” She extended a hand and thought she detected a hesitation in the heavily tattooed man closest to her.

“Joe,” the man finally mumbled. “Joe Spencer.”

“Kevin Staley,” one of the men almost shouted as he stepped past the man who had given his name as Joe.

Jamie appraised this one and felt even sillier about her earlier concerns. This Kevin Staley person had the most charming smile. His hair looked like it was on fire in the glow of the lanterns and his teeth sparkled, adding perhaps just a bit more light to the scene.  She liked this one right away and then fought off a blush as he reached out and took her hand.

“So great to meet you,” the man said in a voice that sent a tingle up her arm and straight to her belly.

“Welcome to Liberty, where neighbors become friends,” Jamie gushed, instantly scolding herself for being so corny as to spout the town’s slogan.

“Liberty…” Mark said the word like it didn’t exactly fit in his mouth. “Never heard of it.” He looked around, squinting with apparent scrutiny. “Kinda small as far as towns go.”

“Says the guy from Smyrna,” Kevin joked.

“Hey, we moved to Spartanburg when I was five,” Mark shot back defensively.

“I don’t think I got all your names,” Jamie piped in, her voice cracking just a little as she did. She simply could not take her eyes off the one who had introduced himself as Kevin Staley.

“I’m Mark Trees,” the broad chested member of the group who had made the small town quip said, reaching out to shake her hand with a grip that was just on the edge of becoming painful. “The quiet one is Bob…Bob Capka.”

Jamie glanced over at Bob and barely suppressed a shiver that was entirely different from the type that Kevin induced. Maybe it was a trick of the lanterns, but she could not get over how dead his eyes looked. The problem was, once she’d made eye contact, she found that she couldn’t tear her gaze away without considerable effort.

“We will need to get you guys in to see our medical staff.” Jamie knew that she was stretching things a bit. Sophie Martin and two volunteers that were being trained on the fly could hardly be considered a proper medical staff; perhaps the dig at Liberty’s small town status had hit her wrong.

“We’re fine,” Kevin assured her.

“Yes, but it is the protocol,” Jamie insisted.

“Protocol,” Joe snickered in a way that made the hairs on the back of Jamie’s neck stand up, almost like how she would imagine a serpent to speak if it had the ability.

“I think we would know if there was something wrong with us,” Mark growled. “We ain’t stupid. We’ve been out in this crap long enough to know what can turn ya into one of them things.”

“Guys,” Kevin raised his hands in the air as he turned to face the other three members of his group, “these fine people are showing us hospitality. It wouldn’t be right for us to impose and ask them to break their protocols.”

Jamie thought she saw a sneer try desperately to tug at the corners of the mouth of one named Bob. The barrel-chested man named Mark let a dismissive burst of air escape his lips, but he didn’t argue.

Joe Spencer was a different story. “Maybe I’ll just sleep outside your little perimeter. I ain’t letting some stranger make me strip naked so they can look at my shit.”

“We all seen ya naked, bro.” Kevin smiled big and then gave a wink to Jamie that reignited her blush. “It ain’t all that. How about we just let these people do what they feel they need to do. I think we will find that the rewards far outweigh such a minor inconvenience.”

Jamie looked from one of the men’s faces to the next. There seemed to be something passing between them that was not spoken. She shoved that thought away, certain that she was imagining things. She blamed it on the alluring effect of Kevin Staley’s smile.

“If you gentlemen will follow me?” Jamie extended an arm towards the middle entrance on the front of the school building that sat by the north parking lot.

As she passed Jonathan, she saw a look that was part shock and part scowl etched on his face. She chose to ignore it and escorted the four men into Sophie’s makeshift office.

***

Jonathan watched Jamie walk away. He suddenly felt like he was back in high school all over again. Despite being on the football team, he had never really felt like he fit in. He was husky (which most people simply just called fat) and a bit socially awkward. He doubted that Jamie even recalled they had been in the same graduating class. She’d even sat two seats in front of him in AP English.

There was just something about those four guys that screamed the Tom Savini-led biker gang at the end of the original Dawn of the Dead. Hell, if that one guy had black hair instead of damn near being a ginger, he would fit the bill perfectly as Savini’s taller brother. He even had a goofy smile on his face all the time like he had just thought of something funny and decided not to share it.

Part of him wanted to follow Jamie and the new arrivals to the intake office, but he had an idea forming in his mind and wanted to work out the details. With the power out, it was going to be a bit more difficult to pull off, but he saw this as a chance to draw from the power of his inner geek.

Besides video games, one of Jonathan’s hobbies had been playing with electronics. He’d been the one to rig a motion activated camera at the Domino’s store when the product inventory sheets started coming up with discrepancies. They’d caught the culprit the second day he set up the camera. That had actually been the thing that earned him his promotion to assistant manager and gave him his own shift to run.

After one more glance at Jamie and the newbies as they disappeared into the building, Jonathan headed for the gym where his cubicle waited. Of course, what he needed wasn’t in the cubicle, he would need to venture outside the perimeter to his abandoned house, but the patrols were reporting that zombie encounters were rare, and even when they were discovered, it was in singles or just a few at most.

A small voice in his head told him that he was being an idiot. Wandering out all by his lonesome was bad enough. The fact that he only had the full use of one hand did not increase his chances. He quickly shut that voice up as he reached his cubicle and opened his footlocker. One good thing about this zombie apocalypse (he laughed whenever anybody used the media phrase “zombie event”) was that it did not draw any attention if he walked past with a pair of pistols on his hips, a shotgun over his shoulder, knives strapped to his thighs and his prized replica of a Roman Centurion’s sword.

He slipped through the gym and exited on the side that faced where the track and field events were held in the spring. Sticking in the shadows, he kept his flashlight shut off until he had cleared the school grounds and reached the clearing under the massive power line towers that bisected the countryside. Once he reached the woods, he flicked on his powerful headlamp and started making his way north.

Shortly after he reached Peachtree Street, Jonathan encountered his first zombie. The woman was naked and her blond hair looked silver in the moonlight. Her lower jaw appeared to almost be completely torn off. He briefly wondered how she might be able to bite in that condition and then quickly decided that he didn’t care. A zombie was a zombie.

He let his shotgun slide off his shoulder and set it against a tree before drawing his sword. This was going to be the first time he used his Roman sword. A giddy tingle turned in his stomach and his mouth went dry as adrenaline flooded him.

He waited until the zombie was almost in striking range. She was now fully lit up by his headlamp. This gave him a better look at her terrible injury. He also saw several very small bite marks all down her legs. Pieces of flesh hung in strips in a few spots, but the wounds looked old. While they still seemed to ooze a little dark fluid, they had dried considerably. What hadn’t changed was the terrible smell.

As soon as she took two more staggering and unsteady steps closer, Jonathan reared back and swung at the top of the zombie’s head. The sword dug into the skull with a violent ferocity. Bits of bone and brain splattered up from the broken skull and the body collapsed in a heap. Wiping off his blade, he put it in its scabbard and then picked up his shotgun.

He was already regretting taking so much gear. It seemed like a great idea to be on that “better safe than sorry” train, as he left the safe zone, but things were starting to feel heavy. It was as if they were gaining weight with each passing minute.

He hadn’t gone another ten feet when he heard the sounds of a low moan coming from his right. He turned and staggered back a step when three children emerged from the brush. It took him a moment to shake off the shock and get his mind to register that these were no longer kids.

They were monsters.

He started towards them and then paused. He had to have been imagining things. He took another step and gasped. Sure enough, the three children stepped back. One of them even moved behind the other two as if trying to put an obstacle in his path should he decide to attack.

For just a moment, Jonathan had a very difficult time seeing these three for what they truly were. His logical mind knew them to be the walking dead. Yet, they were acting as if they were afraid of him. Did this infection or virus or whatever the hell it was that made people into zombies react differently in children? Was there some part of their humanity still intact?

He’d heard a few stories about the children, but he had simply been too far into his own pain—both emotional and physical—to pay it any attention. He thought that Mr. Deese had mentioned something and even used one to show some of the others that this zombie stuff was real.

Kneeling, Jonathan reached out a hand towards the children. So far, this was not turning out much like any of his favorite zombie books or movies. A thought occurred to him. Perhaps the children were only partial zombies. Maybe for some unknown reason they didn’t quite turn all the way. What else could account for them acting so different? They weren’t attacking. That had to mean something. Perhaps he could redeem his huge blunder of not sharing those videos. If these children were special, perhaps they could be used to help the community somehow.

“Hey,” he whispered, making his voice as calm and inviting as possible, “are you able to understand me?”

The trio continued to stay put. Their only reaction was the occasional shifting back and forth from one foot to the other. The one that had ducked back behind the others might have actually taken another step away.

“I won’t hurt you,” he called. This time, he made a “come here” gesture with his outstretched hand. As soon as he did, all three took another step back as if he had spooked them.

One of the children’s head twitched, and its undead gaze went to his left and over his shoulder. Jonathan heard the twig snap in the nick of time and lunged to his right. The move was awkward, and getting up was not easy, but he made it to his knees as the zombie soldier staggered towards him with its arms outstretched.

He was in an awkward position and could not draw his sword and so had to resort to one of the knives strapped to his leg. Pulling it, two things happened almost simultaneously. The soldier zombie lunged, in what was more of a flop due to the zombie’s lack of coordination, and the children suddenly began to come for him just like a regular zombie.

Catching the soldier by the chin, he shoved the head up and to the side so that he could drive his knife into the side of its head. He shoved the body away and rolled back just as the first child zombie tumbled forward and landed on his right leg.

Jonathan grabbed it by the hair and drove his blade down. His aim was just a bit off and he initially feared that he’d missed as the blade tip scraped a little to the side, gouging a chunk of hair and scalp, then it caught and pierced the head just above the right ear. The body went limp and the head was at such an angle that he could not free his weapon.

There was no way that he would be able to draw his other knife before both of the remaining child zombies were on him. Steeling himself for the pain that he knew was coming, Jonathan clenched his teeth. The two children both fell on him practically in unison.

***

Kevin dried his hands on the towel that had been handed to him by some guy who he hadn’t bothered to learn the name of when he’d entered a communal wash room. Mark and Joe were both finishing with getting cleaned up. Bob had vanished at some point and was nowhere to be found. He hoped the man didn’t jump the gun. This place was a gold mine.

He’d noticed all the big rigs being pulled in and parked bumper-to-bumper as a sort of barricade. If he was inclined to settle down, this place would not be the worst choice. The problem rested in the fact that he had no desire to just settle in. He’d already seen enough to know that these people were putting in farmer’s hours. He wasn’t about to spend the zombie apocalypse busting his ass from sunrise to sunset every damn day.

He did notice that Jamie chick checking him out when they’d first met. If things went well, he might be able to get a little of that before he and the boys hit the road. He doubted it would take much convincing on his part considering how she was blushing like a school girl every time he looked at her. And he would convince her. Kevin Staley might be a lot of things: brawler, robber (he hated the label of “thief” because he felt it sounded sneaky and cowardly), and killer. One thing he wasn’t was a rapist. None of his boys would do anything like that. They might kill a girl for saying no, but they wouldn’t take pussy by force.

Walking out into what had once been the high school’s main gymnasium, he saw rows of portable dividers that acted as four foot high walls for the residents of what amounted to a massive open dorm. That was the other thing that made him certain there was no way in hell he would be staying here for any longer than was absolutely necessary. They would find the supplies—hopefully this town had created some sort of central armory—grab what they wanted, and get the hell out of here.

“You got any ideas how we do this?” Mark sauntered up and rested against the wall, his huge arms folded across his massive chest. Somewhere, he’d found a toothpick and had it jutting from the corner of his mouth.

“We need to find out where they’re storing shit,” Kevin said, after being certain that nobody was close enough to overhear their conversation.

“Always making it harder than it needs to be,” Mark chortled.

“And I suppose some sort of amazing idea managed to chisel its way into that giant square head of yours,” Kevin said with unveiled sarcasm.

“Actually,” Mark turned to Kevin with an arched eyebrow, “I think I know exactly how we do this fast and get gone before these hillbilly bumpkins know what hit ‘em.”

“I’m listening.”

“These folks all abandoned their entire town. There are restaurants and I bet at least one grocery store just sitting there. We join up on one of the salvage teams or whatever they are calling them and head out. If we can all get on the same team and have the numbers, we just kill the locals on the team once we find someplace worth emptying. We load up and are out of here before these folks even realize we’re gone.”

Kevin thought it over. He caught sight of the back of Jamie’s head as she ducked into a cubicle. This place was a gold mine, that much was for sure. He wanted to get loaded out to the max and be out of here before Joe or, God forbid, Bob, do something that put an end to this little vacation in an ugly way. That did not mean he felt they needed to leave in the next day or two. He wanted a little time to work on that Jamie girl. Who knew how long it would be before he had another chance at a bit of soft and squishy companionship.

“Sounds like a solid idea,” Kevin finally agreed. “But let’s hang here for a few days. No need to be in such a hurry. Besides, the longer we hang around…” He saw Mark open his mouth and hurried out the next bit. “Within reason, of course…the more detailed information we can come up with. Can you imagine if this place has gathered up ammunition and put it someplace central? Since I doubt they are worried too much about anything beyond the zombies, I would be willing to bet we only have to kill maybe one person.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” a voice whispered behind Kevin causing both him and Mark to jump.

“Jesus, Joe!” Kevin snapped.

“Nope…just regular Joe,” the man replied with a devious smile. “And you may want to put those eyes back in your head, Kev.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The way you are eye-humping that little blonde number…the welcome committee girl?” Joe leered at Kevin who returned the look with his best attempt at a scowl.

“Man, you gotta work on that,” Mark snorted. “You look like you’re constipated.”

To emphasize his point, a young man in perhaps his twenties was emerging from the communal wash area. Mark leaned forward and gave the kid a fierce scowl. The guy almost tripped trying to swing wide of the muscular man.

Mark turned back to Kevin and Joe. “See? That’s how you sport mean face. Maybe if you didn’t smile so damn much. I bet your scowling muscles are flabbier than zombie tits.”

The three men all headed for their individual cubicles. Kevin sat down on the cot that was going to be his bed. He lay down for a moment and tried to get comfortable. It wasn’t bad; he’d slept on hard pans in county jail that were much less enjoyable. Still, he just could not bring himself to relax.

Finally, he sat up, peeked around and then rose up to peer over the wall of his cubicle. He staggered back when he came face-to-face with Mark.

“Dude, just go nail the broad and be done with it.” For emphasis, the big man waggled his eyebrows.

Kevin knuckled the man lightly on the forehead. “Don’t wait up.”

Exiting his cubicle, he had to pull up and dodge a pair of kids who were maybe eight or nine as they raced past. One of them was screaming something about “I gotcha!” while the other called over his shoulder “No ya didn’t!”

“Dead within a month,” Kevin muttered and then headed in the direction he remembered Jamie being when he last saw her. It didn’t take him long to locate her. She was having a conversation with the woman who had given him and the others their check-up. He thought her name was Sophie, but since he wasn’t planning on staying very long, he decided that he didn’t care.

He waited until there appeared to be a pause in the conversation before speaking up. “Hey, uh, Jamie…right?” He knew her name, but he wanted to come off as casual and non-threatening.

“Kevin.” Jamie’s face broke into a huge smile which she quickly forced down to merely happy and pleasant after a gentle elbow nudge from her friend. “Getting all settled in?”

“Yeah, pretty much. Look, I was talking with my guys and we really want to do our part to help. You folks have been so great. And bringing us a hot dinner while we were seeing the doc here was a real pleasant surprise.”

“I’m not actually a doctor, Mr. Staley,” the woman with the mocha colored skin said with a polite smile. “I was a nurse.”

“Well you’re about the closest thing to a doctor that I’ve seen in a while,” Kevin said with an appreciative chuckle in his voice.

“Sorry it was just soup and sandwiches, but the kitchen is shut down for the night and that is usually what the men and women coming in from patrol get before hitting the sack. But I think breakfast is pancakes, so…” Jamie’s voice trailed off and her cheeks turned a warm, rosy pink. It was obvious that she knew she was stammering and rambling. It was also very clear that she’d perhaps had a nice buzz going. This was almost too easy.

“I think I’m still a bit strung out from the road.” Kevin winced inwardly at his cheesy line from an old song he loved. “You wouldn’t mind showing me around, would you? Maybe point out which work teams will likely need the most help tomorrow so we can sign up and get to doing our part?”

Jamie shot a look at her friend and Kevin was almost certain that his chances were about to be shot down in flames when the woman gave a slight shake of the head. He practically held his breath until she looked up at him and gave a nod despite her friend’s apparent disapproval.

“Sure, I am actually going to be working one of the sign-up booths tomorrow,” she said as she pulled away from the nurse who was still trying to keep Jamie from leaving. “I was outside the perimeter today so I get to stay inside for the next few.”

“Out hunting zombies?” Kevin flashed his best smile.

“No, nothing quite so bold or dangerous. Actually, I was out trying to find supplies. I had been hoping to hit that Walmart Super store, but the stupid thing was burned to the ground.”

“Wow, that sucks.”

“Jamie?” the nurse called after them as he opened the door leading outside.

“I’ll be fine, Sophie,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m sure Kevin here can handle anything that might stumble our way. Besides, we’re just going right outside.”

Kevin was glad he’d already been smiling or he might have ended up giving himself away. As he escorted her outside, his mind flashed back to the Walmart that Jamie had mentioned. He and the crew had torched that place. Actually, most of the fault had been Joe’s. They had rolled in and gassed up, filled their extra emergency tanks, and then drove up to the big store front.

The doors had been busted and it was obvious that the place was a hive of walking dead. Mark had been disappointed. He’d really been looking forward to some clean underwear. They were discussing if there might be any possibility that they might be able to slip inside, but since none of them knew where the underwear aisle might be, they (meaning Mark and Kevin since the other two had remained silent on the matter) had decided to skip giving it a try.

No sooner had they made the decision when Joe had hopped off his bike with both of his five gallon gas cans. He’d actually dashed in through the busted door as he unscrewed the nozzles on both containers.

Perhaps two minutes later he was walking out empty-handed. He paused just outside the main doors, produced a disposable lighter, grabbed a wadded up piece of paper from the nearby trash can, lit it, and threw it inside. There was a moment where nothing happened, and then a soft ‘whump’ was heard. A soft orange glow became visible. Moments later, a flaming zombie stumbled past the entry way visible to the four men who were now sitting on their bikes like they were parked at a drive-in movie theater.

“We checked out the Lowe’s,” Jamie paused and looked at the ground. “I screwed up and set off the alarm, so we didn’t get nearly as much as we could have come away with.”

“I guess it’s not necessarily all a bad thing that you set off that alarm.” Kevin returned his attention to Jamie and put an arm around the woman’s shoulders to sort of test the water.

“What do you mean?” She looked up at him and he could tell that he was close to setting the hook and landing this fish.

“Well,” he brushed her cheek gently with his hand and smiled down at her, “that alarm is how we sort of found you. We were not too far away when it sounded and so we headed over to see what was going on. We got there just as your trucks were hitting the highway.”

Jamie did not look away from his gaze and Kevin decided to keep the eye contact. He was grateful that he’d gotten a chance to clean up a little while earlier. He noticed her lean in just a bit and so he lowered his head just enough. That proved to be the clincher. She closed the rest of that tiny space between them and allowed him to kiss her.

Now for the next step, Kevin thought after allowing the kiss to grow into something a bit heated.

“Umm, I don’t think I can take you back to my cubicle. I mean, sure, there are those little dividers, but I doubt we would be fooling anybody.”

Jamie pulled back and looked him in the eyes, and for just a moment, he thought that he saw hesitation. He upped the wattage on his smile and then broke eye contact, staring at the ground, trying to play the shy role now.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to presume…” He let that statement trail off and shook his head.

A soft hand planted itself in the middle of his chest. He held his breath for that few seconds while he waited to see if she might push him back and end things. When her hand drifted up to his face and caressed his cheek, he had to fight to make sure that the smile he flashed was the right one. He didn’t want her to see the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

A few minutes later, she was leading him by the hand. As they ducked behind the stadium bleachers and stopped in some tall grass, he knew he’d won.

10

Regrets and Death

With his left hand, Jonathan grabbed one child by the hair and tossed him sideways. Then, using the right hand, the one with his injured wrist, he grabbed the other child and shoved him away. Pain shot up his arm, but he ignored it as best he could. His mind was very cognizant of the fact that he was facing a life-or-death situation. His options were to endure a little pain now or become a zombie.

Using his elbows, he scooted back and brought a booted foot up just in time to kick away the child that had recovered the fastest and was now staggering for him with arms outstretched and mouth open wide. His boot caught the child in the chin and snapped its head back.

A new bolt of pain caused his vision to blur as he pushed himself up to his feet and staggered back a few steps to give himself some room. He pulled out his remaining knife and waved the zombie children in.

“Come on,” he hissed. “You almost had me fooled, but now I’m on to your little tricks.”

Both children came, but they were now simply just a pair of slow moving zombies and he ended them with almost no effort. As he yanked his knife free, he wiped the blade off on a piece of the tattered tee shirt the little boy had been wearing.

The sounds of twigs being snapped from all around him made Jonathan take off in a jog. He glanced down at the cast on his right wrist and frowned. He was going to have a hell of a time explaining that to Nurse Martin. He added that to the list of things he needed to take care of when he reached his house.

When it finally came into view, he breathed a sigh of relief. He made sure to look around before going inside. If any of those things were following him, he would have to take care of them, but the coast appeared to be clear and he slipped in the front door and breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Looking around, he suddenly felt like an intruder. It no longer felt as if this was his home. His eyes landed on a picture that almost appeared to glow in the shaft of light that shone through his living room window.

Walking over to it, he picked it up and looked at it through tear-blurred vision. It was a picture of him and his mother taken on a trip to Charleston a few years ago. He could see Fort Sumter in the background. He pulled the small knapsack from his back and opened it, placing the picture in with an almost religious reverence.

Moving down the nearly pitch black hall that led to his bedroom, Jonathan pulled out his flashlight with his left hand; somewhere along the way, he’d lost his headlamp. He was fairly confident that he would not need to battle any zombies for a little while, so he allowed himself to relax just a bit. When he opened the bedroom door, he scowled at the sour smell of stale beer and pizza. He wondered if this was how his place smelled to everybody who came to visit.

“No wonder you can’t get laid,” he groused.

Opening his closet door, he had to scramble back in a hurry and tripped over his feet as something large tumbled out at him. He let out a small grunt of pain as he reflexively used his free right hand to help break his fall. Shaking his head to clear it, he saw the dark shape at his feet and laughed bitterly. Standing up carefully, he kicked the vacuum cleaner aside.

How many times had he told himself that he was going to get around to cleaning up his closet so that the stupid vacuum cleaner attachment did not fall out every single time he opened the door? Add that to the list of things he’d always been meaning to get around to, but now he never would.

Kneeling, he pulled out a khaki camera bag and carried it to his bed. Tucking the flashlight under his chin, he reached over and opened the curtains to let in a little moonlight so that he might be able to see better.

Slipping the shotgun free, he set it on his bed and then began rummaging through his room for a few more things. He knew that there were plans for teams to start salvaging everything they could from the abandoned residences, but there were a few things he wanted for himself. Also, there were a handful of items he’d rather not have salvage teams finding. He pulled his box of “girlie” magazines from under his bed and stuffed them into the knapsack.

Heading into the bathroom, he grabbed a few more things and then trudged into the kitchen. In the cabinet above the refrigerator were a few items that he would turn over to Nurse Martin. He grabbed all the partially used prescription bottles and added them to the haul. Maybe if he gave her these, she wouldn’t rip him a new one for ruining his cast and perhaps even reinjuring his wrist.

His last stop was the shelf in the small laundry room. He opened the cupboard mounted on the back wall and smiled. Two full bottles of Jack and a pint of peppermint schnapps. The last one he opened, taking a pull from the bottle.

Satisfied that he had all he’d come for—plus a few bonus items—Jonathan returned to his bedroom and grabbed his shotgun. He was just slinging it back over his shoulder when he heard what sounded like footsteps on his front porch.

Holding his breath, he heard the door knob rattle. The soft squeak of his front door’s hinges came and now Jonathan was more than just a little scared. If it was a zombie, then they could open doors; that was a terrifying thought. If it wasn’t zombies, then somebody was nosing around town and breaking into homes.

“Jonathan Patterson…if you are in here, could you say something, please?” a familiar voice called.

“Mr. Deese?” Jonathan let out his breath and emerged from his bedroom. “What are you doing here? And how did you find me?”

“I’m out here because I was on patrol and heard a scuffle. I got there a few seconds too late, but it looks like you handled things well enough. I didn’t want to yell and bring down more of those bastards, and you weren’t too far ahead. I would have gotten to your house sooner if I hadn’t run into a few of those damn zombies my own self.”

Jonathan stepped all the way into the living room and saw Stephen Deese standing in his front doorway. He had a machete still clutched in his right hand and it dripping dark fluid on the carpet where a stain was slowly growing. For a moment, Jonathan was annoyed that the man would appear so thoughtless, and then he remembered that he was in the early stages of a zombie apocalypse and his stained carpet did not really register on any list of priorities.

“If you are trying to sneak about, you probably shouldn’t wave around your flashlight while you rummage through your place.” The man came the rest of the way in and shut the door behind him. “And that brings me to my question. What the Sam Hill are you doing outside of the safe zone in the middle of the night…by yourself?”

For a moment, Jonathan didn’t know quite what to say. He was standing here with a knapsack slung over one shoulder and a second partially full pack on his back. He finally opted for the truth. He told Mr. Deese everything, including how he’d gotten a really bad feeling regarding the four men who had arrived on Harleys. He said that he could not explain it any clearer than to say they just gave him an uneasy sensation in his gut. He revealed his plan about setting up a few motion-activated cameras that would feed to an app on his cell phone once he found out where these men might be working.

The older man seemed to think things over for a few minutes and Jonathan became increasingly anxious as he waited. At last the man clapped his hands and leveled his gaze at Jonathan.

“I guess it is getting hard to just dismiss things and say it is stuff of fiction considering the fact that we currently find ourselves living in a lousy B-movie.” Jonathan breathed a sigh of relief, but the man held up a finger and his voice became stern. “That doesn’t mean I necessarily buy into what you’re sellin’, kid. If you end up being wrong, I don’t know nothin’ and I don’t wanna hear my name falling out of your mouth. Now, let’s get back home before anything bad happens.”

The pair returned in relative silence and Jonathan actually found himself a bit annoyed that no zombies happened upon him now that he had some help. As soon as they were back inside the perimeter, they separated and he headed over to the booths where people signed up for work details. What he saw only made him more certain than ever that he was on to something.

“Why would we just trust these clowns on a detail headed over to the market?” he scoffed quietly.

That was a blessing and a curse. The good thing was that Domino’s, his former place of employment, was in that little complex where the market was located. If he was going to set up his equipment, then this was the best setting possible. He still had his store keys and would have no problem slipping into the empty pizza store. The bad thing was that Mr. Deese had specifically told him to get to his cubicle and not do anything else stupid tonight.

He briefly considered his options. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but he doubted there really was such a thing. Before he did anything else, he needed to go see the nurse. In fact, if it went like he expected, then it might actually help him pull off his little scheme.

***

Jamie sat at the sign-up table and found her mind constantly replaying the events of two nights ago. She had regretted it less than five minutes after it was over. This was not like her. She had never just had sex with some random stranger. Hell, she could count her lovers on three fingers.

Four, she reminded herself. How had she tossed all her morals out the window so easily? She kept trying to tell herself that it was the madness of the past several days mixed with the booze. It had destroyed her defenses and left her emotions bare so that everything was going at hyper speed. That might explain how sensitive she’d gotten over Mr. Deese and the way he’d stepped in and taken charge of her mission.

After all, it wasn’t her mission. It was for Liberty. It was for everybody living inside their little community.

You need to get your head together, she scolded herself. You have a responsibility to this town and this is not a time for you to be acting like some stupid schoolgirl. Howard Merchant saw something in you. Isn’t it about time you start behaving like the person he knew you to be?

She would talk to Kevin tonight when he got back from the run he’d signed up for. She would explain that they needed to take a step back and slow things down. He seemed like such a sweet guy. She just knew that he would understand. If not, then that would be his loss.

“We have a problem,” Sophie’s voice broke into Jamie’s reverie. She jerked her head up to see her friend standing with a piece of paper in her hands. Mr. Deese was beside her looking more than a little annoyed.

“It seems that Jonathan Patterson has decided to leave.” Sophie shoved the crumpled piece of paper at her.

“What are you talking about?” Jamie took what appeared to be a note from her friend and read it. She looked up with an expression of confusion. “I don’t understand.”

“This is partially my fault.” Mr. Deese stepped forward. “I caught him outside the perimeter. He had slipped out and went to his house in the middle of the night. He had a couple of packs loaded up, but I didn’t think anything of it after I gave him a bit of a lecture and escorted him back here.”

“That’s when he came to see me in the middle of the night because he had ruined his cast. I told him I wasn’t going to just get up and go to the infirmary because he couldn’t follow simple instructions. I checked it to make sure he hadn’t done too much damage and then I wrapped it tight with an Ace bandage and told him to see me later. When he didn’t show up yesterday, I figured he was just sulking. I didn’t think anything of it.” Sophie sounded more than a little distraught, and it was clear that she was in the process of heaping as much blame as possible onto her own shoulders.

“When I didn’t see him around yesterday, and then again today, I made a trip out to his place and found that note tacked to his front door,” Mr. Deese assumed the narrative. “After making sure he wasn’t just hiding out in his house, I asked around, but there is no sign of him.”

“Well,” Jamie scrunched up her nose as she considered the situation, “it’s not like we have a rule saying that folks have to stay here. I feel bad for him, but he is an adult. If he wanted to leave, then he is obviously free to do so.”

“You don’t think we should look around for him? He damn near got himself killed that night he slipped out,” Mr. Deese pressed, sounding like he might be trying to take a little of the blame Sophie was trying to assume.

“I think it’s unfortunate, but anybody can leave anytime they want. And it might seem sad…even a little cruel, but we can’t spare resources to go looking for a grown man who might be having a bit of a tantrum.”

Jamie got up and turned over her seat to her shift replacement. There were still at least a couple hundred people roaming the booths set up on the football field. She joined the pair and steered them away from everybody.

“Look, I understand that you might be upset about this, but I’m honestly surprised more people haven’t left.” The pair stared at her with open amazement and a hint of confusion. “We make everybody work a six-day week from sunrise to after sunset. Many of our citizens have friends and family that they have no idea as to their condition. People are starting to get a little frayed. We are probably going to lose a few more, but let’s not start putting ideas in people’s heads. I know what I saw on that little drive to the Lowe’s the other day. We may be the anomaly in this apocalyptic equation. All I saw were burning buildings, zombies, and death. Nothing out there that I witnessed gave me any hope that this might be somehow temporary.”

Mr. Deese gave her a curious look and then shrugged his shoulders. “If that’s how ya feel.” And with that peculiar comment, he simply turned and walked away.

Jamie waited until he was out of earshot and then grabbed Sophie by the arm and led her just a bit further from the remaining individuals that were scrambling at the last minute to get their name on tomorrow’s work detail lists.

“I did something stupid,” she blurted.

“Slept with that Kevin guy, didn’t you.” It wasn’t a question. Sophie had her best “stern mother” face on and her arms folded across her body.

Jamie dropped her head and mumbled that she had. She waited, certain that she was about to get a very angry lecture. All she got was silence and she was beginning to believe that might be even worse.

“Girl, I guess everybody is entitled to a little selfishness as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody else.”

“You aren’t mad or disappointed?” Jamie’s head came up slowly. Sophie was smiling.

“Did you give me a ration when I got knocked up and married right after graduation?”

“No, but you and Cliff were a couple that had been together basically forever. Everybody knew you two were going to get married.”

“Someday, sure. But I had to turn down a full basketball scholarship. Instead of becoming a doctor like I dreamed, I became a nurse.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing. You are an amazing nurse.”

“But I would have made an amazing doctor,” Sophie said wistfully.

“Still, I don’t see how that can be equated to this. I barely know the guy. In fact, I had to dredge my brain to remember his last name.” Jamie paused and fought back the tears that threatened to spill from her eyes. “I’m not that kind of girl.”

“I know that.” Sophie put an arm around Jamie. The two stood huddled together for a few moments. “So maybe you take a few steps back. If this guy is as nice as you think…he’ll understand.”

There was a sudden flurry of what she now recognized as small arms fire. It sounded distant, but with several teams outside the perimeter the past few days, she dismissed it as anything to be concerned about as she and Sophie headed across the field towards the main school building. The two women had their arms slung over each other like soldiers coming off the battlefield, each of them offering commiserating squeezes as they shared tears and let some of the pressure inside find a release.

Jamie had just wiped her eyes and was composing herself when a voice called out from the tower on top of the stadium press box using one of the police bullhorns. “We have trucks incoming, but there is something wrong.”

Running over to the steps that climbed up to the press box with Sophie on her heels, she thought that she was prepared for the worst. Her mind was already weaving an image of the trucks from the quarry coming up the road in a convoy with a few hundred thousand zombies on their tail.

Scrambling up the ladder mounted on the back wall of the press box, she went through the trap door and then climbed up to the tower’s lookout platform. She spied the convoy approaching from the north as it rumbled down Ruhamah Road. She could not see anything that might cause alarm.

“Take a look with these,” the person on duty said as he handed over a set of binoculars.

Jamie brought them up to her eyes and then gasped. She pulled them down and rubbed her eyes as if that might change what she saw. Looking again, she confirmed her initial assessment. Still, something was wrong. This could not be happening.

The eight massive earthmovers and dump trucks were in a line. The only thing wrong with that was that there should be twelve; but that had nothing to do with Jamie’s reaction. Strapped to the grills of each of the four lead trucks was a single figure. She could not take her eyes off the man lashed to the front of second truck.

It was Kevin Staley.

***

Kevin pushed the big loading bay cart down the aisle and started pulling off every can, stacking them in a plastic crate. As soon as he filled one, he set it neatly and then moved the next one into position. He could not help but hum and sing softly as he worked; the song Master of Puppets providing the soundtrack to his task.

He could not believe that these backwater idiots could be so gullible. They had put him and the other three on a twelve person detail to the local grocery store. They were supposed to empty out the entire place and load everything that was still good into the open bays of three big delivery trucks that had been put on loan from that ridiculous barricade they were trying to create.

At the moment, his only concern was that they would have to find new Harleys. He’d become rather fond of his bike and did not like leaving it behind. Also, they would still have to head back towards the town.

The good news was that they would be on the very outskirts of the safe zone. Apparently the morons in charge had decided to use some vinyl door and window manufacturing building as the armory. The building was just inside the northern border of what they were trying to secure. A massive amount of ammunition was being stashed in a smaller detached building in the very back. They would actually be able to drive right up to it.

The bad news was that the main building was being converted into dorms just like the high school. There was a lot of activity at this place. Also, apparently they had decided to put a guard on duty. Of course, the person was more of an inventory clerk who was responsible for signing in any ammo being dropped off to add to their stockpile. By the time that person realized what was going on, they would be spraying blood from a slit throat.

They would load as much as they could in as short of a time as possible, and then roll out. People would still be wiping the tears from their eyes by the time he and the fellas were a hundred miles away. Today was going to be busy; but it was also going to be one very long adrenaline rush.

As he reached the end of the aisle, he paused to take a drink of water. Glancing in both directions, he spotted Bob emerging from his aisle. The man gave him a nod and then pushed his big trolley out the front doors. This was the last load. It was time for the fun to begin.

He pushed his own cart out, following a woman who looked like she belonged behind the counter at the local library more than she did out here where the zombies had started to take note of their presence. Four of the members of the team had been put outside to deal with the walkers that were converging on the huge open parking lot of this little strip mall with its grocery store, pizza joint, haircut place, nail salon, and fitness center. That was up from just one when they had first gotten here yesterday, two first thing this morning, and now up to the four that were currently running around, jabbing their long spears into the heads of every zombie that came their way.

Joe had volunteered this morning which, while not really the plan, came as no surprise considering his hard-on for killing zombies. As Kevin exited the store with his last load, he saw Joe dancing past one of the members of the team to take down a zombie that would have most likely gotten its hand on the older man.

He shoulda just let the zombie do some of the dirty work, Kevin thought as he pushed up to the open doors of the trailer that looked to be over three-quarters of the way full. Bob had already walked away from his cart, oblivious to the dirty looks and scowls of the two men that he’d left to do all the grunt work of loading the haul up into the truck. Until this last load, he and everybody else had stayed with his or her cart and helped hand the content up into the trailers. Kevin watched as Bob vanished back inside the store.

He did not envy whomever it was that Bob Capka met next. Of course, that first person might have the luxury of a quick death. The rest might not fare so well.

A scream brought Kevin out from behind the back of the truck where he was in the middle of handing his crates up to the large, librarian-looking woman inside. He’d been wondering at that exact moment if this woman would have been pretty in a few months after the zombie apocalypse forced her to cut down on the snack foods.

A smile split Kevin’s face when he discovered the source of the scream. Joe had run the man he’d just saved clean through with his spear and was guiding his struggling victim towards a throng of seven or eight zombies. He continued to watch as the man was grabbed by the first walker to get close enough and then jerked free of the spear and dragged to the ground where he was pounced on by the others.

Joe wasn’t foolish enough to think his actions had gone unnoticed and spun just as the other two people who had been charged with keeping the lot secure came rushing for him with their spears raised. They were screaming for him to get on the ground as they closed from almost halfway across the huge asphalt wasteland that was strewn with corpses from the past two days of killing.

It almost reminded Kevin of the scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. The rule had been made very clear that guns were a last resort. With the undead not posing what was considered a serious threat or coming in large enough numbers to merit concern, nobody had seen fit to carry one.

Well, Kevin thought, almost no one.

Joe drew a semi-automatic .45 caliber from where he’d kept it tucked against his spine and under his loose denim shirt. The first shot hit the woman that had been charging, catching her solidly in the right thigh. She buckled and fell hard, bouncing off the concrete with an audible smack. Joe was actually kinder to the man. Two shots to the chest dropped him.

By then, the people in the back of the truck were emerging to see what was going on.

Kevin turned and stepped into the first one. It had been the pudgy woman with the pretty face. He already had his big KA-BAR in hand and drove it up and into her flabby belly. She gasped and blood spewed from her open mouth as he gave it an extra twist before pulling it free.

The man who was right on her heels ended up stumbling backwards as he caught on rather quickly as to what was happening. He landed on his side, fumbling for the blade he was carrying on his own belt.

“Ah-ah-ah,” Kevin taunted, wagging a finger at the man as he stepped over and stood over his body.

Reaching down, he grabbed the man by the hair and drove his still dripping blade into a mouth that was open and poised to scream. There was a gagging gurgle and the guy flailed while death came with painful slowness. Kevin left the KA-BAR jutting from the man’s mouth as he snatched the blade that had been intended for him from the ground. His victim’s hand clutched open and shut impotently as Kevin looked down on the man’s final death throes.

“I’ll have my knife back,” he sneered as he placed his boot on the man’s forehead and yanked his KA-BAR free while shifting his newest acquisition to his left hand.

A scream from within the store made him hurry his pace as he returned inside. Just as he entered the open front doors, he winced out of reflex. A body hurled past on his right and slammed into one of the thick plate windows, sending a spider web of cracks racing across its surface.

“Dammit, Trunk!” Kevin snapped. “How about giving a call of heads-up.”

“Sorry,” Mark apologized as he stalked over to the stunned figure sprawled on the floor where she’d slid after being thrown. Leaning down, he stomped into her chest once and then grabbed her head with both hands and jerked hard to the right until there was an audible crack. Looking up, he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Snapping necks is harder than it looks in them Stallone movies.”

“Where’s Bob?” Kevin asked, his eyes scanning the interior of the store.

“Saw him back in the pharmacy with that brother and sister.” Mark pointed to the rear of the store.

Kevin nodded and headed towards the back. “Get Joe and have the trucks ready to roll. I’ll get Bob.”

He picked up a lantern that was sitting on the floor. They had placed several throughout the store and had them lit even during the day since it was deceptively dark not too far past the checkout lanes. He had come down the far left of the store and turned the corner when he heard a peculiar sound.

Raising the lantern, he saw a figure hanging from what looked like an extension cord. The cord was secured to an overhead pipe in the ceiling and now swung back and forth as the figure at the end kicked and struggled. He continued forward, but had slowed considerably. By the time he was close enough to make out the details, the body had ceased its struggle and simply dangled limply.

Bob was standing behind the sister of the pair. He was resting his chin on her shoulder and his lips were moving, but Kevin could not make out what was being said. The sister was staring in open shock and horror up at her brother and, by this point, Kevin seriously doubted that she heard anything that Bob was saying either.

“Time to go, Bob,” Kevin called.

The man looked up through the long hair dangling in his eyes. That was the only indication that he had heard anything. For just a moment, Kevin felt fear try to creep into his belly as he looked into Bob’s dark gaze.

There was a flash of something metal and then Bob stepped from behind the twenty-something woman who was still so transfixed on the image of her brother hanging from the ceiling that she did not react. Blood sprayed from her throat in time with her beating heart, and at last she realized her fate. Staggering back, the woman dropped to her knees, hands trying in desperate futility to staunch the flow of blood.

Despite the voice in his head that screamed in warning, Kevin turned his back to the scene, which included Bob, and started for the front of the store. He stepped out into the late afternoon sun and sucked in a breath of clean air.

“Okay, boys, let’s swing by that little armory they got going, grab what we can as fast as possible, and then hit the road.” Kevin climbed into a truck and flinched as Bob chose to join him.

The three large trucks pulled out of the parking lot and hung a right on Main Street, following it around the dog leg as they cruised towards their ultimate destination.

***

Chief Gilstrap climbed up into the big dump truck. This one would be parked someplace where he could get to it if there ever came a need. It was a tank minus a gun turret and would probably be able to mow through a pretty massive horde of the undead if it ever came to that.

He was coming up on the market where he thought he might check in and offer some help if the salvage team was still working on getting everything loaded up. He was just passing a body shop on the right when he saw the big eighteen-wheelers pulling out of the market’s parking lot.

“Looks like we might have almost everybody home for dinner,” the chief said with a smile.

Having the store emptied out was a huge event. This would give them a clear idea of how much food they would have as they got the gardens up. Between hunting, fishing, and farming, they would hopefully be able to sustain themselves. Of course, he hadn’t eliminated the possibility of sending out teams to forage and scavenge abroad. There was no sense in letting things go to waste.

He was coming up on the market when a figure that was definitely not a zombie darted out in the road ahead and began waving his arms around like a maniac. He put on the brakes and was surprised to see Jonathan Patterson standing in the middle of the road. There was a look on his face that put Chief Gilstrap on high alert.

As he climbed out of the massive dump truck, his head was on a swivel as he looked everywhere at once while still keeping Patterson in his field of vision. Something was definitely wrong.

“They killed ‘em!” the young man blurted, pointing back towards the market parking lot. “Killed all of ‘em and they are leaving with the food!”

“Wait,” Chief Gilstrap barked, silencing the man. “Who killed who and who is leaving with the food?”

“Those bikers that arrived a few days ago. I tried to warn you guys, but nobody wanted to believe me.”

“What the blazes are you going on about?” The chief was close enough now that he could get a whiff. Nope, no signs that the kid was drunk.

Jonathan Patterson shoved a cell phone at the chief. “It’s here. Not everything, but enough. Just look!”

“Phones haven’t been working for days, young man,” the chief ignored the device being thrust at him.

“Sure, but my battery powered cameras are working just fine. I had the feeds tethered to my phone and it is all on film. Just look, for crying out loud.”

Chief Gilstrap was tired. He had no idea what this kid was babbling about, but if looking at some grainy video would shut him up, then it would be a small price to pay to return home, wipe himself down with a warm, wet towel, and then sleep for about twenty hours. Of course he doubted that he would get anything close to that amount of sleep, but a man had to have dreams.

He took the cell phone and tapped the sideways triangle that would start the video rolling. The first thing he noticed was that the footage was far from grainy. In fact, the picture was clearer than what he saw on his own home television.

He watched as a few of the store’s salvage team were moving around to deal with approaching zombies. Then he saw one of them walk over and thrust his spear through the chest of one of the other team members. The picture zoomed in and he instantly recognized the victim…and the killer. The problem was that he knew the victim’s first and last name. He had played softball with him in the park during Fourth of July picnics.

The killer’s name escaped him. All he knew was that it was one of those four men who had just arrived on motorcycles—one of the four men that Jonathan Patterson had tried to warn him about. He only watched a few more seconds of the video. He didn’t need to see anymore.

“They just headed for town in the trucks with all the supplies,” Jonathan said in a rush.

Why would they head towards town? Chief Gilstrap thought. Surely it could not be simply to get their motorcycles. They could break in to any shop in the country now and take the bike of their choosing. Then it hit him. He knew exactly why they would be headed towards town. At this precise moment, Chief Adam Gilstrap felt like an idiot. He had allowed strangers to come into his town. He had not said a word against them just signing on for one of the most important salvage operations of the town’s lives.

In short; he had acted like a rookie…or worse.

Turning to face the rest of his team that had joined him on this truck acquisition, he took off his hat and wrung it in his hands as he spoke.

“I don’t have a lot of time to explain, but we have four very bad men about to swoop in and probably take at least half of our ammunition. This is not a game, and I will warn you that if you come with me, you may have to shoot and kill a living human being. That is not a thing that you should take lightly. If you come, be prepared for the worst, and if you choose to sit this one out, there will be no man or woman who thinks less of you.”

Chief Gilstrap climbed up into the truck and was not surprised to see Jonathan climb into the passenger’s side. What did surprise him a little was to see all of the trucks in his convoy follow him as he turned left on Maplecroft Street instead of Peachtree Street.

As the trucks neared the entrance to the vinyl door and window manufacturing facility, the sound of a single gunshot was able to be heard over the roar of the massive engine of the dump truck.

“Dammit,” Chief Gilstrap cursed.

11

Casualties

Kevin brought the lead truck to a stop at the end of the long entry drive that led to the farthest rear end of the door and window facility. He turned so that they were facing out to aid in their departure; not that he expected anything to go wrong. Bob was already climbing out before they came to a complete stop. Kevin set the brake as the other two members of his gang jogged up. They had parked out on the street just before the right turn onto South Norman Street.

He had not bothered to concern himself with setting the safety on his handgun as he approached the large, detached storage shed where the ammo had been gathered. He still could not believe their luck. These people were still so stuck in civilization and the way things were that they could not see the reality. This was a new world akin to the days of warlords and kings.

Kevin Staley would be both. He would secure his place with a ruthless selfishness. He and his three friends would create an empire from the ruins and sit atop it like lords. They would have people throwing themselves under the umbrella of their rule willingly. For that to happen, they needed some necessities. This haul would set them up perfectly.

He sort of wished that Jamie chick would have come along, but he hadn’t even considered asking. She was entrenched in that small town mindset. She’d even quoted some silly sentiment about Liberty being “where neighbors become friends” or some such nonsense. He had not even tried to make her an offer. She would have probably run off and told that relic of a cop that really seemed to be running the show.

Unfortunately for the people of this town, the cop wasn’t really on the ball. He was just as slow in realizing that the world had not begun a slow decline into chaos; it was already here in full effect. Not that Kevin was complaining. It had made their job that much easier.

In a way, he might be doing these folks a favor. After this little disaster, maybe they would learn their lesson and become more capable of survival. Either that or they would all starve and die before the end of the first winter. It made no difference either way as far as Kevin and the others were concerned.

Kevin was about ten feet from the side door that opened to the storage area where the ammunition was kept when a young man emerged from a single door beside where a pair of cars were parked. That single door actually went into the main part of the complex.

“What do we have here, fella?” the man asked as he took off his ball cap and wiped his forehead.

“Actually just here to pick up some stuff,” Kevin replied casually.

“Excuse me?” The man pulled up and regarded first Kevin and then Bob who had altered his course from the location of the ammunition and was now headed towards him. “What would you be picking up?”

“Ammunition of course,” Kevin replied with a laugh. That had been just enough to get the man to look his way and take his eyes off of Bob who was now only a few strides from him.

As soon as the man’s head turned that fraction, Bob had a knife in his hand. He jumped up onto the small landing just as the man was turning his attention back. The knife flashed and then plunged into the unwitting fool’s throat. Bob pulled it out, guided the man to the ground, and then started back for Kevin.

By then, Joe and Mark had crossed the rest of the distance and reached the entrance to the ammunition’s storage room just as Kevin opened the door. Kevin stepped inside and gave a pleasant nod to the lone woman who was standing in front of a stack of crates that went to the ceiling. She had a clipboard in her hand and was busily jotting down something.

“Can I help you?” she asked without even a drop of concern in her voice.

Kevin was glad that they had not only gotten cleaned up, but they had also been given a fresh change of clothes. He was actually wearing a Liberty High School football jersey. The black did an excellent job of hiding the blood.

“Here to help you with the inventory,” Kevin lied.

“Kinda late for that,” the woman snorted. “Figures help would show up after I got most of it done.”

“Oh,” Kevin could not suppress the mirth in his voice, “we aren’t here to count.”

Just then, Bob entered behind him. The woman’s expression changed instantly. Kevin turned and saw a slash of bright red blood that had sprayed the once-white tee shirt that Bob had donned. He turned back to the woman, stepping aside to allow his friend to do what he did best.

Grabbing the first box, Kevin actually winced. Bob was astride the flailing woman, hands locked around her throat as he allowed her to slowly wilt to the ground under his grip. Joe and Mark hurried in and did not need to be told what to do. That was just another thing that Kevin believed put his group of four ahead of an entire town: nobody needed to be told what to do. He supposed that having sign-up sheets and that sort of thing might be fine for some folks, but it simply wasn’t his cup of tea.

They found a pallet jack and started loading it. A moment or two later, Bob fell in and began to help. They had the first load out and were piling it into the back of the open cargo bay when the sounds of approaching vehicles could be heard.

Kevin recalled something about that cop leading a group out to bring in more trucks for that silly barricade and considered shrugging it off. He had climbed up into the bay and sent Bob and Joe back to get the next load. Mark was just shoving another crate in when something about the approaching engines got Kevin’s attention: they were slowing.

“Dammit all to hell,” he swore, causing Mark to look up at him.

“Problems?” the large man rumbled.

“I think we’re about to have company. Go grab the others…I think we are gonna have to maybe fight our way out of this.”

“What?” Mark turned back towards the road as a convoy of various large vehicles slowed where he and Joe had parked their rigs. “Aww, man.”

“I said go get the others, Trunk!” Kevin snapped. “Let me do the talking.”

Mark dropped the crate he’d been holding and took off at a jog for the storage shed. Kevin hurried to the cab of the truck and grabbed his binoculars. Standing on the step of the driver’s side, he brought the glasses to his eyes.

“Fuck me runnin’,” he cursed.

He saw a few people climb out of some sort of earth mover and a cement mixer. After a small meeting at the dump truck in the lead, they jogged over and climbed into the cabs of the rigs carrying their supplies. He saw the chief lean out the driver’s side window of the big dump truck in front and signal practically right at him.

“That answers that,” Kevin sighed.

Joe, Mark, and Bob emerged from the doorway. Mark and Joe both cast concerned glances back towards the road where the convoy was now moving again. It did not go far and Kevin felt his stomach churn just a bit more. They were parking across the exit. There would be no way out now.

“New plan, boys.” Kevin climbed out of the cab and drew his pistol. “Time to split up. Trunk, you come with me. Bob and Joe, you guys cut through those woods.” He pointed to the right. “Make your way out of their little perimeter and get to the highway. There should be plenty of old beater trucks in that shitty little town that can be hotwired. Meet up at that BI-LO in Easley. We can re-group and figure out what to do from there.”

The two men nodded and took off at a jog for the trees. Mark stayed silent until they vanished over the edge of the pavement and into the tall grass. “Why are we going back towards Greenville? That place is a—” he began, but Kevin cut him off.

“A death trap? Yeah, we aren’t going that way. I think maybe we would be better off if we ditched those two and took off on our own.” The big man seemed confused and his eyes darkened a little. “Problem, Trunk?”

“We’ve been like brothers for a long time, Kev,” Mark replied.

“We can discuss this later.” Kevin gave the other man a shove. “Time to run.”

The pair ducked back around the building and headed south. They were in the trees just as the sounds of massive diesel engines rumbling to a stop were heard.

Kevin ducked under some branches and began to weave through the dense growth. He could hear Mark already wheezing behind him.

The guy has a massive chest and huge arms, but he can’t run worth a damn, Kevin thought with a hint of annoyance.

They had not gone far when he spotted a clearing up ahead. Through the trees he was able to make out the shapes of gigantic power line towers. He thought that he might have a better idea about where they were now. Unfortunately, if they turned to the right, they would come out right by the school in just a short distance. The other way was the same direction he’d sent Bob and Joe.

He was weighing out his options when a voice shouted from his left, “Stop where you are and put your hands in the air.”

“How many times have I heard that command?” Kevin muttered.

***

Chief Gilstrap was pretty sure he was angrier at himself than anybody else. He’d been about as irresponsible as he could have possibly managed. In his opinion, he had acted just like the bumpkin, backwoods cop those four men had assumed him to be. He’d been a regular country mouse since this whole nightmare began.

Despite all he’d seen, despite the little he’d learned from a handful of movies, he had just not taken this seriously. Maybe he kept hoping that the government would get a handle on things. Sure, power was out, media outlets had spewed warnings in the last days, but he refused to believe that the world was going to be wiped out by zombies. That was just not possible.

Now his community was paying the price for his negligence. He had allowed absolute strangers to just waltz in and join perhaps the singular most important mission that the community was undertaking—the gathering of food. Sure, he hadn’t sent them alone, but he had allowed all of them to go out together.

“Those are our trucks!” Jonathan blurted, pointing at two big rigs sitting just before the intersection with South Norman Street.

The chief pulled over and grabbed his portable radio. “Ivan, you on?”

“Right here, chief,” a voice replied almost instantly.

“I think we have a problem.” He related what Jonathan had told him as well as a short version of what he’d seen on that horrible recording of the massacre at the market. “I’m at the door and window factory. It looks like they drove one truck right to the fucking ammo storage. I don’t have eyes on anybody yet, but I am going to move in. I need you to come in from the south if they try to make a run through the woods. I know this is going to go down fast, so grab who you can and get moving. I am going to send part of my detail to grab the two rigs these assholes left beside the road. I’ll send them north on Norman and have them circle back to Peachtree. That should cover their most likely route of escape.”

“I’m already on the move, chief,” Ivan replied. “I have a few men headed for Highway 123 just in case.”

Adam leaned out his window and gave the word for everybody to get going. One of his team called out, “Where you gonna be?”

Looking over to the big truck that was pointed out obviously to expedite their departure, he thought he saw movement from back by the ammunition storage. “I am going to block the exit and then a few of us are going to go in on foot and take these animals down.”

A moment later, he was climbing out of the dump truck. When he drew his pistol, it dawned on him that he had never once found the need to pull out his gun for a call during his entire career in Liberty. He had laughed at the shows on television where cops seemed to have their weapons out of their holster more than in. His wife had told him that he should consider it a blessing. Truthfully, he did. He saw nothing exciting or rewarding about taking another human life. It was possible that he might be about to take four in a very short while.

He had five of his team with him. He’d told Jonathan to stay in the truck, keep it running, and lay on the horn if he saw anything. He’d been happy when the young man had not made a fuss or insisted on coming along. Besides having the same doubts he had regarding the four men and one woman following him as he hugged the wall of the long building, Jonathan was wearing a cast on his right arm; that made him pretty much useless in a fight.

He moved to the end of the building and peeked around the corner. The semi was still running, the back still open, but there were no signs of anybody moving around. Edging a bit further out to get a better look, his eyes lit upon a body sprawled on the ramp that led from one of the doors that opened to the main building. He noticed the large pool of dark fluid spread out in a lopsided halo around the corpse.

It was Isaiah Newkirk. He would deal with his guilty conscience later. The kid’s face still had an expression of surprise and pain etched into it. He held up a hand to signal everybody to stand fast. Having been out in this insane zombie infested countryside with these people for a while, he was confident that they knew what his gesture meant. He didn’t have time to check as he ducked low and dashed for the storage building.

He edged around the corner and then hurried down the length. Rounding this corner would put him right by the entrance. Pistol at the ready, he stayed low to minimize his chances of being shot—people shooting at adult-sized targets automatically tended to fire high. Holding his breath, he risked a look and saw the open door. Still on alert, his body a spring being tightened almost to the point of snapping, he made it to the door. Looking inside, he saw legs sticking out from beside a stack of crates.

He listened for a few more heartbeats and was only able to hear his own blood pounding in his ears. He ventured inside, but it only took him a few seconds to ascertain that the place was empty except for the dead body on the floor. He didn’t have the luxury to do anything other than glance and confirm that Gretchen Criss, Granny Criss’ daughter, was dead. Her eyes were dull and staring up at the ceiling without seeing anything.

He rushed out and waved his team forward as he moved to the next corner of the main building and took a look. If these four tried to slip around the building and back up to the road, Jonathan would’ve spotted them by now and laid on the horn.

Knowing that Ivan would be coming up from the south, that left east. Motioning to his team, due east was the direction that Adam Gilstrap took off in. He stayed cautious, but also knew that he needed to move with urgency and purpose. That was the only way that he was going to have any chance at catching these murderous bastards if they had opted to try and escape to the east back towards the heart of town.

They were just emerging where Tillman and Clemson intersected when the sound of an engine turning over snapped his head to the left. He took off at a sprint, the sounds of heavy footfalls behind him letting him know that his team was right on his heels. About two-thirds of the way up Clemson, there was the boom of a shotgun and a scream. Seconds later, an old blue Ford pickup was just backing up onto the road. Adam Gilstrap stopped cold and brought his pistol up. He only had a second or two to make his decision.

He sighted on the head that he saw through the back window and was about to shoot when a fire truck appeared at that end of the street, effectively blocking the exit. The truck veered suddenly and tried to cut through the yard of the house at the end of the road. It clipped a tree as a second big red response vehicle arrived. The pickup slammed into the first fire truck with a metallic crunch. A plume of steam signaled the death of the pickup, but both doors flew open indicating the passengers were apparently fine.

The one with the long hair had just managed to get a few steps when somebody that had been riding in the back of the fire engine flew through the air and tackled him. The other one fared even worse. Two large men decked out in the protective gear of the roving patrols which included a lot of modified football equipment slammed into him like he was a lineman’s sled.

Looking around, the chief searched for the other two. Already, some of the people who had been housed in the residences in this small neighborhood were coming out onto the porch to see what all the racket was about.

“Sumbitches tried to steal my pickup!” an angry voice shouted. “Didn’t have the decency to ask, just hotwired the damn thing and was taking off.”

Chief Gilstrap walked up to see Craig Whalen standing where there used to be a gate. Now, all that remained was a bunch of twisted metal. He was cradling a big double-barrel shotgun that still had bluish smoke drifting from the business end.

“How about you go give the fellas some help securing those two,” the chief suggested. The look he saw on Craig’s face told him that those two would be getting exactly the sort of treatment he hoped for. Turning back up the street to the growing number of citizens, he called out, “Anybody see two other fellas sneaking around? One of ‘em is a beefy sort, the other is tall, has reddish hair and a goatee.”

The looks on the faces he could see told him that the other pair hadn’t been spotted. He cursed under his breath and almost as if in response, his radio crackled.

“Got eyes on ‘em, chief!” Ivan reported, more than just a hint of excitement in his voice. “They took off when I told them to surrender. They went back into the woods and are on the run towards Southern Vinyl.”

“Taking them alive is not, I repeat not a priority.”

The chief turned to the onlookers who all had varied expressions of confusion on their faces. This needed to be remedied. People were still trying to live life as if things were mostly okay. The level of denial was on a massive scale, and part of it was because maybe only a small percentage of the citizens had actually seen an animate zombie up close and for real. That was going to have to change if there was going to be any chance for the people of Liberty to have at least some shot at survival.

“I need a vehicle,” he called. He felt his annoyance grow as they all seemed to be looking to each other for a volunteer. “NOW dammit!”

That did it. A young man started for him, digging in his pocket as he hurried over pointing to the driveway he’d just come from. “It’s the red Chevy, chief.”

Taking the keys with a quick nod and a thanks, he hurried over and jumped in the driver’s seat. Bo Summers hopped into the passenger seat. Bo Summers was perhaps as large as the big man from the foursome, but not in a gym-created way. Bo was what the chief considered country-boy big. Even this early in spring, he was already sporting a farmer’s tan. His hands were massive slabs of callous from bucking hay and other backbreaking farm work. He’d been on every mission so far that the chief had helmed and had not complained or griped even once.

“What’s going on, chief?” Bo asked as they did a quick turn around and headed for Maplecroft which would take them to Ruhamah and back to where they had left the big trucks destined for the slowly expanding barricade.

“You mean besides the zombie apocalypse?” The chief gripped the steering wheel tight as he took the left turn in a wide skidding slide.

“You really think this is it?” Bo asked in a voice that sounded very much unlike the tough guy he had known for over four decades.

“I think it is worse than we can imagine. I think that we might be fighting a losing battle…but I also think we will do whatever we need to do until we can’t do anything else.”

“And what about these four pieces of garbage? How did that happen?”

The chief swallowed the bitterness in the back of his throat. “My fault. I guess I didn’t want to believe folks would go rotten so fast.”

“You’re a damn cop, Adam. How the hell can you not think there are bad people who will take advantage of this?” The huge man threw his arms up gesturing to the countryside they were driving past.

“We ain’t seen this sort of thing here in Liberty, at least not on this level. Not saying we are all angels, but it’s not like we have murders and rapes happening every day.” Chief Gilstrap sighed. “But you’re right…I dropped the ball on this one.”

“Dropped the ball?”

“Can we do this later?” the chief said as he brought the car to a stop beside the dump truck. Jonathan was leaning out the window with a confused look on his face.

“What is going on?” The man opened the door and managed to climb out using the three rung ladder to help get down.

“We have two of them over on Clemson. Ivan said he spotted the other pair coming out of the woods, but they turned around and might be headed back this way.” The chief stepped out into the middle of the road and shielded his eyes from the setting sun as he scanned the tree line for signs of anything.

He saw the flash…but did not have a chance to react. He felt like a fist punched him in the center of the chest. Staggering back, he tried to get a breath, but nothing seemed to be happening. A coppery taste filled his mouth and he felt something trickle down his chin. A burning sensation flooded his pain receptors as he choked on a mouthful of blood while still gasping in futility for a breath that showed no inclination of making its way into his lungs.

He could hear a buzzing sound. Looking up, he saw Bo standing over him with a rifle in his hands. It looked like he was screaming something. Adam Gilstrap tried to hear what the man was yelling, but it could not make its way past that buzz and ringing in his ears. Maybe if he just closed his eyes for a moment and focused on catching his breath; besides…he was suddenly more tired than he could ever remember being in his life.

***

Jonathan winced at the sound of a gunshot from way too close. He felt something warm splatter his face. Reaching up, he wiped with his left hand and staggered back when it came away bloody. A second later, he realized that he hadn’t felt a thing. If he was dying now, then maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing. There was no pain.

The chief crumpled to the ground beside him and was flat on his back, staring up at the sky with a pained look on his face. After blinking his eyes, Jonathan saw the dark stain on the chief’s shirt. It was growing before his eyes, and then there was the blood leaking from the corners of the chief’s mouth.

The sound of a rifle seemed to explode right next to his head. Ducking, Jonathan glanced over to see big Bo Summers with a .30-06 pressed to his shoulder. He fired a second time and started yelling something about staying on the ground or the next one was gonna be in the face.

When did I hit the ground? he thought as he realized he was now flat on his belly, and right next to the chief who was making a strange, wet wheezing sound that reminded him of sucking through a straw when the drink glass was basically empty.

He heard the sounds of shouting and rolled over to see a group of men advancing on two of those bikers. Both were on the ground with one clutching his leg and the other curled up in the fetal position. There was a lot of hollering about “Don’t move!” and “My leg!” but to Jonathan it was just noise. He was looking over at the chief who was almost as pale as a zombie. The only reason that Jonathan knew the chief wasn’t one of those things was because he was just pale. There were no hints of blue or gray discoloration, and his eyes were not filmed over and shot through with those black tracers.

“The chief’s been shot,” Jonathan said, his voice barely a whisper. He looked around and realized that nobody had heard him. “Hey, get some help over here!” Jonathan made it to his knees and crawled over to the chief. “The chief has been shot!”

Looking over his shoulder, he saw that everybody was busy throwing those two bikers onto their stomachs and checking them for weapons. A hand brushed his face and Jonathan actually let out a little scream. Looking down, he saw the chief’s lips were moving, but he couldn’t hear.

He leaned down so that he could, his ear almost touching the chief’s lips. “Say that again, chief. What can I do?” Try as he might, Jonathan could not dredge up one single thing from any of the first aid classes that he had attended during high school health class or the mandatory ones he’d been forced to go to when he became part of the Domino’s management team.

“Tell her…lock it down. Keep our people safe.” There was a slight gasp, and then a long, slow exhale.

Jonathan popped up and looked down at the man who had been the Liberty, South Carolina Chief of Police for what seemed like forever. The man was still staring straight up, but his eyes were not seeing anything.

And they were changing

A feeling of rage overwhelmed him, and before he realized it, he was on his feet and stomping towards the two bodies lying face down on the side of the road. The closer he got, the faster he moved. The men restraining the bikers had their backs to him and so nobody even noticed until he shoved past two of the men kneeling on the back of the one with the reddish hair.

With everything he had, Jonathan kicked the man. His booted foot found ribs and there was a satisfying crack.

Somebody grabbed him after the third kick. Jonathan thrashed and squirmed, trying to get in another solid boot to the ribs of the bastard lying on the ground. The biker named Kevin looked up at him, a slight trickle of blood now seeping from the corner of his mouth, but nothing like what he’d seen coming from the chief. He was staring into the man’s eyes, all his rage threatening to explode in his chest.

The man made eye contact with Jonathan…and then he smiled.

12

“Thank you.”

“I say we drag them out of town and feed them to some of those monsters!” somebody shouted from the gathered throng that looked to be pretty much anybody not currently on watch or patrol.

Jamie stood on the small stage and looked around the packed high school football stadium. The faces looking back at her were a mixture of fear, hurt, and—most of all—rage. She was having a difficult time not letting herself spiral down those same paths.

At first, she had been shocked when the trucks pulled in with the four men lashed to the grills. Two of them, Kevin Staley and Mark Trees, were bleeding from apparent bullet wounds. Joe Spencer, the slender man with all the tattoos had a busted nose, black eyes, and a gash where his teeth had come through the flesh right below his bottom lip.

Then there was Bob Capka. He was a bit scraped up, but showed no signs of having been injured physically in any other way. He was also the only one of the four who had not said a word. In fact, she hadn’t heard him speak one time since his arrival. And now, with the four men chained up in the boiler room of the high school with armed guards watching them twenty-four hours a day, he still had not said a single word.

She was about to ask why these men were tied to the trucks when Ivan, Bo Summers, and Jonathan all piled out of the second truck in the convoy. They didn’t say a word to anybody as they went to the rear of the giant dump truck. Ivan made eye contact with Jamie and had motioned her over. She and Sophie rushed to where the man stood, and as she got close, she saw tears in the man’s eyes. She had no idea what could cause a man like Ivan Potter to cry, and in that instant, she wasn’t entirely sure that she wanted to know.

She had not even realized that she had not seen the chief until the back of the dump truck was opened to reveal what was inside the dump bed. Her hands had flown to her mouth, but it only managed to partially stifle the scream. Standing in the open bay was Chief Adam Gilstrap. Only…it wasn’t him anymore; not really.

This obscene caricature of the Liberty Chief of Police had a dark stain that had spread to almost the entire right side of his shirt. The eyes staring back at her were filmed over and shot full of black tracers. His skin was a bluish-gray and hung loosely on his face, giving him a pathetic look that further removed whatever this thing was from the man he’d been; the man that Jamie Burns remembered.

She had turned to Ivan, but was unable to ask the question. Perhaps she simply did not want the answer. Yet, it didn’t take a college degree to know what the general report would include.

“They did it,” Jonathan whispered.

He stepped up beside Jamie and handed her his cell phone. She looked down and saw a video that was ready to be played. As she watched the footage, she felt an icy chill run up and down her spine. Her blood felt like it froze in her veins.

As she watched the video, Ivan had lured the thing that used to be the chief to the rear of the dump truck’s bed. The thing had actually stepped off the lip and landed on the ground with a terrible snap of bone, then began to struggle to its feet. Ivan and Bo had thrown a coat over its head and then cuffed it and led it to a nearby groundskeeper’s equipment shed.

“What are you doing?” she had asked when they came back.

“Not a damn thing until we talk to Sarah,” Ivan had said solemnly.

“I’ll do it,” Jamie offered.

“You sure?” Ivan asked with a hint of doubt in his tone.

“This is my responsibility. I would like for you to see to the dispersal of this crowd. This is something I have to do.” She had turned to Bo Summers. “I want you to secure the prisoners in the basement of the high school. Put a pair of guards on them. They are not to be left unsupervised for even a moment.”

She recalled being a little surprised when there was not even a hint of questioning as she barked orders. She turned to Sophie after that and told her that all she wanted her to do was ensure that the prisoners did not bleed out. They would stand trial for their actions.

That had been the statement that caused a few people to start voicing protests. She had spun on the cluster of people gathered and leveled her angry glare at them all. “I don’t want to hear it, people. We will do this right.”

Before another word could be said, she had turned and walked away. Her eyes spied the police cruiser and she decided that would do fine. She was just getting behind the wheel when the passenger door opened and Jonathan Patterson jumped in beside her.

“I will deal with you later,” she said. “I don’t have time right now.”

“Deal with me?” he sounded perplexed.

“The note? You were supposedly leaving Liberty, and then you just happen to be in place to record that footage.”

“I will explain everything while you drive over to the chief’s house,” the man had said.

He related his plan and how he figured the only way he could ease his suspicions was to watch these guys for a while. He honestly had not expected anything like what happened. If he’d figured for a moment that the four men were capable of such violence, he would have probably not possessed the nerve. At the most, he just figured they would steal a bunch of supplies or something like that.

He gave his account of what had taken place when the chief got shot, but there was something else he seemed to be struggling with. Jamie waited, but she did not need to be distracted when she walked up to the chief’s house to inform his wife about what happened to her husband.

“Just spit out whatever it is, Jonathan,” she finally said, sounding a bit harsher than she wanted, but right now she just did not have the patience.

“The chief’s last words…they were for you. At least I’m pretty sure they were.”

Jamie pulled the car up in front of the chief’s house. She shut off the engine and turned to face the man beside her.

“He said to tell you to…to lock the town down and keep the people safe.”

Jamie considered the words for a moment. Part of her was stunned. If she had been honest with herself at any point up until that moment, she truly believed that the chief had not held her in any esteem. He certainly hadn’t shown her anything resembling the respect that she felt she deserved. Then a little phrase that her dad had often said rang in the back of her mind.

Respect is earned, not given.

Up to this point, had she done anything to merit that respect? She had been tentative and petulant to the point of ridiculous. Sure, there was nothing in the mayor’s handbook (God, how she wished such a thing actually existed) about how to lead your community through the zombie apocalypse.

Since returning to Liberty after college, she had been the picture of what she believed a proper government official should be. But she had been following text book examples, saying all the right things. Had it all been just an act? When she’d been handed the office of mayor, she had been stunned. Yet, she knew all of the administrative things that needed to be done. What she did not know was how to deal with scenarios that weren’t in the book.

Climbing out of the car, she had told Jonathan to stay put. This was something that she needed to do on her own. And so she had walked up to the door and knocked. When Sarah Gilstrap opened the door, her expression changed in an instant and Jamie was amazed at how the woman had known before she’d even spoken the words. She hadn’t known the details, but she knew the ultimate result and the reason for the visit.

Jamie decided right then that she was going to give the woman as much information as she had. Surely the wife needed to be aware. Then another idea struck her.

“We will be trying the four men for murder. Would you care to be present?”

The woman had nodded. The two shared a few tears and then Jamie asked the second part of her question.

“We need to…put him to rest. Do you want to be present for that?”

After a long pause, the woman wiped her eyes. “I’ll do it.”

A half hour later, Jamie was standing by the grounds keeping shed. Ivan had gone inside with the chief’s wife. A moment later, they both emerged. Two days after that, the trial had been called to order. In less than ten minutes it had been postponed until the next day.

Word had spread fast and when Jamie arrived at the high school she was stunned to discover a line several people wide that wrapped all the way around the building. She decided that if everybody in town wanted to be present, then she would accommodate them.

A platform was hurriedly constructed in the center of the football field. The next day, she called the court to order.

“We want our lawyer!” Kevin Staley had called as he was led in shackles to the chair where he was cuffed and firmly secured.

“You will be acting in your own defense,” Jamie replied, nodding to Bo Summers who quickly shoved a ball gag in the man’s mouth. “But you will speak when it is your turn, and not a moment before.”

With that, the trial began. One by one, all those who had been part of the chief’s team were brought forward to give their accounts. The last person called had been Jonathan Patterson. Unfortunately, there was no power, so his video could not be shared, but Jamie had already come up with a solution. She selected twelve people from those in attendance and had them come up to view the footage of the massacre in the market parking lot.

Once Jonathan’s video was watched, she said that the prosecution was resting its case. She had Bo and Ivan bring Joe Spencer forward first. She asked him if he had anything to say in his defense. After a string of threats and profanity, she simply nodded and the man was restrained and returned to his chair. Next she had them bring Bob Capka.

“Do you have anything to say in your defense?” she asked.

The man flicked his head just enough to get the hair out of his eyes. He leveled his empty stare at her, but he did not say a word. Fighting the urge to look away, Jamie held his gaze as she told Bo and Ivan to return the man to his chair. She finally let out her breath once his back was to her and he was being led back to his seat beside the others.

Mark Trees was next. She posed the same question to him as she had the other two.

“You people are all on borrowed time,” Mark scoffed. “You think we’re the only ones out there looking out for ourselves?”

“Looking after yourselves?” Jamie shot back. “We opened our town to you and gave you a safe place to live.”

“Safe?” Mark laughed. “Maybe you haven’t been paying attention, but there ain’t no place safe no more.”

“What gives you the right to just come and take what is ours? Kill our people?” Jamie stood up and approached the man. “You’re nothing. You came here with the intention of preying on those you thought were weaker than you.”

“You are weak.” Mark looked up at Jamie with a sneer on his face. “You and these people trying to make some sort of wall using cars and trucks…that you are stealing by the way. You really think that will save you? You think we are the worst things out there?”

“No,” Jamie said before the man could continue. “You are just the worst thing we have met so far. But your sort won’t be causing us problems like this ever again.”

She motioned to Bo and turned her back on the man to return to her podium. She had saved Kevin Staley for last. Part of her dreaded hearing this man speak. She had been fooled worse than any of the other people in town. She had no doubt that he would say things in an attempt to embarrass her. What she would not do is try to lie and cover up the truth; that was probably a big reason the world was in the state it currently found itself.

Steeling herself for the worst, she gave a nod to Ivan. The newly appointed chief of police walked over to the last man and led him to the front of the stage. There was no struggle, and even with a ball gag in his mouth, Jamie could see the man at least attempting a smile. Once the gag was removed, Ivan took a single step back and stood at parade rest just behind and to the left of Kevin.

“Mr. Staley—” Jamie began.

“Oh c’mon, sugar tits, you of all the people here can call me Kevin.” The man gave a salacious wink just before Chief Potter punched him in the back of the head. Kevin made a slight grunt, but by the time he lifted his head again, he had a smile plastered on his face again.

“Let’s try this once more,” Jamie said firmly, although she could tell that her cheeks were probably red enough for people in the back row of the bleachers to see. “Why would you and your friends come here and do what you have done?”

“Not bothering with the word allegedly, huh?” Kevin sniped.

“You know,” Jamie came from behind her podium, “that was always something that bothered me about the old system. You could have a person on video committing terrible acts. Their face could be seen clear as day, yet they were somehow allowed to plead not guilty.”

“Guilty until proven innocent then,” Kevin said with a shrug.

“Are you actually claiming innocence?”

“I don’t even know what the charges are,” Kevin shot back. “Nobody has done so much as read off counts or anything. If it’s rape, I don’t recall you ever saying the word no, but then again…it would just be your word against mine so I doubt I’d get any love from the jury.” Kevin made an over-exaggerated look to the left and then the right. “Oh…wait. There ain’t no jury. I guess you are the judge and jury on this little show.”

“Do you want charges?” Jamie asked as she took a few steps closer to the man. “How about murder? Theft? Will those do?”

“So you and your little raiding party have receipts for those groceries?” Kevin shot back.

“The people of Liberty were bringing all the stock from the grocery store inside our safe zone for the use of all its citizens,” Jamie answered calmly, not allowing herself to be baited by the man who continued to look up at her with that same smile plastered across his face.

“So that’s a big no. And then there are all the cars and trucks you people are heisting to make your silly little wall.”

“The vehicles we are commandeering were abandoned.”

“So when you take shit that ain’t yours, its commandeering, but when me and my boys take stuff…well, then it’s theft? Seems to me there is a big double standard going on here.”

“We have operated within the limits of securing what is ours and only taking that which has been abandoned.”

“You can paint it any color you like, but your people are stealing shit just like you accuse us of doing. Correct me if I am wrong, but that Lowe’s you guys hit wasn’t part of this town. Y’all are thieves and bad guys just like you claim me and my boys are. The difference is that you think you can just claim you are doing it for your town and that makes it okay. Stealing for three or three thousand is still stealing.”

“Fine, let’s drop the theft charges and just talk about the murder.” Jamie shot a smile at Kevin as she locked eyes with him.

“They shot first,” Kevin said with a shrug.

“That is a lie and we have you and your men on video as they assaulted and killed the team at Ingles Market.” Jamie forced herself to remain calm. She did not want to come off as smug, but she knew she had the upper hand.

“You have any idea what happened inside that market?” Kevin growled. “Your people attacked us. We were just defending ourselves. I bet your video don’t show any of that, does it?”

Jamie opened her mouth, but then she paused. No, she thought, there is no footage of what happened inside the store. She shook those thoughts away and took another step towards the man. She was now close enough that she could have reached out and touched him if she chose to.

“You’re lying,” she said simply. “You and your people came here with the expressed intent of taking our supplies. You killed people in the process. On the charges of murder, how do you plead?”

“Does it matter?” Kevin’s voice still sounded flippant, but she thought that she detected just a hint of nervousness. Also, she was certain that bead of sweat trickling down from his temple had nothing to do with the heat. It was sunny, but far from being hot.

“I will ask you again,” Jamie replied, a sense of calm sinking into her as she prepared for what was next. “On the charges of murder, how do you plead?”

“Am I speaking for just me, or are you making me speak for them?” Kevin titled his head to indicate his three companions.

“How do you plead?”

“Innocent. Guilty by insanity?” The man laughed. It started as a chuckle and morphed into all out laughter, but there was a sinister quality to it.

“You might be insane,” Jamie agreed. “But that does not give you the right or the excuse to commit the horrific, callous, and evil acts that you and your friends have committed here.”

“Am I evil?” Another burst of sinister laughter exploded from his lips. “Yes I fucking am.”

“That’s enough,” Jamie said, nodding to Ivan.

The man actually looked relieved as he strapped the ball gag back into place. Jamie waited until the man was returned to the bench seat with his companions. Once he was secure, she stepped forward to address the crowd. Up to this point, only those closest to the stage had actually heard the events taking place. The steady hum of conversation throughout the proceedings indicated that things were being passed along to those unable to hear.

Now she picked up the bullhorn. As soon as she did, a hush fell over the audience. She could practically feel the weight of the citizens of Liberty as they all seemed to lean forward as one entity.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have four men who are accused of murder. Just a few months ago, they would have gone through a lengthy process where every loophole and twist of words might have been employed to set them free. The facts are that we have video evidence that show three of the four men in the actual act of killing the members of the salvage team they were sent with.”

Jamie waited a moment and surveyed the faces of the crowd. She saw their anger, and on a few faces, she saw the pain of loss. Her eyes paused on those of Sarah Gilstrap. The woman was a blank slate, her face expressionless. Sophie had mentioned prescribing something for some of the people who had lost friends or loved ones. She briefly wondered what they would do in a few months when the small supply of pills and ointments they currently possessed were all gone.

“While the one individual was not actually seen committing any of the murders, there were bodies found inside the store that might be attributed to him. That would not have been considered a strong argument before the events that have befallen our world, I think they are good enough now.

“We cannot deny that we are living in a different time that may call for a new way of doing things. Today is one of those moments. I am going to put it to all of you as a collective, and I ask for a show of hands.” Jamie paused when Kevin made a snorting sound. She glanced over to see his eyes dancing with glee as he shook his head in obvious amusement. “All who cast a vote for guilty, please raise your hand.”

She had not thought it might be an issue, so she was not concerned with actually counting. The fact that it looked like every person present had a hand in the air made things so much easier. Still, she would complete the process.

“Put your hands down now, please.” She paused a few seconds. “Now, for those wishing to cast a vote for these men being not guilty?”

She swept the crowd twice, but she did not see a single hand in the air. She hoped that they would never have a trial held in this manner again, and the Old World remnant of her mind was throwing out words like coercion, intimidation, and mob justice. She slammed the door on that part of her mind and nodded.

“And what should the penalty be?” She actually regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth as voices began to scream a variety of possible deaths.

“I say we drag them out of town and feed them to some of those monsters!”

“Burn ‘em!”

“Firing squad!”

The suggestions were varied, and a few were even a bit gruesome in their creativity. At last, she held up her hands. Much slower than when these proceedings had begun, the crowd eventually became quiet enough so that she could speak.

“We will hang these men tomorrow. I will ask a few of you with carpentry experience to please meet with Chief Potter afterwards to make the preparations. The gallows will be built here and those who wish to attend are welcome to do so. I would ask that children not be brought to this event.”

With that, she set the bullhorn down on the small stand beside her podium and walked over to Ivan Potter. He was in conversation with Bo Summers and Jonathan Patterson when she reached him. The three men turned to her, their talking ceasing immediately.

“Take the prisoners back to where we were holding them,” Jamie said.

“Any other instructions?” Ivan asked. “Do we keep them shackled or increase their guard. Do we do what it takes to ensure they don’t kill themselves?”

“Absolutely,” Jamie said after only a few seconds of thought.

“And last meals?” Bo piped up.

“No,” Jamie answered even faster than she had regarding the question about making sure they didn’t commit suicide. “We are not wasting any more resources on those four.”

“Damn,” Jonathan breathed, quickly blushing as if he just realized that he’d spoken that out loud.

“And I want the gallows to be equipped to drop them all at once.”

***

Bo Summers hammered in the last nail. Stepping up onto the actual platform, he jumped up and down. The first time was a bit tentative, but then he really gave it all he had.

“I think we can find you a bouncy house, Bo,” Ivan called up.

Bo pursed his lips for a moment and then shrugged. “Let me check my bucket list. I think jumping up and down in a bouncy house during the zombie apocalypse is number eighty-three.”

Ivan shook his head and climbed the stairs. Bo turned his attention to the four nooses that were hanging from the big cross beam. They looked nothing like the ones you saw in the movies. It was just a strand of hemp rope with a slipknot. A thirty pound sand bag was at each trap door to expedite snapping the necks of the four men. It would be tied to each man’s ankles. When the lever was pulled, the doors would open and the bag would drop.

“The end,” Bo whispered.

“What’s that?” Ivan asked.

The man glanced over at the new chief and shrugged. “Nothing…just thinking out loud.”

The sun had risen at his back. Already there was a small crowd gathering.

“Welcome to the Dark Ages.” Bo walked over to the lever. This was the last test. He gestured to Ivan. “Hook those sand bags to the nooses.

Chief Potter clipped each one as he’d been asked and then stepped clear. Bo looked up and saw that, in just that short amount of time, the crowd had practically doubled in size and more were filing in. He waited for another moment and then gripped the lever with both hands. He pressed his lips tight and pulled.

Four sand bags fell through the open trap doors and then bounced a little before gently swinging back and forth several feet above the ground. When he looked up, he noticed a few of the onlookers having a change of heart, turning around and heading against the crowds for the exits.

“Hard times ahead,” Bo whispered.

A few seconds later, there was a ripple of noise from up towards the school’s main building. Shielding his eyes, Bo could see the six man detail and Jamie Burns leading the four prisoners down the path towards where the gallows had been built.

A few bottles and rocks hurled through the air. One struck the largest man of the group. Bo thought his name might be Mark. He decided that, besides not really knowing for sure, he didn’t care. These people had come into the town of Liberty and done terrible things.

From the platform of the gallows, he could look out over the entire crowd. There were a few roped off aisles—one of which the condemned foursome were being led down—allowing some of the folks normally on roving security to patrol the throng. Bo glanced over at Ivan and saw that the man was frowning.

“Problem?” Bo sidled up to the newly appointed police chief; although he doubted the title meant much anymore.

“I would hate for one of them bastards to die from a head wound before we get them up here,” the man replied.

“Well then, tell the folks to knock it the hell off.”

Bo turned and walked away. It seemed like a simple enough solution to him. He watched Ivan scoop up the bullhorn and switch it on.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the chief called. For a moment, there seemed to be no reaction from the crowd as the catcalls and angry shouts continued to be hurled along with a few assorted projectiles. “HEY!” Ivan shouted, eliciting feedback from the bullhorn.

Bo smiled as he saw so many people jump in unison. Walking over to the stairs, he opened the gate to allow the approaching group to come up and join him on the platform. The foursome were all shackled and had their hands cuffed behind their backs. Additionally, there was a heavy chain connecting them to each other. Each man still had a gag of some sort in his mouth except for the one with the long hair hanging down in his face. Bo guessed that one didn’t need a gag since he did not seem inclined to speak.

“Folks, these men have been sentenced to death for the murder of several of our citizens. We will not bring ourselves down to their level by acting like uncivilized animals,” Ivan announced to the people gathered for the execution.

Bo unclipped the belly-chain on the first of the prisoners from the group—the one covered with tattoos all over his arms and chest—and led him to the farthest noose from the stairs. The man started to resist as the noose was slipped over his neck, but as soon as Bo cinched it a bit, the man froze like a deer in the headlights.

The next man was the muscular one. As Bo led him to his noose, he saw sweat beading on his forehead and running down his temples. This one was a little more difficult to get the noose on, and a pair of the escorts had to come up and help.

Next was the one with the long hair. Bo had barely gotten his belly chain off when the man just started to stroll over to his noose. He even ducked his head through it and then stood casually like he was waiting for a bus.

Last was the one with the reddish hair and the goatee. Similar to the one with the long hair, this one made no effort to resist and actually ducked his head through the noose for Bo.

After the escorts departed the platform, Jamie Burns came up and motioned to Ivan for the bullhorn. He handed it to her and the woman stepped to the very front of the platform.

“We will give these men a chance to speak their final words.” She turned to the four, dropping the bullhorn so that what she said was heard only by them and maybe a few of the closer onlookers. “If you just start spewing a bunch of threats or profanity, I will just nod to Mr. Summers behind you and he will pull the lever. Are we clear?”

The men all nodded. Jamie went to the tattooed man. She whispered something that Bo couldn’t hear, but the man nodded and Jamie indicated for the person standing behind him to remove his gag.

The man cleared his throat. When Jamie offered him the bullhorn, he shook his head and mumbled something once the device was away from his mouth.

“A priest or a pastor?” the man coughed.

Jamie turned to the group that had acted as escort and motioned with her hand. Pastor Johnson slipped through the group and climbed the stairs. Bo could tell that the man was uncomfortable coming up on a gallows.

“Can you pray with me?” the man asked once the pastor reached him.

Bo stepped back out of earshot. A man’s business with God was nothing he felt he should be eavesdropping in on. It was something personal and private, and while he believed that these four were brutal killers and deserved the fate in store, he also believed they deserved a shred of privacy if they wanted to try and throw a Hail Mary in God’s direction and hope that the Big Guy caught it. At last the pair were finished and Jamie nodded for the pastor to step back over by the stairs and wait if he was needed again.

Next was the big guy. Jamie repeated her question to him about if he had any last words he wanted to offer. The man tried to yell something. Even with the gag in place, Bo recognized the words “Fuck you!” when he heard them.

Next came the long-haired fella. This one had Bo curious. He wasn’t wearing a gag and didn’t seem the least bit concerned about what was about to happen. His skin was dry, not a bead or droplet of sweat could be seen.

Jamie paused in front of him and made the same offer she had given the other two. The man cocked his head and seemed to consider her. For several seconds, the two were locked in some sort of stare down. Finally, Jamie stepped back. The man smiled and then his gaze just drifted away from her.

The last man was waiting with a smile that peeked around his ball gag. Bo fought the urge to walk up and smash the man in the back of the head. Jamie actually seemed to handle his lascivious looks much better.

“And you, Mr. Staley, anything to say? Keep in mind, all I do is nod and Mr. Summers over there pulls the lever.”

There was a pause, and then the man gave a single nod. Jamie reached up and unbuckled the gag, letting it fall to the ground. She stepped back and shrugged at the man who, Bo believed, realized for the first time just what his situation entailed.

“You people are all doomed.” Kevin Staley glanced briefly over at Jamie to see if she might be getting ready to nod. Her face remained stoic as she seemed content to let him speak. “We’ve been out there, and if you think we are the worst that humanity has to throw at you, then your bubble is gonna burst in a very painful way. We were simply doing what we felt needed to be done to ensure our survival. We found your little town by following a group of your citizens, led by that woman.” Kevin tilted his head towards Jamie. “They were out looting on the outskirts of Clemson. So before you pass judgment on us, you might want to look in the mirror.” Kevin paused and locked eyes with Jamie as soon as she turned his way. “What depths will you people go to in order to see to your own survival? I have a feeling we will be considered saints when we sit next to you. And when you reach that defining moment, remember the fate that you decided should be ours.”

Jamie waited for a moment to be sure that he was finished. He pursed his lips and made a kissing gesture in her direction.

“The ladies and gentlemen of Liberty, South Carolina find Joe Spencer, Mark Trees, Bob Capka, and Kevin Staley guilty of murder and sentence you to hang by the neck until dead.” Jamie turned her back on the crowd and faced the four condemned men. “May God have mercy on your souls.”

Bo gripped the lever. Just before Jamie nodded, all four men reacted. The man with the tattoos bowed his heads as if in prayer. The muscular fella screamed one final curse into his gag, and the man who had given the speech stood tall and started to laugh. All of those reactions were what Bo considered to be pretty normal considering the circumstances.

It was the reaction of the man who had not spoken a word, the man named Bob Capka, that was the response he would ponder and sometimes wake from a nightmare when it replayed in his sleep. Bo was almost certain that he was the only one who heard the man as he broke his silence. The words were spoken so softly, that sometimes he tried to convince himself that he had not heard anything, but Bo Summers knew that was a lie. Those final words would haunt Bo for the rest of his life and actually give him chills whenever he heard another person speak them.

Just as he pulled the lever, he heard Bob Capka whisper, “Thank you.”

13

As Time Goes By

Sophie sat in the small office. Her son had volunteered to help unload the food trucks. That left her alone with the little girl that he had saved. As had been her norm since that day, the girl sat silently on a chair. The dolls, coloring books, and stuffed animals all remained untouched. The girl stared at the floor and still hadn’t spoken a word.

The problem was that Sophie could not remember her name. Glancing at her watch, she saw that it was close enough to be considered lunch time. She pushed away from the desk and went to the small cupboard. Three boxes of crackers and some peanut butter were all that she had. She’d only kept that just in case her blood sugar got a little off kilter; which it did whenever she spent twenty-four hours straight in her office.

“Want to walk over to the school for lunch?” Sophie said in her sweetest voice which took considerable effort considering how tired she was at the moment. “I think they are serving up spaghetti today.”

It was no surprise when the girl just continued to sit in total silence and stare at the floor. Grabbing her belt with the required self-defense weapon—she carried a nondescript machete with a worn wooden handle—she strapped it on and then reached down for the girl’s hand.

“I hate ba-sketti,” the girl mumbled.

Sophie took a step back and regarded the girl like she might if the words had come from the chair that the girl was now vacating. She’d asked Lawrence every single day if the girl had spoken to him and he had assured her that she hadn’t.

“Trust me, Mom, if she speaks, you’ll be the first person I tell,” he usually answered. The last few times he had simply rolled his eyes and left the room.

“Honey, can you tell me your name?”

The little girl looked up at her and slowly shook her head. “Mama says I’m not a-supposed to talk to strangers.”

Sophie rubbed her eyes with her index finger and thumb as she suppressed her frustration. An idea popped into her head and she knelt down. “I bet you are allowed to talk to doctors and policemen, aren’t you?” The girl seemed to think it over for a moment before nodding tentatively. “Well I am Dr. Sophie.” While not exactly true, she was the closest thing the town had to a doctor at the moment, so her little white lie came out easily enough.

“Megan,” the girl whispered after a slight hesitation. “My name is Megan Jones.”

“Well, Megan Jones, since you don’t like spaghetti, what would you like for lunch?”

Again the girl was silent. Sophie started to think that perhaps she had shut down again when, at last, the girl looked up at her with a hopeful gleam in her eyes. “I like peanut butter.”

“Well then you happen to be in luck.”

Sophie unbuckled her belt and hung it on the hook beside her desk as she went back to her small cupboard and produced a box of Saltines and a jar of creamy peanut butter. She cleared away a space on her desk and set down the food. Opening her bottom drawer, she produced two foil pouches of orange drink. For the next twenty minutes, Sophie listened as Megan decided to make up for several days of not speaking.

***

Bo scrubbed his face and stared in the tiny mirror beside his wash basin. He could still taste the sourness of having been sick at some point last night. His eyes shot a wistful glance at the bottle of Johnny Walker Red that sat on the floor beside his bed. It was now minus just over three-quarters of its contents. Last night, it had been full and still in the box.

He noticed that somebody had done him the favor of placing a bucket beside his bed. He had no idea who, but he thanked the anonymous person as he grabbed the sloshing red pail and headed for the closest exit so that he could dump it someplace outside. His mind began to play disjointed bits and pieces of the evening as he made his way through the fairly crowded gymnasium-turned-dorm.

The nightmare had come again even through his drunken haze. This was one of those times where that man had turned right to him and spoken those two words.

All his life, Bo had been seen as one of the ‘good old boys’ of the town. He was usually one of the first to step forward when somebody needed a little help around their property. On weekends, he had volunteered at the Senior Center, and for the past several years, he had been one of the most successful youth football coaches in the county. That had led to him being asked to assist at the high school.

Nobody ever asked why Bo Summers had not married. Nor had anybody ever questioned his fairly regular trips to Greenville. Bo was not somebody that most folks cared to question. It wasn’t that he was mean; far from it. He was better known for his huge heart. He just had a terrific knack for deflecting questions anytime folks got personal.

Nobody was more surprised than Bo to discover that he was gay. He’d chalked it up in his early years as simply being shy around the ladies. He had stifled that voice in his head that tried to clarify his attraction towards men.

Then he’d met Oliver Tandy, a physical therapist at Pickens Memorial Hospital. Oliver had been the one to awaken parts of him that he had tried for years to keep shut away. The problem was, a man like Bo just did not broadcast his orientation in a small town like Liberty. Sure, some folks would be able to see past the label; but too many would not.

The zombie problem in Liberty had caused Bo to be able to forget everything for the first several days, but now that things were starting to level out—at least as much as he figured they would in a zombie apocalypse—thoughts of Oliver had seeped into Bo’s mind.

Oliver had long, curly hair much like that Bob Capka fella. Perhaps that was why he occasionally saw Oliver’s face on that body just before it dropped through the trap door.

He had missed the sign-up for Jamie Burns’ expedition heading up to Pickens Memorial Hospital. Now he was actually considering something very stupid. Despite his ability to take care of himself, Bo Summers was not so foolish as to believe that was sufficient to keep him alive out in the hellscape that was their new reality. If the walking dead didn’t get you, then there were raiders and just plain old accidents.

The days of antibiotics being readily available were about to go away. They were set to enter a period where a simple cut could become infected and kill a person.

When he gave it serious thought, he did not actually expect to find Oliver alive. He’d heard the stories of what had happened at the hospital from a few of the survivors who had made it down to Liberty. The place was a nightmare and said to be crawling with zombies. If Oliver was in the hospital when the military presence failed, he was as good as dead.

The thing was, he needed to at least check. If he didn’t and the day arrived when Oliver came walking up to one of the roving patrols, he would never forgive himself…and it was likely that Oliver wouldn’t either. If he could get up to Pickens and check Oliver’s apartment, which was literally within eyesight of the hospital, then he could at least find something close to peace of mind.

Of course, if he found Oliver and the man happened to be alive, then he would have an entirely new situation to deal with. That would be small potatoes compared to everything else going on and probably make coming out easier than it would have ever been before the zombies showed up.

Bo laughed at the thought and jumped when a voice called his name from across the parking lot. Looking around, he spied Sarah Gilstrap headed his direction. She had just moved into the dorms yesterday allowing a third family to move into the house that she and the chief had called home for so long.

Obviously she’d gotten an early start to whatever she had going on today since she was not only already up and about, but dressed in full protective gear. He briefly wondered what sector she would be patrolling as he waited for her to cross over to him. Just before she arrived, he quickly set the pail on the ground and scooted it away with one booted foot.

“Did you hear?” Sarah asked as she picked up her pace to meet Bo.

“I doubt it,” he said, wincing at the sound of his own voice.

“They need two new volunteers for Jamie’s trip to Pickens.” The woman gave a knowing smile to Bo, her eyebrows raised slightly.

“Since when?”

“Since they have decided that you can catch this zombie crap by getting blood in an open cut.”

Bo thought it over for a moment and then an idea struck him. “Okay, so why are you so excited…and why are you telling me?”

“Wow…you really were drunk last night,” Sarah said with far too much cheer in her voice for Bo’s liking.

A cold feeling started in his stomach and began to spread through his body as he assumed her reason. What had he said? And who had been present?

“Sweetie, relax. Nobody cares. There are slightly more pressing issues right now. Besides, there has been a lot of speculation for the past several years. I can’t believe that you felt you needed to keep that a secret.” Sarah stepped up and gave the big man a hug. She quickly drew back. “Oh…but you need to clean up a bit. You smell awful.”

“I will right after I go make sure that I am on the list. I missed it and was actually starting to consider making the trip alone.”

“We know,” another voice said from behind Bo, causing the big man to jump.

Ivan Potter walked up and gave Bo a friendly punch in the shoulder. It was the same way he’d greeted Bo for years. Bo was having trouble hiding his amazement.

“And no need to worry,” Sarah spoke up. “I already signed you and me on to the team. You need to hurry up. We’re leaving in a little bit.”

Bo stood there watching as Sarah and Ivan headed across the parking lot. After being rid of his bucket he stopped at one of the outdoor clean-up stations. This was a new development just being put in place. A large basin was kept full of water. That basin was hung over a fire that was kept stoked by some of the grade and high school kids. (Everybody had to pull their weight these days…even the youngsters.) You scooped out a bucket of warm water and hung it in a curtained off area where you took a very economical shower.

Just as he finished, he thought he heard a low rumble approaching from the west. That must be the team sent to get the train to help secure the northern part of their safe zone. Today was shaping up to be a nice one. He was already feeling the weight of a decades-long secret sliding from his shoulders.

“Who said a zombie apocalypse was a bad thing,” Bo mused as he started putting on his gear for the trip north.

***

Jamie climbed up onto the top of the massive earth-moving vehicle. Her eyes could not help but drift back to the stain on the road as she’d made the climb. This was where Chief Gilstrap had lost his life. She prayed that a rain would come soon and perhaps wash some of it away.

“Here it comes,” Ivan Potter was standing beside her and pointing to the west.

Shielding her eyes from the glare of the afternoon, she could see the shimmer of something moving their direction. It was not long before the low rumble could be heard as well.

The day after the hanging, a team of ten had been sent west. A train had been discovered by one of the foraging teams and it was decided that now was as good a time as any to go fetch it. This train would be halted on the tracks to help create their northern “wall” between South Norman and Peachtree Streets. Once the train was stopped, they would disable it and then tear up the tracks for a good distance in both directions.

They had lucked upon one train that would easily span the entire length. An added benefit was that there did not seem to be any tanker cars that might eventually spill their toxic payloads. Most of the cars were empty except for a few that were loaded with automobiles that would be unloaded and added to the barricade that was starting to slow down in its creation. The teams bringing in vehicles had to range farther out and only a handful of people were volunteering for those missions.

This particular team had been gone for eleven days. There were those that had started to wonder if perhaps they’d fallen prey to zombies or a band of raiders like Kevin and his group. Last night, a red flare and then a blue flare had been spotted to the west. That was the signal that meant the team was approaching and would arrive the next day.

A low moan caused Jamie to look away from the train. A single zombie was wading through the tall grass. Two people broke away from where the growing crowd was waiting at the railroad crossing and made short work of it.

Jamie had been thankful that, at least up until this point in things, they had only encountered a handful of zombies here and there. Some of the teams going out lately were reporting seeing groups numbering in the hundreds and even the thousands. That had her nervous about her own upcoming mission towards Pickens.

She and twenty others were going to be taking the three eighteen-wheelers that had brought the shipment from Ingles Market along with two more that had been brought in from the highway. They would be driving to Pickens. The hope was that things had cleared out enough so that they might be able to salvage medical supplies from the hospital as well as hopefully some more food.

At last, the train rolled past and eventually came to a stop. Jamie and several people from town came up to the lead engine where a woman emerged from the car, her left arm bandaged and her eyes showing the obvious signs of infection. She was dripping with sweat and her skin was already looking waxy.

“So…many…” the woman heaved before collapsing to her knees. She looked up at Jamie and a grimace of pain creased her face. “Not sure if we could make it back.”

Jamie rushed to the woman, but Ivan caught her around the waist. He held her back as two other people that were in Sophie’s newest group of students slapped on Latex gloves and approached the downed woman cautiously.

As they did, one of the cargo doors opened with a loud clang. Everybody holding a weapon spun almost in perfect unison with weapons leveled. Two men emerged, hands up and calling out for everybody not to shoot.

After a quick debrief, Jamie had a lot to consider before embarking on her own mission. Of the ten people sent out on this run to fetch the train, only three had returned, and only two survived. Those two shared a horrific tale about the degree of destruction and ruin that had befallen almost every single place they passed through.

They shared stories of entire residential neighborhoods burned to the ground. The cities in every direction were overrun by thousands of the walking dead. Some of the herds were said to number in the tens of thousands and left a trail of destruction in their wake that rivaled any tornado, hurricane, or even tsunami.

“They just have so much mass behind them that they push cars aside. Fences fold down like paper and even some small buildings have eventually broken under the pressure,” one of the men recounted as he allowed the medical person doing the inspection of his body to check everywhere for any sign of a bite or scratch.

But it was what the other man shared that clicked home for so many of those who heard. It forced Jamie to require her team to change the equipment they had to carry.

“Larry Mane didn’t get bit. The best we could figure as we checked him out was that he must’ve gotten some of the zombie blood in a nasty cut on his right hand that he had suffered breaking a window the day before. He had zombie blood all over that arm and hand. He didn’t get a single scratch. That is one thing everybody agrees on. Only, within two hours of the fight, his eyes had changed and he started acting sick. Just before sunrise, he let out a long exhale and was gone. We all had a good guess as to what was going to happen next, but nobody wanted to spike Larry unless he actually sat up.”

Ivan had listened to the rest of the report regarding what happened to the others, but Jamie needed to make sure that she and her team were as prepared as possible. After meeting with Sophie and being astounded that the little girl that Lawrence had saved was not only doing better, but now had turned into quite the chatter box, she decided that they needed to take contamination precautions.

Her team all picked out goggles or face shields. Some also chose to wear respirators or masks that protected their mouths. Two members with open sores were eliminated from the team as a precaution.

As she finished packing her own backpack, a knock came at the opening to her cubicle. She turned to see Bo Summers and Sarah Gilstrap standing there with packs in their hands.

“We are the new volunteers,” Bo said in his usual relaxed manner.

“I decided that I needed to get more actively involved,” Sarah said simply.

Jamie was very happy to see Bo, but she felt sort of odd when it came to Sarah. There was just something about how her eyes did not seem to be able to hold contact.

Oh well, she thought, I can’t worry about that right now. As long as she doesn’t do anything to endanger the mission, I can’t really turn her away.

Jamie rummaged through a notebook on her fold-up desk and plucked a pair of pages. She gave them a quick double check to ensure that they were what she wanted and then handed Bo and Sarah each a single page.

“Our top priority when we reach Pickens is to hit the hospital as well as the pharmacies marked on the bottom of the page. This is the priority list of the medical supplies that we need according to Sophie,” Jamie explained as she gave her own equipment a final inspection. “You will also notice that we have listed two locations as fall back spots should you get separated. Both of those spots are secure and have a cache of supplies.”

The pair nodded and then fell in behind Jamie as she left her cubicle and headed to the main entrance to the school where the team was instructed to muster. She arrived as a few of the members were sharing tearful farewells with friends or family.

With both her parents gone, this was the first time that she truly felt alone. She had not realized until this very moment that she’d become so focused on her school, then a career, that she had let almost all her personal relationships wither and die. Sure, people might know who she was, but nobody really knew her anymore.

***

Jonathan flexed his good hand. He’d been very good about doing all the physical therapy exercises that Sophie had assigned him. Having been through his share of injuries from his years in football and other sports, he knew the value of rehabbing.

“My town went to the zombie apocalypse and all I got was this fractured wrist,” he snorted.

Kneeling beside the marker that had been placed in honor of his mother, Jonathan hoped that she’d been right and that there was such a thing as Heaven. If so, then hopefully she now understood his actions at the end of her life. If that was the case, then perhaps she would understand what it was he was about to do.

He and seven others had been sent towards Easley. There was report of a band of raiders in the area that were not simply out snatching up supplies. It had been decided (in a town hall sort of meeting right after that hanging) that the citizens of Liberty would not engage folks who were outside their town’s boundaries. Also, if they encountered groups abroad that laid claim to a specific area, they would withdraw peacefully.

When Jamie returned, there was going to be a vote about whether or not they would officially close their gates to any and all outsiders. Jonathan—as had all seven other members of his detail—had cast a vote in a sealed envelope that was handed to Chief Potter.

Things were changing so fast that Jonathan hardly recognized his town anymore. He hadn’t been surprised when somebody had spray painted over the old town motto that was on the side of the abandoned city hall building.

“Where neighbors become friends” had been changed to “Where strangers will be shot on sight.” He thought that it showed a certain lack of creativity, but that did seem to be the direction that the town was headed.

It wasn’t as if they were being hit by an influx of survivors seeking sanctuary, but he doubted that any newcomers would be welcomed for the foreseeable future.

“You ready, big man?” a voice spoke from behind him.

Jonathan turned to see all the members of his scouting force gathered at the entrance to his cubicle. All the spiked bats, machetes, spears, and assorted bows gave the team a foreboding appearance. His brain quickly reconciled the reality of what stood there waiting for him.

A grocery store clerk, a math teacher, a bartender, a construction worker, a grade school cafeteria worker, a fast food counter person, a fireman, and him…a pizza place assistant manager.

Worst Village People tribute band ever, he thought. Not a single soldier or Special Forces commando in the mix, he mused.

This was the group headed out to see if they could locate any potential targets that merited a larger team being sent to retrieve supplies. Also, they would all be piling into a pickup truck. When they returned, they were supposed to each be driving a vehicle that could be jammed into the growing barricade.

“Yep,” Jonathan gave himself a quick pat down to ensure that he had his all gear and then joined the team.

They headed east on Highway 123 until the still smoldering ruins of the outskirts of Easley came into full view. Jonathan shook his head in disbelief. Certainly he expected a degree of senseless vandalism; even the lawlessness like that gang of four made sense in a weird way. What he did not understand was why people would just destroy everything. It was like humanity wanted to be done and over with.

They passed a massive development on the right that looked like it had once been all upscale housing. Now, the only thing that remained were skeletal shells of blackened wood and stone.

They came upon the Pendleton Street exit and saw a row of bodies crucified beside the highway. There were large signs hanging around the necks of many of the squirming undead with accusations of heathen, unclean, blasphemer, and unholy.

“Glad we have dodged that bullet so far,” Jonathan breathed as they drove slowly along the edge of the emergency lane.

“I wouldn’t count your chickens,” Alex Singleton quipped. “There have been rumors of a small group starting to meet. They apparently are discussing whether or not they wish to remain with…and this is a bit of paraphrasing, so forgive me if I am not spot on with the accuracy, but something about the “deniers of God” or something like that.”

“Let me guess,” Jonathan groaned. “Reverend Jonah Simms and his brother Chuck.”

“Nailed it,” Alex replied as he slowed the truck. “And it looks like we are on foot from here.”

A roadblock had been built to span the entirety of the highway just as they emerged from a particularly thick cloud of smoke that acted like a curtain across the road just past the overpass prior to their intended exit. Jonathan knew that a few groups had ventured this way before, and nobody had said anything about this roadblock; so that meant this was something recent. Part of him was happy that there might be others who were surviving. That part was engulfed by fear when a bunch of gunshots sounded and a series of bullet holes marched across the windshield.

A round slammed into Alex Singleton’s chest and then another hit him in the head, blowing his brains across the rear of the pickup’s cab in a hideous design of bone, brain, and blood. He felt something tug at his shirt and reflexively ducked down.

There was an eruption of screams from the back of the pickup and another burst of gunfire that slammed into the engine block with deadly efficiency. He felt the vehicle slow and then it shuddered violently as it continued its forward momentum a bit further. The sound of the tires being shot out came and then the truck slowly ground to a halt.

“Hands in the air!” a voice shouted from somewhere close.

“We didn’t—” somebody answered from the back only to be cut off by another burst of gunfire that ended with a yelp and the sound of something falling just on the other side of the cab.

Jonathan considered his options. He briefly deliberated on the option of playing dead, but these days, that might still earn him a bullet to the head. He was still mulling over the possibilities when the passenger door was opened with a scream of protesting metal.

“And what do we have here?” a voice said almost in his ear.

***

Ivan looked around what used to be just a counselor’s office at Liberty High School. He recalled a few trips to this as one as well as the principal’s office when he’d been a student here. Looking around, it dawned on him that this was the very room where he had spoken to Chief Gilstrap about what it would take for him to become a member of the police force.

Getting up, he headed out to the hallway and made his way outside. As he did, a few people greeted him with words or a wave. He returned them, using people’s names when they popped into his mind.

The sun was just starting to set. Jamie’s group had only been gone for a few hours. They wanted to get close, but not venture into Pickens until they observed for at least one full day. With the world in the state it was in, it would be a simple matter to hear any gunshots and determine at least the general direction. Also, the night allowed them to scan for possible campfires.

As he strolled toward the old door and window factory where he currently resided, it was almost difficult to tell that this was basically the zombie apocalypse. He could hear birds singing and the chirp and hum of bugs. Nothing gave away the fact that the world had spiraled into a massive extinction event.

It took him a few seconds to realize that he was hearing something out of the ordinary. Once it dawned on him, he froze and began to search the sky. With the world so quiet, he thought that it should be much easier to discern the direction the sound was coming from, but it seemed to be echoing off of everything as it grew louder.

He had trees on both sides and took off at a run to reach the clearing ahead where Farmers Hill Road intersected on the right. Just as he reached his destination, there was a thundering boom. He looked up in time to see a pair of fighter jets fly past at incredible speed. It looked as if they were barely skimming the tree tops as they sped west.

It took him a moment to realize that he was waving his arms like a madman. “Like they would have seen you,” he berated himself.

Still, he stayed put for several minutes as he waited and hoped that just maybe they might bank around and head back in his direction. He had finally resumed walking again when he heard a distant booming explosion. It had come from the west.

He turned his body until he thought that he was in the general direction of the sound. It was getting dark, but in the waning light, he could see a plume of smoke rising skyward. For just a moment he felt a tinge of panic. The Oconee Nuclear Station was to the west, but he was pretty sure that it was just slightly north of Liberty. This cloud was definitely to the southwest.

He was about to continue on his way when he thought he heard somebody scream. The sound was coming from up Farmer’s Hill Road. That was outside the boundaries of the safe zone. As far as he knew, there weren’t any patrols in this area.

Drawing his Beretta 96 A1, he climbed over the cars to his left and headed up the road. He moved over to the side of the road and stayed low, using the tall grass for cover. With darkness coming fast, he also had plenty of shadow to utilize. After taking a moment, he was able to hear what sounded like voices. He actually rubbed his ears to be sure that he wasn’t imagining things.

The scream had ended abruptly, but now he thought that he heard singing. He veered off to follow a heavily rutted dirt road that led off from the main paved one. It headed up into some trees where, as darkness crept across the countryside, he was able to make out a slight glow.

“Something isn’t right here,” Ivan whispered as he crouched down in some scrub brush.

He was able to look across a small clearing to a copse of trees where a group of people appeared to be gathered around a fire. He felt his blood chill as he recognized one of the voices at the same time the actual fire came into view.

Reverend Jonah Simms was standing just to the right of a large burning cross. On the other side was the hulking figure of his brother Chuck. What looked like a crudely built altar was just in front of the two and a figure was lashed to it. Judging by all the thrashing about, it was not voluntary. Gathered around were several people wearing hooded sweatshirts or caps pulled down so that it was virtually impossible to tell who they were.

Ivan considered his options. He did a quick head count and was distressed to discover that there were over fifty people gathered around. That was too many people for him to handle on his own. He would need to return to the safe zone and recruit a team to deal with this. The only problem existed in the fact that he would be consigning whomever was tied to that altar to whatever terrible fate the Simms brothers had in store.

“…have brought this terrible judgment upon humanity with all the sin and profanity that they have allowed into this world with their loose morals and evil ways.” Jonah Simms lifted his arms into the air and the glint of light off of metal shone brightly for a second. “In Revelations chapter twenty-two, verse fifteen, it is written and The Word says, Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. These were the times we lived in, and it is that thing abhorrent to God that has brought down the End Times. We must now step forward and show our righteous and angry God that we have not strayed…that we do not wish to remain with the sinners, and desire that he bring us home so that we may worship at his feet.”

There was a chorus of “Amen!” and “Praise God!” from those gathered. Ivan had to fight everything in his mind and body not to rush in and stop what he knew was about to happen. That person on the altar was going to be murdered and he could do nothing about it.

“When the sun next rises, it will do so on our town having been cleansed of the unrighteous. We will be like the Angel of Death that God sent down to Egypt. We will move this night and smite all the sinners who have led us to this path. Then, we will open the gates and let the demons of Hell come and claim what is theirs as we commit ourselves to our God and beg that he bring us home.”

Ivan slipped back the way he came. It gnawed at him all the way as he ran back to the high school. If he was correct in his assumption, these lunatics were about to come in and murder the people of Liberty. The problem was that he had not been able to clearly make out anybody other than the Simms brothers.

He was about to enlist citizens of Liberty to kill their own. If he was very lucky, then the entire congregation of those following Reverend Simms was present at that little meeting.

Just as he reached Ruhamah Road and cleared the vehicle barricade, he heard another scream from back the way he’d come. It was muffled, but it still reached his ears and plunged into his soul much like he imagined the dagger plunging into that poor victim’s heart.

What was it about the zealot types that made them feel they were the only ones with the answers…the only ones who followed God? He had been a church-going man all his life and felt that he’d certainly had his flaws, but mostly he was a good person.

These zombies weren’t a punishment from God. They were probably the result of something that humanity had done. Bio-weapon, GMO crap, or maybe a nasty strain of the flu that came as a result of how it mutated over the years. Who knew? But more importantly…who cared?

If they were going to have any chance of survival, then the people of Liberty needed to band together, not separate themselves based on some crazy idea that God had decided to pass some mystical judgment on mankind.

The solar powered lights that marked the main entrance to the gymnasium appeared up ahead. Ivan had a plan. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t see any other option. He saw little chance that this night ended without a serious amount of bloodshed.

14

Deliver Us from Evil

Sophie had just tucked Megan in when a commotion caused both her and the little girl to start. She recognized the voice of Ivan Potter, but she could not make out what he was saying.

“Okay, sweetie, you stay put. I’ll be back in just a moment.”

Sophie noticed it right away. A change came over the little girl. Her features went blank and her gaze became unfocused. It was almost as if somebody had hit a switch that shut the girl off.

“Megan?” Sophie whispered.

The girl didn’t react. She stared straight up just as she had in nights prior. The sounds of more voices joining the commotion brought Sophie’s head up.

“They are coming with the intention of killing us in our sleep!” Ivan shouted.

People were near the main doors to the gym, gathering around the chief and firing off a dozen questions at once. Sophie glanced down at the little girl one more time. She gave her a kiss on the forehead and then went to investigate what all the fuss was about.

“The only ones I saw clearly were the Simms brothers,” Ivan said louder as people began demanding to know exactly who he was talking about. “They were talking about sacrificing the blood of the innocent to show God that they were worthy. After that, they were coming here with the intention of killing as many as they could.” He paused and his face seemed to brighten and then cloud over just as fast with a realization.

A sick feeling had begun to form in Sophie’s stomach. She shoved through the gathered crowd. There were some who sounded afraid, but others were actually dismissing the chief’s claims.

“This morning they brought in Joshua’s sixteen-year-old daughter. They said that she was having some female issues. They were demanding to know if she was pregnant. It only took a very brief check-up to put that to rest.” Sophie hated sharing intimate and personal secrets, but she felt this was important considering the circumstances. “The girl is a virgin…I assured them that there was no way that she could be pregnant.”

“We need to—” Ivan began, but the sound of a nearby explosion cut him off. Seconds later, the wail of a siren filled the night air with sound.

“Oh, my God,” Sophie gasped. “They’re going to bring every zombie for miles around right here to us.”

As if to confirm her fear and add credence to Ivan’s accusations, a flurry of gunshots erupted. Ivan climbed up onto somebody’s desk so that he could be seen by the gathered crowd.

“Like it or not, there are those who believe this to be some sort of biblical event, and that it is up to them to prove they are worthy of God or life in Heaven. This is not the time to try and reason with people like this. They pose a threat to our survival and I see no other way to deal with this than to eliminate them.” The chief looked around the room and his eyes briefly paused when they met Sophie’s.

“Are you saying that we are going to have to kill our own?” a voice shouted above the din of worried conversation.

Another volley of weapons being fired came from outside. The chief did not say a word; he simply drew his pistol and climbed down. Sophie watched him head for the door. She pushed through to catch him and grabbed his arm just as he was opening the door that led outside.

“Did you see Lawrence when you were out there?” she asked in a whisper.

“Why would I have seen Lawrence?” the chief replied to her question with one of his own.

“He and Chastity Simms have been sort of seeing each other on the side,” Sophie said, glancing around like she might be afraid of others overhearing. “That was part of the reason that I was so thorough with her check-up. I’m just worried that…” Her voice choked off as she attempted to swallow the lump in her throat.

Ivan Potter understood instantly why she might be concerned for the well-being of her son. Joshua Simms made no secret of his dislike for anybody who was not Caucasian. It wasn’t like he walked around spouting racist drivel, but anybody who listened to him talk either in his tiny pulpit or in one of the local taverns was aware of his separatist ideology.

One of his common retorts when he was accused of being a racist was, “I ain’t sayin’ the coloreds need to be shipped back to their country of origin…I’m simply statin’ that the mixin’ of their type with ours goes against God. Ever hear of the tower of Babel?”

“I’m coming with you,” Sophie stated, patting the pistol on her own hip for emphasis.

“I can’t let you do that.” Ivan shook his head.

“You can’t let me?” Sophie barked.

“You are too important…too valuable to this community.” Ivan placed a hand on her shoulder, keeping her from stepping through the door. “I will look for Lawrence. I promise.”

Sophie tried to protest as several other people began to flow past, heading out to confront people who had been neighbors…maybe even friends. Now they were the enemy.

“Please bring him home,” Sophie said as she stepped back to allow still more of Liberty’s citizens to rush out into the night.

When the door shut, she looked around and was surprised to see less than half the people living in the gymnasium had actually joined in the defense. More had stayed behind and were making a point of not holding eye contact with her or any of their fellow citizens.

As she returned to her cubicle to wait for the chief to bring back her son, she wondered if she would have been as anxious to rush out and commit murder in the name of self-defense. Could she actually take the life of a living person who was looking her in the eyes?

As she sat down in the chair beside Megan’s bed, her lips began to move as she bowed her head and recited the only prayer she could remember.

“Our Father who art in Heaven…”

***

Ivan stood in the parking lot. By his best guess, less than a quarter of those being housed inside the school gymnasium had come out to help. That still gave him a huge numbers advantage, but this was troubling. Too many people were shrinking back and hoping that others would pick up their slack.

Turning to the first person he saw, he called out, “Take three people with you and get over to the door and window factory. Gather as many people as will come. Time is of the essence.”

The woman gave a curt nod and slung her rifle over her shoulder. She seemed to have no problem finding three people to join her and they quickly hurried off into the darkness towards the other main housing area. He swiftly repeated the process and sent another team to the residential neighborhood. Most of the houses had at least four families living under the roof.

Moving to take the lead, he held up his hands to try and get everybody’s attention. “They are up the road here. I am guessing they blew a hole in the barricade by Farmers Hill Road. That is right by where I saw them gathered. None of our patrols is up that direction, so if you encounter anything coming this way, shoot it on sight.”

He quickly dispatched four people with hunting rifles to the roof of the house across the street and outside the barricade. Everybody else was sent to positions up and down the barrier. Most climbed up onto some of the big trucks or busses that helped make up the wall of automobiles.

It did not take long for shadows to start appearing from the north. From his perch atop a trailer of a big rig, he saw that they were moving down both sides of the blockade. That part had him confused until he watched a pair scurry over to a car and open the hatch where the gas nozzle would go. A flash and then a flame could be seen. They were using the cars as bombs. The shadows rushed forward and prepared to repeat the process when one of the snipers on the roof apparently had a good shot. The single report of a rifle was followed by three more in quick succession.

Two bodies fell to the ground, but the people moving down the inside of the barricade took off in a run. They were just about to the road that turned into the school when something flammable arced into the air and landed in the midst of the largest portion of the group. There was a concussive ‘WHUMP’ and a bright flash that made Ivan cover his eyes. That had not been one of the cars blowing up; that was a bomb. And it had come from his people. He could only think of one person in all of Liberty who might have already made an improvised explosive device and he was suddenly glad that the man was on his side.

Sections of grass were now ablaze, and in the flickering light of those fires, Ivan spied three individuals walking through the downed bodies, many writhing on the ground in agony as flames devoured them. Single shots were being fired at pointblank range, ending the thrashing about with a final sharp report.

He rushed up to find Stephen Deese, his wife, and another man doing the grisly job of executioner. All three had bandanas around their faces, adding a spookily anonymous quality to their appearances as they killed.

“Any sign of Jonah or his brother?” Ivan asked over the sound of the siren wailing to the north.

Stephen fired a single shot into the head of a woman who was looking up at him with a snarl of rage on her face and blood trickling from the corners of her mouth. He looked up at Ivan and gave a curt shake of his head.

“Well, they are the ones behind this,” Ivan said. “And if we don’t take them down tonight, we will likely have to deal with them again in the future.”

Stephen turned to his wife. “You two got this?”

“Yep,” Terri Deese looked around and gave a nod. “I think we only have a dozen or so left.”

The man leaned in and kissed his wife on the cheek and then turned back to Ivan. “You got any idea where they might be?”

“I know where I saw them last.”

“Best get moving then,” Stephen growled. “I think the sooner we pluck this nasty weed, the less likely we have more sproutin’ up in the future.”

“You sound like you knew about this,” Ivan panted as the two jogged up Ruhamah Road towards the continuous and annoying wail of a siren.

“I didn’t know who it would be, but I can’t say I’m surprised.” Stephen paused and grabbed Ivan by the shoulder.

Coming their way were a dozen or so of the undead. They were just within the glow of Stephen’s head-mounted spotlight.

“Yeah, the Simms brothers blew a hole in our perimeter up ahead…almost forgot about that part,” Ivan muttered with a scowl.

The two men put a bit of space between each other and approached the zombies. With well-placed swings of their machetes, the undead were taken down with minimal effort.

“We need to find that siren and shut it off first,” Stephen now had to really shout to be heard above the din.

They veered towards the sound and discovered what was basically a red child’s toy bullhorn with a fire truck sticker on it. That toy was switched on and sitting beside an actual bullhorn that was acting as the amplifier and broadcaster. Stephen raised a booted foot and stomped on the toy before reaching down and switching off the actual bullhorn.

“Points for creativity.” Stephen was looking down on the busted plastic toy when Ivan stepped up beside him.

“Whatever,” Ivan said with a shrug. “They were up Farmers Hill.”

Stephen pulled the small knapsack from his back and produced four cylinders. He handed a pair of them to Ivan.

“What are these?” Ivan turned the cylinders over in his hands.

“Be careful,” Stephen gripped the chief by the wrist.

He moved one of the devices so that it could be easily seen using his headlamp. There was a small covered recess and what looked like a tiny toggle switch set in it was revealed when Stephen thumbed the cover aside.

“Flick this switch and you have ten seconds to get rid of the device,” Stephen explained.

“Those were your explosives,” Ivan said with appreciation.

“Funny, I was just headed over to the school when the siren started. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out once you and a bunch of people came bursting out of the gym with weapons drawn. It made it easier when one of the lunatics fired at you guys.”

“Wow, we actually caught a stroke of luck on the right side,” Ivan laughed as the pair walked through the smoldering ruins of where a section of the parked cars had been blown. “We should set a detail to emptying these babies of all their fluids. Otherwise we are open to somebody else doing the exact same thing. Don’t know why that thought never occurred to me before.”

“I think we are all on a steep learning curve,” Stephen whispered, his pace slowing.

Ivan slowed to match the man and began searching for whatever had caused him to suddenly change his pace. Just ahead he thought that he saw something move across the road.

Stephen pointed and then signaled with one finger to each side. He pointed to himself and the right, then to Ivan and indicated left. Ivan nodded, tucked the two devices into the pouch at his hip, and headed into the tall grass.

He had only gone a short distance when he heard the sounds of heavy breathing just ahead and to the left of his position. Creeping forward even slower, he considered pulling out one of Stephen’s explosives, but thought better of it. They were already outside the barricade and who knew how many zombies that siren had brought their direction before it had been stomped into bits and silenced?

“…have you turned your back on your servant?” a voice whimpered. “Has Satan truly won? Has he taken this world for his own to do as he pleases like he did with Job?” There was a wet cough and then a soft groan of pain.

Ivan hurried forward with his pistol at the ready. He smelled him before he saw him. Chuck Simms was on his back looking straight up. His hands were clutching his belly. The man seemed to sense his presence, but he did not move.

“Go ahead, finish me and send me to my Father. You all deserve this hell,” Chuck Simms spat through teeth clenched in pain.

“You people give Christians a bad name,” Ivan retorted.

“You can call yourself a Christian all you like, but the Great Deceiver will be coming for you as he begins his thousand year reign. And then our Heavenly Father will emerge from the heavens and reclaim this world in the name of His Holy Father.”

“What book did you read?’ Ivan scoffed.

“Just you wait and see,” Chuck Simms cautioned. “Satan and his minions are here, and they are coming for you. Why else would none of our faithful have yet to fall to them? I’ve been bitten, but I still live. I am saved, chosen by God.”

A low moan came from the darkness further up Farmers Hill Road. Ivan grabbed the flashlight hanging from his belt and clicked it on. He scanned up ahead and saw several figures stumbling towards where he stood over Chuck Simms.

“I’ll leave you here then to take it up with them.” Ivan nodded to the approaching zombies.

He flashed his light down on the man’s sweaty face and saw absolute fanatical conviction. A yelp and a meaty thud to the right told him that Stephen had probably found Jonah. He swung his flashlight over and Stephen Deese gave him a wave as he began to head over, wiping off the blade of his machete as he did so.

“Satan’s minions will have nothing to do with me, but you…you will all perish in agony.”

Ivan turned and met Stephen part way. The two men started up the road in silence. They were just cutting through the jagged hole in the barricade when a scream shattered the relative quiet of the night. It started like any regular scream, but it morphed into a maniacal laughter that made the hairs on both men’s necks stand on end until it came to a sudden and merciful end.

“You left him alive for the zombies?” Stephen asked, sounding incredulous.

“He said they couldn’t hurt him…something about how he had been bitten but that God saved him.”

Stephen stopped suddenly. “The chief was bit.”

“Umm…no. The chief was shot.”

“Before that,” Stephen corrected. “When we went out to the highway. One of those things got him on the hand, but he never showed any signs…until he finally died from being shot.”

“That seems like something we should tell Sophie. I bet it will make more sense to her. Especially with people dying who haven’t been bitten and all that. Seems to me that this is like the AIDS or Hep C,” Ivan speculated.

“You go on ahead, I will stay here and keep watch on this breech. Send me some support as soon as possible. We need to seal this spot as quick as we can.”

“Will do.” Ivan started away and then paused. He turned to Stephen, a sheepish expression on his face. “You think I shoulda put Chuck down instead of leaving him for them things?”

“I don’t know what to think about much of anything anymore,” Stephen replied, not bothering to look back at the chief.

***

Jamie peered out the window. She could see several of the walking dead roaming the streets outside. From the second floor of the townhouse, they could actually see the hospital. Just looking at it gave her shivers.

It was the stuff of nightmares. So many bodies littered the ground, and the stench of death was so thick in the air that it coated your mouth and nose no matter if you were wearing a mask or respirator. Even with the gauze pads coated in Vick’s VapoRub stuffed up your nose, you could still smell the rotten sickly sweetness.

She moved away from the window and went to the stairs. Her eyes fell on Bo Summers. The man was still sitting on the floor beside the front door. He’d been silent to the point of brooding ever since they’d busted in to this place, taken down that one zombie, and then dragged it outside.

To compound the odd feeling she was getting, Sarah Gilstrap was seated right beside the big man and absently stroking his arm. Every so often she would pat him and lean in to whisper something. She certainly hoped these two hadn’t suddenly snapped. This was not the time or the place.

The rest of the team was scattered around the townhouse. Some were sprawled on the floor, others the couch. Two people had flopped down on the bed and were snoring softly. She slid down and took a seat at the top of the stairs, her mind drifting like the dust motes flitting past her eyes in the sliver of moonlight that shone through the window.

Was this how things were going to be from now on? Was life going to be reduced to these moments venturing into a dead world for supplies? Would all of them make it back?

This was so much scarier than any movie. To see people walking around with massive wounds, parts missing, or bits of them hanging out from gaping holes in their bodies was truly awful.

The drive up to Pickens had been close to disastrous as well as heart wrenching. They had been travelling up Highway 178 and happened upon a multiple car accident. It looked like the people inside had suffered terrible fates as most were still strapped into their cars but had endured attacks that left many with chunks of their faces, shoulders, throats, and upper body torn away.

Then they had encountered a lone military truck sitting on the road just a few miles outside of Pickens. They were not intending on stopping. After all, it was just a single truck with what looked like just the driver-turned-zombie in the cab. As they were edging around the vehicle, Jamie could not help but stop when she glanced over and recognized the man. It was Clifton Martin staring back at her with dead eyes. She saw his hands come up and paw impotently at the smeared driver’s side window. He tried to gnaw at the glass as well, and his efforts only increased when she got out of her truck and walked over to the military transport.

“Oh, Cliff,” she had gasped.

In the end, she put him down. She knew that was what Sophie would have wanted. Of all the zombies she had killed so far, this had been the most difficult. There was something to be said about staring into the face of somebody that you once knew just before driving a short, metal-tipped spear into their eye socket. She just wished that she’d had time to do more for the body than simply have it lifted back into the cab of the truck.

The next bit of horror had come when they passed the burnt ruins of the Pickens County Sheriff’s office. Apparently some of the bad guys that Kevin Staley mentioned had come here in large numbers. It looked like heavy explosives had been used as bits of the main building were littering the highway. Several of the cars in the lot had been blown up and bodies were strung up from anything high enough to keep their feet from touching the ground. Many were in sheriff’s uniforms and had obviously been strung up alive and left to squirm so that the undead could get to them. Some were missing legs and other had been ripped in half. There were even a few strands of rope swinging in the breeze that had been snapped. A variety of profane graffiti had been spray painted on the signage leading to the area as well as gigantic letters on the actual asphalt of the parking lot that read: “Fuck the Police!”

Despite what Kevin had said, she wanted to refuse to believe that humanity could spiral into such depravity so rapidly. People were essentially good at heart…right? What she was witnessing with her own two eyes led her to believe otherwise.

When she returned, she was going to be holding a vote. Up until now, she had thought maybe she might be going too far in her desire to live up to Chief Gilstrap’s final words. Yet, now she felt maybe she was not doing enough. The vote to seal Liberty off from the rest of the world had really been a knee-jerk reaction; or at least that what she had believed until now.

“Hey, Jamie?” a voice whispered, snapping her out of her morose thoughts. She looked up to see Michelle Bennett standing over her. “There is light just to our right over by the elementary school. It looks like a lantern. It hasn’t moved for a while, but it absolutely was not there fifteen minutes ago.”

“Keep an eye on it.” Jamie rubbed her eyes and stifled a yawn.

“You don’t want anybody to go check it out?”

“Why?”

That response seemed to confuse Michelle. The woman opened her mouth twice before finally speaking. “What if it is somebody who needs help?”

Jamie knew that what she was about to say might not come across as proper with some. Still, if she was going to follow through with her plan to seal Liberty, then she needed to start acting like the leader that those who had entrusted her with this position thought her to be.

“We are not here for anybody but the people of Liberty. We have a list of priority items to try to acquire. Our only directive involving others is that we will back off if somebody has laid claim to an area. We are out to salvage and scavenge, not start a war…and we aren’t here on a rescue mission.”

She waited for the backlash and was surprised when the woman simply nodded her head. “Okay, then I will make sure we keep an eye on that light and inform you if it looks like somebody is trying to wave us off or anything like that.”

Jamie leaned against the rail and let herself relax just a little. By morning, the lookouts had reported nothing other than that single lantern. It winked out just a few hours before sunrise and no sounds or other indications of survivors manifested the rest of the night.

“Okay.” Jamie stood at the front door, her entire team assembled around her awaiting instructions. “I want to divide the team in half.”

She had given it a lot of thought as she drifted in and out of her catnaps. She had decided to have Bo take one group and she would lead the other. They would enter from opposite ends of the hospital. Bo’s group would be tasked to the emergency room area. Her group would be hitting the main prescription pharmacy. Since they would likely encounter a lot of undead, time was of the essence. Both groups were going to move in fast and have ten minutes to grab all they could.

“Hopefully you have all familiarized yourselves with the list, but with as many zombies as we have, I think it is just best to grab anything you can. Bandages, alcohol, iodine, basically anything you can stuff into your satchels. I know that Sophie went through a lot of trouble to prioritize that list, but I don’t think anybody realized how awful the hospital would be.” Jamie looked around as she spoke and saw grim determination staring back at her.

“Do we meet back here?” Bo asked. “Or would you rather we made for one of the fallback locations.”

“If we can meet here, try this spot first. Who knows…maybe we will do this in waves. Nothing says we can’t go back in. Sort of like disturbing a hornets’ nest,” Jamie answered. “We get things riled up, but once it calms down, maybe we can make a second and even third attempt.”

That seemed to satisfy everybody and after some handshakes and claps on the back, both teams headed out into the morning sun. They moved together down Monroe Street, and then separated at the highway with Jamie leading her team up to W G Acker Drive and Bo taking his group straight across the open field and up the small hill. They would be coming in from the south and Jamie from the north.

As she and her team hurried down the long, winding drive, they passed rotting corpses and smoldering military vehicles. It seemed impossible that so much carnage could exist in such a small area. If it was this bad here, then the major cities had to be beyond comprehension.

Fortunately, there did not seem to be much activity along the way. They followed the road as it curved around the side of the hospital and came to a rear entrance. Jamie signaled for the team to halt. They would be crossing a parking lot with what looked like the tattered remains of several large tents.

This was the end of their clear run. Several zombies could be seen milling about. A few pawed at cars that contained more of their number, most likely entombed forever. She turned to the group.

“Okay, this is not going to be pretty. We make for that entrance.” She pointed to a set of double doors that had been blown off their hinges. “Once inside, everybody stay close. If it moves, take it down. I don’t want us to leave anything behind that could present a problem when we make our exit. Most likely we will be in an even bigger hurry on the way out.”

Looking around, she saw lips tightly pressed and eyes sharp and focused. These people knew what was in store and were prepared to do what needed to be done. And while that was great, she was noticing a lot of the people in town sitting back and seeming to be happy with allowing others to do all the hard stuff; just another thing to add to her list of issues to take care of when they got back.

As she got up and started towards the hospital in a low crouch, she had a realization that put a smile on her face. She had thought in terms of when she returned to Liberty…not if.

***

Bo took the lead as they approached the Pickens Garden apartment complex. Oliver’s two story townhouse was at the far end looking out over Monroe Street. The hospital was just beyond that, across the highway.

He’d been glad when Jamie accepted his idea of using that location for their observation point without any questions. As soon as they had parked in the lot, he had wasted no time getting out in front. He wanted to be the lead on this in either case when it came to Oliver. If he was alive, then he wanted to be the first face Oliver saw; and if he was dead, then it would be him that put the man to rest for good.

He reached the door and pulled the bandana from his face. It would suck to break in and have Oliver shoot him thinking that he was a looter. Of course, with the Halogen head lamp he was wearing, he would likely blind the man for a few seconds and be able to call out.

He opened the door and was greeted by a figure standing in the middle of the living room. A wave of that all-too-familiar stink came at him full force and made his stomach seize just a bit. The figure in the living room turned to face him, head tilted to one side. There was a dark stain on one arm that had strips of the applied bandage dangling from it.

“I’m sorry you were alone at the end,” Bo whispered, and then stepped forward and drove his blade into the temple of the thing that was no longer his beloved friend and companion.

Sarah was right behind him and patted him gently on the shoulder as the two entered the townhouse and made sure that there were no other zombies. Once they finished, Bo had to just sit down on the floor and hide his head in his hands. Not only did he want to avoid any questioning glances, but he could not watch as Oliver’s things were rifled through as the team searched for anything useful. He knew it was a necessity, but he didn’t have to like it and he didn’t have to participate.

He felt Sarah sit beside him at some point, but he was so emotionally numb that he barely paid any attention to whatever soothing words she was whispering to him. His mind tried to reconcile the fact that he had come here knowing the most likely outcome. He also told himself that at least he had closure. None of that provided him any real solace.

At last Jamie rounded everybody up and split the team in half with him and Sarah sent to try and gather supplies from the emergency room area. He knew that would probably be the area with the heaviest concentration, but he did not say anything. Jamie was actually doing a really good job leading this team and he did not want to seem like he was trying to undermine her leadership. Besides, he really wanted to get in a few good licks against these walking bags of filth. He may never know which zombie ended his Oliver, but every zombie he met from here on out was the potential culprit in his eyes.

As they left Oliver’s home, Bo took one final look. He doubted that he would ever see this place again after this mission. He briefly considered taking one of the pictures from the wall or something else that might remind him of Oliver, but in the end, he decided against it; at least for now. He needed to be focused on the mission.

They made their way down Monroe Street and then the two groups split up. He led the way as they jogged across the sloping lawn that led to the front emergency room entrance. They could see the gaping hole where a series of doors used to exist. Beyond that, the way actually looked surprisingly clear.

Taking a deep breath, Bo motioned for his team to charge. As they crossed the open paved lot, some of the team veered off to take down a zombie in order to keep their retreat as clear as possible. When they entered the emergency room, the team came to a stop. The area looked like somebody had taken black paint and flung buckets of it at the walls, floor, and even the ceiling. Bodies were missing heads where shotgun blasts at pointblank range had taken them away, leaving jagged stumps and a splatter of gore in sinister parody of a halo where the body lay sprawled out or slumped against a wall.

The bodies were soldiers, doctors, nurses and patients. Some were missing limbs…or worse. Snapping his fingers to get everybody’s focus back on him, Bo pointed to the door that led back to the actual emergency room where patients had been treated. Once inside, they would empty carts and bust open lockers. Sophie had provided a hand drawn map indicating where some of the desired items would be stored.

A collection of bobbing lights hurried through the waiting room and reached the door that was their destination. By now, a few of the team had stopped, bending at the waist to be sick. Whether from a combination of the sights or the smells, Bo had no clue; he waited patiently for each person who was forced to stop.

Once everybody gave him the thumbs-up sign, he gripped the handle and pushed in the door to the room. Faces turned in their direction, all of them slack and emotionless. Tracer-ridden eyes appeared in the beams of light, but there was no point of red, or green light reflected back. These were all members of the walking dead. Their gazes gave no sort of reflection. For some reason, that struck Bo and gave him a chill. It wasn’t as if he did not already know what these were, but the added effect of their dead eyes not reacting to light simply increased the level of this already surreal experience to one that caused him to shudder.

“Move fast and stay in pairs,” Bo hissed. There was no sense in being silent, the zombies knew they were present and were even now staggering towards members of his team. He felt Sarah press up against him and he patted her shoulder.

A zombie lurched in front of them and Bo drove his knife into its temple. He quickly kicked it away and strode to the next, repeating his move. As he veered for a cluster of three, he called softly over his shoulder to Sarah, “Start filling those bags. I have your back.”

He did not even look to see if she obeyed or gave any sort of acknowledgement. It was time to visit some revenge on the undead. Sure, he knew they had no concept of his fury, but each kill brought him a degree of comfort. He was just pulling his blade from the top of the skull of a female soldier zombie when a hand clasped his left ankle, sending him sprawling on his face.

“Bo!” he heard Sarah yell.

15

Supplies and Fortifications

Ivan Potter moved among the bodies that had been dragged to a small section of grass just beyond some trees on the north side of the high school. While it was no secret what had taken place the night before, he did not see a reason to have everybody subjected to looking at the dead bodies of those who had been part of the Simms brothers’ little cult.

That word rang around inside his mind for a second and he shoved it aside. Ask him a month ago about a cult popping up in Liberty, South Carolina and he would have busted a gut laughing. Now, he was looking down at a woman that had served him pie in one of the town’s small restaurants. Kneeling beside the body, he brushed his hands down her face to shut her eyes.

“I think we have all of ‘em,” Stephen Deese said as he and another man laid down a body a few feet away.

“Can you believe they sacrificed their daughter to the devil?” one man whispered to another as they left the area and headed back to the school.

The word on this was going to be spread to everybody by nightfall. If folks got carried away or even more frightened, they might have a witch hunt on their hands.

Ivan stood and turned to Stephen. “Get the entire town here within the hour. I want to try and get this situation under control as much as possible.”

“Probably a good idea, I’ve already heard people whispering about who else might have been secret members of this little society.” Stephen wiped his forehead with a towel he had hanging from his back pocket and then headed towards the gymnasium.

Ivan moved down the line, trying to look at these people as the folks he’d passed on the streets or in the grocery store aisle, but for some reason, they all seemed different now. If such seemingly good people could go bad so fast, and in such a radical way, what did that say about those on the fringe? Even worse, what about some of those sick bastards that he knew to be out there?

Those bikers might have been a very small tip of a very large and ugly iceberg. Just twelve hours ago, he had been having doubts about Jamie Burns and her plan to seal off Liberty from outsiders. If he could not trust the men and women of this town, glancing down at his mailman he suppressed a shiver, then he sure as hell could not trust an outsider.

He paused at the body of Chastity Simms. Of all the bodies laid out here, this was the only one he considered a victim. He simply could not understand the mentality involved in such a thing. To believe that murdering your own child would bring God’s favor?

“She told me she was scared that her dad was going to do something crazy,” a voice whispered from behind him.

Ivan turned to see Lawrence standing a few feet away, tears running down his cheeks. He was holding a handful of wilted wildflowers in one hand; they were dangling at his side as if he had forgotten them.

“She couldn’t have guessed it would be this,” Ivan said. He walked over to the distraught young man and put an arm around his shoulder. “And I don’t think anybody could have guessed anything so crazy would have happened here. These were our friends and neighbors. It all feels so impossible.”

“Sort of like a zombie apocalypse?” the boy sniffed.

“Good point,” Ivan conceded.

Lawrence laid the bouquet beside the body and then followed Ivan back to the school where two teams were getting ready to start work on shoring up the defenses around the train. Logs were going to be rolled under the cars to keep zombies from being able to go underneath, and strands of barbed wire would be strung between them. Also, platforms were being constructed and would eventually be mounted on each end of the train as well as a spot in the center.

Sophie was standing in the entry doors her hands shielding her eyes as she scanned the throng of people going about their business. A terrible feeling punched the newly appointed chief in the gut and he turned to Lawrence and grabbed his arms.

“Tell me you have seen your mother since last night when all this crap happened!” he exclaimed.

“Uhh…well…” the boy stammered and sputtered. “Actually…” He let that word draw out for way too long.

”Dammit, kid,” Ivan growled, grabbing Lawrence by the elbow and steering him towards his mother.

A minute later, he was easing away from one of the biggest ass chewing sessions that he’d been witness to since the day that he’d vomited on Sister Mary Beverly’s shoes at the church picnic during his sixth grade year. It wasn’t so much the throwing up that had gotten him in trouble. It had been the fact that he and three other boys had slipped away from the party and gone to Lionel Wilson’s house and raided his parents’ liquor cabinet. He’d never even been able to smell Southern Comfort again without his stomach tightening up. Plus, he always felt a residual burning on his butt. He was pretty sure his mother had whipped his ass at a felony level.

As he was heading over to see if he could help one of the train details, he could not help but chuckle. Just a month ago, Sophie Martin would be receiving a visit from social services at the least. Right now, people were just walking past like nothing in the world was happening.

***

Jonathan stared into the gun leveled at his head. The fear he felt was at war with what he was seeing. Sure, the woman holding the gun was a big woman. In fact, he thought they might be pretty close to the same weight class if they were wrestling. Her face was ruddy and she looked like perhaps she had been in more fights than he’d ever taken part. Still, he was having trouble reconciling that a woman was holding him at gunpoint as four others climbed over his truck and stripped the rest of the people that had been with him on this run of all their belongings. They were even taking folks’ shoes and socks.

At least they were leaving the underwear, he thought morosely.

“Something funny, fat boy?” the woman holding the gun snarled.

Jonathan’s eyes returned to the woman holding him prisoner. He shook his head. “Not a thing. I was just thinking that I was grateful you folks weren’t stripping my friends of their drawers.”

He had no explanation, but a feeling of indescribable calm was settling over him. He was pretty sure that he was going to die any moment and that there really was nothing he could do about it. With all options off the table, it was as if his brain had simply come to terms with fate and shut off the fear.

“Trust me, if we see something in our size, we take that too,” the woman shot back.

“We didn’t come here looking for trouble,” Jonathan said, his eyes no longer focused on the gun. He looked into the eyes of the woman that he figured would be his executioner.

“That’s funny,” the woman said with a mirthless laugh. “Every group of raiders and rapists that we have encountered always say that once we have the drop on them. Yet, when they catch and kill one of our people, or they set fire to our shelter, steal our food…well then…”

“We were just out scouting for supplies ourselves,” Jonathan replied. “We even had orders to pull back if we encountered a group that had a claim on an area. We sorta figure there are enough places to search that we don’t need to encroach on others.”

“And just where is this benevolent community that you supposedly hail from?”

Jonathan thought it over. He shot a glance back to the bed of the pickup as one of the women of this group plucked rings from the fingers of one of the dead bodies. He could only see the hand, so he could not tell who was currently being pillaged, but seeing such disrespect for his friends steeled his resolve.

“You really think I would tell you?” Jonathan finally answered.

The woman cocked the hammer on her pistol and pressed it against his forehead. “Yes…I do.”

“You’re gonna kill me anyway, so why should I do anything to help you vultures?”

That earned him a smack in the cheek with the butt of the gun. He felt the hot pain of split skin followed by a trickle of blood running down the side of his face. His right eye started to blur and his vision dimmed just a bit for a few seconds. But he refused to acknowledge the blow by reacting or even wiping the blood away.

“That doesn’t mean I have to kill you quick.” The woman leaned forward, her sour breath adding to the already unpleasant situation for Jonathan.

“And you are saying that these so-called raiders and rapists are the bad guys? I mean, I get it. There are some bad people doing bad things and taking advantage of this situation, but what makes this anything close to right?” He sort of looked around to indicate the scene of carnage surrounding them.

“The days of right and wrong are over. It is simply about survival now.”

“That’s a pretty narrow view.”

“The days are past when you give people the benefit of the doubt, young man.” The woman eased back out of the cab of the truck and motioned Jonathan to follow. “So is television therapy, tabloid shows passing themselves off as news, and participation trophies.”

Jonathan edged his way out of the truck and almost fell, his vision on the right side now virtually non-existent. The woman with the gun made no effort to prevent his fall and actually stepped back as he landed gracelessly in the trampled grass of the roadside.

“What does any of that have to do with anything?”

“Exactly,” the woman answered cryptically.

Great, he thought as he saw two dozen women moving around the wreckage, I get to die at the hands of a lunatic.

“Now, get on your knees and lace your fingers behind your head,” the woman ordered.

Jonathan did as he was instructed. He saw the bodies of his companions being dragged from the vehicle and tossed unceremoniously into the weeds and brush that grew alongside the highway. Part of him wanted to jump to his feet and just go out swinging as he watched two women swing the body of Alex Singleton by his wrists and ankles back and forth twice. On the third swing, they let go and the body flew a few feet and landed with a meaty slap on top of the growing pile of his stripped down team members.

“You gonna give us something useful, or do we have to do this the hard and ugly way?” the woman asked.

She looked Jonathan in the eyes as she spoke. What he saw was a total emptiness. This woman did not care about him one way or the other. This wasn’t a ploy or a bluff. She was going to kill him eventually. His only option was whether his last moments were filled with horrible agony, or he simply took a quick bullet to the head. He weighed his options and came to the conclusion that it was very likely that she would get her answers one way or the other.

“Liberty,” he sighed. “Our group is from over in Liberty.”

The world went dark in the blink of an eye.

***

They jogged past the sign that read “PHARMACY” with an arrow pointing down a long hallway. Jamie stepped over a corpse sprawled on the floor and motioned for the team to follow. She slowed at each spot along the hallway where an intersection occurred.

It was unnerving to say the least the way noises echoed in this massive building-turned-tomb. The sounds of moans could be heard along with those horrific baby cries. That was still the hardest thing to hear in Jamie’s opinion. In her mind, she knew that there could very well be that one time when a baby might actually be the source of that sound, but the baby cry had become such a cautionary tale that people were becoming numb to the noise.

At two separate intersections she was rewarded by stepping into a zombie that had come to a stop and was simply standing there waiting. They reminded her of spiders in that sense, and this was their web. Much like the spider, as soon as they sensed her presence, they moved in for the kill, but fortunately they were very slow and awkward. She usually managed to drive her spiked staff into its head before it even managed to take a full step.

They finally reached a set of service windows where people would hand over their prescription slips and then sit in the big lobby at their back and await for the medication to be bottled and ready for them to take home.

She motioned for two members of her team to take down the few zombies roaming around the chairs and assorted plants and magazine racks. She and the other three hurried to the customer service windows where they already had their first stroke of luck. The metal roll-down doors had not been lowered and locked by whomever it was that had last been working in the pharmacy.

Jamie pulled the knife that Ivan had given her. The tip of the handle had a nifty little knob that supposedly shattered even emergency glass. She did as he’d instructed and rapped it against the bottom right corner of the window. Sure enough, it went white with cracks. She used her gloved fist and shoved in, sending a cascade of tiny cubes of glass.

“Cool,” she breathed.

Turning with a smile, she climbed up and in. Looking around, it seemed that the last person working here had obviously had at least some idea of what was happening. There were a lot of emptied pill lockers. Still, there were several things on the list that were plentiful. Also, there were little bags on a set of shelves with unclaimed prescriptions just waiting.

After a quick assessment, it was clear that they would basically be able to empty this room out if they stuffed all their packs full and had some of those out in the lobby hand in theirs. In no time, they had the little room emptied of anything useful.

One at a time, she and the others climbed out. They were right by a set of doors that led outside. The only trouble with that came in the form of the fifty or so zombies all gathered around, pawing at the glass. There was even one that had gotten stuck in the revolving door. Its arm had somehow been wedged in between the jamb and the revolving door itself. By the looks of things, it would not be stuck in there much longer. The limb looked twisted and deformed to the point of snapping in two with just a few more yanks.

“Back the way we came,” Jamie announced.

She remained just as cautious on the return trip. Being careless at this point was just stupid. They only had one corner left, and a surge of hope had filled her. She should have known better.

For whatever reason that drives a zombie to do what they do, they rounded that last corner to the lobby by the exit to discover it thick with the undead. There had been the sounds of moans and all that since they entered the building; the emptiness had made being able to judge the nearness of the sound almost impossible.

“Okay, we head back the way we just came,” Jamie announced. “There is a second passage that leads to a service corridor. Sophie said that there is a metal door, and we will have to pry it open. It’s gonna be noisy, which is why it was only for emergency use, but it is there or we risk the exit back at the pharmacy lobby area.”

She led them back, glancing at the piece of paper that Sophie had given her. She had to keep looking up to see the little plaques mounted on the walls to confirm that she was going the right direction. At last they rounded a corner that led only about twenty feet and ended in a solid metal door.

She had two members of the team rush to the door with the pry bars and start attacking the latch. It only took about thirty seconds, but between the noise and seeing the pursuing zombies round the corner just a short distance away, it felt to Jamie like it took forever.

Jamie had her back to the pair opening the door as she watched the approaching horde. The frightened scream from behind her and in the direction of the door caused her to jump and spin, turning her back to a wall of walking death that was drawing frighteningly near. She turned just in time to see both her team being enveloped by a writhing wall of undead arms.

One of them looked right at her, eyes wide with fear, but she was certain that she saw reproach and accusation as well. If it were not for the fact that the individual was shrieking in agony and a zombie leaned in and tore a chunk from his cheek while another ripped away a piece of the side of his neck, she was positive that the person would be cursing her name.

The other had been pulled to the floor and three of the undead were ripping at clothing as they sought the soft flesh of the belly. This one was kicking and flailing, but could not be seen except for those thrashing legs that jutted from the pack of zombies that had dragged him down.

“Run!” Jamie yelled. “We take our chances at the doors exiting the pharmacy.”

She bolted, hearing the footfalls of the others falling in behind. They retraced their steps and emerged in the lobby. Already, at least ten zombies had filtered in from the different hallways that opened up from this large, open room.

An idea struck Jamie as her team came to a stop. All of them were casting furtive looks over their shoulders back the way they’d come as if they expected the zombies to suddenly gain the ability to run and appear hot on their tails instead of the good ways back they should all be.

She gave the undead outside an appraising look and noticed how they were all riled up at the re-arrival of her and her group. The others in the room were all re-orienting on them and beginning their awkward stumbles and shambles in the new direction towards fresh meat.

“Michelle, you and the others go to the far end of the windows,” Jamie instructed.

“What about them?” the woman managed, visibly frightened as well as winded as she gestured to the zombies that had come back like the tide.

“Kill them obviously.” With that, Jamie edged back closer to the shadows and moved in the opposite direction she’d sent her people. “I want you to start tapping on the window. Make some noise and draw them to you. I am going to break the window at the far end once it is relatively clear. As soon as I do, make a run for it.”

She kept checking back and forth between her people and their progress attracting the zombies gathered outside and then taking looks each direction at the main hallways. A few lone stragglers arrived first from the hallway across the lobby from her but closest to where her team was making noise. When the group that had been following them rounded the far corner, she knew they had run out of time. It was going to have to be good enough.

Moments later, there was a loud crack and the sound of a massive window cascading down in a glass rainstorm. Jamie and her team emerged and dashed to the tree-lined road that would take them back to the townhouse. They had just reached Monroe Street when a series of screams came from back towards the hospital.

***

Bo looked down to see a teenaged boy zombie trying to gnaw on his steel-toed boot. With his free leg, he kicked hard and smashed it in the face, crushing its nose, but doing little other damage; certainly not enough to get the zombie to let go. He jerked away and managed to get to his feet before it could grab him again. He stabbed down on the back of the head of this one and felt the tip of his machete scrape on the tiled floor.

More of the team seemed to be involved in fighting zombies than in grabbing supplies and Bo was thinking that this trip might not be worth what they came away with if something didn’t change soon. Another zombie, this one a female in dark and heavily stained scrubs, staggered out from behind a hanging divider. This one had a syringe still hanging from one arm just below a very tightly cinched piece of rubber tubing.

Bo did not have the time to ponder the scenario that would lead to such a situation. He simply stepped in and drove his blade up and under the jaw. Jerking back, the zombie fell and he moved for the next one after checking on Sarah. She had popped a wall locker open and was busy scooping the contents into her open pack.

Good for her, Bo thought. She isn’t wasting time reading labels. Let Sophie sort this shit out when we get it back home.

The raid was now in full swing as half the group fought off zombies while the other half tried to grab as much as they could and stuff it into their packs. There was almost no conversation with the exception of the occasional “Look out!” or “There’s one!”

Bo had just taken one down and turned to find the next. He looked around and saw the others who had been doing battle looking around with the same looks of confusion on their faces. There did not seem to be another zombie around. At least there were none in the actual emergency treatment area.

“Okay, folks,” Bo called. All heads turned to him and he flashed a smile. “Grab what else you can stuff into the packs and—”

A distant shriek cut him off. Everybody winced and seemed to hold his or her breath. When it mercifully stopped, there was silence except for the sounds of heavy breathing as the group slowly exhaled almost in unison and sucked in the next huge breath.

“Okay, that sounded like maybe one or two people,” Bo said a bit quieter than before. “Not saying that is a good thing, but…” He fumbled for what to say and finally threw his hands up in the air. “You all know what I mean. Now grab what you can and let’s get the hell out of this place.”

They did not need to be told twice. There were a couple of last minute snatches and grabs as people took the last few things available to them and then assembled at the door.

“Okay, we have no idea what we drew to us with all this noise,” Bo lectured. “I want you all to be ready for a fight. The objective is to get outside as fast as you can. I know that we had a thing about taking down everything we saw on the way in, but now it is about getting out alive. That means you keep moving forward no matter what happens. If one of us falls, you can’t go back for them. They either make it out or they don’t.”

“What if the way is blocked?” somebody spoke up.

The sounds of moans and hands pawing at the door to the treatment area of the emergency room seemed almost thunderous in the few seconds before Bo answered. “We don’t have a choice. I don’t know about any of you, but I have no idea where those three doors lead to.” He pointed to the various other exits for emphasis. “It could take us deeper into the hospital and this is not a place that I want to get lost in.”

That seemed to settle it for everybody. They all took a few seconds to cinch their backpacks tighter, check their weapons, and their protective gear.

Bo counted down and then pulled the door open. In the time since they had come in, cleaned it out, and then moved into the actual emergency room to gather supplies (and kill the zombies that had lingered since the hospital fell), the waiting room had become overrun with the undead.

Somebody let out a startled cry, but Bo simply gritted his teeth and stepped through the doorway and chopped hard, bringing his machete down on the crown of a man in a filthy HAZMAT suit. The zombies had apparently done the hard work, ripping away the hood when this poor soul had been attacked.

He felt something latch onto his left leg as he took a few steps forward to meet the oncoming wall of undeath. Glancing down, he saw a child of maybe six or seven emerging from under an end table that had probably held an array of old, dog-eared magazines once upon a time. Without hesitation he brought his gloved fist down on the top of the zombie child’s head. It sprawled flat and he stomped hard on its back as he put down the next zombie to stagger forward. As soon as he pulled his blade free, he stabbed down. He did not need to look to confirm his kill; the sudden cease in movement under his boot told him all that he needed to know.

“Run for the exit!” Bo bellowed.

He heard a gasp from his left and glanced over to see Sarah Gilstrap just standing face to face with a female zombie. It was wearing a Pickens County Sheriff’s uniform.

“Oh, Jenny,” Sarah choked out as she pushed the zombie away as it reached for her.

Bo noticed that she was not making any move to end the creature and he turned back to take the thing down, breaking his own rule. He was pretty sure that Jenny had been Adam’s sister. He grabbed it from behind and by the shoulder, spinning it away from Sarah so that she would not see the thing’s face. With one swift move, he drove his weapon into its right eye socket and then pushed it away and into another pair of zombies that were closing in. He started to resume his exit when he realized that Sarah wasn’t moving. She was staring down at the body of the zombie that he’d just killed.

“Let’s go!” Bo snapped. Still the woman did not respond or even act as if she’d heard him. He slapped her hard across the cheek.

“I just can’t,” the woman whispered.

“Oh no you don’t!” Bo snarled. He grabbed the woman by the arm and jerked her forward and then slung her past him in the direction of the exit.

Sarah stumbled and collided with two other members of the team. All three fell to the ground in a heap. Bo cursed and grabbed the first person he came to by the back of the neck, yanking him to his feet. He reached for the next as something clutched at his backpack, pulling him sideways, causing him to trip over one of his fallen comrades.

Landing on his stomach, Bo felt whatever had grabbed him fall on top of him, effectively pinning him to the floor.

He could feel dead hands pawing at him and trying to get at his flesh through the pack and the heavy leather jacket that he wore. Heaving back with one elbow, he felt it connect solidly to the thing on his back, but it had almost no effect as the zombie continued to maul him.

Another of the undead fell on his legs and he felt his knee twist painfully. Looking straight ahead, his eyes met Sarah’s. She had her head turned as she held a zombie inches from her face as it snapped and gnashed its teeth.

A surge of strength seemed to fill all of Bo’s extremities and he pushed up and made it to his hands and knees. His machete was a few feet away, but his KA-BAR was still on his belt and he whipped it out. Reaching around, he grabbed a handful of hair and jerked the zombie forward so that he could stick it with his blade. Another of the undead fell on him, knocking him sideways.

With a snarl, Bo rolled and ended up on his side. A zombie was just leaning down to take a bite out of his arm and he jerked away in the nick of time. A scream sounded from behind him, but he could not tell if it was Sarah. The scream was shrill and quickly reached a pitch that hurt his ears.

Another zombie lumbered towards him, this one looked like it might outweigh him by a good fifty pounds. It had a nasty rip across its taut belly and something black and jelly-like was slapping against the gray skin, covering the bellybutton. One arm had been gnawed down to the bone from just below the elbow and apparently all the way to the wrist.

There was a hiss and a thud just as the creature reached him and was staring down with its dead eyes. Bo knew that this thing landing on him would be his death sentence. But just as it looked like it was going to flop on top of him, that sound came and the tip of a crossbow bolt was jutting from its open mouth. The zombie tottered and then crumpled to the ground, landing hard just to his left; in between him and the last place he’d seen Sarah.

A hand reached out of the shadows and Bo took it. He got to his feet and found Sarah Gilstrap looking at him, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“I’m not ready to die…to give up,” she whispered.

“Then move your ass and let’s get out of here.” Bo turned her towards the exit and gave her a nudge. He glanced down to see one of his team members on his back. His dead eyes were staring straight up and three zombies were crouched around his unmoving figure. They were still ripping out bloody handfuls of his insides and stuffing it into their mouths.

More zombies were coming from every direction. If he took even those few steps to end that scene to kill the zombies and stick that poor unfortunate to keep him from joining the ranks of the undead, he might not make it out of the lobby.

Stepping through the decimated portal, Bo walked out into the sunlight and instantly felt the warmth on his skin. It was as if his body needed to absorb as much of the sunlight as possible. Looking at the rest of his team, he realized that they had lost four people. He’d been so focused on what was happening to him, he’d obviously missed other members being taken down.

“I sure hope to hell that this was worth it,” Bo mumbled as he started across the parking lot towards the grassy slope and Oliver’s apartment.

When they arrived and found Jamie’s team already there and waiting anxiously, Bo felt himself relax just a little. After a very brief conversation, the group voted unanimously to return home right away. All of them had seen enough of the inside of the hospital to last a lifetime. Within minutes they all found vehicles to commandeer.

As they neared the town, they were stunned to discover what had taken place in their absence. Their vehicles were quickly put to use to fill the holes that had been made by the Simms brothers and their followers.

Jamie waited until the crowds dispersed and then pulled Ivan and Stephen Deese aside to discuss tomorrow’s town meeting and vote on closing their borders. They had wandered up to the train car barricade and she was still discussing the possible fallout of such an idea with Ivan and Mr. Deese when the sounds of engines approaching from the north came just seconds after somebody shouted, “We got an incoming caravan!”

16

Going Tribal

The big truck rumbled to a stop as Jamie, Ivan, and Stephen made it up on top of the large green cargo car. Across the tracks and parked in a line were a dozen vehicles stretching back up South Norman Street. There was a long moment where nothing happened.

The front windows of the trucks had heavy screens, boards, and even sheets of metal covering them. There was a slit to see out, but that made it impossible to really look inside. At last, the driver’s side door of the second truck opened and a very large woman emerged. She was wearing what looked like police riot gear including a helmet with a tinted face shield, and had an impressive looking rifle slung across the front of her body.

“Is there a Jamie Burns here?” the woman shouted.

Jamie glanced over at Ivan who shrugged. Stepping forward, she answered, “I’m Jamie Burns. Who are you and why are you looking for me?”

“We have something that belongs to you.”

The woman leaned back inside the truck for a few seconds and then stood back up. A moment later, the passenger door opened and two more women emerged and then hauled out a limp form. They let whoever it was drop unceremoniously to the ground at their feet.

“This man was caught with a group of your people. They were trying to come in and steal what is ours. This man says that they were sent by a Jamie Burns to scavenge supplies.”

“We made it very clear to any of our teams out searching that they were absolutely not to take from another settlement or engage in hostile actions against others.” Jamie moved closer to the edge of the car shaking off Ivan’s hand from her elbow.

The large woman turned to the other two, covering her mouth with her hand and saying something that was impossible to hear from this distance. Jamie tried to get a better look at the person on the ground but still could not make out who it was.

The large woman finally walked to the front of the truck and took a spot standing over the downed body. “I want to make things perfectly clear,” the woman hollered. “If you come into Easley, you will be considered thieves and raiders.”

“All of Easley?” Jamie called back. “I mean, can we drive through towards Greenville on a specific road?”

The woman paused for a moment and consulted with the two that were standing just a few feet away. As they spoke, Jamie caught a glint of something in the trees to the right of this woman.

She turned to Ivan. “We will not ambush these people. That is not who we are. As long as we are communicating, consider it a banner of truce.”

“We don’t send out teams of one,” Ivan replied coolly. “Ask her where the rest of our people are.”

Jamie turned back and was about to ask where the rest of the people who had been with the one on the ground were when the woman answered.

“You can use Highway 93 and rejoin 123 on the other side of Easley.”

“I think we can agree to that,” Jamie called back.

“Good, now, tell your people to back off,” the woman opened her jacket and produced a metal cylinder with a wire that ran back into a vest that looked to be rigged with several blocks of some sort of explosive.

“What people?” Jamie hoped that the woman simply meant those who were gathered on top of the train cars.

“If you want to test me, just be aware that I am very confident that I am wearing enough high explosives to take you and everybody within about fifty yards with me.” The woman moved the hand holding what was apparently the trigger switch for emphasis.

“Then perhaps you can tell me where the rest of that person’s team might be.” Jamie was not sure if the woman might be bluffing. She did not necessarily want to press the issue, but revealing an explosive and threatening to basically become a suicide bomber that would also kill all of her own people just seemed a bit desperate.

“They are all dead,” the woman answered without hesitation. “We spared one—”

Several of the Liberty people who had been onlookers up until this point suddenly began drawing weapons and shouting threats. Jamie was about to yell for everybody to settle down when a single gunshot sounded.

The large woman staggered and fell to her knees. A dark bloom appeared on her chest. She looked up at Jamie a terrible grin on her face. She held up the cylinder and made a show of her thumb coming off the button.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Jamie was just letting out her breath when a bright flash, a concussive blast, and a ball of fire erupted, engulfing the woman, and a large area around her. The body on the ground and the two women that had been standing with the large woman also disappeared in that massive ball of fire. The blast was enough to knock Jamie back and hit her with a gigantic wave of heat, but after a quick check she saw that she wasn’t smoldering.

Getting to her feet, she looked around and saw others doing the same. Ivan was nowhere to be seen and she spun when she heard his moans. She scurried to the edge of the train car and saw him on the ground. He was cradling one arm that was bent awkwardly and his right leg was bent back at a terrible angle. There were three others on the ground also moaning in pain.

The eruption of gunfire caused her to fall flat on her belly. Looking back to the convoy of cars and trucks, she saw several of them backing away. In the back of a few of the pickups, figures were crouched and spraying lead from their automatic weapons.

Gunfire was returned from the trees as the people that had been moving to flank this group took very carefully aimed shots. On two separate occasions, a body in the back of one of the trucks spun and fell out and onto the ground.

The last truck eventually vanished around the bend. Jamie climbed down to Ivan and knelt by his side. “Don’t move.” Looking up at the first person she saw, she yelled, “Go get Sophie. Tell her we have injured here and need her to bring all her people.”

She looked Ivan over and tried to hide her worry as well as force down the nausea. The arm and leg were both bent in such a grotesque manner that it was almost impossible to look at and not feel her gorge rise. She didn’t know about the leg, but the arm that was busted had bone sticking through the skin. This was very bad.

A man walked up to Jamie. It took her a moment to recognize him. It was Phillip, the guy who had managed the Domino’s Pizza.

“Jonathan is dead,” the man muttered and then trudged away, his gaze seeming to see nothing as he kept tripping and stumbling over every little thing his feet contacted.

A feeling of guilt tried to assert itself, but Jamie forced it away. If these people had already killed the others who had been with Jonathan Patterson, then it is unlikely they intended to ever let the man go.

At last, Sophie and half a dozen trainees arrived. Sophie went from one injured person to the next as she prioritized them according to severity of injury. When she reached Ivan, her lips pressed tight and she did not meet Jamie’s eyes.

“Jamie, we will take him from here,” Sophie said and then whispered something to one of her helpers.

“Don’t jerk me around, Sophie,” Jamie snapped. She got to her feet after easing Ivan’s head from her lap.

Sophie grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away from the man as one of her students knelt and produced a syringe. Jamie watched as the man jabbed it into Ivan’s upper thigh and then turned back to the woman who had her arms crossed over her body and her lips pressed so tightly that they were turning white at the edges.

“He isn’t going to make it, Jamie,” the woman whispered.

Jamie jerked away. “What the hell are you talking about?” She ignored the heads that all turned her direction. “It’s a busted arm and a busted leg. How is that—?”

“Nobody has the ability to give him the treatment that he needs. Both of those injuries need surgery. We don’t have the resources, and if we attempt it and fail, that is a lot of medication gone that we can’t afford to lose.”

“What are you talking about?”

“At the least, that arm need to be pinned together. I don’t have any idea how to do that. It isn’t just a simple break.” Sophie took a breath and forced herself to speak quieter. “He is a high candidate for infection. And the pain he would endure…there is just nothing that I can do.”

“But what about all the stuff we brought back from the hospital?” Jamie pressed.

“Just his injuries alone would put an incredible dent in our supplies. I’m sorry, Jamie. The best we can do is send him off peacefully.”

It took a few seconds for the meaning of those last words to sink in. Sophie had just started away and so Jamie had to lunge after her, grab her arm, and spin her around.

“Don’t you dare!”

“It’s already done, Jamie. There was enough morphine in that syringe to send him to a peaceful and pain free death.”

Jamie turned and looked down at Ivan. The man’s eyes were shut, but the wince of pain that had etched his face just a few moments ago was already gone. He really looked like he was just drifting off to a sleep.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to demand that something be done, but her rational mind was already telling her to let him go. She walked back to the man and knelt beside him. Taking his hand, she decided that he at least deserved to not be alone in his final minutes.

She prayed softly as she waited. It was only a few moments later when she felt the man take one final breath, and then let go with a long, slow exhale. She reached down and checked the carotid for his pulse just to be sure and then got to her feet.

She was still trying to decide what to do when a young girl, in her early teens at the most, jogged up to her. The girl had a busted lip and one eye was swollen almost shut. It took her a few seconds to realize why the girl would be present—the junior high kids were all part of the detail that put up the barbed wire and helped roll the logs in place to seal up the trains so that zombies could not get through.

“One of them is alive,” the girl reported. “Mr. Deese says you should come.”

***

Stephen moved back when the massive woman revealed that she was wired with explosives. That had been something he did not understand before the zombie apocalypse. What in the world could make a person think there was any upside to blowing yourself up as a form of attack. You would never know if you had been successful or not.

He noticed both Ivan and Jamie actually move closer. The gunshot caused him to flinch and duck down. He looked up to see the woman drop to her knees…and then the explosion came. He was suddenly flat on his back staring up at the cloudless sky.

His ears rang for a moment and it took him a few seconds to get to his feet. When he looked around, he saw that most of the damage had actually been done to the convoy that the big woman had been a part of. Still, there were plenty of folks on his side that looked to be injured.

The gunfight erupted and he desperately wanted to use one of his own explosives, but he did not feel confident that he would not take out some of his own people in the resulting blast. Drawing his Beretta, he returned fire as the survivors of the convoy made an uncoordinated retreat.

Once the last vehicle vanished around the corner, he scanned the scene. Movement in the wreckage of one of the smoldering trucks on Norman Street got his attention. There looked to be plenty of people tending to the wounded, so he took off at a jog for this potential survivor.

He reached a small Toyota pickup and saw the passenger trying to free herself from the shoulder harness. She had to be in shock which would explain why she could not understand how the piece of metal that was pinning her to the seat was her actual problem.

Stephen moved over to her side of the truck and grabbed the door. He had to give it a few yanks to get it open, but at last it came free with a terrible groan of metal. The woman’s head lolled over to him, and for just a moment he thought that she might be one of the undead. Her eyes were bloodshot, but they were red.

“That blast really fucked you up,” he quipped as he pulled his knife and cut away her seat belt.

He gave the scene a close inspection. After a moment, he decided that he could not think of any way to get her out other than to yank that piece of metal free.

“This is gonna hurt,” he cautioned just as he grabbed the end of the piece of metal and pulled it out as fast as he could.

The woman groaned and her eyes rolled back in her head as she slipped from consciousness. Removing his glove, he checked her pulse before continuing. No sense in dragging a zombie out of the truck, he reasoned.

He pulled her free and inspected her as much as he dared and then produced a piece of clothesline from a pouch on his belt. Once he had her wrists tied, he stood up and waved over one of the kids that appeared to be standing around unsure of what to do or how to help.

“Hey, kid, go tell Chief Potter and Mayor Burns that I got us a prisoner,” he called.

“Where are they?” the girl asked, looking around as if she expected the pair to be hovering above her head.

“They were on the green train car over there.” Stephen pointed. “Maybe start in that general area.”

The girl wandered away looking confused. Not for the first time, Stephen wondered if maybe the next generation had a shot at survival. Of course he’d had those thoughts before the zombie apocalypse; he gave them even less chance now.

At last he spotted Jamie headed his way. She looked like somebody had just shot her puppy.

“Chief Potter didn’t make it,” she said in response to his questioning expression.

“Damn,” he muttered. “We can’t keep taking hits like that.”

“He appears to be the only casualty so far.”

“And what about you? You look a little beat up. You okay?”

He had given the young lady a quick up and down inspection. Her face was smudged with dirt and blood. She had a pretty nasty lump on the side of her face and a cut over one eye.

“Fine,” she brushed aside the concern. “So you found one of them alive?” She walked over to the girl on the ground and stared down at her. “Jesus…were they all women?”

“I think so.”

“So what do we do with her?” Jamie crossed her arms over her body and appeared to be studying the woman intently.

“She has information.” Stephen looked Jamie in the eyes, hoping that he was conveying his meaning without having to say anything.

There was a very long moment of silence. Jamie walked around the body, lips pursed and hands clasped behind her back. At last she stopped.

“Do what needs to be done, Mr. Deese. But I think it best if you maybe take her to that house around the corner and outside of the safe zone. I have a feeling there might be those who would disapprove.”

Stephen cocked his head. He had honestly expected her to be one of those who might not approve of coercive methods of interrogation.

“I will see what I can find out. Where will you be?”

Jamie thought it over for a moment. “I have to go see Hannah Potter. After that I will be at the high school.”

Stephen watched her walk away. Reaching down, he scooped the woman up and threw her over his shoulder. As he walked, he found himself whistling the song Little Red Riding Hood.

He reached the house just around the corner from the train tracks and set the body down to deal with a pair of elderly zombies coming his way from across the street before opening the door to the house. He walked through the place to make sure that it was empty and then went outside and grabbed the woman.

He pulled out a chair from the kitchen table and heaved the limp figure into it. Grabbing the nearby coffee pot, he yanked the electric cord from it and tied one ankle in place. Going over to a nearby lamp, he repeated the process.

Comfortable that she would not be able to run off if she woke, he searched the closets and returned with a set of sheets. He cut them into a few strips and finished securing the woman. Walking over to the refrigerator, he held his breath and opened it. Despite his precautions, he could taste the foulness of the rotten contents in the back of his throat as he pulled out a pitcher that looked like it might have been iced tea once upon a time.

He turned just in time to see a zombie wandering past outside. An idea came to mind and he quickly ripped a few more strips off the tattered sheet.

It took much longer than when he’d secured the living woman, but eventually he had the zombie tied to a chair as well. This one looked like he had been the stereotypical college frat boy with his Emo haircut and Fallout Boy tee shirt.

Grabbing the pitcher of rancid tea from the table, he walked over to the woman and threw it in her face. The woman jerked awake, her sputters and coughs muffled by the gag. Stephen had stepped back and now stood glaring down at the woman.

“I want to lay down the rules here for you just so that there is no misunderstanding.” Stephen moved over beside the zombie. It rolled its head his direction and bit down impotently on the gag in its mouth. “I am going to ask you a series of questions. Any time I don’t get an answer or feel that you are being dishonest, I will undo one of the straps holding Mr. Bitey here in place. By my count, that gives you seven chances. That is counting the gag which I will now untie just to demonstrate my sincerity.”

Moving behind the zombie, Stephen untied the piece of cloth and moved away. As he did so, he watched the woman’s expression. The reaction was exactly what he had hoped for. He saw the fear very clearly etched on her features. She was far more afraid of that zombie than he thought she might ever be of him.

“First question is a simple one. Your leader claimed that you guys were from over towards Easley…is that true.” He received a very slight nod. The woman only shot him a quick glance, but then her eyes returned to the zombie.

“Here is an odd question, and really more of a curiosity than anything important. Just remember, if I think you are lying, I undo one of the strips keeping this fella secure.” Stephen walked around to the woman, making sure to keep wide of the zombie that was now making strange gurgles and low growls as it gnashed its teeth in frustration at not being able to reach him. “Does your little band consist solely of women?”

This made his captive’s head pop up suddenly. Her eyes went wide and he saw something else flash across her face.

“Easy,” he said, throwing his hands up, “it’s nothing so sinister, I assure you.”

She made a show of glancing down at her bonds. She looked back up at him with an arched eyebrow.

“You’re still dressed,” he offered. “I’m just curious.”

The woman said something that was garbled by the wash cloth stuffed into her mouth and kept secure by one of his linen strips. He reached over and tugged at the knot. He let her spit the rag out since he was in no mood to be bitten—zombie or not.

“Yes,” the woman said and then paused as if considering what to say next. “We were all just returning from a women’s retreat. Our bus arrived at the church late at night. We’d heard the warning and the announcements about the possibility of martial law being declared. Our driver would not take us home and said that he just wanted to get us off his bus and go find his family. He left us in that parking lot.” Again the woman paused, but this time it was to swallow the lump in her throat.

“A bunch of them just came out of the dark. Three of us were taken down before we could break into the church. Once we got the door secured, we discovered that our phones were basically useless. We also found out that we were trapped. By morning, there were at least a hundred of those awful things outside banging on the doors and walls trying to get in.”

He’d heard enough of that story for now. Raising his hand, he stopped her from saying anything else. “How many?”

The woman stared at him. She frowned and her head dropped. “I don’t know.”

Stephen yanked one of the strips free that held the zombie’s torso secured to the chair. The zombie immediately renewed its efforts to get at him and the woman tied across from it.

“I mean it!” the woman exclaimed. “I don’t know how many of us made it after Candice blew herself up like a moron.”

Stephen suppressed a smile. At least he and this woman were on the same page about one thing.

“How likely is it that your friends come back for more?” Stephen locked eyes with the woman. This was one of the important questions.

“You haven’t been out there much, have you?” the woman replied. “We get hit almost daily. You are just the latest. The thing is, y’all seemed like a much more organized threat than the usual groups of raiders. We needed to know what we were up against.”

“Why would you need to be up against us? Jesus, you say that you ladies were coming back from a retreat! I have to suppose that you are all regular church-goin’ ladies…unless your story was just a cover.” Stephen glanced over at the zombie that was still biting at the air in a futile attempt to latch onto him. The woman must’ve seen his look and began to almost babble.

“No cover story. We just had no choice but to get tough in a hurry. After what that one man did to Penelope…” the woman gushed, but her voice cracked and faded at the end. “It’s like we landed in the middle of Sodom and Gomorrah. The worst sorts seem to be much more abundant than…well…than regular types.”

“So you strap bombs to yourselves and kill on sight?” Stephen shot back.

“We just got invaded earlier that morning. We honestly thought that it was more of those folks come back for more.”

Stephen considered the woman for a moment. Looking into her eyes, he came to the conclusion that she was either being honest, or she was pathological. Either way, he was losing steam when it came to doing anything to this woman in retaliation for what had happened by the train tracks.

“If I let you go, what happens next?” Stephen knelt in front of the woman and put his hands on the arms of her chair. “Do we need to be watching for a bunch of your friends to show up with bombs strapped to your bodies? Is there going to be a war? If there is, I want to warn you…we aren’t just some ladies auxiliary group holed up in a church or whatever. We are a town of people determined to survive this zombie apocalypse by any means necessary.” He paused for a moment and considered his words. “Jamie was not kidding when she said that we have given our scavenging teams very strict and direct orders not to cross into territory if somebody is there laying claim to it. I think I can even follow up and make sure that our people hold to that boundary your leader—”

“Candice wasn’t our leader. She was just the biggest one of us and so we had her doing all the talking,” the woman cut Stephen off.

“Whatever.” Stephen gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “What I am saying is that we would have no trouble staying out of your area. There are plenty of places for us to search for supplies.”

The woman regarded him silently for several seconds. “You really got your entire town secure against this?” She made a nod towards the zombie across from her in the chair.

“The town? No. The people…pretty much. We pulled back into an area that we felt we could hold easier. At least for now. Once we get this first area fully secure and feel confident that we are through the worst of it, we will push back out and probably annex more and more of the town.”

A voice in his head told him to ease up on giving away secrets. Whether this woman was being totally truthful or not did not mean that information did not have a way of being leaked or spread.

“We don’t want any trouble,” the woman said.

“You coulda fooled me with that business back by the tracks,” Stephen replied sardonically. “You show up, throw the only survivor of our scavenge team on the ground and then go all jihadist.”

“To be fair,” the woman’s head snapped up and her expression changed to one of anger, “your people took a shot first. You had snipers in the damn trees or some such crap. So don’t stand here and act like you and your people are the victims in this.”

Stephen shrugged. “Okay, but we can go back and forth over who is the most wrong all day. What it comes down to is that I want to know why I should let you go. You haven’t really revealed anything. Every word out of your mouth could be a cover story.”

“We are holed up at New Image Church by the elementary school,” the woman blurted. “Before this disaster, there were thirty-seven of us. We range in age from nineteen to sixty-five. Anything else?”

Stephen pulled his knife from his belt. As soon as he did, the woman began to scream. Out of reflex, he lashed out, his fist smashing into her jaw. Her head dropped and she went limp.

“I was just going to cut you loose,” he hissed to the unconscious figure. A low moan from outside was his answer. He rushed to the front room window and looked outside. “Double dammit!” he swore.

He glanced at the zombie tied to the chair and decided not to take any chances. He jammed his knife into its temple and then headed out to the front yard to greet the five more zombies that had arrived.

The first one would remove the last doubt from anybody who might still be on the fence about the whole zombie thing. It had no left arm. There was a nasty stump where the arm had been ripped away at the shoulder socket. The throat was so badly ripped that the head sat on its side, almost resting on that mangled shoulder. The chest had been torn apart and there were rib bones jutting out like an inverse pin cushion.

Once he put the last zombie down, he returned to the house. The woman was still out cold. Looking around, his eyes spotted a hatch in the ceiling down the hall that led to the bedrooms and bathroom. He went to it and was thankful when a ladder folded down after he opened it.

It took some work and he felt something tighten in his back as he hoisted her up and into the attic, but he felt better about it that just leaving the woman untied on the ground floor where something could stumble in and get her.

As he walked back towards the train tracks, he seriously hoped that he had not made a terrible mistake.

17

The Vote and a Slice of Normal

Jamie stood at the podium. She hated the fact that she needed to speak into a bullhorn, but this was something that the entire community needed to hear firsthand. There was no way she would trust this to people spreading it like a post-apocalyptic version of the grade school game, Postman.

“Ladies and gentlemen of Liberty, I come before you today with a matter of a very serious nature.” She looked out at the faces and tried to judge the response she was about to receive. Beside her, Stephen Deese and Bo Summers stood at parade rest like a military honor guard. Taking a deep breath, she resumed her speech. “As many of you are now aware, we have come under attack by an outside group. They executed one of our teams of scavengers and then came here and detonated an explosive that took the life of Chief Ivan Potter.”

Once again, Jamie paused. She wanted that to sink in. She had always enjoyed watching those trial shows and imagined what it must be like to stand in front of a jury and tell them the story that gets them to pass the desired verdict.

Her concern rested in the people who still seemed to refuse to accept the reality of what was happening around them. She noticed that anytime teams were called to leave the safe zone, it usually consisted of the same people over and over. There was a large percentage of the population that had yet to really see what was out there. There were even those who had yet to see an actual zombie.

“Recently, we even came under attack by some of our own people. This group believed that killing all of us would get them to Heaven. Jonah Simms sacrificed his own daughter as an offering before leading an attack on his fellow citizens of Liberty. Many of you were present for the carrying out of the execution of four men who not only murdered several of our people, but also attempted to steal our main source of food as well as much of our guns and ammo.”

Again she paused. Scanning the faces, she was surprised to still see so much passive indifference. These people, her people, they truly seemed to be unaware of how dire the world situation had become in such a short time. Looking over at Stephen Deese and Bo Summers, she gave a slight nod.

The two men went down the back steps that lead up to the combination platform and gallows. A moment later, they came back up the stairs. Each of them had a long pole like the sort that animal control officers used when wrangling a dangerous dog or cat.

The zombie that was led up onto the stage had been a man in his middle age. His brown hair was matted and filthy; his face was smeared and crusted with dried blood. His right arm had been savaged and was missing below the elbow. His nose was also missing with only a dark and terrifying crater remaining.

“This is what is out there. This is not just some flu or virus. This is a horror story come to life.” Jamie drew the knife at her hip and looked over to Bo who gave a slight nod.

She moved in close and plunged the blade into the middle of the zombie’s chest. It lunged, the one good arm swiping at her and the stump acting as if it still had its hand attached as it waved impotently. Jamie left the knife in its chest and then walked back to the front of the stage.

Again she scanned the crowd. The faces that she could see were a mixture of reactions. She saw knowing nods from those who had accepted this new world. She was surprised at how many people seemed to be absolutely stunned; many looked overwhelmed and could not look on the zombie for more than a few seconds without looking away.

“This is not a game, people. This is really happening and we may be one of the last holdouts of humanity. Teams that have ventured as far east as Greenville report that the city is in flames. To the west, Clemson is a wasteland. I am sure that the situation is the same no matter where you go. We are not the norm…we are an exception.”

She hated this next part, but with all the activity of the past few days, this one incident would not add that many more zombies to the numbers starting to gather along their borders. Pulling out a small .22 caliber pistol she returned to the zombie and took a spot just a few feet away.

“These are not people,” she held the bullhorn to her mouth and called. Then, taking careful aim and again making certain that Bo and Mr. Deese were ready, she fired a bullet into its chest. “See? Nothing.”

She fired five more rounds into the thing. The zombie barely twitched, and it made no indication that it was even aware it had been shot. Again Jamie walked to the front of the stage and raised the bullhorn. “Call them zombies if it makes you feel better. I don’t care. But the reality is that these things are driven to attack the living. If you are bitten, you become one…just like the stories.”

She chose not to add the part about there being a possibility that some people might be immune. Holstering the pistol, she walked over to Bo and put out her hand. The man checked with Stephen to ensure he had his pole gripped tightly as the zombie thrashed and struggled to get at the nearby living beings that remained just out of reach. Stephen nodded and Bo set his pole down. As fast as possible, he unslung the shotgun he had over his shoulder. He handed the shotgun to Jamie and then picked up his pole once more.

“Now, some of you might still refuse to believe what you are seeing. You may believe that this person is simply sick and too delirious to register what has been done.” Jamie brought up the shotgun and again checked with both men. They nodded and leaned back just slightly as if those extra few inches might help.

After moving to just a foot or so away, Jamie pumped the action of the shotgun and then aimed at the midsection. She briefly noted that either Stephen or Bo had removed her knife and then she pulled the trigger. The blast was massive and the butt of the weapon kicked hard into her shoulder. When the blue gray smoke cleared, there was an enormous, ugly fist-sized hole blown through the undead man.

Jamie again moved to the front of the stage, set down the shotgun and retrieved the bullhorn. “As I said, this is not a joke, a hoax, or even something that I believe the world will be able to recover from. Some of you have resisted taking an active part in helping to ensure our safety and chance for survival. To that end, I am going to institute a complete census. After that is finished, I will enlist some of you to help me create teams. Every team will rotate through the various duties that we need to have performed. They include scavenging, patrols of our perimeter, and disposing of the zombies that gather at our barricade.”

She saw some of the people looking hesitant and others downright terrified. She had laid down the fear. Now it was time to offer comfort and pitch her final edict.

“You need to know that all of us are afraid. Look around. You are not alone, but we will come together and we will secure this safe zone. We will create a defense force that every man and woman will serve in some capacity. You have to be aware by now that the zombies are only a small part of the problem. The living have actually inflicted more harm on our community than the zombies. I realize that what I am about to propose will seem cold and heartless, but after speaking with many of you, I believe it is the right choice. It will give us the best chance at not just survival, but at having a life. I need you all to understand that there will be hardships ahead that will be unlike anything we could have ever imagined just a few short weeks ago.” She took a deep breath and glanced back at Bo and Stephen who both gave her a nod. “That is why I am officially calling for a vote to seal off our community. We need to be able to take care of ourselves before we can offer aid to others. Also, it is clear that there are people out there who will take advantage of us if we are not extremely vigilant. I do not believe we have the energy to spare to keep one eye on strangers who may or may not wish us harm. This should not be permanent, but I do believe that it offers us the best chance at survival in the long run.”

Jamie stopped talking and once more scanned the crowd. She did see a few heads shaking, but most people still appeared to be a bit overwhelmed. She would have to thank Bo later for the advice about showing them the zombie and demonstrating their inhumanity.

“I want to put it to you all. After all, we are still citizens of Liberty, South Carolina. I believe that we can maintain a democracy where all of you are part of the process. So, let’s see if we can do this with a show of hands. If you agree to seal our town from outsiders, please raise your hands.”

It was a slow process, and the people were not nearly as unified about this as they had been during the vote for a verdict of the four bikers. When she asked for a vote of those opposed, she felt her heart sink. It was simply too close to call. She could not make this decision without having the majority of support from the people.

“Okay. I can see that we will need to have a more formal vote.”

Now it was her turn to be thankful to Stephen. He had warned her that the people still might not be able to let go of the old ways. It was simply not a normal thing to be okay with excluding people who may be in need of help.

“We have tables set up in front of the high school. When you sign your name to the census, please take one of the cards on the table and cast your vote for or against. There will be large boxes by the entrance to the school for you to drop your ballot. We will ask for people from both sides to help with the counting. I hope to announce the results in the next few days.” She scanned the crowd and pointed to a group of three that she recalled having voted against the proposal. “I would like for you three…and…” she scanned the crowd and pointed out three who she remembered voting in favor, “…the three of you to please come up here.”

Once the six were on the stage, she continued after nodding for Stephen and Bo to remove and dispose of the zombie. “These people will be counting the ballots. I will be pairing them up according to how they voted so that a person for and one against will count together and verify the vote. As I said, I want this to be as transparent as possible. We need to be a community that stands together, and the only way that will happen is if we work hand-in-hand and side-by-side for the same common goal. Survival.”

The town meeting was ended and people began to file out and head to the tables where they would fill out the town’s roster and cast their vote. There was a subdued sobriety that she could almost feel as a physical presence. This was the last step away from the world they all knew just a short while ago. She was still struggling with this new reality after days of being up to her neck in it. She did not envy those last holdouts who had tried to ignore and wish away the situation.

As the last few people trickled out, Jamie turned to Bo. “Well, do you think the vote will go our way?”

The man considered her for a moment and then stepped close after looking around to see if anybody might be listening. “We have a few people in the crowd preaching the word for your side.”

Jamie opened her mouth to protest. She had just said that she would make sure that there was transparency. She was of the mind that people in the upper levels of government had sat on something very important and allowed the zombie apocalypse to come on in full swing. Still, she was only trying to give the people the best chance at survival. She could not undo what had been done, but she was responsible for seeing that the people of Liberty had a shot at making a life for themselves in this post-apocalyptic world. If that meant swaying people’s opinions, well, that wasn’t actually dishonest. It wasn’t like she was manipulating the vote.

“Keep me posted on how things appear to be going,” Jamie said.

She headed down and took her place in line to sign the census and cast her vote. She wanted to make sure that she was seen as being on the same level as everybody else. No special treatment…no head of the line privileges.

***

It had been close. Bo moved down along the wall of cars and trucks inspecting for any areas that might allow the undead to slip through as he considered the past few weeks.

The vote had passed by a very narrow margin. Less than forty votes separated the two sides. Since then, they had turned away five groups and a few dozen singles and couples that had arrived. It was funny, but now that there had been a vote and this was an issue, they were suddenly seeing an influx of survivors.

There had been more in the past two days than in all the days combined. They were coming from every direction. The last group that arrived had come all the way from Columbia. They said that the capital was demolished and that fighting had broken out in the streets between rival gangs, police, and people just taking advantage of the chaos. Over half the city was nothing but smoldering ruins and zombies were seen in at least two herds numbering in the tens of thousands just south of the city.

Jamie had been hospitable and polite. She had even allowed them to trade some goods with some of the citizens of Liberty, but when they were told that they could not stay, things got a bit heated. In the end, the sixty or so people walked away when they found themselves facing over a hundred armed members of the Liberty militia.

The Liberty militia, Bo mused.

The day after the vote was finalized Jamie had made him the commander of the newly formed armed forces of Liberty, South Carolina, dubbed the ‘Fighting Tigers’ and currently numbering over three hundred men and women between the ages of fifteen and fifty. It had been a pleasant surprise when the call was put out for volunteers and so many people had stepped forward.

Stephen had been named the new chief of police at the suggestion of Sarah Gilstrap. He had joked privately that he wasn’t very excited about the post considering that it appeared to be cursed. Bo had toasted him and handed him the bottle of Jack that the two men had shared the day they were both sworn into their respective offices.

That was another thing that he had to give Jamie credit for. She was trying to give people ceremonies and things that felt formal and familiar. Maybe it was working because the two teams that had left this morning consisted of over half of their numbers that would be making their first trip outside of the safe zone.

“Commander!” a voice called.

Bo turned to discover a young man shifting from one foot to the other in obvious discomfort. “What is it?”

“I gotta pee really bad, and I still got two hours on watch.” The boy was speaking with his mouth covered by his hands in an effort not to broadcast his predicament to everybody within a hundred yards.

“So go,” Bo replied.

“Where?”

“Son, please tell me that you haven’t lived your whole life without taking a whizz in the outdoors.”

“Well…no…but…” He tilted his head to the left.

Bo turned to see the reason for the young man’s distress. A short distance away, sitting cross-legged on the roof of an old Greyhound bus was a girl with long blond hair. Currently she was scanning the distant trees with her binoculars.

Bo pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers in an attempt to stave off the headache that wanted to bloom behind his eyes. Considering the living quarters and what they faced ahead in the next few months, modesty was going to have to be a thing of the past like so many other hang-ups that people refused to let go of.

“Just find a bush, son,” he snarled as he walked away.

The next several days were more of the same as he turned his group of everyday people into at least moderately competent guards. Twice they were forced to increase their watch personnel after being attacked by raiders. Because of those incidents, the people of Liberty began to take the security posts much more seriously. Even those who were initially against closing the borders to outsiders changed their tune for the most part after one expedition outside the confines of their secured perimeter. They returned with tales of another settlement that had apparently been infiltrated and then attacked from within.

Another pleasant surprise for Bo was that there did not seem to be a lot of talk at all about his personal life. Those who knew either hadn’t said anything, or people simply decided that they didn’t care. He only wished that Oliver had been alive to see this day. He also regretted the fact that, in all the hustle and hurry to get away from the hospital, he had come away without anything from Oliver’s house.

Now that he was the so-called commander of the Liberty militia, he was allowed to patrol the zone or stand watch. What he wasn’t allowed to do—at least for the time being—was venture outside on the supply or scouting expeditions. Of course, he didn’t really have too much time to be upset. So far, they had located nine settlements or areas that other survivors had secured and declared as their own. Also, they had even opened limited interactions with the women in Easley who now made occasional trips to Liberty to trade goods.

As Bo settled into his routine, he occasionally found himself amused at how the books and movies had portrayed the zombie apocalypse. He could not recall many instances where almost an entire town managed to survive.

As the seasons began to shift from spring to summer, the gardens were showing promise. Several of the supply runs had yielded all sorts of farming equipment. Most of what they found was converted into manual operation as fuel was starting to reach the point where it was no longer useable.

There had been a meeting about getting a solar grid set up, but that was probably going to have to wait until next year as the people who had volunteered to take charge of that operation now had to read up on the process. Stockpiles of wood were already being laid aside for the coming winter as that would likely be the main source of heat for everybody. He had a brief thought about the people in the colder climates. Did zombies freeze?

All in all, Bo felt that just maybe things were going to be okay. The only thing he could not do anything about were those terrible nightmares.

***

Stephen nodded to Bo and the man pulled the lever. There was a loud clap and then the sound of a rope going taut as the body dropped through the trap door. This was the fifth hanging in as many weeks. It was a bad sign that folks were becoming desperate.

This last couple had been turned away just two days earlier. Obviously they had chosen to risk their lives and sneak inside the perimeter in an attempt to steal some supplies.

Also, there was talk of another large band of raiders in the area. If what they had heard was true, this group had wiped out a dozen small groups of survivors. Worse still, they were supposedly packing military hardware and numbered over a hundred.

While they were likely no match for the people of Liberty, they could inflict some serious damage. Bo had already called off any further excursions outside the safe zone by any teams until this potential threat could be either dismissed or eliminated.

The latter option had been the focus of last night’s meeting. He, Sophie, Sarah, Bo, Jamie, and Pastor Johnson now made up the town’s council and had met for almost four hours. They had a map of the area with every known outpost, settlement or camp marked. They also had flagged pins that noted reports of raiders.

“We need to start keeping tabs on a few of those larger zombie herds,” the pastor had insisted.

It had been agreed. The last thing they discussed had been the hanging of the two thieves. That was when the pastor excused himself. He had made it clear that he would not sit in on those discussions. The vote had been unanimous.

“I am not sure that having the bodies taken outside the safe zone and put on display with their crime on a placard around their necks is doing any good,” Sarah spoke up after the vote.

“We keep doing it…at least for now,” Jamie insisted. “Who knows how many folks we would be dealing with otherwise? We are only seeing those that are very desperate. I say we keep it up.”

The meeting had been adjourned, and the next day, the couple had been led to the gallows. The crowds were becoming noticeably smaller now. The spectacle of the public hangings had lost their newness. Stephen wondered if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Were the people simply accepting things as they were? What did this say about their community?

“Sparse crowd,” Bo muttered as he stepped up beside Stephen.

“Yeah, I was noticing that myself.”

“You have your team assembled to get these bodies out to the highway?”

“Yep.”

Stephen gave a wave and motioned Lawrence over. The young man was the captain of an eight person detail that would transport the bodies out to Highway 123. The bodies would be hung from the overpass at the 178 junction with signs declaring them as thieves.

Before long, the bodies had been loaded into a horse-drawn cart. Stephen watched the team leave through the gate and then headed over to the old door and window factory. His wife Terri should just about be done teaching her classes for the day.

As he walked up to the building, he spotted Sophie coming out. Little Megan was holding her hand and talking at a million miles an hour. It made him feel good to see the little girl recovering nicely. She still had moments where she would shut down, and it was a process to learn the things that would trigger her. Already, Sophie had learned never to say that she would be right back. Those words acted like a switch for little Megan. The guess was that those were probably the last words the girl’s mother said before she went to her death at the hands and teeth of the zombies.

“Lawrence is probably going to be a little late for dinner,” Stephen said to Sophie by way of greeting. “We had some difficulties. One of our…umm…” He glanced down at Megan who stared up at him with her big, brown eyes. “Well, let’s just say that there was a lack of cooperation. So Lawrence got a late start with the transport team.

“That’s okay,” Sophie said with a shrug. “I think this one deserves a trip to the playground. She got a perfect score on all her knots today.”

“I tied the square knot five times and Jack kept making a granny knot,” Megan twittered, her smile showing where she had lost a tooth recently.

“Wow, looks like you will be joining one of my teams before long,” Stephen joked.

“I don’t get to go to archery class for two years,” the girl giggled.

“Well you just keep doing well. Time will pass before you know it and I think you would make a great member of the militia…maybe even the commander someday.”

“Oooo, Mama Sophie, can I be a commander?” the little girl squealed, hands clasped under her chin.

“Maybe, but you have to keep doing your homework…and your chores.”

She had added that last bit sort of hastily, and Stephen had to hide a grin when Megan deflated just a bit. It became even more difficult when the youngster turned to him with a quizzical look. He pasted on his most stern expression and gave a single nod. He looked up and saw Sophie mouth the words “thank you” as she took the girl’s hand again and started off in the direction of the playground.

“How goes the day, Commander?” Terri Deese joked as she walked up to her husband and joined him.

“Hopefully not as lousy as yours,” he sighed.

Together, the couple walked hand in hand back towards the high school. The slight bulge in Terri’s middle was just starting to show. Part of him was excited by the possibility; however, a bigger part of him was scared to death. He shoved those fears aside for the moment and told himself that he would take it one day at a time and enjoy every moment with his wife. It was a luxury that many could not partake.

***

Sophie handed Jamie the small piece of plastic. The woman looked at it and then tossed it in the garbage.

“Maybe we should do another?” Jamie almost sobbed as she plopped down in the chair and hid her face in her hands.

“Hon, we could do another dozen. You’re pregnant.”

“Son of a…” She let the sentiment die on her lips as the door opened and Megan walked in with a cup in her hands.

“I brought you some water.” The girl set the cup down and then looked back and forth between the two women. “Did Jamie get a shot?” the girl whispered loudly.

That made both women laugh. “No, I didn’t get a shot, sweetie.” Jamie scooped up Megan in her arms and gave the girl a kiss on the cheek before setting her back down.

Together, all three exited the little exam room and walked out into the hallway. The high school was its usual bustle of activity as people went about their daily routine.

“You need to head over to school,” Sophie said to Megan as a group of children walked past in the direction of the factory.

The little girl gave Sophie a hug and took about five steps before spinning around and running up to Jamie and giving her a hug as well before skipping away to join the other children.

Once the girl was gone and Jamie looked around to ensure that there would not be any ears within hearing distance of her whisper, she said, “Let’s keep this quiet for now.”

Sophie understood her friend’s reasons. Granted, it wasn’t her fault that she’d gotten pregnant. She was willing to bet that only a fraction of the people would even put it together that the child had to belong to that biker, Kevin Staley. Sadly, the apocalypse had not put an end to wild rumors and gossip. It would be out there soon enough.

“Doctor-patient confidentiality,” Sophie said, locking her lips with her fingers and tossing away the imaginary key.

The two headed around the school towards what had once been the baseball field. In its place, long rows stretched out, each with signs labeling them: corn, squash, beans, tomatoes. They had about thirty different varieties of fruits and vegetables growing here. Just through some trees were the beginnings of an orchard. Beyond that was the livestock area. Things were starting to shape up nicely. If all went as planned and they had the solar grid in place next year, they might become the zombie apocalypse version of a superpower. There were already plans on the table to set up the next settlement centering on the elementary school and the nearby neighborhoods.

Things were actually moving faster than any of them had imagined. The loss of her husband was still something Sophie hadn’t dealt with, and she was actually worried that the normality that was settling in would force her to do so very soon.

“One thing at a time,” Sophie whispered.

18

Tough Choices and Dark Clouds

“We have a situation,” Bo said.

Jamie looked up from her desk where she had been studying the latest inventory reports. She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. It was her last day before her turn for a shower. She could feel the oiliness of her hair leave a residue on her fingers and scowled in disgust.

“Please, because what I need now is another situation.” She closed the ledger and rubbed her tired eyes.

“Actually, this one is at our gates.”

“Another survivor or group that wants in?” Jamie stood up and strapped her weapons onto her hips. “And let me guess, they demanded to talk to whoever is in charge because their situation is special.”

“Not exactly,” Bo replied cryptically.

“I really don’t have time for this.”

“I get that, but I think you need to see to this one personally. The sentry on watch said she can’t make the call.”

“There is no call to make!” Jamie exploded, her tensions coming to a boil. Even by her best estimations, this was going to be a very lean winter. They were going to be lucky to feed their own people, much less outsiders.

“Okay, then,” Bo replied, his voice continuing to hold almost no emotion.

Together they walked out of the school. Under Sophie’s orders, Jamie could not ride one of the horses and so they had to trudge through the mud and soggy ground from the past few days of late afternoon thunder storms that had jacked the humidity up to nearly unbearable levels.

By the time they reached the section of the barricade, both Jamie and Bo were drenched with perspiration. Jamie felt like she could scrape her body off with a squeegee and come away with a Dixie cup full of moisture from her skin.

She climbed the ladder after Bo and heaved herself up onto the platform where a very nervous young lady was waiting. She stepped aside so that Jamie could look down at whoever had shown up at their walls.

In an instant, she knew why the girl on watch had struggled with enforcing the edict. The woman below looked like she might fall over if so much as a slight breeze came along. Her eyes were sunken and the tattered rags she wore did not conceal how gaunt her frame was from lack of food. Her dark hair was clumped and plastered to her head, making Jamie instantly feel guilty about her own hygienic musings of just a few moments ago.

Worse than the visage of this horribly malnourished woman were the two children who clutched at each of her hands. While not nearly as emaciated as the young woman, it was obvious that they were on the verge of collapse due to starvation.

Her heart felt like it would break and she suddenly had no saliva in her mouth. This was going to give her nightmares later.

Her mind quickly reminded her of what she knew to be the facts of the town’s food inventory as well as the best case projections from the garden. The people currently living inside the safe zone of her town were most likely going to suffer some casualties when fall and winter came.

The increased activity of the lawless gangs that roamed the countryside made it difficult to send out teams smaller than fifty. The problem with that was that they had also been forced to send those teams out with the most minimal of supplies. The logic was simple: the teams would forage to supply themselves as they went, and if they found a sizable cache of goods to take, then they could bring back what they did not consume. It was not a perfect system. But the reality was that, after one team of twenty left with a full week’s worth of rations and then never returned, the decision was made that they could no longer justify sending out food since there was no guarantee that any would be brought back for the community.

“Please,” the woman croaked after a long silence, “if you won’t let me in, then take my babies.”

Jamie wanted to be sick. The reality was that the woman would be more welcome than her two children. One looked to be three or four. The other perhaps six. In both cases, they were truthfully little more than a drain on supplies with no return. Besides what it would take to nurse them back to anything close to healthy, they would use resources and provide nothing for the community.

“I’m sorry,” Jamie forced herself to speak. “We just can’t allow anybody to come inside.”

“Can you spare a little food at least?” the woman pleaded. “It’s been so long…” Almost on cue, the children began to wail at the mention of the word food.

“I’m sorry,” was all that Jamie could say in response. She turned to walk away.

“You can’t leave us out here…the zombies…and they aren’t even the worst thing,” the woman croaked. “You don’t know what I’ve seen.”

“You would be surprised.” Jamie whispered.

“We’re not leaving!” the woman wailed. “I will stand here and scream until every zombie for a hundred miles is pawing at your walls.”

“If she doesn’t leave, shoot her,” Jamie said, turning to go.

“No.” Jamie was just stepping down the ladder when a very soft voice spoke.

“Excuse me?” she asked, climbing back up.

“I won’t do it.” The sentry grew bolder with each word and her voice grew louder as she gained confidence.

“It wasn’t a request,” Jamie snapped.” Maybe you forgot about the standing orders. We will not be allowing anybody inside.”

“Then you kill her.” The sentry shoved her crossbow at Jamie.

“Perhaps you would like to join her,” Jamie said between clenched teeth. “I just finished the inventory, and we are going to be very tight on supplies. Tossing you out reduces the consumption by one more mouth.”

“Jamie,” Bo cautioned.

“No, we are not in any shape to take in others, and I don’t think some of the people truly understand that. It isn’t that I would not love to help. You don’t think my heart is breaking for this woman and her children? But we are facing our first winter in a few months and risk losing some of us due to hunger.” Jamie paused and then turned to the sentry. “It is to the point where I don’t believe that I will make it to term with the baby I am carrying. I don’t like it, but I have come to accept that reality.”

The sentry stared back at Jamie. The woman didn’t speak, but her eyes flitted between her belly which still showed no indication of the life growing inside her and then down to the children standing at their barricade.

“I can’t do it,” she said plainly.

Jamie felt her anger fade. She mentally stepped back and looked at the situation and what she was asking. At last, she reached out her hand. There was no need for an explanation. The sentry unslung her crossbow and handed it to Jamie.

“Now, I am going to ask you to go.” Jamie turned her focus back to the woman below who had grown silent while she observed the situation unfold over her head. “I am sorry about your problem, and I truly wish that there was something I could do to help. The reality is that there is not. You have three people to feed. I have almost three thousand. I imagine we will be starving and the day will come when I look back and envy you.”

“Envy me?” the woman barked. “I am out here in this hell with two babies, no food, and you dare to say that you envy me!”

Once more, the children began to wail. The noise was loud and grating. In the bushes across the clearing that they were still actually in the process of knocking back to increase visibility, a rustling came. A moment later, three zombies emerged. The woman saw Jamie’s gaze shift and she turned around to see the horrible creatures stagger out and orient on her and the children.

“I can take them out, but you and the children need to run,” Jamie called down.

The woman spun back to face her, her expression one of absolute bitter fury and hate. “If you can so easily sentence us to death, then maybe you should be forced to watch. I’m not leaving. Either give us something or I will stand here and scream until I bring every zombie down on you and your people.”

“I can’t,” Jamie said with a sigh.

The zombies were drawing closer and now there was more movement from the left and the right of their position. Bo brought his crossbow up and took down the closest zombie as it drew to within about twenty yards of the woman and her children.

“We can’t run anymore!” the woman cried. “Don’t you understand, you heartless bitch?”

“I understand that I have a responsibility to the people here. I am sorry. You have no idea—”

“NO!” the woman shrieked. “You don’t get to apologize and try to make yourself feel better.”

The zombies continued to draw even closer, and Bo was lining up another shot. Jamie turned to him and put her hand on his arm. When he looked at her, she saw the tears starting to brim and she cursed herself for not crying as well. She knew that they could probably kill zombies for the next several minutes, but it was not going to do anything more than delay the inevitable. Maybe if the woman saw that there really was no other choice, perhaps she would run.

Liar, the voice in her head spat. She knew that voice was being honest. This woman was not capable of running anymore. It was visibly apparent that she had reached the end.

Jamie forced herself to consider their suffering and how it was now her responsibility to end it. She was the one who had called for this edict. She was also the one who was very aware of their own grim situation when it came to their supplies.

Currently there were eleven women pregnant that she was aware of, and it was Sophie’s opinion that they would be lucky if half of them carried to term based on Jamie’s food assessment. That meant the child inside her currently had about a fifty percent chance of being born.

“You need to run,” Jamie pleaded again.

The woman looked up at her with eyes that had gone almost as flat and empty as those of the zombie. She opened her mouth and screamed. This caused the children beside her to wail even louder as they looked with horror from their mother to the approaching and growing horde of walking dead. There were now over twenty that had emerged from the brush and oriented on the trio.

“Jamie,” Bo whispered, trying to pull his arm free and raise his crossbow as the nearest walking dead was now only a few stumbling steps away from being able to reach out and grab one of the three.

“No,” Jamie insisted and forced his arm down.

“You’re insane,” the sentry breathed and retreated to the ladder that would take her down and allow her to run back to the school.

“I am trying to keep us alive,” Jamie insisted. She spun on the woman and glared down at her. “If you are so outraged, then perhaps you would like to trade places with her.”

The sentry pushed away from the ladder and turned, running back towards the school. The sound of Bo’s crossbow being fired caused her to spin back to the situation at hand.

“I told you no,” she snapped as another zombie fell to the ground. “How many more can you take down? Ten? Twelve? Then what?”

“Can you really do this?” Bo shot back, stepping close to her and glaring down with a face that was growing purple with bottled anger.

“I don’t have a choice.”

“Yes you do. We can find a way.”

“And where do we draw the line? Do we let people in based on cute? Is it just women with children, or any woman? What about a group of teenagers? Where do we cut it off?”

Bo stared at her; his mouth opened twice and then snapped shut. Jamie reached out and placed her hand on his arm but he jerked away. Just then, the woman shrieked; but this was not a scream just for screaming’s sake. This was the scream that anybody who had heard before knew it for what it was.

Jamie turned as the woman struggled feebly while a zombie latched on to her shoulder and ripped away a chunk of meat. The children both just continued to stand as if frozen to the spot. One had its mouth open in a scream that was being drowned out by that of the woman. The other looked to have simply shut down and was standing there with an open mouth that emitted no sound.

Jamie brought the crossbow to her shoulder and sighted in on the back of the woman’s head. She took a deep breath, held it, and then fired. The bolt went into the top of the woman’s skull and silenced her scream.

She reloaded as fast as she could, but did not have it done fast enough as another zombie fell in the screaming child, dragging it to the ground. The zombie covered the child and made it impossible for her to get a shot off in order to end the suffering. She swung to the child that still stood in shocked silence. Tears finally filled her eyes and blurred her vision as she tightened her finger on the trigger.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and then squeezed.

The child toppled, dying in silence. Bo stepped up beside her and fired down into the back of the head of the zombie that was crouched over the mewling child. It collapsed, effectively pinning the little one underneath. Jamie had her crossbow reloaded and looked down to see the child’s arm struggling to get free from under the body. At last, a head poked out. She fired and a relative silence fell. The only sounds now were those of the moans and groans of the approaching undead.

She had no idea how long they stood there as the zombies continued to come, attracted by the sounds and now simply moving in the last direction they’d been drawn.

She was still staring down at the dead body of the silent child when there was a distant rumble from the west. It continued to grow, and then she felt the ground shift from a tremor.

“Earthquake?” she asked, turning to Bo in confusion.

The man was staring towards the direction of the setting sun. His eyes were wide and a look of amazement was warring with one of fear. She moved a bit and saw a large cloud rising into the sky.

“What…” her voice trailed off as the direction caused a bell to ring in her head.

“Oconee Nuclear Power Station,” Bo said softly.

Together they watched the cloud grow larger and start to flatten out at the top. It was positively massive and just the sight of it sent a feeling of dread into Jamie’s gut. Could it be that all they’d done, all they’d fought to secure was for naught? This was no simple fire, and there was little use in denying where this had to be coming from. Jamie spun around and threw up as her body simply refused to find any way to process what she was seeing.

“Do we run?” she finally asked after wiping her mouth.

“Where?” Bo continued to stare west at the dark and still growing harbinger of doom.

Looking around, Jamie saw that many of the zombies had turned around and were now plodding off in the direction of the distant blast. She had a fleeting moment of hope until she remembered that Greenville sat to their east. That probably meant that all those zombies were now trudging right for them. She stared down at the corpse of the woman with the crossbow bolt jutting from the back of her head.

“You got off easy,” she whispered.

A moment with the author…

Behind the curtain of the DEAD: Snapshot {your town here} series.

“THE DEAD WALK!”

You sort of dream about that headline. Admit it. You watch shows like The Walking Dead and think, That would be SO cool! Would it really? I want you to bring your own arm up to your mouth and bite as hard as you can. Now keep going until you rip the flesh. (In the interest of our “sue happy” culture, I am not really suggesting that you do this, and if you already did then can I ask what in the hell is wrong with you?)

So…how cool is it now? And then there is the idea of finding a loved one who had the misfortune of not heeding the warnings and got bit trying to hurry home to take care of you. They are coming at you with filmed over, dead eyes. So grab a gun or something and shoot or bash them in the head. Oh yeah, that includes your precious little Jimmy or Janie. You know, that apple of your eye…the one thing that you love more than life itself.

Not sounding so great anymore, is it?

The reality of the zombie apocalypse is probably more terrifying than we want to imagine. However, reading about it is a blast. On that, I think many of us can agree. Only, when you read these stories, don’t they always seem so far away and remote? Unless you have a local zombie author who loves to set his novels in his or her (and by extension…YOUR) neck of the woods, you have to imagine places you have never been and hope to sink into the story enough to feel like you are “there.”

Well, wait no more. With my new spin off of my successful and best-selling zombie series DEAD, the apocalypse can be right outside your own front door. How? I will tell you later. You don’t think I am gonna give you ALL the good stuff right off the bat, now do ya?

My new series is titled DEAD: Snapshot—{insert town here}. Okay that last little bit is just the generic filler. To be clear, the first book is titled DEAD: Snapshot—Portland, Oregon. I set it in my town because it is someplace that I know pretty well. However, the next book is titled DEAD: Snapshot—Leeds, England. Never been there, but with the help of Google, I can get down to street level and “walk” about from the comfort of my computer.

Each of these books will be a stand-alone novel set in the mythology that I built in the DEAD series. Some of them may see “guest appearances” by characters that you know and love or hate from DEAD. You don’t have to be a reader of the series to enjoy or understand the book. It is zombie fiction, not Twin Peaks. For those totally unfamiliar, my zombies are like those found in Romero flicks. Still confused? (I weep for you, but I will clarify.) The Walking Dead. You know, basically slow and not all that coordinated. I do have a few twists in my mythology that differs from the norm. While I won’t state it as a fact, I had not read (in my VERY EXTENSIVE reading) any instances where the bite was not a catalyst for somebody to turn. Also, children of the younger age bracket might behave just a bit differently. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I will leave it at that and let you discover for yourself why my series has allowed me to be a writer full-time and quit my day job.

So, how do you get zombies to come wipe out your town (or maybe the town of an ex, or somebody that you just really don’t like), so to speak? Simple. All you have to do is send me an email at twbrown.maydecpub@gmail.com with “I WANT TO SEE THE DEAD TAKE MY TOWN!” in the subject line. From there, in the actual email, tell me where you are from. Tell me a little bit about your town and what makes it special. Feel free to offer your own name up for use as a character. You are even free to give me a description or photo that I can use to design this character. I even let you specify if you wish to be hero or villain. Sorry, no promises that you will survive in any case, and your character’s depiction may be NOTHING like you in manner and action. It will simply carry your name into the annals of zombie apocalypse history.

So…are you interested?

Curious?

Or maybe you really dislike those snobs over in Shelbyville? (Simpson’s reference, sorry.) Well, you now have the power of life, death, and undeath in your hands. What will you do?

I have the usual suspects to thank. My beta readers (Jeff Shoemaker, Michelle Warren, Nelson Wilbanks, Ramona Martine, Tammy Gaylord Beard, and Tracey Lynn, Caroline Harmon). Seriously, you make this a better book with your keen eyes and helpful suggestions. I want to thank the people that keep us safe: the men and women of the armed forces, as well as the public servants in the medical, police, and fire departments. Without them, we would be in serious trouble. I would be remiss if I did not thank you, the person reading this book. Without you, I would not be doing what I love for a living. Thank you so much for being a part of making my dreams come true. Also, I have to thank Erin West and the staff and players of the 2015 Portland Thunder Arena Football League team.

Last, but certainly not least, I have to thank my wife. You have never wavered in your belief. You push me to do things that I would not do on my own. This book is being handed out at the Portland Thunder home games for the 2015 season because you believed and told me that this was a good idea. Talk about shoving a guy out of his comfort zone.

Keep Portland Weird!

TW Brown

February 2015

To Ruth Rolle

You are an inspiration

Contents

It Begins: Ken Simpson

It Begins: Rose Tinnes

It Begins: Jason Edwards

Discoveries

Beginning of the End

Bad People

“What about Hank?”

The First Night of the End of the World

Into the Breach

“Yes. This is really happening.”

A Terrible Thing

Discoveries

Tough Choices

Door-to-Door Shopping

Rag and Bone

Normal?

Winter

“And so it goes…”

1

It Begins: Ken Simpson

“…as reports continue to come in, we will do our best to keep you informed,” the pretty, blond talking head on the television said.

Ken Simpson was not fooled in the slightest. He opened his hall closet and pulled the long, black case out from behind his array of coats, jackets, hoodies, and windbreakers.

He glanced to the left at the mirror that was mounted on the back of his bedroom door. His wife had insisted on that damn thing. She would get ready for work in the bathroom and then come out and give herself a full once-over before kissing him and heading out the door every morning for twenty-odd years.

After her death following a lengthy and horrible battle with cancer, he had simply not possessed the heart to take the damn thing down. Looking at his reflection, he saw an old man that he barely recognized. His once clean-shaven head now showed a halo of short gray hair that looked more like a wreath than anything else. His week of stubble was adding to the disheveled look that he sported more often than not these days. After he had been forced to retire due to a leg injury suffered while he had been chasing a shoplifter of all things, Ken had simply let himself go.

Standing up straight, he initially sucked in his gut, but then remembered there was nobody around to impress. He let it go and winced as it extended well over his belt. The only feature he still had anything to be proud of was his chest. He had been a big man all his life, and his massive chest made him an imposing figure back in his prime. It was still broad, but he knew that it would not be long before gravity and laziness turned his pecs into man boobs.

For only being forty-nine years old, he looked every bit a man in his early sixties. The last year had been hell. With Milly passing, he had simply stopped caring about anything; and that included himself. With no children and, subsequently, no grandchildren, Ken really had nothing to motivate him to shower if not for the face the clerk would make as he stood at the register. He would climb into his car after buying groceries (more for the replenishing of his beer supply than for actual food) and give himself a sniff test. Usually that would remind him that it had been a while since his last encounter with soap and water.

The one thing that he did take care of was the house. That had been Milly’s pride and joy. For some reason, he could not allow the house to fall into the same degree of disrepair that he had plummeted. The television continued to drone, but he only heard snippets as he shut the closet door with his foot.

“…attacks in increasing numbers…reports of individuals biting their victims…hospitals overrun with people suffering from attacks…”

Walking into his living room, he set the case on the coffee table and opened it. As he did so, he glanced out the enormous picture frame window that provided a view of the street. It was maybe two hours before it would begin getting dark, and there were no signs of kids playing or joggers pounding the sidewalk. He was about to return his attention to the black case when something caught his eye. It was the Calloway dog.

Brandy or Bailey or some other alcohol related name. He never cared enough to remember, and that was a good thing. If Ken Simpson knew the name of a dog in the neighborhood, chances are it usually ended up with a pellet in the ass. As far as he knew, this dog had never used his yard as its personal toilet. Of course, that spoke more of the owner, Ken knew that. But, since he would probably have ended up in jail a long time ago if he’d been shooting the dogs’ owners instead of the dogs—

The dog stopped suddenly and craned its head back over its shoulder. The animal bared its teeth, growling loud enough to be heard in the house. Its eyes were wide enough that he could see the whites. He was not much of a dog person, but he knew fear on an animal when he saw it.

Ken moved to the door and opened it. The Golden Retriever paused and turned his direction. Its collar and leash were still on, but the chunky, balding man who he always saw at the other end of that bright pink leash was nowhere to be found. He thought the man’s named might be Calloway. Maybe it was Carson. Hell, that was something Milly knew, he didn’t really have a clue.

A low moan made Ken look down the street in the same direction the dog was looking. What he saw actually made his knees buckle just a little. The owner of the Golden Retriever was headed this way.

As a retired police officer, Ken had seen some nasty things. Car accidents were always a good place to get a rookie’s feet wet. Literally. The human body was simply not designed to withstand the amount of force that a head-on collision dealt. It was even worse when the person or persons were not wearing seatbelts.

In his younger days, he had been one of those sorts who disdained the use of his seatbelt; at least he had been until he had arrived on the scene of his first accident where the driver and passenger of the compact car had made that same choice. The massive diesel pickup truck that had slammed into them probably would have killed them in any case. But both bodies had been launched through the windshield.

The woman’s head had been almost snapped off from the force of being bent backwards so hard. He had been okay until he reached where the driver had been thrown partway through the windshield. The steering wheel had crushed his chest and the rib bones had punched through where they had been snapped and turned into jagged daggers. Something had been lacerated and fresh shit mixed with the blood leaked from his body in several places. Ken Simpson, rookie police officer, had fallen to his hands and knees and vomited like never before in his life.

That did not hold a candle to this.

The man walking down the street had been torn open. There were things hanging from his belly that definitely should not. Long, ropy strands of what Ken knew had to be intestines dangled and slapped against the man’s thighs.

It was obvious that the attack on this man had been sudden and violent. A dark stain ran down the inside of the legs of his khaki pants. Of course, Ken had been to enough scenes where somebody had died. He knew full well that it was common for the deceased to release bowel and bladder upon dying.

The portly man was walking with slow, unsteady steps; almost as if he might be drunk. This would match up with everything that had been on the news the past few days.

It was global and nobody seemed to know how it had started. If you watched one news channel, there was talk of some sort of chemical weapon. On another, it was a depleted ozone layer and some recent solar flare activity. The religious channels were predictable in their “End of Day” fervor. And then there were the tabloids. Everything from aliens to the Chinese government and some sort of secret weapons test that had gone wrong were getting top billing these past few days when it had finally gotten too big to contain or hide.

Last night, Ken had stopped in to see his old buddy Red. Red Gibson ran a gun shop and shooting range a few miles away. It was where all the local law enforcement types did their target practice. He had picked up another ten thousand rounds for his Glocks and another five thousand for his .30-06.

Already there were reports of sporadic looting and rioting. The government was being mum so far. The last thing that he had heard from the White House was the president telling people to remain calm. Did he actually think that was going to do any good?

Local media coverage was not much better, and he had word from a few of his friends still on the force that a military vehicle was spotted in the parking lots of all the major news studios. That most likely meant that the people of the Portland metro area were being fed a diet of government-approved false information.

The barking and growling of the dog at the end of his walkway snapped Ken back to the situation at hand. Oddly enough, the dog’s owner had not made all that much progress. His gait was not only awkward, but exceptionally slow. He did not see how these things could even be considered much of a threat like he was hearing.

If people were being attacked and bitten by these people who were supposedly infected with whatever the hell was causing this behavior, they had to be either very slow, or very stupid. He had just cracked a slight smile when his neighbor, Gina Glendon, exploded out onto her well-lit porch, the screen door slamming into the twisted black metal that acted as rail and bannister for her tiny stoop.

Gina Glendon was the typical looking soccer-mom. The slight bulge of her belly indicated that she would finally be embarking on that journey of actual motherhood in a few months. Her hair was a chestnut brown and cut stylishly to fall just past her collar. Her skin was unusually pale. Unusual for her since she was a regular at the local tanning salon during Oregon’s rainy winter season. With spring just around the corner, she usually had a bronze glow obtained at the fake-and-bake. Obviously she had forgone that luxury due to her pregnancy.

Gina was a pretty woman, but she had a voice that could peel paint and shatter glass. What was all the worse was the fact that she did not have to yell for her voice to be annoying. Even her conversational voice was nerve jangling. When she screamed, it often could be heard up and down the block during normal circumstances.

Ken’s head was not the only one to turn as the woman let go with a horrible shriek. The owner of the dog turned and reoriented on the woman who was on her butt and scooting backwards away from the open front door. A man stepped out onto the porch and let loose with a moan that was nearly identical to the one he had heard from the owner of the Golden Retriever just a moment ago.

Ken’s cop instincts kicked in, and he cataloged every detail. The man was Gerald Glendon, Gina’s husband. He was in his mid-thirties and worked as a car salesman on the Portland strip known as Auto Row (which is basically a three mile stretch on McLoughlin Boulevard in Southeast Portland). The man was an okay guy from what Ken recalled of their limited conversations usually around spring when they would both be out mowing their lawns on the weekends.

Gerald had a blood-soaked bandage around his left forearm. Ken cocked his head as he looked first at Gerald, and then at the portly dog owner that was closing in behind Gina Glendon with awkward and jerky steps.

“The eyes,” he breathed so softly that he barely heard his own revelation.

Both of these men had eyes that were filmed in a pus-white. But it was the black traces that stood out against the white that was really noticeable as something very wrong. Having seen his own bloodshot visage on many occasions, Ken knew that he was seeing something identifiable and potentially important.

He was still spellbound by the scene until Gerald fell on his wife who had tumbled awkwardly down the few steps that led to the porch and was now sprawled on the grass. It was like being splashed with cold water. If there was one thing that Ken had learned to despise from his days on the force, it was drunk drivers and woman beaters.

Ken took a step forward and stopped dead in his tracks. He actually wiped at his eyes to be sure that he was really seeing what he thought he was seeing. Gerald lunged forward with his head and latched on to his wife’s arm that had flown up in reflexive defense. His teeth snapped shut on the flesh of that forearm, and with a few yanks, meat was torn away.

Ken felt his gorge rise as he watched Gerald make a few grinding chews before swallowing the raw meat and leaning forward for another bite. By that time, the dog owner had reached the couple and fell in to assist in the attack on the flailing woman.

Later, Ken would feel a sense of shame and embarrassment as he stood rooted to one spot while the attack escalated and grew into something so surreal that he simply could not accept as actually happening. He would witness much worse in the days to come, but this first encounter would be the one that would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life.

“Help!” Gina shrieked, her head twisting back and forth with such violent ferocity that it should have caused her neck to snap. “For the love of God, please!”

Gerald bit down on her face just as she finished that plea. His teeth clamped on her nose and Ken swore that he heard a crunch. When the man jerked back, blood shot from this new wound and sprayed the man who was busy chewing with no emotion whatsoever registering on his face as he brutalized the woman who would have been the mother of his child.

And then the dog owner got his first piece of Gina Glendon. The portly man dug his face into the crook of where her neck met shoulder as if nuzzling her.

The next scream from Gina was unlike anything that Ken had ever heard in all his years. It almost caused him physical pain in his gut to even hear. It was that scream that at last sent him rushing into action.

He reached the tangle of bodies and once again was halted in his tracks. What he was seeing could absolutely not be happening. The two men had torn away the woman’s blouse, and her bulging stomach was being ripped open!

Ken kicked the dog owner in the side of the head as hard as he could and then spun on Gerald. The man had pulled something jelly-like and purple from the gash in Gina’s abdomen. He was already shoving it into his mouth as it ripped away from whatever had once held it in place.

Ken made himself look away from the wound. His eyes had caught sight of something else, and if he focused on that single tiny thing, he might very well lose not only his nerve, but also his mind. Rearing back, he kicked Gerald square in the face. The man’s head snapped back and the body went sprawling.

Ken was about to lean in and see if there was anything at all he could do for Gina who had thankfully lost consciousness at some point; probably due to the pain. Only, before he could do anything, both the dog owner and Gerald were struggling back to their feet—or, more accurately, their knees. They were focused on that terrible wound, and their hands were opening and closing almost in greedy anticipation.

“Screw this,” Ken muttered and ran back to his house where his gun case was still sitting open and waiting. He passed the Golden Retriever that was now crouched on his porch. He considered shooing it away, but decided the dog probably had been through enough already.

He reached down and grabbed one of his Glock 17s, along with a loaded magazine that he slid into place. Giving the slide a tug, he ratcheted the first round into the chamber and walked back outside.

His eyes did another scan of the street. He noticed a few curtains had been drawn shut since this ordeal had begun.

“Bunch of damned cowards,” he spat.

The two men were hunched over Gina’s body and the sounds coming from them were a mix of slurps, moans, and smacks. He brought up his weapon and advanced.

“I am only going to give you this one warning. Stop what you are doing and step away from the woman,” Ken said in a level voice brought on by years on the force. He already had a pretty firm idea of how this would play out, but in case there might be any witnesses, he felt the need to at least give some sort of verbal warning.

The two men made no indication that they even heard him. That was enough for Ken Simpson. He sighted on the center of the back of the dog owner and fired. He saw the bullet strike, and the body even rocked forward a bit. However, the man seemed absolutely unfazed by the newest wound. Despite it not really comparing to the injuries that the man had already sustained, there should have been something; at least that is what Ken was thinking in the part of his mind that still did not want to believe what was happening.

Then, the two men both stopped what they were doing and stood up. Ken took a deep breath and took just a second to realize that nobody seemed to be responding to this situation from any of the houses up and down the street.

He fired three shots that hit Gerald square in the chest. The only response was that the man staggered back just a little from the impact. He could see the three entry holes around the area of the heart. And whether his bullets struck the heart or not, the man should be down. With a roar of frustration, he fired once more. This time, his aim was the middle of Gerald’s forehead.

The body dropped instantly and moved no more. Ken stepped back and winced as he fired one more experimental shot into the chest of the dog owner. He wasn’t the least bit surprised when the man kept coming for him, arms outstretched and mouth open wide to show blood-stained teeth. Ken adjusted his aim and put another round in the man’s face. The head snapped back and the body crumpled.

He took a sigh of relief and then felt his body almost seize as Gina Glendon sat up. Her head craned his direction and Ken gasped. Her face had a nasty hole in the center where Gerald had torn off her nose and blood was everywhere. However, it was the obscene rip in her belly that he could not help but look at.

The hole was wide and the skin had been peeled down. Her entrails were protruding from that horrific gash…along with the remnants of a sac with part of something fleshy that he knew he could not unsee if he focused on it for even a second. He looked up at Gina and was momentarily confused by how she appeared to blur and almost shimmer. Then he realized that his eyes were filling with tears.

Taking one more deep breath, he brought his weapon up just as the woman rose awkwardly to her feet, her insides spilling out in a cascade of gore until just that single grotesque cord and remnants of a sac dangled. Ken Simpson fired, his bullet catching Gina Glendon just above the gaping hole where her slightly upturned nose had once been. The woman collapsed to the ground.

Ken let out a heavy sigh and crumpled to his knees just a few feet away from the woman’s corpse. He heard a soft whine behind him and turned to see the Golden Retriever still on his porch. It had risen to its feet and taken one cautious step forward.

“Lot of help you were,” Ken muttered.

The dog bared its teeth and stepped back up to the top landing. Ken raised an eyebrow. The hand holding his pistol started to rise, but then he realized that the dog was not looking at him. Rather, its eyes were focused on something just behind him and to the side. His head whipped around, fully expecting to see Gina sitting back up. What he saw was far worse.

The sac had come to rest just a foot away from the body. The small, fleshy shape that writhed and wriggled in the sac’s tattered remains would hold a special place in his nightmares. Standing quickly, Ken moved away. It was not that he feared this thing could come after him. It was simply the fact that he could not bear to be anywhere near it. Something in his brain yelled for him to dispatch it, but he could not bring himself to do so.

He backed up and made his way up the stairs. He could not look away from the carnage splayed all over his front yard until he was actually inside his house. As soon as he crossed the threshold, he shut the door, grabbed his cell phone, and thumbed it for 9-1-1.

It rang twice before there was an answer.

“You have reached the City of Portland Emergency Dispatch Center…all lines are currently busy. We are sorry, but due to a high volume of calls, all operators are currently assisting other callers. Please do not hang up. You will be answered in the order that you were received.”

There was a click, and then the strains of some pop tune set to an orchestra began to pipe in. Grabbing his Bluetooth and stuffing it into his right ear, Ken put his phone in his pocket.

He turned to the kitchen when he realized that the dog had followed (or more likely, led the way) back inside the house. He considered the animal for a moment.

“I don’t have any food for you,” Ken sighed.

He reflected on the situation for a few seconds and then shrugged. “I think I remember which house was yours. I will stop there on our way out of here, but after that, I don’t know if I will be able to help you.”

Ken went into the kitchen and opened the cupboards. Unfortunately, they were mostly bare. He had no shortage of beer, but that was not going to do him any good. He looked back at the dog that was sitting in the entrance to the kitchen.

“I guess we are gonna have to go shopping.”

***

The recording droned in his ear the entire way to the store. When he spied the large, red sign, he disconnected. The drive had taken almost thirty minutes and had been so surreal that he was becoming numb by the time he turned into the entrance.

Ken pulled his pickup into the parking lot of the Fred Meyer’s grocery store. What he saw was absolute chaos. He’d seen riots in other cities. Hell, even Seattle had been shaken up a few times. However, the people of Portland were more into marches and the like. They loved to come out and take up the banner for whatever cause was in the news at the moment, but they were just too laid back for much more. Riots were very rare, and if they did happen, there was not much steam behind them.

The scene at Fred Meyer’s was pandemonium. Cars were parked every which way. People were running from the store pushing carts laden with all sorts of goods. There were more than a few sporting large screen televisions.

“Like that is gonna help,” he muttered as he put the truck in park. He glanced over at the dog. “Now, you stay put. If you run off, then you’re on your own, and I wish you luck.”

Ken climbed out of the truck. He shut the door and activated the locks and alarm with his key fob. He doubted that another blaring car alarm would be noticed any more than the five or six he currently heard, but it was an old habit.

Reaching around and patting the small of his back, he ensured that his Glock was tucked into the waistband of his jeans. He had not walked ten feet when he almost tripped over the first dead body. This one did not display the ripped and torn appearance that he had seen on Gerald, the dog owner, Gina, and at least a dozen people that he had passed on his drive over to the store. This person, he could not tell if it was male or female, had been bludgeoned. A pool of blood, looking black as it spread across the asphalt under the lights of the parking lot that were just now coming on, was spreading. Ken looked around for any signs of whoever had done this, but he never slowed as he closed in on the entrance to the huge store.

If the parking lot was bad, the inside was a nightmarish madhouse. He could not believe that people had spiraled out of control so quickly. He glanced left and noticed that only a few of the registers were still manned, although he did not see why considering how many people were just skirting past and out into the parking lot.

Grabbing a cart, Ken took a deep breath and waded into the insanity. He’d never been a fan of shopping. Milly saw it almost as a sport. She called Black Friday her championship game. She usually hooked up with a few of her friends and they would leave the house around three in the morning. When she returned later that afternoon, she would make him wait in the garage until she had all her bags inside and stuffed into the closet. He’d gone with her one time. As a police officer, he’d wanted to arrest about a hundred people that day, but he doubted that rudeness would hold up in court as a legitimate charge.

This made that day seem like a walk in the park.

The first thing he did was head for the canned goods aisle. He’d been on enough hunting expeditions in his life to understand the way food kept. After what he’d seen so far, Ken had decided that he was going to be ready if he needed to get out of town for a while. He knew some really great places away from the city. If it got much worse, he would head for the woods.

A cart slammed into his own, snapping his attention back to the situation. A young man no older than his early twenties sneered and gave the cart he was pushing another little shove, scooting Ken’s cart just a bit sideways.

“Get outta the way, old man!” the younger fella snarled.

Ken couldn’t help it. He started to laugh. The kid was probably about a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet. He had enough metal jutting from his face that one punch would shred that very same face into a bloody mess. And apparently he did not take kindly to be laughed at by a pot-bellied old man.

“You need to mind your shit, gramps!”

The young man whipped out a butterfly knife and whirled it in what he likely considered to be an impressive display of steel. In Ken’s experience, a person who made a big deal out of showing a weapon usually did not have the balls to use it, and if he did, it was likely with poor results.

“Put the toy away, sonny.” Ken groaned inwardly at his retort. Had he just called this guy “sonny”?

“You don’t know who you’re messin’ with, old man.”

Just then, another two young men showed up. At least Ken thought that they were male at first. With all the dark eyeliner and crap, he could not be a hundred percent certain.

“Jinks, what is keeping you?” one of the new arrivals asked.

Ken winced. This one had a crew-cut and was decked out in clothing that hid any trace of this young lady’s femininity. Her face had a hardness that looked wrong on somebody so young. He now knew what he was dealing with. He’d had more than a few run-ins with street kids. They often built street “families” that were not much more than smaller, less organized gangs.

“This old man disrespected me!” Jinks snarled, waving his knife in Ken’s direction.

In a flash, Ken reached out and caught the wrist of the hand holding the blade. In another instant, he smacked the blade away and applied a very painful wristlock with just the slightest increase in pressure; and just that quick, the young man known as Jinks was on his knees.

“Now, you kids go on about your business and leave me to mine.” Ken looked around at the others with his steel-blue eyes and made it a point of locking gazes briefly with each of them. “I am going to let your friend loose in a second. I suggest that you ditch all these video games and crap. Get some food, water, and perhaps some warm clothing.”

With a gentle shove, he pushed Jinks back into his friends. They caught him and, almost predictably, went for their own weapons. Each had a small blade of some sort.

“Yeah, and you might want to get something a little more sturdy. I think you will be having to actually use your weapons sooner than you think.” Pulling his Glock and leveling it at the center of the chest of Jinks, and then letting it drift across the rest of them for just a second, Ken shook his head. “But trust me when I tell you that you do not want to fool around with me any longer. There will be worse things ahead.”

Ken tucked his Glock back into his waistband and pushed past the group, turning down the canned food aisle. He was actually relieved that they seemed content to leave things be. He was also more than a little surprised at the lack of reaction from any people who happened to be in the area as this mini-drama played out. Even with all of the crazy behavior happening in the store, his having drawn a pistol received no more reaction than for people to just widen their berth and continue on their way.

He was not surprised to find most of the shelves nearing empty. On the plus side, a lot of the lower-shelf generic items were still mostly available. Even more important, there were a lot of cans of various beans: black, kidney, navy. He grabbed all that he saw and then hurried over to the head of the next aisle. He could not believe his luck. While most of the instant varieties of boxed rice were gone, the large ten pound bags were basically untouched.

He grabbed a hundred pounds of rice, deciding that that should be more than enough. He was pushing down the next aisle where the soaps and other hygiene products were, once more, largely untouched. That is when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out but did not recognize the number. He was a little surprised that the phone had rung at all. He was noticing people repeatedly holding their phones with a look of confusion and betrayal. As was usually the case whenever there was some sort of disaster, the lines were overloaded.

“Simpson here,” he said by way of a greeting.

“Kenny?” a familiar voice said from the other end.

“Ma?” He stuck a finger in his other ear to drown out the background noise as much as possible.

“Kenny, there is something wrong.”

Mary Simpson was eighty-seven and still as sharp as a whip. She had stunned Ken when she had refused his offer to have her move in after his dad had died. Instead, she had sold the house and shopped around until she found a retirement community that suited her tastes. After she’d moved in, Ken had visited the manager, conspicuous in his blue uniform. He’d made a few not-so-subtle hints about how things might not go well for the property manager if his mom was not treated right.

“What is it, Ma?” he asked as he watched a pair of middle-aged men duke it out over a case of baby formula.

“Some people came in during dinner and started attacking folks. They were acting like wild animals.”

Ken felt his stomach tighten. He dreaded the answer to his next question. “Were you bit, Ma?”

“Just a little scratch. That nice gentleman, Mr. Holden? You remember him, the one with the ponytail—”

“How bad, Ma?” Ken hated cutting his mother off, but he was worried.

“Like I said, just a scratch. Barely broke the skin. But that poor Mr. Holden…” Mary Simpson’s voice faded, and Ken heard the sounds of his mother starting to cry. The last time he’d heard such a thing from her was at his father’s funeral.

“Ma, I want you to stay inside. I will get over there as soon as I can. Lock everything up, use the dead bolt and don’t open the door for anybody. I have a key and will let myself in when I arrive.” Who was he kidding? He knew with almost absolute certainty that his mother was already a goner.

“Okay, Kenny.” That simple response made Ken nervous. His mother hated being fussed over, and it was not like her to be so agreeable; especially when it came to him telling her what to do.

“I want you to take one of your blue pills, Ma. Then go to your room, shut the door, and lie down.”

The assisted living center where his mom lived was a long two-story complex with a big rec room and cafeteria as the center hub for the five buildings that stretched away like giant spokes. His mother was on the second floor. That would make her as safe as she could be, or at least allow her some peace.

He was about to say something else when the line went dead. He looked at his phone, fully expecting the battery to be dead. However, that was not the case. And when he looked up, he saw a few other people pulling phones from their pockets or purses and looking at them with the same expressions of betrayal. He tried to call the number back a few times, but it was useless.

Almost to compound his frustration, the line actually rang once. There was a moment of silence, and then a click as the call was disconnected.

“Crap,” he muttered. “This is happening faster than I thought.”

He made his last stop on the beverage aisle. The small bottles of water were gone, but some of the one gallon containers were still there. He grabbed a few and then was hit with an idea. He hurried to the cleaning aisle and found what he was looking for. He snagged a pair of filtered water pitchers as well as several boxes of the replaceable filters.

He was about to head over to the home and garden center when he skidded to a halt. Jerking the cart around, he headed up the mostly untouched pet supply aisle. He grabbed three forty pound bags and wedged them in under his cart. As an afterthought, he tossed in a box of dog biscuits.

He paused just for a second at the electronics department. Unlike the idiots, he found a battery operated radio that would charge using his truck’s adapter outlet. He had to duck once as a man yanked a display model large screen television from the shelf. Then he scooped regular batteries of all sizes into his cart.

After a stop in the home and garden and then the camping section, he grabbed a comforter and draped it over his cart and then tied it down to keep all his items in place.

He exited the store feeling just a shade of guilt. He was now officially a looter. Still, he knew what he had seen, and he had an idea of what might be going on. Of course the tabloid shows had been screaming this for almost a week as those first reports had started to trickle in. But then it had been like a cartoon snowball. It started small but grew exponentially in a short time. He had not been a fan of such things, but he had seen that old black and white movie, Night of the Living Dead back when he was in high school.

He was putting everything in the back of his pickup when he heard the sound of footsteps coming up from behind him in a hurry. He had a good idea of what he would see even before he turned around.

2

It Begins: Rose Tinnes

Rose Tinnes followed the winding road as it took her deep into Washington Park. She loved her afternoon runs even more now that she had shed almost two hundred pounds of useless fat: her husband…make that ex-husband, Frank. The last straw had been when she caught him following her in his car.

Frank had been certain that her running was nothing more than a ruse to hide the fact that she was having an affair. He had said that it provided the perfect alibi when she came home drenched in sweat. Maybe if he’d gotten his fat ass off the couch on occasion, he would understand that a person can sweat if they actually performed some sort of physical activity that did not involve holding the controller to an Xbox.

At almost six feet tall, Rose was a slender young woman. Twenty-six years old in a week, she was in the best shape of her life; at least physically. The divorce had taken some serious emotional tolls on her, but she knew she would recover from that in no time. Her shoulder-length hair was brown, but got just a shade lighter in the summer to where she could pass for sandy blond. Her athletic figure had been a source of disappointment when she was younger and many of her girlfriends were starting to look more feminine, but now she was almost grateful that she had never moved past a 34A cup size. Breasts were a pain when it came to running, much less when she was conquering one of the many obstacle course running events that she had become addicted to this past year. Besides, it kept men’s eyes on her face; unless they were fans of long legs and tight buns.

Running on long leads just to her left and right were her babies; a pair of Border Collies. The male was named Imp. He was a black and white shorthaired dog that lived to chase balls, Frisbees, and anything else that could roll or fly. Imp was overly social and seemed to believe that the entire world was there to be his plaything. However, he was an aloof dog when it came to giving or receiving any sort of affection beyond some polite petting and the very occasional belly rub. He was simply geared to be doing something active from the moment that his eyes opened each day.

Circe was a long-haired red and white that went against all conventional descriptions of a Border Collie when it came to behavior. She was a snuggler and a cuddler. Every evening, she would retire to the bedroom around seven or so where she would await Rose’s eventual arrival. She was not interested in chasing toys. However, anytime that Rose went to visit her sister on her and her husband’s hundred acre farm out in Sandy, Circe loved herding the goats.

Rose’s sister Violet—her mother had loved flowers a bit too much, causing most people to quip that it was a good thing that she’d never given birth to a boy—had plans for slowly weaning her husband and two children from anything commercially produced. They were always preaching the virtues of organic. As far as Rose was concerned, an apple was an apple. In any case, Violet obtained a small herd of a dozen or so goats and used them for milk, cheese, and who knew what else. She had them in a fenced pasture that offered plenty of room for the little animals to frolic and graze.

The first time Rose had taken Circe (who she had for almost a year before she bought Imp) to her sister’s place, she had not even given it any thought when she opened the door to get out of the car. In a flash, Circe had bolted and leapt the split-rail wooden fence that bordered the goat pasture. The dog had gone into herding mode instantly. In a matter of seconds (or at least that is how it seemed that first time) the entire herd of goats had been brought in close and kept in place in one corner of the large pasture.

“When did you teach her that?” Violet gasped with obvious awe.

“Umm…never,” Rose had answered weakly at first, thinking that her sister was going to pitch a fit over her precious goats being disturbed or some such hippie nonsense.

“She is a natural,” Violet gushed.

Rose had made it a point to bring the dogs over to visit her sister on a regular basis after that day. It had also been a bridge that brought her and Violet closer.

The two girls had never been very close. Partially because Violet was eight years older and saw Rose as little more than a nuisance while growing up. Rose, being the sensitive one, had internalized her resentment for years. Over the span of their life, a fairly solid wall had been erected.

For the longest time, their only interaction came when their mother had everybody over for the assorted seasonal holidays. For them to actually build a bond over goats and a Border Collie was odd, but the two would sit on the fence and watch Circe perform what came so naturally. Over time, Rose even learned the names of the goats and began to see their individual personalities.

It was Violet who told Rose that she might have made a mistake and settled when marrying Frank Crampton. Rose had sat silently on the fence and listened that day to her sister’s concerns. When she got home that night, it was as if the blinders had been opened and light had flooded the room to show her the error of her ways. Still, she had not been ready to give up just yet. She thought that perhaps it was the few extra pounds that she had gained since marriage. Not that she was what anybody could consider fat, but in her eyes, she could see every single pound.

That had started her renewed interest in running. It took almost no time for Rose to recall how much she loved running. However, when a friend introduced her to her first obstacle course race, Rose had poured herself into it with everything she had. Her dream was to compete professionally within a year or so. She had told Frank over dinner one night.

Frank had laughed.

That single moment had been the beginning of the end of her marriage. Now she was feeling better than she had in years. Her sister had even come to her first race of the season last week where she had finished first of all the women racers. Violet had been so proud of her and made no secret to everybody they passed that her sister had won the race. While it had been a bit on the embarrassing side, Rose could not help but feel delighted by this display. She had made her sister proud. That confirmed that she was on the right path.

“I think you should start doing whatever you need to do to be part of the professional circuit,” Violet said with stern seriousness as Rose stood under the hose to rinse off a majority of the mud from the course.

That statement of encouragement had been the catalyst. Rose had logged in and registered for the competitive heat of every race in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Northern California. If she could place high, she might be able to gain a sponsor or two before long. But if that was going to happen, she would need to up her training regimen.

Her earbuds were pumping some nice classical as she pushed herself just a bit harder when she reached the steepest hill of her run. Some folks might like to jam the hard stuff when they ran, but Rose found that classical took her away from the world and almost made her forget that she was running.

Imp and Circe trotted along almost as a reminder that she was not as fast as she might think. She was almost certain that the look she received periodically from Circe was an “Is that as fast as you can go?” sort of look. Meanwhile, Imp was getting better at not suddenly stopping to make his mark on every shrub, tree, and street sign that they passed.

She was a bit too immersed in her music, which is why she did not notice that Imp had started to swing wide as they approached the upcoming corner. She did not hear the low rumble of a growl building in his throat. Instead, she was being swept along by Piano Concerto No. 21 - Elvira Madigan.

She came to the sharp switchback turn, only vaguely aware that she was hitting the toughest part of her trek. It was sheer reflex that allowed her to leap just in the nick of time to avoid the figure sprawled across the narrow road. That was also when Imp and Circe reacted. Circe scuttled to the side of her master, ears flat on her head and tail tucked in tight to her body.

Imp was an entirely different story. He began barking furiously, teeth barred and hair standing up around his neck almost to the point of resembling the mane of a lion. His tail was straight up and he hunched low as if ready to spring at the downed body.

Her hands swiped at the thin cords, yanking the earphones free. Out of habit, she had already hit the button that paused her run tracking app. She hated nothing more than being timed while she stood waiting to cross a street; it completely screwed up her average per-mile pace.

“Hey?” she called softly.

She took a tentative step forward and realized that the dark shadow on the road was from a slowly growing pool of blood. As this realization struck, Imp lunged to put himself between her and this injured person.

Plucking her phone free from the armband she wore, Rose quickly called 9-1-1. After a few seconds, as the signal bounced its way to a tower, there was the blessed sound of ringing. After over a dozen rings, Rose glanced at her display to ensure she had dialed correctly.

“You have reached the City of Portland Emergency Dispatch Center…all lines are currently busy. We are sorry, but due to a high volume of calls, all operators are currently assisting other callers. Please do not hang up. You will be answered in the order that you were received,” the computerized voice droned.

Rose locked the phone so that she would remain on the line and then stuffed it into the pocket of her hooded sweatshirt. Imp was growing louder by the minute as he snarled and barked at the body. The figure twitched once and then started to move. This caused Rose to take an involuntary step back, but it also caused Imp to retreat and switch from the incessant barking to a lip curl and growl that was unlike anything that she had ever heard from the young Border Collie.

“Imp!” Rose hissed, regaining her composure and pulling both dogs’ leashes in tighter so that they were at her side. Circe instantly took her ‘sit’ position, but Imp stayed on his feet, crouched low and looking ready to spring at any moment.

The person pushed up with both hands, and that was when Rose knew that something was terribly wrong. The person’s left hand, the one closest to her, was missing three fingers. And by the looks, they had been taken very recently and with an incredible degree of violence. Then, the man turned his head her direction.

Rose gasped at the same instant that Imp lunged. The dog was strong enough to cause her to stumble forward, but she quickly regained her footing and backed away in a hurry, dragging the agitated dog along with her.

The man was…wrong. That was the best way that she could explain it to herself. His eyes were filmed with a thick and foul looking white that was shot through with black tracers. At first, her mind was trying to rationalize it by saying that perhaps the person had seriously bad cataracts. However, the nasty rip and gaping wound where his throat belonged was throwing all guesses out the window.

Rose had heard something from her sister Violet about a sickness or some such thing that was going around. However, with the departure of Frank, she had lost the big screen television. In all honesty, she hadn’t missed it. She spent her evenings with music and a good book. As far as she was concerned, television was a drain on time that she could not afford now that she was training.

Something Violet had said suddenly rang in her mind. ‘They say that people are acting crazy, attacking each other and even biting. It is like some twisted horror movie in some places, and there are even a few locations that have supposedly gone dark. No word coming out of them in a while now. Parts of China, Japan…all silent for the past few days.’

This person’s throat injury certainly could have come from a bite. It was nasty and jagged. What did not make any sense was how this man was getting to his feet. He should not be able to draw breath. If he wasn’t actually drowning on his own blood, then he still should not be getting any air into his lungs. She could see the ugly ribbed tube that was the larynx. It was mangled and torn, and therefore, this person should be dead.

Then the smell hit her. How she had missed it up to this point had to be due to shock. The stench was unlike anything she had ever experienced. As if catching up, her gorge began to rise as well.

Covering her mouth, Rose continued to back up as the man slowly made it all the way to his feet. He took an unsteady step in her direction and raised his hands as if to reach for her. The mouth opened and a harsh wheezing sound escaped.

“That can’t be,” Rose breathed as she backed up another step, bringing Imp and Circe along with her.

She was still backing away when the ferns alongside the road and to her left began to rustle. A figure emerged that looked even worse than the man she had in front of her. This one had a flap of meat dangling where the left cheek should be. She could see the bloody teeth through the ugly hole. To make this one even more improbable, the left arm had been ripped away right at the elbow joint.

Turning on her heel and giving both leashes a good yank, Rose took off at a sprint. She was halfway up the hill when the oddest thought hit her. She tried to brush it away, but her mind refused to let go.

Early on, after she had taken to running, she had entered in a fun run just before Halloween. In this event, individuals were dressed in rags and made up to look hideous; the object had been to reach the finish line without having the flag worn at the waist torn away by one of the “zombies” that sprinkled the course. Adding more fun to the event, if your flag was snagged, then you were now one of the so-called infected.

Of course, that had all been in fun. And Rose had fallen victim to a man who had been hiding behind some stacked hay bales. She had just sprinted away from a small pack and, after losing them in the massive corn maze, she had taken just a moment to catch her breath. That had been her downfall.

“Zombies?” she managed to gasp as she reached the crest of the hill.

She practically skidded to a stop as she looked out across the parking lot that was just below. She saw her car as well as several others. However, she also saw something that defied reason.

People were streaming from the entrance of the local zoo. She could not imagine a scenario that would put zombies in the actual zoo proper—if that was what this madness might be. Then she remembered how the back side of the zoo was bordered by the woods of Washington Park and how the zoo train ran on a circuit that took it around the fringe. There was a tunnel that led into the zoo from the park.

As her eyes scanned the scene, she saw several dark figures on the pavement of the massive parking lot. Then, her eyes stopped and fixed on one scene in particular.

One of the local mass transit busses was stopped a good twenty or so feet from the transit boarding area. As she watched, a woman fell out backwards through the open door and landed awkwardly on the ground. A young man was wrapped around her. Rose could hear the screams as this woman was mauled.

Similar scenes were playing out all over the place. A low moan from behind reminded her of what she had been fleeing just a few moments ago. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the two whatever-they-were that had been pursuing her as they rounded the corner down the hill a ways.

While there were only two back the way she had come, and a hellish landscape of violence down below, her car was down in that lot. She gave another slight pull on the leashes after she spotted the exact location of her vehicle. This would not be a time to have to search for where she had parked.

Rose unzipped and reached inside the little knick-knack pack she wore to keep things like her car keys and little doggie waste bags. She hated when she ran trails and stepped in piles left behind by inconsiderate owners and vowed that she would never be that person; thus, she always kept a roll of the handy little bio-degradable grab bags when she and the dogs went out.

Grabbing her keys, Rose wove through the high brush and ground cover that was supposed to deter people from tromping around in the landscaped park surroundings. She emerged from some waist high bushes and into the actual parking lot and came to a halt.

The scene before her was beyond any nightmare she could imagine. There were people on the ground being ripped apart by others who seemed deaf to the pleas and shrieks of their victims. She’d never been into horror movies or anything of that sort, but something about this rang a bell from a movie that she might have seen at a Halloween party.

“Zombies?” she breathed again as her wide-eyed stare scanned the parking lot in search of the easiest route to her car.

Meanwhile, Imp and Circe were both reacting to this in their own way. Circe had pressed against Rose, ears flat and tail tucked in between her legs. Imp was barking furiously, the hackles around his neck standing straight up. In between his furious barks, he snarled and growled in a way that Rose had never before seen from her dog.

“Crap,” Rose gasped.

Several of the people—or zombies, or whatever they were—had turned their attention in her general direction. Rose saw her opening and took off, giving the leashes a hard tug as she did. Circe was right at her side, but Imp was lunging at every one of the horrific creatures that came within a few yards.

“Imp!” Rose snapped when the agitated Border Collie lunged in the opposite direction that they were running, almost pulling Rose off her feet.

The dog did not even seem to notice the yank and continued to try and attack a heavyset man with blood all over his chest, his tattered shirt revealing sections where bites had been savagely ripped from his fleshy middle. Fresh blood dripped from his mouth, and he swiped at the dog who dodged the awkward attack with ease. A handful of these zombies (she had no other idea what to call them) were closing in, and in a few seconds would be between her and the car. Rose had no choice; she dropped Imp’s leash and took off with Circe still at her side.

She reached her car and took a deep breath to steady her nerves. Her hands were shaking, making it almost impossible to get the key in the lock of her 1983 Honda Civic. At last, she managed to get the door open, but one of the zombies was now just a few feet away and rounding the rear of her car.

She noticed the peculiar filmed over eyes with the black tracers, and her mind made a note to bank that as important information to process later. This particular zombie had several bites on one arm, and she noticed that it looked like it had been bandaged at some point. Again, that was something she could think about later, right now she needed to get away from this place.

Rose yanked her car door open and was almost knocked over as Circe leapt in past her. The terrified dog ducked into the floorboard area on the passenger side of the car and curled into a tight ball. Rose jumped in to the driver’s seat and pulled the door shut. It made an ugly crunching sound. She looked up to see one arm of the male zombie caught in the door, its hand was opening and closing just a few inches from her face.

Taking another deep breath, Rose slammed her shoulder into the door, sending it flying open and knocking the terrible creature over. She paused for just a moment to watch as the man struggled to regain his feet. The lack of coordination was almost comical. It sort of flailed around until it ended up on its side and then eventually its stomach. As it struggled to its feet, Rose slammed the door shut. A thud came from the rear of the car and Rose saw three more of these zombie-like people in her rearview mirror.

For a moment, she was absolutely transfixed by the terrible wounds these people had suffered. They should not be able to function. A whine from her right snapped her back to the situation at hand as Circe made a high-pitched noise that sounded almost human. The message was clear: fear.

“I’m right there with you, girl,” Rose said as she put the key in the ignition. For the briefest second, the thought that her car would do something stereotypical like fail to turn over, ran through her mind.

The engine came to life as usual. Rose absently patted the dashboard and put the car into first gear, pulling away from the horrors that had been pounding on the rear of her car. She felt the car lurch as she drove over something.

As she started for the exit of the parking lot, a sound broke through her haze of panic and dread. She looked to the left and saw Imp running in circles around a cluster of the zombies that were feasting on a downed woman. The scene came in such clarity that it was almost as if her gaze zoomed in on it. Rose saw long strands of something being ripped from the woman’s middle. None of the attackers were taking any notice of the dog as it barked, lunging in and out as if it were trying to draw the zombies away from the poor, doomed woman.

Veering towards the scene, Rose had to try one last time to get her dog to come away from this nightmare. She pulled within feet of the carnage and threw her door open.

“Imp! Here, boy!” Rose yelled.

The dog stopped and turned to the sound of his master. Cocking his head, he seemed to look back at the awful goings-on just a few feet away, and then back to Rose and the open car door. In a flash, the black and white Border Collie sprinted for the car. Rose managed to lean back just in time as he bounded over her and landed with incredible grace in the passenger’s seat.

“Good boy,” Rose gasped as she slammed the door shut and took off as fast as her trusty car could go.

In moments, she was on Highway 26. It was late in the day, and the evening traffic was worse than normal as she headed west towards her home in Beaverton, Oregon. Beaverton was one of many suburban centers that made up the outlying metro area of Portland. Over the past ten years, it had exploded. Intel was no longer the biggest company, that honor now belonged to Nike where Rose worked in the accounting department.

She considered heading over to the campus, but thought better of it. With this insanity unfolding, she just wanted to get home. As she drove, Rose turned on the radio. She realized right then that this was bigger than she might have guessed. The pop station in Portland was running a news broadcast warning people to return to their homes. The report assured that local National Guard units were being deployed to help deal with this unrest.

She fished her Bluetooth out of her pocket and quickly brought up her sister’s phone number and hit the ‘call’ button. There was the usual pause, and then a recorded voice came on the line.

“We are sorry, all circuits are busy now. Please hang up and try your call again.”

Rose smacked her steering wheel in frustration and ended the call. As she drove, she glanced at other drivers. They all had looks of disbelief on their faces. She knew that each of them was hearing the same broadcast. She knew this because Rose had hit the ‘scan’ button. Every single station was carrying the exact same thing.

She cursed herself. It had become a source of pride for her that she no longer listened to commercial radio or watched television. Of course, that had put her out of touch with the news of the world, but it had simply become too bleak and dreary. Every day there was a new scandal, a new atrocity being committed. Murder, war, terrorism, hit-and-runs, rapes, child abductions…and worse; to Rose, this was the decline of the Western Civilization being played out to its slow and eventually tragic conclusion.

She had turned to her music playlists, finding comfort in the familiar. And with training becoming the focus of her new life, Rose had simply lost touch with society. Often was the time when she would visit Violet and her sister would be ranting or agonizing over some sad story that was currently playing out.

“How can you not know about this?” she would say incredulously.

Each time, Rose simply shrugged and repeated her mantra that ignorance was bliss. At the moment, she was cursing her obliviousness to what had obviously been something horrible that was more than just a problem in her hometown of Portland, Oregon. From the news, this was global. Could it be that large portions of China, Japan, and several other countries in Asia were in a complete state of blackout? And the president was being evacuated from Washington and relocated to some secret underground bunker? Add in the fact that there was some sort of military operation being undertaken to rescue his daughter from someplace in Ohio?

“This is madness,” Rose said with a shake of her head as she pulled into her driveway.

Rose lived in a small house just off of Cedar Hills Boulevard. It was a two bedroom, harkening back to the days when her and Frank had actually discussed the possibility of having children. After their separation, she had been thankful of the day that the doctor had told her she could not ever bare any. She was smart enough at the time to also know that might be something she would possibly regret later, but her mind was far from entertaining any ideas of getting into some sort of serious relationship, much less having children. For now, she was more than happy to be Auntie Rose to Violet’s little girl and boy.

Crystal Spring. The name had been a source of contention between Violet and her husband. Trevor Spring had insisted that it sounded too much like a porn star’s name. He had wanted Tracy. He had been basically henpecked into accepting Tracy as their daughter’s middle name. At age five, Crystal Tracy Spring had begun school this year. Because she was so bright, it was less than two months into the school year when the girl had been moved up to first grade. There had even been talk of bypassing first grade, but Trevor had drawn the line. It was bad enough that the girl was already the youngest, he insisted that she needed school to develop her social skills. He had also fought against home schooling.

Jacob Spring, the youngest child, was two years old, and more than a handful as he showed the same degree of exceptional intelligence as his older sister. Jacob was Rose’s secret favorite between the children. Unlike Crystal who seemed far too serious for a child her age, Jacob was a clown.

Rose turned off her car and took a look around. Her neighborhood seemed just as dull and normal as it did any other day. It was a jarring contrast to what she had just escaped up at Washington Park.

Just up the narrow street, she saw one of the neighbors in his front yard. He looked to be inspecting his flower bed. That was what Rose believed all the way up to the point when the man pushed through the hedges in front of the living room window and began to paw at it like an animal.

Almost on cue, Imp’s head whipped in the direction of the neighbor a few houses down and began to growl low in his throat. Rose clipped his leash on before opening the door and tapped the dog on his flank. Imp turned to face her, and his ears dropped. He moved his head close to hers in that special way that he had of expressing affection. Unlike Circe, who was a licker, Imp did this thing where he nudged a person’s face and snuffled their ear. That had become known as his seal of approval.

“You need to be quiet,” Rose whispered. Despite the fact that this neighbor was three houses away, she felt that even the slightest sound might draw it her direction.

Opening the door quietly, Rose only had to give a slight tug on the leashes for the two dogs to follow. They exited the car, Circe remaining almost pinned to Rose’s legs, Imp moving away just a bit as if placing himself in between his master and the nearby threat.

After easing the door shut on her car, she hurried up the walkway to her front door, her fingers already flipping to the house key. Closing the door behind her, Rose gasped when she realized that she had been holding her breath the entire time.

“Where the hell have you been?” a voice barked, causing Rose to jump.

Instantly, both Imp and Circe began to bark furiously. Having dropped their leashes as she entered and shut the door, both dogs took off into the living room.

“Get off me, you fucking mutts!” the man barked.

“Frank,” Rose hissed as she stepped from the entry hall into her living room where she discovered Frank trying to get up from her couch.

He was swatting and kicking out at the dogs. Both were lunging and barking at this intruder. While Circe’s reaction was obviously more one of surprise, and perhaps just a bit of alarm, Imp was once again growling, the hackles raised around his neck and his teeth flashing as he darted in and out, snapping at the man who kicked out savagely, catching the Border Collie in the ribs and sending him sliding across the hardwood floor with a yelp.

“Don’t you dare hurt my babies!” Rose yelled as she rushed at the man.

Frank pushed her away and moved behind the couch. “Then call them off or I swear I’ll kill those fuckers.”

It took her a moment to get them both back under control. Imp was limping a bit and seemed to have some of the bluster taken from him by that vicious kick. She would have to check him as soon as she got rid of Frank. Closing the door after leading both dogs to her bedroom, she returned to the living room to see Frank once more seated on the couch like he belonged there.

She had not really noticed at first, but now that things were settled down just a notch, she saw that his left arm was bandaged up with gauze. Blood was already seeping through, turning a large oval section of the bandage an ugly shade of reddish-brown.

“What happened to your arm?” Rose asked. Then she felt her stomach turn. Frank’s eyes! While they had not filmed over with that ugly pus color, they looked bloodshot…in black!

“One of those sick bastards bit me.” Frank made a dismissive wave of his hand. “Gave her something to consider, though.”

Rose shuddered. Frank had never actually hit her, but he had shoved her more than once; and then there were the times that he had grabbed her by the arms hard enough to leave bruises as he pinned her against a wall or backed her into a corner. This was usually when he would warn her not to “push him any farther” if she knew what was good for her.

“Get out,” Rose whispered.

“Excuse me?” Frank barked with disdain dripping from his words. “Are you telling me to get out of our house?”

“It isn’t ours,” Rose reminded. “It’s mine. I make the payments…and it is in the divorce papers.” She had added that last bit as an afterthought.

“You gonna play that card, Rosie?” Frank knew that she hated being called that. He had done so early in their relationship, and she had made her thoughts on the matter very clear. Ever since then, he had used it any time that he wanted to piss her off or simply get under her skin.

She was about to say something, when a dull thud sounded at the front door. Rose spun, but it was Frank who bounded to his feet. He shoved past Rose, shooting a glare over his shoulder. “You expecting somebody, Rosie? A new boyfriend maybe?”

Rose was about to say that he was being an idiot, but before she could utter a word, Frank had thrown open the door. She could not see past him, but when the man stumbled back, Rose let out an involuntary shriek. The neighbor from down the street had ahold of Frank. The two men fell to the floor in a confused heap of arms and legs.

Then…something happened that frightened Rose more than anything that she had witnessed up to this point: Frank screamed.

She went to move forward, but when the neighbor’s head came up, his mouth ripping away a chunk from Frank’s throat, she froze. Rose could only watch in shock and horror as blood spurted in a red jet, leaving an ugly splatter on the tan wall of the entry hallway. Frank’s scream ended abruptly, turning into some sort of horrible, wet choking noise. She could see blood spewing from his mouth in a crimson froth.

From her bedroom, she could hear Imp barking like crazy. The problem Rose was currently faced with was the fact that the struggle in her entry hall was between her and her bedroom door. All she could do was watch as the neighbor—she thought his name was Elvis Bentley or something like that—tore into Frank with a ravenous violence.

Then, almost too suddenly, Frank ceased struggling. In that instant, the neighbor stopped the attack and looked up, its rheumy eyes seeming to lock on to Rose. The man began to climb to his feet.

And then the impossible happened.

Frank sat up.

3

It Begins: Jason Edwards

Jason Edwards stepped through the gate. It wasn’t much, but in that single step, he had gone from being an inmate and “guest” of the Oregon Department of Corrections to being a free man. Well, sort of anyway. He still had a parole officer to report to, but he knew that was going to be temporary. He would be walking the straight line this time.

This latest stint down had cost him everything. Apparently that had been what it took for him to decide that he needed to make some major life changes. He’d walked away from the gang inside. That had been tough. The subsequent assaults to try to get him to change his mind had been futile. If nothing else, they had convinced him that he was on the right path.

The large city bus pulled up to the stop and he climbed aboard. The driver gave him that look. It was obvious.

The old version of Jason would have said something nasty to the obscenely overweight man who had given him the stink eye as Jason swiped the state-issued card that would provide him with bus fare for the next forty-eight hours. This version simply smiled politely and walked to the rear of the bus.

Sitting down, he took a moment to look around. A mirror just above the mid-bus exit revealed a reflection that made him smile. He had gone in for this latest and final trip down in terrible shape. The smoking and the drinking had made him a scrawny, tall man who looked almost twenty years older than his actual thirty. To add insult to injury, he had been sporting a rather pronounced pot-belly that made his tall frame look even more bizarre.

He had hit the track and the weight room every chance he got. In addition, he had put in for the vegetarian diet. It was only a real sacrifice on Fridays when the standard hamburgers and fries dinner was put on the line. Still, he saw this as a test of his discipline. If he could say no to burgers and fries, he could do just about anything.

Now, at age thirty-seven, he was in probably the best shape of his life. Not only that, but he had enrolled in some programs this time that helped him write a resume after obtaining his GED. An old friend had even offered him a job on a construction crew. After checking in with his parole officer, he would be heading down to the job site to fill out the paperwork. This would be another new experience. In all his life, Jason had never worked “on the books.” He had always been paid under the table in order to avoid the county being able to get their hands on his money to pay off his fines. This time would be different. He would live within the confines of the system.

It had been seven years this time. An old home invasion he had actually committed before his last stretch had come back to haunt him. One of the guys on that ride had been busted for some major shit. He had dropped dimes on everybody in the crew in order to get a deal put on the table that would not see him strapped to a gurney and given the lethal needle.

Jason stared out the window as the bus rumbled past a ratty looking strip mall. He spotted a coffee shack and his mouth began to water in response. Then he saw something else that made him question his eyesight. Reaching up, he tugged the cord that rang the chime indicating to the driver that he needed to stop at the next bus stop.

He jumped up as the bus slowed. The driver seemed to give the brakes an extra hard tap which sent him lurching forward. Jason’s eyes shot up and locked on those of the driver as he scowled in his big rearview mirror.

“Not worth it, pal,” he whispered to himself.

The doors opened with a hiss. Jason gripped his small carry bag and jumped off. He would catch the next one. He still had a few hours before he needed to be at his PO’s office. He had seen something, and if he saw what he thought he saw, maybe he would start off on a good foot with whoever got his case. Besides, when he got on that next bus, it wouldn’t be right in front of the Columbia River Correctional Institution. Maybe the driver would just treat him like every other passenger.

Jason ran across the lot and headed for the alley that ran alongside the strip mall. There was a dingy cinder block wall that made that alley along the side of the shops and allowed just enough room for a pedestrian or bicycle.

As he got close, he could hear something odd. It sounded like wet slurping or smacking, like somebody with really bad table manners. That had him puzzled. He rounded the corner and froze.

He had believed that he had spotted a possible rape in progress. He had seen the figure grab the other and drag it down. Jason had just assumed…

“My God,” he breathed.

A body was, in fact, sprawled on the asphalt. There was a dark pool spreading out from it. However, the attacker was not raping the victim. In truth, the attacker was a woman. But her face was a dark mask. He knew it was blood despite the early morning hour preventing any real light from pushing back the gloomy shadows that struggled to maintain their foothold for just a while longer.

The victim was on his back. Despite the relative darkness, Jason could see that the man had been ripped open at the belly. The woman had had her face buried in that ugly tear until he arrived on the scene. Now, her head was up, something dark and thick dripping from her mouth and landing with a wet splat on the concrete.

Jason backed up and turned to run, but a bright flash of white light blinded him momentarily and caused him to halt. The light blinked off and a lady emerged from her car. She eyed Jason with suspicion. After all, it was barely six in the morning, and here he was at the edge of the alley running alongside the strip mall, caught in the headlights just as he was obviously about to flee.

The woman emerging from the car was perhaps in her late twenties. She was a bit heavy with long dark hair pulled back in a bun. She had dark eyes and Jason guessed her to be Hispanic.

“I don’t want any trouble,” the woman warned in a shaky voice that confirmed his suspicion as to her nationality. Her hand went into her pocket and emerged gripping a phone.

“Call the cops!” Jason exclaimed.

He glanced over his shoulder just as the woman in the alley was taking her first steps his direction. But then the man on the ground sat up, his insides spilling from the hole torn in his gut. The lady with the phone looked confused.

“Call them…NOW!” Jason spun and backed up, his eyes not daring to leave the sight of the pair heading his way from that dark alley. He heard an audible gasp as the pair emerged.

Good, he thought, now maybe she will call—

The thought vanished when he heard the thud and a soft clatter. He spun to see the woman lying unconscious on the ground, her phone a few feet away where it had skittered after her hand relaxed and let go.

Without giving it another thought, he ran to the woman, scooped her up, and carried her to the car. The driver’s side door was still open and he shoved her in, pushing her awkwardly over to the passenger’s seat of the old model Buick.

As he put the car in gear and stomped on the gas, he had the briefest thought. Maybe I would have been safer in prison. He looked in the rearview mirror as the two figures lurched and stumbled after him in futility.

He went a few blocks and pulled in to a fast food place. He briefly registered the fact that the place was closed despite the sign that read “Open 24 Hours” that spun lazily under the main marquee.

Looking over at the unconscious woman, Jason sighed in resignation. He’d heard news reports the past several days talking about some sort of weird infection or something that was causing people to attack each other in horrible ways. It hadn’t been long before the “Z” word started making circulation.

Gritting his teeth, Jason picked the woman’s purse up off the floor of the passenger’s side. He glanced again to see if the woman might be waking. He felt a tingle of discomfort as he opened the purse and rummaged through it until he found what he was looking for: a wallet.

Opening the orange wallet that practically exploded in his hands from being stuffed beyond capacity, Jason pulled the driver’s license out and read the details.

“Juanita Reyes, born October thirteenth, Nineteen eighty-six. Address, Two-one-oh-four Northeast Flanders Street.” Jason tossed the wallet and license back into the purse. “Not too far from my old hood, Juanita.”

Jason took that as a good omen. This lady lived someplace that he could find without help. Pulling out into the light traffic of the morning, he switched on the radio.

“…as reports continue to come in at an alarming rate. The CDC has issued a statement that this sickness being called the ‘Blue Death’ by some, is quickly reaching epidemic proportions. However, they were equally quick to dismiss claims that this was what some are calling the start of the…” there was a nervous titter before the voice read the next bit, “…Zombie Apocalypse. Dr. Linda Sing had this to say.”

There was a slight pause, and then the audio resumed. “Those rumors of the dead coming back and attacking the living are beyond ludicrous. Ignoring the pure physiological impossibility, there is simply no way this can be considered with any seriousness.”

“Well, I don’t know about the old doc, but I think folks are getting a bit carried away. We will be back with thirty minutes of your favorite classic rock. In fact, I think in honor of Dr. Sing and the folks at the CDC in Atlanta, we will kick off your next rock block with a two-fer from The Grateful Dead right after a few messages.”

A loud and far-too-excited voice began to prattle on about the deals at a car dealership, but Jason had tuned it out. He was considering what he had seen. Unlike many of his fellow inmates that oddly enough could not get enough of Harry Potter or Twilight despite their convict status, Jason had been turned on to zombie fiction by a grizzled old man who he never saw without a book in his hand.

The old man was down for life on a murder beef, but his passion back in his youth had apparently been movies by some guy named Romero. He had passed off a book called Zombie Fallout one day. Judging by the title, Jason had expected it to be something to do with nukes or radiation.

He could not have been more wrong.

He was up all that night reading. Jason was thrilled to discover that it was a series. He found that he really could relate to that Talbot guy. And that proved to be the tip of the iceberg. There were hundreds of titles when it came to zombies. Some were better than others, and some were just downright ridiculous.

The last year, he must have read forty or more titles when it came to zombies. As unlikely and far-fetched as it seemed, this was exactly what was happening. Of course there was no way he could actually say such a thing out loud; he would be committed before the end of the day.

No, Jason decided, he had to act like everything was fine. At least for now. Once he got this woman home safely, he would go to the parole officer and do his check in. That would buy him a week. In that time, he would either be proven right, or he would be smacking himself for being such an idiot.

A soft moan to his right got Jason’s attention. He decided that he needed to be proactive and start talking to this woman so that, hopefully, she wouldn’t freak out.

“Hey, you okay, Juanita?” Jason spoke softly.

He was only a few blocks from her home, perhaps if he pulled in and then got out of the car and just walked away, she wouldn’t freak out. The last thing he needed was to be accused of kidnapping some woman. That would get him right back in the lockup. Even worse, he would be facing charges that would ensure his time inside would be more unpleasant than normal.

Jason turned on Flanders and spied the house. It was a blue two-story and had that typical Sixties-era look to it that was the norm in this area. The yard was well tended and a small scooter leaning by the porch hinted at children.

Jason brought the car to a stop by the curb and shut off the engine. Hopping out, he grabbed his bag, slung it over his shoulder, and then went over to help the woman out of the car. He tried to put on his best smile. The look of confusion on her face battled with fear as she tentatively accepted his hand and climbed out of the car. As they walked up to her porch, he could sense her tension. Crap, Jason sighed inwardly, she thinks I’m a freak.

“I brought you home after you passed out. I don’t want any trouble, and I could not leave you back there.”

“That woman,” Juanita gasped. “She was…”

Jason watched the emotions war for purchase on the woman’s face. He was slightly relieved that she had seen what he had seen back in the parking lot. Maybe he would get out of this without any hassles. She opened the front door and he nudged her forward so that she could go inside, He had turned to leave when a hand clutched his arm and pulled him back around.

“Please don’t go,” the woman almost begged.

“Look, Juanita, I gotta get to my PO before ten this morning or it’s my ass. I just got out of prison, and ain’t looking to go back.”

If nothing else, Jason figured the woman would be glad to be rid of him as soon as he mentioned prison. Most folks did not want to associate with felons. The funny thing was how often people interacted with the men and women who had done time without even realizing it. It wasn’t like they all wore signs or something. And while there were certainly a fair share of them who were shining examples of the negative stereotype, there were actually more who just wanted to take another try at being part of the real world.

He actually felt bad that it had taken three trips for his own awakening. However, he was committed, and that meant making the appointment with his parole officer. He seriously doubted that whoever had his case was going to want to hear that he was late because of a zombie apocalypse.

“And how are you going to get there?” Juanita asked.

Jason was actually taken aback by that question. He had been so prepared for a negative reaction and a frightened dismissal that he stood there with his mouth hanging open for several seconds.

“I can drive you,” Juanita offered with a warm and genuine smile.

If Jason was confused before, he was now absolutely dumbstruck…and just a little bit suspicious. He couldn’t help it. For the past several years, he had not seen anybody offer something that did not have strings attached.

“It is all the way downtown,” Jason finally said. Nobody liked driving in downtown traffic, and it was getting to be close to eight or so in the morning. This would be the worst possible time to be driving in the grid.

“Then we best get moving.” Juanita pulled his little bag of personal effects from his hand and set them inside the front door before shutting it and locking it. She hurried over to the driver’s seat after opening the passenger side door for him and waving that he join her. The drive seemed longer in the uncomfortable silence. Juanita had turned on the radio, but all of the news reports were clearly getting her nervous. Jason wanted to broach the topic of what had happened, but he simply did not know how.

As the exit for downtown came up, Jason was more than a little surprised at the relatively light flow of traffic. When they reached the series of one-way streets, Juanita drove without needing to be told where to go. This caused Jason to suppress a smile.

It was not until they pulled into the parking garage right across the street from the Justice Center that Jason turned in the seat and faced the woman. “Who you got in the system?”

Juanita actually blushed. “A few people actually. My brother Tito is doing county time on a UUMV, and my sister Rosa is down for meth. I have a cousin named Juan Hoya who is in and out so much that I couldn’t even begin to tell you.”

“So, you want to come in, or do you want to wait in the car?”

Juanita looked around the parking garage and then back to Jason. Her wide eyes gave up her answer before she opened her mouth. “I don’t want to stay here alone.”

With a nod, Jason hopped out of the car. Together, he and Juanita made it to the parole officer with plenty of time to spare. After signing in and waiting almost three hours, a woman from behind the desk called his name. Jason stood, stretching the kinks out in his back and trudged to the counter.

“You have been scheduled for next Thursday at eight AM,” the woman said without even looking up. She shoved an envelope through the slot under the protective glass. “You have been given a bus pass and an Oregon Trail card that has been credited with a hundred and ten dollars in food stamps.”

“That took three hours?” Jason snapped, unable to bite back his anger.

When the woman did not answer and simply continued to stare at her computer monitor, Jason grabbed the envelope and stomped back to where Juanita was tapping at her phone in obvious frustration. The woman looked up, her face was sapped of color and tears were welling up in her eyes.

“What’s up?” Jason asked warily.

“There are reports of attacks at Washington Park. Even worse, supposedly something has happened at the zoo,” Juanita sniffed.

Jason didn’t get it at first. What was such a big deal about something happening at the zoo?

“The zoo was hosting two schools that came for a field trip.”

That sentence sunk in and Jason winced. He could handle just about anything, but if animals or kids were involved, his sensitivity was raised several degrees.

“We need to get out of downtown.” Jason took her by the arm.

They exited out onto the streets of downtown Portland. There was a sense of hustle, but it was tempered with something else. In a way, it reminded Jason of when a riot was about to go down inside. Everybody usually knew it was coming—even the guards. There was this calm before the storm that crept in and took root in the pit of the stomach. That was what he felt now. This was bad. He didn’t know if it would be anything like those crazy books, but he was certain of a few things. If you thought a storm was coming, you prepared. If it blew past or turned out to be nothing like the forecasters said, then you were ready for next time.

“We need to head to the store,” Jason said as they entered the relative darkness of the covered parking garage.

They climbed the stairs to the third level where the car was parked. Just as they exited the stairwell, a shriek came from somewhere. Jason’s head was on a swivel as he tried to look every direction at once. He didn’t see anything. The problem was that sound acted strange in the tomb-like atmosphere of the parking garage.

Hurrying their pace to just under a jog, the two made it to the car. Juanita fumbled with the keys while Jason continued to keep an eye out for trouble. When his door opened, Jason jumped in, slammed the door, and activated the lock.

“Go!’ he urged.

“Don’t you want to see—” Juanita began.

“We can’t save everybody,” Jason said with grim seriousness.

The rest of the drive was in more of that uncomfortable silence. It was strange, because while he was doing time, Jason had craved silence.

They exited the freeway once again and wove through a residential neighborhood that was an unsettling void of any activity. At last they turned one more corner and the familiar red sign came into view.

“Holy crap,” Jason gasped.

The parking lot was full. People were running into the store…literally. He felt his old instincts crop up. This was going to be like walking through one of those very same riots that he had just been thinking of a few moments ago.

Juanita pulled in and stopped the car. She turned to Jason with a look of concern on her face that spoke volumes.

“Stay here. Keep it locked until I get back. Understand?” Jason said, being sure to lock eyes with the woman so that he could gauge whether or not she was going to be okay. After a deep breath and slow exhale, Juanita nodded.

“You should take my bank card,” Juanita said, fishing in her purse. “Something tells me that you are going to need more than a hundred bucks or whatever they gave you on your Oregon Trail card.”

“And when they ask me who Juanita is?”

“They won’t. You just swipe it at the checkout. The pin is five, eight, eight, four.”

“Why are you trusting me with this?” Jason asked, struggling with odd feelings that swirled inside him at this peculiar display of confidence that he would not do something dishonest.

“You scooped me off the ground and took me home,” Juanita said simply. “You could have done a million things, but you did that one thing that tells me you are a good guy.”

“And me being an ex-con?”

“That cousin that I told you I had no idea where he was that went in and out a bunch of times? Juan? He is a good guy. He just made some bad choices. But I believe that, given the chance, he could get himself in order and live a good life. He just reaches a point where he loses hope and does something stupid.” Juanita patted Jason on the hand and gave him a gentle shove towards the store.

Without another word, Jason got out and stared across the parking lot. His eyes were searching for anything out of the ordinary; well, besides the whole scene of insanity as people poured into the store like maniacs.

As he crossed, he saw a few people on the ground in between some of the cars. What he did not see was somebody ripping their guts out or anything of that sort. Nope, these people had been straight up assaulted and left to bleed out. That told him what he needed to know as he walked into the store.

It was almost unsettling when the electronic doors slid open as he reached the sensor. The wave of sound that poured out was a mix of shouts, screams, and cries for help. A person wearing an apron that marked them as an employee ran out past him pushing a cart that was loaded to almost overflowing. What Jason noticed right away was a lack of any sort of bags or anything that might indicate that the person had paid for the groceries.

When Jason glanced to his left, he saw two registers that were actually manned. The lines at both were stretching down the aisles. However, more people were taking advantage of the madness and simply bolting than were standing in line to pay. Jason pulled a cart free and turned towards the grocery department.

As he reached the produce aisle, he realized that he might want to pass that area by since it was possible that they might lose power in all this. Fresh fruit and vegetables, things like meat and dairy, those were all items that would likely have to be used now. If this blew over in a few days, they could worry about things like that then. What they would need right this minute were things like the non-perishables. That meant canned and dried goods.

Turning left, he paused at the end of the aisle and looked at the coffee sitting on the shelf. He grabbed a few bags and added in some non-dairy creamer just in case Juanita used it. From there it was just a matter of pushing and shoving his way past other people.

Jason saw that an elderly lady was standing in the middle of the aisle when he turned down the water and soda aisle. She was just standing there with a confused look on her face. She looked like some bag lady or something in her ratty clothes and hair matted down in some places, sticking up in others. As he passed her, he noticed a foul stink that almost made him gag.

As he spied the rows of bottled water, he only momentarily took notice of how many idiots were grabbing soda. That would not help when real thirst set in. Water was what he wanted, and he elbowed past a few other men and women who actually moved away a bit and gave him some room when they saw who it was that had pushed.

He had planned on getting all the prison tattoos covered when he got on his feet, but right now he looked like every movie bad guy/convict character there was with his “White Power” and “100% Good Wood” down each forearm, along with the assorted demons, naked ladies, and cryptic signs that announced his particular (and former) affiliation. But if it got him a little room right now, he would take full advantage.

Jason began scooping twenty-four packs of bottled water into his cart and then stacking them neatly. He decided that four cases should hold them over for a few days if something happened. He was actually more concerned about food.

A few minutes later, he was in the canned fruits and vegetable section. He grabbed cases of canned corn, beans, fruit cocktail, and then the soup. When the cart was full to the point of becoming difficult to push, he moved toward the front of the store. He saw that the lines had actually gotten longer despite the fact that many people were simply heading out the door. However, he also saw a pair of store employees standing near the exit with the phones. It did not take him long to figure out that they were taking pictures of everybody who exited without paying.

With a sigh, Jason turned and headed to the end of the line. He had been standing there for about twenty minutes or so when a store employee walked up. The woman wore a badge on her shirt that read: How may I help you? My name is Colleen.

“Go ahead,” the woman sighed when Jason and a few of the people standing in line with him turned to face her. She looked exhausted and her eyes were red-rimmed. He was pretty sure that she had been crying very recently.

“No thanks,” Jason said with a shake of his head. “I saw the clerks up front snapping pictures. I’d just as soon not end up on the local news.” This earned some mumbles of agreement from the people standing with him.

The woman reached into her apron pocket and produced a cell phone. Or, rather, she produced what was left of one. The screen was a series of spider web cracks. It had obviously been stomped.

“We’re done. I am pulling my people before anybody else gets hurt,” Colleen said.

Jason looked around and realized that he didn’t see another employee anywhere. Then he saw her again. It was the foul smelling old lady from the water and soda aisle. She was shuffling along across the aisle, but then she would stop and turn and take a step. A person pushed past and she lunged, sprawling on the floor in a graceless heap.

The store manager turned and gasped. She turned back to Jason and the others, offering a weak smile. “Just go, you aren’t going to be in trouble. There is something wrong. As soon as I get to my office, I am going to announce it on the PA system, I am telling my people to get what they need and to go.”

That seemed to satisfy all those who had heard. People broke from the line and started for the exit. Jason fell in, joining the exodus. He was almost to the head of the aisle of the line he’d been standing in when a scream rose above the cacophony of the store. Turning, Jason saw the bag lady yanking on Colleen’s arm. She had it clutched tightly, her hands gripping it in a way that reminded Jason of somebody with a juicy rib at a barbecue. Then, the bag lady bit down.

Jason could only watch in amazed fascination at what he was seeing. A part of his mind was trying desperately to activate his instinct for flight, but what he was watching had him transfixed.

He’d read so many of those books. He’d even had a few just-for-fun chats with some of the fellas. The idea of a zombie was just too much for anybody to take seriously. Yet, here he was, and there could be no other explanation for the things that he’d witnessed today.

A bright red jet of blood arced away as the bag lady tore loose a piece of flesh and began to chew as if everything was perfectly normal. He had not realized it, but Jason had begun to actually creep closer to the scene; his feet making slow, deliberate progress toward the fiction-turned-reality.

Jason had tuned out Colleen’s screams and was focused solely on the bag lady. Her eyes were covered with a milky film, and instead of regular red, bloodshot eyes, hers were laced with black. There was no expression on its face as it chewed while Colleen writhed and struggled to get away. An idea came and Jason acted. Reaching into his shopping cart, he grabbed a can of sliced pineapple and advanced on the woman.

As he neared, the smell became almost overwhelming. Holding his breath, Jason moved in fast and brought the can down on the bag lady’s head. By the third strike, all he’d managed to do was hurt his hand. However, the bag lady was now paying attention to him. She was struggling to her feet. Jason could see the divot in the front of her skull that he had managed to make.

“Okay, so scratch the idea that just bashing them in the head does anything.”

Jason began to back away, reaching behind him and quickly turning his cart so that he could back up and keep it between him and this bag lady zombie that was taking slow, unsteady steps as it approached. He also noticed how her head moved in jerky, bird-like fits.

Reaching the end of the aisle, he looked around frantically as people ran past, all of them paying no mind to the woman on the floor bleeding profusely several feet away and the man with all the tattoos trying to beat down a bag lady. His eyes came to rest on the end cap display. With spring right around the corner, the barbecue season was almost here.

Jason grabbed the utensil package and ripped it open. He took a deep breath and stepped out from behind his cart. The bag lady took a step closer and was now in arm’s reach.

“This better work,” he muttered. With one hard thrust, he shoved the pronged fork utensil into the eye of the bag lady. There was a moment’s resistance, and then he was able to push through.

It was instantaneous. The bag lady simply crumpled to the ground. Jason looked around, expecting some display of outrage…anything. People were just shoving past and paying this no mind. At some point, the store manager had climbed to her feet or simply crawled away.

Deciding that he could risk grabbing one more item on this run, Jason spun the cart around and ventured further into the store. In a moment, he was in the toy department. A few more aisles and he arrived at his destination. There wasn’t much to choose from in the athletic equipment area, but he saw what he wanted and grabbed the aluminum bat from where it hung on display.

He would have to come back for some more during a second run. He knew what he wanted, but he was still on the fence. If he did this, he would be crossing a line that might land him in serious trouble.

Suddenly, Jason laughed out loud. He’d just shoved a barbecue fork into the eye socket of a bag lady; how much more trouble could he get into? His eyes scanned the area until he spied the hardware department. That would be his next stop after he emptied this basket.

Heading for the exit, Jason saw a woman kneeling in front of a child. The little girl was sobbing uncontrollably and holding out an arm that was dripping blood. The woman was trying her best to console the child, but to no avail. As he pushed his way through the doors and emerged outside to the parking lot, it took him a minute to remember where the car was parked. At last he recalled that Juanita had pulled into a space at the very edge of the lot. He wove through and finally spotted the old Buick. However, he noticed right away that something was wrong.

Breaking into a run, or at least as fast as he could go with the heavily laden shopping cart, Jason charged for the vehicle.

He came to a stop a few feet away. The window on the driver’s side had been smashed. Little cubes of glass littered the area. Pushing the cart up between the Buick and the SUV that was parked beside it, Jason looked inside the car. Juanita’s body was sprawled on the seat. A nasty wound to her head was leaking blood and creating a large dark stain.

Yanking the door open, Jason climbed inside, his fingers going for her throat in search of a pulse. He scooted out of the car and went to roll her onto her back so he could get a better idea as to if she was alive or not when she began to shudder and convulse.

Jason jumped back, unsure of what to do when, just as suddenly as it began, Juanita was still. After taking a few breaths to try and settle himself down, he leaned in and put an ear to Juanita’s chest.

Nothing.

He tried once more to check for a pulse. Again, he found no sign that she was alive. He was aware that he was no doctor; for all he knew, he was doing it wrong. He took the time to get her moved to the back seat and then loaded the groceries into the trunk. When he climbed into the driver’s seat, a realization struck him.

Juanita’s purse was gone.

“You’ve gotta be kidding,” Jason exclaimed.

His eyes narrowed at what he was seeing. A small gang of four people were cruising the parking lot with partially full carts. As he watched, they homed in on a vehicle. One of them took something from his pocket and gave the window of the car they were clustered around a solid tap. He watched as they opened the door and began scooping everything they could out of the car…including the young man who had been in the driver’s seat.

They began putting the boots to the guy. Then, the one that had busted in the window brought something up and smashed the young man in the side of the head. After emptying the car, one of them rolled the guy over and went through his pockets, eventually coming up with a wallet. A moment later, they were stopping at a large panel van. The side door opened and everything was handed inside.

While he had no proof, he had an inkling as to who had attacked Juanita. He felt an urge to confront these hoodlums, but he needed to get Juanita to the hospital. She might be dead, but then again, she might not be. Every second might count and mean the difference between life and death.

With one final rueful look towards the little gang of punks obviously taking full advantage of this mass chaos, Jason pulled out of the parking lot of the grocery store and tried to remember where the closest hospital might be located.

In a stroke of luck, as he turned onto MLK Boulevard, he passed a sign that read: Legacy Hospital, next left. Cutting across traffic sharply to the angry honks of other drivers, Jason took the corner so hard that he heard a thump from in back as Juanita tumbled from the seat.

Pulling into the parking lot, Jason felt his stomach tighten. If the parking lot of the grocery store was bad, then this was a nightmare beyond explanation. He was still in shock when a hand slapped against the driver’s side window. Jason turned to see a face that was a sickly grayish-blue staring it at him. The eyes were covered in a sick film and laced with black; the woman’s throat had been ripped out and dried blood was caked and already turning a blackish color around the hideous wound.

Then he heard a low moan…from the backseat.

4

Discoveries

Ken ducked instinctively and felt something swish through the air where his head had been just a second ago. Kicking backwards, his foot struck something solid and was greeted with a loud “oof”.

Turning, he saw the punks from inside the store. The one that had reached him first was already doubled over, but he had no chance to defend against the next and took a booted foot to the shoulder. He slammed into the rear of the truck and ended up down on his knees. He could hear the dog barking from the cab of the truck.

“Get him!” Jinks yelled, obviously not the one to lead the charge.

Ken saw the boot coming and moved his head just enough to take little more than a grazing blow to the cheek. His hand was going for his gun as the rest of his attackers arrived. He rolled under the rear of his truck, pulling himself into the fetal position in order to do so.

A set of legs appeared just past the rear tires and Ken brought his gun around. He fired and winced at the loud report. A body fell, the person clutching their wounded leg and rolling back and forth. If not for the ringing in his ears, he would have heard the wail of pain.

Looking to the rear of the truck where the attack had begun, he spied the person that he’d kicked as he or she struggled to reach their feet. Lining up his next shot, he fired again; the person flopped backwards and was still. Scuttling back just a little further, he saw another set of legs. The owner had obviously decided to give up on the attack and was turning to leave. Once more Ken fired. He saw the body sprawl in a pool of blue radiance from one of the parking lot lights.

Waiting a second to ensure there were no other attackers, Ken slowly emerged from under the pickup. His hearing was still hampered, but he heard the cries of the person he’d shot in the leg. He walked over and looked down to discover the young lady with the crewcut.

“P-p-please don’t shoot me!” she wailed, holding up her hands.

Ken looked around to see if anybody might be paying any attention. When he realized that nobody was coming to investigate, he leaned down to the girl and examined her more closely. She was filthy and smelled like it had been a good long while since she’d had a shower.

“I’m not going to shoot you…again,” he added that last word as he tucked his gun back in his belt.

He saw the other two that he’d shot lying where they’d fallen. He also saw a few figures moving with that slow, awkward walk in his general direction. Reaching down, he scooped the girl up. She yelped and struggled weakly in his grasp.

“Shut up, I’m not going to hurt you. You need to see a doctor,” he hissed.

“Just let me go!” she insisted.

Ken looked back at the advancing figures. Turning slightly, he pointed them out. “You want me to leave you to them?”

She seemed to consider her choices and then leaned into his side. He walked her to the front of the truck and opened the door. He cast a look of longing over his shoulder. There was still so much inside the store that he could use, but he needed to check on his mother and get this girl some help. He knew that Legacy Hospital was not too far away. He could drop the girl off at the emergency entrance and then head to his mother’s.

Moving around the car, he heard a scream and, as he unlocked his door, he saw three figures falling on the prone body of one of his attackers. He actually felt sorry for the person. He’d heard that scream from Gina Glendon and could only imagine what was happening to whichever of the male attackers he’d shot.

Climbing into the cab, he was instantly met by the snuffling face of the retriever. He eased in and nudged the dog back into the extended part of the cab behind the front seats. The scream rose in pitch and then went silent in an instant.

“What was that?” the girl asked, sounding for the first time like a frightened young lady.

“Something bad,” was Ken’s reply as he started the truck and headed for the exit. “Now buckle up. I am taking you to the hospital.”

***

Rose backed away. Frank stood, his insides spilling from a rip in his belly. Before she could take another step, Rose heaved, the contents of her stomach making a splash on the hardwood floor of her living room.

Her mind struggled to process what she was seeing, but nothing made any sense. As she fought to get her mind to wrap around what was happening, the two men began to draw closer. Standing in the entry hall, the sounds of frantic barking came from her bedroom where Imp and Circe were shut away.

The two figures, Frank and the neighbor, took step after agonizing step towards her. As the intensity of the barking increased, Frank’s head turned in a jerky movement that was almost inhuman in the way it twitched; very nearly like that of a bird. Rose could not allow them to head down the hallway to her bedroom. She had no idea if they could open a door or not, but she needed to get these two men out of her house.

“Hey!” Rose yelled. Frank’s head came back around and he started towards her once again.

Rose backed to the front door, reaching behind her to open it. She had to actually step closer to the advancing monstrosities for just a second as she pulled her door open. At last she was able to slip around it as the neighbor’s hand swiped at her and missed by just a few inches.

Stepping outside, Rose backed down her stairs and looked around. The entire neighborhood was strangely quiet. It was only late afternoon, and not even children could be seen playing outside or walking down the street. It was as if she were the only person actually at home.

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Rose backed down the path once the neighbor and Frank both exited her house. The neighbor reached the first stair and stumbled, landing with a sickening crack as he struck the concrete and tumbled down the three stairs. Frank did not seem to notice and followed in the neighbor’s footsteps. The only thing that was different was that Frank landed on the neighbor who was struggling to try and roll over.

As the two men became disentangled, and the neighbor crawled free, Rose noticed that the man’s arm now had an obscene break in the forearm. Bone jutted through skin, but he took no notice and actually tried to use the arm as he struggled to his feet. Rose had to battle with her rising gorge as she saw the broken forearm bend at the midpoint and then snap in half. The arm was, at this point, totally useless, as the lower half of the forearm was now barely connected by skin and ruined muscle.

Rose walked out into the street and waited as Frank and the neighbor, through some miracle, managed to make it to their feet and continue to pursue her at their slow, awkward pace. Once they reached the end of her driveway, Rose was actually at a loss as to what to do. It wasn’t like she could continue to act as some sort of Pied Piper. She had to figure out a way to ditch the pair and get back to her home.

Then what? she thought as she backed down the middle of the street.

Almost on cue, her phone rang. She knew by the ringtone that it was her sister. Grabbing the phone from her pocket, Rose thumbed it and answered.

“Hello? Violet?”

“Rose!” Her sister’s voice was frantic. But there was something else about it that sounded off. She couldn’t place it, but there was definitely something off.

“Violet, Frank is here, and there is something wrong—” she began, but her sister cut her off.

“Don’t let him in, Rose. This is every—”

And then the line went dead.

***

“Dios mio,” the voice sighed.

Jason had hit the brakes and spun to look in back. Juanita was climbing up from the floor where she had tumbled. He was pretty sure that zombies didn’t talk. Sure, some of the more peculiar books had that going on. He didn’t much care for those, but who knew where the line was drawn between fact and fiction. He would have laughed at the idea of zombies as early as this morning, but events were proving that perhaps truth was as strange as fiction…or something like that.

“Juanita?” Jason asked tentatively. One hand was opening and closing in a tight fist; the other was gripping the door latch. He was pretty sure that he could escape before she bit him.

“Where are we?” the woman asked, rubbing her head tenderly and wincing.

“The hospital.” Jason paused before making his admission. “I thought you might be dead. I was bringing you here to be sure.”

Juanita was silent for a moment before she finally spoke again. “Then you must not have seen what I saw.”

“You mean about the zombies?” Jason blurted. As soon as the word left his mouth he wished that he could get it back. He had already given Juanita enough reasons to ditch him. Showing that he was nuts in the head would not do him any favors.

“So you have seen them,” Juanita whispered.

“Don’t tell me that you think…” His voice trailed off as a woman walked past the car.

They were parked so that they could see the sidewalk that ran along the front of the parking lot where the street went past. The streetlights were all coming on as the light sensors activated them to push back the gloom of the growing darkness of night.

The woman was a bloody mess. There was a strand of what could only be intestine trailing behind her. and as she passed directly under the light, the knife jutting from her chest drew the focus from the missing flesh of her cheek. Her walk was a sort of drag step that reminded Jason of an old man he knew in prison that had suffered a massive stroke. One side of him was partially paralyzed, so his walk was this incredibly awkward gait. Unfortunately, inside, that made him not only a target of ridicule, but also of the general population’s bullies.

“But when I listened to your chest, I didn’t hear a heartbeat,” Jason said weakly.

“Well, I can promise you that I am not a zombie,” Juanita replied as she climbed over the seat.

“So what do we do?”

Juanita thought it over for a moment before turning to face Jason. “I don’t think going into the hospital is a good idea.”

“But your head.”

“I’m fine,” Juanita brushed aside his concern.

“It wouldn’t hurt to be sure,” Jason insisted.

The two craned their necks around to look back at the hospital entrance. Despite the fact that the lot was packed and three ambulances sat in the entry bay with lights on and back doors open, the warm glow of the entrance did not seem to bode ill.

“I will stay right by your side,” Juanita said, patting Jason on the arm.

Together, they took another look around to ensure that there were no more zombies walking past. Once they were fairly certain that the coast was clear, they exited the car, both taking special care to shut the door as quietly as possible.

Without realizing it, they clutched each other’s hand and started toward the entrance to the hospital emergency room. They were just crossing the last crosswalk where the main entrance allowed access to the parking lot when the roar of an engine sounded and the bright headlights of an oncoming vehicle chased away the darkness in a blinding flash. The tires screeched as the driver had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting the pair.

So this is what a deer feels like, a muted voice said from somewhere in the back of Jason’s mind.

***

Ken came to a stop at the intersection. He heard the gasp from beside him and he had to blink a few times for his own eyes to fully register what he was seeing.

Two cars had collided at the intersection. Both were high priced luxury vehicles, and later, when he was trying to purge his mind of some of the horrors he’d seen, he would muse that both driver’s probably felt they had some sort of special privilege afforded them. He’d responded to his share of car accidents where some asshole in an expensive car, driving like he or she owned the road, ended up in a fender bender. He never bothered to hide his smile when he handed them their ticket for any infractions they may have committed to cause the accident.

In this case, the cars had ended in a T-bone right in the center of the intersection. However, that wasn’t the problem that he was dealing with as he took in the scene. It was the fact that a few of those things—he was ready to call them zombies now—had pulled the occupants from the wreckage. A girl no older than fourteen was just standing there in the street, an arm that had been torn from a body clutched in her hands as she chomped into the flesh. Her own injuries were nothing more than dark blotches on her shoulder where her light colored shirt was ripped and stained in that general area.

Sitting on the ground by one of the luxury sedans were three more zombies pulling out a spool of entrails from a torso that looked to be missing an arm and both legs and stuffing it into their mouths. One of them had a large glob of something that kept slipping from its grasp and landing on the pavement. In his mind, Ken could almost hear the wet splat. In any other situation, this might have been comical as the zombie picked up the unidentifiable organ and would lose its grip just before shoving it into its mouth.

Ken needed to get around all of that to make it to the hospital. He glanced to his right at the girl in the passenger’s seat. Her hoody had slipped down to reveal her close-cropped hair that was dyed in a rainbow of colors. The black eyeliner had run down her face from the crying and added to her bizarre appearance. For a second, he was almost reminded of Alice Cooper in the way that the black had made long, dark trails down her pale face. She was staring straight ahead, and her mouth was open in a “oh” of shock and probably horror at what they were witnessing.

“Hold on,” Ken warned before giving the truck a little gas.

At first, the zombies paid him no mind, but as he neared to within ten or so feet, heads began to turn towards this new stimulus of sound. The girl holding the arm let it fall as she pivoted awkwardly and began a slow shamble in their direction. That was enough for him. Ken hit the gas.

The truck launched forward, the bumper clipping the girl zombie and sending her flying. He felt the truck lurch as he ran over another that was struggling to its feet.

“What the hell are you doing!” the girl shrieked from beside him. “You can’t just hit people with your truck!”

“Just shut up and hang on!” Ken snarled.

They were barreling towards two more of the blood drenched monstrosities when the girl reached over and tried to yank the steering wheel to the right in order to avoid hitting the walking corpses. Ken smacked her with a hard backhand. The girl’s head slammed into the edge of the doorframe on her side of the truck and she went limp.

The entire time, the dog had been whimpering and whining in the back of the cab. When he struck the girl, the dog began to bark furiously.

“Oh shut up,” Ken yelled over his shoulder. “She was going to get us all killed.”

The dog made a high-pitched sound in the back of its throat and Ken felt his insides twist. He glanced over at the girl; she was out cold, but he could see that she was still breathing. He hadn’t meant to hit her so hard. But if he hadn’t done something, she might have gotten them killed.

Or worse, Ken thought as he drove past a small pack of the zombies that had come out from between some trees that were planted in the center lane divider.

He zoomed past a blue sign that told him the hospital was to the left. Unfortunately, he did not notice that sign until he was passing it. Slamming on the brakes again and sending the truck into reverse, Ken reached over instinctively and kept the girl from being thrown forward and slamming into the dashboard.

He felt the truck shudder as he slammed into one of the approaching zombies with his rear bumper. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he made out a handful of them heading his direction. Cranking the wheel to the left, Ken popped the truck back into drive and took off down the two-lane road that led to the entrance of Legacy Hospital.

The entrance was marked by the large, lit neon sign that read “EMERGENCY ENTRANCE” in bright red letters. Ken turned hard and spied two figures ahead that were crossing right in front of him. He did not want to hit two of those things head on with the truck. That sort of thing might look great in movies or on television, but the reality was that a human body could inflict serious damage to a vehicle. He did not want to risk losing his only means of escaping the city. As Ken slammed on the brakes, he felt his heart seem to skip a beat and then leap up into his throat. Those weren’t zombies…they were living people. He just hoped to God that the truck would come to a complete stop in time.

***

It had been easier than she first thought. Rose had ducked around a van parked on the street just a house away from hers. The two men had stumbled along, and as she snuck carefully up the sidewalk in the opposite side, she could hear them making strange moans and mewling noises. Once she felt confident that she could slip away, Rose hunched down and hurried back to her house. She glanced back as she reached the door. The pair was still heading along the street and about to cross the intersection. Rose slipped inside and shut the door quietly.

As soon as she did, her stomach lurched a little. The stench of the two men mixed with the tangy acrid stink of her vomit was overwhelming. Rose tried to breathe through her mouth as she went to the bedroom door where Circe and Imp could be heard snuffling on the other side.

She opened the door and was greeted by the pair of bounding dogs. Imp jumped up on her, but quickly slid down her front, shifting into a sort of guard dog mode as he moved in a crouched down prowl towards the living room. His nose was in overdrive. Circe was a different story as she kept leaping up and nudging Rose with her head. As soon as Rose bent down, the warm, wet tongue of the Border Collie made several passes along her cheek and chin. Twice it felt like the little pink muscle was going to shoot up a nostril and pierce her brain.

That moment of normality allowed Rose to catch her breath. She hugged the smaller red and white dog close for a moment. With a shudder, she stood and walked into the bedroom. Both dogs were on her heels. Even Imp abandoned his investigation to keep in close proximity to Rose.

The two jumped up on the bed and watched as Rose grabbed a gym bag from the closet and began stuffing a few things in it. She packed enough for a few nights, making sure to grab hiking boots as well as her trail runners. She knew from experience that it paid to have both if she was going to be at her sister’s house for any length of time.

Certain that she had enough for a few days, she stopped at the kitchen pantry and grabbed the bin with the dog food as well as their bowls. As an afterthought, she tossed in the container of treats.

Making a point to look outside from a few windows in order to be sure that the two men had not returned, Rose turned to Imp and Circe. Both dogs sat, staring up attentively. She clipped on their leashes, not wanting Imp to take off after something if the urge struck him. She’d almost lost him once; that was not going to happen again.

Opening the door just a crack, she peered up and down the street one more time to be extra certain. Confident that the way was clear, she stepped outside, shut the door, and locked it. In a quick walk, she hurried to the car and opened the passenger side door. Both dogs jumped in; Circe curling in a tight ball on the floor of the passenger side as always, and Imp hopping over to the driver’s side and watching her come around the car. She could almost swear that he expected her to just hand him the keys and let him drive.

“In the back, Imp,” Rose whispered as she opened the door to climb in. He gave her a cocked head in response for just a second before turning and bounding into the back seat.

Climbing in, Rose started her car. As she pulled out, her head craned to the left. She saw Frank and the neighbor. They hadn’t gone far, and apparently the sound of the car was bringing them back as they both turned awkwardly, sort of bumping into each other as they made the effort to come for her.

Gunning it, Rose took off and headed for the highway. She hated that her drive would take her back towards downtown Portland. Still, she needed to get to her sister’s house as soon as possible. She pulled out her phone, plugging it into the car charger as she drove. Occasionally, she would tap the button and try to call, but she either got the “All circuits are busy” message…or nothing. She did not know which she hated more.

The radio station was a loop of the same warnings for people to remain indoors. It also said that people should avoid trying to go to the hospitals unless absolutely necessary. They were overcrowded with people that had been attacked.

“This is insane,” Rose said, glancing down at Circe. The dog glanced up at her from where it had rested its muzzle on its paws. “And if this is some of that crazy horror movie stuff, then I sure hope the people in charge get it taken care of in a hurry.”

She continued to drive, and as she passed people, she saw expressions of fear, anger, and even a few cryptic smiles. Those made her shudder. Who could find anything funny at a time like this? Then, something on the radio caught her attention.

“…Centers for Disease control have been working on this since the first reports. They caution that individuals who might have suffered an attack by one of the infected should be watched closely and taken immediately to the nearest hospital. The Army and National Guard units are being deployed as we speak to set up triage stations at all major medical facilities.

“In addition, we have just received news that President Branson will be leaving Washington for a secure location within the hour. It is believed that his staying in a heavily populated area is not in the best interest of national security as riots are erupting in the nation’s capital as well as several other cities across the country.”

Rose shook her head as she listened. Now they were telling people to go to the hospitals. They had just been running an announcement on a loop that said just the opposite and requested people stay home unless absolutely necessary. She also knew that the 9-1-1 circuits were basically useless. She’d tried and gotten a looped recording there as well.

“This is worse than I thought,” she breathed as she crested the hill that gave her that momentary glimpse of the city of Portland spread out along the horizon.

The majestic, snow-capped spire of Mount Hood sat off in the distance, and to her left she could see the remnants of Mount St. Helens. The Willamette River cut lazily through the heart of the city; a collection of bridges spanning it in several locations.

The scenery was spoiled by no fewer than a dozen columns of smoke rising from various locations. Some looked massive and could not be just a single building. One in particular looked like it might be an entire block going up in flames.

“…efforts to locate the president’s daughter have so far been a failure according to sources within the military. A representative from the Ohio—” Rose turned the radio off.

“What makes her any more important or special than any other kid off at college and away from their family?” she grumbled.

As she skirted the edges of Portland on her way to her sister’s house in Sandy, Rose could not help but feel the anxiety of not knowing what was going on. Violet’s call had ended so abruptly, and her sister sounded like something was very wrong.

At last, Highway 26 curved to the right. Now it was almost a straight shot. Twice more she tried to make the call, but as the landmarks passed and she knew she was moments away from the turnoff that would take her to Violet’s house, Rose resigned herself to having to wait.

At last she reached the end of the gated driveway. Jumping out of the car, she walked up and pushed the buzzer for her sister to open the gate. There was an abnormally long silence causing Rose to push the button again.

At last there was an answer. “Who is this, please?” Crystal’s voice asked cautiously.

“Crystal, honey, it’s Auntie Rose. Open the gate, please, sweetie.”

“Mama told me to leave the gate a closed until daddy gets home,” the sweet voice replied with her odd matter-of-factness.

“But it’s me, Crystal,” Rose insisted. Then, as an afterthought, she added, “I have the puppies with me.”

A squeal of delight came and then there was the familiar buzz and the gate began to slide open. Rose jumped in her car and waited until she had enough room. As soon as she did, she sped up the long driveway.

The first thing she noticed was that the house had every single light on; both inside and outside, the lights were a dazzling brilliance that kept the coming darkness at bay. That was Violet’s doing. She had never quite outgrown her fear of the dark and had insisted on the floodlights and motion-activated spotlights around the perimeter of the house. With Trevor gone so often with work, it had been a necessity if Violet was to have any peace of mind.

Pulling in, Rose opened her car door and felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up as Imp began to growl. Getting out slowly, but making certain to look in every direction, Rose decided to leave the dogs in the car for the moment. She had a bad feeling. It had begun with Crystal being the one to answer the buzz and it had climaxed with Imp’s reaction.

“Violet?” Rose called as she closed the car door behind her and took a few cautious steps toward the house.

She took another step and the front door flew open. Crystal emerged, taking a cautious look around before bolting for Rose as fast as her little legs could carry her. She was babbling something, but none of it was making any sense.

Rose knelt and caught the girl by the shoulders and looked Crystal up and down. She had something splattered on her jeans and dark blue blouse. Also, there were flecks of black on her face.

“Where are your mommy and Jacob?” Rose asked.

The little girl took a deep breath and squeezed her eyes shut. “Mama is sick. The neighbor gave her an owie on her arm. She made me and Jacob tie her hands up. She said it was a game, but then she said we could not untie her no matter what. Then she fell asleep and wouldn’t wake up. She smelled really stinky. When her eyes opened, they looked icky…”

Rose remembered Frank’s eyes; she remembered the ugly way they looked like they’d been hit with terrible cataracts. And then there were the black squiggly traces. She gave Crystal a closer inspection when she heard something that made her blood freeze in her veins.

“…then she bit Jacob, He screamed and she wouldn’t let go. She bit off his pointer and his naughty finger—” Crystal was explaining.

“Wait, where is Jacob now?” Rose demanded.

“In his bed. He cried and cried and none of the Band-Aids would stay on. Then he fell asleep.” Crystal had an indignant tone to her voice that made Rose think perhaps she had already said that part.

“Take me to him,” Rose said as she climbed to her feet and took Crystal by the hand.

Together, they walked into the house. Almost immediately, Rose noticed the stench. It was a bit stronger than it had been in her house, but it was that same sickly sweet, rotten stink. The television in the living room was on, as was the one in the kitchen and in the family room. Judging by the echo coming from down the hallway, so was the one in Violet’s bedroom.

She had to take a deep breath through her mouth and pause before continuing. When she did, Crystal led her down the hallway. As they walked, they passed the bedroom belonging to her sister. If possible, the smell was worse. A low moan came from the room that gave Rose a fresh dose of the creeps. On instinct, Rose reached for the door. Jacob could wait; she had to see her sister.

“Mama is in there. I don’t want to go in there,” Crystal whispered. “She smells bad and is being mean.”

Rose took a deep breath and then faced her niece. “You stay right here. I am going to go in and see your mom. No matter what you hear, you stay put. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Auntie Rose,” Crystal said obediently.

Steeling herself for what she was about to see, Rose turned the knob and walked into the bedroom.

***

Ken waited for the couple to get out of the way and then entered the parking lot. As expected, most of the spaces were taken. Pushing aside any sense of guilt, he opened his glove box and removed his police identification placard and placed it on the dashboard as he steered into an area clearly marked as a “No Parking” zone.

Jumping out of the truck, he ran around to the passenger’s side and opened the door, catching the girl as she slumped over and into his arms. With minimal reaching around, he located the seatbelt clasp, pushed the release, and pulled her the rest of the way out of the truck. Closing the door with his foot, he turned and walked as fast as he could with the girl in his arms.

As he stepped on the pad that opened the door to the emergency room, he was hit with an overwhelming wave of sights, sounds, and smells. Just a few feet away, a man sat slumped over in a chair, his hastily bandaged arm dripping blood onto the linoleum floor in a growing puddle. Across from him sat a woman holding a little boy no older than three or four. He had a nasty bite on his right cheek and it had caused enough swelling to shut his eye.

Ken instinctively clutched the girl tighter to his chest. While he had no actual tie to the young lady, it was he that had brought her here. Until the doctors took her in, it was up to him to ensure that she did not suffer further injury.

He approached the window where he should be able to check the girl in. Once that was done, he could be on his way. He had a good idea as to where he was headed, but he needed to do this first; his conscience was already nagging at him about the shootings and then the subsequent leaving as the two young men were set on by the zombies.

He did not imagine there could be a worse way to die when it came down to it. Being eaten alive must be absolutely horrifying…not to mention painful. A scream brought his attention back to the waiting room. He realized that he’d been standing at the check-in window but there was nobody manning it.

Turning around, he saw the man with the bandaged arm now lying face down on the floor. Apparently he had slipped from his chair. Ken did not need to check him to know that the man was most likely dead. Another shriek came from somewhere back in the emergency area. This one sounded like a man, but it ended with an abruptness that was almost more unsettling than the actual scream itself.

“Yeah, we aren’t staying here,” Ken muttered as he headed for the door.

As he was turning to leave, the electronic doors opened and two people stumbled in. Ken had worked the streets enough to recognize gang tattoos. The thing that sort of did not fit with this picture was the fact that the thug was assisting an twenty-something Hispanic woman. With the racist tattoos showing prominently on his arms, this was the last guy on earth that Ken would imagine to be helping anybody; much less a woman of an ethnicity other than Caucasian.

The guy had his arm around the woman who had dried blood on the side of her face and a section of her hair matted down from an obvious blow to the head.

“Anybody!” the gang banger called as he stopped a few feet inside. Ken watched the man’s eyes scan the room. He was not surprised when they locked on him and narrowed considerably.

***

“Anybody!” Jason called.

Juanita had slumped to his side and was starting to struggle with staying conscious. He was beginning to think that the head injury might be worse than either of them believed.

He was only a few steps inside when a number of things pinged on his consciousness. The first was a smell. He’d gotten a really good whiff of it in the grocery store. It was here, perhaps not quite as strong, but he could smell it, and he was beginning to connect it to the possible presence of zombies. The second thing he spotted was a little boy with a nasty bite on his face. The eye on the side of the face that was bitten had swollen to the point where you could not really see it anymore. However, the other one was easy to see; even more so as Jason spotted dark squiggles already visible in the kid’s eye.

Then there was the cop.

Just about anybody who has done time can spot a cop in a crowd. Jason knew the moment that he saw the man with the body in his arms that the guy was absolutely a cop. He felt his old barriers slam into place and his instant distrust seep into every fiber of his being.

A moan to his right tore his stare away from the man across the room. Some guy on the floor was trying to get up. He had one arm bandaged, but the blood had seeped through and there was a nasty, dark puddle on the floor. The man had apparently fallen into it and smeared it all over the place. When his head came up and turned in Jason’s direction, he knew right away what this guy had become.

He eyed the check-in station and saw that it was empty. Also, now that he was on alert, he noticed a few other little details. The area on the other side of that check-in window had shadows moving around. There was a blood stain on a wall that was well back and just barely visible past the little wall that made the rear of the little cubicle where the receptionist or check-in nurse would normally be sitting.

“This is the wrong place to be,” Jason whispered. “All the books say things about how the hospitals are like zombie beehives. All the early victims are here and turning. Doctors won’t believe it and end up bit. We gotta go.”

Juanita moaned softly and mumbled something about being sleepy. Jason shifted his arm under her and hoisted her back up.

The man on the floor was slowly rising to his feet. Jason began to retreat towards the doors. He didn’t have a weapon and he was not interested in trying to take one of those things on with his bare hands.

The cop at the reception window was starting towards him. The zombie noticed right away and turned his direction. That gave Jason the opportunity he needed and he slipped out the door. Just as he did, another car was pulling in. This one came right to the curb, but it was weaving and did not so much stop as it crashed into one of the pillars that supported the slab covering the entry.

Jason altered his course just enough to avoid the crashed car. As he passed the front of the vehicle, he saw a body slumped over the steering wheel. But in the passenger’s seat was a woman. Thankfully, she was belted in. He didn’t need much light to know what her situation was as she reached and clawed at the air. An ugly black rip in the flesh of her throat made even darker by the shadows gave away her fate. Her head lurched forward in futility as the shoulder harness kept her in place, but in that action, her face came into the light shining down from above. Jason could see the unnatural pallor of her skin…and the eyes.

He kept moving, his grip on Juanita tightening just slightly as he spied at least a dozen figures heading their direction. By their awkward gait, he knew what they were and realized that a weapon needed to be his new priority.

“When there is no more room in Hell…” Jason recited.

The door behind him opened with an electronic swish. “Hey, you! Wait up!” a voice called.

The sounds of moans from the undead carried on the wind as if in reply. And then another sound that made Jason freeze: the sound of a baby’s cry.

***

Rose gagged on the wave of stench that assailed her. In the closed up bedroom, the reek was so thick that she felt it in the back of her throat. She could smell the stink of sweat and shit…and something rotten.

It was Violet.

She was tied up on the bed just as Crystal had said she would be. However, she had thrashed and wriggled around enough so that she was cockeyed and lying diagonally with the blankets all kicked away.

“Oh, Violet,” Rose cried, the tears coming to her eyes and blurring her vision.

The only response from her sister was an increased thrashing and writhing. Violet opened her mouth that was still stained with the blood of her son from when she’d bitten the poor boy, letting out another of those horrible moans.

Looking around the room, Rose’s eyes settled on a piece of paper that was on the dresser. The handwriting was instantly recognizable as that belonging to Violet. Walking over to it, she could not tear her eyes away from the horrible thing that had once been her sister.

Picking up the piece of paper, Rose read:

Dear Sister,

If you are reading this, then my fears have been realized. For days, the news has been talking about this infection or plague. It does not matter what they call it. I know what it is. Or at least, I know what it does.

Please bear with me, but if you are reading this, then I am tied up in my bed (unless I have fallen on the floor or somehow managed to break free). I was bitten by a neighbor out at the gate.

I fear that I know how this will end. That is why I will have the children tie me up after I have written this letter. Rose, you are the last hope for my children. Trevor is in Seattle and called just about twenty minutes after the attack. He is in a hospital after being jumped in the parking garage of the hotel he was staying in during this most recent trip. He was bitten. He will not be coming home.

I know that you might have a hard time believing this, but trust me, Rose, these are zombies. Straight from the movies and all that stuff you never liked. I did one thing that might help you. I chased down the neighbor that bit me and crushed the skull with the three-pound sledge. (It is on the back porch, I did not want the kids to see it.) You have to do it just like in the movies. Aim for the head.

I have been trying to call you, but, as you may know, the phone lines are a disaster. I want you to know that if you do get here, there is nobody I would trust more with my children other than you.

And if I am still tied up in this bed, please end it. That is not me. That is a monster that will not recognize you as anything more than something to tear apart and eat.

I wish that I had more time to try and tell you more, but I am already fighting whatever this is that is burning up inside of me. Stay away from the cities. You can probably live here just fine if you reinforce the fencing. The cellar is stocked with enough food for a family of four to last at least a year. The spring planting was already done. All you need to do is take care of it and you will have more than enough.

The farm next door where the person that attacked me came from has chickens. I would grab some now. (I doubt they will be needing them anymore, LOL.) Between them and the goats, you should be well supplied.

One last thing, Trevor’s guns are in the safe in his study. The combination on the safe is 1-30-2-40-24. I don’t know how much ammo he has in there, but it should be plenty if you need to go that way. There is a baseball bat in Jacob’s room and a variety of weapons in the barn besides that small sledge hammer. I would save the gun to defend against the living. I have a scary feeling that they may be more dangerous than the zombies.

I love you.

Violet

Rose turned to the figure in the bed. It struggled and strained to get at her, its teeth gnashing on air with an audible click. Despite her sister’s request, she was not ready to deal with killing Violet just yet—or the zombie version if that was truly the case. She would go check on her nephew first.

Just as she was about to open the door, she heard Crystal scream, “Jacob! No!”

5

Beginning of the End

“What the hell?” Jason swore, untangling himself from Juanita and moving towards the sound. Ken took a step in that direction, but Jason held a hand up. “Don’t you have your hands full enough already?”

Without another word, he moved over to the row of cars from where the sound had come. It was too dark to see very well, and he did not have a flashlight. When the sound came again, Jason re-oriented his search and moved in as fast as he dared, taking care that he watched his footing. The last thing he wanted to do was step on an infant.

The cry came from right on the other side of the car Jason was moving around. The stench he was now associating with the undead was growing stronger. He looked around, worried that one of those things might be closing in. He saw nothing and hurried. He could worry about what to do with a baby later. He stepped around the bumper and froze. Once his eyes and brain were in sync again, he staggered back.

“Jesus!” he gasped.

“What is it?” Ken took a step forward, hating that he had this unconscious body in his arms.

Jason looked down and could not hold back the shudder. The body crawling towards him had been ripped almost in half. All that remained was the upper torso, one arm, and, of course, the head of the woman; which was, at the moment, craned up towards him. Jason was grateful for the darkness; he did not want to see clearly enough so that the details of what was crawling towards him could etch themselves in his brain along with all the other images.

He raised his foot and stomped down on the head of the thing. That almost cost him as the skull impacted on the pavement and his foot slid down the side. He’d read that move so many times in books that he’d actually convinced himself you could give a zombie a good stomp on the head and crush its skull.

Stepping back, Jason was stopped in his tracks when the sound of the baby cry came from the pathetic creature on the ground. He had already deduced that the noise came from this creature, but having it confirmed with his own eyes somehow eased his mind a great deal. This would complicate things just a bit. How would a person know if they were hearing a baby or one of the undead?

“Well?” Ken called.

“Umm…” Jason was at a loss how to explain, but he did not have to as the man pushed in beside him.

Jason shot the guy a sideways glance. Yep, this was a cop. If not, then he sure as hell should be with the attitude he was putting off. Before the man could ask any questions, the zombie lifted its head up at them and made a mewl that stretched into the baby cry sound.

“Holy crap,” Ken gasped.

“Yeah,” Jason agreed.

A series of moans reminded the two men that there were other threats. Jason looked around to see that the parking lot was becoming busier. Two cars were prowling in that search for a spot. This, in turn, was bringing in more of the undead.

“Sound,” Jason said to nobody in particular.

“What?” Ken asked from beside him.

“The zombies are obviously attracted to sound.”

“And what makes you say that?” Ken challenged.

Jason walked over to a car and slapped it on the hood. He had his eyes fixed on a pair of zombies a few rows over. He was rewarded by their heads turning his direction and then altering their course. He watched as one bumped against a parked car and then seemed to struggle as to which direction to go.

“And they aren’t too incredibly bright,” Ken mumbled as he watched Jason’s hypothesis being given credence.

“That could be used to a person’s advantage,” Jason added. When he saw Ken shoot him a look, he took that as an invitation to explain. “Let’s say you are trapped someplace. If you can create a noise in another location, then the zombies might wander off and allow you to escape.”

Ken nodded and made a low noise in his throat. Jason reached down and picked up a few pieces of loose gravel and then tossed it at a car to his right, away from where he had parked the truck. Sure enough, the zombies in the area all turned and then slowly began to wander in that direction. All except for one that was now getting too close for comfort. It seemed to be locked on him and now had its arms out, hands opening and closing as it drew near.

He began to back away. With no weapon handy to actually do anything significant, he could only retreat. He had taken a few steps back when a dark figure moved past him fast. Something whizzed through the air and then there was a heavy thunking sound.

The figure stepped back and Jason watched in awe as the person put a foot on the shoulder of the walking corpse and yanked a three foot machete from the crown of the skull of the now defunct zombie. The body toppled unceremoniously as the figure turned to face him. Pulling the hood back, a woman’s face was revealed in the weak glow of the overhead parking lot lights.

“Just standing there is a good way to get bit by a zom,” the woman said with a sniff. She leaned down and wiped her blade clean on the shirt of the zombie she had just dispatched. After sliding it back into the leather sheath on her hip, she reached a hand out to Jason. “Erin West, and I wouldn’t stick around in this parking lot very long.”

***

Ken felt more than saw the figure move past him and plow into the zombie that had not been as easily distracted as the others. His mind made a note that this one had been the closest; that might be important.

He saw a wickedly curved and sturdy machete come down in an overhand chop that cleaved the approaching man with the ripped shirt that was torn from the left shoulder. Even in the light from above, Ken could see the huge chunk torn away from what had probably been a pretty beefy trap. This guy’s muscles had not done him any good fighting off a zombie.

The figure that had come out of seemingly nowhere made a bit of a show of pulling the machete free and then turning to face them. “Just standing there is a good way to get bit by a zom,” the woman said with a sniff. She leaned down and wiped her blade clean on the shirt of the zombie. After sliding it back into the leather sheath on her hip, she reached a hand out to the guy Ken had decided was either a gang member or ex-con. “Erin West, and I wouldn’t stick around in this parking lot very long.”

“Jason. Jason Edwards. And that is Juanita Reyes.” The man pointed to the Hispanic woman that stood a few feet away, her head trying to turn every direction at the same time as she watched the zombies once again redirecting their steps to come for this most recent bit of noise. “And maybe we should get the hell out of here before—”

Two cars came barreling into the parking lot, cutting off whatever else the man was about to say as they slammed into each other. The smaller compact model did not stand a chance against the SUV and careened into the curb and then bounced up and into the shrubbery that had been planted around the big sign announcing the entrance to the Legacy Emergency Room.

Ken watched as the SUV barely even slowed down and continued into the parking lot. His eyes tracked it as it raced to the covered entrance and skidded to a stop.

“We should go,” the woman named Juanita said in a nervous tone that made her sound almost like she was being choked.

“Good idea,” the woman wearing the hooded sweatshirt piped in. She sounded more enthusiastic than she did afraid. Ken thought he might like this stranger. She was certainly a person of action.

“Where do you suggest?” Jason asked, moving back to Juanita’s side and looking around with clenched fists.

“Out of the city,” Erin spoke up. “I was trying to get to my friend. She is a nurse here, but I was on the third floor looking for her when I ran into about thirty of those things…the zombies. Sad to say it out loud in front of strangers, but I decided right then that it was every man and woman for him or herself.”

Yep, Ken thought, I like this gal just fine.

“I have a pickup, managed to get a few things from Freddy’s, but not nearly enough to last longer than a couple of days if the five of us stay together.” Ken shifted the girl in his arms that had remained unconscious through this entire ordeal.

He was surprised at the instant urge to simply put her someplace like the back of a car or something, and be on his way. It wasn’t like he was responsible for her. Besides, with the bullet wound in her leg, she was not going to fare well without medical assistance.

“Let’s meet up around the corner at Albina Park and figure out what to do,” Erin suggested.

There was a scream from the hospital’s emergency room entrance. Everybody turned at once to see figures almost vomiting forth from the entrance/exit doors. Apparently the SUV’s owner had let out or drawn the attention of however many of the undead had built up in the emergency room. He turned back to see Erin already backing away.

“We’ll see you there,” Jason was calling over his shoulder as he and Juanita hurried to their car.

Ken went to his truck. He paused at another pickup. This one had a nice camper shell over the bed. He leaned against the rear bumper and checked the hatch. The knob turned and he looked around like a guilty child expecting to be discovered at any second.

Shifting the girl over one shoulder, he opened the little shell covering the truck’s bed and then laid the girl down. He glanced at the leg. She was lucky. From his cursory gaze, it looked like the bullet had passed through the muscle. Had it hit bone, she would certainly be done for.

“Sorry, kid,” Ken whispered. “You ain’t my problem.”

A voice in his head ranted that he was doing the wrong thing. It was a voice he’d heard many times over the years. It was a voice that he had learned to ignore.

Closing the hatch, Kevin climbed into the cab of his truck. He barely got the door shut when something bounced into the front seat. He’d almost forgotten about the dog. Actually, in truth, he had forgotten entirely. That is why he had reached out and grabbed the excited Golden Retriever by the throat out of sheer reflex.

“You stupid dog,” he grumbled, his hand releasing its grip. Almost like it had already forgotten the momentary harsh treatment, the dog leaned forward and licked the side of Ken’s face.

He saw a car pull out of a nearby parking space and then head for the exit. He saw it turn left.

“I guess we are going to a park,” Ken muttered. He did not even notice the Golden Retriever’s ears perk up at the use of the “P” word.

***

Rose flung the door open and rushed out into the hallway. Just across the hall and to her left, Crystal was trying to keep her brother Jacob at bay. The boy was reaching and clutching at his sister.

His damaged hand was a hideous mess, and almost made worse by the several Band-Aids that still dangled, now stuck in place by the dried and blackened blood. The thing that caught Rose’s attention was the complete lack of emotion on the boy’s face. It was slack and blank. Were it not for how he was snapping his teeth as he tried to bite his sister, he might look more like a discolored mannequin than anything else.

Charging in, Rose yanked Crystal away and kicked the little boy backwards. The little girl reacted a second later, screaming for Rose not to hurt her little brother. The toddler was struggling to his feet as Rose wrapped Crystal in her arms to keep her from running to Jacob’s aid.

And then the strangest thing happened. The little boy stood, cocking his head to one side and then the other before turning and walking away. He vanished around the corner into the living room. Now Rose was very confused.

She turned to Crystal and gripped the girl by the shoulders, making it a point of looking her in the eyes. When the girl’s head started to turn to look into her mother’s room, Rose caught her by the chin and eased her head back so that they were looking at each other again.

“I want you to go into your room right now.” Rose paused and considered the situation and what she could do. “You stay there until I call you out for dinner.” The little girl opened her mouth to protest and Rose cut her off. “I mean it, young lady!” In that instant, she winced inwardly as she heard her mother as well as her sister in that line.

Amazingly, it seemed to work as the little girl turned obediently and went into her room. Crystal turned and gripped the edge of the door, her eyes narrowed and lips pursed.

“You’re being mean. You used to be the nice Auntie Rose, but now you are just a big meanie!” And then the door slammed.

Not for the first time in her life, Rose thanked the powers that be that she had never had any children of her own. That was starting to feel like a blessing.

As she stood, she heard something topple and crash in the living room. She shot her sister a look, more to confirm that the woman was still firmly secured. She took just a second to be impressed with the children’s ability to tie knots.

“Must be a country thing,” Rose said to herself as she shut the door on Violet’s room. One problem at a time. She had to tend to Jacob first.

She reached the end of the hallway and paused, listening closely for any sounds coming from the living room. At first there was nothing, but then she heard the squeak of somebody stepping on a loose floorboard.

“Jay-cob!” Rose sing-songed.

A soft moan came from the living room with a guttural sound that had no business coming from that baby. She reached the corner and has hit once more with the stench that she was now certain indicated that Jacob had whatever his mother had come down with. She knew what she had seen, but that did not make it any easier to accept that this was some sort of horror movie nightmare come true.

Holding her breath, Rose snuck a look around the corner. Jacob was standing in front of the television, his head cocked to the side. From behind, and with his damaged hand out of sight, he could be perfectly fine; just a little boy staring at the images on the television. Rose glanced at the screen herself and saw footage taken from the air. It showed a section of a city, she had no idea if it was Portland or someplace else. However, she saw several clusters of people engaged in things that a child should not be watching.

The camera zoomed in as three individuals dragged a woman to the ground and began tearing into her. The red spray that shot up made it clear as to the woman’s fate. There were bodies in the street. And worse.

Is that a leg? she thought as the camera continued to pan the screen.

The reporter was speaking in a voice that was not normally heard on the evening news. This person was afraid, and the words he was reading from his teleprompter did not really match his face or tone.

“…instructed to remain home. The rumors that this is some form of terrorism seem unfounded as the reports have come in from practically every corner of the globe. The CDC insists that this is simply an illness and that these are not the dead come back to life. Dr. Linda Sing had this to say…”

There was a flicker as somebody in the control room switched over to the canned video reel of the CDC spokeswoman. A middle-aged woman with short, dark hair appeared on screen with her name and title just above the news ticker. Her pale skin looked even more washed out under the lights. This was exaggerated further by the fact that she wore absolutely no make-up.

“Those rumors of the dead coming back and attacking the living are beyond ludicrous. Ignoring the pure physiological impossibility, there is simply no way this can be considered with any seriousness.”

Rose was pretty sure she had already heard this exact same report. She needed to hear something new…and helpful. She needed to know why people with their insides torn out were walking. She needed to know why a bite was turning her sister into the creature in that bed. And then, there was Jacob.

She stepped out into the living room. The little boy continued to ignore her. Looking around, Rose spied something that gave her an idea. It was a spool of rough twine; the same kind that had been used to tie up Violet!

There was a voice in the back of her mind that was telling her to heed Violet’s letter. Despite all that she had seen, Rose warred with what she should do. After all, this was not some random stranger; it wasn’t even her jerk of an ex-husband. This was her sister…her nephew.

Moving over to the island counter that divided the kitchen from the dining room, Rose grabbed the spool of twine and turned back to discover Jacob was now watching her. His little head was tilted to one side. She forced herself to ignore the filmed over eyes with the black capillaries making him look sinister. She kept her eyes from looking at the missing digits on his hand or the blood that he had smeared all over himself while in his room.

For just a second, Rose had to fight back tears. What had that poor baby been thinking after being bitten by his mom? How painful must it have been to actually have two fingers bitten off? She’d slammed hers in the door more than a few times over the years and that had been terribly painful.

“Jacob?” Rose knelt and tried to sound as sweet as possible. Maybe that would help. She could not necessarily take the fact that he had tried to attack his sister as proof positive that he was a monster. He was a little brother, after all. Didn’t that make him a little monster in some manner already?

The little boy took an unsteady step forward. She could not attribute his awkward gait to anything. After all, he was still just a baby. Yet, his head kept twitching; just a bit, first one way, then another. His eyes locked onto her in a way that was disconcerting to say the least. It was not the look of her favorite nephew excited to see his Auntie Rose.

His mouth opened and Rose felt her gorge shift for what felt like the hundredth time this evening. His tongue was a hideous gray thing that flicked just a little as that deep moan escaped his bluish lips.

Rose unraveled a little bit more of the twine. That action seemed to alarm or maybe even anger the little boy. Without warning, Jacob lurched forward, hands reaching and mouth smacking. The few teeth that he possessed snapped together with a sharp clacking sound.

Out of reflex, Rose threw out an arm and swatted the child backwards. He landed awkwardly on one side and there was a nasty snap as something broke. He slid a few feet and his head smacked into the edge of the raised brick in front of the fireplace. It wasn’t hard, but the angle was perfect for the corner to put a nice divot in the little boy’s face where his cheek struck.

Rose knew that the little boy should cry, yet, he began immediately to try and regain his feet. Before he could, Rose rushed in and yanked his arms behind his back and bound the wrists. With a rush of adrenaline, she had them secured before she realized that she had cinched the rope tight enough to cut into the flesh, yet Jacob made no sounds except for the moans and groans. She shoved him down on his stomach and tied his ankles as well.

Once she was finished, she rolled the little boy over onto his back. He had gone still and was looking up at her with those hideous eyes. Yet, for an instant, she swore that she saw something pass across his face. She told herself that she had to have been imagining it. As she started to reach down to pick him up, the child craned his neck and tried to bite her again.

Being careful, Rose scooped up the boy and carried him in to Violet. Maybe that would help. Perhaps having them together would spark something. Anything to debunk the possibility that this was exactly what Violet proclaimed it to be.

She walked into her sister’s room, and the reaction from Violet was instant. She began to writhe and gnash her teeth, her eyes locked on Rose in a way that was extremely unsettling. Still, Rose moved around the bed and ducked in to lay Jacob at Violet’s side.

Stepping back, Rose was stunned. There was a definite reaction in Jacob. He had gone still, seemingly content to be at his mother’s side. Sadly, Violet showed no such change in her desire to get at Rose and take a bite out of her.

Rose grabbed the thick comforter that had been kicked to the floor. After a few minutes and some serious effort, she had trussed the two down so that they were both secure in the bed. She wanted to gag them, but she was satisfied that, between being tied down, and the door being shut, neither of them would be much cause for concern.

Now that she had that taken care of, Rose walked back out to the living room. The television had the “Emergency Broadcasting System” notice on the screen. The crawler at the bottom had the message: “An announcement from state and national government officials is forthcoming…please stand by…”

“This ought to be good,” Rose sighed as she flopped down in the chair and thumbed the volume on the remote. Every channel had the identical announcement.

At last, the screen changed and a man in a rumpled suit came to a podium. The American flag hung on one side. The man wiped his hand down his face and then looked up at the camera. If he was some important politician, Rose sure did not recognize him.

“My fellow Americans, we are currently dealing with a situation that is unprecedented. As I address you, the president and several key members of the cabinet are en route on Air Force One to a secure location. They will be working endlessly with the CDC until a solution to this strange epidemic is found. We ask that you please heed the announcements from your state and local officials as we take the steps to stem this horrific tragedy that is being suffered around the world.

“In a moment, your local emergency broadcasting systems will inform you of what to do. Afterwards, the president will address the country. God bless America, and the rest of the world, as we can hopefully come together and resolve this crisis.”

There was an instant as the man gathered whatever he had brought to the podium that the camera lingered on his face. Rose saw the sweat running down in rivers. This man was just as scared as everybody else. And then there was the fact that he had obviously not made the cut when the president gathered “key members” of the cabinet.

“That has to suck,” Rose whispered, her eyes glued to the screen.

And then the screen went back to the EBS test signal. The ticker informed Rose that an announcement from the local network would be carrying region-specific information in one moment. Time felt sluggish, but at last there was a camera shot of a large desk. The Oregon state flag was on one side, the American flag on the other. A gray haired man in a suit sat behind the desk with a few sheets of paper. He seemed surprised by something and then looked up at the camera.

“People of the Portland-metro and surrounding areas, we are facing something that is unprecedented. There is a terrible virus or contagion that is sweeping through not only our city, but the world. As reports flood in from around the world, the symptoms are consistent.

“This is what we know for certain. Those infected are currently described as hostile and displaying violent, cannibalistic characteristics. The CDC has confirmed that this disease is communicable. There is no known prevention other than to avoid contact at all costs.

“Local hospitals have ceased accepting victims of attack. You are directed to bring any person bitten but still alive to stations set up by the police and National Guard. Currently in the Portland-metro area the following locations are set up as monitoring sites: the Rose Quarter, PGE Park, Roosevelt High School, Beaverton High School, Gresham High School, Tigard High School, Forest Grove High School, and Franklin High School. Be advised that more sites are planned, and that those who must use the Rose Quarter or PGE Park will be directed to a FEMA-run emergency shelter where they will be asked to provide information on the person or persons they delivered. At each high school, that information will be obtained at a designated checkpoint established in the vicinity. There will be signs clearly designating routes to take. Also be advised that you should only use the Rose Quarter and PGE Park if you’re in the immediate vicinity.

“Additionally, the president is expected to speak at seven Pacific Time, approximately eighteen minutes from now. Martial law is expected to be declared on a national level, and Portland is already in the process of recalling all members of the National Guard.

“I ask you now to please follow the instructions you will see on the screen and do your part to keep the peace here in our beautiful city. If you are listening on the radio, this message will be repeated on a loop until the president speaks. After his address, your local stations will be broadcasting continuous updates of what to do. We will get through this, but only if we stick together as a community.”

The man smiled and tapped the pages on the desk as if to signal that he was finished. There was a flash, and then the EBS pattern returned. The crawler began scrolling the high points of the national and local addresses as well as the locations to bring those who were infected.

Rose looked over her shoulder. She simply did not see any way that she could move those two without putting herself and Crystal in danger.

She would worry about that later. Right now she needed to get something fixed for dinner. She had no idea when the last time was that Crystal had eaten; or herself for that matter.

She was rummaging through the cupboards, cursing her sister’s refusal to buy anything in a box that could be whipped up in just a few minutes when she heard a voice behind her.

“I don’t feel good.”

Rose turned to see Crystal standing in the entryway to the kitchen. Rose did not see anything at first, and then it almost jumped out at her. On the left forearm, there was a perfect imprint of teeth. The skin had barely been broken, and only in a couple of spots by the looks of things. That did not seem to matter.

The dark traces that acted as a visible clue for somebody who had been infected were already clearly visible in the little girl’s eyes.

***

“…to bring any person bitten but still alive to stations set up by police and National Guard. Currently in the Portland-metro area the following locations are set up as monitoring sites: the Rose Quarter, PGE Park, Roosevelt High School, Beaverton High School, Gresham High School, Tigard High School, Forest Grove High School, and Franklin High School. Be advised that more sites are planned, and that those who must use the Rose Quarter or PGE Park will be directed to a FEMA-run emergency shelter where they will be asked to provide information on the person or persons they delivered. At each high school, that information will be obtained at a designated checkpoint—”

Jason switched off the radio as he pulled up to the curb at the park. “Can you believe this?”

He sat staring out the window for a second until he heard a sniff beside him. He turned to see Juanita wiping at her eyes. She glanced over and saw him staring and scrubbed all the harder.

“Sorry,” she managed, the strangled sob catching in her throat.

“For what?” Jason asked honestly.

Juanita shrugged. Jason was at a loss. He wanted to be sympathetic, but now was not the time. They needed to meet up with this Erin chick and then decide where to go. However, he had learned his lesson at the hospital; reaching into the back seat, he fumbled around until he found the bat that he’d taken from Fred Meyer’s.

Exiting the car, his eyes scanned the area. It sort of reminded him of prison. Every day, there was an open period out in the yard. Some guys walked the track, some lifted weights, played basketball, or any variety of other sports. When you went to yard, you always kept on a state of alert; that was just the way of things.

He was glad to see that there was nothing moving at the moment. He waited for Juanita and then started for the fence. There was a corral-style entrance that you had to weave through in order to reach the park proper. As he and Juanita entered, the truck pulled in. Jason noticed that the cop was alone.

Wait, he thought, scratch that. He has a dog.

That was something that Jason had missed more than he realized until he’d been in prison for a while. One day, this blind guy came in to the anger management class as a guest speaker. He had a guide dog named Brogan. Petting that dog had stuck with him for a long while. That was one of those “small things in life” that he had decided might be a bit bigger than he had ever realized. He had vowed to appreciate those things much more this time.

“Where’s your friend?” Jason asked as the man approached. That was when he realized that the man hadn’t given his name. To his credit, they had been in a bit of a hurry to get out of that hospital parking lot. Still, everybody else had given names. This guy hadn’t introduced himself or the person he’d been carrying.

“She didn’t make it,” the man grumbled. Jason noticed that the guy did not make eye contact. He was hiding something.

Once inside the park, Jason pulled Juanita to his side and turned to face the man. “You never gave your name back there.”

“Ken Simpson. You wanna share your SID number?” the man quipped as he wove through the switchback entrance and emerged to stand a few feet away.

Jason took note that the man had a pistol in a holster on his belt. He wasn’t touching it, but his hand sort of hovered in a way that hinted at his unease with everything going on. He also noticed that the man was kind of scroungy looking. A few days without shaving, and this guy could actually pass for a bum. When he asked for Jason’s SID number, it confirmed to him his suspicions that this guy was a guard or a cop. A SID, or State Identification number, was given to anybody who ever had the displeasure of being arrested and charged with a crime in the state of Oregon. For a convict, it was like a driver’s license number. He knew his better than his own social security number.

“You a cop?” Jason asked as he started towards the baseball diamond.

“Retired,” the man said as he fell into step. “You a convict?”

“Yeah,” Jason answered, and then added, “also retired.”

Ken Simpson did not laugh. The trio walked the rest of the way in silence. The woman was standing on the pitcher’s mound, the bicycle parked at home plate.

Now that she had her hood back, Jason took a moment to get a better look. She was a pretty healthy looking woman, not anorexic and skinny—a look that reminded him more of crack whores and heroin addicts than anything sexy. Her dark hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail that was wound up and pinned in place on the top of her head with two long prongs that looked like they might be stainless steel.

She had a pretty face and full lips, but there was a hardness to her eyes that detracted from her appearance. Basically, to Jason, she looked angry. He glanced at Ken and saw similarities in their expression. He turned his focus back to Erin. She did not have a cop vibe, but there was something about her that made her more one of the guys than it did a woman; and that played at odds with her curvy shape that was obvious even with the baggy clothes.

Her hooded sweatshirt was unzipped at the moment and revealed some form of Lycra sports bra or top. They were keeping what he considered just on the edge of an overabundant amount of breasts smashed together with a perfect amount of cleavage showing.

Shaking himself, Jason flushed when he realized that, not only had he been staring, but it had been spotted. Erin scowled and zipped up her hooded sweatshirt before speaking.

“So, here is what I know. These things ain’t living. My friend the nurse? The one I was trying to meet up with at Legacy? She sent me this.”

Pulling out her phone, Erin tapped the screen a few times. A video began with a woman holding the phone that had shot the footage in her hand like she was taking a selfie.

“Hey, Westy. It’s Cherry. You gotta see this. Whatever they are saying on television, don’t you believe it…”

The video went on to show a man with a bandage on one arm from the wrist to his elbow. He had the sickly pale grayish-blue skin and the messed up eyes. There were three other hospital staff members in the video, and they all looked scared, but strangely excited at the same time. At one point, the girl who had identified herself as “Cherry” took a scalpel and cut the man open from neck to bellybutton. She used her gloved hands and opened the man strapped on the bed who seemed not to notice as he continued to raise his head and snap at the people moving around him.

“It’s real, Westy!” The woman’s face came back to fill the picture. “Sure as shit, this is freakin’ zombies. We are gathering some stuff and will be leaving from the cafeteria exit in about two hours. We always said that medical stuff would be gold if this happened. Well…” The camera whirled around and came to rest on the body tied to the bed in some out of the way hospital room. “There it is. See you in a bit, sweets.”

That last comment made Jason raise an eyebrow. Not that he was the sort to believe that all a “woman like her” needed to go straight was a roll in the sack with the right man, but at least he understood more why she had shot him such a dirty look. At least that was the logic his mind was forming.

Ken Simpson was on an entirely different tangent. He stepped in front of Erin and hitched his pants in a way that reminded Jason of the stereotypical southern state trooper. All he needed was a toothpick and mirrored sunglasses.

“Y’all were planning to steal a bunch of stuff from the hospital.” Ken had no emotion in his voice, and he was making a statement, not asking a question.

“That was the plan,” Erin said shamelessly. “I don’t know if you were paying complete attention, but I think that video makes a valid argument for zombies.”

The next thing that Ken said actually surprised Jason. “It’s a shame they didn’t make it out. But I take it that you know where they would have been getting their stuff?”

“Not exactly,” Erin spoke with caution licking at the edge of her voice. “Why?”

“Because, in all this zombie crap, things are crazy for a few days, but then they settle down. If this spirals out of control, then we could go back in there a week or two from now and hopefully grab the stuff they gathered. It might even still be bagged up and just waiting. Save us the trouble of having to search.”

Jason did a double take. He had actually thought all the way up to this moment that there would be no way the cop was going to buy the whole “zombie apocalypse” idea. He had still struggled with it. At least he had until that video; that had been the final nail in the coffin of any doubt.

“Nice idea. But I am going on to phase two of my plan,” Erin said with a dismissive wave.

“Plan?” Ken scoffed. “How does anybody plan for this sort of thing?”

“It didn’t have to be zombies,” Erin said with earnest seriousness. “Preppers simply prepared for the collapse of this country and its infrastructure.”

“You were one of those nuts?” Now Ken was practically laughing as he spoke. “Like those sorts you saw on television? You one of those religious nuts like in Waco, or some anti-government yay-hoo like that fella in Ruby Ridge.”

“Easy to throw labels and make assumptions based on ignorance,” Erin shot back. “But last I checked, you came here to meet up with me. You are just as free to turn around and walk off. I imagine that girl you were carrying with the gunshot wound to her leg could use some help right about now.”

“Oooh, snap,” Jason chuckled.

Ken’s face darkened for a moment, and Jason actually believed that the man would either leave, or attack this Erin chick. He glanced over at Juanita and saw that she must be thinking the same thing as she had begun to edge away from where the possible conflict might turn physical. Instead, the man surprised him again.

“I’m just sayin’ that if I had to run into a random stranger in a parking lot of a hospital being overrun by zombies, I’m glad it is somebody who knows what the hell they are doing.”

“So, what is the plan?” Jason decided that it was okay to get back into the conversation.

“I have a place up in the foothills. A few small changes and we are totally off the grid. The reality is that I can’t hold it alone. Cheryl, some friends and I were getting this place ready a long time before reality televisions started painting us as a bunch of conspiracy theory kooks.” Erin looked past Ken and Jason to the nearby street.

“Okay, so why us?” Ken asked the question that Jason was thinking.

“Honestly?” the woman asked with a raise eyebrow and the hint of a humorless smile curling her lip up on only one side. “Because you were the first people that I ran into.”

“And what if we were freaks or some sort of lunatic?” Jason shot back.

“You had a woman with you that was following of her own free will.” Erin looked over at Ken and shrugged. “And you had a dog.”

Jason gave a nod and Ken made a sound in his throat that might have been a cough covering a chuckle. Erin tapped her hip and the heavy-duty blade she had hanging at her side. “Besides, if one or both of you acted strange, I would have dropped you on the spot.”

“You would murder somebody?” Ken was back to sounding every bit like a cop.

“I got news for you, mister,” Erin stepped right up to Ken without a hint of fear, “the rules are about to change. The center is collapsing, and the edges are going to spiral down the toilet. Things are gonna get a lot worse before they get better. If you don’t change your mindset, you won’t last the week.”

Jason nodded in approval. For whatever reason, he believed that he had just fallen into a very good situation.

6

Bad People

“Did Jacob bite you, Crystal?” Rose asked as she knelt in front of the girl.

With tears welling in her tracer-riddled eyes, the little girl nodded. Rose shot a look over her shoulder at the door to her sister’s bedroom. Taking Crystal by the hand, she stood and led the girl to the kitchen and had her sit at the breakfast bar.

“What would you like to eat, sweetie?” Rose asked. She asked that question mainly because she really had no idea what to fix for the little girl. Besides, if she felt sick, then perhaps she wouldn’t want to eat.

“Peanut butter?” the girl posed the request as a question.

“Okay.” Rose spun back to the cupboards and began searching. At last, she discovered a jar with a handmade label. The bread was on a cutting board and when Rose went to cut it, she was surprised to discover that it was still relatively fresh.

“Who makes their own bread?” Rose scoffed under her breath.

“Mama does. She even let me help now that I am older.”

Rose turned to see Crystal still sitting at the counter, but she had laid her head down on her arms. Her breathing was starting to sound weird, like she had something caught in her throat.

Rose wanted to get the sandwich made fast and then get the girl back to her room. She had a good idea as to what was happening.

She had just cut the sandwich in half when she heard something behind her that made her heart thud with rib cracking force. In that instant, she realized that she had simply tuned out the girl’s breathing. That meant that she had not noticed when it had ceased.

Turning slowly, fearing what she would see, Rose staggered back a few steps. Crystal was still sitting at the breakfast bar. She was upright now, and her head was tilted to one side. Those eyes had gone from just the black tracers to being filmed over as well.

She had become one of them.

The little girl’s head twitched a few times, and Rose had the feeling that the girl was studying her. Her skin had drained of color to the point where it was a bluish-gray, and when her mouth opened, a low moan escaped.

“Oh, Crystal.” Rose took another step back.

Crystal’s head jerked violently towards her and her eyes seemed to lock on to Rose. The girl tottered and then fell to the floor, momentarily disappearing from view. There was a scuffling sound, and then Crystal was back on her feet. Yet, for whatever reason, the girl did not approach; she continued to watch Rose.

Rose felt her hand moving along the counter just behind her. It found the sink and then clutched something sturdy. She brought the rolling pin around and held it thrust out in front of her.

“Just stay back, Crystal. I can take you to your mom and brother. Would you like that?”

Crystal—or whatever that thing was that used to be her niece—took a step closer. Rose edged towards the side exit of the kitchen where she would emerge in the hallway. From there, she hoped to lead the girl to the room with her mother and brother.

A sudden eruption of noise came from outside. It was the dogs; they were still out in the car. And now, from the sounds of it, something had them riled up. She knew Imp’s bark well enough.

“Crap,” Rose breathed.

Crystal’s head slowly peered around the corner. The girl’s mouth opened and let loose with a pathetic mewling sound. One awkward step after another, and then she was in the hallway. Rose glanced over her shoulder and hoped this worked. She realized in that instant that she had effectively cut herself off from any ready escape.

The muffled roar of a shotgun sounded from outside, causing Rose to start. Crystal’s head twitched once as she turned towards the sound. Then, she turned back to her aunt and came with hands out, fingers clutching at the air like crab claws.

“Double crap.”

***

“So we aren’t going to one of the FEMA centers?” Juanita asked as Jason shot through an intersection well past the light changing from amber to red.

“Nope.”

Jason’s eyes were locked on the bumper of Ken Simpson’s truck. This had not been the first time that the man had gone through an intersection at the tail end of the amber light. If he did not know better, he would swear the man was trying to ditch him. Sure, he wasn’t doing anything too erratic or crazy; but he was not making any effort not to lose Jason.

The woman, Erin West, had agreed to toss her bike in Ken’s truck and ride with him to this place she knew out in Sandy. She had given Jason a general idea of where it was “just in case.” That was no help. He was not at all familiar with the area. He knew it was out in the sticks, but that was about it. He could find damn near anyplace in the city, but once he hit the rural towns surrounding the Portland metro area, he was a fish out of water.

“You think this place she told us about is the right choice? I don’t know about this. The radio was talking about martial law being in effect and all sorts of things. And there goes another one of those military trucks.” Juanita pointed as the deuce-and-a-half rolled past.

Jason glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the faces of men riding in the back. More importantly, he noticed that the men he could actually see all had weapons cradled in their arms or between their knees. He had lost count around twenty.

“I think this is bad, and it is going to get much worse. I don’t want to be under some military lockdown where I am trapped and have all of my options stripped away,” Jason said.

“But wouldn’t it be safer to be with more people and have armed guards?”

“I don’t want you to freak out or think I am crazy.” Jason gave the steering wheel a little jerk to avoid a car that had pulled only partway out of the road. He shot a glance and saw something thrashing about inside. It was too dark to get a good look within, and for that, Jason was actually just a little bit grateful. “But I think that this is…” He could not say it out loud to her. It was just too preposterous.

“Zombies?” Juanita said at last.

They had tip-toed around that word up to this point. However, whatever the media wanted to call them, whatever that doctor lady wanted to say, these were right out of the horror movies. Those people were the undead, and they were feeding upon the living. Those attacked were becoming infected and turning into the same things. He did not see what else he could call it.

“This might very well be the zombie apocalypse.” Jason let that statement hang in the air for a few seconds before continuing. “I am not saying that the world is going to come to an end. Hell, they might knock this back and get it under control in a few weeks…months maybe. I know they did in Shaun of the Dead.” Juanita chuckled and Jason felt a little better about what was coming out of his mouth.

“But they might not.” Juanita folded her arms across her chest and seemed to consider an idea, twice she sounded like she was about to say something, but each time she only sighed and made a noise in her throat.

“We have to be ready for that possibility,” Jason finally said. “And it is because of that, that we need to be on our guard. Sure, there will be looters and that sort early on, but I am worried about what will happen when it is obvious that things have failed and we are on our own.”

“What do you mean?”

“You watch the news at night, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Yeah, well then imagine all those people who have been caught doing the worst things. Now…imagine that there is nothing in place to stop them. No system to bring them to justice.”

“That’s funny,” Juanita practically snorted.

“What is?” Jason was seriously confused. He did not see anything even the slightest bit amusing in this scenario that was unspooling in his mind.

“A guy who just got out of the joint being the one to worry about how the bad guys might take over.”

“Yeah?” Jason shot her a peculiar look before his eyes returned to the road. “Well I just spent the past several years in there with guys that you absolutely do NOT want out on the streets to do as they please. I have a feeling that there are plenty of people out here who have been walking a tightrope. This will be the thing that sends them plummeting into the abyss.”

There was a moment of silence. Jason stayed locked on the pickup, driving as close as he dared without actually tailgating. At last Juanita turned his direction.

“That is some pretty deep stuff.”

“For an ex-con?” Jason only bit back a little of the sarcasm. He hated being stereo-typed.

“For anybody,” Juanita said with a dismissive wave of her hand.

Jason was about to say something when the brake lights on the pickup flashed and then came on steady. They’d been doing over sixty in a forty-five mile per hour zone, flashing past houses that were spaced out unlike the urban cramming that took place in the metro area.

Juanita exclaimed something in Spanish that Jason recognized as an expletive. She had her hands on the dashboard to brace herself, but Jason brought the car to a halt a good few feet from the truck’s bumper. He hit the release on his seatbelt and started to open the door. Before he got out, he turned to Juanita and shook his head.

“You stay put.” She started to protest, but he held up a finger to stall her. “If things go bad, haul ass. I am serious, don’t get out of this car.”

With that, Jason climbed out. He looked over his shoulder and motioned with a hand for Juanita to move into the driver’s seat. Once she did, he headed for the truck. The driver’s side door was open and Ken was standing just past it with his hands on his hips.

“Get up here, convict,” Ken called over his shoulder. Jason bristled, but did as the man requested.

When he reached Ken’s side, he stumbled, coming to a stop. In the glow of the truck’s headlights was a three-car accident. It had both lanes blocked. The ditches on either side would prevent being able to go around the wreck. However, it was not so much the pile-up that was so disturbing.

Sitting on the road, legs splayed out in front, was a girl in her late teens. She was a mess. Her clothing was black with blood, but her face was a crimson mask and there looked to be a massive shard of glass jutting from the side of her face. In the girl’s hands, she held an arm that dangled from the shattered window just above her head. The person the arm belonged to did not seem to notice. Something was moving inside the car, but the moans coming from the shadows did not sound like it was from anything living.

“We gotta move this.” Erin stepped up beside the two men. “The quicker the better.”

“How do you propose we do that?” Ken asked. “My truck is sturdy, but it ain’t just gonna shove three cars out of the way.”

“We see if any of them are still able to move on their own,” Erin retorted matter-of-factly.

“You first,” Ken snapped, making a bowing gesture and sweeping his arms wide in an ushering motion.

With a shrug, Erin drew the machete from her hip and started forward. Jason watched as the girl gnawing on the arm seemed to regard her for the merest of seconds before resuming in her feast of forearm. Erin walked up and swung in an overhand arc, her blade coming down hard on the crown of the zombie girl’s head.

Jason had to lean to one side, and there was still a lot of shadow keeping his view obscured, but he had to admit that he was more than a little impressed when Erin planted a booted foot on the zombie’s shoulder and yanked her blade free.

Deciding that he was not going to be seen as a coward (while also coming to the decision that he cared less than nothing when it came to what this prick Ken thought of him), Jason rushed in to help yank the door open enough so that they could pull the body free that had been the source of the zombie’s snack. He was about to ask what they should do when Erin plunged the tip of her machete into the eye socket of the person on the ground. The body twitched a few times and was still.

“No sense waiting for it to sit up,” Erin answered Jason’s open-mouthed expression.

Sure enough, there was another body in the car. It was strapped in the passenger’s seat and had craned its head in their direction. Erin silenced it in mid-moan as she thrust her blade forward and then jerked back.

She climbed in the driver’s seat and tried the key to no avail. “Worth a shot,” she chuckled. She adjusted the lever on the steering column. “Okay, I put it in reverse. Not saying that is gonna mean a thing, but let’s push this one back.” She hopped out of the car and shouldered her way past Jason.

Hurrying around, Jason put his shoulder into the vehicle and tried to push. There was the screech of protesting metal as the car came clear from under the rear quarter of the big SUV in the middle of the carnage.

Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a face plastered against the window on the driver’s side of the SUV, mouth working like the zombie thought that it might be able to chew through the glass and get to them. A shadow made him jump, and Jason popped up suddenly, fists clenched and ready to fight off whatever it was that had taken this moment to attack.

“Easy, breezy,” Juanita said as she put her shoulder in with the other woman to move the car back.

“Where the hell is that jerk, Ken?” Jason managed through gritted teeth.

“He got back in his truck.”

“And why the hell are you out here?” he grunted as they gave the car one last push before the slope stepped in to assist; the car rolled back into the ditch, the nose pointing up, the front tires off the road when it came to rest at the bottom of the ditch.

“Because of them.” Juanita pointed back the way they had come.

The problem with being out in the boondocks was the lack of light. However, between the moon and a few of the houses along the way, as well as a small roadside mini-mart and gas station that they had passed just a moment ago, it was easy to see at least a dozen figures headed their direction.

“Where the hell did they come from?’ Jason snarled.

“Anywhere…nowhere…does it matter?” Erin grunted as she plunged her blade into the zombie that had tumbled out of the SUV after she’d opened the door during this brief conversation. “We need to get moving.”

With that, Erin climbed up into the big vehicle that had shuttled children to soccer, hauled Christmas trees from one of the many local U-cut locations, and had been filled countless times with bags of groceries to feed the family of the woman that now lie sprawled on the road like so much refuse.

There was a slow chug, and then the blissful sound of the engine turning over. Erin popped the vehicle into gear and mashed the accelerator. The terrific scream of metal and the roar of the engine were a concert of unpleasant noise that seemed all the louder given the circumstances. However, Erin was able to push the third vehicle in this pile-up aside as well as get the SUV out of the way just enough to allow cars to pass single file. She made note that there was blood in the passenger’s seat as well as a huge hole in the windshield on that side.

Hopping out, she stepped between Jason and Juanita, facing Jason and all but ignoring Juanita. “I know you want to be chivalrous or some such nonsense, but believe me when I tell you, the time for that is gone. It is every man and woman for him or herself. If you can’t handle your load, you ain’t gonna make it. Seems to me that this woman can handle her business…so maybe you should let her.”

Jason ran his hands over his face in a washing motion. He looked from one woman to the other and then nodded. In his mind, he understood exactly what Erin was saying. However, it was going to be difficult to adhere to the idea that his survival might rely on allowing others to die. But then again, would that be so much more different than in prison? In the joint, you took care of yourself first. There were no such things as real friends.

“I think I can do that,” Jason nodded. Yet, deep down, he wondered. The past several years, he had been trying to learn how to be a good and decent person; a contributor to society instead of a burden.

“You gonna stand there all day with your thumb up your ass, convict?” Ken called from the truck.

Jason looked around and realized that Juanita had already started back for the car and Erin was climbing into the cab of the truck. With a shake of his head, Jason cast one more glance at the zombies approaching from back the way they came and headed for the car.

He paused when he reached the truck and shot Ken Simpson a nasty look. “My name is Jason Edwards. Not ‘convict’ or ‘inmate’ or anything else like that. We clear?”

Ken snorted and popped the truck into gear, heading for that single lane gap that he’d had no real part in helping to create, leaving Jason standing on the road. As he climbed in the car, he wondered if all his reading about zombies was going to do him any good in this world. He focused on those thoughts so that he would not fixate on killing Ken Simpson.

***

Ken shot a look at Erin as she climbed in the truck. He was ready for a ration of crap over his not staying out on the road to help them move vehicles in the clear. Honestly, he probably would have been the mouth to lead that charge if the situation were reversed. The truth was that he did not want to give away the fact that his back was screaming at him. Carrying that girl had tweaked something in a bad way. He would not have been able to fight off a toddler at this point.

“How bad is it?” Erin said flatly as he popped the truck into gear and edged around the pile up.

“What do you mean?” Ken asked before he could catch himself. That was ‘Cop 101’ stuff. She knew he was hiding something and had just set him up to lie.

“I saw you wince when you climbed out of the truck and I noticed it again when you bailed. Tell me straight up…are you bit?”

He saw her hand resting on the hilt of the blade she wore at her side. While he doubted that she would take a shot at him while he was driving, he was not as confident about how she might respond the moment the truck came to a halt.

“I am not bit,” Ken stated with icy calm in his voice. “I will strip buck-ass naked when we get to wherever you are taking us if that is what it takes to prove it.”

“Not that I wanna see you naked, but I think that is best.” Erin sat back, making a little demonstration of putting her hands in her lap.

Ken did not try to hide his smile. He liked this gal just fine. The fact that she was not simply ready to take his word was actually a plus in his book. After all, they were basically strangers. He wondered if the convict would see things through the same filter.

They continued along down the highway that took them out of Portland’s more populated suburban area and out to what the city folks referred to as “the sticks.” Places like Estacada, Canby, Molalla, and Sandy all had a town center kind of place, but most of their actual makeup was rural with farms. Of course, those were slowly being displaced by housing communities as developers swooped in and grabbed giant tracts of land where they would squeeze in as many houses as possible.

As they drove with the radio droning the same message on a loop about the locations of FEMA centers and where people should bring the injured, Ken wondered briefly if this might be worse than anybody expected. Well, he shot a glance over at Erin who was now sitting with her head back and her eyes shut, almost everybody.

He was about to ask her exactly where they were headed when she said, “Take the next road on the left. We are about five miles out.”

***

Rose closed the bedroom door behind her. She could hear Crystal scrabbling to her feet, but she did not have time to secure her at the moment. Somebody was outside…with a gun! Her dogs were both going nuts, and she was terrified that whoever it was outside would hurt them. She realized that she needed to be concerned for herself, but those were her babies.

Running for the front door, Rose at least had the sense of mind to peek out the curtain first. Unfortunately, it was now fully dark outside. She could not see anything that was not in one of the pools of light cast by the multitude of security lights her sister had around the property.

She scanned the area out front and saw two figures limping towards the house and three more sprawled on the ground. She had barely pulled the curtain aside an inch which is why the person who was on the porch suddenly came into view and surprised her. Rose let out a little shriek and stumbled back, falling gracelessly on her butt.

“Hello?” a voice called from right outside the door.

“Please,” another chimed, “let us in! They’re everywhere out here!”

Rose climbed to her feet and made a quick decision; she could not stay inside and leave those people to whatever fate might be in store, but more importantly, she could not leave her babies out in the car any longer.

Turning the knobs, she unlocked the door as fast as she could. She turned the knob and only had the door open a crack when it swung in and sent her flying. She was on her belly and trying to get to her feet when a booted foot slammed into her gut. Rose felt the wind leave her lungs in a sudden and painful rush.

“Stay the fuck down, bitch!” a voice snarled. Rose turned her head and looked up to see a very large woman in jeans, flannel shirt, and a baseball cap scowling down at her.

“Hank, get inside!” the man now standing in the doorway barked.

A younger man, in his late teens by Rose’s best guess, staggered into the room, using the wall beside the door to slide down until he was on the floor. He left a dark smear of blood in doing so and, out of reflex, Rose winced at the idea of how angry her sister would be when she saw the mess.

“Two more of them damn things down,” the younger man, Hank apparently, said as he struggled to catch his breath.

“If one of ‘em was that prick Samuel Riggs, I will kiss your ass,” the woman snorted as she stepped over Rose and knelt in front of Hank.

“Now, Missy,” the other man said as he leaned where Rose had been standing only moments before, moving the curtains aside so that he could peer out the window, “that man fought in World War Two.”

“Don’t make him any less an asshole,” Missy retorted. The woman gave Hank a pat on the shoulder which caused the man to wince. As she started to stand, she shot a nasty look over at Rose and her expression changed to one of confusion. “Hey, Randy, that ain’t the Spring cunt.”

The man at the window turned and shot a glance over his shoulder. He shrugged and turned to look back out the window. “Prob’ly her sister. Seem to recall she had a sister that came out from time to time.”

“You picked a bad day to come pay a visit,” Missy huffed as she came over to Rose and knelt down.

The first thing that Rose noticed was the bitter stink of whiskey on the woman’s breath. She knew that smell all too well from her married life. However, now that she was getting her wind back, she was able to get a better look at these intruders.

The Reynolds family. She remembered hearing a great deal about them. They were some of the last remnants of the folks that had retreated to these parts to avoid the eyes of the law. In the 70s, they had grown pot, but now, these were meth heads. They had smoked, snorted and injected away what had once been a few hundred acres of beautiful farmland. All that remained was less than an acre with a rundown and ratty looking single wide with rust stains and the siding peeling away.

Missy Reynolds would be the last person you might expect to be a meth addict if you were going off of initial appearances. At just about five feet tall and well over two hundred and fifty pounds, she was a big woman. Her blond hair was greasy and kept in a bowl cut on her large, round head. She was missing well over half her teeth, and those that remained would not be staying long by the looks of it. Her face was a pocked mix of serious acne scars and the fresh, open sores of the meth addict. Her nose was flat from having been busted a few times more than it had been reset, and her dull blue eyes were beady and hidden in folds of flesh that gave her a perpetual look of being drunk and angry.

Randy Reynolds, the oldest of the three siblings, was in his thirties, but looked considerably older as the years of hard drinking and heavy drug use took their inevitable toll. His long brown hair was easily as greasy as his sister’s and pulled back in a sloppy ponytail that only accented his receding hairline. Where his sister was obese, Randy was stick thin to the point of gaunt. He had no trouble looking the part of a “tweaker” in the meth scene. His arms were scrawled on with the typical—if not some of the worst—jailhouse tattoo art. It was the rare occasion that he (or any of his siblings, for that matter) were seen without a cigarette either dangling from their mouth or tucked in behind one ear.

Last, but not least, was Hank Reynolds. The baby of the bunch, Hank was actually twenty-three. He’d been blessed (or cursed, depending on how you looked at it) with a baby face; and for that reason alone, he had endured the constant ribbing, taunting, and beatings from his elder brother and sister. His hair was a cross between the blond of his sister (and mother) and the deep brown of his brother (and real father). His eyes were big and brown, and his skin was almost flawless, only just beginning to show the hints of the open lesions that were so common amongst the users of crystal meth. He still had all of his teeth, and was the only one of the three to brush with any regularity—and by regularity, for a Reynolds, that meant once or twice a week.

The consensus around town was that Hank would have been a heartbreaker if not for his last name. That alone precluded his having any shot at the bevy of local girls who all knew, or knew of, his family by the time they were old enough to start school. Having made it all the way through the sixth grade before being officially expelled and prohibited from attending any of the local schools in the Sandy area, Hank was considered the “smart” one in the family; that did nothing more than make him a bigger target for his siblings.

“Ain’t you called Rose or something?” Hank said through clenched teeth as he pushed up to his feet with an audible gasp and wince.

“Yes,” Rose said with a nod, her eyes darting from one Reynolds family member to the next.

“Them your dogs out in the car?” Hank took a step towards the woman and reached to help her up. He got a smack on the back of his head for his troubles.

“Ow! What’d you go and do that for?” Hank whimpered.

“We ain’t here to make friends with these people,” Missy hissed. “You seen the news. People are getting attacked and killed. Old Man Riggs got his guts hanging to his knees and is still walking about like it’s nobody’s business. We got a chance to cash in and I ain’t gonna have you ruin it by gettin’ all nicey-nice with some bitch you’re gonna have to end up killin’ before we go.”

Rose felt her mouth go dry. This was actually more frightening than her encounter back at the house with her ex and the man up the street. At least they were infected or zombies or whatever the hell was going on. These were perfectly normal people (in a manner of speaking) who were talking about murdering her like it was the most normal and natural thing in the world.

“So,” Missy returned her piggish gaze back to Rose, that permanent sneer deepening with extra menace, “where is the rest of the family? Tulip or whatever the hell your sister’s name is. And those two brats of hers, where are they?”

Almost on cue, a low moan came from the bedroom where Rose had just led Crystal. Missy’s head turned slowly, almost like she was a bad animatronic. Her eyes narrowed, which Rose found herself being amazed at considering how deeply set and squinty they were already.

“Sounds like somebody already caught whatever this damn sickness is,” Randy said, coming away from the curtain. “Hank, go see what the dealy-oh is with whoever is down yonder.”

“Yonder?” Rose whispered incredulously.

“You gettin’ sassy, bitch?” Missy grunted as she made her way to her feet. Leaning down, she grabbed Rose by the hair and yanked her up. “Maybe you should show us what is down there. I gots me a feelin’ that I already know.”

Rose struggled, wincing as she felt hair being ripped from her scalp by the roots. That was enough to get her to settle down.

“My sister,” Rose blurted. “She and the kids all have whatever this is.”

“Then that is good news for us,” Missy snorted.

“How so?” Hank asked.

“We ain’t gotta get our hands dirty. Can’t nobody accuse us of a murder that we didn’t commit.”

“Sis, sometimes I can’t believe folks say that Hank got all the brains in the family,” Randy said with a laugh.

“Go on,” Missy extended her arm to her little brother like she was handing off something nasty. “Take her down the hall and shove her in that room. Me and Randy will have a look around to see if there is anything here worth taking.”

“Randy and I,” Hank muttered under his breath as he took Rose, choosing to grab her arm instead of accepting the proffered handful of hair that Missy offered.

“What did you say, boy?” Missy called as her youngest brother led Rose down the hallway.

“Nothing,” Hank shouted over his shoulder. “Nothing you would understand, you fat idiot,” he whispered just barely loud enough for Rose to hear.

As they reached the door, Rose winced at the sound of something being shattered back up the hallway. That crash was followed by some hoots and yells of glee.

“You don’t have to do this,” Rose whispered. Hearing Hank’s obvious disapproval of his brother and sister’s behavior, she felt a kernel of hope start to grow.

The young man stopped and turned to face her. His face was a twisted mask of hate and anger. For the briefest of moments, she thought that it was for Missy and Randy. Then, Hank spoke.

“Don’t even think about it, you snotty little bitch. You never gave me the time of day. Now, you think that I am gonna go against blood to do you any favors.” He laughed, and it was an evil, bitter sound. “You’re lucky old Randy and I didn’t take a go at ya before tossing your skinny white ass aside.”

The sound of a hand smacking against the door broke the spell and allowed Rose to tear her eyes away from those of Hank as he glared with unveiled venom at her. Stepping to the door, the youngest Reynolds family member turned the knob and flung it open. There was a thud, and as the door opened all the way, Rose saw Crystal clawing at the air as she struggled to her feet. In the bed, Violet’s head turned and her mouth opened in a moan. Beside her, Jacob struggled as well, and quickly joined in on the moaning chorus.

“Holy shit,” Hank breathed as he pushed Rose forward to lead the way into the room. He barely broke stride as he lashed out with a boot and kicked Crystal’s legs out from under her so that he could approach the bed and get a closer look.

He turned to Rose with a downcast expression. “She ain’t nearly so hot with her eyes like that and her skin all gray.” His eyes traveled the length of Rose’s body, causing her to take an involuntary step backwards.

“Hank!” Missy hollered from the front of the house. “Get your ass out here. Looks like we got company!”

The young man headed for the door, but paused before he shut it. “You stay alive long enough with her,” he nodded his head towards Crystal who was just now regaining her feet again, “and just maybe we can reach an…arrangement. One that lets you live.”

The door shut and Rose turned to face her niece.

***

“Pull in up there,” Erin said as she sat up suddenly.

“This your place?” Ken asked as he slowed.

“No, but I know who lives here and they don’t ever leave their gate open.”

The truck pulled up to the driveway and Ken whistled. “Don’t look like they opened it of their own free will.”

The gate was a twisted mess of metal that had obviously been smashed through. Up the driveway, but nose down in a deep irrigation ditch that ran alongside it, was a beat up old truck.

“That is the Reynolds’ pickup,” Erin said in a tone that made it clear that little fact was important.

“Okay?” Ken offered a leading question that he hoped would give him an idea of what the hell was going on.

Erin never got a chance to answer as a figure stepped out from behind the rear of the Reynolds’ truck and into the path of Ken’s. Out of reflex, he slammed on the brakes. The figure in the headlights was obviously not one of the living. Both arms had been ripped free and the creature still managed to wobble towards them with his guts spooling out of a horrific tear in his belly. What had once been a very elderly man opened his mouth to reveal dark gums. Obviously this guy had worn dentures. Ken was about to make a witty comment about not having to fear this zombie’s bite as he watched it run into the front bumper, apparently seeking the shortest route to its intended target, but not quite grasping the concept of having to go around.

Erin flung open her door and stepped out, blade coming free before both feet hit the ground. Walking around the truck, she swung hard and fast, cleaving the top half of the man’s head clean off. Ken winced at the display of violence, but was momentarily confused as the young woman seemed to just stand over the fallen body of the corpse.

At last, she turned and came back to the truck. When she climbed in, Ken could see tears carving trails through the grime on her cheeks. He wondered if perhaps she had known the man. He was about to ask when she spoke.

“Old Man Riggs. His name was Samuel Riggs. He fought in World War Two. Every summer he would pay the local kids to mow his yard and do odd jobs. He was never stingy with his money if you were willing to put in an honest day’s work. He didn’t tolerate slackers, and if he caught you loafing, he sent you packing. He used to march every year in the Veteran’s Day parade, refusing to ride in the car with the banner. He told the most amazing stories…” Erin’s voice hitched and caught as she began to sob.

Ken put the truck in gear and started forward, wincing when the vehicle jolted just a bit as it ran over the body lying in front of it. Once the rear tires were clear, he goosed the accelerator and made short work of the rest of the lengthy driveway which terminated at an open turnaround. There was already one car parked right in front of the house.

However, there were also a good dozen or so of the undead gathered around it and another ten or so (at least that he could see) along the front of the house. Some were clawing at windows, a few were at the front door, and a couple were simply at the wall, clawing like they might actually think they could get through to whatever was on the other side.

“You can sit in here again and do nothing if you want,” Erin said while giving herself a pat-down. “The people here are good people, and they have a lot of things that we can use if we join up. Their farm and ours are adjacent. Between the two groups, we could ride this out for a good long while.”

She didn’t wait for his response; instead, the woman climbed out of the truck and shut the door. However, she did not move forward towards the house like he expected, and for a moment, Ken lost sight of her. When he found her again, she was at the car behind them with that guy Jason and the Hispanic woman who he could not recall the name of at the moment.

Seconds later, both front doors to the car opened and the pair emerged. Jason had a bat in his hand. The woman hurried to the rear of the car and popped the trunk, she emerged with a tire iron. The trio did a quick huddle and then started for the nearest of the walking dead.

“I’m living a fucking zombie movie,” Ken sighed as he watched the carnage begin.

Of course he’d come to that conclusion a long time ago. However, for whatever reason, it was now becoming real. With a sigh, he reached under his seat and pulled out a case. Setting it down, he watched calmly as the three worked methodically to reach the house. It wasn’t too difficult by the looks of things.

Removing one of his Glocks, Ken inserted the magazine and let the slide slam into place. He considered bringing both, but decided to just scoop up another two magazines and stuff them in his coat pocket. Then he loaded the second and set it on the seat. Never knew if he might have to make a run for it. It would be nice to have this second weapon as a safety net.

Ken climbed out of the car, his nose wrinkling immediately at the stench. He was a step away from the truck when he saw the curtain twitch beside the front door. Maybe it was his cop instincts, or maybe it was just dumb luck, but Ken whipped his pistol up and leveled it at the center of the door frame just as it flew open and a large figure stepped out onto the porch with a street sweeper jammed against one shoulder.

Time slowed down for Ken as he aimed. He could tell instantly that the short, squat figure in that doorway was aiming at Erin. Without giving it another second’s worth of thought, Ken fired three rounds. All three shots slammed into the figure’s center mass. The body toppled backwards and fell back into the house.

There was a moment of silence. In that instant, it seemed as if even the zombies paused in their pitiful moans and groans to see what would happen next. An anguished voice finally shattered that silence.

“YOU MOTHER FUCKERS DONE KILLED MY SISTER!”

That was a girl? was Ken’s last thought before a tall, lanky figure leapt through the open doorway, a street sweeper at his hip—probably the same one that his sister had been holding just moments before—erupting with a mighty roar and a flash of fire.

7

“What about Hank?”

Randy Reynolds pumped and fired the shotgun. Fortunately for Erin, Jason and Juanita, he was basically firing blind, the barrel swiveling to anything that moved; which, at the moment, were just the zombies.

Ken was relatively safe considering the distance. Shotguns were hellish at close range. This was a point vividly illustrated when a zombie stepped directly into the line of fire and took the full brunt from the twelve-gauge buckshot. Its head erupted, reminding Ken for some reason of the grand finale of watermelon smashing that took place at the end of the Gallagher shows. The body took one more step and then collapsed in a heap. Another round slammed into the chest of a young woman and erupted from her back. This rocked the woman, but she continued on as if she did not notice the fist-sized hole in her body.

Ken did not see where the third shot went as he sighted in on his target and fired. At first, he thought that he had missed, But then, the man took an unsteady step forward and then another before dropping to his knees. A dark stain was visible on his forehead. Ken was actually a bit miffed. He had aimed for the chest. The man had moved at the last second, taking a step down from the porch. In doing so, he had taken the bullet to the head.

Everybody seemed fascinated by Ken’s recent kill; so much so that all of them were paying more attention to the two dead bodies in the doorway and ignoring the zombies moving in on them. He was about to say something when a hand clamped down on his shoulder. Ken spun to see a man about his age. The man had a nasty rip on his throat and a few bites on his arms that looked strangely small.

Shaking his head to snap himself back into action, he shoved his Glock up under the man’s chin and fired. The man dropped like a stone and revealed another several figures headed his way. They were nothing more than black silhouettes in the bright headlights of his pickup directly behind them, but he did not need to see details to know that they were children.

“Jesus on a jet plane,” he muttered.

The first of the children finally closed to a distance where Ken could see him better. The boy was maybe five. He had been ravaged most unpleasantly. In Ken’s mind, he saw the boy pulled to the ground by a pack of those things. That would be the only explanation for how this boy was so ripped up.

Adjusting his aim, Ken was about to fire when something happened that made him pause. It had nothing to do with the fact that this zombie was a child. The moment that he’d accepted the idea of what was happening, he had simply turned off the part of his brain that allowed him to see these things as anything more than a savage animal that needed to be put down. It would be no different if he was out deer hunting and a cougar or a bear tried to attack him. While he had no desire to hunt either of those predatory animals, he would not simply stand there and be mauled. To him, zombies were no different. Man. Woman. Child. A zombie did not care. It simply wanted to eat you for whatever reason.

No, what made Ken pause was the way that the boy suddenly stopped his advance. He tilted his head, first one way, and then the other, as if regarding Ken and determining if he, Ken Simpson, were the threat. To compound his astonishment, the other children halted their advance as well.

“What the fu—” was all he managed to say when a voice from behind shouted.

“I’m coming out! I ain’t armed, but I gots me a hostage. Don’t shoot!”

Ken had to fight every instinct and impulse in his body to keep from turning. He would have to trust that the trio of Erin, Jason, and that woman had his back.

***

Jason swung the bat like he was trying to send one into the cheap seats. His hands were stinging like crazy, but he had no other choice. The only thing he was certain of at the moment was that he would be looking for a different weapon as soon as this was over. It might work in the movies and in the books, but using a bat to crush a skull was much harder than it had ever been portrayed.

The zombie in front of him stumbled, and he brought the bat down on the back of its head. For some reason, this worked much better than when he hit them in front. He had just drove his bat down to end the most recent zombie to cross his path when the door to the house flew open. The figure was short and squat, reminding Jason of a dwarf from those Lord of the Rings movies. However, it was the nasty shotgun that garnered most of his attention. He was a deer in the headlights all the way up to the point when three shots cracked off in quick succession and the body toppled backwards.

The next few seconds were deafening silence. He saw the shadows move inside the doorway and had the sense of mind to duck as a tall man came out screaming about how they’d just killed his sister before firing off that street sweeper and obliterating a nearby zombie from the neck up.

The man had the weapon at his hip, and while that might look cool in the movies and on all the cop shows, it was crap when it came to being able to fire with any accuracy. The next round caught a woman just a dozen or so feet to Jason’s left square in the chest. The zombie rocked a little, but then continued towards the epicenter of noise coming from the front porch as the tall man screamed threats and then fired again. Apparently the man was starting to discern between the living and the undead, because there was an eruption of bark from the tree just to Jason’s left, a few of the flying splinters stinging his face as the wood found purchase in the flesh of his cheek; one coming dangerously close to his eye.

Self-preservation kicked in and Jason dove to the ground and covered his head with his hands. His rational mind was trying to tell him that this form of defense would not do much to stop a shotgun shell, but the flight instinct had him doing the old duck-and-cover.

He heard three more shots, but these sounded different and came from behind him. Risking the exposure, Jason craned his neck to look behind him and instead was greeted by a pair of legs as a zombie walked up, obviously thinking that somebody had laid out a Jason-flavored picnic. Fortunately, his reflexes were on full alert as adrenaline coursed through his body in ways it had never done back in his old home invasion days.

He swept a leg around and kicked the zombie off its feet. His next move was to pop up and bring his bat around to take down the next closest zombie. It just so happened to be the woman with the fist-sized hole in her chest from having taken a slug of buckshot from that street sweeper just a moment ago. The zombie toppled and Jason started for the open door. A noise directly behind him caused him to hit the ground for the second time. He rolled over, unsure what he would see, and felt his lips curve up in a smile.

Juanita was standing over a downed zombie. She was yanking the pry-bar end of her crowbar out of its face. In a deft movement, she kicked out with one foot and put the woman with the hole in her chest back down on her back and then rammed the tire iron into the head, ending the zombie’s struggles instantly. Just as she reached over to give him a hand up, a voice called from the house.

“I’m coming out! I ain’t armed, but I gots me a hostage. Don’t shoot!”

Jason hopped up and immediately saw Ken just to his right. The man had a pistol out in front of him and was in a crouch, but he was facing away from the house. Jason shot a look that way and was able to make out the silhouettes of several small figures backlit by the headlights of the man’s truck.

It was obvious to him that the man had his hands full. He saw no sign of the woman Erin, but with the scattered floodlights, his night vision was absolute crap. She could be right on the other side of any of the cold, white halos of light that shone from the six different posts around the front yard area as well as the pair of high-powered Halogen lights aimed almost directly at him from the front porch. That meant he would have to have Ken’s back. It was not something he had ever imagined in his life. Jason Edwards backing up one of Portland’s finest? The fellas in the joint would skin him alive.

Well, he was out here in the shit, and he had the feeling he would need every swinging dick…he shot a look at Juanita. Figuratively speaking, he thought as the doorway filled with shadow once again. A man stepped out onto the porch with a woman as a shield. He held a knife to her throat.

“I don’t want any trouble,” the man yelled.

***

Crystal had climbed back to her feet and was coming for Rose with her hands reaching; opening and closing like crab claws. Rose shoved the girl back. Either due to Crystal’s lack of coordination or because she had shoved harder than she realized, the body toppled and the head struck the floor with a solid thud.

For an instant, Rose had reason to hope that perhaps Crystal had been knocked out, or maybe that zombie thing about a blow to the head had some truth to it. However, after only a few seconds, the girl began to squirm and struggle to her feet.

She had taken a step when all hell broke loose in the front of the house. There was yelling, screaming, cursing, and the sounds of gunfire. Rose backed into the corner, her eyes going from the bed holding her sister and nephew, to her niece. For some reason, the child had stopped moving and was cocking its head one way and then the other. First it would fix its rheumy gaze on the door, then her head would twitch slightly and readjust to look at Rose.

A noise like somebody running sounded at the door and it flew open, slamming hard into Rose and causing her to yelp in pain. The door bounced back enough so that Rose could see that whatever spell had kept Crystal in place a second ago had ended. The girl was on the move; but she was not coming at Rose.

“Sorry, kid,” Hank’s voice came with a sigh and the young man stepped forward.

Rose could only watch in stunned horror as he grabbed Crystal by the hair and drove the blade of a large butcher’s knife into the little girl’s temple. He shoved the body back and spun to face Rose.

“Don’t make me kill you,” Hank growled, grabbing her roughly by the arm and jerking her around to where she was in front of him.

“P-p-please—” she started, but he jerked her hard and pressed the edge of the blade against her throat.

“Shut up!” he hissed in her ear. “I said I don’t want to hurt you. I will if you do anything stupid. Otherwise, just be quiet and let me deal with whoever is outside.”

Pushing her ahead of him as he made his way up the hallway, Rose felt Hank’s body press so close that it was becoming a bit uncomfortable on the personal level. Coupled with the knife at her throat, Rose was terrified for her life more than she had been at any point up until this very moment.

“I’m coming out! I ain’t armed, but I gots me a hostage. Don’t shoot!” Hank yelled, his mouth close enough to her ear that she winced.

She could see Missy’s body on the floor just inside the door. A pool of blood had managed to spread out around her and there were three dark stains in the middle of her body. As she and Hank moved around Missy’s body. Rose’s eyes could not look away from the face of the downed Reynolds matriarch. Even in death, her eyes had a look of anger that almost made her feel bad for the woman. To die in such a state must have been a miserable experience. She had the oddest thought that it was doubtful that Missy had ever known a moment of real, true happiness.

As she stepped out onto the porch, her eyes scanned a scene beyond any nightmare she could have envisioned. There were bodies littering the ground, but she skipped over that and locked on the front windshield of her car. There they were, sitting in front with Circe in the driver’s seat and Imp on the passenger’s side. Both dogs’ ears perked up at the sight of her, but neither barked.

“I don’t want any trouble,” Hank yelled. At least this time he’d moved his head a few inches from her ear. It was still loud, but not painfully so like the first time.

She thought that she saw two figures turn their direction and then pause after a step or two. That meant that they were probably not zombies. The next thing that she noticed were the pickup and older car parked just behind hers a little ways on the driveway. It was there that her eyes locked. A man was standing with his back to her and had a pistol out in front of his body with a two-handed grip. She could see a few figures moving around in the headlights of the truck. They looked like—

A series of gunshots made her jump again. She was so startled that it was another few seconds before her mind registered the pain at her throat where the knife had given her a shallow slice. A heartbeat later, there was a heavy thud and she felt Hank sort of tumble against her like he’d just been shoved. She also felt the knife move away from her throat and a second later clatter to the concrete porch.

Jumping away from the man, she almost toppled backwards down the stairs. Another figure was standing there, this one holding a rather impressive looking machete.

“Everything is gonna be okay,” the figure spoke.

It took her brain a few more seconds to wade through everything and come up with the name of the voice’s owner. Recognition came just in time. She was starting to fall backwards down the steps when a hand shot out and grabbed her by the wrist.

“Erin?” Rose managed as she was jerked forward from the precipice. “Erin West?”

***

Now able to see the boy a little better as his eyes adjusted, Ken felt his stomach churn. The little boy’s face was missing a lot of meat from where the lower lip area had been ripped away violently. The tear extended down the chin and to the throat as well as most of the right cheek.

“God forgive me,” Ken whispered.

He adjusted his weapon and fired. The bullet slammed into the boy’s forehead and blew out a good chunk of scalp and brain that seemed to hang in the air and wait as if it wanted to be certain that his eyes got a good look before it fell into the pool of darkness that was the ground at the boy’s feet. A few more deft adjustments and he sent bullets flying as the other child zombies began towards him.

He brought his Glock down after the last of the small figures tumbled to the ground. He felt something deep down that was trying to let him know he had done what was right. Yet, now that he stood over the downed bodies of a group of children, his conscience threatened to burn through and devour his sanity.

“Holy shit,” a voice whispered from beside him, causing Ken to spin suddenly and out of reflex. It was the convict.  Ken made no effort to stop his fist as it lashed out.

The punch landed solid on the man’s nose with a satisfying crunch. Ken’s vision reduced to pinpoints. All he saw was this human piece of crap that a sympathetic society had probably let off easy. This was every criminal that had taken a moment of his time that could have been spent caring for his wife in those final days before cancer stole her away. Ken swung again and was surprised when he met nothing but air.

The convict ducked his punch and came up with the barrel of an aluminum baseball bat. It caught Ken flush on the chin and brought with it sweet darkness and a reprieve from the voice in his head screaming that he was a child killer.

His last conscious thought was that he hoped that he would never again open his eyes.

***

Jason started towards Ken. He’d watched in what was confusion at first as Ken held a group of children at gun point. However, one of them turned just so in the light to reveal a mangled face, and he knew instantly that these were not just regular children.

When the man fired off a series of shots, each one emphasized by a dark figure dropping to the ground, Jason winced. He knew that he would likely face such horrors himself if he survived for any length of time, but that did not make it any easier to see. There was a hard rule in the joint: anybody who hurt a child was met with a special brand of prison justice.

Hell, it was even hinted at on shows like that SVU program. However, the public might be a bit more squeamish if they had to witness some of the fates he’d seen in his years locked up. Hell, he’d been a participant in a few nasty beat down sessions when he was a young thug trying to make his way into one of the gangs on the inside. It was a standard rite of initiation to put the boots to a freak (the prison term for those in on sex crimes). One instance with the handle of a plunger always came to mind when he allowed himself to wander down that particular memory lane. He shook those thoughts off and dealt with the horror at hand.

Stepping up beside the man who was still holding his pistol out for some reason, Jason took in the carnage as much as he could while giving thanks for the darkness and how the bright headlights only helped to at least partially mask what was now scattered about on the ground at his feet and Ken’s.

“Holy shit,” Jason breathed, a feeling of actual sympathy growing inside him; not for the children lying dead on the driveway. They’d been dead well before they arrived here. His sympathy was for the man who’d just had to gun them down.

He never saw the first punch coming as he turned with the intention of trying to offer a kind word to the man. The crunch and eye watering pain hinted at a busted nose; not that it would be his first. Out of the years inside, his own reflexes in a fight were still pretty sharp despite his having “turned over a new leaf” this last time down. Ducking low, Jason came up hard. It was not actually until after he smashed the barrel of the bat into the man’s jaw that Jason actually even remembered that he was still holding a weapon.

“Jason!” Juanita yelled.

He turned, fully expecting a scolding for having knocked the man out. It took him only a split second to remember that there were still a couple of zombies close by that needed to be dealt with.

Allowing his anger to grow, Jason stormed to the closest one and swung as hard as he could. The next day, when his shoulders hurt, he would not have a clear recollection as to why. However, the ferocity of his swings were the most likely culprit as Jason cranked back and swung over and over until he felt the head burst under one of his blasts.

As he stalked from one zombie to the next, he cursed himself for even giving that piece of crap a single ounce of his concern. He vowed that, situation be damned, it would not happen again. Part of him even began to hope that maybe one of the dead children might not actually be completely disabled and would crawl over and take a chomp out of Mister Ken Simpson.

Another skull shattered under the rain of blows Jason dealt, and he stood up in search of the next closest target. It took him turning around three times before he realized that nothing was moving. At some point, Juanita and Erin had gone over to Ken and were just now helping the man to his feet. He had an arm slung over each of the women’s shoulders and looked like an injured athlete being taken off the field as he limped along with his head drooping low.

Why do people always seem to limp after being hurt? he wondered as he fell in behind the slow-moving trio. I smashed that punk in the face, so why the fuck is he limping?

He reached the front porch and stepped over the downed body of the guy who’d been firing the street sweeper. He paused as Juanita and Erin continued on with helping Ken up the stairs of the porch and then into the house where they had to step over the unmoving body of the man who had come out onto the porch holding a knife to some gal’s throat. Just inside, he could see another body on the floor of what looked like an entry hall. That had to be the woman Ken had shot in the chest.

Jason reached down and picked up the nasty shotgun. While a weapon like this would be useless at a distance, it would wreak absolute havoc at close range. The headless zombie just a few feet away was physical testament to that fact.

Slinging the weapon over his shoulder, he started up the stairs and was met by Erin. She had unburdened herself of Ken and was now crouching down beside the man who had come out with the hostage.

“Hank Reynolds,” Erin answered the expression of an arched eyebrow that Jason shot her. “His sister Missy and brother Randy. One of the last of the old time drug families in these parts. The folks were strictly pot, but they were the type where you didn’t go snooping around their property if you knew what was good for ya. More than a couple of the Nosy Nellies came up missing back in the day.”

Jason knew all about the old pot farms out in some of the rural areas surrounding Portland. He also knew very well that Meth had replaced pot for many as it was relatively cheap to manufacture and could turn a good profit. That show Breaking Bad had actually helped meth get a bump in popularity as stupid wanna-be thugs broke glass only to discover that the addiction was fast and ugly.

“So what the hell are they doing here?” Jason asked as he moved up to join Erin beside the unconscious figure on the porch.

“No idea.” Erin seemed satisfied that the young man was still breathing.

Jason squinted a bit to make sure that he wasn’t imagining things. “This kid has been bit,” he said. Using his boot, he gave a nudge to the left arm of Hank Reynolds. Sure enough, there was a rip in the sleeve on the back of his arm. A near perfect imprint of teeth could be seen as well as a small rip just below that bite.

Erin jumped back like a snake had just crawled out from under the body. She quickly regained her composure after checking her hands; obviously inspecting them for any of the man’s blood. When she did not see anything, she stood up.

“Watch him. I’ll be right back.”

Before Jason could ask anything, she trotted over to Ken’s truck. Jason watched her with more than a little amazement. She passed two zombies that had staggered up in the last moment or so. With next to no break in her stride, she had a knife in hand and would grab the zombie by the shoulder and plunge the blade into the temple, moving on almost before the body had even hit the ground.

She reached the truck, opened the door and vanished from sight for a moment. When she reappeared, she had a small backpack in her hand. She jogged back, rummaging through the pack as she did so.

“What’s up?” Jason asked as Erin tossed him the pack.

“Grab a set of gloves,” Erin said as she pulled on a set of blue Latex gloves and knelt back beside the unmoving form of Hank Reynolds.

Jason did as he was asked, but his eyes had wandered and he was watching Juanita and the woman who had been hostage just a few minutes ago. The pair were struggling to move Ken Simpson’s rather meaty frame up and onto a couch. They were talking in animated whispers, but the woman was telling Juanita something that was obviously upsetting. She kept looking up the hall with what could only be serious concern and a bit of fear.

“His eyes are clear,” Erin announced, snapping Jason back to the situation at hand. “Maybe the infection hasn’t set in yet.”

“So?” Jason asked, shaking his head.

“I say we tie him up and see if he has anything useful for us.”

“Useful?”

“Jason?” Juanita’s voice called, interrupting before Erin could explain why she did not want to simply kill this guy and be done with it.

“Yeah?” Jason turned and saw the woman standing a few feet away with a drawn expression that made him instantly take a step towards her with the mind to extend some form of comfort.

“My sister and her son are tied up in her bedroom. They both have whatever this is and…” The woman that had been a hostage stepped forward beside Juanita and spoke as she wiped the tears from her eyes. She sniffed before continuing to speak, her hand coming out with an accusatory finger pointed at Hank Reynolds. “That man killed my niece. He stabbed her in the head with that knife!”

Jason glanced down at the man and then back to the woman who was shaking. Whether it was from fear, nerves, or just an overdose of adrenaline, he could not tell. However, the expression of anger on her face was unmistakable.

“Okay, we will take care of things one issue at a time,” Jason finally said as he put his hands up in a placating gesture. “Why don’t you go out and get your dogs while Erin and I get old Hank here secured. Juanita, go with her. No more going outside or anyplace alone. We work in teams from here on. Clear?”

He glanced down at Erin who gave him a nod. She had already pulled out a zip tie and bound Hank’s arms behind his back.

“That pack is like Batman’s utility belt,” he muttered.

“You have no idea,” Erin said with a smile as she stood. “Now let’s take this guy down the hall.” She put out a hand and stopped the woman who was heading out the door with Juanita. “Rose was it? Violet’s little sister. Right?” The woman nodded. “Rose, is it okay if we put this guy in Crystal’s room?”

The woman nodded vigorously and then rushed out of the house to her car. Jason watched just long enough to feel confident that there were no zombies close by before turning back to Erin.

“So, you know these people?” It seemed like a stupid question the moment it came out of his mouth, and he heard Bill Engvall telling him that he was now a proud owner of a sign.

“Actually, they are my neighbors,” Erin said as she grabbed Hank under the shoulders and nodded for Jason to get his feet. “They have a pretty good farm. If we combined my place and theirs, we would be set for…” She trailed off as if lost in thought. After a few seconds, she whistled. “Man, we would be self-sufficient for freakin’ ever. Hell, if the world goes to shit and never recovers, we would still be fine.”

Jason considered the words and let his own mind wander for a moment. Most of the books he’d read as well as the movies and such, all had the people holding up in malls, or even prisons. He had always thought the first idea rather short-sighted. The second had its merits, but he was certainly not eager to return to a correctional facility unless it was the last possible resort.

“Can I ask you something?” Jason finally spoke as they set the body of Hank Reynolds on a bed with some sort of Disney princess adorning it. Glancing around, he saw more of the same on the walls and felt a momentary pang of loss, guilt, and shame.

He had a few baby-mamas out there, and this was the first time he’d even given them a thought. Granted, he had been out of their lives pretty much forever. They did not know him, and he had stopped receiving letters from the last of the mamas when he’d landed in prison this most recent time. He had no recent pictures beyond a few tattered baby pics that were somewhere in his small bag of personal effects that he’d walked out the gate with and, he felt the guilt deepen, that bag was back at Juanita’s place. He thought that he might have brought it in when he first arrived at her house. Honestly, he had not given it much thought with all that had gone on in the short time prior.

“Depends on what you want to ask,” Erin said with what Jason instantly recognized as a guarded tone.

“You spend your life waiting for this shit? The zombie apocalypse, I mean.”

Erin laughed. It was actually a pleasant sound, and he noticed right away that she was very pretty when she wasn’t being such a hard ass and carrying whatever the hell chip she was toting on her shoulder.

“No,” Erin said with a shake of her head. “Honestly, we were not really serious when compared to most preppers. Our concerns where started by my dad way back in the days of it being us versus the Russians. My dad was just sure that some fool would push the button.”

“So you got an underground bunker and everything?”

“Oh yeah, but over the years it became more of a place to sneak away to and make out. Heck, when I got back from college, I actually rented it out as a place to live.” Something changed in her voice and Jason glanced over his shoulder to ensure that they were alone (except for the unconscious guy a few feet away). He felt like this woman was about to tell him something that was some sort of secret. Or at least that was the vibe he got just before she spoke.

“That was all good until I came out.”

That sentence hung in the air for a moment. Jason did not say a word, and he could tell that Erin was waiting for some sort of sarcastic comment. That face that he’d seen when she laughed just a moment ago was gone. It had been replaced by the same stone cold look he’d seen since they’d met.

“I take it your family wasn’t cool with it?” Jason finally said with a shrug. Erin nodded, but her eyes were boring holes into him and her lips were pressed tight. “That must’ve sucked. I can’t say I understand…” her expression started to grow harder if that were even possible and Jason hurried to finish his statement. “I mean about your specific thing. But I can understand when your family kicks you to the curb. I lost everything with my going in and out of prison. But those are so different. My family bailed because I was a screw up. Yours were just stupid.”

Her lips curled up in a smile and some of the ice melted from her eyes. “I think you and I are gonna get along pretty damn good.”

“Probably better than me and that ex-cop out there or whatever Ken was before.”

Jason shot a look towards the living room and saw Juanita and the woman named Rose coming in with two very excited dogs. He thought they might be some kind of herding dog or something. One of them looked like the kind you would find at a beach chasing and catching a Frisbee. That had always blown him away how a dog could learn to do such a thing.

“Yeah, about that, you guys have to either get along or one of you has to go,” Erin said, pulling his attention back to her.

“He’s the one who hit me first!”

“Yep, and I did not say that you would be the one kicked out, but having two guys at each other in confined spaces like we are gonna be living in is just a recipe for disaster.” Erin joined Jason in the hallway, closing the door behind her.

“You won’t be having any problems from my end, but I won’t take crap from that guy.”

“And I won’t be giving any,” a voice called from the living room causing both Erin and Jason to jump.

The pair walked into the living room to see Ken struggling to sit up on the couch. Both Juanita and Rose were standing just inside the front door and the two dogs were looking around the room as if trying to determine which of the humans was hiding the treats.

Circe sat obediently at her master’s side, but Imp had moved a few feet away, effectively placing himself between Rose, the stranger on the couch, and the two strangers emerging from the hallway. He sniffed the air and his head lowered as he locked on something he did not care for down that same hallway.

“We need to catch our breath for a moment,” Erin said , putting an end to the silence. “But we have some big decisions to make in the next several hours. Also, I need to let the people at my place know that I made it back and that I am okay.”

“Before we do anything or go anyplace, what about Hank?” Rose asked.

8

The First Night of the End of the World

“I say we just kill him,” Jason spoke first after everybody else seemed to stand around and look at one another with the same blank expression.

“What?” Rose surprised Jason by being the one to protest. “We can’t just murder somebody!”

“It isn’t murder.” Jason shook his head. “This would be a mercy killing. That guy is a dead man walking.”

“What do you mean?” Juanita asked, her nose crinkling in confusion.

“He’s bit,” Erin answered before Jason could say anything. “The word I have heard is that people are not making it more than a couple of days. In fact, that is the very reason I wouldn’t go to one of those so-called FEMA rescue centers. They are taking in people who have been bitten. I give it a day tops before those places are nothing more than hives of the walking dead.”

“Being a little over-dramatic, aren’t you?” Ken scoffed.

“Not at all.” Erin turned to face the man who had managed to make it to a fully upright position. She noted that his right eye was swelling nicely and looked like it might be little more than a slit if he didn’t put some ice on it. It’s gonna suck to be him in the morning, she thought before continuing. “That is the reason this is not going to clear up any time soon and we might want to be thinking long term…like forever. People are not going to start to allow themselves to believe what is happening until it is too late. By then, the zombies will already have the overwhelming numbers and our infrastructure will be on its way to being a thing of myths and legends.”

“So we are really going to call them that?” Rose said in a soft voice.

Erin glanced over and saw not so much as a realization as she did acceptance. “Call ‘em what you like. It won’t change anything.”

“Then maybe you should be the one to go and kill that kid in there,” Ken gave Jason a nod.

“Because I’m an ex-con?” Jason spat. “Which I guess you all assume means I won’t have any problems killing somebody. And if this is all just temporary, then the lot of you get to keep your hands clean.”

“Okay,” Ken shrugged. “But I was just going with the idea that since you made that choice, you carry it out. If you weren’t paying attention outside, I put down…”

His voice faded, and a dark cloud of something Jason thought might very well be sorrow crashed down and shone in the man’s eyes. Jason mentally slapped himself. He had all but forgotten those child zombies that Ken had put down. And it had also been Ken Simpson who shot the other two attackers. Sure, they had come out with a street sweeper and been about to mow down anything that moved, but killing is killing. No matter who you are, unless you are a pure sociopath, it stains the soul.

“No, you’re right,” Jason said with a nod. He reached out in Erin’s direction. “You mind if I borrow your machete? I think bullets would be a waste at this point.”

“You gonna cut his head off?” Juanita exclaimed.

“Something like that.” Jason made a “hand it over” gesture with his fingers, but Erin shook her head.

“I am not ready to just kill the guy.” Erin put a protective hand over the hilt of her machete as if she thought that Jason might try to take it from her. “I say we let him go. He was just following his brother and sister. Hank is harmless.”

“He didn’t seem harmless when he was holding a knife to that gal’s throat.” Jason pointed at Rose.

“Or when he killed my niece,” Rose added.

“Your niece was already dead, Rose,” Erin said with a shake of the head. “I saw in your sister’s room when we took Hank down the hall and put him in Crystal’s room. Did you tie Violet and Jacob down in the bed like that?” Rose nodded. “Then you already know something ain’t right. You know because you saw with your own eyes. If anything, he did you a favor. That is one less member of your family that we will have to deal with.”

“Jesus, have a heart!” Juanita snapped.

“We can do all that emotional crap later. Right now we have to do what is necessary to ensure our survival. That will mean plenty of tough choices ahead. I say we just send Hank on his way. He probably makes it home and dies within a few hours, a needle sticking out of his arm if he is lucky.”

“Are you serious?” Now Juanita was getting angry, and her voice was starting to gain volume with each word. “You think he will be lucky to overdose? What is wrong with you?”

“I think it would be better for him than to die sick and turn into one of those things. If he overdoses, then at least he is happy on the way out.”

“I got news for you, anybody doing drugs is far from happy—” Tears were welling in Juanita’s eyes and she had taken a step towards Erin when Ken snapped, cutting her off.

“Can we debate this crap later? We are either killing that kid or we are letting him go. But what we don’t need right now is a bunch of emotional crap or debates on how little Hank is a poor, misunderstood and tortured soul.” Ken pushed himself away from the couch and Jason hid the smile that threatened when the man’s legs gave a little wobble.

“Okay,” Erin agreed. “Then I say let him go. We can vote on it. However, if you vote to kill him and that vote wins, then you have to be present for it, and you are one of the individuals that draws a straw to determine who deals the death blow.”

Jason hid a smile. Despite the seriousness of the situation, he knew exactly what the woman was doing. It was one thing to want a person dead (or at least think that you did), it was another thing entirely to be the person to swing the axe.

One of his many jobs over the years during his time in and out of jail and prison had been in a slaughterhouse. He had always known what it took to turn an animal from a carcass into a meal; his dad had been a typical Northwest sort of guy and never missed hunting or fishing season. He’d field stripped his first deer when he was seven. Still, working in a slaughterhouse was a different experience all its own. And while he never once considered becoming a vegetarian, he firmly believed that more people would if they had to kill, strip, and butcher their own meat. The bottom line was that few people could actually do the dirty business of taking a life.

“Show of hands,” Erin said, “Who is for killing Hank?”

Jason was the only person to raise his hand.

***

Ken made a mental note. In reality, he was all for killing that punk, Hank Reynolds. He believed that letting him go would come back and bite them in the ass. Keeping him here was out of the question, and he was willing to bet he had that woman Rose’s vote if it came down to that.

Still, he shot a sideways glance at the convict. The guy had to know that the women were not going to vote to execute the Reynolds kid. Yet, he had stuck to his guns. And while that did not mean that they would be enjoying a bro-hug and a six pack of cold ones together any time soon, he had to respect that the convict did not waver in a tough stance.

“Okay,” Erin clapped her hands together, bringing Ken’s attention back to the conversation. “I have to go to my place and check in with my people, but before I go, are we agreed that it would be best to combine our resources and fortify?”

“Wait, what?” Rose asked. “What are we combining? And what is this about fortifying?”

“You are aware of what is happening,” Erin picked up her pack and slung it over her shoulder.

“Yeah…sorta.” Rose gave a weak shrug of her shoulders. Her eyes kept flitting to the hallway.

Ken thought he recalled something about a sister, niece, and nephew. Oh crap! he thought with just a bit of alarm as he realized where they might be and, more important, what condition they might be in.

“We might be in for a long haul. The president has left the White House, martial law is being enforced, and people have already started to loot and go off the deep end. Considering we did not start hearing about this until almost a week ago, and yet, it is already global to the point where places like China have suddenly gone dark, but all air travel is just now being suspended, I say the cat is already out of the bag.”

“And having kittens,” Jason quipped.

“The books and movies ain’t gonna hold a candle to the reality of what we will face. There will be serious problems once everybody has raided the grocery stores and such. Food is going to become more precious than gold, and without anybody to enforce the law…” Erin let that last statement hang in the air, but she glanced from Juanita to Rose. It was clear that all three women were sharing in some deeper meaning.

“So what do we do with the prisoner?” Ken asked. “We may not have agreed to execute him, but we sure as hell ain’t gonna feed and care for him.”

“You are right. So maybe you can help me load him into the truck and give me a ride to my house?” Erin proposed.

“Sure,” Ken agreed with a shrug. “But I thought that you said you live next door. So why do we need to load that guy into the truck?”

“I do live next door. And out here, that is a good distance. As for Hank, I figure we could dump him on his doorstep. He lives about two or three miles up the road. His family has never been much for following the rules. Despite all of them having felony records, I am willing to bet we can find a good stash of guns and ammo. We will need everything we can get our hands on in the coming days.”

“So now we are the ones raiding other people’s houses?” Juanita protested weakly. “Doesn’t that make us just as bad?”

“Not at all,” Jason piped up. “Like we have pointed out, that kid has a nasty bite. He isn’t long for this world. We are just getting an early start on the salvage operation. Right?” He turned to Ken and Erin for confirmation.

“Whatever makes you feel better,” Ken huffed. He turned his attention to Rose. “You think your dogs will be okay if I brought them a friend?” He had almost forgotten about that doofy Golden Retriever that had so far ridden out all this insanity by staying down in the cab of the truck in a tight ball behind the driver’s seat.

“Umm, probably? Is your dog socialized?” Rose replied.

“I have no idea. The dog belonged to some guy down the street and just kind of tagged along with me.”

“The poor baby!” Rose exclaimed and dashed outside.

Ken shrugged, maybe she would take the thing off his hands and he would no longer have to worry about it. It wasn’t that he hated the dog, it seemed well-behaved. He just did not have the time or patience to worry about anything but himself at the moment.

A few minutes later, Rose returned with the dog. It was tight up against the woman’s legs. Immediately, Ken saw the black and white dog turn and give the newcomer a long look. Apparently it saw no threat and returned its attention down the hall. The red and white was a different story. Ken watched as the two dogs met; nose-to-nose at first, before engaging in all the assorted sniffing of butts and such that dogs are prone to do when they meet. Apparently the Golden was acceptable and the pair went to the couch and hopped up on it, each of them taking an end.

Ken shrugged. It looked like he wouldn’t have to worry about the dog any longer. It could be somebody else’s problem. He felt something inside kind of twist. He refused to accept that it was anything to do with how quickly that Golden Retriever seemed to just dismiss him and move on to the next person. He sighed and headed down the hall with Erin to fetch the boy.

***

Rose suddenly felt very tired. She looked down at Circe and saw that the dog’s large brown eyes were starting to slide shut despite all the activity taking place. Imp was an entirely different story. Where Circe had chosen to curl up at her master’s side on the couch, Imp was standing and his head was drifting from one stranger to another. Yet, it was to the hallway where he would always return his gaze. The fur around his neck still stood up just a bit more than normal, and the dog’s tail was sticking almost straight up. As for the new arrival, she had passed the sniff test and was now curled up at the opposite end of the couch.

Absently running her fingers through Circe’s fur, she glanced at the television. Somewhere along the line, it had been muted, but the EBS was still running its announcement about what people should do and where they should go. The crawler must have recycled twice by the time Erin and that older man came out carrying Hank Reynolds; Ken she thought was his name, but she was currently too tired to be sure (or care).

Reaching over, Rose gave Circe a scratch behind the ears. The dog took that as an invitation to climb up into her lap. Rose sighed and allowed the feelings of comfort that came from holding her baby to wash over her soul. Out of reflex, she had almost told the dogs to get down when they had both gone to the couch and climbed up. Violet had a strict policy when it came to pets being on the furniture.

“Not likely she will be enforcing that rule anymore,” Rose sighed. She leaned down and kissed the red and white Border Collie on the top of her head and hugged her close. Imp cast a look over his shoulder, but instead of joining them, he stretched out on the floor so that he was between her and the hallway where he still watched with his head tilting occasionally from one side to the other. The Golden simply closed…Rose peered closely…her eyes.

“What kind of dogs are they?” a voice caused Rose’s eyes to pop open. She had almost dozed off, and her obvious start made the man standing just a few feet away take a step back and raise his hands.

“Sorry,” the man said. “Name is Jason in case you didn’t get it earlier in all the madness. I was just wondering about your dogs is all.”

“They’re Border Collies,” Rose replied. “The red and white girl here in my lap is Circe and the black and white boy on the floor is Imp. I am pretty sure the new arrival is a Golden Retriever.” After a moment, she gave an embarrassed laugh and added, “And my name is Rose.”

“Pleased to meet you feels like a strange thing to say, but…”

“No, I understand,” Rose laughed.

“Can we turn the television up?” the woman named Juanita asked as she emerged from the bathroom. “It looks like somebody new is talking.”

Jason shot a questioning glance at Rose who nodded. She would have to make it clear that any thoughts of who was a guest or whatever social protocols from the past that people felt the need to observe were probably best left out the window.

“The remote is in the basket on top of the entertainment center.” Rose pointed.

Juanita grabbed it and held it out in front of her. A green bar moved across the screen, allowing the voice of the man behind a news desk to be heard.

“…have been informed that the president’s plane is reported to have crashed. No further details are being made available at the moment. However, we have been instructed by representatives of the United States Army to issue the following statement that reads as follows…” The man seemed to lean forward at the desk for a moment and squint. He looked past the camera. “Are you serious?”

A voice could be heard in the background, and the reply was loud enough to be heard clearly. “Read the teleprompter exactly as it is written.”

“The dead are returning to life. The CDC has confirmed that a living person bitten by one of the undead, or zombies as pop culture would call them, will turn within seventy-two hours, but some have done so in as soon as just a few minutes. There is no way to determine how fast or why the disparity in what are now called “turn” times. However, if a person has been bitten, you are required to either bring them to the nearest military-manned FEMA shelter or dispose of them yourself.

“There is to be no mistake, these are not your friends or loved ones. They will not recognize you in any manner or for any reason. Dr. Linda Sing had this to say…”

There was a flash on the screen and a poor quality video showed a doctor’s office that looked like any that a person would walk into. There were shelves of books in the background and several certificates or diplomas adorning the walls. Seated behind a desk was Dr. Linda Sing, the same woman who had gone on camera earlier in this same day to discredit any reports that the dead were returning and attacking the living. She looked tired and her uniform was a blood-stained mess. Also, she was wearing dark sunglasses.

“Am I on?” the doctor asked whoever was operating the shaky, handheld video device.

“Yeah.” It was one word, but the voice made it clear that whoever was holding the camera was agitated.

“Good. To whomever is watching, I am Dr. Linda Sing of the CDC. I am here to reverse my earlier statement that these people that are instigating attacks are not the dead come back. After detailed observation of a specimen that had no vitals and had been declared dead, I was witness to that individual sitting up and attacking another person.

“There can be no doubt that this person was dead only moments before. However, after the specimen was restrained, numerous things were done that a living person could not endure, much less remain conscious during. Additionally, I can confirm that massive brain trauma seems to be the only method of dispatching these…individuals—”

“They’re fuckin’ zombies, you stupid bitch!” somebody off-camera yelled.

Dr. Sing glanced to the left and pursed her lips before continuing. “Simple decapitation is not entirely sufficient. While the body will become inert, the head still seems to function and a bite that transmits the infection can still occur.”

With that last statement, the doctor removed her glasses and leaned forward. It was not a necessary gesture. The dark traces in her eyes could be seen quite clearly.

“One of the telltale symptoms is the appearance of the darkening of the capillaries in the eye. If you are infected, I suggest you turn yourself over to the nearest FEMA center or military checkpoint. The only chance we have to contain this rests in your swift response—”

“That went out the window a long time ago while you fucking scientists sat on this information, you stupid bi—” another voice off camera hollered, but was cut off as the video ended abruptly.

The man behind the desk appeared on the screen once more. He was still looking past the camera in the studio, a look of what could very well be fear etched on his face.

“Umm…yes, well.” The man on camera looked past the camera again and seemed to grow even paler. A commotion could be heard in the background that ended with a woman’s shriek and a nasty crash.

“Read the teleprompter like you were told, or she endures more of the same,” a voice came over the broadcast clearly. The menace dripped from it with open hostility and no attempt to mask the threat.

“The United States Army has been given permission to…detain any person who shows signs of this infection—”

Click.

“That is enough of that,” Jason said. He’d picked up the remote that had fallen from Juanita’s hand at some point while they all stared at the television in disbelief.

“But—” Rose began, and Jason cut her off.

“This is a bad deal. We need to assume that no help is coming in any form. That gal Erin said that this farm and hers would be enough for us to take care of our needs for the foreseeable future.”

“My sister was in the process of trying to live off the grid or something. I never really got into it or paid any attention,” Rose sighed. Just mentioning her sister brought images of Violet and little Jacob tied down in the bed. And Crystal…

Tears came in a rush and Rose began to cry. It did not take long for her to lose control. She could not stop no matter how she tried. In fact, the more she tried to pull it back in, the worse it seemed to get.

The past several hours came in a rush. The first encounter during her run; the escape from Frank and the neighbor; discovering her sister and the note; Jacob; Crystal; and then the Reynolds family. It was too much. Something inside of Rose shut down, and all the dams seemed to burst as she spiraled into an abyss of fear, sorrow, and hopelessness.

***

“Turn down that road,” Erin pointed.

Ken veered down the dirt road that was too narrow for more than one vehicle at a time. As it was, his truck barely fit and the sounds of branches dragging down the sides made a fingernails-down-a-chalkboard sound that put his teeth on edge. The entry road went for quite a ways, and Ken was about to suggest abandoning this idea and backing out before it became even more of a chore, when they emerged into a large clearing.

Just ahead was a dilapidated single-wide. A tall fence of metal surrounded the trailer and a very large portion of the clearing. Ken stopped at the gate.

“Well?” He turned to Erin, but she was already opening the door and getting out of the truck.

With a sigh, Ken followed. Erin was at the rear of the truck, and had opened the door of the camper shell and was dropping the tailgate. Leaning in, she pulled the body towards her. Ken sighed and moved in to help. The twinge in his back was pretty sharp, but he pushed it down.

Together they hauled Hank Reynolds to the gate and laid him down. No surprise, a large chain and padlock secured the entrance. Without a word, Ken went back to his truck and climbed into the rear bed where the large toolbox was mounted just behind the cab. A few moments later he emerged with giant bolt cutters.

After making short work of the chain, Ken set the cutters down and they carried Hank to the trailer. They had just set the young man down at the bottom of the cinder block steps that led up to the door when a low moan carried on the quiet night air.

“Crap, that is inside the trailer,” Erin whispered.

“So?” Ken didn’t see why it mattered. They could just leave the guy outside. He was not their concern. Hell, he was lucky they had taken him this far. Ken would have been just fine leaving him in the ditch beside the road.

Erin moved up the stairs slowly, her machete coming free from its sheath as she reached the door and gave the knob a twist. No surprise, it was locked.

Ken watched, although he could not say that he was in any way surprised when she produced something from a pouch on her belt and went to work on the lock.

“What are you doing?” Ken stepped over Hank and joined Erin on the small, warped wooden porch.

Already he could smell the acrid stench that could be mistaken for a cat box. He knew the odor of a backwoods meth lab when he smelled it. He also knew the toxicity of the fumes. He was not going in that trailer no matter what might be inside.

“Ta-da!” Erin whispered. With a flourish, she opened the door and took a step back.

A zombie emerged from the doorway. It was a woman; that much was clear mostly due to her complete nudity. Erin gave the shambling corpse a gentle shove back.

“Oh, Sara,” Erin sighed. “I told you not to get mixed up with these guys.”

In the silver glow of the moon and the weak blue lights of the fluorescent bulbs flickering on the porch like something out of a bad movie, the zombie stepped back outside for Ken to get a better look at this time. She was a younger girl, close to Erin’s age which he guessed to be early twenties. She had that emaciated look like so many meth users. If he bothered to, Ken was certain he could count each rib. Her left forearm was wrapped in a filthy bandage that was held in place by what had to be several yards of duct tape.

With a swift upwards thrust, Erin drove the point of her machete up and into the chin of the zombie. Ken swore he heard the tip of the blade ting against the top of the skull. It did not go through, but that was more due to Erin jerking down and back to free her weapon.

“Don’t go in there,” Ken warned.

“Why, because of the toxic fumes?” Erin asked over her shoulder. She reached in and hit a light switch. “Come up here and tell me if holding our breath for a few trips might be worth it.”

Erin stepped away from the door and made an ushering motion with her arm to invite Ken to join her and look inside. With an exasperated groan, he came up the stairs.

“You think we can risk it?” Erin stepped back and let Ken take a better look.

“How does this happen?” he gasped.

The first thing a person could see when looking inside the Reynolds’ trailer was the heavy plastic that covered everything. To the right, you had a clear view to the kitchen where they obviously did their cooking, just probably not much in the way of food. Various fast food wrappers littering the floor as well as any horizontal surface acted as a visible testament supporting that theory. The counter was a mess of beakers, tubes, copper coils and gas burners. The table was littered with baggies, many containing shards of crystal meth.

However, that was not the standout feature; at least as far as Ken (and obviously Erin) was concerned. To the left were the living room and a hallway that led to at least two bedrooms and most likely a bathroom. The hall was stacked with metal boxes, the few that were open revealing what had to be several thousand rounds of varying calibers if all the boxes were actually full. Leaning against the wall were a variety of rifles; he saw a trio of .30-06s, five .22 caliber rifles and…

“A fucking M4?” Ken said with honest astonishment.

“Two.” Erin pointed to another weapon atop the canisters of ammo. “And how many freaking shotguns do you need?”

Leaning against one wall were fifteen shotguns of various makes and designs including three more street sweeper types with their huge cylinders.

“No handguns?” Ken turned to Erin with an arched eyebrow.

“In Missy’s room,” a voice croaked from the bottom of the stairs causing the pair to jump.

“Hank is it?” Ken walked down the stairs to the young man and nudged him with toe of his boot for emphasis.

“Yes, sir,” the young man croaked.

“Okay. So here is my question. Where are the masks?”

“M-m-masks?”

“Don’t play stupid, boy. I will drag your ass back up to the highway and leave you for one of those things.”

“Already been bit,” Hank said with a weak sneer. His efforts at bravado were pathetic at best and made all the worse when he cried out after Ken grabbed a handful of hair and jerked his head off the ground.

“You might be injured, but you ain’t dead yet. You want to see what it feels like to be torn apart and eaten alive? I am willing to bet it is a helluva lot worse than that little bite you are sporting.”

Ken could see in the young man’s eyes that a nerve had been struck. There was a moment where he thought Hank might be checking to see if perhaps there was a bluff being played. Ken sucked at poker, and the main reason was that he just did not have that ability to bluff. While he would never be credited with being overtly emotional, he still could not fake it. That had served him well during his years on the force. When confronted with a criminal, he was all business. Funny thing about criminals, they can usually tell. He had always credited it to a life based on lies and deception.

“There is a footlocker strapped to a support under the trailer,” Hank admitted.

“You are going to go under and fetch it.” Erin came down the stairs and knelt beside Hank, her knife whipping in a deft motion that cut the bonds holding his wrists. “You try anything, and I swear to God, I will kill you on the spot.”

Ken turned and walked back to the truck while Erin laid out her ultimatum. He rummaged around in his tool box until he found what he was searching for.

“Why’d you just walk off?” Erin asked.

“Might be handy to be able to see this dumbass.” Ken held up a large spotlight-style flashlight. He hit a button and a beam of light hit Hank square in the face causing him to cry out and throw his hands over his eyes.

“Holy crap, man!” Hank wailed.

“Just making a point.”

“What point is that?” Erin asked with a loud stage-whisper.

“The point is that if I can cause him this much discomfort with nothing more than a beam of light, imagine what I could do if wanted to seriously hurt his ass.” Ken waved the flashlight and indicated for Hank to get moving.

“You gonna untie my feet?” Ken looked down and then back up, his gaze shifting back and forth between Erin and Ken.

“Nope,” Ken said, jerking the young man to his feet.

Hank hopped over to a piece of wood and pulled it back. Ducking down, he made a show of how much pain his shoulder was causing him. He was almost all the way in when he stopped suddenly and looked back over his shoulder.

“If I have a seizure or something and die while I am under here, promise me that you will shoot me. Don’t let me become one of…them.”

“Absolutely,” Erin said with a grim nod.

A few moments later, Hank was scooting backwards with the trunk. It was a vinyl covered footlocker. Ken shoved Hank aside and flipped up the lid. Sure enough, there were several masks and boxes of filters.

After finding one that did not absolutely reek, Ken strapped it on. Erin had just grabbed the first one and was already waiting for Ken at the doorway.

“What about me?” Hank called as the pair disappeared into the front door.

“Wait out here,” was Ken and Erin’s reply almost in unison.

“And hope no zombies come,” Ken added.

The two stood in the living room that was now the equivalent of a post-apocalyptic gold mine. Ken headed towards the hallway.

“Grab the ammo first, maybe sling a weapon over your shoulder on each trip.” Ken grunted as he grabbed a stack of ammo canisters.

***

Jason stood on the porch. It had been a few hours since Ken and Erin had rolled out. He was seeing just the faintest hint of dawn starting to paint the horizon. Looking over his shoulder, he saw the women stretched out on couches, both were fast asleep. The red Border Collie was nestled in a crook behind Rose’s knees. The male was in the middle of the floor, his head pointed straight down the hallway where the two zombies were secured in that bedroom. The Golden had gone to the floor and was curled up, its side rising and falling in the pattern of deep sleep.

Shortly after Ken had left, Jason had gone out to the gate, yanked it back into as close to its original shape as possible and pulled it shut. He had taken a flashlight because, once you got clear of the massive front yard and turnaround driveway, it was pitch black. There were no streetlights out here. Night meant a whole new kind of darkness compared to what you found in the city.

He’d heard a few moans in the dark, and sweeping the flashlight, he spotted a handful of zombies. One was stuck in the ditch. Apparently the mud at the bottom was pretty viscous. When he’d walked back to the house, he’d been surprised by a lone zombie.

After shutting the gate, he had relaxed just a bit. He was just passing the Reynolds’ truck that was nose down in the ditch that ran alongside the driveway. It was there that a young girl no more than fifteen or so had stepped out and caught him completely by surprise.

After the expletive that he’d shouted, Jason reached for the big butcher’s cleaver that he had swiped from the kitchen counter on his way out. He felt his heart skip a beat when the handle of the cleaver fumbled in his grasp and then slipped away to clatter on the pavement. He’d claimed the street sweeper, but he had not felt that the need for so much firepower was necessary and left it just inside the door to the house.

What he had not counted on was being surprised by a zombie that seemed to almost pop up right in front of him. Giving the girl a hard shove, Jason swept the ground with the flashlight. Somehow, the cleaver had simply vanished. The girl was coming for him again, her arms extended.

Despite his years as a criminal and the fact that he was very aware that this was a zombie, he hesitated for just a moment. This girl had been clueless that her life would be cut so short. She probably had no idea when she woke this morning judging by the relative freshness of the injuries, that she was going to be set upon by a zombie and have most of her throat torn out as well as a few nasty chunks from her arms. He wondered if the girl had known her attacker before he or she had become a zombie. The dark stain in the crotch of her jeans told him that she had let go of her bodily functions either during or just after the attack; not that such things were abnormal.

And with that thought, he brought the flashlight down on the girl’s head with all the force he could muster. The metal bludgeon bent from the force and the lens shattered, casting him into darkness. It was in that instant that he saw the flaw in his plan. The absolute darkness of this rural area prevented him from seeing anything.

He took a step back and his foot felt something that sent his hopes soaring. Reaching down, Jason found the handle of the cleaver. Just as he stood up, cold, dead hands caught his arm. Thankfully, it was not the one holding the cleaver. With one swift stroke, he drove the blade deep into the forehead of the girl. In an instant, she collapsed to the ground.

Jason had returned to the house more than just a little shaken. He’d been thankful that the women had already started to doze off. The only look he got upon his entry through the front door was Imp giving him a disinterested glance over his shoulder before he rested his head back down on the floor and let his eyes begin to droop as he watched down the hallway where that terrible smell emanated.

After walking around the house and making sure that every window and door was shut and locked, he had opened the door where Rose’s sister and nephew were tied down. The smell was present before he reached the door, and when he’d opened it, he’d almost gotten physically ill. A voice in his head screamed to end them, but it was not his place. A nudge at his side announced the arrival of Imp. The dog let loose with a low growl in its throat.

“I feel ya, buddy,” Jason said, giving the dog a scratch behind one ear.

And with that, he’d shut the door and returned to the living room. He’d stepped out onto the porch and allowed his ears to take in the sounds of the night. He had no idea how long he’d stood there when he’d heard a distant scream. It was horrific. He could not begin to imagine the fear or agony that caused a person to scream in that manner. Even worse, it was such a horrific scream that it was impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman.

The occasional sound of gunfire came, and then he heard something in the distance that caused him to step down off the porch. Moving out into the yard, Jason scanned the skies. It took him a moment, but eventually, he spotted the lights of the helicopter coming from the direction of the soon-to-be rising sun. He could tell right away that there was something wrong by the way it coughed and sputtered.

He watched as the flashing lights on the aircraft came closer, but he could also see the helo losing altitude. It was not at an alarming rate, but it was going to be close as to whether or not whoever was piloting was going to clear the trees.

He continued to watch as the lights started to dip below the tree line. There was a crashing sound and then silence. He was not certain of the distance, and in the dark, it would be impossible to tell. He was still debating what he should do when the headlights of what he hoped was Ken’s truck came into view.

***

They pulled out of the Reynolds’ place and then Ken followed Erin’s directions to her house. When they arrived, Ken was greeted by two men and one woman.

“Where you been?” the woman asked with an edge to her voice. Ken noticed the suspicious looks cast his direction and decided to stay in the truck.

Erin climbed out and, after what Ken considered a few too many hugs, the group huddled in conference. Occasionally, he saw a head crane back his direction. He made it a point not to acknowledge the glances. In truth, he could care less what they thought. And if worse came to worse, all the guns and ammo were in the back of his pickup, thank you very much.

He would feel no guilt or shame in backing out and leaving this place in his rearview mirror. When it came down to it, he was responsible for the survival and safety of one person: Ken “mother-fucking” Simpson.

At last the little gathering broke up and Erin came back to the truck. He had expected her to tell him to drive in and that they would be unloading here. He already had the retort on the tip of his tongue; that was why he just stared at her a tad bit dumbfounded when she announced, “Let’s go back to Rose and the others.”

“What about your people?” Ken finally asked.

“They are going to start working on the plans on how we can join the two farms. It will mean a lot more work to secure the perimeter, but the end result will be worth it.”

“You really think this is going to be that big of a deal?”

Erin relayed what her friends had told her in regards to the most recent EBS broadcast. They drove the rest of the way in silence. At last, the entry gate to Rose’s house came into view.

Ken slowed, he heard something like a tremendous crash over the engine despite having the windows rolled up. That meant that whatever he’d heard must be pretty big. They were just pulling up to the gate to where the others were waiting and his headlights revealed the convict standing in the driveway all alone.

“That didn’t sound good,” Erin said from the passenger’s seat.

They came to a stop and Jason had already jogged the rest of the way up the driveway and opened the gate to let them in. As the truck rolled up and Ken hit the button to lower the window, Jason asked, “You guys see that helicopter go down?”

“You sure it was a helo?” Ken asked. He didn’t know why he felt the need to challenge Jason on everything the man said, but he couldn’t help it. The truth was that he simply did not like or trust the guy. Perhaps his years in law enforcement had left him jaded, but then again, as far as he was concerned, he’d seen enough over the years to warrant this attitude.

“I heard it first, and by the time I spotted the lights, it was going down.” If Jason was annoyed by Ken’s question, he did not let it show. “Maybe we should go take a look,” he suggested.

“Why?” Erin’s response caught both men off guard.

“What do you mean, why?” Jason finally asked.

“I mean, whoever was in that chopper is probably dead. Going after them is an unnecessary risk. And if you haven’t been paying attention, shit is getting real nasty.” Erin said all of this like she might have been describing the weather. “Already some of the creeps are crawling out from under their rocks. Who knows what will happen in the next day or so as it becomes obvious that the cops ain’t comin’ if you call. Hell, there were enough creeps in the news when we did have the police. What do you think is gonna happen when that thin shield between the creeps and society evaporates?”

Ken listened. She had a point. He’d locked up more than his share of individuals who should never see the light of day or take a breath of free air for the rest of their lives. Not everybody inside was a threat to humanity, but enough of them were for her point to ring true for him. He glanced over at the convict and was surprised to see a nod of agreement.

“So we leave them to die,” Jason finally said.

It was not so much a question as a vocal acceptance of what they had just decided without having to debate or vote. Ken was glad that the other two women were not present. He just did not think that they would see things with such a lack of emotion. He knew that the moment emotion became part of the equation, rationality was often the first victim on the sacrificial altar.

“Let’s shut the gate and get to the house,” Ken said. They had not seen any more zombies since leaving the Reynolds’ place, but he was not up for tempting fate.

“I’ll hop in back,” Jason offered.

“Umm, actually, there isn’t room,” Erin said with a wicked smile.

“Let me guess,” Jason said, “you brought back some supplies?”

“You could say that.” Erin simply smiled.

“We will show you at the house, but let’s get off the road.” Ken had seen enough for the night. He’d done things he could not imagine.

“I’ll just shut the gate and meet you guys at the house.” With that statement, Jason gave the truck a pat and headed for the gate.

A few minutes later, Ken, Jason, and Erin were opening the back of the truck and admiring their newfound haul. Jason gave a whistle of admiration and reached in to pull out a .30-06 with a high-powered scope attached. Ken had to fight the urge to yank it from the man’s hands. Instead, he began counting silently to a hundred.

“What about the people back at your place?” Jason asked.

“They are going to work on plans on how to best combine both properties. We are gonna have some work to do in order to make it secure. Most of what is in place is simple. Just three or four strands of barbed wire. I think we will need something better to keep the zombies out. If a dozen or so of those things come at the fence in one area, I don’t see it withstanding the force,” Erin replied.

“I think we better plan for more than just the zombies,” Jason said with a grim tone that made Ken give the man a sideways glance. “It wasn’t the zombies that came out onto the porch with a street sweeper or held that girl Rose at knifepoint. I think that the living will be a bigger problem in a short time. Maybe once things settle a bit and the dust clears, then perhaps we can relax some, but if we are gonna secure these two properties, then everybody needs to come together and be prepared to do their part.”

“I’m glad that everybody is making decisions as to what to do with my sister’s place.” The voice surprised Ken and the other two. It did not slip past Ken’s attention that Jason had instantly brought the rifle to his shoulder.

***

Rose felt her heart thud when the man with all the tattoos aimed that rifle at her. She also saw the embarrassment on his face as he realized at whom he was pointing that thing. He lowered it almost as quickly as he’d raised it.

“I’m sorry, Rose, I just thought that you were going to be okay with this place and my family’s joining up.” Erin stepped forward.

“You really think it is going to be necessary?” Rose asked. She could accept what she’d seen. She could accept what had become of her sister, niece, and nephew. What she still could not accept was that this would be how civilization crumbled. Surely the government had a plan. Didn’t they have some sort of zombie apocalypse document on the CDC website or something?

“I’m as sure as anybody can be right now,” Erin replied with a shrug.

“I just—” Rose began, but the sudden blaring of the strains of a song by a woman that was urging the listener to “fuck the pain away” interrupted and caused everybody to jump.

Erin reached in her pocket and yanked out her phone. At first, she seemed to stare at it like she didn’t know what to do. At last, she swiped a finger across the screen and answered.

“Cherry?”

Rose was close enough to be able to overhear the conversation. It never occurred to her that she might be intruding, but what she was hearing could not just be shut out of her head. There were sounds of gunfire and distant screams that sent chills flooding through her. The screams were unlike anything she had ever heard in her life and sounded as if they were conveying a pain of unimaginable levels.

“Westy? Where are you?” a female voice cried.

“I can’t believe it’s you. How did you get the phone to work? They have been damn near useless for hours.” Erin was visibly shaking as she listened to the voice on the other end; not to mention the sounds of chaos and hellish screams that had both Jason and Ken moving forward as if drawn by some invisible Pied Piper.

“No time,” the voice replied.

The sound of stress and fear leaked through the phone and wrapped its snake-like tendrils around the hearts of Rose and, by the looks of it, Jason and Ken as well. It was a physical presence that had risen pebbles on Rose’s arms as well as the back of her neck where she had no doubt that her hair was standing on end.

“Where are you?” Erin asked.

“Still in the hospital.”

“But…I thought…I’m so sorry.” Erin’s voice was strangled as she obviously fought back tears that brimmed on the cusps of her eyes.

“You did the right thing, Westy. But there might be a chance we will be getting out.” There was a pause, and Rose thought that the connection might have failed, but just as Erin opened her mouth, Cherry continued. “Most of us anyways. Greg and Brandy are…gone.” Another pause. “There is a police detachment on our floor. They secured it against at least a hundred of those things. It was awful…so many died…” the voice trembled and then the sound of Cherry clearing her throat could be heard. “Anyways, they managed to secure the stairwells. While they were doing so, one of them checked out a service elevator shaft. He said that they might be able to clear the closest stairwell to that shaft. The zombies are thinnest there. We are waiting until it is light outside so that we can hopefully see. There are frosted windows, the real skinny types, but at least it is some sort of light. You would be surprised at just how dark those stairs are. Flashlights only do so much, and most of them were used as weapons when the cops began to run low on bullets. They say they have enough for one last charge if we are going to try and get out of here.”

There was a burst of bitter laughter, and a voice could be heard saying something unintelligible. “Dave says that the cops never ran out of bullets in the movies, but I keep telling him that we almost never saw any cops except the dirty ones in the movies…well, the dirty ones, the two that raided Monroeville Mall’s conveniently located gun shop, and Ving Rhames. Most of them didn’t really count, and they weren’t anything like the men and women that we have watched literally sacrifice their lives to save as many people as possible—”

“You said you guys are breaking for it when the sun is fully up?” Erin interrupted. “So about an hour or so from now?”

“Probably,” Cherry agreed. “And I will get to you any way that I can. Trust m—”

And then there was silence.

“Cherry?” Erin whispered it first, but then she found her voice and cried it over and over.

Rose didn’t know what to do. It was in that instant that she realized that she had been eavesdropping on what was basically a private conversation. Jason was the first to move as he stepped forward and eased the phone from Erin’s hand. She fought him at first, insisting that her friend Cherry might still be on the line.

“It says, ‘call ended’ on the screen,” Jason pointed out.

“No,” Erin wept and collapsed into Jason. He glanced over the woman’s head with an expression that clearly indicated that he was at a loss as for what to do.

Rose stepped up and eased an arm in, allowing Erin to sort of fall into her. She stroked the woman’s hair and whispered soothing words as she hugged the distraught semi-stranger.

She’d known Erin only in passing. Actually, she thought that Violet knew her pretty well. However, Erin had always seemed to be on the way out every single time that she came to visit. They’d maybe spoken less than a hundred words in the past three or four years. It was not as if there had been any animosity, they simply had never really been formally introduced. Rose had always thought that it might have something to do with how her sister had so few friends over the years. Even when she had managed to make one, they would meet her younger and more easy-going sister Rose and slowly, Violet would be pushed out of the picture. It had never been Rose’s intention, and she hadn’t even been aware that it was a thing until Violet’s twenty-ninth birthday a couple of years back.

Rose had come over for their usual birthday dinner and went to grab something to drink while the steaks finished on the barbecue. She’d seen the ice cream cake when she opened the freezer for ice cubes. She hadn’t said anything right away. She had regretted that decision later. Maybe if Violet had not been drunk off her ass on birthday wine, maybe then she would not have laid into Rose so bitterly about how Rose always stole her friends.

“…going after her,” Erin announced as she pushed away from Rose, scrubbing at her face with her hands.

***

“I’m going after her.” Erin pushed away from Rose’s arms and scrubbed at her face with what almost looked like anger.

“You’re gonna do what?” Ken asked.

Jason glanced at the man and was surprised to find himself on the same page as the ex-cop. After all, hadn’t they just made the choice not to go check the site of a helicopter that had crashed nearby. Hadn’t Erin said something about not taking foolish risks? Now she was seriously considering…no, Jason shook that first thought away. She wasn’t considering a damn thing. It was etched in stone. The woman had her mind made up.

“I am going back to Portland.” It was a simple declaration, but Jason heard the dare implied to any who might think to stop her.

“And that makes sense how?” Ken pushed the issue.

“This isn’t about making sense,” Erin said with a chill in her voice that Jason recognized as threatening violence. Apparently the ex-cop recognized it as well.

“How do you expect to survive the thirty mile trip back into Portland? I think it is safe to say that it has grown exponentially worse since yesterday. Hell, this entire fucking country was still basically in denial until just a few hours ago, and I think we can safely say that they are so late to the party that the band has already packed up and left.”

Jason swung his head around and was surprised to discover Juanita standing in the doorway to the house. Her hair was a mess, and it was clear that she had not been awake for more than a few minutes, but she obviously had heard enough to know what was going on.

“The news is showing scenes of cities in flames,” Juanita continued, talking over Erin’s attempt at a response. “New York is burning out of control. Chicago…Los Angeles…they just appear to be gone. The ticker says that none of the media centers are responding. Oh, and now there are reports that our own military is fracturing. People are now being told to avoid the FEMA centers. The military is either deserting their posts or conscripting civilians…or using them as human shields as they bug out and abandon their posts.”

“Jesus,” Rose breathed.

“Jesus has nothing to do with this,” Juanita replied flatly.

“How did it get so bad so fast?” Ken asked with disbelief ringing clear in his voice.

“So fast?” Erin spun on the man. “This has been building for a few weeks. It has simply been suppressed. It was a back page story. Any attempts by people to point out what was going on were met with derision and open mocking. That Dr. Sing bitch called it juvenile fantasies. Who the fuck fantasizes about the end of the world and humanity with any seriousness?”

There was a moment of silence. Jason looked from one face to another. When he locked eyes with Juanita, she obviously saw what was flitting around behind his eyes. She pursed her lips and gave a curt nod. It was not so much angry as it was acceptance.

“I’m going with you,” Jason finally said once he was positive that he could stand by those words. It had actually been a mental debate. Deep down, he knew for a fact that he was afraid of what was out there. He’d heard the screams of those being torn apart. It would probably haunt him forever.

Erin faced him and cocked her head to one side. “Why?”

At first, Jason did not think he’d heard the entire question. After a moment, he just shrugged. “It is the right thing to do.” That earned a scoffing snort from Ken.

“You two go ahead and rush off to your death.” Ken shot a look at the loaded bed of his truck. “I imagine you’ll be wanting to pick from the haul we just brought back.”

“I will.” Erin left no doubt that there would be no debate.

“And your friends? What do you want us to tell them?” Ken shot back. If Jason didn’t know any better, he would swear that the man was trying to talk them—or at least Erin—out of this fool’s errand.

“Don’t care.” With that, Erin turned to Rose. “Your sister has some stuff stored in her pantry. Could I take a few things? I won’t take much, just enough to hold me over and keep my energy up. We can forage on the way back. I will replace everything I take.”

Ken made another sound, but it seemed to get caught in his throat when Erin shot him an icy glare. Rose was a different story.

“You can take whatever you think we will need.” Rose stood there patiently while the statement sunk in.

“We?” Erin asked with open skepticism.

“I’m coming with you.”

“This is not going to be pretty,” Jason warned. He thought that the woman might be biting off more than she could chew. Where Erin was compact and just a bit muscular, Rose was long, lean, and lanky.

“No illusions that it would be,” Rose replied with just a hint of gruffness hardening her voice.

“Then we can’t stand around talking.” Erin clapped her hands together with enough force to cause the black and white Border Collie to come out and investigate. “We grab enough food and water to keep us going, but hopefully not enough to weigh us down.”

Rose’s face seemed to brighten suddenly. She made a sound that was almost a squeal and rushed to her car. Popping the trunk, she came up quickly with what looked to Jason like some sort of funky backpack.

“My Camelbak!” she exclaimed. She obviously saw Jason’s confusion. “It holds two liters of water, and they are easy to refill along the way at any spigot.”

“Nice.” Erin actually smiled.

It didn’t take long. They whipped up a few peanut butter sandwiches and grabbed the bunch of bananas from the counter. Even though they were taking Rose’s car, they were making allowances for the possibility that anything could happen between here and the hospital.

Ken watched quietly, making no offers to help. Jason heard Juanita ask him why he would not help them and was actually surprised at the answer.

“They didn’t do anything to deserve the death sentence. I won’t lift a finger to send them to Hell.”

Just before they left, Rose made arrangements with Juanita to look after her dogs. The woman seemed happy to be given something to look after. And with the briefest of goodbyes, Jason, Erin, and Rose climbed into Rose’s small car and headed for the gate.

9

Into the Breach

Jason eased past a cluster of three zombies that were hunched over and feeding. He could see well enough in the gloom of pre-dawn to pick out a pair of legs. They looked small.

“Oh, my God,” Rose breathed from the back seat.

“Don’t look out at that,” Jason said, doing his best not to sound like he was scolding her. “You are going to see enough to fill a thousand lifetimes’ worth of nightmares. Just sit back and try to relax.”

It had been mostly uneventful up to this point. The occasional zombie was easy to swerve around. As they cruised along Highway 26, Jason was surprised at how many accidents they encountered. Even more eerie was the fact that none of them had been responded to by emergency vehicles. To see two, three, and even a seven car accident scene just sitting there in the road was surreal. A few of them were not void of movement. They passed more than a handful of accident scenes where occupants could be seen moving in the vehicles. He did not so much as slow down.

As they passed the first one earlier on, it had been Rose that asked why he wasn’t even going to see if they could help. Fortunately, Erin answered so that he did not have to be the heavy.

“If they are injured, we can’t help them.”

“But we are headed for a hospital,” Rose insisted.

“A hospital that is overrun with the undead,” Erin reminded.

Jason did not think that too many of the “people” they were passing in those cars were of the living variety. He still shivered at one image in particular. They’d passed a three car wreck that forced them to move into the right hand emergency lane as they drove by. The wreck was just outside his window, and he made the mistake of peeking into the mangled minivan that had its sliding door ripped off in the collision. Inside was a car seat that was well lit by the interior light that would remain on for as long as the van’s battery held its finite charge. The small figure that turned its head his way and opened its mouth in a moan that he was thankful not to have heard over the running loop of the EBS warning that was on the radio was missing both legs right around the knee. It was very obvious that those tiny legs had been ripped off by the now absent attackers. The tattered flesh hung around the two grisly stumps were more ropy than tattered like you would see if they’d been chewed on. Just before he paid heed to the screaming demand that he look away coming from the rational part of his mind, he saw one arm come up as if to reach for him. The other arm was gone, leaving nothing but the exposed socket joint that he swore he could see amidst all the black, dried blood.

He could not imagine the horror experienced by that child in his last moments. Had it been the rest of his family that came for him and literally tore him limb from limb? It was in that moment that he understood the screams that he’d heard earlier. The people that were dying were not doing so in a quick manner. Instead, they were being ripped open, torn apart, and feasted upon by the undead. How many of those attacks were made worse by the attacker being a loved one?

“We’re coming up on Gresham in a few miles,” Erin announced. “I imagine it will start to get hairy right around there.”

Jason nodded and shook his mind free of the image that was burned in more permanent than any of his tattoos. A tattoo could be covered and made into something beautiful. What he’d seen inside that van would never fade. He was as certain of that as he could be of anything.

Almost as if her words had acted as a cue, Jason began to pick out wispy columns of smoke on the horizon. He stopped counting at thirty. Fires of varying sizes were going to burn out of control until they simply petered out, got a good old-fashioned Northwest rainstorm to douse them, or ran out of fuel. Judging by the clear and cloudless sky that was turning a soft blue, rain was not going to be coming anytime soon. Granted, it was the Pacific Northwest, where, if you didn’t like the weather, just wait ten minutes and it would change; still he did not see anything on the horizon that gave hope to any form of moisture falling soon.

“Still nothing on your phone?” Jason asked to take his mind off of everything else.

“Nothing,” Erin stated the obvious as she tapped the screen with her thumb and tried once again to call Cherry.

There had been one moment where they got their hopes up. It had been all for naught. The audible click, pause, and then a single ring took a total of perhaps three seconds. It seemed like an eternity, but, just as suddenly, there was another clicking sound and then the silence. Not even the “All circuits are busy now” message was playing.

They rounded a long, arcing corner and just passed the “Welcome to Gresham” sign when Jason took his foot off the gas. In the distance, a pack of figures had flooded the highway. At first, he thought that they were zombies. His throat was tightening when he saw most of them were running!

“Crap,” he breathed. “This is gonna be a short fucking apocalypse.” He had always dismissed sprinting zombies anytime the topic arose. The conversation usually went something along the lines of:

“Zombies can’t sprint.”

“Why not?”

“Because, they would lack the control and coordination of being able to physiologically perform such things.”

“You do remember that we are debating things that rise from the dead and become mindless eating machines with apparently no need to poop or otherwise void all the human snacks they consume, right?”

“Fuck off.”

Jason did not see one bit of humor in recalling those conversations at the moment. If zombies could do that whole Snyder Dawn of the Dead remake thing and sprint? Humanity had about a week at best.

“What’s wrong?” Erin asked as she looked up from the useless phone in her hand.

Jason did not need to answer. He was looking straight ahead, so Erin (and Rose) simply followed his gaze. Rose actually crawled forward a bit and was wedged in between the two front seats.

“Are those—” Rose began, but a scream cut her off as if providing the answer.

“Thank God,” Jason blurted before realizing exactly to what he had just given thanks. “I mean…”

“You thought they were sprinters,” Erin said with a wince. “I think we can cut you slack on that one. But for now…we need to get moving.”

“Where are they all coming from?” Rose asked as she continued leaning forward between the seats.

Jason’s eyes were scanning the highway in the general direction that this relatively large group was pouring out. When he saw it, he felt another stab at his conscience. It wasn’t bad enough that he’d just thanked God that these were people running for their lives and falling under attack by zombies in their midst; nope, they were all pouring from a massive church.

Looking at the scene ahead, he made a decision. Stomping on the gas, Jason swerved to the left and crossed into the eastbound lane. With no oncoming traffic, he only had to dodge the people…and undead. However, he knew very well that he would have to be cautious. This older model Honda Civic would not withstand much in the way of an impact. Despite what cars might be able to endure on television and in the movies, one body to the grill of this baby would end their trip in a hurry; of that much he was damn near certain.

“Be careful!” Erin hissed as he jerked hard to the right on the wheel to avoid a man who tumbled down the little slope and then came leaping out of the irrigation ditch that ran alongside the highway.

There was a thud, and Rose squealed as the passenger side smacked into one of the people or zombies, it was too much of a blur to be able to tell. What was not lost in the chaos were the cries of the living as they begged for the car to stop.

Jason felt his heart physically ache as he listened to all those pleas. He knew very well that there was nothing to be gained from stopping. They would be swamped, and that would be the end of things.

The highway began a long gradual downslope into a swirling cloud. To the same side of the highway as the church was one of the fires that seemed to be burning out of control. As they neared, Jason could make out the boxy shapes of the residences populating the manufactured home community that was now becoming a raging inferno. He stepped on the gas and urged the Honda to give all it could give. Even inside the vehicle, the heat was almost enough to hurt his skin. Worse still was the stench. The bitter smell of burning rubber, plastic, and bodies was enough to make all three of them gag.

At last they came out of the hazy smoke and Jason rolled down the window as they rocketed through an intersection. The traffic lights were dark, and with no other vehicles in sight, Jason did not even ease up on the accelerator in the slightest bit.

“That was worse than the cell block day room on chili night,” Jason quipped, trying to bring some levity. He glanced to his right and saw no reaction from either of the women.

They continued to drive towards Portland. Every mile that clicked off on the odometer was both a blessing and a curse. The blessing came in their being just that much closer to their destination. The curse came in the form of the shadowy figures flitting by. Some wandered open parking lots, other strolled the highway itself as the undead became more and more prevalent.

“How?” Rose whispered.

“People refusing to believe until it was too late, and then some folks still denying it up to the very end,” Jason replied. “Seriously, did you ever think for a moment that zombies could really happen? That is stuff out of the movies and comic books. That is George Romero and Stephen King shit…not something that could actually go down in the real world.”

***

“You take care of Violet yet?” Erin asked after they’d driven on for a few more minutes.

“Umm…no. Why?” Rose answered tentatively, hearing something in the other woman’s tone that sent off warning signals.

“That is how it is happening so fast.”

Rose thought about it for a moment. Twice she opened her mouth to protest, but each time, she shut it. She knew what Erin’s point was as well as the fact that she could not refute it. Hell, it had almost cost her her own life. She had clung to some sort of false hope all the way up to the moment when she’d been shoved into that bedroom with her sister, nephew, and niece; the latter of which had been free. Even then, she had raged at Hank Reynolds when he’d killed Crystal.

“What time did your friend say that they were making a break for it?” Jason asked. His eyes were flicking around the surrounding area and then down to the gas gauge. “We might make it to Legacy, but we won’t make it back on this tank. We need to get gas.”

“You really think anyplace is gonna be open?” Rose asked. So far, they had practically been the only living people on the roads up to this point. A fact that chilled her as her mind flipped through all the times she had driven to her sister’s house. She could not ever recall one time where she’d been the only car on Highway 26.

“I ain’t looking for a place that is open,” Jason replied, his voice tight from the tension.

Without warning, he suddenly veered to the right. The familiar sign of a Fred Meyer parking lot leapt into her field of vision. Dodging one lone zombie that was stumbling across the entrance, they banked hard to the left, tossing Rose to the right of the backseat where she felt her right arm’s funny bone hit something hard enough to send electric spasms to the tips of her fingers.

The car came to a screeching halt under the awning and Jason jumped out. He started for the main building and then stopped and opened his door, sticking his head back inside.

“Both of you stay put.” Erin opened her mouth, but he cut her off with a raised hand. “This isn’t about if you are capable. It is about I am gonna do some stuff in a hurry and I don’t need you in the way. If you see anything coming, honk the horn and we are outta here.”

He did not wait for another word and simply slammed the door. Rose watched through the window as he approached the squat, gray building where the top of a register could be seen. He reached down and grabbed something from the ground and turned his head as he smashed it into the window. It took a few more tries and made a lot of noise, but eventually, the window gave way.

He vanished through the gaping hole after clearing a path with one arm wrapped in his jacket.

“I think he’s done this before,” Erin quipped.

“Looks like it,” Rose agreed, taking a few seconds before realizing that Erin had made the comment as more of a joke.

A moment later, lights were coming on at each of the bays. Jason emerged and rushed to the pump beside the car. Erin rolled the window down and stuck her head out. “Can I use my gas points?”

“Funny,” Jason sniped, a flurry of activity as he shoved the nozzle in and squeezed the handle. “And how about your windows, you want them washed, maybe have me check the fluids?”

“Damn, how long were you in prison?” Rose called. This received a chuckle from Erin that was only made bigger when Jason shot a scowl over one shoulder.

“Hate to cut this party short, but we got incoming!” Erin pointed forward. Sure enough, five figures were headed their way. The awkward gait and low moans confirmed that these dark shadows were not members of the living.

Jason glanced up and then back at the readout on the pump. He seemed to weigh something in his head for a moment before speaking.

“Take ‘em down. We have no idea if or when we might get another opportunity like this. We need to fill this baby up.”

Erin didn’t wait a second before throwing open the door and drawing the large, heavy blade at her hip. Rose had grabbed a hand axe from the garage before they’d left. She’d used it more than once to cut firewood down to kindling on many occasions at her sister’s house. She imagined that there were probably better weapons, but it had stuck out from everything else in the garage. Perhaps solely due to its familiarity; but, whatever the case, that was the weapon she had (except for the pistol at her side which they had agreed beforehand only to use as the very last resort).

Erin swung and took the top third of the skull from an elderly woman who crumbled in a heap. That prompted Rose to call out, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”

She had no idea where this was coming from. It was not like her to make jokes; especially bad ones and in such poor taste. Still, it made her feel good when Erin shot a crooked smile at her before moving on to the next target.

Rose stepped up to a man that had obviously never jogged a day in his life. His jowls were even more pronounced with the droop to his skin that death seemed to give. He had at least three chins and a belly that left no doubt that this man had not seen his own penis, except perhaps in a mirror, for a long time.

Bringing her arm up and back, Rose judged the obese man’s next step perfectly and brought the weapon down hard. The head of the hand ax crashed through skull and cleaved all the way to the bridge of the man’s nose. A second later, Rose yelped in pain. The first explosion came from the sting her hands felt from the shock of the blow, the second came when the man toppled. The ax was buried and wedged firmly in the skull; coupled with her death-lock grip, she felt her wrist turn viciously and then give an audible snap as her hand was twisted with sudden violence.

“Rose!” Erin yelled, yanking her machete free from her third zombie.

The final remaining zombie was another man. This one was shorter and of Hispanic origin. His black hair had a huge patch missing where it had apparently been ripped out by the roots. Rose was on her side with her back to the approaching zombie, she never saw it until it flopped onto her and began to paw at her with its cold, dead hands.

Jason seemed to appear out of nowhere. He grabbed the monster by its collar and yanked it back and away just as its mouth came within a hair’s breadth of clamping down on the bridge of Rose’s nose.

A long strand of some sort of dark mucous dripped from the undead man’s mouth and into Rose’s. The woman coughed suddenly as she choked on the vile, thick fluid. Erin was kneeling beside her now and turning her onto her side, slapping her hard on the back.

“Cough it up, Rose!” Erin urged.

She tried, but it had gone down the wrong pipe and now she was struggling to breathe. With weak, mewling croaks, Rose tried to scream, cry, anything if it would get that foul taste from the back of her throat.

She closed her eyes as she continued to struggle, but they popped open an instant later when she was greeted behind her eyelids by the sickly, washed out face of the man who had just tried to bite her. She could see every single tracer in his milky eyes, the absolute lack of any emotion as the man leaned in with the intention of taking a piece of her.

At last, a pinhole seemed to open and allow in just the slightest bit of oxygen. Rose tried to gasp and suck it in, but could still barely get enough to push back the sense that she would suffocate and drown in the unholy saliva of one of the walking dead.

She was aware of arms scooping her up and then she was tossed unceremoniously into the back seat. She hit her head on something and felt the world start to fall away, but she would not allow that darkness to come. She was terrified that, if her eyes closed, they might never open, or worse…she would see the face of that zombie as it drew near to try and bite her.

“Sorry about that!” Rose heard Jason holler as he slammed the door and vanished from view. A moment later she heard the sound of screeching tires. She was stricken with the funniest thought, I didn’t know my car had that kind of power.

***

“Get that stupid dog back to the house and shut it up!” Ken snapped as he brought his pistol around and fired pointblank into the face of the zombie that dared to take a swipe at him.

He felt the adrenaline dump another batch of its magic elixir into his system. The problem was that he did not know how much longer he would be able to count on that resource.

It had started about twenty minutes ago, but it seemed like hours. Oddly enough, it had been the barking of that cursed black and white dog that alerted Ken and Juanita that there was a problem.

Of course, if the barking would have failed, he was pretty certain that the sounds of a meaty hand slapping the door would have woke him up in a hurry. Ken sat up, his old cop reflexes kicking in immediately as he had a Glock in his hand before his eyes were even all the way open.

Juanita sat up from the couch as Ken passed, but before he could reach the door, another loud noise made him take a step back as a window shattered off to his right. The blinds crashed to the floor as the upper half of a woman who had most of the right side of her face missing from a bullet that had not ended her came clawing through the broken window. Ken stepped over and lifted his booted foot high. He brought it down on the back of the neck of the female zombie.

Stepping over had given him a clear view outside. Somehow, several of the undead had made their way inside the fence. His mind immediately jumped to the Reynolds kid. He just had a feeling.

Juanita had finally gotten into action, but the dogs were having a fit and barking like crazy. The black and white kept lunging in at the downed zombie woman until Juanita pushed the animal aside and drove a large butcher’s knife into its temple.

Looking out the window, Ken spotted a pair of zombies at the door. Both were slapping and pawing at it, oblivious of his presence. Stepping back, he grabbed Juanita and pointed at the door and then held up two fingers. She nodded. It wasn’t until he yanked the door open and flung the first one to the floor that he could get his hands on that he questioned his reason for hand signals. Were the zombies going to understand him if he gave instructions?

As Juanita took out the one on the floor, Ken stepped in and shoved his Glock under the chin of the other zombie. He knew there had been talk about conserving their bullets, but he wanted these walking bags of filth dead for good. Firing, there was a pulpy burst of brain and skull fragments as the bullet exploded out the top of the zombie’s skull.

Now that he was outside, Ken could get a better idea of what they were facing. At least a couple dozen undead were coming towards the house. His eyes caught sight of something that made him pause for just an instant. One of the undead was Hank Reynolds. The kid had been savagely torn apart by what had to have been several zombies. Most of his insides were now outside. The gaping hole in his middle was horrific to look at as organs that Ken could not begin to identify actually seemed to clog the hole in their quest to be dumped out and onto the ground. The entire left arm was torn away leaving nothing more than a stumpy nub of jagged bone.

Moving down the front of the house, Ken cast a longing glance at the still-open tailgate on his pickup. There was an arsenal in the back of that thing that could arm a small third world nation. He’d made up his mind that he would not move everything into the house until he was satisfied that he would be staying.

Oddly enough, he had not come to that conclusion yet. While it certainly seemed like a wise choice, Ken had a difficult time seeing himself riding out the apocalypse with these people. Not that he’d ever even remotely considered such things ever happening, but if this was the end of civilization, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be around anybody.

As he stepped to the right to avoid the outstretched arms of the nearest zombie, he brought his Glock up and jammed it against the temple of the awkward creature and fired. The bullet passed through and promptly punched a hole in a curtained window. He winced inwardly and told himself to be more careful.

That thought prompted a flood of things that he’d done wrong up to this point. As he made his way from one zombie to the next, oblivious to the fact that he was making his way towards the front gate, he reflected on how careless he’d been. If he wanted to survive (an idea that he was still not convinced of yet), then he was going to need to make smarter decisions.

It was as he was sliding in a fresh magazine and letting the slide load the next round that Ken chose to stay. These people would need a strong leader. He had not seen anybody that had impressed him back at Erin’s place. He sure as hell wasn’t going to trust these people’s fate to a convict.

At last, he reached the gate. It was still locked. Glancing to the left and right, it took him a few moments to find the break in the fence. Walking with brisk purpose, Ken could see several more of the undead stumbling along on the road that ran parallel to the property. Taking a good look around, he made out a half dozen more small clusters of zombies, along with a few lone figures that were headed his direction.

When he reached the part of the fence where the barbed wire had snapped, he put bullets in the heads of the five that were entangled and thrashing around on the ground, each oblivious to the rips and tears that they were inflicting on themselves as the barbs dug furrows in arms, legs, chests and even faces.

There was no way he could do anything to repair the fence at the moment. The opening was a good three yards wide from post to post. He was still considering his options when a noise behind him made him spin and bring up the Glock.

“Whoa!” Juanita yelped as she threw up her hands and stumbled back. The black and white dog was at her side, his nose sniffing the air; there were no signs of the other two.

Maybe they were the smart ones, he thought. He lowered his pistol. “We got trouble.”

That had been all he’d had the chance to say before the next wave arrived. Actually, they were still a good ten or twenty yards from the gaping hole in the fence, but that stupid dog had rushed out, barking and snapping at the first group of three. Ken had noticed how all the other groups seemed to orient on the dog. Whether it was the noise or the tempting snack the mutt made, he didn’t know, but he was going to use that to his advantage.

He sent Juanita back to the house to fetch a leash. He made it very clear that she needed to make sure that the other two dogs were shut inside the house. When she returned, he had already dropped eight more undead, but at least thirty or forty more were closing in on him and the dog.

He clipped the leash to the dog’s collar and started up the road. The beauty of this rural location was the abundance of wooded areas.

“C’mon, mutt.” Ken gave the leash a tug.

“His name is Imp,” Juanita corrected.

“I don’t care.”

Ken turned and started up the road with Imp and Juanita in tow. He would pause every so often to let the dog bark and the zombies to re-gain some ground. At last he spotted a good place to duck into the trees. He waited once more until the zombies were close enough and the dog was having a conniption fit before ducking into the woods.

He had never considered the possibility that there would be any zombies in the woods. That had almost cost him his life. He was walking backwards, urging the zombies to follow. The dog had grown more agitated by the minute. When it suddenly turned and lunged behind them, Ken was spun around and found himself face-to-face with a woman that reached for him with a hand missing two fingers that had been bitten off; recently if the wet smear down his jacket’s left sleeve was any indication.

Ken jammed the gun into the face of the undead woman. “Get that stupid dog back to the house and shut it up!” Ken snapped as he fired pointblank into the face of the zombie.

“Which way do I go?” Juanita asked, her gaze darting from Ken to the still approaching group of zombies that had followed them from the road and into the woods.

Ken pointed to his left. “Go that way a good hundred yards or so and then turn for the road. Move fast and keep that dog quiet. I will take these damn things a bit deeper into the woods and then lose them. I’ll meet you back at the house as soon as I can.”

“What about the hole in the fence?”

“One thing at a time,” Ken called over his shoulder as he stomped away. A second later, he began belting out the song, Friends in Low Places by Garth Brooks.

He kept his head on a swivel this time, aware that that stupid dog had probably saved his life a moment ago. Once again, he’d been careless. That had to change, starting now. He sang louder when he was sure that the zombies were tracking him instead of Juanita and that dog. From what he had observed so far, sound definitely had an effect on these things. That had to be something they could exploit.

“…where the whiskey drowns and beer chases my blues away…” Ken warbled as a plan began to form in his head.

***

“My poor car,” Rose sighed as the trio climbed out.

The large blue and white sign of Legacy Hospital could be seen through some trees. They simply needed to go up and over a couple of blocks.

The drive in had gotten a lot more interesting the closer that they got to Portland. They began to see a few vehicles on the roads. One instance was a bit terrifying.

They had passed a large panel van driving east in the westbound lane of Interstate 84. The van had slammed on the brakes and tried to block their path as they neared, but the interstate was too wide and Jason swerved around it. The van had come after them and Jason had made a snap decision.

“Hand me that street sweeper as soon as I stop,” he said over his shoulder.

Rose hadn’t actually known what a street sweeper was up to that point, but she grabbed the shotgun with the large canister that looked like some sort revolver on steroids.

“Hang on!” Jason shouted and then slammed on the brakes and cranked the wheel a bit to the left to put the driver’s side of her car facing in the direction of the oncoming panel van. In a flash he threw open his door. “Hand me the shotgun!”

Rose did as he asked and then watched Jason pump the weapon and bring it to his hip. Then he did something crazy; he started walking towards the oncoming van! She kept wondering why he wouldn’t shoot. At last, he pulled the trigger. Then things got even crazier. Jason kept firing, and the van kept coming. It seemed to be impossibly close and she remembered wondering why she hadn’t gotten out of the car. She was going to be rammed and the odds were not in her favor to come out of it without serious injury. Fortunately, the driver of the van must have finally seen the weapon and been a bit nervous, because it swerved suddenly.

Jason fired one more shot and then dove out of the way. Rose thought that she heard him yell something like “Hang on!” but she couldn’t be sure. In any case, that last shot must have hit a tire because there was a loud pop or bang and then the van did a sumersault…and another…and then three more. Rose swore that thing actually cleared the hood of her car on that second flip, but in any case, her little Honda Civic had escaped unharmed.

At least up to that point.

They came off Interstate 84 and were merging on to Interstate 5 when a black SUV came upon them fast as it rocketed north on Interstate 5. Jason had to swerve hard to the right and clipped the concrete barrier. The horrible grinding sound set Rose’s teeth on edge and made the terrible headache that was banging in her temples that much worse. The SUV clipped them enough to spin them around to where they were now facing south into oncoming traffic. At least a dozen cars flew past with none of them so much as slowing to see if any of them were hurt.

Jason had to restart the car, and for a moment, it did not look like he would be able to as the engine made odd noises and seemed to sputter. At last it turned over and he spun them back around in the right direction. They had made it off the interstate, but not much further as black smoke began to leak from under the hood.

“We’re almost there,” Erin pointed at the sign.

Together, the three of them grabbed everything from the car and started off the rest of the way on foot. They were just coming around the corner of a big park when the sounds of gunfire could be heard coming in bunches from the direction of the hospital. A few louder booms followed sporadically.

“Grenades?” Jason said as more of a question.

Rose had no idea. She had never heard a grenade before, but the noise did remind her of the sounds from the Fourth of July displays that came on the heels of the flashing display of light.

They continued on, Erin starting to increase their pace from a fast jog to more of an all-out run. Rose stayed with them, noticing that they started to slow again after only a minute. She could have kept that pace for a while, but neither Erin nor Jason were in the shape that she was in.

“Almost there,” Rose reminded, trying to coax the two into picking their tempo up.

As they passed a non-descript building, a figure stumbled out at them. Rose jumped and cleared it easily, but Jason stepped to his right and fell off the curb, hitting the pavement with an audible exhale that was forced out with a yelp of pain.

Rose stopped and turned to help him and heard Erin’s footsteps continue on as if nothing had just happened. A pair of zombies were now closing in, and Jason was making a strange croaking noise. The noise was not the problem so much as the fact that he did not seem to be making any effort to get back up or even roll over.

Shooting a glance over her shoulder, she saw Erin disappear around the corner. Zombies were seeming to come out from every direction. Some of them were following after Erin who was now yelling her friend’s name.

Rose heard the refrain of “Cherry, where are you!” growing faint as the woman continued on her way towards the hospital and all the gunfire that was now becoming more like popcorn when the batch is almost entirely popped.

10

“Yes. This is really happening.”

Ken hurried along the tree line. He could see the house. So far, not a single zombie could be seen. He paused and made sure before coming out and jogging across the last stretch of open ground that brought him to the barbed wire fence that bordered the property.

To the left he could see the road that ran along the front. Already, birds were circling the “free” buffet that was being served up as dozens of corpses now began the process of rotting in the sun. That would have to be a top priority on his to-do list. They had to burn or dispose of all these bodies.

Slipping between two strands of the barbed wire, Ken hurried the rest of the way to the house. He was almost to the porch when he heard a low growl come from inside, quickly followed by a shushing sound. Juanita’s head peeked out from the curtains of the shattered window beside the front door.

“Thank God it’s you,” she breathed.

“Who else would it be?” Ken asked gruffly as he reached for the door to enter the house.

“Some people were outside of the house a moment ago,” she answered in a whisper that, coupled with how fast she spoke, almost made it impossible for Ken to understand what she had said.

“We aren’t looking for trouble,” a voice said from behind Ken. He spun, his pistol up and ready. It only took a slight adjustment for him to be lined up with a shot that would hit center mass of his target.

It was a woman, and she was holding the hand of a little boy no older than six or seven. She immediately stepped in front of the child and shielded him with her body.

“Please!” she almost begged. “Our car crashed up the road a ways. My husband tried to avoid hitting one of those…things. We went into the ditch and he got knocked out by the air bag. I tried to wake him, but nothing worked. A bunch of those things were headed our way so I grabbed Evan and we ran.”

Ken sighed. He knew what he needed to do, but that didn’t mean he would like it.

“You and the boy get inside. That is Juanita.” He hiked a thumb over his shoulder at the woman as she opened the front door and emerged onto the porch.

A second later, before Ken could introduce himself, Evan shrieked. “Doggies!”

The black and white dog had bolted past Juanita and rushed to the child. Its tail was wagging furiously and the dog nudged and jumped up on the boy until the two fell to the ground and began rolling around, a mix of laughter and happy yips.

Ken’s eyes began to search in every direction. This noise would bring more of those things. He pursed his lips and snapped, “Quiet!”

The pair almost froze, both stopping in their play and turning their heads to the man who had just ended the fun. The dog sat down, but the boy started with a jutting lower lip and then erupted into bawling. He scrambled to his feet and ran to his mother that was now looking at Ken like he might actually be worse than the zombies.

“Listen,” Ken raised his hands in a sign of peace, “you two can play all you want inside. But if you make all that noise out here—”

“The monsters will come?” little Evan managed around his crocodile tears.

“Yes, the monsters will come.” He looked up at the mother and saw her stance ease a bit. “I am going to go for a walk up the road…” He raised his eyebrows as he left that sentence as a bit of a question.

“That way,” the woman said as she pointed up the road towards the direction he had come when he first arrived at this house.

“Okay.” Ken rose and dusted himself off. “Juanita, you take the new folks inside. Keep the door shut and keep a watch in the direction where the fence is busted. We need to fix it or plug it up, but I don’t think it will do much good. Too many of those things at once and the barbed wire snaps like string. We are going to have to come up with something more durable if we plan on staying here.”

“You’re staying here?” the woman asked, sounding equal parts shocked and alarmed.

“Where else would we go?” Juanita asked, signaling Ken to keep quiet. “The FEMA centers are falling. Anybody who is bitten becomes one of those things.”

Ken would have missed it if he blinked, but he saw the woman’s eyes tighten just a bit at that statement. He gave her a closer look. She seemed fine. He felt his throat go dry as he turned his attention to the boy. Was that a scratch on his right arm? He moved a little to get a better look. Apparently the woman had picked up on his move. She lunged forward and snatched her child back to her side and then nudged him behind her body.

“On second thought, we will go see if my husband managed to get the car out of the ditch.”

“I thought that you said he was unconscious?” Juanita asked, obviously confused.

The woman locked eyes with Ken. Her lips were pressed tight, and he saw a determination in her gaze that let him know she would die trying to save her son if it came down to that. He gave a knowing nod and stepped back. It didn’t matter if he already knew that the child was as good as dead. He let his eyes drift to the boy once more and saw the beginnings of dark tracers creeping into the whites of the little boy’s eyes.

“I think we might have a few things that would help,” Ken said quietly. Ken nodded to the open back end of the pickup. The woman looked back at Ken and he saw the acceptance of a terrible fate in her expression.

“No thank you.”

With that, the woman took her son by the hand and headed for the opening in the fence. He watched them go. He almost hated the fact that he was a little relieved when a single zombie fell in behind them and did not come through the open spot in the fence.

“Why did you let them go?” Juanita’s voice cut through his thoughts and returned him to the situation at hand.

“The boy was bitten. He was infected and is going to become one of those things.”

Juanita’s mouth opened and then closed with a snap. She let her gaze drift over and get one final glimpse of the mother and her son just before they vanished from sight.

“How could you just let them leave like that?”

Ken spun and saw the reproach directed at him. He had actually expected this woman to understand. Up to this point, she had seemed fairly reasonable.

“And what would you have me do? Hold them against their will? Wait for the boy to turn into one of those things and then try to fight my way past that mother who is ready to die to save a boy that is beyond saving?” Ken did his best to control his voice, speaking in a low, even tone.

Juanita seemed to consider his words for a moment. It almost reminded him of watching that frame-by-frame series of pictures when Mount St. Helens blew. It was a slow and steady collapse and then tears streaming in rivulets that cut through the dirt and grime that had accumulated during a day of killing zombies, running through woods, and killing more zombies.

“This is really happening,” she hiccupped once she stopped crying.

At that moment, there was a scream. It came from the direction that the woman and her son had gone. A moment later, another scream joined it; mother and son in a chorus of terror. He turned back to Juanita.

“Yes. This is really happening.”

***

Jason felt that instant fear that comes when the breath is knocked from a person. There is a period of time when there is a sense that you may never be able to inhale again. The harder you try, the more that fear escalates. At the moment, Jason was at the peak of that fear. When something fell on him, he was certain that death was imminent. His only consolation came in the fact that he would not be letting loose with one of those horrible screams as he was ripped apart. He could barely make the weak croaking noise that was escaping his lips at the moment.

Then, another noise came and something shifted on his back. A head rolled over his shoulder and landed on its side just a few inches from his face. The head belonged to a man. Its shaggy and bedraggled appearance made it a logical guess that this man had been homeless. Through the involuntary tears that had started to fill Jason’s eyes, he could still see the mouth moving and the filmy, tracer-ridden eyes shifting back and forth.

There was another dull thud and a body fell right next to him, thankfully blocking the view of that head. Something gripped him by the collar of his jacket and tugged. Jason braced for the end.

“C’mon, try to stand,” Rose’s voice filtered in through the haze of fear and pain. That was when he began to realize that there was something wrong with his left ankle.

Jason was rolled onto his back and found himself looking up at Rose. There was just enough light in the sky to make the shadows partially hide her features. In that moment, she was amazingly beautiful.

“Erin took off. We need to get moving.” Her head popped up and the sun washed over all of it, chasing away those shadows for just a moment. And that was when he saw them.

Jason fought to move, but remained helpless for several seconds before some of the control returned. As he regained his ability to move and breathe, he was momentarily thankful. He had seen the tracers starting to work into the whites of Rose’s eyes. Yet, because he had been incapacitated for the most part, she had not seen his feelings of pity that were churning in his gut.

“Help me up,” he managed to croak at last.

“Erin left us.” Rose pointed up the street in the direction towards Legacy Hospital.

“Then we better get moving.” Jason took slow, painful steps at first with his arm slung over Rose’s shoulder.

Together they made their way to the corner. By now, the sounds of grenades and gunfire had ended. However, now the screams of the dying and the moans of the undead had filled in the silence of a city that was spiraling into the abyss of total loss. Portland, Oregon would fall to the zombies. Of that there could be no doubt.

By the time that they reached the entrance to the parking lot, they had passed at least a dozen people going the other direction. All of them were looking over their shoulders in horror. A few simply stumbled by in absolute shock, their faces void of anything resembling emotion. In many cases, they could have been mistaken for the undead.

“Stay close,” Jason whispered.

It was practically a needless request since Rose had pressed herself against him once they began to encounter the living stragglers. The symphony of pain and panic continued to come at irregular intervals from the gigantic hospital complex.

As they neared, strange lumpy figures became visible. It took Jason a moment to realize that he was seeing the broken bodies of people who had leapt to their deaths. His eyes tracked up to some of the top floors and noticed at least a dozen windows that had been busted out. He seemed to recall someplace that hospital windows were not just regular glass. He might have been wrong, but that did not diminish the fact that people had chosen to plummet to their deaths rather than face whatever was inside that large brick building.

The doors to the emergency entrance were gone. Actually, Jason corrected himself, that was only partially true. A small car had driven into the large double-doors. It had apparently backed out at least partway; presumably to allow the occupants the ability to exit the vehicle. Of course, if it had been bad when he’d left so many hours ago, he could not imagine that it had gotten better.

“Umm…” Rose was tugging on his sleeve.

Jason swiveled to look in the direction that the woman pointed. Coming across the parking lot were five individuals in some sort of body armor. They were coming at a sprint and waving for everybody to flee. In the midst of these people, Erin was running beside a woman with short red hair.

“Come on,” Jason urged as he tugged at Rose’s arm.

“But that’s Erin.” Rose tried to pull away as she pointed emphatically with her free hand.

“Yes, and she is waving us away. I have a bad feeling about—”

Before he could complete that sentence, there was a tremendous explosion from just down the gradual slope and around the corner of the hospital. A ball of fire rose straight up. It poked out and roiled from black smoke and a grayish cloud that matched the fire’s race skyward. Second later, huge chunks of rock and metal began to rain down on the parking lot.

The sounds of heavy impacts smashing the hoods, roofs, and windshield of the various cars in the lot added to the cacophony of ear-splitting noise. Jason gave Rose a yank and then started away as fast as he could limp on his injured ankle.

***

Rose sat in the back of the Volkswagen Beetle. If her car had been old, this thing was beyond ancient. However, it had been the car that Jason had hotwired for them. When Rose had asked why they didn’t try one of the newer, nicer vehicles in the parking lot of the brick Baptist church where he had led them as they fled the explosion and resulting fire that now raged a few blocks away at the hospital, his reply had been another in a string of revelations.

“Newer cars are not really prone to being hotwired as easily as older cars,” he explained. “I would not even know where to begin. Old cars are easy. Plus, they can take more punishment.”

That had been good enough for Rose. She turned her attention to Erin and the tall, much-too-skinny woman standing beside her. Her hair was that sort of orange that reminded her of Pippi Longstocking. It was cut short in a very fashionable style that hovered just above the shoulders. Her eyes were a hazel that swirled with flecks of gold and her skin did not look like it had ever seen the sun.

“Rose Tinnes,” she said by way of introducing herself once everybody had climbed in the car with Erin and Jason up front and her in back with this stranger.

“Cheryl O’Hara, but just call me Cherry.”

And then they were moving. The buildings whizzed by and it was not long before she was absolutely lost. She didn’t come downtown if she could help it, and this was just on the outskirts of the heart of the city.

Eventually they were back on I-5. That was when they passed the first military vehicle. Actually it was a six-truck convoy headed north to their south as Jason made for I-84. To the right, they passed the Rose Garden Arena. She knew it had changed names when some company had jumped in and bought the rights, but that had never seemed right. It had always been the Rose Garden. Smoke billowed up, pouring from the massive glass panels that were apparently missing in several places. The once-white exterior was smudged with black.

“So much for the FEMA centers,” Cherry sighed, looking out of the window past Rose.

“I can’t even imagine what hell must have happened inside that place,” Erin added.

“Probably worse than the hospital,” Cherry said. “With all that open space and the thousands of people who were already scared. Toss in the military, and I can’t fathom how anybody could make it out alive.”

The conversation continued, but Rose leaned back and shut her eyes. She could not shake the terrible headache. Also, she was probably being paranoid, but it seemed like everybody was looking at her funny. Erin’s friend Cherry was sitting with Erin’s machete in her lap for some reason.

She swallowed and tried to clear her throat a bit. That nasty taste had not gone away from the zombie slobber that had dripped into her mouth. She actually got a bit nauseous just thinking about it, but the massive pounding in her temples and behind her eyes was even worse.

As they continued to drive, the conversation started to sound funny like her ears were stuffed with wet cotton. She began to shiver. The next minute, she would be burning up.

Maybe I will sick up that horrible slime that I swallowed and then feel better, Rose thought as she fell into a fitful sleep.

***

“I don’t see so much as a scratch on her,” Ken insisted. Still, he could not deny the signs of the dark tracers in her eyes when they peeled up her eyelid.

“I checked her from head to toe and back again,” Erin insisted, sounded annoyed. “I did not find anything. It doesn’t make sense.”

Jason stood across and was pinching his lip in deep thought. He had carried the woman in and laid her on the couch when he had arrived with Rose, Erin, and her friend. Ken noticed the man’s limp right away and called him out, asking if he’d been bitten. Of course, when Jason denied it, Ken had pushed the issue. He had been more than a little surprised when the convict began to strip off his clothing.

“You want a closer look?” Jason taunted as he dropped his pants to his ankles.

When he was told that it was Rose who actually needed checking, Erin had insisted that he and Jason wait out on the porch while she, Cherry, and Juanita inspected the unconscious woman. He’d been more than a caught off-guard when the black and white Border Collie had scooted out the door with them.

The dog had shown reluctance to return inside even after the inspection was complete and everybody now stood in the living room. The red Border Collie had reacted in quite the opposite manner. She had jumped up on the couch the moment that Rose had been laid down and was nestled in between the woman’s legs with her head peeking over and resting on one knee. The Golden Retriever seemed completely aloof and neither shied away from, nor paid any special attention to Rose.

“I think I might know,” Jason said. Every head swiveled in his direction. He seemed a bit uncomfortable all of a sudden and clasped his hands together in front of himself, his head rolling back so that he was looking up at the ceiling.

“Well?” Erin pressed after he had remained silent for several seconds.

“The gas station.” Jason let that statement hang in the air. Ken saw realization dawn on Erin’s face as she apparently recalled what had happened.

“What about a gas station?” Ken finally asked.

Jason went on to describe what had happened during the fill up, and how Rose had gotten a mouthful of slobber from one of the zombies. Ken listened and had to admit that the kid had a point. Nobody knew for certain how this stuff spread beyond a bite or maybe a scratch. So why wouldn’t it also be transmitted through something like getting a mouthful of zombie drool?

“That sucks,” Cherry finally said with a shake of her head.

“So what do we do?” Erin asked.

Ken was a bit surprised. Up to this point, the woman had been a freaking warrior.  All of a sudden, she sounded tentative and…like a woman? He scolded himself mentally before he opened his mouth.

“We tie her down. Maybe she won’t die. Hell, maybe she will wake up in a few hours and be fine. Wouldn’t it be crazy if this worked like some sort of inoculation?” He knew that he was hoping for too much, but, to be honest, he had just gotten used to the idea of riding this thing out with these people.

“Sounds like a good idea to me,” Juanita said, leaning down and putting the back of her hand against Rose’s forehead. “And maybe some rags with cool water to help bring down the fever.”

“You women deal with that,” Ken said, hitching his pants and turning to Jason. “You and I need to deal with that hole in the fence.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Ken was actually a bit surprised when the convict didn’t pitch a fit. In his experience, most convicts hated being put to work. Most of them would be happy to simply while away the days, months, and years, sleeping or watching television.

“Oh!” Jason pulled up and turned to the women. “When are your friends supposedly showing up?”

Erin shook her head. “Probably not for a while…if ever. They want to secure things at my house first before expanding. They think it would be foolish to try and defend more area than we are able.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Jason admitted. “I understand how this place has a lot to offer, but maybe we shore up one dyke before trying to build another.”

“What did you say?” Cherry snarled.

Jason flushed and began to sputter. Erin’s scowl only seemed to fluster him more. Ken did not say a word and took in the whole situation. He knew damn well that the kid had not meant it as a nasty remark to the two women. He’d simply been trying to illustrate a point. He was actually considering the option of opening his mouth to defend the young man when Cherry broke out into a laugh.

“Ease up, convict,” she snickered, shooting a wink at Ken for good measure. “We ain’t that touchy. Bigger things to be worried about if you know what I mean.”

“So, are we leaving here?” Juanita asked.

“I think perhaps we should.” Erin gave a nod and looked around. “I think we should take everything we can load up, and make a few trips to transport what we can.”

“Umm…” Jason stepped forward and seemed a bit hesitant. Erin gave him a “go ahead” motion with her hands to get him to continue. “If you are suddenly so eager to ditch this place, how come you have stayed this long? You even came back with Ken after he took you home.”

Now it was Erin’s turn to look embarrassed. She glanced at Cherry and then turned back to Jason. Ken did not think that he was going to like the answer.

“The God’s honest reason is Cherry.” Everybody stood silently, waiting for her to continue. Now it was Ken’s turn to give the rolling hands gesture. “I went after her because I knew in my heart that she was alive. However,” she looked over at Jason and gave a sheepish bow of her head, “I also knew that I couldn’t do it alone. I’d have to have somebody there with me—”

“We were cannon fodder?” Jason exploded. “You just used us and put our lives in danger like that for your own selfish reasons?”

“You weren’t just cannon fodder,” Erin corrected. “You were back-up and support. I could not have done this without your help.”

“That’s bullshit,” Jason retorted. “You didn’t have to leave and come all the way back here. You could have stayed put and waited…you could have gone in after her.”

“When I lost contact with her, I had to assume that she was gone for good.” She looked at Ken. “When I got home, my friends told me that Cherry had gotten through to one of them and told them that she was doing her best to escape. When she called me—”

“You said to hell with us and put our asses on the line to save your friend.”

“She’s not JUST my friend,” Erin insisted.

“That girl…Rose?” Jason stepped up to Erin and glared down at her. “She is infected and probably won’t see the end of today because you needed to rescue your girlfriend or whatever the fuck you want to call her. That’s some messed up shit, I don’t care how you want to justify it.”

“I just—” Erin began, but this time it was Ken who cut her off.

“You need to leave.” Ken folded his arms across his chest. He did not have much common ground with the convict, but he was actually on the man’s side with this one. Sure, he had stayed at the house, but that did not excuse the woman’s actions.

She could go to her friends and do whatever it is they thought that they needed to do. He would get to work with the convict and shore up this spot. If nothing else, at least he would know who his neighbors were on one side. They could perhaps be there in support.

Or not.

After all, if this really was the end of the world and the zombie apocalypse was a reality, then there was no need to feel bad about taking care of number one. Hadn’t that Erin woman just displayed that in no uncertain terms? Her motives were completely self-serving.

“Hit the bricks,” Jason snarled. He pushed past Erin and flung open the front door.

***

Jason stood on the porch. Erin and Cherry had left about an hour ago. He’d watched them leave. Despite his anger, he was torn. If some man had done the exact same thing to rescue his wife, Jason would have probably understood. He might have been a little miffed. If a mother had done it to save her child, he likely would have had absolutely no problem with it.

So why was he so mad? Why was Erin’s desire to save Cherry any different? Was he being a total hypocrite?

“We got a lot of work to do,” Ken’s voice called from somewhere deep inside the house. “I already checked the garage and that barn they have. We have some supplies, but we are gonna need to go out and find a few things.”

“We need to get busy,” Juanita whispered, causing Jason to jump. He hadn’t realized that the woman was right beside him.

“Was I out of line?” Jason asked as he turned to face Juanita.

She seemed to consider his question to the point where he was braced for an answer that he might not like. He’d certainly dragged enough doubt into his conscience.

“Not really.” Juanita gave a shake of the head, but then she levelled a gaze at him that let him know there was more to come. “However, she was only doing what she felt she needed to do. She wanted to save her loved one, and it is hard to find fault with a person in such matters.”

Jason gave her words some serious consideration. After all, hadn’t he been basically telling himself the exact same thing?

“How is Rose doing?” Jason asked, changing the subject.

“No real change. She opened her eyes and kept mumbling stuff about Violets or something.”

“That was her sister.” Jason had recalled hearing something like that when Erin had been around.

“And that brings up another issue. When are we going to do something about that poor woman and the little boy?”

Jason nodded. He’d actually sort of forgotten about them. His mind drifted for a moment as he reflected on how none of this was working out like it did in the books or the movies. He was discovering, much to his chagrin, that he didn’t really have the answers. In fact, if he was being completely honest with himself, he was beginning to wonder if he would survive the first week.

Just then, Ken came into the living room.

“We can’t stand around all day, con…err…Mister Edwards.”

Jason knew well enough that the use of “mister” in this sense was the man’s way of continuing to address him like he was an inmate. Correctional officers often referred to their charges as “Mister So-and-so” when engaging them in conversation. Still, he had to acknowledge that it was an improvement.

“So what do you suggest we do?” Jason asked.

Ken laid out his plan while Jason and Juanita listened. Both admitted openly that the ideas were solid. They did indeed have some serious work ahead, and they would also be forced to venture out to gather some much needed supplies. That was perhaps the riskiest part.

“So, what about Erin and her people?” Jason finally asked once Ken’s plan had been discussed and everybody knew what they would need to do in order to make it happen.

“What about them?” Ken raised an eyebrow and gave a shrug.

“Are they friends? Enemies?”

“They’re just people. I doubt they are going to stage any sort of raid or anything. Let’s just focus on what we need to do in order to get this place shored up and zombie proof.”

Juanita couldn’t help but chuckle. The statement in and of itself was just too incredible to believe. The fact that it was being said with such sincerity only made her laugh harder.

It didn’t take long for her laughter to catch. Pretty soon, Jason could not help himself and joined in. Then, much to both his and Juanita’s surprise, Ken began to laugh as well. The three of them were roaring heartily when the sounds of a dog whimpering came from up the hall.

A low moan silenced them completely.

“Dios mio,” Juanita spat. “I didn’t secure her after giving her that soup.”

A snarling flash of black and white rocketed past and actually skidded to a halt at the entrance to the bedroom. The dog that the woman called Imp skidded and stopped at the doorway, the fur around his neck standing up straight, his lip pulled back in a menacing snarl with teeth barred in accompaniment to the low growl that rumbled in his throat.

“Of all the irresponsible…” Ken let the reprimand die on his lips as he drew his machete.

“Damn,” was all Jason said as he and Ken headed up the hallway towards the bedroom where Rose had been laid down.

11

A Terrible Thing

Rose felt horrible. The chicken soup had been warm, but there was a sourness to its flavor that made her want to throw it all back up. She kept it down only by sheer force of will. At least she managed to do so until Juanita left the room.

Almost as soon as the woman had stepped outside the door, Rose had managed to turn her head enough to be sick. The bile-laced mixture burned her throat and brought tears to her eyes as her stomach twisted and heaved until every last drop had come back up. She had to actually pull a long noodle from her nostrils as she let her head fall back onto the pillow.

Through it all, Circe hovered and stuck by her side. The little red and white Border Collie nestled in as soon as she collapsed onto her back.

In all her life, Rose could not recall having ever been this sick. Her body ached. At least that nice woman had untied her hands and removed those straps that held her down on the bed. They’d been so tight that she could barely breathe. Unfortunately, now that she was free, her breathing did not seem to be getting any easier.

Something soft nuzzled her under the chin and Rose felt the soft tongue of Circe as it lapped at the hollow of her throat. For that brief moment, Rose remembered how often the little female Border Collie had done the exact same thing when they would return from a run.

“You’re a good girl…” Rose managed to mutter before her eyes fluttered and then shut. With one final gasp, a pause, and then a slow exhale, her body convulsed twice and then went still.

***

Circe nudged the woman. She could smell the wrongness, yet, this was her person. More than once she had tried to remind the one she called Imp that they owed all that they were to this human. She was the bringer of food and that made her important.

“Master?” Circe whined softly.

No reply came and the feeling of wrong seemed to grow and become overwhelming. Every fiber of Circe’s being screamed for her to get away. Imp and the useless Golden Retriever had vanished long ago, leaving her to tend to The Master all by herself. Even the other humans had apparently all but forgotten about the woman on this bed who was everything in Circe’s small world.

Her time as a puppy had been magical. She remembered all the days that they would run together; just Circe and The Master. And the treats for doing such simple things as playing! At times, she almost felt guilty for taking them. She would have gladly chased the ball and returned it for the pleasure of the run and the way she was stroked, ruffled, and told how pretty and good she was by The Master.

Circe loved her human. She would stay at her side no matter what happened. And everything had been perfect until the wrong ones had first appeared. The smell was confusing. At first, they smelled like something that would be perfect to roll in. Only, there was something else under that scent. It was…wrong.

And now…now that smell was coming from The Master. Another whine escaped the frightened Border Collie’s muzzle.

“Get back!”

Circe turned her head and discovered Imp standing in the doorway. He looked angry, and his eyes were almost solid black as they looked right past her and to where The Master was beginning to stir behind her.

“The Master needs us.”

“The Master is no more,” Imp snarled. “She is now one of The Wrong. Get away from her before she hurts you.”

“How can you say that? How many times did The Master care for you when you would eat something that you should not? Even when you made Bad Dog on the floor!”

“She is not The Master any longer, Second Mother.”

The use of that title made Circe pause. Imp only used it when he was being pack. He used it when he apologized for playing too rough, or when she would be scolded for something that was his doing and he would offer up an apology.

“She would never hurt us,” Circe insisted. She could feel The Master move behind her. Perhaps if The Master would but speak in her peculiar language, Imp would see. He would have to see.

Hands ran over her. It was in that instant that Circe realized that The Master truly was one of The Wrong. There was that instant when the cold hands closed on her that Circe reacted out of instinct. She whipped her head around to bite, but as soon as she saw The Master, that urge simply faded from the years of conditioning.

The Master was safety and love and protection. The Master was never hurt; even when she did things that upset The Master, she had never once been nipped, swatted or even scolded with much force. That is why Circe did nothing more than tremble as The Master’s mouth came closer.

“Run, Circe!” Imp demanded, but she would not. The Master would not hurt her. It was not The Master’s way.

The cold hands of The-Wrong-That-Was-Now-The-Master gripped her fur tighter and made Circe whimper in pain. Surely that would make The Master see. All those times when The Master would accidentally step on her foot or tail; The Master would always stop and tend to the hurt. She would soothe with words and gentle strokes of Circe’s fur.

The mouth came in closer, and then clamped down on the side of Circe’s throat. The red and white Border Collie yelped in pain as she felt something tear away. The pain was more than she could stand and Circe jerked free. Her body landed on the floor with an awkwardness as her legs did not free themselves properly from the bed coverings. Instead of landing on her feet, Circe landed on her side and felt her head bounce off the floor. She rose unsteadily and saw her own blood shoot across the room and spray the floor. She managed only a step before The Master landed heavily on top of her. Both back legs snapped under the sudden and overwhelming weight. Again Circe yelped.

In her mind, as the world faded to darkness, all she could do was ask herself how she had upset The Master. What had she done wrong?

***

Imp watched helplessly as The Wrong tore into his beloved pack-friend, Circe. He refused to allow himself to refer to that thing as The Master. It was not The Master. It was one of them.

The hot life blood came in a jet from Circe’s throat. She yelped in a raw, ragged way that Imp knew meant that she would be no more. He saw as Circe vanished under the body of The Wrong. He heard her pain cry and the sound of snapping bone. He was about to launch into an attack when the two man-things that were not of the pack came on the run.

“You are too late, stupid man-things!” Imp barked.

He saw that they held things in their awkward paws that could cut and hurt the flesh. The Wrong had managed to get to its knees and was pulling the limp figure of Circe in to take another bite. The Wrong’s face vanished in the long, silky fur that Circe had been so proud of and preened every time that The Master pulled out the funny little thing that ran through that fur and made it shine even brighter than normal as well as pull out all the kinks and knots that teeth would take hours trying to fix.

As The Wrong came up with a mouthful of meat and fur, one of the man-things leapt into the room in his graceless man-thing way and brought down a cutting thing on the head of The Wrong. Dark fluid that smelled foul and almost hurt Imp’s sensitive nose ran down the face of The Wrong.

It was over.

Imp looked up the hall at the new pack member that had introduced itself as Baily (a name that Imp thought was almost as ridiculous as the dog it belonged to). The Golden Retriever was actually shaking with its tail tucked tight against its belly. Imp wanted nothing more to do with this place. His pack was gone. When the door opened the next time, he would run. Imp loved running. Of course he loved it most when chasing after one of those wonderful discs or squishy balls that The Master used to throw for him.

The man-things were now talking. Imp wished that any of it made sense. He heard the name of The Master, and on reflex, his ears perked. However, an instant later, his ears dropped. The Master was gone. Imp was alone.

A new smell began to drift into his nose. Instantly, the black and white Border Collie’s lip curled back. There was something different, but it was still the smell of them: The Wrong. A twitch caught his attention and Imp’s head swung around to the source.

It was Circe.

No, that was not his pack-friend. When the head lifted from the floor where it had come to rest in all that life blood, Imp snarled. The eyes opened and Imp could see the death in them. Barking furiously, Imp warned this new horror to come no closer. Man-things never understood, that was why it was no surprise when The Wrongs had not responded to his warnings. Yet, this thing had once been pack…dog. It had to understand.

“Stay back or I will use teeth and claw,” Imp snapped.

That was the first challenge that a dog learned once it was weaned. Most dogs liked to use it in play, but Imp had first used it to warn one of the hated felines that prowled outside his window and left their bitter scent on his favorite tree. He occasionally tested it on the man-thing that stuck things through the door while The Master was away. A few times, he had used it on The Master’s mate. That had earned him a kick in his ribs, yet he had not been afraid. He smelled that man-thing’s weakness. He smelled the fear when he, Imp, had issued that challenge.

This Wrong was not Circe. Imp was certain as the thing that looked like her but certainly did not smell like her began to drag itself forward towards him and the two man-things that stunk of fear. It was a change from their normal scent. One of them stunk of anger and Imp had made it a point to avoid that one whenever possible.

The other man-thing was different. Imp liked him. That one always scratched him behind the ears or on his chest if they were close. He had been watching that one closely as he seemed to be drawn to The Master. Imp thought they might try to mate soon judging by the smells. He would have allowed it.

But now was not the time for such thoughts. Imp snarled another warning at The-Wrong-that-was-not-Circe. Its head turned towards him and milky eyes that were laced with death seemed to consider Imp for a moment.

Hands caught Imp as he started forward. He glanced up and saw the man-thing that reeked of anger. He wanted to bite and demand to be let go, but Imp knew that now was not the time. The other man-thing had stepped forward, in his hand was the same weapon that had killed The-Wrong-that-was-not-The-Master. With one swing, he brought it down and split the head of The-Wrong-that-was-not-Circe.

The man-thing set Imp down on the floor. There was communication, and then they both left the room. Imp slunk forward to take one final look at his former pack-friend. Circe had taught him much. Now, she was gone. He knew that she would already be chasing rabbits in the Endless Meadow. He would miss her. She and The Master had always made him feel like he was the most coveted thing that one of his kind could feel.

Imp was a Good Dog.

***

Ken walked out of the room. What he’d just seen had made his blood turn to ice and his stomach twist into a knot. Seeing people become zombies had been upsetting. When that red and white Border Collie had lifted its head and rolled those tracer ridden, milky eyes up at him and started to drag itself along the floor, he had feared for an instant that his mind might very well snap.

“That sucked,” Jason whispered.

Ken agreed with the sentiment. His feelings on the matter were much deeper, but that description would suffice for now.

“Dogs,” Jason whispered. “Why would it affect dogs?”

“Ask a scientist,” Ken replied, stepping aside as the black and white dog slipped past him in the hallway.

“We need to deal with the two in the other bedroom and then start disposing of the bodies,” Jason said, hand already on the doorknob to the room where Rose’s sister and nephew were secured.

“We have a lot to do,” Ken agreed.

The next few hours were busy ones. After dealing with the two zombies in the bedroom, the men began dragging the bodies outside and starting a pile. Juanita was given a list of things to look for in the barn and asked to start gathering as many of the tools and supplies as she could find.

Once all the corpses had been gathered into a pile, the fire was started. Ken was dousing it with some gasoline when Juanita came up.

“Can we at least say a prayer?” The tears in her eyes were mixing with the sweat, and the gray handkerchief she wore over her face was almost black from moisture. When Ken nodded his consent, he saw something in her eyes that made him pause.

Did she think I might actually say no? he wondered.

What had he said or done up to this point to make her think that such a natural and simple request might be denied. Perhaps later, when things settled down, he would examine himself a bit closer and try to find what it was about him that could make a person feel that way.

***

Jason stepped back as the black smoke spiraled skyward. It was still early, and they’d managed to accomplish a great deal, but the work was just starting. The next thing on the list was actually the one thing that could end them all. It was also a step that he knew Ken was trying to delay.

Looking around, he realized that, at some point, the dogs had simply disappeared. He called out for Imp, but there was no response. He considered actually searching for the black and white Border Collie, but there were more pressing matters on the list of things that they absolutely had to accomplish today.

They would have to empty out the truck of all the guns and ammo he’d brought from the Reynolds’ house and then drive into town. Fortunately, the infrastructure was still intact. The power remained on and the internet (while hideously slow) was still up and running. They had put in a search for hardware stores in the area and found three. Both of the larger big-box stores were about equal in distance. Jason pointed out that the one known for its blue logo was also a stone’s throw from the local office of the Oregon State Police.

“I say we hit the local Home Depot,” Jason suggested. “It is gonna suck either way.”

The debate was minimal, and Ken agreed. It was also agreed that all three of them would go. Juanita refused to be left alone, and Jason could not blame her. Until they had this place secure, he wouldn’t want to be here alone either. Just looking out from the kitchen window, it was easy to pick out the singles and small groups of zombies roaming the area.

The three of them picked through the assorted guns and ammo before unloading and hiding it in a root cellar under the barn and then covering the door with dirt and straw. Once they were happy with how well hidden that hatch would be to any who might come sniffing around in their absence, they prepared for their foray out into what was sure to be a glimpse into the bowels of Hell itself. Jason had settled on a Glock similar to Ken’s—although not nearly as nice—as well as the street sweeper and a Ruger ten-shot .22 caliber rifle.

“Why you going with the pea shooter?” Ken quipped as they were making their selections.

“All it needs to do is put a round in the head. This weapon will work fine, and I can carry a lot more ammo without being weighed down,” Jason replied. He kept his smile to himself when Ken set down the .30-06 Springfield and selected another of the smaller caliber rifles.

Jason stuffed several boxes of ammo into his pack. That had prompted a question by Juanita as to why he was taking so much.

“If we get separated and I am on my own, I want to be able to feel like I can take care of myself for a while.”

Once everybody was happy with what they had which also included a hand-to-hand weapon (machetes for Jason and Ken, a hand axe for Juanita), as well as a few bottles of water, they piled into the truck and started off towards Portland.

“What about the bodies that are still burning?” Juanita asked as Jason was hopping out of the truck to open the gate.

“They are far enough away from anything. Hopefully that fire will have burnt out while we are gone and the wind will have blown most of that smell away,” Ken answered.

Jason had to agree with that sentiment. He’d never had the misfortune of smelling a body as it burned. It could not help the unpleasantness any with the bodies all being zombies that already had their own stomach-churning stench.

Once the truck was through the gate, Jason shut it and hooked the latch. The truck turned up the road and had gone less than a mile when it slowed and came to a stop. Jason glanced over at Ken and saw the way that the man was white-knuckling the steering wheel. He turned back to the front and saw a single zombie standing in the road.

It was a little boy.

He was about to ask Ken why he had stopped, after all, while it was unfortunate to see a child all torn up and covered with dried blood from where a large chunk of his left arm had been ripped away, this was not the first child zombie that they had seen. However, when Juanita began to utter a murmured prayer and he shot a look her way only to find tears streaming down her face, he kept his mouth shut. This was something personal between the two.

“Stay here,” Ken whispered as he stepped out of the car.

***

Ken closed the door to the truck and drew his Glock. He knew full well that conserving ammunition was important; however, this needed to be quick. Certainly the boy deserved that much.

“Evan,” Ken whispered as he drew near.

Once again, he was struck by how the child zombie reacted in a manner so very different from the “regular” zombie. Of course, as soon as that thought struck him, he actually chuckled in one sharp snort.

The zombie child…Evan, Ken reminded himself. This child had a name. It was Evan.

Evan tilted his head at the sound of Ken’s amused snort. He had not taken a step towards the man and actually seemed wary. That was in direct contrast to the other zombie now getting up from the other side of the car that was nose down in a ditch.

Evan’s mother.

“Damn,” Ken whispered.

Unlike Evan, his mother came right for him, hands reaching and clutching, mouth open. A hair-raising moan that seemed much too deep in tone escaped her and drifted on the near perfect silence of the late-morning air. The woman had a nasty rip down her throat that gave an almost clinical view of the exposed esophagus. In addition to that horrific wound, her right arm had chunks missing from the forearm. Ken knew defensive wounds when he saw them.

There was one zombie on the ground at the side of the road. If he had to guess, he would say that the head had been slammed repeatedly into the rear quarter-panel of the car where the nasty smear and chunk of scalp with hair had dried in place.

Looking even closer, he could see that the majority of the struggle took place around the still-open front passenger’s side door. There were dark stains on the normally gray sand and gravel in that area. He could not see clearly, but there was definitely a figure still behind the wheel of the car. Evan’s father no doubt. If Ken had to guess, he would say that the woman and her child had returned and tried to free the father. At some time during that attempt, zombies arrived and took down Evan’s mom. Despite trying to shove it away, his mind concluded that Evan probably witnessed the entire ordeal.

Ken had heard the screams. He had little difficulty putting the pieces together now that he was standing here.

Cold hands brushed his own as Ken gently pushed the zombie that had been Evan’s mother back and away. The next time she lurched forward, Ken stuck the barrel of his gun up under her chin and squeezed the trigger. The sound was only slightly muffled.

A hiss and a moan came from Evan. The boy transformed almost instantly. It was actually a relief to Ken as the boy became nothing more than a regular zombie. Before anything could change, Ken closed the last few steps and pressed the gun against Evan’s forehead.

The shot seemed to ring for an eternity in Ken’s ears.

***

“I can’t believe it,” Juanita whispered as they turned off of Interstate 205.

“Jesus,” Jason breathed as they drove past a few dozen zombies that all began to bounce off each other as they turned to follow the truck.

On both sides, bodies littered the ground. Some had been torn apart to the point where there was not enough left to actually come back. In many cases, bodies that had been savaged to the point of losing one or both legs, simply crawled on their bellies. In one instance that Jason saw and had to use the side view mirror to look back at to be sure that he had indeed seen what he thought he’d seen, he was able to confirm that the person was seemingly ripped in half and was missing everything below the waist.

Fires were burning out of control, and despite there not being any that they could readily spot, smoke wafted on the air and ash fell like snow or at least a fine sleet. There were at least a dozen massive columns of black or gray smoke that had to be hundreds, if not thousands, of feet high. One in particular was turning into an ominous mushroom shape, giving even further credence to the apocalypse feel that now hung over Portland.

Another thing that all three of them noticed and began pointing out to one another were the mad dashes of the living. Whether solitary, as was more often the case, or in small groups, the living were scampering across the roads, yards, and parking lots. Some were carrying things, as in the most peculiar case they all spied which was a woman running like she was an Olympic sprinter with a massive decorative lamp in her hands. Many were empty-handed and had the look of a wild animal being hunted. Then there were the others.

That was the only way that Jason could classify them. These were the people that gave even him, an ex-con, a case of the heebie-jeebies. Some slunk back into the shadows as they passed, but many simply stood and watched them go by, often making it a point to establish some very uncomfortable eye contact. A few went so far as to wave or even beckon for them to stop.

“This is not going to play out well,” Jason said after they had driven past a man who was standing in the street completely naked.

“I don’t understand,” was all that Juanita could manage.

“Nobody is holding people in check. All those awful things that you saw on the news,” Ken posed as they shot past the naked man, coming within inches of actually hitting him. “That was just the surface. And now, with there being no real presence of law and order, a few have crawled out from under their rocks.”

“Those are the types that make even the hardcore convicts nervous,” Jason added, giving Ken a nod in understanding. “The ones that, when they did get caught, it made people wonder how they had existed for so long without being caught. Guys like that freak that killed those two teenaged girls and buried one under his brand new back porch concrete slab.”

Juanita shuddered involuntarily. She suddenly felt a ripple of guilt. She was probably in one of the safest places that any woman could ask to be in at this exact moment. Smack dab between an ex-con who wanted to turn his life around and a hard-assed cop who didn’t seem to like or trust a single soul.

At last they turned into the massive parking lot. Other businesses shared the lot with the colossal Home Depot, including an electronics store that still had wisps of smoke trickling from where the front doors used to be.

“Funny how short-sighted folks can be in a crisis,” Jason sighed. “If this holds out and is the real-deal zombie apocalypse, the power grid is not long for this world. So, all those big screens and video game machines are gonna be little more than unwieldy weapons. Kind of like that joke about whatever you have on your left being your weapon for when the zombies come.”

“Wait!” Juanita turned, giving him a raised eyebrow. “How would you know about something like that? You were in prison the past few years.”

“Yeah,” Jason agreed with a nod. “But I still had friends on the outside. You’d be surprised at the off-the-wall crap you talk about when you have thirty minutes on the phone to kill.”

“Actually…” Juanita’s voice trailed off.

Jason waited for a moment and then cleared his throat to see if she would continue, then he recalled that she had a cousin named Juan who had been in and out of trouble. Fortunately, Ken pulled up to the entrance of the Home Depot. He turned in the seat to face them both.

“Okay, the good news is that somebody left on the lights.” Ken pointed and Jason realized that he hadn’t even given that any thought. “I have a flashlight, but I suggest that you grab one as soon as you can and load it.”

“What about me?” Juanita asked.

“Yeah, you aren’t coming in. I want you to stay in the truck. Turn it around so that we can just bring stuff out and toss it in the back. Any sign that somebody is taking an interest to you and you haul ass. For no reason are you to shut off the engine. Are we clear?”

Jason was actually impressed. He hadn’t really given this much thought beyond the idea of going in, grabbing stuff, and then getting out of town. Also, to her credit, Juanita did not argue. She gave a nod and as he and Ken exited the truck, she drew her pistol and laid it on the dashboard.

“Okay, kid,” Ken grunted as he and Jason walked up to the doors. “Keep your head on a swivel. And make sure you know what you are shooting at.”

“I’ve held a gun before,” Jason said coolly.

“Yeah…that’s what I figured. But this is different.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, this time I’d rather you not take shots at the cop.”

“Oh…you got jokes now?”

“Who says that I was joking,” Ken replied with a straight face. And with that, he pushed the busted door open and walked inside. While it was clear that few had thought to hit this place, it was also apparent that some had. The doors were shattered and the safety glass ground into powder where the wheels of large carts had rolled back and forth a few times.

Jason was not surprised when he spotted a few people running up and down aisles with carts, many of them brimming with all sorts of things. He and Ken had actually planned out this shopping spree on the drive in. Jason had been in construction during those lulls when he was not locked up. He knew what tools to get. Ken had nodded as Jason gave him some of the top priority items that they would require and even asked a few questions about some of the specifics, which let Jason know that the man was not simply nodding and tuning him out.

Twice, Jason paused to help somebody pull something down off a shelf or pick the proper tool. It started to become a nuisance as apparently word spread that some guy in gray sweats was helping people.

At last, Jason had everything that he’d wanted to make sure that they got no matter what. Granted, this was only set to be the first haul, but things had been prioritized. If they had to bug out now, he would be okay. Pushing through the doors, he passed two men on their way in. One of them eyed him and set off Jason’s internal alarms. He unloaded the cart and then waited for Ken to show up. When the man finally arrived, Jason filled him in including a description of what the man was wearing. Before heading back into the store, he paused at the driver’s side and told Juanita as well.

“If anybody fitting that description comes out the door, you just go,” he told the woman, all the while, his eyes darting back to the entrance of the store.

He was just about finished with his second cart when he heard the sounds of screaming from somewhere in the store. He thought about it for a second before tossing a few more items onto the huge pushcart he had snagged for this particular haul and then headed for the doors. The sounds of screaming had turned to begging and pleading that were now being punctuated by meaty smacks.

Jason was almost unloaded when Ken arrived. His trip had been into the garden department just as Jason had suggested. Boxes of seeds and bags of garden soil were piled high.

“You hear that shit going on?” Ken asked quietly.

“Yeah.” Jason gave a curt nod as he tossed another bag of the garden soil into the bed of the pickup.

“Don’t imagine you want to do anything about it?”

Jason eyed the man. If he were being honest, he had wanted to find whoever was doing the beating and give them a dose of their own medicine. The one thing that he struggled with was the idea that they couldn’t save everybody. Right now, their top priority needed to be taking care of themselves. Still, if they were just going to look the other way when things like that were going down, then what did that say about them as human beings?

“Actually…” Jason let that word hang in the air.

“Then let’s go.” Ken tossed the last of some sort of liquid plant food into the truck and headed for the door.

12

Discoveries

Ken moved down the aisle and felt the surge of adrenaline dump into his body like an old friend. Not for the first time, he equated it to the high felt by a junkie. While he was not the type to do something insane like parachute or climb mountains, he did accept the fact long ago that he was addicted to the rush.

He had sent Jason down one aisle over. He felt certain that the kid could handle himself in this case.

The sounds of laughter could be heard just beyond a massive display of soon-to-be useless appliances. Just barely audible, almost as an undercurrent, came the sounds of weeping. Ken had to stifle the feeling of embarrassment as he heard a man sobbing. That was just not something that his “generation” was comfortable with doing. Nowadays, it seemed like men crying had become some sort of social norm. He blamed Alan Alda.

Pausing at the end of his aisle, Ken ducked low and moved across the open space, taking cover behind a large refrigerator. He glanced to his right and saw Jason hurry across and then vanish behind some shiny washer and dryers that looked like something out of The Jetsons. He was about to come up and see if he could get a bead on the bad guys when he heard a familiar voice.

“Yo, fellas! What’s up!”

Ken cursed quietly at first, but then realized that he’d just been given the perfect diversion. That hadn’t been the plan, but then again, all they had agreed upon was that these creeps needed to be stopped.

“Fuck off, bro!” a voice snarled.

Ken took his time and peered around the corner of his hiding spot. He saw two men standing by a shopping cart. They had picked through it, obviously finding very little that they liked. He doubted that they were here for anything more than to harass and assault others. One of them was currently going through a wallet and making a big show of ripping up photos into tiny pieces. He had no doubt that the man had probably plucked any cash he might’ve found and stuffed it into his pocket despite the fact that it would be good for little more than starting fires before long.

“P-p-please.” The man on the floor lifted his head to reveal a face that reminded Ken of Sylvester Stallone at the end of the Rocky movies.

“Shut up!” one of the two bullies snarled, kicking the man in the ribs for good measure.

“Wow, you guys are pretty hardcore.” Jason’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “That guy has to be…what? A buck fifty? I notice you two punks didn’t say shit to me when we passed in the doorway. Hell, my cart had much better stuff loaded on it.”

Jason waited for a few seconds and then smiled; that smile turned into a chuckle, then actual laughter. Ken was confused, and obviously the two men were just as baffled.

“What’s so funny?” one of the men asked, making it a point of puffing his chest out a bit as if that would add emphasis to his challenge.

“You guys.” Jason made a dismissive wave with his hand.

“You got no idea who you’re messin’ with,” the other man snarled, stepping away from the cart.

“I know you ain’t been in the system, and to me, that means that you are a couple of wanna-be tough guys.”

“Oh, and what makes you so sure?” the one closest to Jason snapped, pulling a rather impressive looking knife from his belt.

“Because,” Jason drew his pistol, causing the man to stagger back a step before he could regain his composure, “in the joint, when you call somebody a punk…well…that is pretty much a guaranteed fight. Punks are prison bitches. Nobody accepts being called that.”

Now Ken smiled. He had to give the guy credit, but now it was time to wrap this up and get moving.

“How about you two young men step away from that cart,” Ken ordered as he came out from behind his cover, gun drawn and leveled in a two-handed grip. It wasn’t a request.

“Hey, man!” the one holding the knife said, raising his hands and then, realizing that he was holding a knife, tossed the blade to the floor with a loud clatter. “We don’t want any trouble.”

“Is that what that poor guy said to you before you busted him up and ripped through his stuff?” Ken waved his gun to indicate that the two men move away from their victim.

“You guys cops?” the other man challenged.

“Yeah, I’m a cop,” Ken replied.

“Thank God,” the man on the floor managed around swollen, busted lips.

“So now cops are out lootin’ like everybody else?” the one who had tossed his knife said with unmasked derision.

“Which means you might want to worry about how likely he is to use that gun he has pointed at you,” Jason quipped. “He don’t strike me as the sort to care much about the rules.”

The two men both seemed to consider that statement. Ken noticed one of them go just a bit pale. He now knew which one he needed to be paying closer attention to between the pair.

“Here is what is gonna happen.” Ken adjusted his weapon to the one that had not drawn a knife and had the lesser reaction of fear. “You two are gonna replace every item in that cart.”

Ken caught Jason’s scowl. He realized that they needed to go, but if there was a way to avoid having to take any sort of drastic measures with these two, then he was all about trying to find it.

“You gonna make us stand in time out next?” the man who Ken now saw as the leader of these two spat.

“No, but I will put a bullet in your leg and leave you for the zombies.”

Ken let all the emotion drain from his face. He knew very well how to strip himself down to something that often made criminals think twice about doing anything stupid. He’d found that emotion was often met and matched. If you let all your feelings sink and gave off a vibe that said you did not care one way or the other, the bad guys often crumbled. It was almost as if their aggression fed off of hostile and negative feelings.

“But you’re a cop,” the follower of the two almost cried.

“I was a cop.” That was the truth. He had retired from the force. However, he would let these two individuals take it any way that they wanted.

“I wouldn’t,” Jason warned.

Ken flicked his gaze to the convict. Had Jason seen something that he had missed? A second later, he got his answer when the leader of this two-man gang suddenly made a run for it. Almost on instinct, Ken squeezed off two shots. The man stumbled, tried to regain his footing and failed, sprawling on his stomach and sliding on the polished concrete floor.

“Okay! Okay!” the second man began to scream. “I don’t want any trouble.”

Before he could say anything, the second man had grabbed the cart he’d been rummaging through just moments before and started off into the giant store. Ken had already dismissed him and was approaching the man on the floor.

Jason fell in beside him. They reached the man who was sprawled in a growing pool of blood. Ken looked around and saw that other people in the store were still dashing about, seemingly ignoring this entire scene. He was only moderately surprised at the apparent lack of any concern being shown by the people that scurried about with their carts. In his opinion, society had spiraled into fantastic levels of self-absorption. Maybe this giant press of the reset button was not such a bad thing.

***

Jason sat in the passenger seat of the truck as they headed home. He had been surprised when Ken shot that guy. Granted, he had been about to do the same thing, but there was just something in Jason’s mind that said a cop would be more reasonable.

The three of them drove in silence all the way back to Sandy. They passed a few more of the living on their way. Some on foot, some in vehicles of all shapes and sizes. Most were headed out of the city.

Jason had looked out the window as they cruised along Interstate 205 and headed for Highway 224. A MAX train was stopped on the tracks just past the transit station, the windows were splattered and smeared with what had to be blood. It was so bad that you could not see inside very clearly, but still well enough to make out a few dark shapes moving around within the cars.

They passed Clackamas Mall and saw several black plumes rising from the massive complex. He wondered how many people had been foolish enough to go there based on some stupid idea they saw in a movie.

By the time they were away from the city and the air began to clear from the smoke and ash, Jason began to feel the effects of the day. Fatigue was making itself known, and he struggled to keep his eyes open between the actual exhaustion. That is why it took him a few minutes to realize that they were headed in a direction that was not towards the house in Sandy.

“Where we going?” Jason sat up and shook away the fatigue.

“I gotta deal with something first.” Ken didn’t look at him, his eyes were locked on the road directly in front of them.

Jason looked around and shot a questioning glance at Juanita who simply shrugged her shoulders and gave a slight shake of the head. Waiting a moment to try and figure out exactly where they were, Jason was lost. This was not anyplace he could ever recall having been before.

“Look…” Jason began, but after only a slight pause, Ken ended the mystery.

“It’s my mother.”

That statement hung in the air, and Jason heard enough in the tone to know that this was a bad situation. He sat back and left the man to whatever thoughts were drifting through his head. As it turned out, he did not wait long. The truck pulled into a large, brown building’s parking lot. The sign read: Peaceful Pines Assisted Living.

As the truck came to a stop, Jason saw several of the walking dead turn and start in their direction. The complex itself was a large domed building in the center with two-story buildings coming off of it. The design reminded him of low rent hotels. Basically, nothing too fancy.

“I will be back soon. If I don’t come back in thirty minutes, feel free to leave.” Ken fiddled with the key ring and removed something that he stuffed into his coat pocket. And with that, Ken Simpson opened the door, slid out of the truck, pulled his machete, and split the skull on the zombie that staggered up and into range.

Jason watched the man hack his way across the open parking lot. The zombies all turned and followed. A moment later, the man vanished into the large domed building that was the heart of the facility.

“What do we do now?” Juanita asked timidly.

“We wait.” Jason made sure that the coast was clear and then got out of the truck and went around to the driver’s side. Seeing that they had three-quarters of a tank, he decided that they would just let the engine run.

***

Ken tugged open the glass door. He had an excellent view of the interior of the reception and recreation area. The cafeteria was further back through some doors, but he didn’t have any need to go there. As soon as he opened the door, the stench of the undead rolled out and almost caused him to vomit.

He went to step over a corpse that was sprawled just inside the door and almost ended his journey right there. A hand reached up and snagged his pant leg, sending him tumbling to the floor. Fortunately, Ken was able to roll and avoid impaling himself with his own machete. Coming up to his knees, he was facing the zombified old man that was now crawling towards him. Jabbing out, he drove the machete into the left eye socket and ended the zombie’s advance.

Getting to his feet and making a point to be more cautious, Ken headed towards the door that would lead to the stairwell that took him to the second floor. He’d given it serious thought over the past couple of days any time he got a chance to catch his breath. He’d known that his mother was as good as dead when she’d revealed to him that she’d been bitten or scratched by one of those things. Some folks might consider him cruel or heartless for not having come sooner, but it was actually his mother that had taught him to be a realist.

She would have probably scolded him for coming now. The issue that tugged at Ken was the idea that even the shell that he knew very well not to be his mother would be up and walking around. He would slip in, put her to rest once and for all, and then haul ass and hope that the two or three dozen geriatric undead that had converged on him as he went through that door would wander off before he returned and made his exit.

Running up the stairs, he saw dried blood smeared on the walls and unidentifiable bits and pieces of the human body littering a stairwell that was blessedly well lit by wall sconces and overhead fluorescents. He reached the first landing and came upon an elderly woman hunched over with her back to him. He could also clearly see the splayed out legs of the unfortunate bastard that had met his or her end.

When the old woman turned her head in Ken’s direction and opened her mouth, he was ready for the moan so common with these abominations. What he was absolutely not ready for was the sound of a baby’s cry.

“What in the unholy fuck…” he whispered.

Stepping in well before the woman could engage her muscles and stand, Ken brought down his blade and ended the woman. For good measure, he pushed the corpse aside with his booted foot and then drove his blade into the top of the head of the poor female orderly who had probably just been trying to help.

When he rounded the corner to finish his ascent to the second floor, he was greeted by another surprise. Three more elderly zombies had been killed. Two, by the looks of things, had been put down with metal dinner forks. Both were on their backs, their gaze marred by the handle of the utensil jutting from an eye socket. The third was the one that made Ken glance back at the facility orderly and give a nod of appreciation. That one had had its skull crushed by repeated slams into the concrete wall. A series of dark stains that looked like somebody had thrown a wet soccer ball at the wall were evidence of a half dozen attempts before the obvious victory that ended with the elderly female zombie’s head smashed open like an overripe melon.

Reaching the top of the stairs, Ken threw open the door. He’d been breathing through his mouth this entire time and he swore that the stench on the undead had coated his throat. He could taste the rotten, foulness every time that he swallowed the saliva that kept filling his mouth as he fought back the urge to be sick.

He hurried along the covered landing to the door that was his mother’s room. When he reached it, he produced the small key ring with the two keys to his mother’s room. It seemed to weigh a ton.

Taking a deep breath, Ken put the key into the lock and turned it. It was as if he could hear every part of the tumbler rotate and fall into place as he unlocked first the regular lock and then the special dead bolt that he’d arranged to have put in. His mother suffered from dementia, and at times would insist that the drug dealer that his father had put away was coming for her.

The reality was that the man had actually managed to escape custody. He had broken into their house, but he’d made the mistake of coming up what Ken had always considered the squeakiest stairs in the world. Ken’s dad put two rounds in the man’s chest. Of course Ken’s mother had insisted on a deadbolt lock afterwards. And thus, that seemed to be her fixation when he’d first moved her into this assisted living facility.

Reaching down and grabbing the doorknob, Ken felt his other hand tighten on the machete he held. He stood there for a moment until his machete hand began to physically ache. Opening the door, Ken stepped inside.

The apartment was little more than a glorified hotel room. There was a living room with a love seat and a wall mounted television. Ken saw that the EBS was still up and running, but the sound was muted. Currently, all that was being broadcast was a message that warned citizens that martial law was in effect and that everybody was to shelter in place and await further instructions.

“What a bunch of crap,” Ken grumbled.

“You watch your mouth, young man,” a familiar voice croaked from the other side of the door that led to his mother’s bedroom.

Ken jumped, but as soon as he recovered, he hurried to the door and flung it open. “Ma!” he struggled with the tightness in his throat as emotions that he worked so hard to suppress threatened to come to the surface.

“What the heck kept you, boy?” Ken’s mother was sitting on her bed with a tube of crackers and a bottle of water, a book of crosswords tossed aside.

“I th-thought that you…” he let the statement fade. He could not bring himself to say it. However, his eyes went to his mother’s arm.

“What?” Mary Simpson asked, seeing the concern in her son’s face. She followed his gaze and looked at her bandaged arm. “This? I told you it was just a scratch.”

Ken peered at his mother’s eyes. Not a single trace of those black squiggles that were proof of infection. Of course there had been reports that some people took as long as seventy-two hours. But shouldn’t she be exhibiting some signs? It had been almost two days at least.

“We need to get out of here,” Ken finally said with a shake of his head.

He would bring his mother with him. She would be his responsibility and he would sit with her for every single minute until this…whatever it was…finally took hold and claimed her.

“Where are we going?” Mary Simpson asked.

“Away from here.” He almost expected her to resist. She would say something like how tonight was BINGO night or some such nonsense. Instead, she pointed to a small suitcase that sat next to her dresser.

“Grab my bag and let’s go.”

Ken led his mother to the door and then paused. He turned to face her and saw that she was giving her room a bit of a once over. How many times had she done that exact same thing whenever they left the house?

“Ma, things are bad out there.” He suddenly felt like an idiot. How would he be able to explain that zombies were real and not sound like a fool? How could he explain that the dead were actually walking around and eating the living to his eighty-three-year-old mother? He decided that the best thing to do when dealing with Mary Simpson was to simply come out and show her. And that was precisely what he was prepared to do until she spoke.

“If we are going out there, I want a weapon. I may not be able to do much, but you can bet your ass that I won’t be zombie chow without a fight.”

Ken turned to his mother in amazement. She smiled and walked up to him, her eyes bright like they were during her periods of lucidity. These were the times that Ken had had so much trouble dealing with these past several months. When his mother was “fine” there was no brighter, more independent woman in the world. That was why he had so much trouble when she would slip into her states of dementia. He knew that she would hate it if she was aware that such things were going on.

“You know?” was all Ken could manage to say.

“Kenny,” Mary Simpson placed a frail hand on her son’s cheek and smiled, “I know that things have been tough on you since Milly died. And it sure couldn’t be easy with me having my…troubles…but I do watch the news. I have seen what is out there.” Mary paused and her smile widened. “And besides, I saw Night of the Living Dead when it showed in the theaters. I think I know a zombie when I see one. Just a shame that poor Doctor Sing couldn’t bring herself to admit what was happening until it was too late.”

Ken hugged his mother. And then he did something that he never imagined himself doing in a million years. He unholstered his Glock and handed it to his mom.

“It’s got a little bit of a kick. Only use it as a last resort. Those things seem to be attracted to sound. Just stick by me and watch your step. The ground is littered with bodies and not all of them are necessarily…” Ken paused. He was about to say “dead.” However, dead is exactly what they were. They just happened to still be moving around.

“At rest?” Mary Simpson finished for him.

“Sure.” Ken gave a shrug and a nod. Then, he reached over and picked up his mother’s suitcase. Just as he did, the lights went out.

***

Jason tapped the steering wheel. Ken had been gone for a while now. He had already gotten out of the truck on five separate occasions and put down at least a dozen zombies that were drawn by the sound of the truck’s engine. At last, he’d shut the thing down. That was not a decision that he was feeling all that comfortable with at the moment.

Only a short while before, two cars had raced past on the road that ran in front of the assisted living center. There was a good enough view that he and Juanita had actually been able to see them as they approached, and had been alerted by the roar of their engines at least a few minutes before they ever came into view.

When the two cars did appear, it was also very clear that one car was chasing the other. The lead car was a newer model Jeep Cherokee. Jason recognized it instantly; he’d had one several years back and had been an avid reader of Car & Driver magazine. He’d seen the write ups every year when the new models came out and was hoping to get one again someday. He guessed that he could have his pick now.

The car that was doing the chasing was a Hummer. The driver of the Jeep was all over the road which was probably why the driver of the Hummer was able to keep up. Neither he nor Juanita got a clear look at the occupants of either vehicle, so they were clueless as to any idea on what might be happening. However, the two vehicles were not out of sight long when the sounds of a massive crash were heard. A moment later, there was another peculiar explosion.

It took Jason a few seconds to realize that the sign on the mini-mart across the street had gone dark. After all, it was daylight, so the exterior sign light was not something readily apparent.

“Stay here,” Jason finally said, and climbed out of the truck.

Drawing his own machete, he walked cautiously to the street. He had to step through a hedge that ran in front of the facility, but that was preferable to him over going all the way down to the main entrance. He wanted to stay on a straight line that kept him in the closest proximity to the truck.

He stepped out onto the sidewalk and saw that there were several zombies all up and down the road. They were in a heavily populated neighborhood, and it should not have surprised him to see so many, yet he was still struck by it.

He had to wonder how this had happened and how it had spiraled out of control so quickly. Just a few days ago, it was a footnote in the news. Had the government really been able to cover things up that well? He had his doubts. He believed that it came down to the simple fact that people did not want to believe it. Besides, wasn’t the general public always being hit on the news by some new sickness? He’d gotten tired of hearing about the newest flu strains or whatever it was that made people in Japan and China walk around with masks on their faces. This had just been more of the same. That spokeswoman for the CDC had dismissed this as anything serious. That had been good enough for him.

It was a long and straight stretch of road, so when he looked up in the direction that the two vehicles had gone, he easily spotted them…sort of. The Jeep had crashed into the one place that could cause the most damage. Jason made out what was obviously a power transfer station. Smoke was already rising and he could see intermittent sparks and flashes of blue.

The Hummer had stopped on the road and Jason watched as two figures emerged. One of them tried to rush in to where the Jeep had crashed, but the other person held him or her back. Already, several of the undead had turned and were heading in that direction.

Not wanting to catch the attention of the several zombies—possibly numbering in the hundreds—that were to his right and now all seemed to be coming in his general direction, Jason ducked back through the hedge and hurried to the truck.

“What’s wrong?’ Juanita asked as he climbed inside.

“They hit the power transfer station up the road.” As if to emphasize his point two more small explosions sounded. “Those are probably transformers blowing.”

“So how much longer do we wait? Are we in danger?”

“No,” Jason said with a shake of his head. “It just means that this place is off the grid sooner. I imagine we will see total power failure before long no matter where you live. As for waiting, I say we give him five more minutes. If he doesn’t show up, I will at least go up and take a look. I haven’t heard any gunshots. I am pretty sure that Ken would go down swinging. At the least, if he thought that he was done for, he’d eat a bullet.”

The two sat in silence. A lone zombie stumbled from around the corner of one of the buildings that radiated off from the central hub. It looked like a woman with long, black hair. She was wearing white, so the damage done to her seemed even more vivid. The zombie was headed for the direction of the accident, and Jason got an idea as he watched it stumble along, apparently clueless that he and Juanita were little more than twenty or thirty feet away.

Once the zombie had passed them and made its way through the shrub, which actually took a few minutes as the creature struggled in its awkward manner to navigate the hedge, eventually falling through. The moment that the zombie vanished, and before it could regain its feet, Jason hopped out of the truck. As they had watched, he explained his idea to Juanita. Now it was time to test it.

Fortunately, there was plenty of debris littering the lot and he snatched up a pop can. Filling it partway with some dirt took a few seconds, and by the time he scurried to the hedge and peered through, the thing was a good twenty or so feet away and trudging for the scene of the accident. He also noticed that the Hummer was gone. With a high, arcing throw, Jason lobbed the can across the street, scoring a direct hit on a car that was sitting with its doors open.

The zombie paused, and when Jason looked around, he saw several others do the exact same thing. They re-oriented on this latest stimulus and began heading in the general direction of where his can had landed. He was watching as the first zombie actually reached that area and then kept walking until it was forced to stop and change directions due to a fence at the end of the mini-mart’s parking lot.

He was already churning with ideas on how he could use this to their advantage. He had, at least in a preliminary way, confirmed that the zombie reacted to sound. Just as he backed out of the shrub to return to the truck, a hand grabbed his shoulder.

Jason screamed.

***

Jason spun and Ken had to duck to avoid being decked. He cursed himself for his continued carelessness. He of all people should know better than to sneak up on folks. He was just lucky Jason wasn’t holding a machete or, even worse, a gun.

“You scared the crap out of me,” Jason snapped, his hand going to his chest for just a second as if to quell a heart attack.

“Sorry,” Ken blurted and hiked his thumb over his shoulder. “Time to go.”

“Who’s that?” Jason asked as they started back for the truck at a jog.

“My mom.” Ken struggled with the next part of his statement. “She’s been scratched by one of those things, so she is my responsibility, but I am bringing her with us.”

Jason simply nodded. Ken had been ready for some sort of argument and simply found himself open-mouthed as he got in the truck and started it up. Introductions were made hastily, and Ken went to help his mother buckle in, but she slapped his hand and told him that she was elderly, not an invalid.

As he pulled out, he noticed that Jason had rolled down his window and stuck his head out. He seemed to be looking for something. Ken checked all his mirrors, but he did not see anything.

“You lose something?” Ken asked as they pulled out onto the road.

“No.” Jason called over his shoulder as the truck turned and began its journey towards the highway.

Ken waited a few minutes, but it became clear that the guy wasn’t going to fill him in. “So what are you looking for?”

“The zombies react very specifically to sound,” Jason replied as he slid back down into his seat.

“What do you mean?”

Jason went on to explain what he’d seen with his little experiment. Ken listened to it and actually found himself impressed with the ideas that Jason proposed. It would mean a bit more work, but it wasn’t like he had any plans.

13

Tough Choices

“What the hell!” Jason snarled as Ken brought the truck to a stop. From their vantage point, they could see the house. Smoke was pouring from all the windows and flames were visible, coming up through the roof.

“You think Erin’s people did this?” Juanita asked.

There was a moment of silence as both men glared at the seemingly senseless destruction to the house that they were going to make into their own little fortified outpost. Jason shot a questioning glance at Ken who paused only briefly before giving a curt shake of his head.

“No,” Jason admitted. “We might not have parted ways on the best of terms, but she doesn’t strike me as the sort to do this.”

Ken rolled down his window and they both heard it at the same time. Jason knew that sound well. One of the things that he loved doing in the form of recreation was to go ATV-ing. He had a Quad Runner back in the day that he’d scored from a guy who owed him money.

“Really?” Jason sighed. “Has it already spiraled to this point? We got random people out setting fires and looting?”

“Says the guy in the truck full of stuff that we heisted from Home Depot,” Ken snorted.

Jason glanced at the man and saw the slightest quirk in the corner of his mouth. He guessed that was supposed to pass as a joke. Well, it was pretty lame, but at least the guy had some sense of humor.

“So what do we do?” Jason sat back; the house was burning to the point that they would be unlikely to put it out.

“That barn is pretty big. It might not be loaded with creature comforts, but it is something.” Ken pointed to the huge building well away from the house where they had thankfully stashed the guns and ammo. It looked undisturbed and was far enough back to most likely remain safe from the conflagration.

They pulled up to the gate and Jason got out. They’d been smart enough back at Home Depot to put the chain and locks on the top of everything that they’d loaded into the back of the truck. He grabbed the chain and locks out and then, after the truck drove through, he secured the heavy metal gate.

They drove up to the barn and everybody climbed out. Jason watched Mary Simpson, he’d seen the nasty scratch on her arm and actually felt sorry for Ken. The man would more than likely have to put his own mother down after watching her die and turn. Maybe he would talk to the man later and make the offer. He had no doubt that it would be refused, but at least he would feel good about having asked. Still, he was also very aware that those dark tracers in the eyes were a definite indicator that the person was infected. Mary Simpson had no such symptom. Her eyes were just as white and normal as anybody’s.

They unloaded everything, and right away, he and Ken grabbed some of the supplies and headed to the breach in the fence. They had to stop a few times in order to take down the occasional zombie, but for Jason, it was sort of like the old days. He felt comfortable with tools in his hands.

By the time that the sun was starting to disappear behind the trees, they had repaired the breach and gotten a good start on the solid planking that would shore up the front of the property. Jason had no doubt that they would have to go out several more times if they intended to shore up the entire property, but for now, the priority was the part that was bordered by the road.

That night, they came to a new realization. The food had been inside the house. Fortunately, the water was still on, so they had plenty to drink, but a chorus of growls from all four stomachs made it clear that they would need to remedy the food situation first thing in the morning.

Juanita had insisted on taking the first watch, and when she woke Jason for his turn, he was thankful for the little sleep he’d gotten. As he patrolled the area, he was very cognizant of the fact that they could not maintain this pace much longer. This was made even more apparent during one moment when he was walking along the fence line for an undetermined amount of time without realizing that a zombie was moving along beside him, occasionally taking a swipe over the fence. When they reached the area that was still only barbed wire, the zombie had lunged and fallen partway over. Of course Jason had ended it quickly, but he also went to the pump and splashed some water on his face, doing so each time he passed by for the duration of his watch.

The other thing that he noticed was the quiet. Sure, there was the occasional moan, groan, or cry, but that was basically it. He only heard one gunshot. That could mean a number of things. One of them could be that people realized that shooting a gun was like ringing a dinner bell. It brought more zombies from all over.

He was just about ready to wake up Ken for his watch when a sound behind him in the grass made him freeze. Turning with his weapon drawn, it took him a few seconds to make out the dark figure, but there was no mistaking once it moved and the little bit of moonlight there was shone on the white fur.

“Hey, Imp!” Jason whispered.

The dog scurried to him, head down, but tail wagging furiously. Kneeling, Jason gave the dog a scratch behind the ears and actually felt something in him that seemed to melt as he accepted the gentle nudges and even a few swipes of the tongue by the black and white Border Collie.

“Where have you been, boy?” Jason whispered, removing his gloves and running his hands over the dog just to be sure there were no injuries. “Well, let’s get you back inside with the people.”

The dog followed, taking time to sniff and hike his leg every so often. When they passed the house, the dog gave it a wide berth and even made a low rumble in his chest. Jason cataloged the response, recalling how the dog showed such hatred for the undead.

After waking Ken and making sure that he was aware of Imp’s return, Jason found a spot to lie down. He could not keep the smile from his lips as the dog made a tight circle and then flopped to the ground, rolling into him and exhaling with a loud huff. Jason fell asleep running his hands down the side of the Border Collie that actually fell asleep first and began to snore softly.

***

Ken watched the sun rise on the horizon. He cast a wary eye skyward and took in the clouds that were already rolling in. Without the local news, he had no idea how bad the storm would be, but he had no doubt that rain was on the way.

His mind wandered a bit as he considered the reappearance of the black and white dog that had belonged to Rose. That had made him wonder where the Golden Retriever had wandered off to in all this madness. Had the dog suffered some terrible fate? He was surprised at the fact that he seemed to actually care.

By the time that everybody else was awake, Ken had scoured the property, his eyes peeled the entire time, looking for any sign of the dog. When Jason woke and then suggested that he and Juanita make a food run, Ken took a few moments to realize that the man was intentionally making arrangements so that he and his mother were alone together.

Ken checked his mother, surprised to discover that there was still no sign of the tracers in her eyes. He handed his keys over to Jason and told the man to perhaps see if he might find some sort of walkie-talkie as well as a generator.

“Anything else you would like me to see if I just happen to find?” the man said with just a hint of sarcasm.

Ken felt a stinging retort on his lips, but he saw the man’s point. This was a food run. He was going out with Juanita, and while it might not have been a popular thing to say in the overly politically correct society that was gasping in its death throes at the moment, women and men were different. He and Jason would be a more formidable team out in that insanity than would Jason and Juanita.

Ken watched as the truck rumbled to the gate. He waited until Jason had locked it and driven away before heading back to the barn where his mother waited. He felt a sense of dread every single time he turned his attention to her. He knew in his gut that it was just a matter of time before those black tracers showed themselves in her eyes.

He shoved away the feelings of guilt and shame that threatened to overwhelm him. He’d actually considered just going inside and doing her in while she slept. He seriously did not know if he had the ability to watch another person that he loved as they were devoured from within by a horrific sickness that would leave them as little more than a shell of what they had once been.

“Kenny!” Mary Simpson’s voice cut through his morose thoughts and he took off for the barn at a sprint.

Bursting in, he found his mother seated on a large bale of hay. She was stroking a Golden Retriever that gave him only a quick glance before returning its attention to the woman who was ruffling the fur around the neck and giving scratches behind the ears.

“Hey, ma,” Ken said through a few deep gasps that were reminders as to just how out of shape he’d allowed himself to become.

“I thought we had a black and white dog,” the woman said with a look of confusion on her face.

***

“We go in and out. I will have the truck backed up as close as possible. You stay by my side and push the cart. I trust you to grab all the right food. I will have my gun out and be watching our back,” Jason explained as they pulled into the parking lot of the Safeway grocery store.

“No problem.” Juanita checked her own pistol and shoved it behind her back as she climbed out of the truck.

Walking inside, it was obvious that this place had already been hit pretty hard. Even worse, the smell of death mixed with the stench of undeath. A few shadows moved around in the gloom. Since the power was still on in the area, Jason had to figure that somebody had shut this place down, only a few of the security lights were actually on. Maybe it was a manager trying to save the store, or maybe people who did not want to be revealed by the brightness of the overhead fluorescents had found the switches and shut everything off at some point.

The first zombie that they took down was an older woman with her gray hair still managing to be held back in a tight bun that gave her eyes a slight upturn. She was wearing the tattered remains of an evening gown and Jason had to guess that she had probably not seen the inside of a grocery store in a while. This was the kind of woman that had people do the shopping for her. He was surprised when he allowed himself a little chuckle as he pulled his machete free from the woman’s head.

“Care to let me in on the joke?” Juanita asked.

“Just thinking about a few things,” Jason said with a lilt of humor lacing his words. “Just the fact that this is that great equalizer people have been screaming for these past few years. I wonder if anybody is gonna survive long enough to enjoy it.”

“Okay.” Juanita sort of let that word draw out a bit. “So tell me again which part of that was supposed to be funny?”

Jason shot her a look as they grabbed a cart and headed down the closest aisle. “Not sayin’ that it was funny in a stand-up comedy sort of way, more that it is just a really big case of being careful what you wish for. It was like how people were always saying things like how they were having the worst day, and could it get any worse. I always thought that the answer to that question was a big fat yes. Looks like I was correct.”

“Good for you.” Juanita gave a shake of her head as she grabbed some of the scattered and meager remains that were on the shelves, or, in some cases, the floor.

Jason kept looking over their shoulders, and every so often, he would jog ahead to the end of the aisle to take out whatever might be waiting or heading their direction.

They were down to the last aisle and barely had three-quarters of a cart when Jason held up his hand to get Juanita to freeze. She heard it as soon as she stopped; it was the sound of soft whimpering. Jason held up a hand and crept the last few yards to investigate.

He’d already encountered zombies that could mimic the sound of a baby’s cry. That had creeped him out to no end. He had no reason to doubt that this could be just another trick or ploy.

Peering around the endcap display that was nothing more than empty shelving with one broken jar of ready-made pasta sauce that had already begun to attract flies, Jason readied himself for anything. What he found made his heart hurt.

Sitting on the floor was a child no older than four. How the child had survived up to this point was a miracle. While the place had not been crawling with the undead—he’d only had to put down three—they had none the less been present here in the store. Unfortunately, the child had not managed to escape unscathed. The child was holding his left arm to his chest, and even in the gloom, Jason could see the dark smears of blood.

“Dammit,” he hissed. This had caused the child to look up and cry out, scooting away as fast as it could.

“Whoa!” Jason held his hands up in a gesture of peace. This only caused the child to cry out even louder.

“Put that thing down!” Juanita hissed as she shoved past Jason, knocking down the arm with the hand that held the machete.

Jason winced and dropped the offending limb. Meanwhile, Juanita moved to the child and bent down once she was about five or ten feet away. Holding out her arms, she beckoned for the child to come to her.

After a series of sniffles and more than a few wary glances past Juanita to where Jason stood feeling every bit like the boogeyman, the child climbed to its feet and came tentatively to the woman. When the child stepped into a narrow shaft of light, Jason was able to get a better look at him. He had sandy colored hair and was wearing pajamas with some yellow cartoon character that he wasn’t familiar with. There were a few rips in his clothing, the most notable being the right sleeve which was practically torn completely off. The exposed arm had one fairly nasty bite as well as a few deep imprints that were now mouth-shaped bruises.

“It’s okay,” Juanita cooed, causing Jason to think that it was going to be anything but. He moved back out into the aisle that ran the length of the back of the store and made absolutely certain that there were no more zombies coming their way. He would allow Juanita to see to the child despite knowing full well that the little boy was doomed; his fate sealed with that first bite.

“The reapers are coming,” the boy whispered.

Jason returned his attention to the youngster, his blood going a few degrees colder in an instant. His mind raced through several of the zombie apocalypse books and movies that he’d read. A few were the sort that went off on some kind of supernatural tangent. He never liked those much. He didn’t think that zombies needed anything to make them even that much scarier, like mind-controlling necromancers or other equally preposterous things.

Any time that he stumbled across a story like that, he immediately, fair or otherwise, shoved it into the category of “books that stole blatantly from Stephen King’s The Stand.” While that was admittedly one of his all-time favorite stories, and imitation was supposed to be the most sincere form of flattery, he could not help but see such things as cheesy.

“The reapers?” Juanita asked, beating Jason to the punch.

The little boy nodded and began to sway back and forth a bit as if to some unheard rhythm. Whether it was due to the poor lighting, or simply to the fact that he had been stretched about as far as he could over the past few days, Jason could not suppress a shiver.

“They come with fire,” the boy whispered.

“That’s all I need to hear.” Jason tossed his head, indicating that they move for the doors.

Juanita scowled, but she took the boy’s hand. “My name is Juanita, what’s your name?”

“Gabriel James Prentiss,” the boy replied, accepting Juanita’s hand and following along.

“That is a pretty neat name,” Juanita said with enthusiastic appreciation.

“My mommy said I am named for an angel and my granddaddy.” The little boy edged around one of the corpses that littered the floor as he spoke, and Jason had to admit that he was handling all of this very well.

They were almost at the front of the store when Jason heard what sounded like music. It was distant at first, but as they froze in place and waited, it became louder.

“Reaper,” Gabriel whispered.

Jason turned his attention back to the street that ran the length of the front of the grocery store. It was actually a business loop for Highway 26, and thus, very wide. He had to hope that whomever this might be, they would simply continue to drive past.

No such luck. As the strains to “Don’t Fear the Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult blared from the large, red vehicle…

“Is that a school bus?” Juanita asked, leaning forward over Jason’s shoulder.

“Looks like it used to be.”

“It’s hideous.”

Jason had to agree. It had been painted red, but in such a way that it looked like somebody had just thrown buckets of paint at the side of the bus. The top of the bus was an ugly shade of sky blue with a yellow trim. There was aluminum foil over all of the windows that ran the length, and the tall windows of the door where passengers would board were painted black. Additionally, giant letters in white were painted all over. Most of them were garden variety profanity, but a couple were actually several word phrases that were vile.

The bus stopped, and then it turned right, swinging wide and coming into the parking lot. The music ceased with an audible click, and a voice came over some sort of PA. “Attention whoever is in the store…the owner of the pickup truck, we have claimed this area and you are considered to be trespassing. Come out and give yourself up and we will let you go with a warning.”

Just as the voice stopped, somebody else could be heard in the background. It sounded like the second person was laughing. Not that he needed any special reason to openly defy and disobey this request, but that was the nail in the coffin.

Turning to Juanita, Jason took her by the arms and looked her in the eyes. “We have no idea how many there are in that bus, or what they might actually intend to do. What we are not going to do is just give up to these people.” The woman nodded in agreement.

“Good.” Jason shot a look over his shoulder and out the window of the grocery store, watching as the bus slowed and then came to a stop where it effectively blocked the exit that the truck would need to use. “I have a plan.”

***

“You think I’m gonna die pretty soon, don’tcha?” Mary Simpson practically cackled. The Golden Retriever swung its head around and gave him a look like it was just as anxious to hear his answer.

Ken stood in the door to the barn. He’d sworn that he heard gunshots a few minutes ago. Of all times for a pair of zoms to show up and get that black and white dog all riled up to the point where it was barking its fool head off, it had to be this exact moment.

“You hear me, Kenny?” Mary Simpson called.

“Huh?” Ken turned to face his mom. His gaze immediately locked on her eyes.

Still no signs of the tracers. It seemed unlikely that she would go this long and not show any of the evidence that she was sick with whatever it was that turned people into the walking dead. Yet, here she was, days after a bite and still nothing.

“I said,” she stressed that second word, “that you think I am going to die pretty soon.”

“What?” Ken shook his head a made a ‘pssh’ sound in dismissal. “Of course not.”

“Kenny, I am not stupid. I see the way that you are looking at me. It is like every single time I manage to catch you, you have that look on your face like you are expecting to see a flattened puppy.”

“It’s just…” he started, but then he remembered that he was talking to his mother. Mary Simpson could not be strung along or fed a line of bull. She could sniff out his lies before he usually got the first word out of his mouth back when he was a boy. What made him think that anything was different now?

“I saw the news, I know what they are saying, and I can’t help it, but I feel fine. A bit hungry and thirsty, but not for anything more than maybe a ham sandwich and an ice cold beer.”

Ken laughed. Leave it to his mom. He still remembered the first time he’d ever drank a beer with his mother. Sure, he’d drank plenty before that day, his eighteenth birthday, back in the days before the legal age was twenty-one. It had been strange at first, but over the years, he’d discovered that he enjoyed sipping a few brews with his mom and just hanging out.

“Well, Jason and Juanita should be back soon. They went to get food.” He didn’t hold out much hope that they would return with any beer, but there was always the chance.

“And why do you dislike that other young man so much?” Mary Simpson got up and made her slow, deliberate way across the barn to where Ken stood in the doorway.

“Just…it’s…” Ken fumbled for something concrete. He knew that if he told his mother he simply hated the guy because he knew the man was a former convict, that his mother would scold him and tell him that he was being foolish. He knew that; he just did not feel like having his judgment called into question by his mother on this one issue.

“We may be together for a while, Kenny,” his mother said with a smile, patting him on the arm. She leaned up to give him a kiss on the cheek and Ken staggered back like he’d been shot.

“Oh, ma,” Kenny managed around a throat that was becoming tighter by the second. He felt that he would start choking any minute now.

The black tracers had finally come.

The tracers were starting to show in his mother’s eyes. From the corners they were creeping, and if he stared, he knew that he would see them make their way across until they had completely entrenched themselves.

Mary Simpson looked up at her son. Ken saw her own realization dawn as his face was unable to hide anything. She reached up and touched his cheek. He made every effort not to flinch away from her touch. After all, that Rose girl had caught the zombie infection from some other way. She hadn’t been bitten; she’d still turned into one of them.

“It finally happened,” she whispered.

Ken could not lie to his mother. That had already been established. He simply nodded. Mary’s head dropped for a moment, but when it came back up, despite those sinister dark lines, she still had that look of calm.

“You won’t let me become one of them will you?”

Ken stared at his mother. His mind was having a difficult time processing what was being said. He was flashing back to those last days when his wife was confined to that hospital bed. She had looked up at him with much the same expression. She did not want to continue to endure the suffering. They had even touched on the subject of medically assisted suicide. Ken had refused to entertain that idea. In his mind, that would be akin to his signing the death warrant against the woman that he loved more than anything in the world.

In the end, she had slipped into a coma. For another five days, she hung on to the fragile thread of life. The doctor had explained that often, it is sheer force of will that causes people to linger. She was basically already gone, the doctor went on to explain, and that perhaps she was simply holding on for his sake. Ken considered that absolutely preposterous. He refused to accept that until the day he finally allowed himself to leave her side. It was only for a short time. He had just wanted to stretch his legs for a minute and get some coffee that was not absolutely revolting. He’d driven the three blocks to the nearest corner coffee cart and grabbed his drink. It had been less than thirty minutes.

When he had stepped out of the elevator, the first thing that he noticed was the empty nurses’ station. He rounded the corner, his legs trying to run, but the fear of what he would find, what he knew in his heart was waiting around that corner, prevented him from doing so.

The doctor was coming out of Milly’s room, his hands in the act of hanging his stethoscope back around his neck. Ken was no stranger to hospitals, and he had become very well versed in the body language of medical personnel. He knew before the words were spoken.

“I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Simpson. Your wife is dead.”

“Kenny?” Mary Simpson put a hand on Ken’s arm.

“Sorry, ma.” Ken shook his head to clear away the bad memories. “I promise that I will not let you become one of them. When the time comes, I will take care of you.”

***

Jason stepped out of the store with his rifle slung across his body. He gave a nod to the man standing on the top of the bus with the microphone in his hand.

“You say this is your turf?” Jason snorted. “And what makes you think you are running shit around here? The way I see it, it is every man for himself. I’ll be takin’ what I loaded into my shopping cart and heading on up the road.”

“You don’t—” the young man began, but he barely got two words out of his mouth when Jason brought up the high-powered rifle and put a round into his throat.

Jason winced; he’d been aiming for the center of the chest. He would need to sight in the rifle as soon as possible. That would be important when it came down to head shots on the undead.

“Anybody else want to run their mouths?” Jason challenged.

Sure enough, the bus slammed into reverse, the man still standing on top beside his fallen companion tumbling awkwardly and landing hard on the asphalt. Jason knew that things would change soon enough, but it had been his experience that most bullies were a lot of talk. He’d ended a lot of stuff back in the joint by simply punching in the face whoever it was that was running his mouth. Anybody that needed to do a lot of talking before a fight usually needed to work up the nerve or simply hoped that words would be enough to scare the person they were confronting. It was simply not normal human nature to be violent. It was even more uncommon for somebody to actually be able to commit the act of killing another. His advantage rested in the fact that he already saw this entire situation for what it was…

The end of the world.

“C’mon, let’s get out of here before they grow a spine or bring more of their friends,” he called out.

Juanita hurried from the store, Gabriel seated atop the groceries in the big red cart. She scooped the boy into her arms and put him in the cab as Jason started simply scooping everything into the back of Ken’s truck as quickly as he could manage. Juanita was there to help a moment later, and they made short work of their relatively small haul. Jason was already planning the next move. He had an idea as to where he could find a better supply of food. It would be dangerous, but it was going to be worth it if he was correct.

As they drove back to the farm, Jason spotted his target. He made a note as to where it was located and then kept an eye on the odometer. It would not be long before they would have to rely on their feet for transportation. Fuel was a very finite resource, and the power would be tripping offline sooner rather than later.

As they pulled up to the gate, Jason noticed Ken sitting on the ground beside the VW. He was holding one of his Glocks and made no sign that he even saw or heard them arrive. He climbed out and opened the gate, and then shut it once Juanita drove the truck through. He stifled the feelings of annoyance at the fact that the man had not seemed to do anything during his absence. If they were going to secure this place and make a go of trying to survive this nightmare, they were a long way from a time when you could just sit around and do nothing.

“Where is Mary?” Juanita asked as they pulled up and parked in front of the barn.

Jason sighed and shook his head. He’d all but forgotten about the fact that the woman had been mauled just a little by one of the undead. In fact, he was starting to think that just maybe a bite, or at least a scratch, by a zombie was not a death sentence. His eyes flicked to Gabriel and then back to the dark interior of the barn.

When he finally saw what he was looking for, he stifled a groan. Right now, somebody needed to be the rock everybody could turn to when things went bad; he would be that rock. Another look over at Ken confirmed his decision. The man’s red-rimmed eyes told part of the story, but the body-shaped lump on the ground with a blue tarp over it told the rest.

Jason climbed out of the truck and told Juanita to take Gabriel on a walk for a while. He gave a tilt of his head towards the tarp. Juanita actually staggered back, obviously not realizing what had happened until that moment. She grasped Gabriel’s hand and hurried away with the boy, saying something about showing him around the place.

Once she and the boy were out of earshot, Jason approached Ken. The man had neither budged, nor made any sign that he was even aware that he was no longer alone. Jason took each step with caution; after all, the man was holding a pistol in his hand. It would be nothing more than a flick of the wrist for the man to bring it up and fire a round or two into his chest.

“Hey, man,” Jason spoke in what he hoped was a non-threatening voice. “Umm…” And that is where his mind just sort of went blank.

He glanced back to the barn and the blue tarp. What exactly could he say to a man that had obviously just had to kill his mother?

“I thought that she was going to be okay,” Ken whispered, his voice barely audible, even in the relative silence. “Shit…how many days had it been? And didn’t they say that people were turning within seventy-two hours?”

Jason thought that he’d heard something like that. Only, maybe it had something to do with the severity of the injury. But then he recalled Rose. That woman showed no sign of being bitten; she had ingested some kind of fluid from a zombie. This was not working out at all like any of the books or movies.

He shot a look across the yard where Juanita was walking with that boy Gabriel, pointing out flowers or some such thing. He had obvious bite marks, yet his eyes were clear. He looked at Ken and felt the question come. He tried to bite it back, thinking that this was obviously too soon for such things.

“Did you see it show up in her eyes?” Jason wanted to sink into the ground at that very instant.

Ken’s head came up and his puffy eyes seemed to almost have to search for him for a moment before locking on. “Yeah.”

After several heartbeats, Jason realized that he needed to breathe. He’d been holding it in, and his lungs felt like they were on fire.

“You want help taking care of her.” Of course, Jason had no idea what that might entail. Would he want to bury his mom? Cremate her?

“You’d help?” Ken lifted his chin and seemed to examine Jason closely. “Even with everything…” The man’s voice trailed off and he dropped his head.

“Like it or not, we are sort of in this together for the time being. We are going to have to rely on each other.”

“And you are okay with the fact that, no matter what, you and I ain’t ever gonna be friends?”

Jason smiled. The man was set in his ways. He saw Jason as a criminal…a convict. He might always see him through those jaded eyes. The man was speaking through grief and pain and a lifetime of dealing with the worst that society had to offer. Hell, until this last time down, Jason had been one of those bad people that had helped give Ken the views he held onto.

“I’m cool with it. Just because we ain’t friends doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t treat you like a human being.”

Ken rose to his feet and started for the barn. Jason fell in just behind the man. Within a short time, they had a pyre built and laid Mary Simpson’s body on it. Jason had agreed that Mary would be dealt with separately, but once she was, for all intents and purposes, gone, then they would start tossing the rest of the corpses on the fire.

14

Door-to-Door Shopping

“And what would make you think that the boy would be any different than my mother?” Ken hissed.

The three adults stood around a large barrel that had become their version of a heater. It was in the center of the large open space on the floor of the barn. Gabriel, the boy in question, was up in the loft fast asleep. It had been four days since Jason and Juanita had returned with him; four days since Ken’s mother had shown the signs that she was infected.

Ken still had nightmares about that day. He often thought it strange that, in a world where the undead were overwhelming society and an actual zombie apocalypse was happening, a world where he had already seen things happen that were the stuff of horror movies as people were torn apart and fed upon by the undead, Ken was haunted by how he had put his mother to rest.

It had started off as something so simple. He had helped her get comfortable and drift off to sleep. As soon as he was certain that she was out, he’d drawn his Glock. That was when it became difficult…became real. It is one thing to say that you can end a person’s suffering by killing them; it is quite another to actually do it. Had she been a stranger, Ken doubted that he would have thought twice. The fact that he was becoming numb to the idea of death was something that he would try to examine later, if the time ever presented itself. However, when faced with killing his mother, Ken had faltered. At last, he had simply covered her with a blue plastic tarp and put the barrel of the gun to what he guessed to be her forehead.

He could still not recall having pulled the trigger. Yet, it was obvious that he had done so. There was a hole where the bullet had gone through, and his mother had never sat up or cried out. Mary Simpson had simply ceased to be.

As he sat there crying, he began to understand how this apocalypse had managed to spiral out of control. It was all well and good to see something on television or read it in a book, but when faced with the task of killing a loved one, he doubted that many people had what it took. That thing coming for you might not be living, it might want to rip you apart and devour you, but that did not make the face any different to the loved one staring at his or her approaching death. People saw what they wanted. Period.

“We have no idea how long before we found him that the boy was bitten,” Jason’s voice snapped Ken back to the conversation. “Do we want to keep watching him around the clock?”

“I’ll do it myself if it is such a bother,” Juanita retorted, arms folded across her chest and chin actually jutting forward just a bit to emphasize her defiance.

Ken looked up as if he could see through the planks that made up the floor of the loft. He knew that the boy was up there, sleeping. Could he or Jason actually go through with the act of killing the boy in his sleep? Ken did not want to admit it out loud for fear that it might be seen as a weakness, but he was almost certain that his conscience did not have the room.

“Fine,” Jason agreed. “He is your responsibility. That means that he stays with you every moment when he is awake. But I want him restrained when he is sleeping.”

“You mean tie him up?” Juanita gasped. “You want to treat him like he is some sort of animal.”

“That is not what he was saying.” Ken stepped in. He had to admit, the convict had a point. And it would be no big deal to just restrain the boy when he slept. An idea struck him. “We can make a game out of it.”

“Excuse me?” Juanita turned her defiant gaze at Ken, but the he simply ignored her.

“From what I’ve seen, the zombies aren’t all that clever or agile. They certainly could not untie a knot. Am I right?” Jason nodded, and after a moment, Juanita did so as well. Ken smiled and continued. “So we tell him that we want to play a game. Every night when he goes to sleep, we will tie up one ankle. When he wakes up, he will need to figure out how to untie it.”

Both Jason and Juanita considered Ken’s plan. Jason shrugged and nodded a second or two later, but Juanita seemed to really examine the idea. At last, she agreed as well.

“How long do we play this game?” Juanita asked.

Ken opened his mouth, but then snapped it shut. He had no idea. After all, his mother had gone past the seventy-two hour window before she started showing the signs; how long could they watch this boy before feeling confident that he was not going to turn?

“Three weeks,” Jason said. When Ken and Juanita both looked at him, he expanded on his answer. “We can probably keep him interested in this so-called game for a while. But let’s face it, after a month, if he hasn’t turned, then I don’t believe that he ever will.”

Ken agreed and the plan was put into motion immediately as Juanita went up to join Gabriel and get a night’s sleep. Ken wanted to join in on that activity. Unfortunately, he had the first watch. While they had been making good progress on the fence, it still was not a hundred percent complete along that front stretch. Also, they’d already had three spots breached where they had put up the reinforced section of fence.

“We need to dig a trench,” Jason had said earlier this afternoon as they had repaired the damage after taking down the dozen undead that had all chosen that one spot to try and breakthrough for whatever reason drives a zombie.

Ken agreed, and it was decided that they would go into Sandy and hit a tool rental place that Jason said he recalled seeing. The place had looked largely untouched; and why should it be hit…most looters were grabbing stupid things like big screen televisions and video game systems while those that were trying to survive were focused solely on food, guns, ammo, and the variety of blades and bludgeons.

The problem was that it was obviously a two person job. Both men agreed that it was a poor idea to bring the child; Juanita needed to keep her vigil as they waited for the infection to show up and claim yet another victim. However, neither liked the idea of leaving her alone for however long the trip might take.

In the end, Jason had said that he would go it alone. He said that he wanted to see about increasing their food stores. They had almost gone through what he and Juanita had managed to come back with last time.

“You do know that the supply trucks have stopped coming,” Ken pointed out. Jason had merely nodded.

“I have a plan, and I actually think it is best that you not be along for it,” Jason admitted.

Ken waited until Juanita had been up in the loft for a while before approaching Jason who was sitting by the fire barrel and sharpening a black handled machete with a whetstone. “You ready?”

Jason nodded and rose to his feet. “I will try to be back by sunrise.”

***

Jason rolled to a stop. He had the window down on the driver’s side in order to be able to hear better. The sounds of gunfire had all but ceased in the past few days. He did not know exactly how to feel about that little fact. On the plus side, perhaps things were beginning to settle down; on the negative, it might mean that there were just fewer people left alive.

A soft moan carried on the breeze and, moments later, was answered by that terrible baby cry. It was pitch black, and he could not even make out any silhouettes in the near complete blackness of a moonless night. This was one of the areas that lacked any sort of streetlights. Given the fact that most people had either made a run for it, evacuated to a FEMA shelter, or fallen victim to the undead, as well as none of the few homes scattered about this location having lights on, Jason figured that this was about as dark as the world could get. He better understood why ancient civilizations had such a fear of the night. He liked to think that he was a pretty confident guy, but sitting at this three-way intersection and hearing the sounds of even distant zombies, Jason felt his gut tighten with at least a bit of fear.

Just beyond this intersection was the turn into the housing development that he’d spied on his return trip with Juanita and Gabriel. He turned in past the sign that promised “Several Homes for as low as $280,000” in what big letters announced as the first phase of Strawberry Heights.

A row of two-story homes with massive garages and lawns little larger than what would take a handful of passes with a mower stretched out on either side. Over a third still had their “For Sale” signs up, but there were the others…the ones with open garage doors or perhaps the second car or even RV parked in front that he had his sights set upon.

He killed the engine as he came to a stop in front of the first house. He took a sniff and felt confident that there were no zombies, at least none in the immediate proximity. As he walked up the driveway, he caught a hint of something foul. Drawing his machete, he stepped up onto the porch and tried the doorknob.

Locked.

Moving along the front of the house, he tried to peer in the windows, but, between the utter darkness and the gauzy curtains, he couldn’t see a damn thing. He passed a smaller window that he figured to be a bedroom and got a stronger whiff of that unpleasant smell that he now associated with zombies. It was much more pungent than just a simple dead body. It was hard to describe exactly how, but in just this short time, he had learned.

Moving down the side of the house, he walked into the open back yard. A small collection of children’s playthings were scattered about. There was a propane barbecue grill on the porch and Jason quickly checked to see if it had a canister of propane still attached. He was delighted to discover that, not only did it have a large white tank of propane, this was one of the upper end barbecue grills. It had the tank hung on a weighted hook that indicated that the tank was at least around three-quarters of the way full.

After he had removed the tank and then hauled both it and the grill out to the truck, Jason returned to the sliding glass door on the back porch. He gave it a tug and was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was unlocked.

The wave of stench hit him with gut-roiling intensity and a mewling moan came from nearby. Jason slid the door open all the way and stepped back just as a little girl took unsteady steps out and onto the porch. It turned its head in short, jerky movements and its mouth opened again as it moaned. What it did not do was move towards him. Jason had his weapon in his hand, but he was momentarily taken aback by this reaction. There was absolutely something about the child-zombie that made them different. However, that difference was only minor and seemingly temporary as it actually appeared to spot the machete and then revert into the standard behavior of the undead by reaching for him and staggering forward with its mouth opening and closing in anticipation of tearing into his flesh.

With one quick stroke, Jason brought the heavy blade down on the crown of the girl’s head, splitting her almost to the nose. With a booted shove, he pushed the body away and freed up his weapon just as another zombie shambled out. This was likely the mother. And Jason put an end to her in much the same manner, actually easing the corpse down beside the child after he chopped deeply into its skull.

Reaching just inside the doorway, his hand found the light switch and he flipped both toggles upwards. The back porch light as well as an overhead in the dining room came on and chased away the darkness. Glancing down, Jason confirmed his suspicion about this being mother and daughter. Besides the obvious of them being in the house together, they looked strikingly similar even in their state of undeath.

Stepping inside, his eyes spied a large family portrait on the wall just above an enormous fireplace in the living room. He could make out mother and daughter, both with wavy blonde hair and big smiles that flashed bright whites for the mother and an open gap waiting for the permanent teeth on the daughter. There was also a man with skin the color of mocha with a bit of extra cream. His black hair was short and cut with perfect symmetry.

A moment later, he stepped around the corner of the living room. For just an instant, he seemed to pause as his eyes sought Jason. The moment that those filmed over, tracer-ridden orbs locked on him, the mouth opened and a chilling baby cry issued forth. Jason lunged forward and brought his machete down hard and fast. If nothing else, he just wanted to end that sound.

For the next several minutes, he hurried through the kitchen cupboards and the walk-in pantry beside a large double-doored refrigerator. He had discovered a box of heavy-duty plastic garbage bags and went about tossing in everything that he could think of that would not cause a rip in the bag. He was stunned when he filled two such bags and hurried them out to the truck.

Apparently his activity had somehow drawn attention as three zombies were clustered around the pickup and another two were staggering across the front lawn. Setting the bag down, he took care of them and then finished loading the first haul. After five trips in and out of the house, he had emptied out the kitchen for the most part, as well as the bathroom, a hall closet full of blankets, towels, and liquid laundry detergent.

This had worked out much better than he imagined. That was a double-edged sword. He would no doubt have to return to pick these homes clean. His only real concern was the possibility of encountering other individuals that had the same idea. He was already of the opinion that the undead were the least of his worries. With zombies, you knew ahead of time what you would be getting. It was the living that proved to be a mixed bag; most of it seeming to lean towards unpleasant.

Back on the road, Jason was grateful for the fact that it seemed that the clouds were being blown away. This was providing just enough ambient light that he could see the road. While not the most optimum way to drive, he did not want to give himself away too readily. He had managed to escape his last encounter with a small gang that were apparently claiming the whole of what was downtown Sandy as their turf.

Almost on cue, a set of headlights came into view on a road that ran perpendicular to his. If he continued on, they would come close to meeting at the intersection. Jason stopped the truck and watched with patience as the mysterious vehicle continued to prowl along. Eventually, it turned down another road and vanished into the trees. It might not have been the individuals from before, but he had no real desire to find out.

At last, he arrived at the tool and equipment rental outlet. Just as before, the place seemed completely intact. Not even the windows had been broken by passing vandals. There was a large, fenced-in lot with all sorts of machinery. He spied one thing in particular that made him smile: a flatbed trailer.

Pulling in, he once again gave a precursory sniff and was pleased to find nothing more than fresh air. Hopping out, he rushed to the gate with the lock cutters that he had found on the tool wall in the barn. In a flash he was in, making a showing of pulling the gate shut behind him and parking the truck on the back row between a trio of small cement mixers and a backhoe.

He hurried to the back entrance of the shop and discovered that the metal door was locked. He wanted to avoid busting a window if possible and after finding out that he lacked the skill to pick the lock, his eyes scanned the building until he found a frosted over set of windows. They were small and, being in the rear of the building, would not draw any attention if he broke them.

Once he was inside, it was a simple matter of grabbing a few more things that they would need to make their trench. An hour later, Jason had a flatbed trailer “loaded to the gills” as his dad used to say. Hooking up the trailer to the truck was an easy task, and Jason was back on the road with plenty of time left to allow him to make it back to Ken and Juanita well before sunrise.

***

The next evening was highlighted by an uneventful late-night trip to the Fred Meyer grocery store after another trip to the rental store where they grabbed the six barrels in the lot. For this run, they had brought Juanita and Gabriel, telling them both ahead of time that they would remain in the truck during this trip.

Jason had insisted that they fill the barrels right away since it was unlikely that the power grid would last much longer. He had switched on the pumps and started pumping as Ken stood at the ready with an arsenal that included Glocks on each hip, a sawed off twelve-gauge shotgun, and a .30-30 Winchester with a scope.

It almost seemed like prophecy when, as they were filling the fifth barrel, everything simply shut down. Using the forklift dolly to load the barrels, they winced at every sound. The absolute silence was almost more unnerving than the early days of sporadic gunfire and screaming…almost.

They were returning to the farm when Jason told Ken to stop the truck. Jason hopped out of the truck and Ken followed, hand on the grip of one of his pistols.

“Easy, Ken,” Jason whispered.

“What is it? Why did you have me stop?” Ken stepped up beside the other man, his neck on a swivel as he searched for the threat.

“Portland.”

That one word hung in the air. It took Ken a moment, but then the realization hit. Both had been out enough to know that, even though it was what Jason called “country dark” out on the outskirts of Sandy where they were making their fortified home, you could still look to the west and see a glow on the horizon. Also, there were the transmitter towers with their red lights.

It was all gone. Sure, there were still pockets of light, but those were just the last of the fires burning out. They did not hold a candle to what had once been the dome of light pollution created by the city as a whole.

“Power is out everywhere,” Jason whispered.

“So much for cold beer,” Ken said with a chuckle.

They had driven home in silence. Jason thought that it might just be his mind, but he felt that the world actually seemed darker.

The next week went on with long stretches of hard work and the occasional stop in the progress to deal with the surprisingly rare zombie. At one point, as they were finishing up the day’s digging of the five foot wide, seven foot deep trench, Jason hopped down from the backhoe and accepted the canteen from Ken.

“Not what I expected,” he laughed as he screwed the cap back on and tossed it beside the cooler.

“What?” Ken asked absently as he began refilling the gas tank from one of the fifty-five gallon barrels of diesel fuel that they had obtained.

“The zombie apocalypse.” Jason started packing up the rest of the tools and loading them onto the flatbed.

“I am probably not paying much attention,” Ken admitted, “because I have no earthly idea what you are talking about.”

“I read a lot of zombie fiction back when I was at the Columbia River facility. I even watched a few of the movies during those Halloween film fests that a few of the channels run. They were all action and people dying and running and evil biker gangs that come in at the end and wipe everything out and ruin it for the supposed good guys. I mean, not one single story that I can recall, rolls with the same or very similar formula with a climactic ending where the stronghold falls and the main characters have to run for their lives.”

“So you want an evil biker gang to come ruin all our hard work?” Ken scratched his head and gave Jason an odd look.

“Hell no!” Jason snorted. “I’m just saying that here it is, the end of the world from all indications, and we are digging ditches.”

“We killed two zombies this morning,” Ken pointed out.

Jason laughed and shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah, I guess I just expected more insanity and—”

“Explosions?” Ken cut him off.

“Sure,” Jason finally agreed.

***

The last of the tools were loaded onto the flatbed and then the big tarp was pulled over the backhoe and secured with stakes. It had been Ken’s idea. With gas being a luxury, and any sort of re-supply unlikely, he had said that it might be worth saving every single drop for actual work. Since Jason doubted that anybody would cruise by and decide they absolutely had to have a back hoe, he had agreed.

They reached the barn to see Gabriel throwing a ball for the Golden Retriever and the Border Collie. The two dogs seemed to be having the time of their lives, each racing to the ball and then the run back to the boy where whoever did not have the ball made every effort to steal it from the other. The boy was laughing and Juanita had a smile on her face that was easy to see, even from a distance.

“Like I said,” Jason quipped as Ken brought the truck to a stop and shut it off, “just not what I expected in a zombie apocalypse.”

“If a biker gang comes in the next day or two, I am blaming you,” Ken muttered as he climbed out of the truck and braced himself for the charging Golden Retriever that seemed to absolutely love him despite his attempts at complete apathy directed at the animal.

“Hey there, Stupid,” Ken greeted the animal, ruffling the fur around the neck and giving the dog a scratch behind the ears. The Golden nuzzled against the man and followed him to the makeshift table which was nothing more than a sheet of plywood set up on a pair of sawhorses.

There had been some debate about Ken’s apparent choice of a name for the dog. Ken had shut it down by stating that everybody else could call the dog whatever they wanted, but he would be using the name “Stupid” regardless. Gabriel had been tickled by the idea.

“What’s for dinner?” Jason asked as he sat down.

It had become the running joke for the past two days. They were down to an assortment of Ramen noodle packages. Jason had been stunned at how fast they had eaten their way through what he had thought to be a pretty good haul from that one house as well as what they had scavenged from the store.

The bowl landed in front of him with an unceremonious thump, some of the broth splashing over the sides. It would be time to make another run tonight. This time, he would be doing nothing but grabbing food.

“I’ll hit that neighborhood tonight,” Jason announced after downing a spoonful of the overly salty noodle soup.

“I don’t think that it is a good idea for you to go alone,” Juanita said as she took a seat at the table, placing hers and Gabriel’s soup down as she did.

“I agree,” Ken added.

“Sure, and it sucks, but this is really the only way. We can’t,” his head turned and he fixed Juanita with his gaze, “and we won’t leave you and the boy alone. You will not be coming out on these runs until we hit the deadline for…” His eyes drifted to Gabriel who ate with gusto, his hand slipping under the table every so often to slip a noodle to either Imp or Stupid depending on which muzzle had made it onto his lap.

Of course, Jason knew damn well that he was just using that as an excuse. If he was forced to admit the truth, he simply did not want to bring her along. Sexist sentiment or not, he did not want to have to worry about having along a woman. He’d already seen enough out there to know that things were more than just a little bit dicey as law and order vanished.

The world had been bad enough when there were cops, judges, and jails. If anything happened to Juanita, he would feel sick and absolutely blame himself forever. Besides, his sexism pretty much ended at the fences. She’d been out there doing her share of swinging a pick, shoveling dirt, and hauling rocks.

“You taking the truck and the flatbed?” Ken asked.

Jason thought it over and finally shook his head. “I don’t think that will be necessary. I doubt there will even be enough here to fill the pickup. Plus, if I do run into trouble, I don’t want to be hauling that thing behind me.”

Once the meal was finished, Jason went over his load out. He had plenty of protective clothing, and he grabbed a single Glock along with six spare magazines. When it came to hand held weapons, he’d grown partial to the simple one he’d found in the barn with the black handle. In addition, he tossed a few tools into the knapsack that he would be carrying.

As soon as it was dark, Jason jumped into the truck and got ready to head out. Imp followed and tried to come along, but Jason gave the dog a scratch and called Gabriel over.

“Will you watch my dog for me?” he asked the little boy. The youngster nodded and wrapped his arms around the Border Collie’s neck in a gentle hug.

As Jason locked the gate behind him and started off, he realized that that had been the first time that he had officially claimed Imp as his own.

The drive was faster than he recalled from the last time. He wondered if that had anything to do with the fact that it was a clear night and the moon was painting the landscape in a soft bluish-white. Despite the power grid being down and out, or perhaps because of it, the light of the moon seemed brighter than ever and gave off plenty of illumination for him to drive by.

When he arrived at the small residential area, he instantly felt his senses ratchet up a few degrees. It was like that rush of adrenaline that he got when he was about to commit a robbery or speak in front of a group of people. His mouth went dry and he suddenly had to pee.

Pulling up to the next home that showed signs of having been inhabited, Jason climbed out and did a visual sweep of the area. He’d passed a few zombies on his way in and knew that they would turn and come after the truck, but they were far enough back that he knew they would be a while before arriving—if they did not get distracted by something else first.

He had shown Ken how noise could be used in their favor when dealing with the undead. He’d gone out to a field and gotten the attention of a lone walker. After a few minutes Jason had ducked down in the tall grass and Ken had (not entirely willingly) popped up, clapping his hands a few times. Sure enough, the zombie had stopped and turned in the direction of this new stimulus. They had traded off several times until both Jason and even Ken had to admit that sound was a draw for the zombie. Neither of them could guess a good reason, but it had been proven in fairly convincing style.

That was where the new “secret weapon” came into play. Jason had put some gravel in a few soda cans. Those had gone in his knapsack with his tools. As he approached the house, he noticed the smears on the windows before he got that first whiff of the undead. As he tried the front door, he was momentarily distracted by the sound of breaking glass from someplace close by. That was why he was turned just slightly when he opened the front door and was taken by surprise by the dead hand that grabbed at his wrist.

***

Ken sat next to the fire, knife in hand as he whittled away at a piece of wood. It wasn’t until just a moment ago that he realized that he’d been fashioning a small boat from the piece of pine that he’d been shaving away at with his big knife.

His gaze went to the barn where Juanita and Gabriel were asleep by now. He had been bothered a bit by something that Jason had said earlier about how this so-called zombie apocalypse was nothing like the books and movies. As a cop, how many times had he laughed at the shows on television that oversimplified and magically always solved every crime that came their way; often times with a dramatic shootout.

Real life and that as depicted by the entertainment industry were seldom in sync with one another. Still, if this place was hit by a group of bad guys, his people wouldn’t stand a chance. It was simple mathematics: two men, one woman, and a child did not equal a gang or a small army of people who had checked their conscience at the door.

He looked in the direction that he knew Erin’s place to be. Perhaps there was something to be said for joining forces. The only thing he would be even the slightest bit bothered by was the hours and days of hard work that he, Jason, and Juanita had put into the outer defense of the place. Already, the trench was complete along the front of the property. They had the entire front section of fence reinforced. Jason had even suggested that they allow the dirt to act as an additional barricade and so they had a good berm that would do well to keep the zombies from even reaching their trench for the most part.

He didn’t really relish the idea of leaving this place. Maybe they could go out and look for any other pockets of survivors. Of course, he crushed that idea before it had any time to gain traction. Strangers were an unknown, and these days, that was a bad thing.

Getting up, Ken set the boat down and started out on a foot patrol of the property. It certainly seemed bigger at night than it did by day when you could pretty much see from one fence to the other on all four sides.

He was walking along down the side of the property that bordered Erin West and her people when he thought that he heard crying. Instantly alert and drawing his machete, Ken froze in place. Had it been a baby cry zombie? He wasn’t sure. It had been scarcely audible.

Pausing at the fence, Ken looked around and even lifted his nose to the air. He didn’t smell anything that might be a zombie. With even more caution, he ducked through the fence to the other side.

He would take a few steps, pause, and then take a few more. The West property was bigger than where they lived, and part of it was some sort of Christmas tree farm. That area bordered the two, so Ken found himself weaving through neat rows of well-shaped, triangular pines that would probably never see their potential realized.

“Hello?” he whispered.

If he had taken a single step even a fraction of a second sooner, he would not have heard the tiniest inhale of somebody sipping in a breath. Turning slightly, Ken oriented himself in the general direction of the sound and then froze in place. It was his experience that a person in hiding had a much different perspective on time versus the person waiting. Sure enough, his patience was rewarded just moments later when a soft rustling and the snap of a few twigs alerted him to the location of the person who had been trying to hide.

“I am not going to hurt you, whoever you are,” Ken spoke softly, calling on his years of training. “It’s Ken Simpson from the farm next door. The um…damn, I don’t know those people’s last names. Umm, Rose’s sister’s place. I am the one who drove Erin back here.”

“Oh, thank God,” a female voice hissed.

“Cherry?” Ken managed just as a dark figure poked out from behind a nearby pine tree.

“Mr. Simpson,” the woman gasped, rushing forward once it was clear that the man speaking was who he claimed to be. “You have to help us.”

“Have to help you what?” In his mind, he heard Jason grousing about the boredom that was their zombie apocalypse.

“They came last night,” the woman said in a hoarse whisper. “They killed Bryan and Jimmy. Then, they just walked into the house and started killing people…but only the men. They…they…” And then the woman burst into tears.

Ken wrapped an arm around the young woman and led her back towards the fence. She started to pull away, but he kept his grip firm.

“We can’t leave them…we can’t leave Erin and the others,” Cherry cried.

“We aren’t leaving them,” Ken promised. “But if we are going to help them, we need more than just you empty-handed and me with a machete and this pistol. We need more firepower and a couple more bodies. Plus, you need to give me the details…as much as you can. I need to know exactly how many there are and anything else that you can provide me with before we go back there.”

Cherry seemed to stall, but at last her head dropped and she nodded, huddling in close to Ken as he led her back to the barn. He would need to get Juanita up. For one, she would be better suited to dealing more directly with this woman who was on the verge of hysterics; but also, she had proven that she could handle herself when it came down to the nitty-gritty.

“Damn you, convict,” Ken cursed as he walked away from where Juanita was putting a blanket around Cherry’s shoulders and whispering to her that things were going to be okay.

The dumbass had gone and jinxed everything with his big mouth. It looked like he was about to get his wish. Things were about to get real exciting. He glanced at the horizon and saw the first hints of dawn.

Hmm, he thought, shouldn’t Jason be back by now?

15

Rag and Bone

Jason yanked back and pulled the child zombie with him. The child had no more coordination than a regular zombie and ended up sprawled on its side. Hurrying over, Jason brought his boot down on its back and cleaved into the skull with an adrenaline-fueled hack that ended up completely chopping through the entire right side of the creature’s head. A resurgent wave of stench rolled up as brain matter spilled out onto the pavement of the entry walkway.

Jason was no doctor, but he was pretty sure that the oozing jelly-like stuff that he could see as a darker pool leaking from the skull was not normal. He had no time to really consider this, though, as the sounds of footsteps heading towards him caused him to spin in a hurry. He spotted two more figures limping his direction from the open front door. One of them was another child, and it had paused in the doorway while the other larger zombie continued forward. It stepped out from the shadows of the house and into the silvery light provided by the moon and stars to reveal itself as what was most likely the father of the house.

This man was probably the one to bring the zombie infection home Jason surmised as he allowed the walker to come into range of his machete. He was wearing nothing more than boxer shorts and had a bandaged left arm. He had not really paid it any notice until just now, but the child that he had cleaved the side of its head off looked to have her throat ripped out.

As soon as he cut down the father, that seemed to activate the second child zombie. Jason filed away that fact to consider later. There was absolutely no denying that the children zombies, at least the really young ones, were acting different from the so-called normal zombies. At the moment, he had his hands full.

The chorus of moans coming from all directions at once sent a chill down his spine. Where had they all come from? he wondered. The last time he’d come to this area, it had seemed almost completely deserted. He considered his options and decided that he had come this far. How bad could it be, after all?

He backed up and returned to the street. He actually breathed a sigh of relief. It had sounded worse than it actually looked. Yes, there were zombies coming up the street and headed his direction. Having only the light of the moon to act as his primary source of illumination, he guessed there to be somewhere in the area of twenty or so. They were spread out, and thus, it was no problem for him to rush to meet them and take them down before going inside the house.

As he moved around, taking the singles out first and then working on the pairs and the lone trio, Jason had to be at least a little impressed with himself. In all his reading, he could not recall many situations where the people in the stories were not running for their lives at the first sign of a zombie. Of course, if these were the sprinters from that most recent Dawn of the Dead remake, or the infected from 28 Days Later (and not the one with Sandra Bullock), then he would be a lot more hesitant about taking on almost two dozen of the walking dead.

Once the last one was down and he took a good look around to ensure that there were no more coming, Jason returned to the house and went inside. The lingering stink of the undead still hung in the air, forcing Jason to cover his mouth and nose with his sleeve for a moment out of sheer reflex.

From the entry hall, he turned right towards an open kitchen area with a breakfast bar on the far side. The curtains were open, a shaft of ambient light wafting in and spilling across the floral centerpiece that sat in the center of the dining room table. Jason took a step into the kitchen and tripped over something big that he had not seen in the pools of dark shadows that hid the floor.

The moan that came as he was rolling over and struggling to his feet let him know that he’d just found another member of the household. He’d been pulling out the flashlight from a pouch at his side and heard it make a nasty cracking sound as it hit the floor and bounced.

Something clutched at his foot and Jason kicked as hard as possible to free himself. Scooting back, he quickly found his back up against the door to the oven. His vision was well acclimated and he was able to make out the shadow of a head that had risen up from the floor. Reaching into his pocket, Jason grabbed the only other light source that he possessed; a disposable lighter. Thumbing the wheel, Jason squinted initially, but then he saw her.

It had to be the lady of the house. She appeared to have suffered the worst of the attacks by the looks of things. Even in the flickering light of the tiny flame, he could see the numerous smaller bites on her arms and face. It still did not explain fully why she was on her belly and crawling. From what he saw, she had both legs.

Using the same weapon that had killed off the rest of the woman’s family, Jason ended her time on this earth once and for all with a single swing. Getting up, he dusted himself off and started to work on getting as much as he could from this house that they would be able to use.

When he went down the hallway to the master bedroom, he found the answer to the mystery of the mother. Amidst the carnage and splattered blood that were just more dark stains in the limited light shining through the window, was a wheelchair. That was also when he noticed that the widths on the doorways and halls were a bit wider than what you might normally expect.

“That had to suck,” Jason said with a shiver. He could not even imagine the horror that poor woman must have endured as her husband and children attacked her.

He went methodically through the house and then out to the garage. That last part was made easier when he discovered a flashlight and an unopened package of batteries in one of the drawers in the kitchen.

Things stayed surprisingly quiet after that first run-in. He went through two more houses, both abandoned. By the time he finished, it was a bit later than he had expected as the first rays of the dawn were spilling across the dew-soaked lawns. On the plus side, he had the truck’s cargo area loaded to the point where he’d had to resort to using the passenger’s side of the cab. Even better, the third house still had plenty of supplies to come back for. As he had been making one final walkthrough of that third house, he had discovered a can of spray paint. That had prompted him to go outside and spray a giant ‘X’ on the front of the houses that were now empty of anything that he considered useful.

As he started up the pickup and headed back to their homestead, he actually felt pretty good. One of the things that he’d found in his search was a room apparently belonging to a boy about the same age as Gabriel. He had scooped clothes and toys by the Hefty bagful and tossed them into the truck. Sure, it had taken up the room of valuable resources, but he would make more of these trips. It would be nice to see the child actually have a reason to smile. Besides, what kid didn’t love getting a bunch of toys?

***

Ken stopped crawling and once again listened for any sounds that might indicate there were people up and about. His best guess had him with another hour or so before dawn. He wanted to try and get a look at the West compound. He would not do anything until the convict returned or he felt certain that the man was gone for good.

He seriously doubted that the man would bail on them, but being out and alone in this hell was not exactly a good thing. Perhaps it was time to visit the idea of making these supply runs as a group. Even if that meant bringing the kid and having him stay in the cab, it might be a much better idea than just going it alone. Not that he was fond of the convict; but right now, manpower was at a premium, and the guy had shown that he was not adverse to putting in a hard day’s work. Truth be told, the man had a pretty healthy construction background which made him worth his weight in gold. Ken, while good with basic tools and such, was not necessarily well-versed in some of the finer points of building.

He moved forward just a bit more and was finally able to get a much better view of the house. Unfortunately, that did him almost no good whatsoever. Sure, the sky was clear and the moon was bright, but the house was dark and there did not seem to be anybody moving around. Ken waited for several minutes, but nothing changed.

At last, he gave up and returned back to the place he was slowly beginning to think of as home. Once he felt that he’d gotten far enough into the woods, he stood up and walked the rest of the way. It was as he was climbing through the barbed wire that separated the two properties that Ken paused. He slowly stood and took in the view. The rising sun was just starting to paint the sky in reds and purples. Along with it, the snow-capped peak of Mt. Hood stood majestically.

Ken had grown up and lived his entire life in the state of Oregon. He had simply become accustomed to the beauty. He had never seen the big deal when tourists or friends from abroad would visit and make such a fuss about something that he saw practically every single day. As he looked at the splendor of the mountain, he thought that maybe he was seeing how amazing it was for the very first time in his life.

In that moment, a number of things struck him. He’d lived most of his life not really appreciating all that he had; especially when it came to the “simple” things.

He’d loved his wife, but he hadn’t realized how much, or how she cared for him until she’d died. And that was the simple one. However, Jason was currently gone, out trying to break into places and bring back food. The power was out which meant that everything needed to be cooked over flame…that meant chopping wood. Doing it for a day or two when camping was one thing, and even then, it was no big deal to stop at a store on the way and grab some bundles of kindling, or maybe even some well-seasoned firewood before heading into the camp grounds. Nowadays, it was all going to have to be done by somebody here.

He walked across the open field to the house and spotted a dust cloud in the distance. He shaded his eyes even though the sun wasn’t yet bright enough to really be an issue, and was relieved to see the familiar outline of his truck rumbling towards the entry gate. Breaking into a bit of a jog, he met Juanita as she came out of the barn with Cherry.

“It’s Jason,” Ken answered her unasked question. He noticed Cherry slump in relief.

By the time the truck came to a stop in front of the barn, Ken had sent both women back inside. He explained that it would be best for him to give the rundown of what was going on without a bunch of extra emotion. In truth, he wanted to talk to Jason and get the man’s input on what they should do. He hated the fact that he was actually uncertain for one of the few times in his life. Yet, he was having a difficult time reconciling the idea of getting involved. A part of him—in truth, a really big part—did not want to get involved. He wanted to shore up their own defenses and prepare for what he considered to be the inevitable attack.

“Who was that?” Jason asked, pointing to the barn as he climbed out of the truck.

Ken filled him in on the details. When he was finished, Jason stared at the ground for a moment. Just as Ken was about to ask him what he was thinking, Jason’s head popped up and his grim expression said it before the words escaped his lips.

“I guess we go to war.”

Ken thought that was a bit melodramatic, but he understood the sentiment. Together, the men began to sift through their firepower and select the weapons each felt the most comfortable using. For Ken, it was his Glocks, an M4, and then one of the double-barrel shotguns. For Jason, it was a .30-06 with a scope, a pair of .357s, and the street sweeper. Additionally, Jason poured three bottles full of some kerosene that was in a can in the barn. Ken was not entirely on board with the idea, but Jason insisted, saying that if they could force them into the open, it would be easy pickings.

“And what about the hostages?” Ken asked plainly.

“You are thinking like a cop,” Jason gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “We might lose one or two, but it would be better than nothing, and, in case you forgot, we are outnumbered.”

By Cherry’s account, there had been seven of them. All men, but she could not recall that they were heavily armed, and Erin had insisted that the weapons be stored someplace outside the house apparently expressing her concern for just such an event.

Once the men were both happy with the guns and ammo that they had loaded, they each grabbed a machete for that “just in case” moment that Jason insisted always seemed to happen in his stupid books.

“Yeah, remind me to tell you what I think of those books when we get done here,” Ken grumbled as they headed out of the barn for the fence that bordered the two properties.

***

Jason crouched down and brought the rifle up to his shoulder. There is no way it is this easy, he thought. Once more, he made a head count just to be sure that he was seeing things clearly. Again he came up with one group of five men standing around the large fire pit and another two men dragging bodies from the house; obviously the men in Erin’s group that they had killed the night before.

He flicked off the safety and took a deep breath as he sighted in on the men around the pit. He figured he could drop one and get a good shot off at a second before they reacted. They were far enough away from the house that he was confident that he could get at least one more of the “bad guys” before they managed to reach the safety of the house.

Lining up his shot, he said a silent prayer that Ken was smart enough to see their situation and that he was just as ready. With a squeeze of the trigger, he saw his first target spin and actually fall into the fire pit. His screams were almost an answered prayer for Jason as the men turned their attentions to the horrified screams of pain from their compatriot.

Jason sighted in and got off his second shot before the men actually realized they were under attack. The second victim fell and then the sounds of another weapon being fired came right on the heels of Jason’s second shot. Three men were out of action, but the other four were running full-tilt for the house. Jason got off another shot, noting that the men were too frightened to think of doing anything clever like zig-zagging. They seemed to be taking that good old straight-line-is-the-shortest-distance-between-two-points approach. That allowed his fourth shot to hit a man in the middle of the back and send him sprawling on his face.

Ken had taken down another of the men which left only two. One of them made it in the door and slammed it behind him, leaving his last remaining partner outside banging on it for only a heartbeat before a shot from Ken ended his life. The man slumped to the ground in a heap, a swath of blood marking his decent.

Jason was just considering what to do next when the front door flew open. A man emerged with a woman that Jason did not recognize held in front of him as a human shield. He held a wicked knife to the woman’s throat.

“You either back off or I cut this bitch! You hear me, mother fuckers!”

Jason got a good look at the man’s face through his scope. He looked to be at least partially of Asian origin. His hair was buzzed down to a crewcut, and Jason even made out a scar on the man’s cheek. He was about to squeeze the trigger when Ken’s voice made him pause.

“You go right ahead. Makes no never mind to me. I don’t know that woman from Eve. And then I get to take a much cleaner shot at you.”

Jason pulled his eye away from the scope and glanced over in the direction of Ken’s voice. Sure enough, the man was stepping out from a cluster of untrimmed Christmas trees. He had his Glock out in front of him with that two-handed grip that cops seemed to like to use. Jason was more of a rifle and shotgun kind of guy, and so his actual experience with a pistol was pretty minimal. Perhaps there was something to that kind of grip; he would ask Ken later when they had some down time.

“This bitch’s blood will be on your hands!” the man screamed.

“No, I won’t get a drop on me.” Ken took another step closer, but he nodded his head once.

Jason took that as a sign that Ken wanted him to finish this guy. He brought his rifle back up and sighted in on the man’s head once more. He was pretty confident that he could nail this guy without hitting the woman. Mostly. Sort of. Okay, he felt he had at least better than a fifty percent chance of not hitting her. But his options were pretty limited. And if the man did slit the woman’s throat, well then, she would be dead anyways. Better a quick death from a bullet to the head if he missed. And that was just an ‘if’ at this point. He was pretty close, no more than thirty or forty feet at the most by his best guess.

“One more step—”

The report from the rifle drowned out the next word. The bullet that crashed through the front of the man’s skull cut off the rest. The woman screamed and dove away without a scratch on her.

Ken rushed to her and knelt down, holstering his pistol in the process. Jason broke from the trees and rushed past the woman and into the house. His eyes lit on three more women, each bound and gagged. Since he knew her, he went to Erin first and removed the gag. She spat as if clearing her mouth of something foul and then looked up with narrowed eyes.

“So…what kept ya?”

There was a single moment where Jason did not know how to respond. His lips moved, but no sound came out. Then Erin smiled. Of course her smile was slightly marred by her blackened and swollen left eye, giving her look a lopsided quality.

Jason quickly recovered and then, with a straight face, he grabbed the cloth gag and put it back in place. He heard her muffled protests as he rose and went to the next woman sitting against the wall. After he had freed the other two, he bent down in front of Erin.

“Are you gonna behave?” Even behind the gag he could see her good eye sparkle with mischief and a smile tug the corners of her mouth up as she slowly and deliberately shook her head in the negative. “Suit yourself.”

Jason stood and headed for the door to a chorus of thumping as Erin pounded the floor with her bound feet. He was not a step out the door before one of the other women had obviously hurried over and removed the gag. What followed were a string of profanities that would have impressed or perhaps embarrassed any convict.

***

Ken sat on the tailgate of his pickup and sipped at a canteen of lukewarm water. The sun was out and in full effect. He and Jason had just unloaded what was likely the last of what they would be able to scavenge from that small residential community that would never reach completion.

In a grassy area on the far side of the barn, Gabriel was delighting himself as well as Imp and Stupid as he threw an orange tennis ball and watched the two dogs bound after it. For just a moment, he wished that he could swap places with that kid. Just as suddenly, he was hammered with a wave of sadness. That child would never know a normal world. Whether the zombies simply fell over and died after a few months, or (and this was not looking to be likely) the government got things back under control (even less likely), that child would live in a new era. From what he’d seen in just this short time since everything suddenly fell of the ledge, it was going to be a rough existence.

Humanity had never lacked the capacity for evil or the ability to do horrible things to each other. With no sort of deterrent, it was likely that so-called civilized society would be taken further into the abyss. He capped the canteen and wiped his brow with the handkerchief he kept stuffed into his pocket. Just as he was about to close up the truck and head into the barn for whatever Cherry and Juanita would be serving up for lunch, he spotted an approaching cloud of dust.

It was far enough away that he had time to signal Erin and Jason to come out and join him. They had a plan in place for strangers—proof of how bad things had already gotten if that took precedence over finding a map and making plans for where they would search next for supplies.

Jason was long gone and in position by the time a rickety old cart being pulled by a grizzled man on a bicycle came to a stop in front of the gate where Ken and Erin stood, each with a pistol in hand since it had been decided that precious seconds might be lost in drawing them after trouble reared its head.

“The days of being polite are likely to be a thing of the past,” Ken had reasoned during one evening around a campfire.

“Rag and Bone!” the man cried cheerfully as he came to a stop.

Ken looked past the man and saw a dozen or so of the undead arriving in the man’s wake. He checked out the cart and arched an eyebrow in question at the man.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Erin spoke the very words that were on the tip of Ken’s tongue.

“Rag and bone, missy!” the man crowed. He climbed off his bicycle, seemingly oblivious to the pair of handguns that were trained on him and following his every move.

The man scuttled to the rear of his cart and began to rummage through it, muttering under his breath the entire time. At last he made a bit of a hooting noise and popped up with a few things cradled in his arms.

“Is this guy nuts?” Ken whispered.

“I’m gonna go with yes,” Erin replied as the man did a bit of a hop and skip back to the gate.

“What I have here is some of the finest in self-defense. Nothing more satisfying than knocking down the stench bags with their own parts.” With a flourish, the man produced a long cudgel with what looked like a leather-wrapped handle. The bludgeoning end had a metallic spiked knob that took Ken a moment to identify.

“Is that…?” Erin’s voice faded and she cocked her head, too fascinated to be horrified.

In the man’s hands was what Ken had to assume was a femur. The “leather” used to wrap the base and form the handle looked to be dried human skin. The crowning piece was a skull that had been dipped into some sort of heavy, amber colored resin that had a number of metal spikes of varying sizes and types frozen in place.

“I see you are dubious…let me demonstrate.”

With that, the man set down four more similar weapons and scurried off in his hop-skip sort of dance towards the small pack of zombies that had been following him. Ken and Erin could only watch as he danced around from one to the other, swinging the femur club. It was a brutal and violent demonstration, but neither he nor Erin could deny the apparent power of the weapons.

After every single one of the zombies had been taken down, the man bounded back to them. He stopped at the gate and made a bow, sweeping the long, tattered coat he wore aside as if it were a magnificent cape.

“What can you trade?” the man asked as he stood up holding out the used weapon to Ken.

“Ummm…” Ken was still awestruck by the display. The weapon had pulverized the heads of the undead with a single blow, and this frail looking man had swung it like it was nothing.

“Hand it over.” Erin stepped forward. “I want to check it out for myself.”

“Ah, the lady speaks.” The man handed her the femur-club and then skipped back to his cart singing a song about rags and bones that Ken actually found to be sort of catchy.

Erin holstered her pistol and then hefted the weapon, stepping clear to swing it around a bit. She used it with a single hand and then with both as if taking a practice swing while stepping up to bat. Meanwhile, the old man had tossed his tarp aside and was dragging something from the back. Ken was only partially surprised as the man hauled a zombie out. From the looks, it had been a girl in her early teens which probably accounted for how easily she had fit in the cart. It was bound and gagged.

“Shall I cut the bonds and let you try for yourself?” the man cackled, giving Erin a salacious wink.

Erin glanced at Ken who shrugged and nodded. The man hooted with glee as Erin gave consent. He started to bend down to cut the twine binding her wrists and ankles when he suddenly froze.

“Sneaky eyes in the bush.” The man popped up and turned, placing his tattered sneakered foot on the zombie girl’s chest. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” he sing-songed.

There was a pause, and finally, Jason emerged from a nearby hedge. The man did not seem perturbed in the slightest. He simply waved and returned his attention to Erin.

“So, are you ready?”

Erin gave Ken one more look and then climbed over the gate and out onto the road. Ken noticed that the man had adjusted his position so that he was out of range if Erin suddenly decided to swing at him. Ken conceded that, while the man might appear just a bit crazy, he was apparently no fool.

“Okay,” Erin said tightly as she re-gripped the weapon and choked back on it.

The man cut the final bonds around the zombie girl’s wrists and then gave the gag a tug, pulling it free from the zombie’s mouth. He scurried around behind his cart, leaving Erin and the zombie to their grim business.

The zombie took a moment to gain its feet, then it turned in the direction of the cart. It began in slow, awkward steps away from Erin. Ken watched as Erin hurried around to get between the monster and the cart. The zombie refocused its attention on Erin and altered its course.

“Kill it already,” Ken urged.

Erin shot him a nasty look and then swung. The resin-coated and spiked skull struck the head with a nasty sound that was part shattering bone and part bursting melon.

“Holy crap!” Erin exclaimed, pointing to the nearly headless body that crumpled to the ground at her feet.

If Ken had come across this body without having seen the demonstration, he would have believed that it had suffered a shotgun blast at close range.

“We’ll take all of these that you have,” Erin exclaimed as she toed the corpse at her feet.

After a transaction that included some canned food, a blanket, two tubes of toothpaste and a pair of sunglasses that were dangling from the visor of Juanita’s car, the man handed over six of the oddly crafted weapons. As he pedaled away, he called out over his shoulder, “Peace, dudes. And remember…keep Portland weird!”

16

Normal?

“Get your head down!” Jason yelled.

Gabriel ducked and slid on his belly as he’d been shown. He skidded to a halt and looked up through the cloud of dust he had kicked up with his tiny body. Jason was looking down at him with a stern expression.

“You’re out!” Jason held up the ball and winked.

“Jeez, Jason!” Erin snapped. “You could cut the kid some slack. Maybe take it easy on him.”

Gabriel rolled over on his back and sat up. Wiping the dust from his hands, he did his best impression of Ken’s stern face. “The easy way gets ya killed.” Coming from a six-year-old, it was not a spot on impersonation, but everybody knew instantly who he was imitating.

“Yeah,” Jason agreed, reaching down a hand to give the boy some help up.

The boy accepted it and walked back to the piece of wood that had been designated as home plate. Picking up the plastic bat—one of the treasures that Jason had brought back several weeks ago when he’d made what had been the last solo run anyone from the compound would ever make again—he brought it to his shoulder and nodded for Erin to pitch him another. Their little baseball play time went on for another hour before everybody agreed that they were all hungry and would set it aside until the next opportunity arose.

Jason, Cherry, Erin, Linda Bauer, and Sandra Ellison were hot and sweaty from their hours out in the hot summer sun. Yet, none of them minded the heat in the least. It was a welcome change to the extended spring they’d just seen pass. Spring in the Pacific Northwest was often a chilly, wet, and windy time. This year had been no different, and it was made worse by the fact that the world had ceased to exist as they’d known it.

There had been many miserable nights where everybody was huddled in as close as possible for warmth. This past week of sunshine had not only improved everybody’s spirits, but it had brought young Gabriel out of his shell. He’d been Jason’s shadow all week; following him when he went out to work on the barricade, and even dragging along his own small shovel to help them dig the trench that would encircle both properties.

They entered the barn to discover Juanita and two newcomers, Gene and Rachel Fellman, in the act of setting the two long picnic tables for the evening meal. These were just two of the newest members to join their growing community. The Fellman’s had come in the middle of the night just a few days ago. They’d been on the move from what they simply referred to as the Hellscape. That was Portland.

With fires still burning out of control, many set by warring factions of the countless gangs that had spawned with the end of any actual law and order in place, the few people who were more set on survival versus preying on others were abandoning the remains of the Rose City. When the Fellman’s arrived, it had been Gene by himself who had approached the fire. After hearing some of the horrific tales about how things had so rapidly decayed in the city, it was no surprise that the man had made his wife hide before he approached the barn and the small group gathered around the fire that night.

“Hell, if it weren’t for seeing the women, I woulda kept on going and never given you guys a second thought,” Gene admitted to Jason that next day.

However, with the slight influx of people, the demands for essentials rose as well. That meant more trips out to some of the outlying areas. Most recently, they had been taking the long (long at least by the new world standards) trip to Happy Valley. They had discovered a large trailer park and huge housing development right beside each other.

That first trip in, they were able to confirm that both locations were apparently abandoned. The manufactured home community had been at least halfway destroyed by fires, and the housing development was crawling with undead, but both appeared void of any living resistance, and thus, an ideal target.

That was a lesson they had learned after clearing out that first small community that Jason had pin-pointed. Once it was stripped, they had looked for a new location. They had simply rolled into another similar development, only to have a hidden gunman open fire. The truck had taken a few hits, but nothing that put the vehicle out of action.

Juanita had asked why they were hitting places so far from home one evening when Jason and Erin had returned from a run to Carver where they had loaded up a treasure trove of canned goods from a small roadside restaurant.

“If we hit all of the places close by first, then we will be screwed when the gasoline runs dry or starts to go bad. We need to hit the farthest places we dare right now and work our way in,” Jason explained.

Today, Ken and a brother and sister that had joined the group the same day that the Rag and Bone man had first come by, were out on a run to Happy Valley. They were expected back any time now since it was a standing rule that nobody be out after dark. That was when the “Crazies” ran wild.

The Crazies were not any specific group. This was simply the term that had been adopted for the singles and small groups of wanna-be bandits and, for lack of a better term, vandals. These singles and small packs of feral humans were solely intent upon setting fires, hurting others not in their little clique, and general mischief.

It was the consensus that the Rag and Bone man somehow fell afoul of the Crazies. He was discovered by Erin and a few of the others on a run. His cart and bicycle had been pounded into a nearly unrecognizable hunk of twisted metal. His body looked to have suffered the same fate. In addition to a ferocious beating, he was hung from one of the massive and now useless power line tower structures that cut through the countryside.

Just as Jason was finishing with his meal—the idea of breakfast, lunch, and dinner were no longer applicable since they ate whatever was available and at sporadic times throughout the day—the sound of an approaching vehicle made him leave the relatively cool shade of the barn and step outside.

Sure enough, Ken’s truck was heading their way. It was kicking up a great deal of dust, and it took Jason a minute to realize that it was weaving as it came up the road. The added dust was coming from the tires hitting the gravel and dirt that bordered the country road on both sides. Jason broke into a run. He knew that all it would take was for the tires to go just a bit too far on one side or the other and that pickup would be dropping into that deep ditch that ran along either side of the road.

“What is it?” Juanita asked as his jog shifted into a sprint and he dashed past the garden where a few of the community’s residents were working.

“Ken’s back, and something is wrong!” Jason called over his shoulder.

His voice obviously carried, because the sounds of tools being dropped and other people rushing after him came an instant later. By the time he reached the gate, the pickup had actually rolled to a slow crawl. Jason saw Ken alone in the cab. There was no sign of the brother and sister that had accompanied him. He suddenly felt guilty that he could not recall their names. He reached the gate and vaulted over.

The door to the truck opened and Ken fell out, hitting the ground hard and then sliding into the ditch. As Jason reached the man, he searched for, but saw no signs of blood. That was a relief until he reached Ken and rolled him over onto his back. He was almost blue. Putting a hand to the man’s face, he felt little to no breath, and he was not even sure it was breathing he did feel as much as it might be from the gentle summer breeze.

Leaning down, he searched the man’s throat for a pulse and did not find one. He unzipped the man’s jacket and then tore open his shirt. Using his fingers to find the bottom of the ribcage where the xiphoid process would be, he gave it a good four fingers of space and then placed his palm on the man’s chest and began compressions.

After the first series of ten compressions, he leaned down to place his ear on the man’s chest. Still nothing. By now, Juanita and some of the others arrived. Jason looked up at the woman.

“I need your help. I could do it, but…” His voice trailed off and he flushed. “Look, after I give the next compressions, I want you to give him two breaths.”

With that, Jason returned to his task. He wished that he actually knew how to perform CPR properly. He would have to wing it and hope that it worked. As he finished his next series of compressions, Juanita tilted Ken’s head back, plugged his nose, and opened his mouth with her thumb before leaning down and administering two full breaths. They did this for three more tries and Jason once again listened to the man’s chest. He thought he might have felt or heard something, but he couldn’t be sure.

He went through the ten compressions again and just as Juanita finished the second breath, Ken moaned. Unfortunately, that had the effect of causing everybody to scramble or jump back in fear. After all, the man was nothing close to normal flesh tone with his blue tint. When Ken muttered an obscenity, everybody instantly relaxed.

“Ken said a naughty word,” Gabriel whispered, causing everybody to let loose with a little nervous laughter as the tension had not yet fully subsided.

“Yes he did,” Erin agreed. “We can punish him later.”

“Later?” Ken moaned. “Feels like somebody hit me in the chest with a baseball bat.” He shielded his eyes and squinted up at Jason. “Was that you, convict?”

Jason nodded. “Umm, yeah. Juanita and I gave you CPR…I think.”

“Well, thank you. I imagine that you saved my life,” he managed around a few winces and groans, his voice a barely audible whisper.

“You’re welcome,” Jason said with a nod.

“That don’t mean we’re gonna be drinkin’ buddies or anything,” the man added after Juanita had accepted a canteen that somebody offered and given Ken a sip.

“Never thought that it would.”

Jason rose to his feet and moved back a few steps. He had a few people step in and give him a hand picking up the man and moving him to the rear of the truck. He was briefly aware and only a little disappointed at the apparently meager amount of goods that had been scavenged and loaded into the truck. Barely enough to make it worth the precious amount of gas that had been used. Not to mention the fact that Ken had returned without the brother and sister.

Once they got to the barn and got Ken situated and comfortable, the man related the story of what had happened and why he had come back alone.

***

Ken pulled up to the duplex and shut off the truck. Turning to the pair beside him, he made a point to take a breath before speaking. These two were acting like this was a damned field trip. That was a good way to end up dead…or worse.

“Okay, see the gray house?” He pointed and the pair both nodded enthusiastically. “That is our first target. We go in and make the kitchen and bathrooms the top priority. Understand?”

Again they nodded, and everybody piled out of the cab and into the street that was already throwing back some good heat as the sun rose to its midday apex. Stepping over a corpse that was rotting in the street, he did not fail to notice that it looked as if the body had been nibbled at. Somebody had put a bullet in this thing’s forehead. He could even make out the traces of burnt flesh around the entry hole.

He found that to be somewhat strange considering the fact that they had seen plenty of animals come out of the woods and fields in the past several weeks. None of them had shown any interest in the corpses of those who had once been zombies.

Walking up the path to the front door, Ken scanned the windows. Over the course of events, it had been discovered that most zombies made their way to a window sooner or later. They were filthy and left some nasty smears on the glass. None of the windows in the front of the house showed any signs of the undead, and he tried the doorknob. It was locked, but he quickly produced a metal device that Jason had fashioned and popped the lock with ease.

Pausing at the entry, he took a sniff. It was musty and there was a hint of rot, but nothing to indicate that a zombie might be present. The kitchen was through an archway on the right as they hurried up the narrow corridor. It was not a very good haul. Obviously these people had either taken what they could carry or, and this was a possibility that Juanita pointed out one day, maybe they were just at the end of a cycle before shopping. After all, who kept everything stocked at all times? Most people went to the store, loaded up, and then went back in a week or so as things began to run low, leaving the spur of the moment items that they really had no use for like the cans of garbonzo beans that seem to appear in every cupboard.

It did not take much longer than an hour to search the house and pick everything that they needed. On three separate occasions he had to tell either Chris or Jerri to quit poking through drawers. Clothing was not a priority.

Just as they exited the house and were about to hit the other half of this duplex, Ken caught the scent of the undead. He held up his hand to silence the droning whispers being exchanged between his cohorts. Thankfully, they both hushed in an instant. Ken even heard the familiar rasp of weapons being drawn from leather sheaths.

The sound was coming from the row of hedges that separated the driveway of this half of the duplex from the driveway of the house that was their next target after they tossed the garbage bags of the stuff that they had gathered into the back of the truck.

Ken was about to lean down, thinking that the sound was coming from a zombie that was unable to stand or walk. He’d seen plenty of that sort, so this was no big deal. Then the Pit-bull crept from the brush. It showed no signs of being bitten, but its eyes were that hideous milky white with the black tracers. Ken instantly thought of the body in the street he’d seen that had been picked at by something.

The realization came as he brought his machete down on the animal’s head to end it; there was nobody around to feed these poor creatures. Their domestication would lead to their demise, but when forced with starvation, picky eating goes by the wayside—his steady diet of those aforementioned garbonzo beans standing as testimony to that fact. This was further evidence that dogs were apparently able to contract this same horrible infection or disease or whatever the hell it was that had taken down humanity.

He had passed other animals, many dead by now as nobody showed up to feed the poor things. Up until now, he had not seen a single animal as a zombie since what he had hoped was a fluke with that dog after Rose died. This discovery was upsetting to say the least.

After unloading their bags into the truck, the three of them went to the next house. The windows were a filthy mess and he was still ten feet from the door when the terrible smell hit him.

“Can I do the door thing?” Chris asked.

At just over six feet tall and already showing obvious signs of weight loss as the Apocalypse Diet melted away the pounds, he was down to about two hundred and eighty pounds from his well over three hundred that he weighed when first arriving. Still, his round face and gap-toothed grin reminded Ken of Augustus Gloop from the old (and his mind only) film version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The kid was either an idiot, or that smile was frozen on his face. His dark hair was in need of some washing as it was starting to clump.

And then there was Jerri. She was the polar opposite of her brother. Where he was obese and terrible clumsy, she was slim to the point of skinny. The lack of food would have her down to nothing but a skeleton before much longer. Of course her breasts would not suffer, since they were so blatantly fake to the point of almost comical, considering how slight the rest of her body was by comparison. Where her brother had dark hair, Jerri had blonde. However, the lack of any beauty salons were taking its toll as the roots grew out to a more sandy and natural color.

The one feature that bonded the pair were the eyes. They were a vibrant hazel that had flecks of a golden color swimming in them. That…and the constant smile. Both of them were always smiling like they knew some wonderful secret. Personally, it annoyed Ken to no end.

Ken did not like the idea of following Tweedledee and Tweedledummer into this situation, but they needed to learn. With a hint of trepidation, he stepped aside and let Chris lead the way.

The young man showed the proper caution at the door and turned with a huge grin after trying the doorknob and discovering it unlocked. He had turned the knob and opened it partway. That was when things went bad in a hurry.

A hand snaked out from the crack. It was just a foot or so off the ground, and Ken was the first to see it. Unfortunately, he could not shout the warning in time as Chris was already shoving the door open and preparing to enter.

He tripped over the arm and had the misfortune of his sister bumping into him and sending him sprawling forward. That actually shoved the door open the rest of the way. The good news was that the owner of the tiny arm did not weigh enough to keep the door from opening, and it lost its grip on Chris’ leg as he fell. The bad news came in the form of the five zombies that were stumbling into the hallway.

One of them, a man who looked like he spent every waking moment in the gym, was first to pounce. It flopped down on Chris, causing the young man to let out a pained “oof” as his lungs emptied of oxygen. Chris’ sister Jerri was no help as she screamed and started to back away, tripping in the process and knocking Ken back, preventing him from rendering assistance to the downed young man in the doorway.

Next came that horrible scream. Ken was just recovering, and in the act of stepping around Jerri, when he saw the second zombie fall on Chris. Its mouth latched onto the sleeve of his heavy leather jacket and tugged in futility. Unfortunately, the first zombie found the man’s face. More specifically, it found the meat just below the left eye. It clamped down and began to tear.

By now, the other three zombies pounced, and Chris all but vanished with the exception of his legs which pounded the ground furiously as the screaming kicked up another notch until one of the zombies obviously found his throat. There was a jet of blood that managed to squirt through the cluster of undead that were now pawing and tearing at the man.

Ken backed away as Jerri turned to him and screamed, “Help him!”

“He’s beyond any help, kid,” Ken said. He winced at the cold flatness of his voice as he stated the reality of the situation with appalling bluntness.

That answer was not good enough for the young lady. Her face twisted into a mask of fury as she ran to her brother’s aid. She grabbed one of his flailing legs and began to pull. There was another awful gurgle and one of the zombies tumbled away from the soon-to-be dead young man and landed on its side right in front of Jerri’s feet.

Ken backed away as the hands reached out for the woman’s ankles and grabbed hold. Jerri actually lucked out. At least that is the way Ken saw it as he continued to move away from the carnage. As she fell, her skull struck a huge concrete planter with some sort of tree that was a dried husk of its former self without the owners to water it. There was a thud and a snap. He only looked long enough to see the awkward angle that her head sat. Jerri’s eyes rolled back in their sockets and she shuddered violently once and was still before the zombie crept up her body and began to paw at her.

Reaching the relative safety of the pickup, Ken saw several of the undead emerging from the shadows, open garages and even a few front doors of the duplexes up and down this road. This had only been the second run on this particular community, obviously the undead had not been lured away by anything as of yet. As Ken started up the pickup, he hoped that most would follow him out through the arched brick entry. That would make future runs to this place that much easier.

As he drove away, he could not tear his eyes from the rearview mirror. He saw many of the undead clustered around the two bodies of Chris and Jerri. He should have never let that fool boy go first. Up until the very end, the boy thought that this was some immersive video game or some other equally ridiculous nonsense. In short, the kid had not taken it seriously and now he and his sister were dead.

At last he reached the highway when he felt something like a gunshot to his chest. His left arm went numb and he started to experience a double vision of sorts as his eyes watered terribly. Ken Simpson was no fool; he knew damn well that this was a heart attack.

His hands kept slipping on the wheel and everything went in and out of focus as the pain came in waves, each one more intense than the last. His air was driven from him as he struggled. He knew that he was as good as dead. He thought that he could see the blackened ruin of the house and the big red barn that was now his home along with Jason, Juanita, and all the others. If he could just reach the gate, then just maybe…

Ken’s eyes shut and his hand slipped from the steering wheel. Fortunately, his foot came off the gas pedal as well and the truck coasted to a stop.

***

“How is he?” Jason asked as he and some of the others came in from a day of working on the barricades.

“Grouchy!” Gabriel muttered.

This response received a few titters from everybody, but Juanita shot the boy a scolding glance and turned back to answer the question. “He seems like he is recovering okay. That slurred speech is actually fading. I think he will be back to normal in a few more weeks.”

“Normal?” Jason scoffed. “Then he is doing better than everybody else still alive, because I don’t think anything will ever get back to normal again.”

“You know what I mean.” Juanita brushed aside his comment. “He will be up and around again.”

“Well you can break the news to him that he won’t be working on any of the field crews.” Jason joined the rest of his work crew around the large wash basin to at least rinse some of the day’s grime from his hands and face before the meal.

“You do know this is an open barn and I can hear you,” a voice wafted down from above.

Jason wiped his hands and face on the towel and craned his neck to look up to the rafters of the barn where everybody slept and where Ken Simpson had been kept since his heart attack. “Yep, sure do.”

With that he headed over to the table, ignoring the muttered string of profanities that had Gabriel covering his mouth to stifle his giggles. One of their new and crowning achievements was a wood fired oven. Jason had spent three days on it, and today was the first day it was being put to use. Juanita had kept the kitchen area clear, insisting that she and the other three cooks wanted to surprise the group.

Looking around, Jason was amazed at how many people were now living here. In fact, a discussion was scheduled for tomorrow about perhaps setting a limit or making plans for what they could do to accommodate more.

In the books and movies, there were only a handful of survivors. In the real apocalypse, things were playing out very differently. They had not only taken in a fair number of survivors, but they had also encountered their fair share out in the wilderness of this new world. Some were fearful, some friendly, most simply made a passing acknowledgement and continued on their way. There was even a rumor of a community being built up at Timberline Lodge. That might be great for the summer, but if they survived the first winter, he would be very surprised.

At this morning’s count, they now had forty-one people living here. As of today, Gabriel was still the only child. Jason was not a fan of children, they could not really contribute, and as selfish as it might sound, everybody needed to pull their weight in these first months.

That brought his thoughts back to Ken. He had been the one to administer CPR, but since that day, he had actually found himself wondering if that was the right thing to do. There would be no after care. No special diet or anything else. And again, everybody needed to pull their weight. Would it have been such a bad thing to let the man die? If he lived for an extended period, but could do nothing more than sit around and consume the precious supplies they managed to scavenge or grow in the garden, then wouldn’t it have been better for the community if the man had been allowed to die on that road?

Normal? Jason thought. Things are never going to be normal again. We are going to have to make some tough choices ahead that would be unthinkable just a few months ago.

“Pizza!” Gabriel squealed.

Jason shook himself free of his morose thoughts and looked up as Juanita and the others who had put together this evening’s meal came to the table with round platters of a familiar treat.

That night, he tried to put away the darkness that was creeping into his thoughts and simply enjoy a meal with everybody. He made it a point to wander around and talk to as many people as he could. He told himself that he was not judging or gauging their worth, but simply trying to get to know them.

However, no matter what he told himself, he knew what he was really doing. One moment in particular would haunt him in the months to come. He was talking to a young man who had obviously spent a considerable time behind a desk and out of the sun. The man was a whiz with numbers, he always talked about spreadsheets and all he could do if he only had Excel to make things run smoother. When Jason asked him why he couldn’t do it with pen and paper, the man rambled and babbled on with what were, in his mind, nothing more than thin excuses. He glanced up to see Ken staring down. He made eye contact with Jason, and in that look, he knew very well that the older man was, whether he would admit or not, thinking many of the same things.

All Ken did was give a slight nod, but it was as if the man had been inside Jason’s head. This was the height of summer. The garden was producing, there was a stall stacked full of canned goods, improvements were being made to prepare the outer perimeter and make it not only zombie-proof, but also a deterrent to the living that might have mischief on their minds. Yet it could not be denied or avoided.

Winter was coming.

He knew he had read that line somewhere before, and he knew that it was actually written as some kind of ominous warning. And now, here he was, thinking those very same words and wondering how many of these smiling, laughing individuals would be here when the first buds of the next spring began to show.

17

Winter

Jason tromped through the snow. It was only a few inches, but the sky and the feel of the air let him know that things were just getting started. It was early, so everything was a dazzling white with just a hint of gray as the dawn broke. Large, fluffy flakes drifted to the ground, some swirling in the gentle wind that was making the chill seem just a bit more intense.

The dozen RVs were perhaps the only thing not under that blanket of white as the heat from within did its best to melt it all away for the most part. That had been a pretty damn good idea. Although, when they had first thought of it, they had planned for doubling the size of their community and brought in far more of the luxury vehicles than they thought they would need. Now people were doubling up. They had grown much faster than he could have ever imagined.

The vehicles were arranged in a giant square. There was an outer and inner ring along with catwalks and all sorts of things that were designed to aid in their defense should the perimeter fencing and defenses ever be breached. So far, nothing had come close. The zombies were simply not agile enough to climb the berms. Up to this point, they had not even seen a single one of the walking dead make it up, over, and into their trench. Humans had been another story, but none had come in numbers able to really pose a threat to this burgeoning community. Jason was actually very proud of what they had managed to create over these past months.

The first stirrings of people waking and preparing for what would be another grueling day were just being heard. Above it all was Ken’s voice.

“Dammit, Juanita, I don’t need to be dressed up like a four-year-old. I can do this myself!”

Jason smiled, feeling his cheeks crinkle as they shifted under the frigid air that, according to the large, round thermometer, was an icy nine degrees. For Oregon, that was akin to being in the Arctic Circle. The weather simply did not make a habit of plummeting to temperatures of that nature very often.

“We had some activity last night on the back side of things,” Erin said as she fell in step with the man.

Actually, that was his destination. He’d already been made aware of this latest attempt by some small marauding gang of what were now referred to as “Wasters” due to everything outside of their little realm now being referred to as The Wasteland. It certainly seemed fitting.

Jason’s last trip outside the fences a few weeks ago had shown him a world that he could have never envisioned. Buildings burnt and falling over, vehicles starting to settle into their final resting places as tires lost their air. The bodies of the truly dead in varying stages of rot and decay littering the landscape and bringing out all sorts of vermin. Next spring was going to pose some problems as all manner of disease would likely be spawned from the abundance of rotting corpses.

Today was a big deal. He and fifteen others were making a run to, of all places, a mall. He was torn between seeing the humor and being more than a little nervous. A mall was a big and dangerous place now more so than in those early days. They were havens for warring tribes of Wasters.

They were not actually going to the mall proper as their primary target. Actually, they were hitting a few locations around it that the newest additions to the community had sworn were largely untouched, along with what was designated as the priority target. That was another thing about the apocalypse; in the stories, people travelled along, little to no mention of re-supplying, and when they did, it was always some magical cache of goods that would appear at the worst of times just as things looked bleak. That was almost the situation here at what was now just known as The Compound.

Game was scarce for whatever reason, and canned goods were running low enough that the latest report was that there was maybe enough for four days if they watered everything down and gave out minimal portions. They had felt so confident that they had scavenged enough when the last of the fuel had been used up. They did not count on the fact that their population would continue to grow; or that all that hard, physical labor required a regular infusion of energy in the way of protein to fuel the body.

“It is a small warehouse complex,” the new arrivals’ spokeswoman had explained. “I was a shipping clerk for the place. The reason nobody has hit it is because it is just a few long buildings with no sort of signage out front. However, this was the overflow warehouse for the local Costco. As you can imagine, that store was emptied long ago, but this overflow warehouse just down the road is stacked.”

Of course that had instantly raised a flag for Jason, Erin, and Ken. “Okay, so why didn’t you hit the place?” Jason had asked.

“Because there is a group of people that have turned it into their home. They are dug in pretty good and keeping a low profile.”

“So we are raiders now?” Erin asked. However, there was not so much anger in her tone as acceptance.

“If we don’t find something soon, we are gonna start running into serious problems,” Ken said in his matter-of-fact tone. “Maybe we can work out a deal with these folks.”

“They don’t do deals,” the woman said with a darkness in her voice that made all three of them turn their full attention her direction.

“Okay,” Erin finally gave a wave of her hands to indicate that the woman needed to spill what she had not been coming out with up to this point, “out with it.”

“The man running the place is my ex-husband, Larry Ralston.”

That statement just hung in the chill morning air like the ghostly vapor coming from everybody’s mouths and nostrils. It was said with a certain degree of bitterness and open hostility. That gave Jason pause. However, Erin was a bit more practical.

“You guys didn’t split on good terms?” Erin prodded.

“He was the foreman and warehouse supervisor. I was the last person in the place to find out that he was nailing some damn college girl who was working there for the summer,” the woman spat.

“Okay, we will check it out,” Erin had said. “You will give us the address and basic directions, but you won’t be going on this run.”

The woman started to protest, but Ken shut her down. “We don’t have a democracy here. And you might be setting us up, or, even worse, you might be tempted to do something stupid. That means that you and your people stay here in isolation until our group gets back. Three days out, three days back. Five days leeway for any problems that will occur, and if they don’t make it back, you are sent on your way with the clothes on your back and no supplies.”

“But—” the woman had started to argue. Now it was Jason’s turn to cut her off.

“I will be leading this run, and if it smells bad, I will simply return home and we will kick you and your little group out on your asses. But if this is a trap and we bite it, then we are dead and you are just out all of your supplies.”

This was the standard operating procedure anytime they brought in a group that “knew” about some treasure trove of supplies and wanted somebody else to do the dirty work to obtain it. Twice, the people had simply shouldered their packs and left. Once, they had been taken up on the deal. It had led to an unassuming trailer beside the Clackamas River that a group of seven men had turned into a small outpost. The thing was, they would pretend to trade with passers-by, and then allegedly sneak out after whoever they did business with (provided that they were a small enough group) and then kill everybody and reclaim not only their own goods, but any supplies their target might possess.

That had been right around the end of summer and actually accounted for a very nice haul. It had taken three weeks to get everything brought back, and in the process, they discovered that it was not exactly worth the hard work. Between the supplies consumed on the run (you could not skimp if you were going to be out in the Wastelands) and the two people they lost—both in the attack and resulting firefight, neither to zombies—they figured that the net gain was only just a bit more than they had spent in field supply load outs.

Even if you could count on some degree of foraging, which, the rule of thumb was that you could not count on any at all these days, the haul had to be very well worth it. The thing that tipped the scale was that this place reportedly had a pair of old UPS vans that still worked. They had treated gasoline that was still useable, and at a bare minimum, they could expect to be able to make three trips there and back with both vehicles. The woman insisted that three trips would almost empty out the warehouse in question.

“Maybe we put this run on hold,” Jason finally suggested as he and Erin reached the sentry tower where the night’s activity had been reported.

“If we do, people will start going hungry.” Erin started up the ladder to where the person on watch waited, staring down at them while rubbing his gloved hands together and blowing.

“People are already going hungry,” Jason blurted, not realizing until he opened his mouth that he had fallen into Erin’s trap.

“Exactly!” she called over her shoulder as she hauled herself over the rail and onto the platform.

“I really hate when she does that,” Jason grumbled.

At last, the three people stood cramped in and close on the covered watch tower’s platform. The man repeated his account, obviously having it down to the pertinent facts by now after what was likely his fourth or fifth re-telling.

“But none of them came close or tried to tests the perimeter?”

Erin had heard the same story Jason had heard. They had stayed about twenty or so yards away, often ducking in and out of the woods that bordered the property on this side. He saw his own annoyance mirrored on the man’s face as he answered to the negative.

“I say we double the magazine load out for all tower watch sentries and also put five rovers on the track instead of the usual two.” The “track” being referred to was a five foot wide raised path that ran along the interior of the fence line, allowing whoever was walking on it to see out over the berms. Fires were lit every night in specific locations outside the fence in the cleared area to allow sentries to have a better chance of seeing approaching humans or zombies. “Have them double back at their discretion to keep it random and keep prying eyes from finding a pattern. Hold a meeting today to make the changes and post the new watch bill by lunch time.” Jason glanced at Erin who nodded her agreement.

With that, the pair headed back to the main grounds and Jason accepted his field pack for the trip. He really did not want to do this. He credited it to all the books and movies, but he had a bad feeling, and that always meant disaster.

Ken and Juanita were among those there to see him and his team off. Ken was bundled up worse than the Randy character from A Christmas Story. Juanita and Cherry had taken it upon themselves to act as the man’s nurses. His condition was worsening as the cold really set in and took hold of things. The newest problem seemed to be what was likely a bout with pneumonia. Still, Ken had insisted on seeing this group off.

“Hey, convict,” the man coughed, summoning Jason over and making a point of brushing off both women so that he could speak with Jason at least semi-privately.

Jason walked over and stopped. Despite all that had happened, and even the fact that he had saved the man’s life those weeks back, their relationship had never warmed up. His calling Jason “convict” was no term of endearment. It was Ken’s way of reminding the man of how they supposedly differed. There had been no long talks where they got to know each other and discover they had more in common than they realized. That worked great in fiction, but the truth was that neither man really liked the other. Period.

“Look, I hate to ask you, but I know your type have a code against tellin’ so you are really my only hope.” Jason gave the man his best bored stare. Inside, he wanted to just punch the man in the face. “If you find a bottle of whiskey…a small one even, and could bring it back to me?”

Jason waited; this was normally the part where they would say something about how they would “owe ya one” or some other sentiment. Instead, Ken leaned back and eyed the man with pursed lips.

“Sure. Whatever.”

Jason turned and walked away. He passed Gabriel sitting on the hood of a defunct car on his way out. The kid had a bright red ball in his hand and both Imp and Stupid were staring up at him with rapt attention, waiting for the next throw. The kid waved. Jason nodded and pulled his knit cap down over his ears. His feet were already starting to feel numb.

Yep, he thought, this run is gonna suck.

***

Jason slipped up beside the building and held his breath. The voices were louder now. Whoever this was, they obviously did not care about making noise. He could understand that out in the boondocks where they lived, but here, close to the city on what had once been 82nd Avenue, a main strip lined with business of every type back when Portland was alive, the living and the undead had a presence. They had seen more than their fair share of both since arriving in the area.

He pointed to the two bundled figures across from him that were crouched low behind a snow covered hedge and a sign that had all the actual signage busted out and indicated for them to hold and cover his back. They nodded and he imagined they were probably more than happy to oblige.

They had come over what used to be Interstate 205 and been greeted by a half dozen bodies hanging from nooses at each end. It had not been lost on Jason that they were all men, and that they’d all been stripped from the waist down and their manhood rather unceremoniously removed.

Jason ducked low and used the hedge that ran parallel to the walkway as his cover. He was really glad, and not for the first time, that he lived in Oregon where plant life was abundant and a regular part of most business landscaping. Reaching the end, he could now hear the discussion taking place.

“…Larry said they are just a drag on resources and we have to let them go,” a young woman’s voice said. It was clear from her tone that this conversation was over and done in her mind.

Apparently the younger sounding woman with her was either ignoring the verbal cue or simply not ready to concede the point. “But they had that whole car full of supplies. They certainly brought enough that they can’t be called freeloaders.”

“And how do you think we continue to stay ahead of the game?” the other woman asked. “We do it by bringing in more than we use. It is called running at a surplus.”

“Yeah, well if Larry keeps killing all the newcomers—”

“Just the men,” the other woman corrected.

“Fine, if he keeps killing all the men, we are gonna be a tribe with a ratio of ten women to every man. That makes the pickings, rather thin. Have you seen some of those guys? Seriously.”

“And if you would pay attention, you would realize that we need more women for the genetic pools,” the second woman stated, seeming to basically ignore what the first one said.

Jason almost barked a laugh out loud. Apparently this mysterious “Larry” was not choosing his females based on their brains. Glancing over the hedge, he could see the two women.

Sure enough, one of them was more of a plastic surgeon’s construct than an actual woman. Her parka was unzipped to reveal more than ample breasts shoved up and together in some sort of bright pink Lycra top that was also partially unzipped. If he had to guess, Jason would peg her as having been a stripper in one of Portland’s many strip clubs. Her blond hair could be seen around the fringes of her knit stocking cap and even in cold weather gear, it was obvious that she was skinny. Not that all strippers were vapid wastes of human flesh, but he’d met enough to know that the smart ones were as rare as a vegan Republican from Texas.

The other woman was short. Unlike her friend who seemed to be more concerned about how she looked versus staying warm, this one was bundled from head to toe. She even had a scarf around her that she kept wrapped around the lower half of her face. He was surprised that it did not do much to muffle her voice as he had been able to hear both sides of their conversation quite clearly. Her dark hair stuck out from one of those caps that was in the shape of some cartoon character that he did not recognize. It was bright yellow and the flaps hung down in a way that Jason saw as being dangerous since they would allow for something (or someone) to grab them and jerk her head down or back.

The two women actually appeared to be standing watch. They were posted next to an old green car of some sort that was mostly covered with snow except for the area that had been brushed clean, presumably by them, and used to rest a pair of beverage containers that had steam trickling from them. The whole scene did not seem right to Jason, but he had to assume there was a method to such madness.

He turned to Erin. “Okay, I guess I will try to approach them?” He hadn’t really meant it as a question, but it had certainly come out that way.

“You do realize that they are probably bait,” Erin stated.

“I can feel that something is off, but I sure can’t figure out what.” With that, he shouldered out of his pack and handed over his rifle. He checked the pistol tucked into his belt and patted the handle of his machete as if seeking some sort of reassurance. He gave a hand sign to one of the other pairs and indicated where he wanted them to move towards. Once he was confident that everybody was in place, he stood up.

Once on his feet, Jason started walking towards the women. His first surprise came in just how fast they drew their weapons. He had not even seen the two assault rifles leaning against the car they were standing next to as they spoke. He certainly saw them now.

“You can stop right there, mister,” the dark haired one snapped.

Jason froze, but he also made a few more observations now that he was a bit closer. For one, the woman had brought the rifle to her hip, not her shoulder. While that sort of thing looked cool on screen, it made for lousy aim. If she was holding a shotgun, it wouldn’t much matter, but this was an assault rifle. Yes, she might hit him, but held to the shoulder at this range, a shot aimed center mass would almost certainly strike home. Second, she had amazingly beautiful eyes that were a striking blue that was in drastic contrast to her dark hair.

As for the one he currently called “Blondie”, she was holding her weapon, but it was thrust out in front of her like she might be more inclined to try and jab him with it instead of shoot him. Also, he could see a visible tremor. The gun was almost vibrating.

“I don’t want any trouble.” Jason put his hands up and came to a halt. “I just heard voices and…well…it’s been so long since I heard a human voice, ya know. I just—”

“Save it,” the dark haired one snapped. “You need to just turn around and find someplace else to crash. We ain’t got nothin’ here for you. And we don’t take in freeloaders.”

“I’m not a freeloader!” Jason insisted. He pointed to his pack. “I got food and stuff. I was just looking for someplace to stay until this damn snow clears out. I’m on my way to Salem. That’s where my family is…or, at least that is where they were. But I gotta go myself and see, know what I mean?”

“Listen, mister,” the dark haired one stepped forward, making it sort of clear to Jason who was running things at this location, “you don’t want to stop here, you—”

“You’re kinda cute…in a biker sort of way,” Blondie cooed, stepping up beside her companion, her gun still being held in a haphazard manner.

“Can it, Mercy,” the dark haired one hissed. “Trust me when I tell you, you don’t wanna stop here.” The woman looked Jason in the eyes and made her attempted warning as clear as she could.

“That wouldn’t have anything to do with them bodies hangin’ back at the overpass would it?” Jason asked casually.

The reaction that he received was very interesting. The dark haired woman’s lips tightened, as did her grip on her rifle which was now inching its way up to her shoulder. The blonde’s mouth had popped open to a surprised ‘O’ that indicated she might not be entirely clued in on how things were running in her camp.

“That is none of your concern, now please, do as I advised and just move on.”

By this time, the woman with the dark hair had her rifle to her shoulder. She meant business, and that was really the part that would haunt Jason. The woman was trying to save him. She knew that he would be “welcomed” in and then stripped of anything valuable and probably hung like the others.

She never heard the figure move up behind her, and only had a brief instant to register that she had been duped as a hand covered her mouth and the knife made its way across her throat. Blondie was taken down in much the same manner, however, for whatever reason, Jason forgot her almost as soon as he stepped over the body that was bleeding out in a crimson spray that made a mess of the almost pure white snow.

“Everybody move fast,” Erin hissed as she caught up and started towards the long building at the bottom of the gently sloped drive, making a point to stay down low and not actually cross or enter where she might be seen by anybody on top of the warehouse.

The lead group had already made their way around the back side of the small complex and cleared the roof of any possible lookouts. This was proved by the gray piece of cloth that fluttered from the cell tower situated on a lot that bordered the rear of this place. Jason and Erin waited until they spied a figure stand up on the roof of the building and wave a green flag. Actually, it was a green tee shirt tied to a golf club, but this was a time where you simply made what you needed out of what you had on hand.

The pair moved down the driveway and to the gate with four others. As soon as they reached it, Jason stood watch as Erin produced heavy cutters and snipped an opening into the fence.

“This is a terrible location,” Jason observed as they made their way through the hole. “The back side is all brambles, trees, and high brush that blocks your field of vision. You are at the bottom of a hill. I am surprised they lasted this long, and I can bet that, if it wasn’t us doing this now, somebody else would do it later.”

“Tell yourself whatever you need to, but let’s move,” Erin snarled. “I told you, things are gonna change. You have to be ready to adapt or you die.”

They reached the metal door. Jason held his breath as Erin reached down and tried the handle. He was only a little surprised when the thumb latch pressed down and the door opened with an audible click.

If Jason was surprised, then the man standing in the entry hallway between a door that likely opened to the warehouse proper and a window that showed some sort of office, was even more stunned. In the office, a woman sat at a desk with a book in her hand and a large binder of some sort open on the desk before her. Both were absolutely shocked into immobility.

The man recovered and was turning for the door just as Jason lunged and tackled the scrawny figure who looked like a cast off from Revenge of the Nerds. They landed on the concrete floor of that entry hall with a nasty thud. Jason quickly went about the task of slitting the man’s throat. Erin had her arm in the open window of the small office and was shoving it back so she could climb through as the woman seated at the desk fell backwards and got tangled in the chair she had just been occupying.

A moment later the six of them had hurried down the long hallway. Obviously these had once been offices of some sort. Now, they were bedrooms. The ones that were occupied had people at card tables in some cases, or asleep in sleeping bags in others. They had slipped into an obvious false sense of security or perhaps even a degree of boredom. Whatever the case, Jason was amazed at how easily they moved from room to room and executed its inhabitants.

He had shut off the emotional part of his brain. That was how he had managed to function during his criminal days where he embarked on more than a few home invasions. Of course, in those instances, he and his gang had a rule. Women and children were not hurt with the exception of what it took to restrain them. (He would learn later how much of a lie that was that he had managed to convince himself of as his victims testified in court and recounted their terror; many demonstrating the effect of an injury that might not be seen, but was very real none the less.) Nobody was ever killed in those days.

As he ended the life of a young man barely into his teens and the two young women who had been asleep in that room as well, he felt things try to slip in and bruise his conscience. His only defense was to picture Gabriel sitting there, waving to him as he and the others left. His mind painted a picture of a boy near starvation with hollow cheeks and an overly gaunt frame.

At last, they reached the end of the hallway and were faced with a pale brown door. They could hear an incredible ruckus on the other side. For a moment, Jason was certain that they had been discovered and that the group that was supposed to wait for their signal to rush in from the back had come early and been revealed. Then a heavy thud sounded as if something had physically struck the door he was now facing.

“Man! You suck!” somebody bellowed from the other side of the door. “That was right in your hands!”

They were playing a game, and that sound had obviously been a ball or something that hit the door. Jason turned to the others and gave the nod after confirming that this door was also unlocked. Almost in unison, everybody sheathed their blades and brought up a variety of rifles. Erin held up her hand and counted off.

One…two…three.

The door flew open and Jason charged in with his group on his heels. Unlike the sentries, all of the people with Jason had rifles at their shoulders as they scanned and located the next target. It was over so fast that it almost felt anti-climactic. Bodies were strewn about the concrete floor of the long warehouse. Some were still moving, and each of them was quickly dispatched with a blade.

The other team of six had come through the back door, cutting off retreat and taking down the few who actually had enough reflex to try and attempt an escape. Large hatches on the roof opened, and the four up top climbed down and did a walkthrough using the catwalk some fifty feet above. Once the “All Clear” signal was given, Jason set everybody to task.

Just as had been promised, a pair of large UPS trucks were parked just inside the rear bay. They were brought forward and the loading began. Standing beside Erin, Jason sighed and said, “Well, looks like we are the bad guys now.”

“You don’t get it.” Erin spun to face the man, her face an emotionless mask. “There is no black or white when it comes to survival…only varying shades of gray.”

***

Jason pulled up to the gate and waited for the person swaddled in winter gear to open it up, lower the handmade drawbridge that crossed the massive trench, and then wave them in. He pulled up as the person signaled him to stop before he was all the way over.

A handful of people emerged from some of the assorted cover that was in place around this main entrance; also, he looked up to see a rifle from the tower pointed directly at him.

“Hey, Jason,” Cherry said as she pulled back her hood and smiled.

“Glad to see that the new security protocols are being put in place.” Jason gave a wave to the person up in the tower. The person gave a curt salute, but the rifle never came down.

“Did everything go well?” Cherry asked as three armed individuals came forward with guns at the ready.

Jason watched them slide past the cab of the big, brown truck and make for the rear door. There was a pause as they set up in defensive positions at the rear doors to the cargo area, and then one person stepped forward and threw the doors wide, making certain to jump clear of the large opening. There was another pause before they moved in slowly and started to pull back some of the cargo. Once it was determined that the load was clear, the exact same procedure was repeated for the second van.

By nightfall, the vans had been completely emptied and all the goods were being inventoried. Jason stopped by Ken’s cubicle long enough to produce a pint of some generic brand of whiskey that he’d never heard of, but Ken accepted it like it was fine Kentucky bourbon. The next day, the man was found, dead in his bed with an empty container of pills still clutched in his fist. Jason noted that it was perhaps one of the first times (besides being the last) that he had seen Ken with an honest-to-goodness smile on his face.

Even more peculiar was the fact that the Golden Retriever was curled up on the floor beside the bed, tail thumping slowly when Juanita entered that morning to make the discovery. The dog stayed in the room until Jason and a few others came, wrapped the man up in a blanket, and took him out to one of the bonfires that sat in the clearing between the fence line and the trees.

This had actually been one of the first rules brought to the small community. It was suggested after a group of five that were barely able to walk when they arrived all died within an hour of being admitted. Since burying people was considered to be a waste of time and energy, everybody was asked to agree that his or her body could be taken to the bonfires in the event of death. It had seemed like such an odd thing, but most people saw the sense.

People had complained at first about some of the measures that had been decided upon by a handful of individuals, but as word continued to slip in about some of the conditions that people were being found out in The Wastelands, mouths shut and grumbling ceased; at least in any sort of public manner. Jason knew that people would always bitch and moan when they felt they had some sense of privacy.

As winter continued and the weather alternated between dreary and rainy, to clear as a bell and so cold it hurt your face, and then with a few more snow events mixed in just for good measure, the number of survivors that straggled in dropped dramatically. With them came tales of madness, inhumanity, and even a few examples of dramatic heroism. Many brought in stories of starvation and cannibalism.

While such things seemed like an impossibility to most of the folks living in this compound, they were certainly not ignored or dismissed by a small group, mainly Jason and a few of the others with knowledge of their own inventory and how precarious it had become until that warehouse run.

Even with that massive influx of supplies, things remained very tight as winter dragged on. The levels of depression rose with the degree of confinement, and more than once, either Jason or Erin, the de facto leaders of this little community, were called to deal with a body of somebody who had taken the steps to end their own life. One time in particular, that had almost ended in disaster as a person chose to slit their wrists.

The woman in question had been a bite victim that, like Gabriel, had not taken ill and turned. However, at some point after her suicide, she rose and wandered out of her little cubby/stall that made up her semi-private living quarters. Fortunately, she staggered out and bumped into one of the off going roving sentries who promptly stuck his blade into her temple and then went and woke Jason.

After that, there was a mandatory check-up of all residents. The biggest surprise was that they discovered three more individuals who had been bitten and were immune. They were noted in a security manual and it became part of the rovers’ routine to stroll by their little stalls. Perhaps that was why it was also no big surprise when one of the immune let loose with a scream one night that brought almost everybody in the compound running.

Star Walker was a pretty young lady who was one of the immune. At some point, as people allowed themselves to start to return to some sort of sense of normality, she became enamored with a young man named Arris Blom.

Known as “Arry” by everybody, Arris was blond with blue eyes and a square chin that looked like it might be carved from granite. He was a hard worker and his body was a testament to his physical endeavors both before, and now during the apocalypse. When he fell ill, Star kept him in her quarters and made excuses that managed to keep possible intruders at bay.

Unfortunately, when Arry breathed his last, Star had finally nodded off and woke to discover him standing over her with his eyes filmed over and riddled with the same tracers that she had tried to ignore. After his quick second death, the details came out and a long debate was held. The final verdict was that Star was to be exiled.

Her exile was not due to Arris Blom’s death, but rather her subsequent cover up when he began to show signs of the infection. She was never seen again, and most believed it was unlikely that she survived beyond a day or two out there on her own. Those that knew her best within the compound said that she was famous for doing a half-assed job and then sweet talking others into covering her poor performance. Arris was just the first unfortunate victim to have ended up sharing her bed. That was when it was decided that this infection could be spread by the immune to others just as any communicable disease might be transmitted.

After that, a committee was created and the slow process of building a government as well as establishing laws, rules, and penalties began. Like a cartoon snowball, it started small, but quickly began to balloon out of control.

By spring, things were ironed out as much as possible. It was a demonstrated truth that it was impossible to please everybody, and a few of the compound’s residents even left under protest when they disagreed with the “unfavorable and tyrannical direction” things were going by their accord during one of the many town hall meetings. More interesting was the fact that all but three of the seventeen dissenters who left returned within five days, saying first that perhaps they had been hasty in their decision, then finally admitting that The Wastelands were now full of unspeakable nightmares and that they would be thankful if allowed to stay.

During that first spring, a set of small apartment-like units were constructed under Jason’s watchful eye. But it was the sign that got the most attention. Above the entry gate was a carved wooden plaque. It read: Rose City.

18

“And so it goes…”

A crowd had gathered in the clearing. If somebody took the time to count, it is unlikely that anybody would be surprised to discover that six hundred and sixty-four people were present of the most recent census count of eight hundred and five. Of those not in attendance, some were on perimeter patrol, a job that had become more important as the zombies began to coalesce into herds—some rumored to number in the hundreds of thousands, if not the millions—and others were part of bare bones staffing in many of the jobs that could not simply be shut down for the day. Of course, there were always a few who simply wanted no part in such things.

As the morning fog lifted and a single shaft of sunlight broke through, there was a small murmur, and even a smattering of applause from a few more sentimental types. The rain of the past several days had done wonders for the crops that had been planted over the past couple of weeks. However, if asked, it is likely that most would agree that a bit of sun was preferable for today’s proceedings.

A young man in his late teens stepped up onto the small platform that had been hastily assembled once it had been agreed that this would likely be an event that most residents of Rose City would wish to attend. The young man brushed back a lock of brown hair from his eyes and shuffled through a few pages of notes hastily written on the hemp paper that nobody seemed to be able to get enough of these days. It had actually reached a point where limits were placed on how much a person could “buy” at a time to ensure that as many residents as possible were allowed some of the precious material.

To say that the young man looked uncomfortable would be a gross understatement. He was much more comfortable when he was out on a hunting party to bring back meat for the community. In those times, he could range out alone where he lived with his thoughts. To him, that was simply the environment of choice. He loved the woods of the Pacific Northwest; heck, he even enjoyed wandering The Wastelands from time to time.

Here, at this moment, he was as out of his element as an individual might ever be, yet, he had insisted on doing this. When suggestions were made to the contrary, he simply shook his head and maintained, “This is mine.”

A sea of expectant faces looked up at the young man and a hush fell over the crowd. These were never easy, and this one was especially difficult for some of the old timers. They all remembered the days when something like this, something so tragic, could easily be avoided.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the young man began. Those words silenced the last remnants of whispered conversations that might still be taking place in the crowd. “We are gathered here to say our farewells to a man you all knew, and that many of you loved. Jason Edwards is dead at the age of forty-six. He died, as many of you know, from complications due to an infection he received from a cut suffered while on a run in The Wastelands.

“And so it goes…once more we are reminded of our own fragility in a world that lacks conveniences that many once took for granted. In the eleven years since the establishment of Rose City, we have lost too many brothers and sisters of this community to things that were not even given the briefest of considerations.

“Let Jason’s death be mourned, but let it also be a reminder that we must always be alert for dangers where we least expect them. As he has said so often, we are not—”

“Out of the woods yet,” a chorus of voices spoke in unison, almost drowning out the voice of the speaker.

This spontaneous outburst sent a ripple of laughter through the otherwise somber crowd. It also seemed to allow the young man the chance to loosen up a bit and complete his eulogy. When he finished, a few others came forward with words for the crowd.

At last, the time came and a ceremonial torch was passed forward. The pyre was lit, and a thin tendril of smoke rose skyward. Over the next half hour, some individuals came forward and tossed a branch or twisted braid of dried vine onto the fire as had become the custom over the years.

At last, there remained only the young man and a woman who was just starting to show streaks of silver in her jet black hair. They stood huddled close with an arm around each other as the fire continued to burn.

“That was a very good speech, Gabriel,” Juanita said, giving the young man a squeeze.

“He would have hated it,” Gabriel chuckled. “Too many words.”

Again they let silence wash over them. They were standing that way then the alarm bells began to sound. From the pattern, it was the south wall, past the small shops that stood where a barn had once been. The entire community became a hive of activity as people rushed to their posts. An excursion team was already massing in the village square. Gabriel’s team was up today. He would have to hurry to the quartermaster’s shop and grab his gear.

Zombies were approaching.

“We ain’t out of the woods yet…indeed,” Gabriel sighed.

A moment with the author…

Welcome to the second of my DEAD: Snapshot—{insert town here} books. Of course, for those of you who just saw the cover and/or the title and thought it would be a neat way to pass your time and missed out on DEAD: Snapshot—Portland, Oregon, you will be fine. Each of these books are meant to be a stand-alone title. These books are set in the world that I created with my twelve book series titled DEAD. Book one is DEAD: The Ugly Beginning in case you have absolutely no clue who I am or what I am talking about.

So, the purpose behind the DEAD: Snapshot collection is to bring the zombie apocalypse to YOUR home. If you are a zombie fan, you have likely read plenty of the pop fiction out there. The thing is, I imagine you have wondered what would happen in your own neck of the woods should the zombie thing ever actually happen. I am lucky, since I write the DEAD (and Zomblog) series, I was able to use the Pacific Northwest as the setting for some of my work.

So, how do you bring the zombies to your front door? Simple. Just shoot me an email at twbrown.maydecpub@gmail.com with “I WANT THE DEAD TO TAKE MY TOWN” in the subject. Tell me about your town and why it makes for an interesting setting. I can’t promise, but if your town jumps out at me…it will experience the zombie apocalypse via my written word. If you can get a public figure interested…very cool. I will send the entire city council and the mayor or whatever you have their very own copy if they want to have a DEAD day or whatever. Remember, I pride myself on being accessible. I will Skype, Google Hangout, or whatever. That is part of being an Indi Author. Unlike some of the big names, we can actually interact directly with our fan base, and we will do just about anything to get our books into people’s hands.

Here is the fun part for me (and I recommend you perhaps give this a try while you read), I go to Google Earth when I write these stories. I zoom all the way to street level for some parts just to get a better line of sight and see what the characters are seeing. Of course, my brain has to add in the mayhem and destruction…as well as all the zombies.

As you read this book (and future editions of the DEAD: Snapshot {insert town here} series), I invite you to bring up Google Earth and locate some of these places. Get a feel for where I am taking you. Also, that may inspire you to check out your own location via Google Earth and see what I would see; you might even want to direct me to something specific in the event I pick your home to be the setting for an upcoming book.

For those of you who have never taken the ride that is my DEAD series, I do invite you to give it a shot. I can admit that I learned a great deal while writing those first three offerings (DEAD: The Ugly Beginning, DEAD: Revelations, and DEAD: Fortunes & Failures). I think my biggest improvements came in the “Vignettes” section. That was a case of a writer knowing what he meant to do, but not really having it succeed in the eyes of the readers. My idea was to offer these “snapshots” of the apocalypse all around the world. Sort of a palate cleanser in between the “Steve” story and the “Geek” story. What I ended up doing was putting in too many characters for people to really follow since most of the vignettes were one-timers or two at best. Of course, that being said, I have one story from the Vignettes that lasted through all twelve books.

You won’t find any of that here. In the Snapshot series, you get a main story in a central location. Sure, you may have a few characters to follow, but the story stays focused. I hope that you enjoy these tales, and I look forward to “travelling” to various places as I bring my vision of the zombie apocalypse to the rest of the world.

And now for a few words of thanks: this book would not be what it is without my Beta Readers. This crew helped me make it better by catching my many errors. Even better, I had a couple that were from the region where this book takes place. You might think that, since we all speak English, we are pretty much the same. Nope. And I owe a ton of thanks and gratitude to my friends across the pond that helped me with slang and even corrected me on what you might find in a pantry over in Merry Old England. So, to Vix Kirkpatrick, Melena Duff, Caron Hirst, Kary Lawrence, Niamh Clancy, Heather Burns, Dawn Spengler, Jeff Shoemaker, and Nelson Wilbanks, my most heartfelt thanks. Seriously, you made this a better book and there is always a space on my grill for an extra steak if you are in the area. To the men and women who keep us safe in the Armed Forces as well as our local police, fire, and medical personnel, not only do you have my thanks, but I am sure almost everybody else that you serve each and every day. To my wife, thank you for everything you do every single day to support me as a writer…even when I am ready to throw in the towel. My last thanks is for you. Without you buying this book, this world does not exist. By you reading this book, you give the characters in it their life and soul. You also allow me to do what I love for a living. If somebody would have told me that I would be an actual author for a living…I would have told them to quit blowing sunshine up my nethers. Yet…here I am. So thank you. You made a person’s dreams come true just by reading this book. How often do you hear that?

For King and the law!

TW Brown

September 2015

For Simon

Contents

The Dead Walk

Human Filth

Join or Die

Terrible Things

A New Leaf

Running

Choosing

Through Jaded Eyes

Verdicts

Settling In

Staring Over The Edge

Meeting

Point of No Return

Bait

Face Off

Sound Travels

Closure

Epilogue

1

The Dead Walk!

Shadiyah Kasim looked from the window of her flat on the ninth floor of the Clyde Court Towers. Everywhere she looked, it was the same nightmare. Fires still burned and there would be no services to put them out. Groups of the undead could be seen stumbling around the streets. On occasion, she could see a living person on the move.

It was always easy to tell the difference. The dead moved along with little to no deviation from their course until whatever it was that caught their attention would send them off on a new tangent. The living moved in fits and starts.

And the living ran.

Thank God that the dead did not run. While she was not terribly out of shape and had tried her best to hit the treadmill at the gym at least a couple of times a week, the dead did not tire, and if they had the ability to run, humanity would have fallen in the first week.

Not that the human race had fared all that well, Shadiyah thought.

“Anything, Shaddi?” a voice called in a hushed whisper causing her to pull away from the window.

Shadiyah’s sister Assi, sat on the floor clutching her doll to her chest. A few months ago, that would have looked ridiculous. Assi had the thick, black hair of their Lebanese mother. It hung down to the middle of her back and usually had an amazing luster and shine. Now, it looked dull, flat, and tangled. Her large eyes were rimmed in red from the endless crying. She looked like she would not likely share in the ample breasts that their mother had passed on to Shadiyah. Assi was slender and had the perfect figure of a tomboy. Right now though, Assi was acting in an uncharacteristically girlish manner as she clutched that worn out ragdoll to her chest.

Assi was fifteen and past the age of dolls. However, Shadiyah could forgive the girl considering all that had happened. On reflex, her eyes flicked to the dark stain that was dried and now a part of the living room wall like some hideous sort of New Age artwork.

Her father had brought the sickness into their home. Of course, when it had happened, nobody had any idea what would occur within those next horrific hours. She shoved the memories from her head and returned to the situation at hand.

They needed food. As of yet, the water had not been shut off, but she knew that was just a matter of time. Already, when she looked up at night, she saw large sections of the city appearing as black stains on the landscape. It was like watching the tide roll in and knowing that her sandcastle was going to be washed away no matter how hard she might try to prevent it.

“Assi,” Shadiyah knelt in front of her sister, “I need to go out and get—”

“NO!” the girl shrieked, causing Shadiyah’s eyes to flick to the front door. Not more than twenty minutes ago, something had been scratching at it from the other side.

“Shh!” She covered her little sister’s mouth with a hand. “You need to stay silent, and you need to understand that we have to stock up on as much water as possible while we wait for somebody to come rescue us.”

Assi looked up with tears brimming over the cusps of her eyes. She clutched the doll even tighter to her chest and snot bubbled from her nose, causing Shadiyah to flinch. As soon as she did, she could not fight back the bitter laugh that burst forth.

Here she was, unsettled by a little snot after everything that had happened in the past few days. She glanced at her hands; the blood that had dried under her nails and left them stained black was only a small piece of the whole puzzle.

“Can you keep quiet?” Shadiyah asked as she rose to her feet. Her sister nodded. “I will be as fast as I can, but we need to get as much bottled water as possible. While I am gone, I need you to fill the filtered pitchers. Can you do that?” Again, Assi nodded. “And don’t open the door, no matter what you hear out there. I have the key and will let myself in. If I knock and tell you to let me in…” She let that statement hang as an invitation for her sister to respond and confirm that she understood.

“Then that means somebody bad has you and is forcing you to bring them here,” Assi said with a sniff.

There were more than a few unsavory types living in the towers. Shadiyah had added this last precaution after hearing something terrible happen down the hall a couple of days ago. From the sounds of it, she thought that it might be that nice family from India that had recently moved in. Whoever it was, the screaming, begging, and crying had gone on for hours.

She had scoured the house for anything that could be used as a weapon and happened upon something under her father’s bed that she’d never seen before. It was a black leather case, but inside was a magnificent curved sword. Its handle looked to be of carved ivory and had a lion’s head at the end of the hilt.

There was also a letter with a fancy gold seal that spoke of her father as being some sort of hero in the Lebanese Army. She hadn’t even known that he had served.

She had pulled out the weapon, half expecting it to be nothing more than a decorative piece, but when she cut her finger on the blade, she discovered otherwise. Besides being tremendously sharp, the weapon was also surprisingly sturdy.

Shadiyah slung the leather belt over her shoulder and picked up her sister’s school backpack. When she stood, she saw her reflection in the mirror that was mounted on the wall by the arch next to the front room door. She paused to take in what she saw.

Before all this insanity involving the dead returning as zombies that hungered for the living, she had worked in an opticians shop. Every day, she had put on her makeup, dressed nice, and then hopped on the bus. Her wavy hair had always been kept long, and despite how much her mother complained that such personal vanity was inappropriate, Shadiyah went the extra effort to straighten her thick black locks.

Now, her hair was a nest of unruly curls that had not seen a brush for over a week. She had not even thought about such frivolous things as makeup since the day her father had risen and killed their mother in this little apartment. Yet, and she could not help herself, her big dark eyes and feminine curves still shown through, hinting at the beauty hidden under the dirt and grime. Shadiyah knew from an early age that she was pretty. Not just because her parents said so; that was a parent’s duty. No, she began noticing how the boys looked at her, how even some men would turn as she passed.

She had dreamed of becoming a model. However, when she had stopped at a small agency one day on a whim, she had seen those dreams crushed. Yes, she was easily as pretty as any of the girls sitting or standing in the lobby. However, at barely five feet tall, she was lacking in height.

“Perhaps you might consider acting,” one of her friends had whispered that day.

Shadiyah shook herself free of those memories. She needed to be focused on the here and the now. Letting her mind wander would be an invitation to becoming one of those things. The news had made it very clear in the end: a bite or scratch from one of the undead would result in the wounded individual becoming another member of the growing horde within seventy-two hours.

Stopping at the front door, she glanced back at her sister again. Assi had actually moved to the couch. She still had that ridiculous doll clutched to her chest, but at least she’d gotten up from the floor.

Being as careful and as quiet as possible, Shadiyah turned the deadbolt and then opened the door a crack. If the smell inside the flat was bad, it was sickeningly overwhelming in the corridor. Opening the door a bit further, she could not help but pause to glance down at the bodies of her parents.

Squeezing out, she pulled the door shut behind her, used the key to lock the deadbolt, and then took in her surroundings. The long corridor looked like something from a bad horror film. There were bodies (or parts of bodies in many cases) strewn on the floor. Glancing down, she saw the corpses of her parents. Her father still only had the one bite on his arm; the bandage still clinging in places and stained black from the dried blood. The only other injury was where the ice pick still jutted from his temple. The last reports on BBC News had made it clear that only a traumatic strike to the brain could stop these abominations.

Three of the undead had met their end a few doors down, each of them having been beat to the point where their skulls had busted open and their brains splattered in wide arcs. Unfortunately, it looked as if the victor had also become part of the spoils. A man was seated against the wall, a cricket bat at his side. He had slit his wrists.

Unfortunately, that had not prevented the infection from the nasty rip on his right arm from taking hold. The man’s head lolled a bit as it turned her direction. Then, in bird-like fits, it slowly locked on to her and the man began to rise awkwardly to his feet. His eyes were filmed over, and in the poor lights from above, they almost looked as gray as his skin, minus the blue hints around the edges, The black tracers that riddled his eyes looked even darker, adding to the sinister menace this zombie presented as it stood, still clutching the bat in one hand.

Shadiyah had not seen or heard any reports about the zombies using weapons; yet, here one was, slowly staggering her direction with the bat in its hand. She gripped and re-gripped her father’s scimitar as the zombie made its slow progress towards her. When it was about ten feet away, it brought up its arms, reaching for her. In the process, the bat fell from its grip and clattered to the floor.

Shadiyah smiled and stepped in to attack. Her swing came in and connected just below the man’s temple. There was a jolt of pain as the vibrations down the blade reached the hilt. Instinctively, she let go of the weapon. The zombie collapsed to the floor and ceased to move.

Shadiyah took a tentative step forward and toed the corpse on the shoulder. When nothing happened, she moved in and worked her weapon free. She wiped the blade on the man’s pants and was reaching for the cricket bat when the door to her left opened. Leaping back, she brought up her blade and prepared to swing again. Already, her mind was telling her to be prepared for the shock of impact. She could not be dropping her weapon every time she hit one of those monsters. However, it was no monster that now stood in the doorway.

“Is that you, Shaddi?” an older woman’s voice rasped.

“Mrs. Raye,” Shadiyah breathed. “What are you doing out here?”

“I heard a fuss outside my door. I am tired of waiting for trouble to come knocking on my door and thought it was high time I ventured forth,” Henrietta Raye harrumphed as she stepped into the hallway.

The woman’s short gray hair was precise, her blush applied with perfection, and that familiar slash of bright red lipstick made a striking contrast to Shadiyah’s rumpled and unkempt appearance. The woman was actually wearing a brown paisley jumpsuit and a heavy looking gold necklace. She held a metal-tipped cane in her hand like it was a rapier. Her blue eyes glittered as she surveyed the hallway.

“You do realize what is happening?” Shadiyah asked.

Mrs. Raye had always been known as a bit of an eccentric. The rumor was that she was filthy rich but extremely miserly (which explained why she lived here instead of some posh flat in a much better neighborhood).

“From what they were saying on the telly, the dead are attacking the living like in those ridiculous old movies.” Mrs. Raye stepped forward and poked the zombie that Shadiyah had taken down with her cane. “And only a ding to the brain seems to be how you take them down.”

A noise from down the hall interrupted the moment and three more figures rounded the corner. Two of them were familiar to Shadiyah. They were part of the little gang of troublemakers that liked to skulk around the front of the building and say rude things to every female that passed.

“Nice to see that the universe spits back a bit of karma every once in a while,” Mrs. Raye scoffed when it was clear that the young toughs had been ripped into by zombies. One of them had his insides spooling out of a hideous rip in his ample belly. She thought he went by the name of “Hippo” or something like that.

The two women advanced on the trio of zombies and put them down with surprising quickness. Shadiyah was more than a little impressed at how the older woman brought the tip of the cane up and shoved it into the eye socket of Hippo.

“So, young lady,” the woman spoke as she wiped off her cane on the sleeve of the shirt worn by the zombie she had just dropped, “what finally brings you out of your house?”

Shadiyah shook her head and gave a shrug. “We are almost out of food. I thought it might be best if I gather some supplies before we become desperate.”

“I’m so sorry, dear,” the woman said with a slap of her hand on her thigh. “I saw your poor parents outside the door. I am being terribly insensitive. As for the food, where do you think to go?”

“I figure I would go door-to-door on this floor first and see who answers. It can’t imagine we are the only ones left. Perhaps it would be a good idea to clear the floor and secure it?”

The older woman gave a nod of her head. “Good to see you are dismissing all that nonsense on the telly about making a run for the emergency centers. A friend of mine from America said that their government was doing the same thing, but reports were not too long in coming that those places are now a hive for the zombies as folks who came in infected have died and come back to attack all the people packed in like sardines. The panic only acted to make it worse and as many of the poor fools died in the stampede as fell to the zombies during the attempts to flee.”

Shadiyah was speechless. This woman was talking about zombies like it was no big deal. She had seen it firsthand with her parents and still had trouble accepting things for what they were.

“If we secure this floor and work our way up first, I think we can wait things out in this tower until everything is put in place,” Mrs. Raye said with a smack of her lips.

“You really think that things will be fixed?” Shadiyah winced at the plaintive sound of her voice. She’d been the strong one for her sister these past few days. Now, she just wanted to lean on somebody else for a while.

“I have to,” Mrs. Raye said, accepting the younger girl in a one-armed hug. “Otherwise I might as well just jump out my window and end it fast.”

Thirty minutes later, they had gone to the doors of the other residents on the floor. Only one person had answered: Cyrus Ivanoff, a man at least ten years older than Mrs. Raye and barely able to walk.

“Looks like everybody on this floor that could, made a run for it,” Mrs. Raye sniffed after they assured Mr. Ivanoff that he should wait in his flat, and that they would check in on him again very soon.

Shadiyah could not admit to being very surprised. She had seen the trickle of residents leaving with bags and suitcases when those first announcements had been made on the news. Supposedly, an emergency shelter had been established at the Wortley Recreation Grounds. Army units had come in and erected a fence as well as large tents. She imagined that the idea was to try and keep as many people together as possible in order to allow them all to slip into some sense of security which would prevent mass panic.

Not two days later, there had been a noise that took her some time to actually identify: Gunfire. That lasted for about five minutes before it became sporadic and eventually stopped. By morning, several plumes of smoke could be seen rising from the west in the direction of the obviously failed shelter.

There had been other locations in the area, but that one was the largest. That also marked the day of the last broadcast on the television or the radio. The speed in which things happened in the end had been sudden.

“Perhaps we should gather what we can first before going up,” Shadiyah suggested to Mrs. Raye.

Assi had been alone for almost an hour. It would be a good idea to bring in some food and check on her before moving on. Mrs. Raye shrugged and they returned to the first flat they had checked. The door had been locked, but Mrs. Raye proved to be full of surprises as she scuttled back to her flat and returned with a small black case. In moments, the lock had been picked and the two were inside and loading up a few bags with anything that they could find.

They returned to find Assi standing at the window. The girl did not so much as acknowledge their presence. Shadiyah tapped her on the shoulder and had to finally physically take her sister by the shoulders and turn her around.

The click of the door closing made Shadiyah turn around to discover that her elderly cohort had decided to exit. She huffed in frustration and then returned her attention to her sister.

“I brought food!” she tried to say with as much cheerfulness as she could muster.

The truth was that she wanted to slap the girl. Yes, things were terrible, and yes, she had witnessed the death of their parents, but it had been Shadiyah who had been the one to put them both down. She’d been the one to have to grab their father by the hair and yank his head back as the man ripped out their mother’s throat.

Assi had remained curled up in a ball on the floor of the hallway and gone into hysterics. She had done nothing to help put their parents to rest, much less offer a hand to carry them out to the hallway when they began to smell so bad that it was impossible to keep them wrapped in a blanket on their bed and wait for somebody to come take them away.

“Look, little sister,” Shadiyah walked up and put her hand on Assi’s shoulder, turning the girl to face her, “I know this is horrible. I know it feels like a nightmare, and you just want to wake up, but that isn’t going to happen. This is…”

She looked out the window at the tendrils of smoke rising from several locations. This was a living nightmare; there was no doubt about it. However, the emphasis needed to be on the living part. She was not ready to just give up.

Sure, it looked as if the people in power had let this get away. There had been all the talk about how there was nothing to be alarmed about, and that things would right themselves soon enough. When the “zed” word began popping up, it had been shouted down and ridiculed.

There had been some American doctor that was on television over and over talking about how this was all a bunch of juvenile nonsense. Shadiyah still recalled her last transmission where it was clear that she was now one of the infected. At least she had finally admitted her error.

Shadiyah laughed. Assi’s head twitched and the younger girl peered up at her sister with confusion making its way through to at last give her some semblance of an emotion on her face.

“What is so funny?” her little sister asked.

“Just remembering…” Shadiyah paused, she had a chance to hopefully pull her sister out of being almost as visibly alive as those walking corpses she’d just put down. “Just thinking that I bet Miranda Wood is probably crying about not being able to get her hair done. At least now we will see what color it really is.”

Assi’s face actually seemed to brighten just a shade. Obviously that had been the right thing to say. Of course, now that Shadiyah thought about it, she was wondering how the self-important little bitch was holding up.

Miranda Wood was eighteen going on thirty-five. She had long hair that came all the way to her waist, and less cleavage than a twelve-year-old boy. She had skin the color of milk that was so translucent that you could see the blue veins running underneath. Yet, despite all that, she was sickeningly pretty; even worse, she acted like she knew everything. The only thing rumored that she knew for sure was how to trade giving a bloke a hand job in exchange for a few pounds that she would quickly spend on clothes and having her hair dyed a different color almost every month.

As loose and slutty as Miranda Wood was known to be, her older brother more than made up for it in his squareness. He was supposedly about to become a member of the West Yorkshire Police Force. Simon Wood was a tall man with his blond hair kept cut short and parted on the side. He had a runner’s body, long, lean, and lanky. He always looked so serious, and did not say much unless you spoke to him directly. Shadiyah assumed that had to be due to the fact that his sister was always striving to be the center of attention.

The two sisters ate in silence. When they finished a few tins of beef and some Super Noodles, Assi pushed her empty bowl away, lay down, turned her back, and pulled a blanket up over her shoulders.

Shadiyah scowled. Not for the first time, she had to resist the urge to reach over, yank her sister around, and slap some sense into the girl. After a few deep breaths, she cleaned up their small mess of disposable plates and utensils and then went back to the window to watch darkness fall on the city of Leeds.

It was just at that final few moments before the sun would dip down and plunge the world into darkness when the power went out for good. Because of the clouds, the world seemed even darker. Shadiyah could not even see the streets below.

Just as well, she thought. Only moments before, her eyes had been drawn to the rail tracks just to the south of the Clyde Court towers. A small mob of perhaps a hundred or so of the walking dead were moving along, headed in a southwestern direction. If she remembered correctly, the tracks bent due south and headed straight for those snobs in Cottingly.

In the darkness, Shadiyah found her way to the sofa and sat down. She drifted off to a mixture of the moans of the undead and the whimpers of her sister.

***

Waking to the sounds of somebody knocking on the door was bad; waking to the shrieks of her sister Assi was enough to make Shadiyah’s already foul mood just a bit darker. She got up, shot a glare at her trembling little sister that gave a clear message to be quiet, and then trudged to the door.

“We don’t want any.” She glanced over her shoulder and winked at Assi. The girl returned a nervous smile.

“Open the door, you little thief.”

“Mrs. Raye!” Shadiyah threw open the door and flashed a smile at the older woman.

“Came to see if you might be game to venture downstairs and see what we might find. Hello, poppet.” The old woman strode in like she owned the place and gave a curt nod and greeting to the young girl curled up in the blankets. “I think we should grab anything like fresh fruit and vegetables right now and eat it before it all goes off. This place smells bad enough. With the power going down, it is about to get much worse I am afraid.”

“Sounds like a good idea.” Shadiyah turned to her sister. “You want to come along?” She hoped desperately that the girl would refuse, and had to fight to hide her relief when Assi gave a fast shake of the head.

“Lock up behind me. I will get back as soon as I can. Don’t open the door for anybody, I have my key.”

“You think that will actually be a problem?” Mrs. Raye scoffed as the door closed. “That child looks like she will piss herself if her shadow moves.”

Shadiyah ignored the quip and headed for the emergency stairs. Opening the door, she paused. The stairwell was shrouded in complete and utter darkness. Strange scuffing sounds and what might have been a moan echoed up from the pitch black square of oblivion.

Mrs. Raye edged around her and pulled out a small silver flashlight. She pushed a small button, and a dazzling beam of blue-white light danced in front of them.

“Solar powered,” the woman said over her shoulder as she started down the stairs. “Seems everything has a solar option these days.”

They ran to the next floor and opened the door a crack. What they saw made them look at each other for a second before Mrs. Raye tugged the door shut and headed down to the next level. The hallway had no fewer than a dozen of the walking dead visible just in the immediate area that the flashlight illuminated. Every door was wide open, and in the opening of the first one on the right were a cluster of two zombies tearing apart some poor unfortunate. It was impossible to tell if it was man or woman, old or young, since just the feet were visible—a pair of blue trainers that were twitching and then going stiff as the toes pointed down and seemed to go rigid for a second before they resumed their rapid thrumming.

The next floor offered a little promise. Not a single zombie could be seen, and even after several heartbeats of waiting, nothing appeared to investigate. They crept to the first door on the right and gave the knob a twist. It turned!

Shadiyah stepped back just a bit so Mrs. Raye could open the door while she readied herself with her father’s scimitar. The door creaked as it opened like some low grade horror movie prop, but nothing greeted them in the entry hall, the living room, or the rest of the flat. The two made a quick pass through the kitchen and bathroom, scooping anything useful into a large canvas bag that Mrs. Raye had brought along.

Once they finished, the pair headed across the hallway to try that door. This one was locked, but Mrs. Raye pulled out a small case and made short work out of picking the lock. They repeated the same procedure, and once again found an empty hall. Their relief was temporary as a low moan drifted up the hall from the shadows of the flat that apparently had all its curtains drawn shut.

“I think we can skip this one,” Shadiyah whispered.

“You scared?” Mrs. Raye turned to face her younger companion with a raised eyebrow and a sardonic smirk on her thin lips. Shadiyah nodded vigorously.

“I don’t see the reason we need to risk ourselves when there are probably many other places to try that are empty.”

“Well, good to know that you aren’t just some sort of foolish child.” The older woman backed up and pulled the door closed before returning to continue with what she had to say. “I watched from my window these past several days. Seen folks treat these things like they were nothing more troublesome than a sewer rat. Thing is, you let a sewer rat get a bite of ya, and you will find yourself enduring a rather unpleasant series of jabs for tetanus, hepatitis and God knows what else. Last I heard, ain’t no jabs to keep you from becoming a walking corpse,” she said in an affected Yankee twang

By the time that they had finished this floor, they were both lugging two heavy gym bags behind them. While not everything they found would be anything that Shadiyah would have paid for to eat (what was the deal with so many people having sardines in a tin stacked in the cupboard), she knew well enough that hunger would eventually overpower her aversion to anything. Also, they had a few heads of various greens, some radishes, carrots, and even a few tomatoes.

She was dragging her duffels behind her when a hand clamped down on her shoulder like a vice. She started and turned to see Mrs. Raye had stopped cold and was pointing straight ahead.

“We didn’t leave that door open,” the woman whispered.

“Are you sure?” Shadiyah asked. The expression on the older woman’s face was her only response.

Henrietta Raye dropped her duffels and brought up her cane. Shadiyah had made the mistake of underestimating that thing as a weapon until the first time the brass head carved into the shape of a rook from a chess set smashed into the head of a zombie. She had fully expected the cane to snap or shatter. Instead, not only did it bust open the skull of the zombie like a ripe melon, the cane had not so much as bent a single degree. Add in the fact that Mrs. Raye swung the thing like she was a professional cricket player, and there had been no more concerns about the old lady, her weapons, or her ability to handle herself.

Together, they crept to the door and peered in. Nothing but the blackness could be seen. Using her torch, Mrs. Raye scanned the landing, stepped into the well and flashed her light both up and down. She turned to Shadiyah and shrugged when a voice caused them both to jump.

“Who’s down there?” a voice hissed.

“How about you tell us who is up there,” Mrs. Raye shot back.

There was a pause, and then the voice called back down, “Simon Wood. I am coming down the stairs. I’m alone.”

“Move real slow, sonny,” Mrs. Raye barked. “I am a bit jumpy these days. Any sudden movements might cause me to do something nasty with my stick here.”

Very slowly, and with his hands in the air, Simon Wood eventually emerged from the gloom of the stairs leading up and back to the floor they needed to return. He looked worse than Shadiyah had ever seen. In fact, she did not think that she’d ever seen him with so much as a hint of stubble on his angular face.

Simon Wood now looked like some of the scratters you found lying in the shade of the park with hands out asking for spare change. His eyes were swollen and one of them looked like he had taken a nasty punch to the face. His lip was also split open and a small knot of swollen flesh jutted out in emphasis.

“Shaddi?” Simon tilted his head to the side and squinted as he tried to get his eyes clear of the dazzling beam of light from Henrietta’s flashlight.

“Hi, Simon, what were you doing upstairs?”

Simon and his family actually lived two floors below this one. She considered briefly the idea that he had simply overshot his own floor in the darkness, but his answer blew that idea down.

“Some young hooligans are out and about causing trouble. I was trying to chase them down. They already did a nasty bit of damage to poor Geraldo Mint.” Simon’s face clouded over.

Geraldo Mint lived just a door or two down from Simon’s family. He had some sort of mental health issue. He worked with the grounds crew for the Towers, and could always be counted on for a smile and a wave by any who passed by whether he knew the individual or not.

“Who could do anything to that sweet boy?” Mrs. Raye gasped.

“There are more than a few unsavory types out and about taking advantage of the madness,” Simon sighed.

“Where is Miranda?” Shadiyah asked with an unintentionally derisive snort. She had not meant for it to sound like it did—as if perhaps Miranda might be running around with these thugs—but it was already out of her mouth and she could not get it back.

Simon’s face clouded and a shimmer of what looked like tears gave his eyes a glassy shine. He blinked rapidly and wiped them away as his head dropped with his chin coming to rest on his chest.

“She…well…” Simon seemed to be struggling for the words, his voice barely above a whisper.

“I’m so sorry!” Shadiyah gushed, reaching out a hand to the man and brushing the length of his left arm as she stepped close and peered up at him.

“She came home from being at the pictures with a bunch of her friends, yeah? Only, when she walked through the door, she was cursing up a storm about filthy people and some man biting her after falling out of an alley and trying to snatch her handbag.” Simon’s mouth clicked shut, and his eyes tightened as he visibly fought back the tears. “She had a bite on her left hand. It wasn’t really all that big. I didn’t think anything of it, even that night as I watched the news and that American doctor finally admitted that the dead were getting up and attacking the living.”

“You poor dear,” Mrs. Raye whispered with more warmth than Shadiyah had thought her capable.

There was a moment’s pause, and then Simon opened his mouth to continue, only, instead of his actually getting the chance, a terrible shriek came from upstairs. Shadiyah knew her sister’s scream well enough after the past few days.

Assi was in trouble.

2

Human Filth

{The following section contains unsettling and graphic images that may be disturbing to some readers. Sensitive readers may wish to skip ahead FOURTEEN paragraphs to the *** marker in order to avoid this graphic scene.}

She was running up the dark stairwell, her shins paying for it every time she tripped and banged them. The complete darkness made it even worse as she had no idea when she would reach a landing. When she arrived at the first one just before the stairs turned and switched back, continuing their ascent, she had sprawled on her stomach, almost having the wind knocked completely from her lungs.

Voices from below and behind called for her, but she ignored them, continuing her reckless charge. At last, she reached the next landing, and her hand scrabbled for the door. She flung it open and her wild eyes scanned the hallway. Nothing but the same dead bodies that had been there before could be seen. Then, her eyes came to rest on the door that opened to her flat.

As she drew near, it struck her that there was no sign of forced entry. That could only mean one thing: Assi had opened the door for whoever was now inside their flat.

Shadiyah paused for a moment, taking the time to draw her father’s scimitar. The sound of the blade rasping as it pulled free was drowned by another terrible shriek…and then laughter. It was deep and evil sounding in nature; and it was obvious that it was coming from more than one source.

“C’mon, Gecko, give another fella a go, yeah?” a voice chortled.

“I ain’t had a chance to finish,” another voice grunted.

Shadiyah shook herself free from the terror that was trying desperately to grip her and keep her feet rooted to this spot forever. The first step was difficult, almost as if her feet were moving through thick mud. However, each successive step was a little easier, and in a few seconds, she was sprinting that last bit and then skidding to a halt in the doorway to her flat.

She could only see down the entry hall, but now that she was at the opening, the sound was much easier to discern. She could hear the hard breathing and grunts from one source, and she could also hear the squawks of pain that came in a rhythmic punctuation that emphasized the sounds of flesh slapping against flesh.

Shadiyah took each step down the hall while numbness seemed to radiate from her brain and make its way throughout her entire body. Even though she was certain what she would see once she stepped from the entry hall and into the living room, she still felt a new sensation of shock ripple through her body once the scene came fully into view.

Assi, her baby sister and the sum total of all the family that she knew she still had left was shoved face down on the floor. She had only the briefest of instances to be thankful that Assi’s face was pointed the other direction and that the two did not make any actual eye contact.

There were in fact three males (her mind refused to give them the title of “men”) in the living room. One of them was standing with his back to the scene and staring out the window at the day that was actually becoming sunny and bright as if to contrast the darkness of what was taking place in the flat. This one had shaggy brown hair just past the collar of his black tee shirt. He was also wearing cargo shorts that looked as if they had not been washed in weeks. Shadiyah’s eyes fixated for a heartbeat on a single dark stain on the back of the thigh.

The second one was currently standing over the scene and watching with an evil glimmer in his piggish eyes as he actually rubbed his hands together in anticipation—apparently he was about to be next, or so he believed at that particular moment. This one seemed to prefer the shaved head look, but had obviously not seen a razor in at least a week. He was chubby and his gut was not only hanging over the belt of his jeans, but also bulging from the sides as well.

The one currently assaulting Assi looked like the poster boy from an old Hitler Youth photograph. He had perfect blond hair parted to the side and bright blue eyes that were slightly scrunched at the moment and were looking straight ahead…and directly at Shadiyah. His lips, which had been pressed tight, suddenly opened in a soundless ‘O’ shape that revealed perfectly straight, white teeth and a pink tongue that darted to the right.

***

Without another thought, Shadiyah strode across the room and, with a slight thanks for the first time in her life in regards to just how small the flat really was, she stepped forward and swung the scimitar. A blond haired head flew to the left with the momentum and force of the swing, but the body stayed exactly the same for a few heartbeats as it caught up to the fact that it was no longer receiving signals from the brain.

A gout of blood arced up, actually spraying the ceiling. The hands—one of which had gripped Assi by the hair, and the other which had her by the left shoulder—flexed, gripped, and then let go. The body fell to the side and convulsed a few times as the final electrical impulses discharged. All of this happened in a span of just a few heartbeats (which was easy to judge by the blood jetting from the neck stump of the first dead body).

The pudgy skinhead jumped first from the fright, then turned to face the source of the intrusion. His face went from surprised to lascivious so quickly that Shadiyah would later tell herself that he must not yet have been able to get his little piggy brain to process what had befallen his companion just seconds earlier; he simply saw another victim arriving late to the party.

When she brought the blade around in a backhanded arc, he threw his hands up out of sheer instinct. The entire right hand and the fingers of the left went flying through the air. Before he could even scream, she stepped in and drove the tip of her scimitar into the man’s throat. His mouth opened and closed like a beached fish a few times before the blood began to well up and trickle from the corners of his thin, pale lips.

Shadiyah pulled the blade free and kicked out, sending the rotund male crashing backwards and splintering the little coffee table that had sat in the middle of the living room.

The last male had turned and witnessed the death of his skinhead friend. The body of the other was at his feet as a symbolic barricade between him and Shadiyah. Now that he was facing her, she only vaguely registered that his eyes were red. Likely from drugs, she thought bitterly as she closed on him, her sword arm cocked and ready to strike.

“Shaddi, no!” a shout echoed from a million miles away. She knew the voice; it carried authority and sounded like a voice she should obey.

In the blink of an eye, she dismissed her brain’s reaction to that command and swung. Knowing that this was the third and final male of the bunch, she screamed her impotent fury at not having another person to continue to vent her anger upon. She swung again and again. Then, hands grabbed her from behind and she spun, prepared to take on whoever dared to intrude on her vengeance.

“Shaddi!” another voice barked. This one sounded just as far away as the first voice, but once again, she recognized the tone as one of authority. Still, she would not be denied.

And now that she had a new face in front of her, another male, she could continue her attack. At least that was her thought. She raised her arm to swing, but something slammed into the side of her head and there was a dazzling flash, and then…merciful blackness.

***

“Is she going to be okay?” Simon whispered.

“Which one, Mister Wood?” Henrietta Raye replied.

She was kneeling between the sisters. She had checked the younger one first and quickly grabbed the blanket that was draped over the sofa and used it to cover the poor girl.

“Umm…either? Both?” the young man stumbled over his words.

“Time will tell on this one.” Henrietta laid a hand on the blanket covered girl. “She was already barely making it before this happened. It is very possible that she could just shut down for good.”

“What about Shaddi?”

“This one is a fighter.” The older woman moved over to the oldest of the sisters. “She will be fine, I imagine. But if her sister succumbs to this ordeal, I fear we may have some problems.”

“Problems?” Simon knelt beside Shadiyah and seemed to be resisting the urge to brush the long strand of hair from her face.

“Rage is a nasty thing, boy. Shadiyah was consumed by it until I smashed her in the side of the head with my cane.”

Simon winced. He remembered well the look on Shadiyah’s face when she had spun on him. Henrietta was certain that the boy would have been decapitated if not for her fast cane work.

“Did you really have to hit her so hard?” Simon stood up and walked to the kitchen to get a glass of water.

Henrietta felt sorry for the young man. He obviously had a soft spot for the raven haired beauty. That is a recipe for disaster in these times, she thought with an inward sigh. Right now, survival was something that would rely on a person being able to remain detached. In that respect, Henrietta Raye was thankful. She had nobody to fret over. Her family was all the way down in London.

“If I didn’t, she might have gotten off that swing she was raring back with, and you would be like a bloody Roundhead after an audience with King Charles or somebody to fall afoul of Alice’s Queen of Hearts.”

Simon returned with his glass of water and paused just long enough to scoop up the scimitar from where it had fallen. He moved it over to a far corner of the room before joining Henrietta.

“So, what do we do now?” he asked.

“I am returning to my flat after I go secure the door to this floor. I plan to have a bite to eat and then take a nap.”

“What about them?” He pointed to the two forms on the floor, his voice seething with disbelief. “How can you leave them like this?”

“Oh…” Henrietta tottered to the door and paused, throwing a look over her shoulder, “I figure they are in good hands with you here.”

***

The door shut and Simon stood rooted to his spot for several seconds before he slumped in acceptance. It was obvious that the crazy old bat was not going to come back any time soon. He scowled one more time for good measure and then began to unload everything in the carry bag.

He still could not believe that Mrs. Raye had grabbed him when he started to chase after Shadiyah. She had told him to grab the bags and bring them along.

“But—” he began to protest.

“No time for buts,” Mrs. Raye had scolded. “Food is going to be harder and harder to come by for the foreseeable future.”

He had scooped up the bag, and that was where his current problem resided: guilt. Perhaps if he had just sprinted and caught up with Shadiyah, he would have been able to deal with a situation that she should not.

“You are a bloody wanker,” Simon whispered,

Did he think that he would have been able to stop what had happened to Assi? Certainly not. It was clear that the terrible events were well underway before they managed to get back to the flat. Shadiyah had exacted vengeance; certainly not a way that would have been acceptable a few weeks ago before the zombies had come. Still, she had killed a living person—actually, she had killed three.

Simon knew from his time as a trainee that killing a person could be mentally destructive to the individual committing the act. Most people were not wired to be okay with taking a life. Guilt almost always manifested itself in some manner…eventually. How would Shaddi deal with the whole situation?

Of course, if anybody could get to the other side of something so traumatic and continue on with their life, she was one of those special few. That made Simon’s eyes drift over to Assi.

He had concerns when it came to the young girl. He remembered her as being somewhat delicate.  Add in her age, and this girl was a prime candidate for an unpleasant ending. As callous as it might seem, now was not a time when you had the luxury of being able to care for somebody with serious issues.

A soft moan from the lump on the floor that was Shadiyah caused Simon to start and then scurry over to see if he could offer any help. She was trying to sit up, but there was an instant when she froze. Then, without warning, she threw off the blanket and rolled away, coming up to her knees. Her face was a rictus of malevolent anger. Her normally soft, beautiful, large, brown eyes were little more than slits, and her lips curled back in an actual snarl.

“Sh-Shaddi?” Simon managed from a mouth that had suddenly gone completely dry, void of even a hint of saliva. “It’s me…Simon Wood.”

He saw her eyes dart to the figure that was her sister, and it actually made her face twist into an even angrier, hate-filled expression. It sent a chill through him and his hand had unconsciously started to drift for the metal baton he had hanging from his belt.

“Where are they?” she spat. Her eyes scanned the room and then locked on Simon. Did she think he might try to cause her harm?

“Mrs. Raye had me deposit them in the flat next door. She did not think that it was a good idea to have the bodies around any longer than necessary.” Simon forced his hand down to his side, being very careful to move it as slowly as possible.

When the woman stood up suddenly, Simon feared that she would insist on going next door to perhaps see the results of her handiwork…or possibly add him to that list. Instead, she walked to her sister and knelt beside the girl.

“Tomorrow was to be her sixteenth birthday,” Shadiyah whispered as she stroked her sleeping sister’s face.

There was a long and, for Simon at least, uncomfortable silence. At some point, Assi had opened her eyes. Simon wished that she hadn’t. They were glazed over, obviously she was still alive since he could see her chest rise and fall with each breath, but that spark of life was absent from her eyes as she stared straight up at the ceiling.

When the sun finally dipped so low that the flat was shrouded in shadows that would eventually join to form a blanket of pure darkness, he felt a sense of relief that embarrassed him. He considered several times about simply excusing himself and slipping out, leaving the sisters in peace.

Could they have peace? a voice taunted him from the depths of his mind.

“Maybe you should go, Simon,” Shadiyah finally said from the darkness.

Part of him wanted to protest. Now more than ever, this woman needed somebody to help her carry this terrible burden. The problem was that he had no idea how he could possibly help. With a sigh, he rose and left the flat.

“How are they?” the voice said from directly behind Simon, causing him to jump. He was almost certain that he’d let go just a bit with his bladder.

“I don’t rightly know,” Simon admitted. “The girl woke up, but she is just staring up like she has no more life in her than those deaders.”

“And Shadiyah?” Mrs. Raye pressed, getting up from the rocking chair that she’d dragged out to the hall and set in front of her door.

Simon had to blink a few times to be sure he was not imagining things. Lanterns had been placed all along the hallway in both directions to offer up just enough light to see. As his eyes scanned the scene, he was certain that the body count in this hall had increased by several new additions.

“Boy!” Mrs. Raye was now right in front of him, snapping her fingers. He shook his head and blinked.

“Sorry…umm…Shadiyah seems…okay?” He was not sure that was even remotely the correct word to use to describe her, but at least she was moving about, talking…things like that which he had to take as some sort of good sign. Right?

“Well, you and I need to make a choice here and now.”

“And what choice would that be?” Simon’s eyes came to rest on the body of a boy no older than seven. He clearly had bites taken out of his arms, but somehow that did not seem as bad as the fact that he had the handle of a kitchen knife jutting from one eye socket.

“Are we going to stay here and try to make the best of this terrible nightmare, or are we going to seek out someplace else?”

Simon returned his focus to Mrs. Raye. That had actually been his own thoughts just before he had encountered them while he was chasing those—

The feeling punched him in the gut with enough force to cause him to actually drop to his knees. He had been chasing some punks who were running around the building apparently causing trouble for the surprisingly few tenants remaining here in the Towers. His mind drifted back to the past couple of days…

***

“I’m scared, Simon,” Miranda said before moaning and curling up into a tight fetal position on her bed.

Simon picked up the towel that she had just used to wipe her mouth after vomiting into the rubbish bin he’d brought to her bedside. He held it in a gloved finger and thumb as he deposited it into that same bin and then shut the lid and pushed it aside.

“I know, sis,” Simon commiserated.

He had just left the living room where he had watched a new update on BBC News that said a person had no more than seventy-two hours after being bitten before he or she would turn. Well, he had an update for them; Miranda had been bitten five days ago. Her eyes had the black tracers, and she was obviously not feeling well, but she had managed to fight off whatever this infection might be for a full two days past their supposed long end of the spectrum.

Maybe she would recover if she could just get whatever it was out of her system. That was why he’d been slipping Ipecac into her food. She said that she could not taste a thing, so he figured that he could help induce enough vomiting and, coupled with how he had her bundled up so heavily to induce sweating, he would make her better.

“Oh, God!” Miranda moaned as she lunged for the edge of the bed. Fortunately, she did not have much left in her system. The bile and broth mixture was more of a frothy trickle at this point as she heaved and made noises that had Simon on the verge of joining her.

“Let it all out, Miranda,” Simon whispered as he sat beside his sister and held her hair back. That was the least he could do.

She heaved again and her body went rigid for a second, and then collapsed. A long, wet, strangled sigh escaped his sister, and then she did something that proved to Simon just how sick his sister really was.

The eye-stinging reek of flatulence assaulted Simon’s nose before he could think to hold his breath. He forced himself to keep quiet. He knew Miranda well enough to know that she would die from embarrassment if he so much as hinted at what she had just done.

She was still for several seconds before she began to move. At first it was slow and sluggish and he continued to rub her back and utter soothing words. Then, she began to struggle as if she wanted to roll over. Simon stood up to allow her room and froze in his tracks at what he saw.

“Miranda,” he cried, taking a step back from the thing that was no longer his sister.

The eyes which had been red and puffy were now filmed with a sickly yellowish coating that made the black tracers stand out all that much more. The skin of her face had sagged, and her open mouth revealed a tongue that appeared gray as it slid out over her bluish lips. A low moan escaped his little sister and Simon was now frozen in place from the combination of grief and horror.

How had he not noticed her dying right beside him? He’d been rubbing her back for mercy sake! Yet, he could not deny the simple fact that his sister was now one of them…the walking dead.

For some reason, he found himself helpless to do anything as she slowly rose from the bed, struggling to get out of it. When she fell hard to the floor after her feet became tangled in the blankets, he’d actually almost stepped forward to help her up and to assist in freeing her from the tangle of linens. Fortunately, the same force that had not allowed him to flee also seemed inclined to keep him from stepping in to help.

It was not until her cold, dead hands gripped his arm that the spell finally broke. Unfortunately for Simon, that was a shade too late. He jerked his arm, but was not prepared for how tight Miranda clutched him.

When she bit into his forearm, all the parts of his brain that had continued to insist that this creature was his sister and not a flesh-eating zombie simply disguised as a poor and much uglier imitation were silenced by the facts. Simon shoved hard and slammed the Miranda-zombie backwards towards the bed. It clipped her right behind the knees and she fell back gracelessly. Her grip on his arm had only loosened slightly, but it was enough for him to finally free himself.

When she started to rise again, he had kicked her in the chest as hard as he could. Without waiting to see if there had been any negligible effects, Simon ran for the door, pulled it shut behind him, and then collapsed against the wall across from his sister’s room. He looked down at his arm and winced as the pain receptors kicked in over the receding adrenaline.

A dull thud sounded and Simon could see the dark shadows at the bottom of the door; she was right on the other side, and it sounded like she was trying to chew her way through. He forced himself up to his feet and hurried to the bathroom.

Flipping on the light, he examined the bite. The imprint of Miranda’s teeth could be easily made out and blood dripped from a few places where she had broken the skin. He opened the cabinet and pulled out some TCP. Twisting off the cap, he poured a good bit on the wound and winced at the incredible burning that felt like it would eat through to the bone.

He had gone to the living room and sat down. Despite everything that had happened, Simon had drifted off to sleep as the adrenaline left him and his body simply shut down. When he awoke, it was to an eerie silence. He rose slowly and made his way to Miranda’s door. Getting down on his stomach, he looked under the crack and saw the shadows of her feet; she was still standing just on the other side, but she was simply shifting back and forth.

Next, he held his breath and returned to the bathroom. He looked in the mirror and was amazed to see that his eyes still looked normal. He leaned closer and pried his eyelids as far apart as he could, peering intently until his eyes began to sting and water.

“Nothing,” he mumbled and returned to the living room.

He stared at the television, but there was nothing on the screen, not even the test pattern. The screen merely flickered and occasionally had a burst of static but nothing more. He moved to the kitchen and tripped over a discarded shoe. Almost immediately, the sounds of Miranda pawing and slapping at her door resumed.

Simon knew what he had to do. It hurt him deep in his soul, but he could not allow his sister to remain one of those things, and if he was going to eventually turn as well, he needed to take care of her sooner rather than later.

He went to the hall closet and fetched his metal baton. He thought it over, and then tucked that into his belt and returned to the kitchen, his eyes scanned all the knives, but everything he looked at made him wince inwardly. He could not just kill Miranda. Yes, he realized that the thing in her bedroom was no longer his little sister, but it still looked way too much like her for him to be able to beat her to death or ram a large knife into her head.

“I’m sorry,” Simon whispered as he turned and left the flat.

He had not even closed the door when one of those things came for him. He thought that it might be one of the Pulaski family. He seemed to recall that they had relatives from Warsaw who had recently moved in. For whatever reason, he had no problems at all pulling out his baton and swinging with all his might.

At some point, Simon began to grow tired. He had not realized that he had taken down a dozen of these abominations. He walked across the hall and tried the first door after knocking and receiving no answer. This was the Smythe family’s flat.

As soon as he entered, he was hit by a tremendously foul stench that made him struggle for just a moment with being sick. Once he regained control, and felt confident that he would not vomit, he made his way into the living room. What he saw made him pause, but it also was perhaps the single thing that pushed him over the edge and into acceptance.

The Smythe family consisted of the father, mother, and three boys between the ages of ten and fifteen that were constantly causing a ruckus and being scolded by their shrill-voiced mother. At the moment, those three boys were all crouched around a single figure that was sprawled on the floor. The body lay just perfectly so that the morning sunlight could trickle through the open curtains and bathe it in a golden glow.

The oldest of the boys held an arm that had been violently ripped away. The other two were both face down in the abdomen, feasting in such a way that reminded Simon of swine at the trough. Entrails were ripped out and scattered about haphazardly.

The sounds of smacking, moaning, and slurping were horrendous to witness, but there was another sound that made Simon’s ears perk up. It was a squeak and a metallic clink that came in erratic intervals.

He briefly considered just trying another flat, but he feared he would find more of the same, or perhaps even worse. Stepping forward, Simon had taken his baton to the closest boy; that had also been the youngest. It only took five swings to crack the skull and send the dark jelly-like matter within splattering in an arc across the nearby wall.

By then, the other two had re-oriented their attention from the corpse on the floor to the living, breathing person who had dared interfere. The oldest was trying to stand, and that was when Simon realized that most of his left leg had been gnawed off from the knee on down. That made Simon’s decision marginally easier as he stepped in and drove the small, blunt tip of his baton into the eye socket of the middle boy before shoving the older one back down and then repeating the move. He was pleasantly surprised to discover that using the “eye socket” method was much quicker and easier than trying to bust open a skull.

Once finished with the third boy, Simon set off down the dim hallway to investigate the noise. He could see a door to the right that was shut, but the light was on and trickling under the door where the mysterious sound emanated. He knelt down, but he did not see any shadows that would indicate something moving around on the other side.

Steeling himself, and then giving a quick yank, he opened the door and let out a little shout of surprise. He had discovered the father. The man had a dozen or more small bites taken from his arms. Apparently, he decided that he would try to end himself by hanging from the shower head. He had looped a belt around his throat and then probably just forced his legs out from underneath his body. Whether it worked or not would be anybody’s guess.

Currently, the man was actually standing up in the tub. He was in black socks with no shoes, so he kept losing traction and slipping. That was causing the belt to cinch up, and then as he struggled back to standing, he would bump against the tiled walls with his heavy belt buckle or even one of the rings on his hands. Simon recalled the first time he’d seen the man; he had scoffed inwardly at all the jewelry the man wore. He also had several gold chains…or at least he used to. Most of them had snapped at some point and littered the bottom of the tub.

The man spotted Simon and lunged, causing him to jump back out of reflex. Unfortunately for the zombie, the slack in the belt was gone in an instant and the man’s head and neck whiplashed. The feet slipped and shot out from underneath the zombie and the body fell a short distance and jerked to a stop with an audible crack that Simon could not tell whether or not were the bones in the man’s neck, or the fixture he was now almost dangling from by his entire weight.

Simon had ended the man and then returned to the living room just in time to witness as what was left of Mrs. Smythe begin to sit up. That had proved to be too much and Simon had left and returned to his own flat. He could endure the idea of Miranda’s zombie on the other side of a door. And as long as she did not start making too much racket, perhaps he could just pretend.

That had lasted two days. During that time, Simon had watched from his window as the city of Leeds fell to the undead. He had already known better than to try and go to one of the shelters. He had a bird’s eye view of one and had seen it fall the day before Miranda died.

Every night, he’d heard the sounds of screams and even people begging and pleading for their lives. Part of his conscience urged Simon to get out there and try to help…do something. The problem was that a much louder voice in his head warned that his very survival probably hinged on him staying put for the time being.

He had finally dismissed that voice when he’d heard some screams from the flat directly below his own. It was not just the scream, but the cruel sounding laughter that accompanied it. At last, Simon made the choice to resume his calling of being a servant of the public.

He had exited his flat and dashed down the hall. That careless act almost cost him when one of the walking dead lunged from an open doorway and the pair tumbled to the ground in a heap. Luckily, Simon came up on top and was able to kick away from the uncoordinated zombie. He did not even bother ending the thing; he was determined to help somebody. He knew he was likely doomed to the same fate his sister had succumbed to, but that was suddenly strangely liberating.

He reached the landing and briefly registered the fact that the door was actually open already. The hall was much like what he had seen on his own floor. Rubbish was strewn the length of it and a few bodies were sprawled just about everywhere. Many of the doors to the flats on this floor were open and looked to have been pried or kicked in.

Another shriek came from down the hall and Simon started for it. He gripped his baton and stayed close to the wall, switching sides as he neared a door. His swapping back and forth had him across the hall from where the noises were coming by the time he reached that open door.

“…c’mon, ducky, give us a little smile,” a voice chortled.

“Please…please don’t,” a female voice begged.

Simon tilted his head in confusion. It sounded like an old lady. His hatred for whomever these animals were had just found a new level. He discarded caution and strode to the open doorway.

He had not expected there to be three. Even worse, just as he stepped into the doorway, one of the trio, a pudgy man about Simon’s age was exiting for some reason. He had a big bag in his hands and actually displayed surprising reflexes. Before Simon could bring his baton into play, the man swung the bag and slammed Simon back out and into the corridor. A boot to his ribs quickly followed.

“Hey, fellas, we got a copper out here!” the pudgy one hollered.

Simon scuttled back and recovered just as the other two emerged. He held out the baton in front of him and prepared for the worst.

“Nobody here called for a bacon sandwich did they?” one of the men said with a sneer. This one was blond with blue eyes that had a visible coldness to them.

“Maybe you three should just move on,” Simon said, trying his best not to sound like he was nervous.

“We got all we need here, right boys?” the blond said to the others. “But here is what we are gonna do.” The man stepped closer to Simon, but was smart enough to stay out of range of the baton. “We decided that we want this tower. We are simply serving all the occupants notice that they need to find someplace else to live.”

“You’re what?” Simon gasped.

“Yeah, see, we been living over in Wortley Towers, but too many of them damn flesh eaters skulking about. We decided that we would make Clyde our new home. If you want to stay, well then, you will be paying rent.”

“You are mad if you think any of this—”

And then something crashed into the back of his head. When he woke up, he was still in the hall. He gave his body a cursory inspection, but everything seemed fine. His baton was on the floor up against the wall across from him; they had not taken anything. That puzzled him.

He climbed to his feet and went into the flat he’d encountered these hooligans in and gave it a look. Whoever it was that had been here was gone now. The place was empty and looked like it had been properly sacked.

He turned back to the fire exit and saw a message spray painted on the wall: This is your 24-hour notice. Get out!

3

Join or Die

“There were four of them,” Simon muttered. He quickly recounted his ordeal to Mrs. Raye.

“Perhaps it would be best if we all stuck close for a few days.” Mrs. Raye shoved her chair into her flat and then pulled the door closed.

The pair returned to the door to Shadiyah’s flat and knocked. There was a long pause, and Simon was about to knock again when the door suddenly swung open.

“I don’t need watching, thank you,” the tired looking woman snapped.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Mrs. Raye huffed, elbowing past Simon and using her left arm to nudge Shadiyah out of the way as well. “I think we all know what has happened. It also seems as if most that could leave this place have done so. They left behind the elderly, the immigrants who could not speak the language, and therefore obviously did not know exactly what was happening, and apparently the stubborn few idiots like us.”

“Mr. Ivanoff would not leave if the building were on fire,” Shadiyah mumbled.

“Like I said…the idiots.”

Mrs. Raye walked into the living room and skirted around the heap on the floor that was Assi’s sleeping form. She looked out the window and sighed. After a moment, Simon followed. He gave a shrug and an apologetic look to Shadiyah as he shut the door and slipped past her glare of annoyance.

“It would seem that we must come together if we are going to have any chance at surviving.” Mrs. Raye continued to look out the window for another moment before turning back to face the two who managed to somehow stand a good distance from each other despite the close confines of the living room. “We should perhaps plan a way to fortify our position here and then work our way down and systematically clear the floors.”

“What are you talking about?” Shadiyah blurted.

“I think we all agree that the shelters were a colossal mistake. We have a better chance here than perhaps almost anyplace else. We need to make this place as safe as we can and also start gathering supplies.” Mrs. Raye walked over to the small table where Shadiyah had started sorting out what was in the bags from their brief excursion. “We should actually start on the ground floor. That is likely going to be the worst. But, if we can clear it and then make it a real chore for anything, living or dead, to make it inside, then we might just be okay.”

“Will that make you Dennis Hopper?” Simon mumbled.

“Excuse me?” Mrs. Raye turned to the man with an arched eyebrow.

“Nothing…obscure reference to a bad movie.” Simon shot a glance at Shadiyah and saw no sign that she was even listening to any of this. “What about that bit I was telling you before we came here?”

“I say we worry when that problem lifts its head. The way I see it, we have the numbers now, this person can either join up with us, or he can leave.”

“What?” Apparently Shadiyah was paying better attention than Simon realized.

The woman stormed over to Simon and grabbed him by the arms. Her eyes were wide and her face had morphed into a mask of hatred again. Still, Simon could not help it as his eyes were drawn down to the woman’s very ample cleavage. He scolded himself and used all his willpower to look into Shadiyah’s eyes. Of course that only reminded him of how beautiful they were. Even now, in her seething anger, she had beautiful eyes.

She shook him, demanding that he tell her what he had meant by a fourth person. He stammered and stumbled a bit, but he eventually told her his own story about his encounter with the small gang of miscreants. Just as he had with Mrs. Raye, he left out the part about the bite he had suffered. As long as he wore the long-sleeved jacket and his eyes did not show those dark squiggles, he would be fine. That reminded him, he needed to get to a bathroom soon and see if there was any sign. He did not know exactly how it worked, but he imagined it should be something he could see at the onset. After all, once it did occur, it was very apparent; that had been all he could focus on any time that he was near Miranda.

“The only choice I will give that prick is whether I cut off his balls before or after I kill him!” Shadiyah snarled, shoving Simon away.

“No, you won’t.” Mrs. Raye stepped forward and planted herself directly in front of the angry younger woman.

“What! Are you going to defend this monster!”

“First, this person was not present when your sister was assaulted.”

“Assaulted?” Shadiyah was nearing hysterics now. “Call it what it was…she was raped. And had I not shown up when I did, those other scum bags would have taken their turns.”

“This mystery person was not present for that horrible thing. Additionally, they could have killed Simon when they had the chance. I don’t know why they didn’t, but here he is…alive and well.”

“I don’t care.” Shadiyah stepped into that few inches that separated her and Mrs. Raye.

Simon decided that perhaps enough was enough. He leaned in between the two and eased them apart, keeping his focus on Shadiyah since he was less concerned about Mrs. Raye taking a swing at him. Surprisingly, he had to physically push both women back and away.

“We won’t be much good to anybody including ourselves if we keep this up. How about if we decide to at least see what this person has to say before we just kill him?” He was looking directly at Shadiyah and he saw something flash in her eyes, and then…they seemed to go blank.

“Fine.”

The woman stepped away and crossed her arms. Something about her tone, expression, and the total lack of any emotion in her eyes made Simon suddenly a bit nervous.

***

How could he say something like that? Shadiyah fumed, but she kept it to herself. Just swallow anything from here on that upsets or angers you, the time will come when you will be able to release all of that on the person who deserves it.

“Fine.”

Shadiyah put herself in between these intruders and her sister. They could make all the plans they wanted, and if that included bringing in this mystery man, that was okay by her. Everybody had to sleep some time. Until then, she would do what she had promised. She was going to take care of her sister.

Mrs. Raye started talking about what needed to be done and how. She was going on about how they needed to start downstairs on the ground floor and go from door to door.

“I know of a hardware store not far off…Cartwright Hardware. We should find anything we need there,” Simon said.

“That place is on the other side of the tracks,” Mrs. Raye said with a grimace. “And none of us have a car. How do you propose to bring back enough to make the trip worth it?”

“I guess I will have to find a vehicle.” Simon gave a shrug.

“Yes…one that just happens to have the keys handy, and also enough petrol to get you there and back.”

“It’s not even a mile away.”

“May as will be on another planet at the moment.” Mrs. Raye gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “Besides, I don’t think anybody here is eager to go out there in that madness. It would be best if we can find a way to seal things off with what we have on hand. All we really need to do for now is seal off the openings in the fence. That bugger is made of some sturdy iron or some such. It should keep the walking dead out unless they can climb fences. I don’t believe that to be the case, so we should be fine. I know there are a few cars parked in back. Even without the keys, we might be able to push them in front of those gaps and seal things up.”

“That still means going outside,” Simon insisted. “And I think I can manage to get one of those transport vans running with a little bit of effort.”

“How about if we just deal with making the most of what we have, young man? I know it might seem like a good idea to venture out for whatever you can find, but I believe we need to make the most of what we have and then make a list of what we actually need. If you go dashing off right now, you are just going to be taking things willy-nilly. If we intend to hold this place, then we need to be smart.”

“And what about this mystery person?” Shadiyah finally asked, unable to wait any longer. “He was part of that group that raped my sister. I want him found now. Not only do I want to be sure that he pays for what has been done, but I certainly don’t want a monster like that to hurt somebody else.”

“Perhaps that is where we can begin,” Simon offered. “You and Mrs. Raye can head to the top floor and work your way down. Knock on every door. I doubt that Mr. Ivanoff is the only person left in this tower besides the three—” He snapped his mouth shut and made an apologetic bow of his head before continuing. “Besides the four of us, I mean. Meanwhile, I will head down to the grounds and see what it will take to seal things off.”

“And what would you have us do if we find somebody that counts as being one of the living?” Shadiyah replied with a scowl.

“I think that is self-explanatory, girl,” Mrs. Raye huffed. “We need to get rid of the walking dead and dispose of the remains, and we should get anybody living to locate to one central floor.”

“And do you think rushing off by yourself is such a good idea?” Shadiyah asked Simon.

“Would you prefer that I stay and help the two of you with clearing the floors?” Simon retorted, instantly regretting it. He was not sure how it sounded to Mrs. Raye or Shadiyah, but in his own ears it almost sounded like he was perhaps belittling the women and their ability to fend for themselves.

“I just think we would be best served if we all stuck together,” Shadiyah replied with a shrug. “Sort of like the rules you learn by watching scary movies. You know…as soon as you split up, somebody dies.”

Simon made it a point to hold back any sort of smile that tried to etch itself into his face. “Okay, then perhaps we will all stay together. But if that is the case, then we need to decide if it is more important to search the building or see to securing it from any of those things getting in.”

The discussion was brief. Each of them came to the quick decision that it would be best to see about preventing any of the walking dead from stumbling into the building. They would have their hands full as it was with dispatching the ones already inside.

Each of them decided upon his or her weapon of choice. Shadiyah of course chose her father’s scimitar; Mrs. Raye held up her cane with the head apparently sturdy enough to cave in a skull and the tip able to plunge through an eye socket with ease; Simon kept his metal baton but also got permission from Shadiyah to grab a meat clever from the kitchen.

“Just in case,” was his reply to the unasked question.

As for Assi, Shadiyah woke her as gently as possible and explained to her what was happening and that they would be back soon. “I don’t care what anybody says, you can’t open the door. The only person with a key is me, and I will use it. Do you understand?”

Her sister simply stared at her. That was both good and bad. At the moment, the good rested in the fact that it now seemed beyond unlikely that the girl would do anything past sitting or lying exactly where she was at the moment. She could deal with the bad later.

***

The trio stepped out into the hallway. Simon saw Shadiyah’s eyes dart to the door where the trail of blood led from the bodies of the attackers that had been dragged out of her flat. There was something in her look that made him just a little bit nervous. Part of him reasoned that she knew the difference between him and those animals, but he was not comfortable enough to say he was a hundred percent certain.

They all trekked to the fire exit and took the stairs down to the ground floor. When they reached the bottom, it was actually Mrs. Raye who stepped to the front and scooted in between Simon and the door.

“The two of you step back,” the older woman whispered. “When I open this door, something may very well fall through, be ready for that. Also, try to stay quiet. I imagine we will all see things we would rather never have to witness. Also, it does not matter if you recognize the person or not, if they have those terrible eyes, they are one of the walking dead. That is it, period. You kill them fast and let your conscience sort it out later. Are you both clear?”

Simon had seen some of the news reports, and even worse, he had endured the attack by his own sister. He felt confident that he would be able to handle himself and gave a curt nod. He did not look over in time to see if Shadiyah actually responded in any manner, but the look in her eyes made him believe that she had probably given the okay as well.

Mrs. Raye threw open the door and…nothing. Simon peeked out and was surprised to find at least this particular area empty of any of the walking dead. He could see across the street and spied a few walking dead stumbling along, but none of them were even remotely close, nor did the few in sight seem to notice or pay them any attention.

“Look!” Shadiyah hissed, pointing to their left where a bit of an alley ran between the two towers. A figure dressed in black jeans, boots, and a dark green hooded sweatshirt was hopping up on a Dumpster and then vanished as he leapt over the fence and scurried away towards the other building.

“Was that him?” Shadiyah spun to face Simon.

“I don’t really know. You do remember that I was hit in the head from behind, right?”

“I think we can worry about this stuff later,” Mrs. Raye said quietly. “For now, I think it best if we do a walk-around and see where we need to seal things off. It would also be good to take each one as we find it and use whatever we can…like right over there.”

The other two turned their heads to see what was being pointed out. There was a narrow entry just off from the small parking lot. A few small trucks were parked haphazardly in the few nearby spaces. Shadiyah actually started for one of the vehicles, but Simon grabbed her by the shoulder, making it a point to do so with caution in case she was still a bit spooked.

“Hold on,” Simon leaned forward and whispered.

A series of small, two-story flats bordered the rear of Clyde Court Towers. Stumbling from an open gate that made an ominous creak as if to signal the arrival of this new horror was a zombie. This one had been a young lady. While it was clear that she was one of the walking dead, it was not the couple of bites visible on one arm that drew attention.

Her head sat strangely crooked, tilted to the right to the point where the ear was resting on the bare skin of her shoulder. One leg was obviously broken at mid-thigh and the bone jutted through the meat. It was a wonder that she could move, and it looked like that break would eventually buckle the pathetic creature as the meat ultimately gave way. Right now, it was obvious that dense muscle was all that kept the leg from folding like a lawn chair.

“Judy Bissell,” Mrs. Raye whispered. “She lived on the tenth floor.”

“You think she fell?” Simon asked as he gripped his baton tighter and prepared to go end the poor thing’s existence.

“Does it matter?” Shadiyah huffed as she pushed past the man and plunged the tip of her scimitar through the woman’s face, jerking back just as fast as she’d struck. The body collapsed to the ground and was still.

“What the bloody hell!” Simon exclaimed.

“Do you have a problem with this?” Mrs. Raye grabbed Simon by the elbow and spun him to face her. “Because if you do, then perhaps you should return inside and watch over that little girl upstairs. I told you before I opened that door what we would be dealing with.”

“B-b-but…” Simon’s protest died on his lips. Of course she was right; both of them were.

“No buts, young man,” Mrs. Raye insisted.

“Are we done talking?” Shadiyah wiped off her blade with the hem of Judy Bissell’s blouse.

“We need to move one of those cars over there and use it to seal off the gap in the fence here.”

Mrs. Raye pointed and that seemed to snap Simon out of his trance or whatever had come over him. Shadiyah watched as he jogged from one car to the next and peeked inside. He called out that one of them actually had the keys still dangling from the ignition. He opened the door, climbed in and then followed Mrs. Raye’s hand signals as he parked so close to the fence that the sound of scraping metal could be heard. As Shadiyah watched, she sort of felt sorry for Simon; he was a nice enough guy, but at this moment, she doubted his ability to survive longer than a few weeks if he did not experience a serious shift in his mindset.

That last thought made her pause. Was it really as dramatic as all that? Did a person have to change the way he or she thought in order to survive? The scene involving the brutalization of her sister flashed in Shadiyah’s mind and that was enough to convince her that it was absolutely necessary. While such horrid things were not entirely uncommon in the world before the dead rose and began to wipe out the living, she felt that perhaps such things might become much too common now.

The reality was that humans had displayed over the centuries that they are a mostly selfish species. Throughout history there were tales of abuse and enslavement. Man liked to control, and if given the chance to control with absolute power, he was prone to abuse that power. With no system of law or justice in place, anybody could do whatever struck their fancy with basically absolute impunity. Well, she would just have to ensure that neither she nor her sister suffered such a thing ever again.

“Shadiyah!” Mrs. Raye whispered forcefully, obviously not for the first time by the sound of her voice or the look on her face.

“What?” Shadiyah flushed and shook off her reverie.

“We need to get moving. There is nothing actually separating the two buildings, so we need to seal that other tower.”

“Why?”

“When I first ran into those hooligans, one of them told me that the other tower was done in,” Simon interjected as he hurried to them at a jog. “He said that they were overwhelmed with zombies in that other tower. For whatever reason, more people stayed than left, and the way it sounds, most of them are now zombies.”

Shadiyah considered that statement and smiled; if they sealed off that building, then perhaps that evil bastard would find himself trapped. The best possible scenario other than one where she struck the death blow after a prolonged series of torture sessions would be for the zombies to rip that person apart and feast on his insides while he watched.

“What are we waiting for?” Shadiyah took off at a jog in the direction that Mrs. Raye had indicated.

***

Simon followed a few yards back. Part of his reasoning was that he could better keep an eye on things, but if pressed, he would have to admit to himself that he was just a little bit frightened of Shadiyah.

Her quickness and ease in killing Judy Bissell was only partially disconcerting; after all, the woman was obviously one of the undead. However, almost everybody in the Towers knew Judy. She was always engaged in some cause or another to help those that she considered less fortunate. It was said that she went hungry on more than one occasion because she ran across some poor beggar with a sad tale that had her emptying out her cupboards. She’d gotten special permission from the owners of the building to place a small bin in front of the door to her flat where people could donate blankets and such. Every Saturday, she would walk the streets of Leeds and hand out whatever she had managed to accumulate.

Simon had gone to Judy’s once bearing a casserole that his mother had made. The only two things he recalled from that meeting was that Judy Bissell did not shave her armpits, and that she owned no furniture, her flat was basically empty.

They made their way around the back side that bordered Phil May Court. That was where they apparently ran out of luck. His best guess was that perhaps the massive number of people that had gathered at the nearby church must have turned. At least two dozen of the undead were staggering about on the grounds as more came to join them from that open gate between the church and Clyde Court Towers.

“Wait!” Mrs. Raye whispered angrily, but it was too late; Shadiyah was striding out to the middle of the small crowd.

The woman whirled about with her scimitar and took down the first three zombies unlucky enough to be standing less than a few feet away. Her long, black hair whirled about as she spun and sliced or jabbed.

By the time that Simon could snap out of his amazed stupor, she had taken down seven of the monsters. Simon stepped forward to help and froze. He would need to adjust the woman’s kill total down by at least one. A severed head was at his feet where it had rolled to a stop, but the eyes were shifting back and forth as the mouth opened and closed. He used the tip of his baton, pressing it to the left eye socket and then, cupping both hands over the butt of his weapon and giving a sturdy thrust down, he ended the entirety of the zombie’s existence. His brain placed that little event in a special place for later. He thought that it might be important.

It happened so fast that Simon actually had to turn two complete circles to be certain that they had in fact taken down all of the undead in the immediate area. He looked over at Shadiyah who was already wiping off her sword and seemed no more concerned than if they were out for a Sunday stroll. Mrs. Raye was leaning against a wall and seemed to be trying to catch her breath. He jogged over to her to see if she was okay or if perhaps she had been bitten.

“Just not as spry as I used to be,” the woman said with a groan as she pushed away from the wall.

The trio actually worked together with quick, quiet efficiency as they pushed a small blue lorry into place and then pulled off the pallets stacked on the flatbed of the vehicle and shoved them under it to prevent or at least limit the possibility of zombies coming underneath and emerging in their slowly developing stronghold.

It was also in the cab of the lorry that Simon lucked upon a very helpful find: a set of chains with a padlock. Of course, the lock would have been useless were it not for the ring of keys on the floor of the passenger’s side.

Hurrying to the main entrance, Simon actually had to yank one of the undead through the door. Shadiyah was at his side in an instant, plunging her blade into the zombie’s face as he looped the chains through the doors and was just about to secure the lock when a hand slapped on the glass.

“Let me out!” the face on the other side pleaded.

Simon’s eyes went wide as he took in the hooded face. This had to be the mystery man that had been running with the three men that Shadiyah killed.

“Yes,” a cold voice whispered from beside him, causing Simon to jump. Shadiyah stepped up to the door and brandished her blade. “Please let him out. We wouldn’t want the zombies to have a go at him.”

“C’mon, mate, let me out. Those things are coming, and there are too many for me to take down.” The man banged on the glass for emphasis.

Simon tilted his head and glanced past the man to the corridor beyond. Sure enough, there were at least twenty of the things coming, and this man had no weapon (at least nothing visible) to use in his defense.

“If we let you out, you may have some problems that you will need to deal with.” By now, Mrs. Raye had reached the doorway.

“What sort of problems?” the man almost whined, the fear oozing from his voice. “I think these things are problem enough, yeah?”

“You and your boys did a number on her sister,” Simon said, glancing over at Shadiyah who was now pacing back and forth like a caged tiger.

“I had no part in that. I dropped those guys when they started hurting people, now please, let me out…I will do whatever you ask, but don’t let those things get me!”

Simon saw the fear on the man’s face. His eyes were wide and he kept looking over his shoulder and pushing impotently on the doors.

“Let him out,” Mrs. Raye said, stepping between him and Shadiyah. Then she turned to the younger woman. “You stay in line until we have had a chance to talk to this young man and at least hear his story.”

Simon pulled the padlock free and then yanked the chain out in a loud metallic rattle. The man pushed out and spilled onto the landing. He had barely managed to get to his knees when the tip of a scimitar was against the back of his neck.

“You are out, but you aren’t moving until you talk,” Shadiyah said with almost no emotion.

The man froze and very slowly lowered himself to the ground and rolled onto his back. He kept his hands out and eyed the three people staring down at him for a moment before he began to speak.

“Me and the boys were having a bit of a party a few nights ago. Had some friends over and were having a right good time when the news came on that told everybody to either shelter in place or make their way to one of the rescue centers. People took off like rats on a sinking ship, ya know? The only ones left were me, Dizz, Gecko, and Sven. The four of us just sat in front of the telly, downing pints and watching the world come to an end.

“When they said that all of China, Japan, and most of India had gone dark, we were worried, but when that American doctor said that this was the dead coming back, we knew what was what. We decided that we should probably find as much food as possible. Since so many people had left their homes to go to those emergency shelters, we figured that they would not miss their groceries. We went from door to door, starting on our floor.

“We didn’t run into anybody until we reached two floors under ours. That was when we came upon the first actual deader. The thing was hunched over some poor bloke and feasting on him like a Christmas turkey. Dizz had his little knife, the one he carried everywhere and acted like it was some amazing thing. He used to flip that damn thing out and whirl it around… Sorry,” the man shook his head, “just remembering what a proper wanker he could be. Anyways, he steps in and sticks that thing in the side of the head. Does just like they said on the news, but then the one being chewed on starts to move, so the fellas start to have a little fun, ya know.

“They start sticking him and knocking him over. They eventually decide to lure that poor fella to the stairs and are gonna shove him down just to see what happens and that is when the door to Miss Bissell’s flat opened. That woman screamed like nobody’s business, but she was actually screaming at Dizz and Sven to leave the poor bloke alone.

“Gecko tried to grab the damn thing, but it got past him and took a good bite of Miss Bissell. Now she is screaming and hollering while that thing pulls away with a big piece of her arm. We got the thing away and Miss Bissell slams her door on us saying she is going to call the authorities. I told her—”

“This is all a nice story,” Shadiyah interrupted. “But I want to know how you try to explain that what happened to my sister is not reason enough for me to stick you through and leave you to die.”

“And it would help if you were able to explain why you hit me on the head and left me in the hall when I came upon your mates about to do the same thing to another poor woman…and as far as I know, might very well have done so since her door was still open and her flat was empty when I came to,” Simon said as he stepped beside Shadiyah in a demonstration of support.

“And perhaps you can explain the twenty-four hour notice that was spray painted on the wall over in our tower.” Mrs. Raye took a place on the other side of the man and then gave a slight nod of her head to the left.

A handful of zombies were coming, no doubt drawn by all the noise. Simon took a moment to watch as they staggered and stumbled, seeming to fine tune their approach as they got closer and closer.

“I had no idea what they were doing until I caught them. We had split up, supposedly each of us going to a different floor. I have no explanation for what they did, and the reason I conked you,” the man gave a nod to Simon, “is because you were threatening my mates. I had no idea about that woman until after I hit you. Then I told them I was done and I escorted that lady up to the top floor.”

“Of this building?” Mrs. Raye said with a frown. “So you abandoned her and you were leaving her to die?”

“You got it all wrong, mum,” the man said, obviously flustered as well as very aware of the approaching zombies. “I was trying to get folks to the top floor here because the lower ones were so bad off. I heard screaming coming from your building and went to help—”

“Your boys said that this building is overrun,” Simon cut the man off and shot another look over at the approaching zombies.

“No worse than yours.” The man shrugged very slightly causing Shadiyah to jab him in the shoulder with her weapon. He hissed between his teeth, but other than that, he simply remained on the ground with his arms out to his sides.

Simon observed that the man seemed more resigned than angry. In his opinion, if this man happened to be anything like his former and late companions, he would probably be displaying a great deal more aggression and anger. Still, he did not think he could convince the angry young woman at his side to relax any time soon. What he needed to do was find a way to get this man on their side and convince Shadiyah that it would be to all of their benefit.

“You said that you brought that woman to the top floor and left her,” Mrs. Raye stepped back into the conversation. “Is she still up there?”

“Should be,” the man said with a very slight nod, his eyes flicking to the blade hovering over his left shoulder as if to ensure that it was not going to stick him again. “I escorted her, a group of three kids from the fifth floor including what I am pretty sure are a brother and sister…umm…anybody speak Pakistani…I think they are that or maybe Iranian? Umm…also there were these two little old Scottish birds and then Miss Bissell.”

Simon felt his head snap around and focus on the man lying on the ground. That sudden reaction made Shadiyah jump, and the man on the ground apparently thought he was about to be executed because he curled into a ball and threw his hands over his head, begging to be spared.

Mrs. Raye caught Shadiyah’s arm as she recovered and started to lunge forward. Simon knelt and grabbed the man by the shoulders and yanked him around so that they were face-to-face.

“You put Miss Bissell with those people? Was she the only one that was bitten?” Simon shouted.

“What? Yes…why?” the man seemed on the verge of absolute panic now.

“Didn’t you watch the news and hear all that about the bite being the equivalent of a death sentence? You put all those people with Miss Bissell—” Simon began, but Mrs. Raye cut him off after shoving Shadiyah behind her and dropping down with one knee into the center of the man’s chest. To Simon, it looked more like she was simply trying to keep him in one place and maintain a gap between the man and Shadiyah’s sword.

“Miss Bissell is dead. We ran into her just a few minutes ago. She looked to have taken quite a tumble. I can only imagine that she came from the window of wherever you left her. The question is whether or not she hurt anybody else before her rather unpleasant ending.”

“We need to go up there,” Simon said simply.

“And do what?” Mrs. Raye challenged.

Simon opened and closed his mouth a few times before pressing his lips together tightly and frowning. At last, a look of determination spread across his face. “We don’t have time to stand around and debate this.” He jerked his head over to indicate the approaching undead. “We have already outstayed our welcome. You and Shaddi head back up to the flat. Me and…” He let that last word hang in the air like a question as he shot a look at the man on the ground. The man seemed to start as he realized he was being addressed.

“Cedric Black,” the man said weakly. Shadiyah made a dismissive snort, but a quick look from Mrs. Raye made sure that she kept her disapproval contained to that single gesture.

“Cedric and I will go up and see to those other folks. If there are any survivors, we will invite them to join us.” Simon reached out a hand to the man on the ground. The man accepted the hand and rose slowly to his feet.

As he stood, the hood of his sweatshirt fell back, allowing the trio of Mrs. Raye, Simon, and Shadiyah to get a better look at him. He had an almost comically perfect round head. His hairline had already begun the early march back and had receded to the point where he had a well-defined bald spot. The man kept his brown hair buzzed down to stubble that was also showing a few sparkles of pre-mature gray. He had ruddy skin and dark eyes that were currently darting between the woman with the scimitar and the man with the constable’s baton. He was moderately muscular, but that was ruined by a rather pronounced pot-belly.

“If you think they are already dead…” Cedric gulped, “…or worse…then why would we risk going up there?”

“Because they might be alive. If we are going to hold up here until all this madness settles down, then we need to get everybody together,” Simon replied.

“Settles down?” Cedric barked a harsh laugh, but quickly quieted when Shadiyah took a step towards him. “Look, I don’t know what you have seen, but I have seen people eating each other.”

“Maybe we feed you to that lot,” Shadiyah stepped closer to Cedric and pointed to the small mob that were now less than twenty or so feet away. “Save us the trouble of having to kill you ourselves.”

“You don’t really get a choice in this, Cedric.” Simon pursed his lips and then shook his head. “That is not entirely true. You do have a choice.”

“Oh?” Cedric seemed to brighten at that prospect.

“Sure,” Simon said with a shrug as he gave the two women a nod that indicated they needed to get moving. “You can join us and try to prove you are not like your mates, or you can die at the hands of those things…if Shadiyah doesn’t kill you herself.”

“So let me get this straight,” Cedric said slowly, eyeing the man before him and then casting one more look over at the two women who had started to walk briskly to the other tower, “my choices are join or die?”

“Yep,” Simon said looking in at the several undead that had gathered on the other side of the door that opened to the main entrance to the tower where there might be people in need of his help.

“Sounds fair.”

4

Terrible Things

Shadiyah opened the door to the tower and spied a shadow moving away from her at the end of the dark corridor. Without waiting for Mrs. Raye, she took off at a jog. Her speed picked up as she drew closer until she was almost sprinting the last several feet. Bringing her blade up, she drove it into the side of the head of the zombie just as it started to turn her direction.

“Young lady, we don’t have time for this nonsense,” Mrs. Raye called in a very loud whisper from behind her.

She didn’t care. She’d been robbed of her vengeance; but that was only temporary. If this Cedric Black was going to join them, then he would be easier to find. She was certain that he was not being entirely honest when it came to his involvement in the despicable things that were committed by his little gang.

A hand grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around. On instinct, she went to raise her scimitar, but another hand grabbed her wrist in a surprisingly firm grip. It was only surprising in that it was Mrs. Raye and it simply did not seem like a woman her age should be so cursed strong.

“I know that you are upset, but right now, we are simply trying to set ourselves up for the best chance of survival.” Shadiyah opened her mouth to protest, but Mrs. Raye shook her head and continued her lecture. “We have to secure this building. It is going to require several long days ahead that will be dangerous enough as it is. What we don’t need is for you to make this any harder on us than necessary. Your sister was abused terribly, and I know that you want the world to pay…and I am not saying that you have to forgo that forever…just for now.” The woman stepped back and made direct eye contact with Shadiyah. “I just need you to wait a little while. Can you do that for me?”

If she was hearing the older woman correctly, she was merely being asked to delay the execution. Perhaps she could allow that; after all, she did want to make things safer for her little sister. Despite being more than a tad bit annoying, Assi had suddenly and inexplicably become her life.

“Can I make one request?” Shadiyah composed herself as the two women started for the stairwell.

“Certainly, child.”

“When the time does come…it is in a manner of my choosing. There will be no vote, no stay of execution.”

“I think I can agree to that,” Mrs. Raye said with a nod.

The pair made their way up the dark stairwell, Mrs. Raye using her flashlight to illuminate the path. As they climbed, they noticed the sounds of pawing on some of the doors that opened to a few of the other floors. Sometimes they heard muffled moans, all of this was disconcerting as Shadiyah considered what it would take to actually clear the entire tower of an unknown number of zombies.

“Wait!” Mrs. Raye hissed, bringing them to a halt just as they were rounding the switchback and about to ascend to the eleventh floor. “Did you hear that?”

Shadiyah shook her head since she could not say that she’d heard anything beyond what they had been hearing all the way up the stairs. She listened, but nothing stood out for several heartbeats.

And then she heard it.

“Oh, my God!” she whispered. “Is that a baby?”

“It certainly sounds like it.”

“We have to help the poor thing.”

“I agree, but something does not feel right.”

Shadiyah cocked her head at Mrs. Raye in confusion; she honestly had no idea what the woman could mean.

“That sounds like it is coming from just the other side of the door,” Mrs. Raye expounded. “Unless there are no zombies on the floor, or at the very least, none in the corridor, then there should be no way for a baby to simply be out in the open and surviving.”

Shadiyah grabbed the door knob, but Mrs. Raye pulled her back. “You have the better weapon, dear. Let me open the door. You cover me and I will see what we have.”

Stepping back, she watched as the woman switched her flashlight to her other hand and opened the door slowly. There was a moment where nothing could be seen, but before the door had even been opened a few inches, a hand appeared in the crack. Even in the relative darkness, it was clear that the hand did not belong to one of the living.

A second later, the door was yanked open and a tall, lanky man stood in the doorway. The man reached out with both hands and grabbed Mrs. Raye by the shoulders. The woman tried to bring her cane up, but lacked any real force behind the blow and the head of her cane glanced off harmlessly.

A second zombie was directly behind this first one, and an open door immediately to the right gave off enough light for it to be clearly seen that this one was missing its left arm. It tried to push forward to join the other in the attack on Mrs. Raye and opened its mouth.

The sound that came forth caused Shadiyah to stagger back. Even Mrs. Raye, who was obviously terrified and fighting for her life, paused in her struggle at that sound.

A baby cry.

With a hard shove, Henrietta Raye sent the zombie that had her by the shoulders tumbling back into the one that had just let loose with that chilling baby cry. Shadiyah shook off her dumbfounded stupor and lunged forward with her scimitar. The point slid into the open mouth of the lead zombie that was already recovering and lurching forward once more in an attempt to get at Mrs. Raye.

“Straight to hell with you, you unholy bastard!” With that curse uttered between clenched teeth, the older woman drove the pointed tip of her cane down into the middle of the face of the one-armed zombie that had lured them in with its baby cry sound.

Several more of the undead were now stumbling into the hallway. The women retreated back to the stairwell and were about to shut the door when a voice called from somewhere close.

“Hello?” the voice squeaked. “Is somebody there?”

Almost as one, the zombies in the hallway turned, reorienting on the voice and heading towards the third door on the right. Shadiyah paused, torn between her desire to get back to her sister and the fact that there was somebody here and now that needed help. From the sounds of it, this person was alone.

“How many are with you, child?” Mrs. Raye called out.

“Just me!” was the plaintive reply.

Once more, the zombies halted their advance and began to change directions. They were actually bouncing off each other in their seemingly confused state. One tripped and tumbled to the floor causing two more to stumble over the downed figure.

“How did these things get the upper hand so quickly?” Mrs. Raye said to nobody in particular.

Shadiyah briefly recalled her mother’s helpless response to their father as he came for her and began to tear her apart. These things were not initially successful because they were so strong, fast, or coordinated, they were taking out humanity because they looked too much like us, she thought as she took in everything.

Mrs. Raye moved to the first downed zombie and spiked it. She turned to Shadiyah with a scowl. “Are you going to help, or will you continue to stand there and make sure that the floor does not float away on us?”

The two women made surprisingly short work of the half dozen undead in the hall and then arrived at the door. The sounds of sobbing could be heard on the other side.

“Open the door.” Mrs. Raye gave a short rap with her cane. The sounds of the locks being turned sounded and the door opened up just a crack to reveal a single puffy, red-rimmed eye staring out at them.

“Are they all gone?” a quiet voice hitched.

“All?” Shadiyah snorted. “Hardly.”

“The ones in the hall seem to be handled.” Mrs. Raye shot a nasty look at Shadiyah and then knelt down to be more on the same level as the frightened child on the other side of the door. “Are you in there all by yourself?”

The girl opened the door another inch or so and shook her head no. “My mum is in here, but she is sick like the other people on television…until the television shut off.”

“You say that your mother is in there?” Mrs. Raye put a hand on the door and started to apply just the slightest pressure in order to get the little girl to step back and open the door.

“She is in the loo. She told me that I needed to leave her in there no matter what.” The little girl stepped back to allow the women inside.

Shadiyah guessed her to be perhaps nine or ten. She had dark hair with the hint of a slant to her eyes that implied Asian heritage somewhere in her family tree. Her skin was amazingly pale in stark contrast, which only emphasized her delicate features. She was wearing denim shorts, sandals, and a tee shirt with a picture of a female singer, the name “Shari” in sparkly letters just above the image.

“Stay with the child,” Mrs. Raye said, moving past the little girl and disappearing around the corner.

A moment later, the sound of a door opening was followed by the start of a moan and then a sharp crack followed shortly thereafter by a thud. The little girl jumped at the sound and tears welled in her eyes.

“My mum’s gone, isn’t she?” The little girl looked up at Shadiyah and her hand seemed to unconsciously snake into hers in an attempt to find some semblance of comfort.

“I’m so sorry.” The words tasted bitter on Shadiyah’s tongue and she wanted to offer more solace, but there was a chill beginning to form in the core of her soul and she could not shake the feelings of detachment that were growing by the second.

“Would you like to come with us?” Mrs. Raye asked as she came around the corner, wiping the end of her cane with some piece of cloth and then stuffing the stained square of linen in her pocket.

“How about you take us to your room and we pack a few things just in case you need to stay for a while.” The girl nodded and the three of them headed up the hall and to the bedrooms.

“What’s your name?” Mrs. Raye asked as the girl pulled clothes from a small dresser and placed them with surprising neatness and care into a small travel case of red plaid.

“Annie Sun,” the girl replied.

“Pleased to meet you. My name is Henrietta and this is my friend Shadiyah,” Mrs. Raye said with cheerfulness that Shadiyah knew she could not have managed. Ten minutes later, they had a small suitcase packed and were ready to go.

“Can I bring my iPod?’ the little girl sniffed after closing her dresser drawers and turning to face the two women.

“I don’t see why not?” Mrs. Raye shrugged.

As they reached the door, a nearby explosion rocked the building causing a few things to tumble from a shelf in the living room. Annie screamed and flung herself against Mrs. Raye, her arms wrapping around the woman’s legs. The sounds of moans echoed up and down the corridor as the three living residents currently on this floor all sort of stumbled out while trying to catch their balance.

“What the hell was that?” Shadiyah moved ahead of the other two and hurried to the door that led to the emergency stairwell. She gave it a push and discovered that the door seemed to be stuck. Stepping back, she gave a hard kick. There was a slight screech, but the way was still barred. Looking over her shoulder, she waited impatiently for the other two to join her. “Help me get this door open.”

Mrs. Raye put her shoulder into it as Shadiyah kicked again and again. After the fifth or sixth attempt, the door creaked open about an inch. That caused both women to renew their efforts until they managed to get a gap wide enough for all three of them to slip through.

“Good thing none of us are fat,” Mrs. Raye gasped as she followed the other two into the dark stairwell.

At last, they reached their destination and once again had to force the door open. Shadiyah peered through the opening first. They were fairly confident that they had put down any of the free-roaming walkers on the floor, but she was growing cautious as her jangled nerves began to get the best of her. As expected, the hall was empty of anything moving.

She rushed to her door, pulling out her keys as she did. When she opened the door, an acrid stench assaulted her nose and it took a moment to realize that there was a steady breeze blowing inside her flat. She ran to the living room to discover the large window had been obliterated. Her first thought was that it had something to do with the explosion…then she realized that there was almost no glass inside the flat around where the window had once been.

She approached the gaping hole, her feet moving like they were mired in a thick, viscous mud. When she finally reached the far side of the room and looked outside, her eyes refused to look down and instead drifted to the oily black smoke that was wafting skyward and carrying on a stiff northeasterly breeze.

She did not know what had happened exactly, but she could tell that it was coming from the direction of the train tracks to the south of the Clyde Court Towers. She could see walking dead converging from all over. It almost looked like they were coming right for her building, except they had just enough of a deviation in their approach to make it clear they would pass down by the train tracks.

At last, she looked down. Her eyes almost seemed to be able to shift to a telephoto mode as they locked onto a single figure sprawled in the courtyard. It did not matter that she was several stories above the figure…she knew with certainty that it was her little sister. Beside the ruined body were the twisted remains of the chair that used to be at her father’s desk.

Assi had jumped to her death, and in Shadiyah’s mind, it was all her fault. She had failed her sister. Yet, underneath that thought was something else beginning to bubble and seethe from the recesses of her mind.

Anger.

***

“Bloody Americans are probably all doing fine,” Simon snarled as he brought his baton around and jabbed it into yet another eye socket.

They had only a few more steps to go and they would be in the stairwell. Hopefully there were not as many zombies to be found as there were in this corridor. He had lost count after putting down seven of the infernal creatures. He had also discovered that beating a skull until it shattered was nearly an impossibility. All the books, movies, and television shows where people simply swung once or twice and busted in a zombie’s skull were rubbish. He hoped that anybody who had ever helped propagate that myth had gone down under a swarm of the undead with an impotent club in their hand.

“Why do you think the Americans are doing any better than us?” Cedric gasped.

“They all have bloody guns. Most of them probably own three or four.”

“How do you know that?”

“Seen it on a documentary once about how well armed the Americans are and how their freedoms to own such things have led to them being the murder capital of the world.”

“I seen a documentary about how they have the corpses of aliens from some flying saucer that crashed back in the Fifties or Sixties…don’t make it true,” Cedric huffed as he grabbed the corpse of an old man by the throat, pinned him to the wall, and jammed his gore-coated knife into the man’s temple.

At last, Simon reached the door to the emergency exit and threw it open. The first floor landing could be seen, but looking up, it was an inverse abyss of blackness. He suddenly realized that Mrs. Raye had the only torch.

“We need to move,” Cedric said, giving Simon a bit of a shove in the back. “I think a dozen more of those things are coming in the main door.”

“If we pull that door shut, we’ll be blind as bats.”

“No,” Cedric nudged past Simon and clicked a button on something he pulled from his pocket, “we won’t.”

The man had a large, powerful flashlight in his hand that seemed to light up the entire stairwell in a dazzling blue glow. He pulled the door shut behind them and then took a position just ahead of Simon.

“I already had to make this trip a few times, and I was actually in the stairwell when we lost power. Thought that we had emergency lighting, but I guess the maintenance staff sort of let that slip,” Cedric said quietly, his voice still echoing a bit in the cavernous space. “It probably took me two hours to get the rest of the way up.” The man laughed uncomfortably as the two started their climb. “Probably not that long, but it sure as hell felt that way.”

They had just passed the ninth floor when a terrible explosion sounded. It shook the building violently, causing both men to grip the railing to avoid falling. When the shaking ceased, Simon swore his ears were still ringing; also, it suddenly felt a bit warmer.

“We need to pick up the pace,” Simon panted.

The two men hurried and finally made it to the floor where Cedric pulled up to a halt and pressed his ear to the door to listen for anything that might be on the other side. The man switched off the light and plunged them into near perfect darkness.

“What are we waiting for?” Simon whispered after several seconds passed.

“I don’t hear anything,” Cedric replied. “If there are living people still waiting, then I would think to hear something. The corridor was cleared; none of the flats had anybody or any of those things still wandering around. I told everybody to leave the doors open just so that it felt like we were all together.”

Simon puzzled over that statement. It simply made no sense for this man to be a part of those disgusting blokes he was associated with.

“Well we aren’t going to know anything if you don’t open the door,” Simon finally growled, beginning to lose his patience with what now seemed like delay tactics by this stranger.

Cedric sighed and pulled the door open slowly. A bitter smell that was a mix of petrol, rubber, and possibly wood managed to actually dominate; but the smell of undeath could easily be picked up. When it was finally open a few inches, Simon pushed past and stepped into the hall of the top floor.

He was two steps towards the nearest door on the right when a child poked its head out from the doorway. Simon froze, at first believing that the child was okay. However, when the child stepped out the rest of the way, it was clear that he was not among the living any longer.

The boy had a massive bite from his left arm that looked like it tore away most of the bicep as well as a good bit of skin all the way up to the neck. Also, it looked like his lower lip was hanging by a thread as it bobbed and swayed on his chin. The boy took a step closer to Simon and stopped, tilting its head as if regarding him and trying to determine if he were friend or foe.

For a brief second, Simon considered the possibility that his own bite acted as some kind of mask that the zombies would see and consider him one of their own. He shifted his feet and adjusted his grip on his baton. That seemed to be all it took. The child lunged, suddenly becoming just like any other zombie. It staggered for him, arms out and hands grasping. He was caught so off guard that he simply stood with his baton in his hand as it grabbed him by the wrist and began to pull it closer to his mouth to take a bite.

Something pushed into him and sent him stumbling to the right as Cedric stepped in and plunged his knife into the boy’s temple. A second later, the boy’s sister appeared around the same corner. If he was messed up, she was mangled.

The little Middle Eastern girl was maybe four years old. From the looks of things, she had been last, and apparently the one to suffer the most heinous attack. Her left leg was dragging and most of her calf had been torn away. Her clothes had mostly been ripped off in the attack, revealing at least a dozen bites taken out of her back, buttocks, and thighs. Her right hand was simply gone, nothing but a stub of jagged bones poking from the ravaged skin. Her belly had been ripped open and much of her insides had been torn from her body. Simon recovered as the little girl collapsed, and he was almost certain that he could see the remnants of horror in the frozen expression of her eyes as he stepped past her to join Cedric in the search of this particular flat for any possible survivors—though he doubted they would find any.

The bedroom helped to confirm Simon’s hypothesis about the little girl’s final moments. There were dark stains on the floor near the bed that were consistent with somebody being dragged from underneath it. Also, splatters of darkness were visible towards the head of the bed, closest to the corner. He tried to clear his mind of the horror that poor child must have endured in the final moments.

A low moan made the two men spin around. The third child stumbled into the room, most of his throat torn out which seemed to be a merciful death compared to that of the little girl. Right behind the child was one of the old ladies. Her mouth was smeared with a dark stain. From the looks, this lady had tried to fight. One of her eyes was swollen shut and there were at least five bites on her face that had only done enough damage to be visible through the impressions that remained.

Simon was confused since those were the only injuries he could see; none of them were fatal. At the most, she should simply be showing the tracers in her eyes.

That thought jolted Simon and he drifted away from Cedric as the man ended the old lady’s existence. He hurried to the bathroom and used the little ambient light there was to give his eyes a check.

Still nothing? How could that be? His sister had bitten him almost three full days earlier.

“Hey, where did you go?” Cedric actually sounded frantic.

Simon stepped out of the bathroom and discovered Cedric backing away from another older lady, a woman and two young men around their late teens. The zombies were stumbling and pushing forward to get to the man, but the space in the hallway made it a bit crowded and that is probably what saved Cedric.

Moving into the living room, Simon stepped behind the long sofa and called for Cedric to join him. The man kicked out at the old lady and then dove back and scrambled to join Simon.

“Where the hell did you go?” the man panted, anger tainting his voice as he yanked his blade free from the younger woman’s face.

“I thought I heard something,” Simon blurted, not wanting to reveal his injury to anybody, much less this man.

The man shot him a dubious look and then returned his attention to the five zombies coming for them. The undead actually made themselves easier to kill as they split up at the small coffee table in the center of the room. The old lady simply stopped and looked like she was willing to wait for the living to come to her. The young men each went a different way and allowed Simon and Cedric to take them down with little effort.

Yet, once again, the child seemed to hang back from the fray. At some point, Cedric had obviously taken him down, but something was nagging Simon about the behavior of the child zombies.

Simon moved around his side of the couch and apologized to the older woman before putting her down for good. Once that was done, he moved to the window and looked outside.

“Yeah…you won’t be staying here.” Simon yanked the window open and took a better look at the derailed train on the tracks just to the south. It had plunged down the far side of the berm. That might be the only thing about that situation that was lucky.

“Jesus and the saints,” Cedric breathed as he joined Simon at the window.

“Yeah, it looks like hundred if not thousands of those things are headed this general direction. We need to get to the other tower before it is too late.”

“What?” Cedric barked. “Why would we go back to that tower and be trapped? We need to run. Get your friends, grab anything you can carry, and we run for the countryside.”

“You want us to leave this place? Why would we do that?” Simon challenged.

“Well,” Cedric held up his fingers to count off his points, “first, this area is gonna be swarmed within the next hour by what might be most of what used to be the population of the city. Second, there are corpses everywhere that will start rotting before long. That means disease and who knows what else. I doubt we will want to breathe the air in a few months. Third, this place is easy to spot and looters will likely come from every direction…some of them might be rather unsavory.”

That last point made Simon laugh inwardly considering the company this man had been keeping until just a few hours ago. Still, he had to admit that the man made a valid point. Was making this place their bastion really such a good idea?

“So, where do you have in mind?” Simon asked.

“I don’t, but I know that staying in this city will not go well for us. There are too many things that can go wrong…that train is a fine example. We already have fires burning all over the place and that just put one right in our lap. Toss in the petrol stations around town that could add to the trouble soon enough and this entire city may well burn to the ground. Oh, and did I mention the few hundred thousand zombies?”

Simon listened to Cedric speak and had to admit that the man’s points were all spot on. Perhaps they should consider relocating to someplace out in the countryside. A thought came suddenly and he actually clapped his hands, startling Cedric in the process.

“I have a cousin over in the town of Micklefield.” Simon felt a pang in his stomach at the realization that he’d not thought about any of his family all that much since this whole nightmare began.

“You do realize that your cousin is likely just as dead as those blokes,” Cedric said with a shake of his head as they watched several hundred of the undead pouring down Copley Street.

Simon moved closer to the window and looked down at the hordes heading their direction. He scanned the area and could see more and more of the walking dead falling in with the mob. Yes, he thought, getting out of the city proper was the best plan. Now, the trouble came with trying to convince Shadiyah and Mrs. Raye of that fact.

He and Cedric were standing there in silent contemplation when a flash of sudden movement caught Simon’s eye. From Lloyd’s Pharmacy came a small group of survivors. He could tell they were living because of the fact that all of them were running like lunatics escaping the asylum. They were not making any attempt to stay together; they were all simply running to get away.

It had been easy to see all the zombies shambling along the streets, but from this vantage so high up, it was difficult to see how many of the undead were getting into the buildings. Apparently it was a sizeable number. As that group emerged and tried to escape, an obvious flow of zombies now emerged from the pharmacy.

Then, Simon saw something that, despite the horrific scene playing out, caught his full attention. All of the undead in that general area were changing course. They were now moving towards this new stimulus. It was easy to see from above that none of those poor souls had even the slightest chance of survival. There were just too many cursed zombies.

As much as he wanted to look away, he found that he could not. It was simply too riveting to ignore; also, he almost felt as if he owed it to these poor doomed souls. Each one of them was about to exit this world, and there would be no memorial or monument to mark their ever having existed. They would simply become part of the massive numbers of the undead now roaming the streets.

The one thing he was grateful for was not really being able to clearly see their faces. As it was, he could barely hear their shouts and exclamations above the noise of the fire, the undead, as well as the distance that separated them.

One person in particular drew his attention and he focused on that lone figure. The person was dressed in what looked like riot gear. The clothing was all black and, at least from this distance, looked like it was made of fairly sturdy material. To complete the look, this person had a visored helmet on with the face shield down.

This lone stranger had managed to climb up on top of a black lorry and was swinging what looked like a sword of some sort with ruthless efficiency. He would hack down one zombie and then another. Sadly, the effort began to become too much and the wild swings became jabs, until the person finally fell to his or her knees in fatigue.

By then, the undead had packed in tightly around the vehicle and were growing in number to the point where the lorry began to visibly rock back and forth like a small boat out on the angry sea. The person struggled not to be sent sliding or tumbling, but it was clear that even if he or she did manage to hang on, the vehicle would eventually tip.

There was a sudden surge of movement from the person as they threw themselves down on their back and then, with the large blade, made a swift motion across the area of the throat. Simon was thankful the lorry was black; while it was clear something was spreading across the roof of the van, the black paint made it impossible to really see the blood. Still, the person kicked a few times before sliding from the roof and into the hands of the greedy mob below.

Simon allowed his vision to become less focused again and he scanned the area. It did not look like a single person remained. He felt a sardonic smile curve his lips as he took in the morbid irony of one of his previous thoughts. While it was true that there would be no permanent markers for these poor souls, there were a series of temporary ones. He could make out the eight individual clusters of the undead where they had dragged down those doomed individuals. At that moment, he could basically see the exact locations where those people all came to rest…such as it was.

“Let’s go get the others and get out of here.” Simon turned away from the horror below. Part of him moved away because he needed to stop looking at what was going on down there, but the other part of him needed to get away from the window before he threw himself out of it just to end the overwhelming sense of futility that rose above him like a giant tsunami and threatened to sweep him away forever.

5

A New Leaf

Shadiyah turned to regard Mrs. Raye. The woman was focused solely on that child they had liberated from her flat. She refused to think of it as rescued because that would imply that the girl was somehow safe. Assi’s broken body down below was testimony against that idea.

“…is a nice young man who was actually training to become a police man. He is very brave and strong and will help keep you safe,” Mrs. Raye was saying.

Shadiyah now found herself becoming annoyed by the older woman. For somebody so pragmatic, she was filling this girl’s head with absolute fantasy.

She returned to the window and looked down at the zombies converging from all over. In the distance, she saw a bloom of flame erupt skyward. This one was far enough away that it was a few seconds before the dull “whump” of the explosion sounded. It was just a low, hollow sound, but the girl still squealed, prompting a new series of comforting lies to spew from the mouth of Mrs. Raye.

What is happening to me? a quiet voice piped up from some distant part of her mind.

That voice was quickly swallowed by the darkness that was seeping into every crack and crevice of Shadiyah’s being. She had no time for that part of her that held on to such useless feelings and emotions as compassion and empathy. Her sister had taken her own life because of something that had happened at the hands of others.

Funny, she had thought that the zombies would be the problem. Her biggest concern had been protecting the two of them from those horrible monsters. In the end, it had been the living that damaged Assi and sent her to her death.

Her mind began to run though stories that she’d heard on the news over the years. She started to see a pattern: Men are evil. That idea found fertile soil in her troubled mind. Every time an inner voice tried to speak out against what was going on in her head, darkness was heaped upon it until the voice became silent.

“Shadiyah!” a voice snapped her from the swirling maelstrom wreaking havoc in her head. She turned to see Mrs. Raye looking at her expectantly.

“Sorry.” She cast a glance back out the window where her sister had flung herself to her death, then back to the old woman. “My mind was…” Her voice drifted off as she saw pity etch its ugly mask on the old woman’s face. She hated being pitied; pity was for the weak.

“I think we should move to a different room until Simon returns. The wind is picking up and I—” Mrs. Raye snapped her mouth shut and her eyes shot to the open hole where the window used to be and then back to Shadiyah. “I just think it best if we move.”

“Okay.” Shadiyah shrugged her shoulders and grabbed a bag of some of the supplies that they had managed to gather in all this madness. She waved her hand for the woman to lead the way.

Shadiyah shut off her mind after they got settled. She leaned back and shut her eyes so that she would not have to see the sad looks she was receiving from Mrs. Raye, or the cautious-bordering-on-frightened glances that Annie Sun kept shooting her. At last, the sounds of approaching feet could be heard. They were moving fast and with regularity which at least eliminated the chance for zombies.

There was a rustling, and the sound of the door opening. Mrs. Raye hissed something out to the hallway, and after some more scuffling sounds, the door shut.

“None of them?” Mrs. Raye finally said.

“They were all turned,” Simon replied. “We didn’t hear or see anybody else, but we didn’t really search. I figure most anybody in that tower would be leaving with that fire raging just on the other side of the tracks.” There was an odd and lengthy silence before he continued. “And we need to pack what we can and be out of here as well.”

“Why would we do that?” Mrs. Raye argued.

“Those things are coming from every direction,” Cedric spoke up.

The moment that she heard the man’s voice, Shadiyah’s eyes popped open and she locked onto the stranger that did not belong in her presence.

He was standing beside Simon, his back almost to her. She let her hand drift down to the sword at her hip. Of all the people in the room, she was armed best. It would be a simple matter for her to end his existence right now.

She stood, the weapon sliding out almost silently. She took a step forward just as Simon turned to face her.

“Where is Assi?”

She opened her mouth to speak but nothing would come out. Instead, she felt her eyes grow hot and her vision became blurred as the tears spilled down her face.

“She is gone.” Shadiyah could not bring herself to say the words.

“Gone?” Simon asked, scratching his head in confusion. “Where could—”

Mrs. Raye pulled him close and whispered something in his ear. Even through the tears, Shadiyah could see that man’s expression change. There it was again…pity. The other man, Cedric, had moved close and obviously heard what was said. He had a very different expression flash across his features. His eyes went to Shadiyah and the sword in her hand. He might be a lot of things, but apparently stupid was not one of them. The man took a step back and reached for the door.

“Maybe I should just go.” Cedric now faced Shadiyah and was backing away.

“Shaddi!” Simon hissed. “What are you about?”

The woman froze and her gaze adjusted to lock on to the man who had spoken. Suddenly, she barely recognized him. He seemed different. Perhaps his running around with that vermin of a human being had rubbed off on him somehow. Perhaps the core of all men was basically the same: rotten.

“My sister is dead.” The words were flat and without emotion, but they conveyed something menacing and hard. “That man and his pack of wolves broke her, and she could no longer bear to live.”

“I wasn’t with them…I was no part of their—” Cedric began to protest, but Shadiyah cut him off.

“Shut up!” She whirled back to face him and her sword cut through the air in compliance with her motion. She let her vision narrow to just him. Simon might actually be worth saving, but this piece of filth would not live to see another day if she had anything to say about it. “You will say whatever you need to say in order to try and save your sorry life. I was actually going to let you live for a few days until we got things straightened up here, but now that we are apparently leaving, you are no longer necessary.”

“What?” Simon blurted. “Shadiyah, this is the grief talking. I am sorry about Assi, truly I am, but I don’t believe that this man had anything to do with it.”

“Why? Because he says so? Do you really expect him to admit to the animal that he is?”

“He was not in this room when we arrived, and you took care of everybody that was present.” Simon took a step forward causing Shadiyah to adjust where her scimitar was pointed. He threw his hands up, but he took another step closer. “I truly am sorry.”

Shadiyah looked at Simon and tried to figure out what he meant. What exactly was he apologizing about? That was her final thought when something crashed into the back of her head and the world spun away into a void of darkness.

***

“Is she going to be okay?” Simon asked, sighing heavily in relief that he did not fully understand.

Why would he be afraid of Shadiyah? They had been friends for a better part of five years and despite her current state, he refused to believe that she would do him any harm. His rational mind flashed an image of the look in her eyes and he felt that kernel of doubt plant itself a bit more firmly than he would admit at the moment.

“She will be fine,” Mrs. Raye knelt beside the girl and brushed the hair from her eyes. “She will have a nasty headache when she wakes up, but that is about it.”

“That stupid cunt is off her perch,” Cedric snapped.

Simon whirled on the man. “You do recall the part about her sister having been raped by friends of yours and apparently jumping to her death while we were absent, yeah?”

“Easy, I’m just saying that your friend seems a little off.” Cedric raised his hands and took a step back.

“She has reason,” Simon huffed as he edged past the man and knelt beside Shadiyah with Mrs. Raye. “You sure she will be okay?”

“Positive, but your friend makes a good point.” Mrs. Raye looked up, and Simon saw something on her face that he did not exactly like.

Later, when he was able to relive the whole terrible scene in his mind, he was able to figure out what it was that he saw in that moment on the older lady’s face. It was an absolute lack of emotion. Far worse than anger was the feeling of apathy.

“She is a liability, Simon,” Mrs. Raye explained. “She very much means to kill that young man, and judging by what I saw, she would not stop there. The girl might very well have suffered an unbalance that cannot be righted.”

“Told ya,” Cedric muttered, earning a harsh glare from both Simon and Mrs. Raye.

“If we want to have a chance to survive, I am afraid…” The woman stopped speaking and pressed her lips tight as if considering the answer to a difficult problem. At last she gave a curt nod and sighed. “We have no choice but to leave her behind.”

“What?” Simon exploded. He pushed back from the unconscious figure on the floor and spoke in a harsh whisper that almost seemed as if he feared speaking out loud would rouse Shadiyah. “Perhaps it is you who is mad.”

“Simon, the girl is broken. She was taking care of her sister these past several days and I think it took its toll. The poor younger girl was already pretty much a vegetable. Even before that terrible event, Assi would not speak or do anything except stare at the wall. I know…I came over and checked on them as recent as yesterday.”

“We can’t just leave her. She will die,” Simon insisted.

“If we bring her, it is likely that we all die. The woman has no reason left in her.” Mrs. Raye stood up. “We can see to her safety as much as possible, and we will leave her with plenty of supplies, but we can’t bring her with us if we want to live.”

“You would side with that stranger over Shaddi?” Simon pressed, hiking an angry thumb over at Cedric.

“It has nothing to do with siding,” Mrs. Raye said. “I am telling you what I saw in her eyes, the girl is unstable and on the edge of a total mental breakdown, and if she does that while she is with us, it is very likely that we all pay with our lives.”

Simon scowled. He had seen something in Shadiyah’s eyes as well. He did not want to admit that it had concerned him, but he knew he was lying to himself. His shoulders slumped as he accepted the truth. Still, he hated the idea of leaving her by herself. Mrs. Raye could say whatever she liked, but they would be sentencing Shadiyah to death if they abandoned her.

Cedric took a step towards the downed woman and Simon’s arm shot out, barring the way. “What do you think you are doing?”

“I just thought that our group would benefit from having that blade since we are the ones who will be leaving this building and going out into that hell,” the man said with a snort.

“If you touch her or that sword, I will personally throw you through one of those windows.” Simon squared his shoulders and faced the man, making it a point of looking him in the eyes to hammer home the sincerity of his words.

“I don’t want any trouble, copper.” The man raised his hands and stepped back.

Simon scowled; he did not like this at all. These people were willing to just cut a person loose and let them drift away awfully quick. His mind went to his bite wound and he wondered how fast they would do the same to him. He considered revealing his condition right then and there. Perhaps they would insist that he stay behind as well. If that happened, then Shadiyah would at least have somebody.

“Are you really a police man?” a small voice said, causing Simon to look down at the little girl now standing in front of him and looking up with an expression of what looked strangely like…hope?

“Well…” Simon began, but he paused as he knelt down to meet her at eye level.

He was certain that he saw something in this little girl’s inquisitive expression that held out hope that he was that authority figure who would offer her someplace to anchor herself against the madness. He had to admit, the past several days had seen the world spin out of control. Civilization was in tatters in less time than anybody could have ever imagined. He likened it to a car crash where you were moving along fine and then suddenly coming to an unceremonious and violent halt that sent you smashing through the windshield.

“He was about to start his first day with the police right here in this neighborhood,” Mrs. Raye said as she stepped up beside him.

Was that relief that he saw flash on the girl’s face? A wave of guilt washed over him. What would it do to this child when the infection or whatever it was finally claimed him and he started showing symptoms? He would worry about that later; right now it was time that he started acting the role of the protector of the people.

“I was all set to become a member of the Outer West branch of the West Yorkshire Police, Little Miss.” Simon knelt before the girl and offered his best smile.

“My mum said that if I was ever in trouble, or afraid, that I should look for one of the men or women in black.” Annie touched Simon on the face and he stiffened for a second, thinking that she might be seeing those first tracers in his eyes, but instead, she simply smiled and then threw her arms around his neck in a big hug.

“So, where did you say we were heading?” Mrs. Raye asked.

“Micklefield,” Simon said, standing up and scooping Annie into his arms with him as he did so. “I have a cousin there. The town is small enough, and maybe things are not as bad out that way as they are here.”

“That might not be such a terrible idea,” Mrs. Raye agreed. “If nothing else, it gets us out of the major population center.”

It didn’t take long for them to gather things up to bring on their journey. They knew that driving the main roads nearby were out of the question simply by glancing out the window. The A58 leading to the roundabout and the city center was jammed in both directions with cars that had long since been abandoned by any of the living occupants. That meant that they would need to be able to carry everything.

“So we are just leaving anybody else that might be in the towers?” Simon asked as they all stood outside of Mrs. Raye’s flat cinching up the backpacks that she had actually leaning up against the wall in her entry hall for some peculiar reason.

“We can’t save everybody,” Mrs. Raye answered curtly. “The time has come to take care of ourselves first. Once we have gotten settled, then we can worry about others if that is what you wish to do.”

Simon could not shake the nagging feeling in the back of his head that there was more about this old bird than met the eye. He had actually asked about the three backpacks when they had walked into her flat that already had some basic supplies loaded into them. She had given him some sort of dismissive answer about being prepared and just hoping to be able to run across a few able bodies in the process to shoulder the load.

Additionally, she had an array of small but nasty weapons to choose from sitting on her kitchen table. He did not want to ask where those had come from and simply picked up a spiked mace that looked like it had been lifted from a museum exhibit. Deciding that the baton was just not that effective, he gave this new weapon a few practice swings and felt fairly confident that it would deal out enough damage to crush the skull of a zombie.

Cedric had picked up some sort of peculiar looking bladed weapon. It looked like a scythe except for the fact that the handle was short enough to be wielded one-handed. Also, it had some sort of heavy saw-toothed blade jutting from the handle that looked like a small version of a headsman’s axe.

“What the blazes is this?” Cedric said, the palpable awe in his voice seeping through.

“A friend of mine in Iran made that for me,” Mrs. Raye said with no more emotion than if she were commenting on the weather.

Once everybody was ready and Annie had been given very specific instructions to stay close and keep quiet, the foursome were ready to leave. A nagging feeling that had continued to ping around inside Simon’s head until he could take it no longer finally won out.

Everybody headed for the stairwell, but Simon pulled up. “Meet me at the exit. I will be down in just a few minutes.”

“Where are you going?” Mrs. Raye’s voice called after him, but he ignored her and rushed back to Shadiyah’s flat.

He pulled the spare key that he’d found hanging on a hook in the kitchen from his pants pocket and hurried inside. He went to the room of the flat where they had tucked the young woman into bed. Grabbing a piece of paper, he scribbled a quick note:

Shaddi,

We have gone on to Micklefield. If you find it in your heart, I would love for you to join us. It pains me to leave you behind, and know that I was against the idea, but the consensus is that you have let your anger get the best of you. I hope you will decide to give Cedric a chance. In my heart, I do not believe that he was part of that terrible thing that happened to Assi.

We will get out of the city any way we can, but the hope is that we will eventually make it to the M1 and follow it until the A656 roundabout. Look for us at the Parish Church of Saint Mary the Virgin first…if you choose to join us.

Simon

He slipped the note under the scimitar that they had left on her dresser. He wanted to ensure that she got his message. If she chose to refuse his offer, at least he could live with the idea that he had made one. Giving the raven-haired beauty one final look, he had to resist the urge to kiss her forehead. Slipping out the door, Simon hurried to the stairwell and began the decent to the ground floor where the others would be waiting.

***

When Shadiyah opened her eyes, it took her several seconds to realize that the utter darkness was what was keeping her from being able to see a thing. She sat up, and her eyes quickly found the seam at the bottom of her door in the relative blackness of what was obviously the bedroom.

She stood and was greeted by a wave of nausea and dizziness that had her sitting back down in a hurry. She waited for the sensations to pass and then attempted to stand once more. This time, she went slow and was rewarded with being able to make it to her feet.

Padding out to the living room, she was not surprised to find it empty. There was very little actual light filtering in, and she thought that she could hear the pitter patter of rain on the windows. Moving to them, she looked out at the dead city of Leeds, England.

She could be looking at any city in the world for all she could actually see from her vantage point. What she could see were the several fires burning throughout the city she had called home. Yet, now she felt completely detached. Not just from Leeds, but from everything. It was as if her soul reflected the utter darkness blanketing the world laid out before her.

She moved over to a table that had obviously been placed by her former fellow survivors. It was sitting directly in the path of the miniscule amount of light afforded by the living room window. It was not near any of the other furnishings and the table was littered with a few items obviously intended for her. Among them was a small flashlight that she switched on.

She suddenly realized that there was one item in particular that she could not be without. Already her mind was promising to hunt down and kill those who abandoned her if it was not located. She returned to the bedroom and was relieved to discover her father’s scimitar on the large dresser sitting against the far wall. She also discovered a note and read it. When she finished, her hand crumpled the piece of paper and dropped it to the floor.

She returned to the living room and found that much of the food that she and Mrs. Raye had scavenged was still sitting in neat stacks on the kitchen counter. She opened a tin of corned beef and a bottle of water and then returned to look out the window.

She had no idea how long she stood there, nor did she know when she had actually regained consciousness from the nasty blow to the head that had left her with an ugly feeling knot that was crusted with blood. But when the sun began to turn the dark sky to that of a slate gray, she was still looking out the window.

As her view became more and more clear, she began to discern details. She could see large mobs of the undead milling about, and that was when she remembered that there had been an explosion involving a train car carrying petrol.

Shadiyah exited the flat, not bothering to shut the door behind her. She returned to the flat where her sister had jumped and made herself look out the window. The fire had moved away from her location and was engulfing what she was almost certain had to be the Wortley Recreation Grounds where one of the rescue centers had been located.

Once more she simply stood for an indeterminate length of time just staring out at the vista of destruction. She briefly considered Simon’s note, and then discarded the idea of joining those people.

No, Shadiyah thought, she did not need to join anybody. Still, watching the fire as well as the hordes of zombies seeming to converge from every direction, she did not want to stay here.

After returning to the flat where all the supplies had been mercifully left for her to pick through, Shadiyah sat down to a meal of soup from a can and some crackers. As she sat and ate, her mind wandered. She had been cut loose. For some reason, that did not bother her. Instead, she felt strangely…

“I am free,” she whispered.

Not in the way that had once been the norm of free; no, this was a freedom that went beyond the norm. This was a freedom in its most pure sense. This was the freedom to commit good or evil. Only, it would be based on her own determination. She had already seen how, when given the choice to pass judgment, most people lacked the ability. They were accustomed to allowing others to do it for them and almost seemed afraid to make the tough choices. She had no such fear.

She had discovered something when she had executed those bastards. In that moment, she felt a sense of peace that she had never in her life experienced before. That single moment had been the purest bliss, and now she craved it more than anything in her life.

She was still eating when she heard what sounded like a distant scream. Rising to her feet, she absently checked the scimitar at her hip and went to the door. She listened for another few seconds. The sound came again along with a furious pounding and banging. All she could tell was that it was on one of the floors below. She was not sure of anything else beyond that.

Shadiyah stepped out into the hall and ensured that it was empty. Nothing but the bodies of the slain littered the floor. Breaking into a slow jog, she made her way to the emergency exit and opened the door to the stairwell. The blackness was no longer something that scared her, but she knew better than to try and go down the stairs without being able to see. One wrong step could be her end.

She clicked the button on the flashlight and started down. The banging had stopped, but the screaming was now more intense. It sounded like a man, but she could not be sure. What she could tell was that whoever was screaming was taking a beating. That was obvious by the way the sound would end with a sharp abruptness.

When she stopped at the door and could be certain that the noise was in fact coming from that floor, she was surprised to discover that she was at the door that would open to the corridor where her own flat resided. That seemed strange, and then she heard the sound of somebody speaking. It was unintelligible until she opened the door a crack.

“…any trouble, please just take what you want and leave me be,” the voice of an old man begged.

“Where did you get all this shit?” a voice snarled, emphasized by a hard smack.

“Henrietta—” the weak voice of Mr. Ivanoff gasped, but was cut off by another vicious sounding attack.

“I told you to shut up about trying to tell me some old bird came and delivered food to you in the middle of a bloody zombie apocalypse,” the same voice that seemed to be doing all the talking spat.

Shadiyah knew there were a couple of thugs with this ring leader simply because she could hear the hoots and laughing. She had no idea what weapons these animals might be carrying, so she would need to be careful as she approached. Entering the corridor, she set her flashlight down and drew her blade.

Hugging the wall on the same side of the hall as the door to Mr. Ivanoff’s flat, she crept up cautiously. As she did, she could hear the clatter and crash of things being tossed about. With each step closer, she found a sense of calm becoming more and more prevalent.

At last, she reached the open doorway. Crouching low, she peered around the corner. At the end of the hall she could see old Mr. Ivanoff sprawled on the floor. He was bleeding from his nose as well as a nasty cut above his right eye which was already swelling shut. Standing over him was a tall, skinny male wearing an ill-fitting jacket that looked like it had been stolen from somebody twice his size. His dark hair was styled into a drooping Mohawk with the sides of his head sporting nothing but stubble. Even from behind she could see a number of hoops and such dangling from both ears.

Beyond the scene playing out just a few feet away, she saw at least three more young males, none looking much older than mid-to-late teens, digging through a collection of boxes and bags that were on the floor in the living room. She actually recognized one of the large burlap totes that Mrs. Raye had carried when they were out scavenging. Tins of all sorts of things were scattered on the floor, but there was a large black carry bag that looked to be where they were putting things they had decided to take. As she watched, she saw one of the looters hold up a plastic bottle of some sort.

“What the blazes is puh-silly-um husk?” the one holding the plastic container asked.

“It’s psyllium, you dolt. It helps you crap better,” one of the others answered. “My auntie used to take it.”

That answer seemed to satisfy the one asking the question. He also apparently deemed it unnecessary and tossed it on the floor, giving the container a stomp with his boot for added measure.

Shadiyah took in a long breath and held it as she rose to her feet. She moved silently down the entry hall until she knew that she was in range. Due to the confined space, she could only thrust, driving the sharp point through the back of the head right at the base of where it attached to the neck. She actually felt the blade shiver off the spinal column just a bit as it drove through.

Yanking back, she brought her knee up to stop the body from colliding with her. The look of astonishment on Mr. Ivanoff’s face was a mix of relief and terror in a confusing mask of wide eyes and open mouth, but Shadiyah paid him only a second’s worth of attention as she winked and stepped past his prone figure.

Entering the living room, she saw that there were only three males accompanying their now dead leader. (She supposed him to be the leader since he was doing all the talking.) The closest was immediately to her left. He was kneeling over an open box, holding what looked like a container of instant oats. With a backhanded swipe, she brought her blade around and buried it in his face perfectly bisecting his wide open mouth that was making an ‘O’ of surprise at that instant.

She had to bring up her foot and shove her latest victim away and off her blade. Surprisingly, he did not seem dead yet and was making a horrific amount of noise. The other two had been stunned to the point of inaction and were just staring at her. One was holding an economy size package of bog rolls and the other had an open tin of sardines that he was obviously stuffing into his own mouth; a hint of oil dripped down his chin as evidence.

Knowing that her advantage of surprise was about to come to a conclusion, she jumped up on a squat end table and brought her blade down hard. The man threw up an arm and her blow dug into the shoulder, the feel of bone breaking under the blow sending a buzz of electric pain to Shadiyah’s hands.

This man howled in agony, his noises adding to the strange gurgles of his comrade that was thrashing back and forth, hands over his mouth as blood poured through his fingers. The one uninjured man had an apparent lack of desire to confront this crazed woman and ran for the door. Unfortunately for him, he did not take into account the possibility that the old man he hurtled would try to trip him.

He stumbled and crashed into the corpse in the middle of the hall that had been the first of the group to fall. His breath came out in a loud grunt and exhale. He was trying to scramble to his knees when Shadiyah came up behind him. She thrust her blade into his back and then pulled out. He howled and flopped over, throwing up his hands and crying for mercy.

Shadiyah could see the blood not only forming a pool on the floor, but also spreading across the front of his shirt, indicating that she had run him all the way through. The man was babbling something, but she did not hear the words. Instead, she kicked his legs in order to spin him just so that she could move in and swing again. She drove the blade down but at an angle that caught her target just below the armpit. The strike was lucky (for her at least) in that it went right between two ribs and pierced a lung. She had to brace herself with a foot on the individual’s side to free her weapon.

Stepping back, she could see the dull-eyed stare of a corpse looking up at her; the face still a pleasing mask of terror. Returning to the living room, she made short but violent work of the two remaining and then returned to Mr. Ivanoff who was still lying on the floor.

“Miss Kasim,” the old man croaked as he struggled to sit up. His normally thick Ukrainian accent was masked by the tightness of pain that rang in his voice.

“Mr. Ivanoff, are you okay?” Shadiyah asked as she knelt beside the elderly man.

“I have not been okay since the days of Brezhnev.” The man made a weak attempt at laughing that ended in harsh coughs.

Helping the elderly gent to his feet, Shadiyah was amazed at how light the man felt. He was little more than a skeleton. She eased him to his well-worn chair and then stepped back and looked around at the carnage.

“Perhaps you should come across and stay in my flat,” she suggested.

“Ah, it has been so long since a young lady has invited me over,” the old man gave a waggle of his amazingly bushy eyebrows, but then he gave a shake of the head. “No, Miss Kasim, I do appreciate the invitation, but I believe that I shall spend my final days right here.”

“But…” She turned, her arm extended towards the corpses littering the tiny flat.

“Just take them outside the door. My eyesight is not what it used to be, so I won’t be bothered by a few more stains. And with all the death in the air, what are a few more bodies adding to the mix.”

Shadiyah shrugged and dragged the bodies out into the hallway. After that, she came in and picked up the scattered supplies and placed them back in the scattered boxes. Looking around, she simply could not leave things in their current state. She hurried over to her flat, grabbed some supplies and returned to clean up a bit. By the time she was finished, the better part of the day had passed. She only stopped long enough to share a meal with Mr. Ivanoff.

By the time night fell, the pitter patter of rain had turned to something a bit stronger. With the power gone, the flat grew chilly enough that she could see her breath wisping up in curls of misty vapor. After fetching a few blankets from the closet in the hallway and covering up Mr. Ivanoff, Shadiyah took a seat on the couch until the man drifted off.

Once she was certain that he was asleep, she slipped out of the flat. Twenty minutes later she was up on the roof of the tower. She walked the edge of the entire building, her naked body becoming drenched by the downpour as the blood washed away.

6

Running

“Run!” Simon yelled. He gave Cedric a shove and then spun to take out the zombie that was only a few steps away now and closing.

They had made a terrible mistake. In two days, they were not even out of the city yet. They had been forced to head south shortly after they left the Clyde Court Towers. They had originally followed the A58, but when they reached the bridge over the River Aire, they had encountered a major obstacle in the form of a bridge that was a hive of undead activity. They had no idea why, but with the cars packed in bumper-to-bumper and hundreds of zombies weaving in and out of all the defunct automobiles, crossing the bridge would not have ended well.

They had followed the rails through the Holbeck District and come out when they made it to the junction where the A61 and the M621 met. They opted to spend the night in a warehouse complex instead of the nearby neighborhood across the A61.

“But there are a hundred empty beds right over there!” Cedric pointed to the cluster of houses.

“And ten times that many zombies most likely,” Simon had said with a shake of his head.

As it was, they had to take down a few walkers that were stumbling around the parking lot. Simon had climbed up on a freight truck and gotten on to the roof of the building after once again having to explain to Cedric that breaking in a door or window would keep them from having a secure location in addition to making a great deal of racket.

The next day had been miserable with a steady drizzle that would turn to heavy rain every so often. Cedric seemed to complain so frequently that eventually little Annie had turned to him and pointed a scolding finger.

“You are supposed to be the grown up, stop being such a baby.”

Simon suppressed his smile, but Mrs. Raye made no such attempt and gave a snort of approval. It seemed to work, because the man had remained quiet for a considerable amount of time until he let loose with a moan as they were crossing East End Park heading almost directly east. That sudden sound caused everybody to spin on him at once. The man did not even notice; he was turned to the south and pointing at the tree line that separated the park from some train tracks. Coming through those trees were hundreds of the undead.

Simon had urged the group to pick up their tempo, but told them they would be wise to save their energy for when they really needed it. That ended up being the case just as they emerged onto Ings Road on the far side of the park.

Two-story brick houses lined the streets on both sides. Obvious signs of chaos were apparent as far as the eye could see. Bodies were everywhere it seemed; many had been torn apart to the point where it was impossible to determine age or even gender. However, this was where they encountered one particularly horrifying scene that caused them all to come to a sudden halt.

They had turned north on Skelton Road at Mrs. Raye’s urging after she insisted that it would get them to York Road, the A64. That would be their best and hopefully fastest way out of the city. Once they were clear of Leeds, they could regroup and make their way south to the M1 and their eventual target of Mickelfield.

They had reached a tee-junction and veered right when they spied an iron fence with a closed gate. The logic was that they could get over the fence and be clear of the growing mob of undead on their heels that only seemed to be gaining in number as it poured through the neighborhood, collecting every zombie as it passed. Simon had given Cedric a boost over and then Annie. Next was Mrs. Raye who was surprisingly spry and needed very little help from either of the men. Simon came last, and just as his feet hit the ground, Annie screamed.

Considering all that she had already seen, the sound was a big surprise. Everybody’s gaze followed to where she was pointing and saw a pair of large dogs barring their path along with several undead children and a handful of adults.

It was the dogs that had caused her reaction. One of the animals was missing its back half and looked as if it had been torn in two by a pair of giant hands. The insides trailed from it like hideous gray serpents. In its mouth dangled what Simon was pretty sure had to have once been a kitten. All that remained was tufts of orange and white fur fouled with blood.

“What fresh slice of hell is this?” Mrs. Raye gasped.

The adult zombies all began to stumble for them along with the pair of zombified dogs. Simon shot a confused look at his people and then back to the zombies. The children were staying put. A few had taken a step or two closer, but they were not advancing, and instead, were seemingly observing the situation. A few of them cocked their heads back and forth as if considering whether Simon and his group represented a threat.

When the first adult reached them, Cedric had stepped in with his sickle and taken the top half of the head off. He kicked the body back and set up for the next. The adults continued to advance, yet, for some unfathomable reason, the children all stayed bunched in close and continued to simply observe.

“We can’t go back,” Mrs. Raye said with a quiet calm. “That mob coming up from behind has brought out every zombie from all those houses. I would be willing to wager that there are at least a thousand coming from back that way.” She hiked a thumb over her shoulder for emphasis.

Simon looked around and spotted a path leading down the side of the school that was partially blocked by a crashed car that had smashed into a large rubbish bin. It was narrow, but it also looked like the best possible escape from their current location. He pointed it out to the others and grabbed Mrs. Raye, giving her a little push in that direction. The woman was surprisingly compliant and took Annie by the hand, pulling her away from where she had been frozen in horror at the sight of the zombie dogs.

Once he was sure that the two had made it over and past the crashed car, he told Cedric to go next so that he could take up the rear. He had a plan, and it would mean he had to be fast, Cedric was in a sort of battle lust and pushed away Simon’s hand twice before Simon forcefully grabbed the man, spun him away from the zombies and towards their escape route, and then gave him a hard shove while imploring him to run.

Cedric finally seemed to shake his mind clear and comply. That left Simon to attempt his plan. He hated that this was even an option, but he really saw no better way to give them a chance at a clear shot through to Mickelfield.

Simon took down the one adult zombie that still remained close enough to be a problem with his trusty mace and then shot another look at the children; they had retreated back to the entrance of the school! He had no idea what to make of that, and it also made what he was about to do seem just a little bit more unpleasant.

Simon had not always been the good boy that everybody believed. In his teens, he had run with some real thugs. It was while he was with this gang at the age of fourteen that one of his best friends died during a nasty little dust up by the train tracks near the Wortley Recreation Grounds. It had not been anything like the movies, and even worse, nobody really seemed to take notice. It was just another kid from the bad side of town on the mortician’s slab.

During his time with that gang, he had learned how to properly blow up a car from a young Irish street kid who had been accepted as one of their own. He hurried to the vehicle and looked inside the open trunk.

“At last…catching a break!” he said to himself as he popped open the tool box he had discovered. Grabbing a small mallet and a screwdriver, he swiped up a crumpled Daily Mirror from the bin. The headline made him almost start laughing.

“THE DEAD WALK!” was in large, bold print across the top of the page. There was a very good picture of a man in a business suit that had been torn up pretty bad in an attack. He had a visible rip on his throat and there was also a massive blood stain all down the right side. In addition, you could see the black tracer-filled eyes staring blankly straight on at the photographer.

Glancing over his shoulder, he could see the leading edge of the large zombie horde arriving at the gate they had climbed over. There was still no sign of the zombie school children advancing, but he simply could not spare any part of his focus to ponder their odd behavior. He would just be thankful that they had not attacked. He was not sure how easy of a go he would have when it came to taking down children.

With a few well-placed strikes, Simon managed to puncture the fuel tank on the vehicle sending the sharp odor of petrol fumes up his nose to battle with the stench of the undead. He quickly shoved the newspaper against the leak and used the screwdriver to stuff it into the hole where it began to soak up the leaking petrol. He had to rummage for some more paper real quick, but there was plenty and he allowed just enough moisture to soak the already applied paper before slapping a new piece in with that moisture acting to make the new piece of paper adhere. Stepping back, he pulled out a small butane lighter and lit the end of the paper. Just as he did, he heard the groan of the gates.

Jumping over a nearby hedge, he landed on the narrow walk beside the school building. He took one more look as the crush of that many zombies finally became too much for the gate, folding it down and allowing the massive mob of the walking dead to pour through. A moment later, there was a bit of a flash as the vapor cloud from the leaking petrol caught and became a small fireball.

Just as Simon reached the corner of Victoria Primary School, there was a concussive thump that caused his ears to pop, and then the car’s petrol tank exploded sending a black, oily cloud skyward with a twisting braid of flames wrapped throughout. The blast blew several of the zombies back into their group, but it also proved to be a new focus for the horde. While they would not actually walk into the flames, they did just as Simon had witnessed with the train car explosion: the zombies oriented on the new sound and stimulus.

He emerged from some bushes to discover a building that was trimmed in orange and had a tall fence surrounding it with large white letters proclaiming it to be ‘The BIG Bathroom Shop.’ Skirting that fence, he reached the concrete river known as York Road, or the A64 where his group stood staring back to the west. He joined them, and it took him a moment to realize that, mixing in with the low clouds of the dreary day was a wall of smoke. The wind at their back was sending the majority of the smoke and ash away from them.

It looked like all of Leeds was on fire behind them.

***

Shadiyah woke and rolled over on the sofa to look out the window. It was still raining, but that had not seemed to be enough to stop the nearby fires that continued to rage. It looked as if everything towards Wortley was ablaze, add this development to the several small fires that looked to be catching all around, and she began to see the possibility that leaving Leeds was for the best.

After getting dressed and packing a duffel full of supplies, Shadiyah had a small breakfast and then headed for the door. She stopped for just a moment and gave the flat one final look. It had never been much, but this little place had been home. She had shared good times and bad with her father, mother, and sister.

Stepping out into the hall, she refused to glance down at the bodies of her late parents. She was already feeling melancholy; she did not need to see their corpses to send her into a deeper sadness. She would check on Mr. Ivanoff one final time. She knew that warning him about the growing risk of fire would fall on deaf ears, but she would at least clear her conscience by making the effort.

She knocked and waited a few moments before letting herself in. The old man looked to be dozing in his chair; most likely he had fallen asleep staring out the window at the swirling clouds of smoke and flame.

She had only taken two steps closer when she knew that the man was not sleeping. For one, Mr. Ivanoff’s snoring was somewhat famous amongst the residents on the floor. There was no sound in this tiny flat.

Stepping around to see the man’s face, she could see his dull, lifeless eyes staring out at nothing. The man was dead, but he had died with just the slightest smile on his face. Shadiyah leaned down and closed his eyes and exited the flat.

She was well down the emergency stairwell when a thought hit her and she turned around. Several minutes later, she was inside the Wood family flat. The place was mostly as tidy as she recalled, but she did notice a few things. For one, it looked as if there had been a bit of a scuffle in the living room. Also, there were dark stains on the carpet that she knew were most likely blood.

Then…there was the smell.

That stench of the undead actually seemed to permeate practically everything now, but there were places where the smell was stronger. This flat was one of those spots.

Moving down the hall, Shadiyah stopped at the closed door to Miranda Wood’s bedroom. She put her ear to it and heard nothing, yet, the thickness of the undead stink was here at its worst, and she knew what had to be on the other side of the door.

“I did not think you a coward, Simon Wood,” Shadiyah whispered.

That small noise seemed to be enough to cause whatever was on the other side of the door to Miranda’s room to stir. A low moan came with the sounds of a hand slapping the flat surface followed by something scratching on the cheap wood.

Shadiyah had never cared much for Miranda. Truth be told, she could not stand the stupid girl. Yet, she felt she needed to do this. If nothing else, it would clear the slate between her and Simon. He had shown her a kindness in leaving that note. She also felt confident that it was likely his doing that she still had her father’s scimitar. Doing this one thing would put them even.

Drawing the blade at her hip, Shadiyah gripped the doorknob and turned. She took in a breath and then gave a hard shove, forcing the door open. Even the act of holding her breath did not entirely save her from the wall of acrid stink that rolled from the room in a wave that could almost be felt.

Backing up the hall, Shadiyah set herself in place and waited for Miranda to emerge from the room. It took long enough that she had almost given up the vigil to go see what was taking the girl so long.

When Miranda stepped from the room, she was still engulfed in the blackness of the gloom that intensified the farther down the hall you went. So it was actually not until the scrawny figure stepped into the gray interior of the living room that Shadiyah got an actual look at the pathetic form that had once been Miranda Wood. What she saw made her gasp, and it had nothing to do with the fact that the girl was a zombie.

No, it was the dark stain around the zombie’s mouth.

Considering what she knew and could deduce from the situation, she reached a logical if not tragic conclusion: Simon had been bitten by his sister.

She glanced around to ensure that she had enough room for what needed to be done. Surprisingly, she took no happiness or joy in driving her blade into the face of Miranda. The body crumpled and was still. For reasons that she could not understand, Shadiyah cleaned her blade, put it away, and then returned the still corpse of Miranda Wood to her room where she placed her in bed and covered her with the slightly fouled sheet that was crumpled and in a pile at the foot of the bed.

She exited the flat, and this time was able to travel down the stairwell all the way to the ground floor. When she arrived, she remembered the tactic that Mrs. Raye had taken and placed her ear to the door first. When she heard nothing, she opened the door just enough to peek out into the corridor.

Empty.

Easing out, she was surprised that the smell of the undead was more potent than that of the fires burning everywhere. Still, she had to pull her scarf up over her mouth and nose to help filter out at least some of the smoke. Having gotten a pretty good look at the surrounding area before leaving, as well as recalling with fair accuracy where the density of the fires was the worst, Shadiyah made for Wellington Road towards the big roundabout.

She made it a point to avoid the undead any chance she got and was surprised at how easy they were to get around without them taking notice. Before long, she was moving along the A58. When she passed the Leeds Harley Davidson shop, she regretted not knowing how to operate a motorcycle. While she doubted they were that complicated, she was smart enough to know that the combination of her lack of skill mixed with the amazing racket would be a recipe for her death. Still, she did think that the shop had something worth checking out.

She hopped over the barrier and crossed the empty lot to the large windows that fronted the building. She was not surprised to see most of the glass missing and a good many bikes already gone. She even began to doubt that she would find what she was looking for here, but decided to venture forth regardless.

She stepped through a busted window, the crunch of glass under her feet seeming even louder than normal. She tried to step around the worst of the piles of shattered safety glass, but it was impossible to avoid it all. At last, she was far enough inside that it stopped being a problem.

She wove through the store making a point of being careful and alert. She had to stop after every few steps because she was certain that she kept hearing something moving about in the building with her. Every shadow had the possibility of being one of the walking dead, but eventually she noticed a distinct lack of the smell that gave away the undead and so she relaxed, if just slightly.

At last, she happened upon what she was searching for and could not hide her smile. For one of the few times in her life, she was thankful to be so diminutive. The assorted displays of leathers and jackets had been tossed, of that there was no doubt. However, she had no trouble finding something small enough to fit her perfectly.

Not long after she had come across her little cache of protective clothing, she was back out on the A58 headed east. She was still warring with the choice she had made after dealing with Miranda, but for now, she would at least head in the direction of Micklefield.

She had reached the River Aire and was debating the best way to continue with the terrible snarl of abandoned cars and what looked like a few hundred of the undead weaving in and out in their midst when she heard something down by the water that had her rush to the rail.

Looking down into the dark waters below, Shadiyah’s eyes tracked the banks in the direction of the sound. Two men were paddling a canoe and heading her direction!

She considered her possibilities and enjoyed the fact that they did not seem to be aware of her as of yet. That allowed her to really assess them and decide on her options. The closer they got, the more that she began to suspect that these men might not necessarily be the cream of society. She could recognize the dark brown pullovers that she knew to be common attire for residents of Armley, the prison in Leeds.

The closer they got, the more she was able to feel comfortable with her assessment. One of them had dark blotches on his arms that would likely morph into tattoos once he drew nearer. Both men had shaved heads and poorly trimmed facial hair and were apparently interested in looking behind them more than in front.

Shadiyah climbed up on the rail and swung her legs over so that she was perched on it as they continued to draw closer. She could see a few items tossed carelessly in the bottom of the canoe, but they seemed to be very poorly supplied. The most important thing that she managed to glean from her observations was the fact that they had no real weapons other than perhaps their paddles.

“Oi! Lads!” she called down when they were almost directly beneath her, still comically ignorant of her presence.

The men both looked up at the same time and one of them craned so fast that the canoe rocked violently. This caused them to both overreact to try and steady the small craft. A second later, the canoe capsized, spilling both men into the water with an expletive-laden shout and tremendous splash.

She actually had to cover her mouth to stifle the laughter as she watched them both begin to splash around the canoe, but what happened next caught her so off guard that she was now the one staring open-mouthed.

“Help!” one of them called; Shadiyah could not tell which one.

At first, she was struck by the terrible thought that the zombies were in the water as well. But the man continued to thrash about and it became obvious that he was simply trying to keep his head above the surface of the water.

“I can’t swim!” he managed around a mouthful of water, confirming the conclusion she had drawn just a second before.

She watched and was more than a little surprised when the second man turned around and began to paddle towards his companion. From her vantage point, she could see the whole scene clearly. The canoe was upside-down and slowly drifting away from the pair of men. Both paddles were also floating, one of them vanishing under the bridge.

The man thrashing about was starting to sound frantic just as the other man reached him. He did what most drowning individuals do; he lunged for his rescuer and pulled the man down with him. A few seconds later, they erupted from the water again, the thrashing becoming even more intense as now both men were in a fight for their life.

They went under again but the water continued to churn and froth. Of course, all of this racket was now drawing the attention of more than a few undead. Zombies were moving towards the shore on both sides, but the growth was thick enough that they were having a slow go of it.

At last, one of the men surfaced. He was looking around now, trying to locate the original source of their distraction. Shadiyah had already moved away and was hurrying to the other side of the bridge as the canoe emerged. She had to fight her way down to the water, but she was able to grab one of the oars first and then pull the canoe to her.

She could hear the shouts and sputters of the apparent sole survivor of the pair, but she paid it no heed. Turning the canoe over proved to be more difficult than she had thought would be the case. At last she had managed it, her eyes glancing back up the river towards the man who was now obviously swimming her direction.

She unshouldered her pack and hopped into the canoe, giving a little wave goodbye as she did. Pushing away from the shore, she saw a few zombies starting to gather up on the bridge as well as those coming down to the river’s banks. A few were just now starting down by her location as she began to paddle away. The curses began to fade as she found her rhythm.

***

“Looks like we got out of there just in time,” Cedric said with a sigh.

Simon was relieved, but a much bigger part of him was fighting with a sense of guilt that was taking deep root—its icy tendrils threatening to destroy his already nagging conscience. He knew that it was impossible, but a part of him still wanted to return for Shadiyah and make her join them.

“Yes,” Mrs. Raye finally spoke, “but we still have a great deal of nastiness to work our way through before we reach Mickelfield.”

As if to emphasize that point, a distant explosion to their east sounded. They turned to see a small cloud of black smoke rising from the row of residences that lined the far end of the footie pitch that sprawled alongside the motorway.

The group began their trek east, following the A64 for as long as they could until it became obvious that they needed to get clear of being in the open. Somehow, it seemed as if the undead were managing to spot them as they passed through what had once been a densely populated area.

At last, as they reached the Selby Road roundabout, they moved over to the train tracks. While they would still be passing through relatively the same general area, since the tracks ran almost parallel to the motorway, they had the advantage of being walled in by dense trees and foliage. It wasn’t quite like being in a tunnel, but it was as close as possible without the utter blackness.

All of them began to relax after a while. Annie moved away just enough from Mrs. Raye to the point where they were no longer holding hands, but Simon noticed that she was not so far apart that such things couldn’t change in a heartbeat.

They did not see another zombie for over an hour. It had reached the point where Simon had allowed his gaze to drift down so that he watched his feet more than anything else. There was still enough apprehension so that nobody really seemed much up to talking.

That allowed Simon to seep further into his guilt over having left Shadiyah. Every so often, his gaze would drift over to Cedric who seemed to have practically no cares in the world as he trudged along with his new companions. Once in a while, the two men made eye contact and it was always Cedric who broke off; usually pretending that he spied something interesting up ahead or some such nonsense.

Simon had no idea how much longer they walked when Mrs. Raye gave him a tug on the sleeve. He stopped and looked around. At some point, they had entered the lush, green, English countryside. Rolling hills rose like waves on both sides of where they were walking.

“I think that is the M1,” Mrs. Raye said, pointing off to their right. Simon glanced over, shaking his mind clear of the daydreams that had been flitting in and out—mostly regarding Shadiyah.

Annie had actually strayed far enough away that she was walking in the grass that grew alongside the tracks. She moved in and out of the shadows cast by the trees and almost seemed like a ghost the way she would drift between the sun and darkness.

Simon called for everybody to stop and then took a seat on a fallen log that sat in the shade. Everybody gathered around, each giving him expectant looks as he sought to sift through his best recollections on their location. He had certainly made this journey enough times over the years. Of course those trips had been by car, certainly not on foot. At last, he believed that he had a good idea of where they were and which direction they might be able to go to reach their ultimate destination.

“If memory serves, Garforth is just south beyond the M1. If we stayed on the train tracks, we would end up passing right through the heart of town. That would not be my choice. We could follow the M1 until it hits the Great North Road and follow it straight in, or we could cut south once we pass Garforth. There is a country road that brings us in from the east using Church Lane.” Simon looked from one face to the other.

What he saw made him almost smack his forehead in realization. These people were all exhausted. Even Mrs. Raye looked on the verge of collapse. Shooting a glance at the sky, he wished he could actually see the sun, but the clouds were being tenacious in their desire to keep the world shrouded in a gray blanket. Still, it was obvious that it was growing late. Even if they pressed on, they might not make it to Micklefield until well after dark.

“I miss cars,” he mumbled and then clapped his hands to get everybody’s attention. “So, I propose we pop over and see if we might be able to spend the night someplace close. I seem to recall there being a football club nearby. Might even find a few things worth taking along since I doubt many have come this way to loot and pillage.”

Simon pulled out one of his last bottles of water and took a long drink He felt they had at least a fair chance of finding something to drink in a place like that. If nothing else, athletes did like having a plentiful supply of beverages.

There did not seem to be any voice to the contrary and so the small group cut through the trees on the north side of the train tracks and began making their way across a large, grassy field. The herd of sheep grazing in the pasture paid them almost no mind as they continued nibbling.

“How about some roast mutton for dinner?” Cedric whispered as they made their way to a small collection of buildings.

Simon nodded his agreement. “If we can find a spot to hold up for the night and can build a suitable fire, I think you may be on to something.”

As they got closer and closer to the small cluster of buildings, it was clear that something was a bit off. A feeling began to nag at the back of Simon’s mind, and he finally came to a stop, everybody doing likewise and turning to him with obvious questions etched on their faces.

“What’s the rub?” Cedric asked. He shot a look back to the buildings, but his eyes kept drifting to the sheep that were grazing nearby. As if to emphasize his own thoughts and priorities, his stomach growled loudly.

“Something seems peculiar,” Simon said, his voice dropping almost to a whisper as if he might be worried that somebody or something might hear. He squinted as if that might help him be able to see clearer. There was definitely something out of place, but that was when he realized just how tired he was as well. He simply could not see it; at least not clearly.

“I think you are just overly fatigued.” Mrs. Raye gave him a pat on the arm. “What could be wrong out here? All I see are a few rundown buildings, an old farmhouse, and…” Her voice trailed off as she stepped up beside Simon and took a better look.

Simon fixed the woman with a quizzical eye and could see her studying what was ahead of them. Maybe she could make sense of whatever it was that had him so uneasy.

“Everybody, very casually turn around and head back to the train tracks.” Mrs. Raye took Annie by the hand and pivoted on her feet, heading away from their proposed destination. She leaned over to Simon and whispered, “We can discuss this later.”

At last, they reached the tracks. When they drew near to the M1, Simon had everybody stop and wait while he went up to take a look around. When he found what he was looking for, he swept the area to be sure there were no zombies lurking and then jogged back to the group.

By the time he returned to the others, the shadows of the end of the day were stretching out and connecting as night made its slow but steady approach. Annie was leaning up against Mrs. Raye, her eyes closed, and Cedric (who was supposed to be keeping a lookout) was propped against a tree, his eyes shut as well. The only person alert was Mrs. Raye. She shot a nasty glance in Cedric’s direction and then returned her gaze to Simon.

“Well?” she asked, causing Annie to stir and snuggle in closer.

“It won’t be very posh, but I think it will keep us safe for the night.”

“That is the best we could hope for,” Mrs. Raye said, climbing to her feet and running her hand through Annie’s hair to comfort the girl when she started at the sudden movement.

Simon shot a look over at the man who was pulling himself away from the tree he’d been dozing against without even the slightest look of embarrassment on his face. He was becoming more and more certain that they would have been better served to bring Shadiyah and leave this lazy oaf of a man behind.

They all made their way to the M1 and Simon ushered the group to a small, white van that sat in the very center lane sandwiched in between several other vehicles that were all part of what looked to have been a nasty accident. There were no windows except for those up front and the pair on the back of the wide open cargo doors. Once everybody climbed in and became situated, Simon pulled himself up and in.

The quarters were a bit cramped, and with everybody somewhat soggy from the weather, it was not long before a musty smell permeated, but that was the tradeoff for them being warm and relatively safe. A voice woke Simon just as he started to drift off to sleep.

“I need the loo,” Annie grumped.

7

Choosing

Shadiyah had never really paid attention to the river that cut through the city of Leeds. Now, it was positively the only way that she could see having a chance to get out. The zombies were everywhere and in massive numbers. She looked up at the dead faces that peered down from some of the walkways that ran along the gently winding river and could only shake her head.

“How?” she asked the breeze since there did not seem to be anybody else to hear her.

By the time she reached what she knew had to be Leeds Station, she was actually thankful to dip into the darkness of the tunnel that ran underneath, allowing the river to continue on past the heart of what had once been a beautiful and vibrant city. Now, as she pulled in the paddle and allowed the canoe to drift along with the gentle current, she felt much like the tunnel she was currently navigating. She could not, nor would she try, to deny the darkness that was settling on her heart.

When she emerged on the other side, she glanced back at the curved white roofs of the train station. She let her eyes drift over the many tall buildings and she wondered if perhaps there might be a single living being that could see her. She wondered if maybe that person might be just wishing and eager to catch her eye with the hopes that she would somehow be able to come to their aid. She also wondered if there might be some malevolent part of the dregs of humanity that watched her and imagined doing terrible things to her in this new and lawless world that existed…at least for the time being.

That last thought was what took greater purchase in her mind as she continued on, occasionally using the paddle to correct her course and keep her in the middle of the waterway. She had seen the evil of man with her own eyes. She knew that history was full of tales from the Middle Ages regarding how those in power had often abused it at the peril of the poor, the innocent, and quite often, the women.

She had taken back a small bit of the power that was stripped from her sister in that moment when she executed those terrible bastards that had hurt and abused Assi. Could she hope to take back even more?

“Please!” a distant voice called, snapping her focus back to her immediate surroundings.

A brick building to her right with windows and balconies overlooking the River Aire was obviously on fire. Smoke was leaking from the bottom three levels and an orange glow could be seen emanating from within. On one of the top floor balconies was a young man who looked to be in his twenties.

Perhaps around the same age as Simon, she thought as she looked up at the individual frantically waving his arms to try and get her attention.

“Can you help me?” the man shouted down.

He was already on the outside of the balcony railing and appeared to be ready to jump. He had a large bag in one hand that looked like the sort a person would carry to the gym. Even from here she could see that it was bulging and gave the impression as if it might split at the seams if poked just so.

“Toss the bag,” Shadiyah called as she paddled closer. “Let me get it pulled in and then you jump.”

The man seemed to consider her statement and then nodded. “Good thing you ain’t a bloke,” the man called down with a nervous laugh. He unshouldered the bag and held it up above his head.

“Why do you say that?” Shadiyah paddled back a little to come to a stop as close to the building as she dared. The smoke and heat actually made it a dangerous prospect of getting any nearer.

“No way would I toss all my goods down to a fella. That would be the same as just giving it away. People are not acting out of charity these days. I feel a bit badly if I am being honest.”

“Why is that?” Shadiyah cocked her head to the side in curiosity.

“When I first spotted you, I was actually going to wait until you got close and then I was going to try and land either on you or close enough to give you a good tip.”

“But now you’re promising to be a gentleman?”

“I would certainly owe you that.”

“Well then, you best give that bag a toss before the fire climbs any higher.”

“Do you think you can catch this?” the man asked with concern. “It’s a bit heavy. All the food I could find is inside, nothing in tins thankfully, or we would be in a bit of a pickle. Still, it’s quite heavy, so be careful.”

Shadiyah opened her arms and gave a gesture for the man to throw the bag. He had to grip the railing of the balcony as he leaned out and then tossed it down to her. It plummeted, and proved to be just as heavy as promised. The canoe rocked sharply as she snagged it just before it landed almost in her lap. She felt her shoulder wrench a little, sending sharp pain radiating up her neck and down her side. Still, she now had the bag.

Dropping the bag, she looked up to see the man leaping from the balcony. He would land well short of her and just a little behind. Picking up her oar, she dug in and began to paddle away. Each stroke caused her to wince as she dug into the water for all she was worth.

For the second time in a very short period, she could hear screams for her to stop mixed with threats of what would happen if she did not. After a few minutes, the pain in her shoulder changed to nothing worse than a steady heat. She knew well enough that she would likely be more than just a little sore the next morning, but that was still several hours away.

She glanced up at the sky and decided that perhaps darkness was not as far off as she first thought. She would need to find someplace to stay for the evening. Despite the relative safety she felt at being on the river, she did not want to spend the night in the canoe.

She would soon have her choice made for her. She had just passed under another bridge when she saw a small fork in the waterway at the tip of what appeared to be some sort of manmade island. Keeping to the right, she felt a tingle of excitement as she figured out exactly where it was that she had arrived.

Ensuring that the zombie presence was minimal, she finally managed to get the canoe to a spot where she could hold on to the concrete landing and pull herself up. Her shoulder gave a bit of protest, but eventually she was on solid ground and had managed to tie the small section of line that was at the bow of the canoe to a metal post.

“The Royal Amouries Museum presents: Shogun versus Samurai,” she read from the sign.

She was not surprised to see that somebody had already thought to come here. The entrance was destroyed. Still she considered it unlikely that the entire place was emptied out; that would take an army.

Drawing her own scimitar, she entered the building. Once she set her original bag and the one that she had recently liberated in a safe place behind the main information desk, Shadiyah ventured into the gloom, the beam of her flashlight cutting a path in the inky blackness of the interior.

***

Simon opened his eyes and sat up. That let him feel every aching muscle in his body. He did not think that his neck would ever recover from the kink he could feel in it as he tried to turn his head gingerly first one direction and then the other.

“You look horrible,” a voice whispered from up in the front of the van.

On instinct he turned his head to see the person speaking and was rewarded with a jolt of pain and a refusal of his head to actually complete that action. Turning his upper body towards the front of the van, he winced as the light from what hinted at the possibility of a sunny day bored into his head.

“I was thinking that it might not be such a bad idea to just go out and allow one of those deaders to take a nip,” Cedric chimed in as he groaned and rose to a sitting position beside Simon. Obviously his body was feeling the effects of sleeping in the cramped quarters as well.

“That would be silly,” Annie snorted as she crawled over the tops of the two men and joined Mrs. Raye in the front seat, apparently oblivious to their groans of pain as she did so.

Simon leaned over and started to open the cargo doors when Mrs. Raye spoke up and stopped him. “I wouldn’t do that just now.” Simon’s hand slid off the handle and he adjusted his body back to the front of the vehicle, eyebrows up in question. “About twenty of those bloody things just staggered past like a bunch of sailors trying to find their way home from the pub. They were moving down the side of the motorway and headed in the same direction we want to go.”

“Probably see a lot of those things slipping out of the city,” Simon said as he sat back against the interior of the van, continuing to rub at the base of his neck in hopes of kneading out the knot of muscles that were causing him so much grief.

“Yes, well, perhaps in a bit we can see about getting out, otherwise I am going to piss myself,” Cedric groaned causing Annie to cover her mouth as she giggled.

They sat quietly for a while longer. Eventually, Simon decided that it had been long enough, and after confirming from Mrs. Raye that there did not appear to be any zombies in the vicinity, he popped open the cargo doors. The rush of fresh air quickly reminded him of how dank the interior of the vehicle had become with four soggy bodies crushed in on top of each other in the closed in space.

“I don’t imagine that anybody thought to check and see if any of these vehicles might still be able to run?” Cedric said as he returned from behind the large freight truck that seemed to have been at the center of the accident.

Internally, Simon smacked his forehead. Apparently he had been just as exhausted as everybody else last night. Ten minutes later, they were satisfied that any of the vehicles that might have been drivable either had no keys or no gas. Of course that revelation only ended up being a bit of a disappointment as it meant that they would be walking again today. His feet were killing him. Naturally he would not be saying anything or complaining about it; of course Cedric had no such qualm and started in almost right away.

“I got blisters on blisters, mate. How much farther do we have to go?” he groaned as he hoisted up his backpack and cinched it up tight which only prompted a new outburst. “And I think I may have a nasty rash starting in my armpits.”

“We can stay on the M1 for a bit. Maybe we will find a vehicle that has petrol and the keys,” Simon said as he started up the road.

The sun was over the horizon now and shining directly into his face. He recalled something he had seen in one of the vehicles in that wreck involving the van they’d used. Jogging back, he reached in and pulled out a set of what certainly looked like expensive sunglasses.

“Cartier shades,” Cedric gasped. “Ain’t you posh!”

That earned a chuckle from everybody and the group scoured the other vehicles for sunglasses. It was something so simple, but everybody had a laugh as they passed the few sets they discovered back and forth. When they all finally settled on their own pair, they headed up the road.

At first, Simon was bothered by some of the faces staring out at him from vehicles as they walked. However, after a while, he simply ignored them and kept his focus on the road in front of them.

“I am glad that you decided not to try and be some sort of hero.” The sound of a voice to his left caused Simon to jump and he turned to discover Mrs. Raye had sidled up beside him.

Annie was skipping around Cedric at the moment singing in a whisper some pop song about making “your body rock” or some such nonsense. That left the two of them bringing up the rear and a good twenty yards or so behind Cedric and Annie. He guessed now was as good of a time as any to clear the decks on what he had seen.

“Those were people hanging from that scaffold, right?” Simon shot a sideways glance at Mrs. Raye and saw her nod. “And was that a military truck parked on the road?”

“It was,” Mrs. Raye confirmed. “If my mind is working correctly, that was a Foxhound parked just beyond the grove of trees.”

“So what do you think was going on?”

“I am sure I have no bloody idea, but it felt…off.”

“Exactly,” Simon said with a nod. “If not for the bodies strung up, I might have had us approach. I can’t really explain it, but seeing those people hanging had me wondering. Maybe it is too many movies, but it always seems that the military, government, and basically any figure of authority always ends up being a proper git.”

“Says the policeman,” Mrs. Raye laughed.

“Yeah, well there is always the one idiot who tries to do good. He usually ends up dead.” Simon glanced over his shoulder, almost expecting to see the armored vehicle roaring their way with soldiers shouting and waving their weapons. All he saw was the smoky haze that shrouded Leeds and the massive accident that clogged the M1. He would not allow himself to think about the bite on his arm at the moment; that would be too depressing.

They came to another roundabout and Simon took them down the A656. The walk was actually becoming pleasant as lush green farmland opened up the left and trees bordering on their right. Without anything being said, everybody drifted to the left side of the road, eyes keeping a watch for anything that might stumble out from the trees.

Annie seemed like any girl out for a walk on a normal sunny day as she flitted over and plucked the occasional daisy. When Simon called for a brief break where they pulled out the little bit of bread they had managed to snatch up. Spreading on some Marmite and passing the pieces around, Mrs. Raye surprised everybody when she produced a few wrapped bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale.

“Enjoy these, lads, it may be quite a spell before we taste the likes again.” The woman handed one of the bottles to Simon and one to Cedric. Before Annie could raise a complaint, she produced a Fruit Shoot and tossed it to the girl who caught it with a squeal of delight.

“Apple!” Annie exclaimed, sitting down at the side of the road to enjoy her treat.

“What about you?” Simon asked after taking a long pull of the ale and then offering his bottle to the woman.

She produced a green tinted bottle and gave it a wistful look. Simon saw her actually wince as she twisted off the top. He read the label with a bit of confusion.

“What is Royal Brackla?” he asked after taking another pull of his ale, savoring it like he had never done before.

“Royal Brackla Nineteen Twenty-four,” she emphasized. “This was a gift from a male admirer.”

Her gaze became unfocused and it was clear that she was remembering something wonderful as a smile curved her lips. She shook her head after a moment as if to clear her mind before looking back down at the bottle. With a sigh, she brought it to her lips and took a drink.

“Ahh…heavenly.” She replaced the cap on the scotch and carefully wrapped it back up, in not only the cloth she had used for that bottle, but also what she had used to protect the two bottles of ale.

To each his own, Simon thought.

They hoisted their gear once more to the sounds of Cedric’s complaints; although he did seem in at least slightly better spirits. At some point, Annie had made a wreath from the daisies and was now wearing it on her head like a crown.

The road wound lazily and, while they could see a few of the undead shambling through some of the vast fields, none seemed to take notice of their little band of travellers. Sometime just before midday, they reached a junction with a small black and white sign that pointed east.

The sign had one word: Micklefield.

***

There was an eerie silence, and Shadiyah paused every couple of steps to listen for anything that might indicate movement. Each time she paused, she asked herself if she really needed to venture into this place.

Stop being such a ninny, she scolded herself mentally. You currently possess one weapon. If something happens to it, you are done in.

She reached a large room with busted bits of whatever the museum had been using to keep its precious weapons and armor safe and secure. Yes, this place had obviously been looted. She could see dark lumps on the floor and closer inspection revealed that they were mannequins. Most had been entirely stripped of anything useful. There were even a couple of zombies in the mix that had been taken down.

One in particular looked like whoever had ended its existence used it for a bit of sport before the final blow was given. It had its arms and legs cleaved from it and the blow to the head had actually split the skull almost perfectly in half.

She wove through the massive complex and kept having sudden flare ups of worry that her flashlight would simply go out and leave her stranded in the dark. Eventually she did manage to scavenge up some metal bracers for her forearms that had wicked spikes running along their exterior. She tried on several other pieces but decided that most of it was simply too damn heavy.

After finally settling on two small but sturdy swords from one exhibit and a leather jerkin, she felt that she was ready to venture back outside. On the way, she came upon an exhibit of bows. After several failed attempts to even get the string drawn back, she gave up and cast the bow and arrows aside.

“Looks so easy on the telly,” she sniffed as she returned to the main entrance and grabbed her bags.

Once she was outside, she dragged her canoe along until she cleared the lock and then resumed her journey. More than once she heard terrible screams unlike anything she’d ever heard in her life. She could not imagine the pain or horror that could induce such sounds. More than once it made her stop paddling as shivers rattled her bones and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

Eventually, she noticed that she was leaving Leeds behind. Glancing back, she saw so many columns of smoke rising into the sky that the entire city looked like it would burn and leave nothing behind to show that it had ever existed. The thought of it made her sad.

“How does an entire city burn down?” she asked out loud.

The sound of her own voice actually startled her and caused her to look around for signs of anything or anybody that might have heard. She saw nothing. In fact, to her right looked to be some sort of massive shipping yard with its huge machinery and giant trucks designed for hauling.

She could see more than a couple of the undead wandering about, but nothing too worrisome. If only she knew how to drive, she could hop in one of those big trucks and drive to the first castle she could find and start her own kingdom.

She quickly dismissed that fantasy and looked to the left where the countryside was changing from the closely packed in buildings and residences to open fields. The bridge allowing the M1 to cross over the River Aire loomed and she made a tough choice. While there was a certain degree of safety afforded her by being in the canoe, she had already discovered how difficult it was to carry one around a lock. She had managed to get free of the city; that had been her goal, and it seemed that she’d reached it.

Paddling for the northern bank, Shadiyah climbed out of the canoe, grabbed her gear, and started into the woods along a narrow trail. She decided that she would not use the motorway. No sense putting herself in unnecessary danger. While it was certainly possible that she could encounter a zombie out in these woods, it was much less likely than if she walked out in the open; that also held true for the living.

She walked all the rest of that afternoon, keeping the M1 to her left. Late in the day she passed what she believed to be some sort of large farm to her right. Already she could see the plumes of smoke to her right in the distance beyond the farm indicating what was likely one of the suburban towns that surrounded the proper city. Also, just ahead a mile or so and to the left were more signs of the destruction.

“Bloody fires are everywhere,” she grumbled.

Looking skyward, she could tell she did not have much time remaining before darkness came on to the point of making travel impossible. She needed to find someplace safe to sleep. Eventually an overpass came into view and she decided to emerge from the woods and fields to see if she might find a good spot to camp for the night.

She was astounded by the sections of the motorway that were completely open only to eventually become automobile graveyards with cars, trucks and all manner of vehicles jammed in tight and forever silent now that their owners had either abandoned them, or perished inside.

As soon as she came up to the motorway, she recognized where she had emerged. She was between the town of Garforth and the Parrish of Austhorpe. That revelation was a bit discouraging. She had not travelled all that far to this point.

She suddenly found herself wondering how Simon and his group were faring. Had they managed to escape the city? Certainly it was not likely that they had some sort of watercraft made available. With what she had seen, it was quite possible that they never even made it out alive.

She was surprised to discover that that thought made her just a bit sad. Of course she would be fine if Cedric had been eaten by the zombies, but Mrs. Raye, Simon, and that little girl were not completely deserving of such a thing.

Not completely.

They had abandoned her. Even worse, they had taken up with one of the animals responsible for her sister’s death. They could say what they like about how he had not been present, but she didn’t care what excuses they provided him or that he made.

She stopped and realized that she was now standing in front of a Jet petrol station. What surprised her was that, up to this point, she had not encountered any of the walking dead. She was about to investigate whether there might be any snacks remaining inside when one of those terrible screams began.

It definitely sounded like it belonged to a female judging by the pitch. Pulling the scimitar free from its scabbard, she broke into a jog and followed the road to the right as it branched off and headed into some sort of business park. A second scream joined the first which was now beginning to die. This one was quite possibly male, but young.

It was at this point that she started to run. The screams were increasing, and now she was certain that she heard more voices; these sounded as if they might be begging. At last she reached a sign at the entrance to some sort of inn. The sign read: The Thorpe Park Hotel & Spa.

The entrance to the complex was where at least a hundred of the undead were gathered. All of them were reaching skyward. At the rails of some sort of walkway were several figures. Currently, two of them were grappling with a young boy of twelve or so while the sea of undead arms that waved, clutched and writhed below in a vain attempt to reach the melee that was taking place about ten feet above them.

Shadiyah counted five individuals that looked to be causing the trouble. Two were fighting with the young man by the rail while lashing out a knife; another two had women clutched to them and looked to be forcing them to watch what was going on, and one was leaning over the rail having what sounded like a good laugh.

“Well, well…what do we have here?” a voice crooned from behind her.

***

Flat, grass fields stretched out on both sides of what Simon told them was Church Lane. Mrs. Raye and Annie stuck to the center line while Simon and Cedric waded out into the grass and dispatched the single and small groups of zombies that were shambling through those open fields. The outskirts of Micklefield could now be seen and everybody began to unconsciously pick up their tempo. Simon was the first to pretty much clear his side of any nearby walking dead and hurried over to help Cedric with the last few to their right.

He was almost to the man when something caught his foot sending him sprawling on his face. He heard the shouts from Mrs. Raye asking if he was okay, but he had landed wrong and the handle of his mace caught him in the solar plexus, knocking the wind from him in a painful rush.

Flat on his face, he struggled and could not even find the strength to roll over; even worse, he could not seem to be able to breathe at all. That terrifying sensation was almost as paralyzing as the sight that filled his vision when he managed to turn his head. Just a few inches away, the undead visage of a zombie was opening its mouth wide, craning its neck forward so that it could reach him and take a bite out of his face.

He wanted to scream…call for help…anything. Sadly, with the wind knocked from him, he would be able to do nothing except prepare for the terrible pain that was about to eclipse what he was already feeling. He did the only thing he could think of as the face drew near; Simon closed his eyes and waited.

There was a strange sound that reminded Simon of a melon being cleaved in two despite him never actually having heard such a sound before. He felt a hand grab his shoulder and yank him over onto his back.

“Hey, copper, you gonna just lay there?”

Simon opened his eyes to see Cedric staring down at him with a wicked grin on his face. He opened his mouth to express his thanks and nothing more than a pathetic squeak managed to make its way out.

“Had the wind knocked from ya,” the man tisked and clucked his tongue. “Not a very good feeling, yeah? Had that happen a few times as a hooker for the local rugby team. Let me tell ya, when one of them fatties gives you the business, you bloody well know it.”

“Is he okay?” Mrs. Raye’s voice called out.

“Yeah, just had the wind taken out of his sails,” Cedric called back, reaching a hand down to Simon.

Try as he might, Simon could not get to his feet just yet. It took him a while; so long, in fact, that Cedric had to venture out and take down a few more zombies that were closing the distance and would become a problem if not dealt with immediately.

When he was finally able to stand, he was still bent a bit at the waist and Annie moved over to take his hand. “Are you okay?” she asked, her eyes squinting as she leaned in for a closer look.

Simon felt his already struggling lungs get even tighter. The way Annie was staring made him remember his bite with a sudden shock. Even worse, he had lost his sunglasses in the fall. Was this it? If it was, he could at least rest in the fact that he had gotten his group here to Micklefield. Of course they still had no idea if they were in any better conditions than back in the city.

“You don’t look very good,” Annie said, patting Simon on the cheek.

“Getting the wind knocked from you is quite unpleasant,” Mrs. Raye offered as she came up to give Simon a look. Simon held his breath as the woman gave him a good once over. At last, she stood up straight and gave him a pat on the shoulder. “We can take a minute or two for you to catch your breath, young man, but not too long.” She swept her arm out to the fields and the scattered array of walking dead that were now obviously aware of their presence.

Simon let out a long sigh of relief. Apparently he was still not displaying the tracers in his eyes. That was a good sign, but how much longer could he hope for his luck to hold out. Sooner or later he would succumb to the bite…right?

They continued up Church Lane until they came to the stone announcing that they were now in Mickelfield. Just ahead, they could see the small shacks for the Metro stop on either side of the road. Modest brick homes were on each side, but there was something else that had everybody’s attention.

The first street that branched off to the right was blocked with all manner of vehicles that had been wedged in amongst each other. In addition, the whole mess had been wrapped in barbed wire. There were a few dead bodies scattered about, each having obviously been taken down with severe trauma to the head. Looking further along up the lane, they could see more of the same on the subsequent roads that went to the right. To the left, there was no such thing being done. Many of the houses showed signs of having been hastily abandoned, and that is also where the first zombie came stumbling from.

The pathetic creature looked to have been an elderly man well into his seventies. He had little more than a fringe of hair remaining as a wreath around his head, and he was so stooped over that it almost seemed impossible that he could see anything in front of him other than his own feet. Yet, after a few unsteady steps, the thing paused, turned towards them, and began its slow shamble their direction.

Cedric stepped away from the group and began to approach the lone zombie when a voice called out, “Leave him be!”

Everybody turned towards the sound and saw three figures emerge from a narrow alley branching from what the sign announced as Hallfield Avenue. They were all dressed in heavy denim pants and jackets. Each had goggles and a respiratory mask on as well as snug woolen caps that helped hide their gender, although it was clear that the one who had spoken was a male with his deep, gruff tone.

“Christ, I hope these lunatics aren’t trying to save the undead,” Simon whispered.

“Not at all,” a female voice said from behind the group, causing everybody to spin around suddenly and bring up their weapons out of reflex.

Annie squeaked and scooted behind Mrs. Raye, her head twisting back and forth between the three people that had first greeted them and this new arrival that was dressed in the same fashion except for her goggles being up on her forehead and her mask hanging at her neck. The woman was holding a bastardized piece of farming equipment that was now a long handled multi-pronged spear with barbed blades on the outer tines.

“We just choose to ignore them until we have enough worth worrying about. If we took down every walking corpse that came through, we would be hacking and chopping all day and every day.” The woman planted the butt of her weapon on the ground so that it was not pointed at the new arrivals.

“I am here looking for my cousin,” Simon spoke after a few uneasy seconds where everybody simply seemed to be evaluating each other and assessing for possible weaknesses.

“You Simon Wood?” one of the trio called. This voice belonged to a woman who sounded like she had been a chain-smoker most of her life.

“Yes.”

“You’re the vicar’s cousin.” It was not a question. “He will be happy to see you, no doubt.”

“And me him,” Simon replied.

“Before we let you in, a few questions,” the man who had first spoken to them said, pulling his own mask down and flipping his goggles up. That seemed to be a sign for the rest, because the other two followed suit.

The man was a tall, hefty sort, but not fat. He looked like the type that worked out in the fields, his skin ruddy and creased from the years of exposure. He had a wide, barrel chest and arms that made the sleeves of his denim jacket look almost like blue sausage casings which begged the question as to how well he could actually move around. He had a shock of dark, curly hair twining up from under the edges of his cap and his eyes were dark, but glittered with what might be a bit of humor. Almost as in confirmation, his lips curled in a slight smile that did not look at all out of place on his face.

“Before we do all that, could we perhaps do each other the courtesy of exchanging names?” Mrs. Raye asked primly. “My name is Henrietta Raye. You obviously already know Mr. Wood here. This other gent is Cedric Black, and this lass is Annie Sun.”

The man shot a look to the woman who currently had the group flanked. Simon picked up on the slight gesture and wondered if perhaps this woman might be running things. Whether or not that was the case, she stepped forward and spoke. “My name is Melena Duff.”

Melena looked to be in her early forties. She had wispy red hair fluttering in the breeze around the fringe of her cap and her eyes were as close to green as a human being could hope to attain naturally. Her skin was milky white and the lilt of an Irish accent was easy for him to discern. She had laugh lines and those were only exaggerated when she flashed a bright smile. He guessed her to be barely a shade less than six feet if she did not perhaps peek just over.

“Nelson Wilbanks,” the gruff man said after getting an elbow from one of his cohorts.

“My name is Dawn Spengler,” the petite woman who had given the elbow said as she took a step forward and removed her cap to allow long, blond hair to cascade down past her shoulders.

She had bright blue eyes that caught the sun and flashed with mischief as she flipped up her goggles and pulled down her mask. Her mouth was just as tiny as she was, which Simon found amusing since her voice was so strong and loud…even a shade deep for a woman; although by no means masculine.

“Kas Asan,” the third member of the group said.

Kas was obviously Indian. His black hair and dark skin were the only giveaway though, since his accent was clearly Yorkshire through and through. He was the only one of the three that did not smile during his introduction, that was the first real thing that registered to Simon. Also, the young man—perhaps in his late teens—kept looking past them and up Church Lane in the direction that they had come as if he might be searching for something…

Or someone more likely, Simon thought.

“So, introductions are made, mum,” Nelson said. Simon noticed that his gruff tone was quite a bit more deferential as he spoke to the older woman. “Can we ask a few questions now?”

“By all means,” Mrs. Raye said agreeably.

“First, we are guessing that you do not number more than we see here?” That received mumbles of confirmation and agreement. “And have you encountered any military units in your travels?”

Simon shot Mrs. Raye a look and quickly scolded himself when he saw that she had not so much as flinched at the question. He was about to join the chorus of denials when Melena spoke.

“Were they north of here on the other side of Garforth?” she asked, moving around to be closer to the rest of her people. Her eyes were locked on to Simon and it was obvious that she had seen his look.

“Yeah, we saw them,” Simon finally said.

“Were you followed?” Nelson was suddenly back to being gruff and verging on hostile.

“Not that we are aware.” Simon could not keep his hand from gripping the handle of his mace a bit tighter. He moved just a fraction closer to Annie so that he was in a more direct path should these people decide to charge them.

“No,” Mrs. Raye said very bluntly. “We were not followed. I don’t believe they were even aware that we passed by. They are making themselves comfortable at a farmhouse just north of the train tracks.”

Simon shot the woman another look, but she seemed not to notice. Just as well, he was pretty certain that he had a foolish expression on his face.

How could she be so sure? he wondered. But then again, she had been more than just a little surprising during the past few days.

If he was impressed by how calm and suddenly in charge Mrs. Raye seemed, he was even more amazed at how these strangers apparently were ready to accept her word as being good enough on the matter. There was a visible degree of relaxing that came over all of these people.

“I guess our next order of business is really just a technicality,” Melena said with a clap of her hands. “After all, you four have been on the road for a day or two, yeah? So unless you got bit out in the field, in which case we would likely see blood, then I can assume none of you are about to turn any time soon and have not been bitten.”

“As you said…that would be apparent,” Mrs. Raye replied with an easy laugh.

“But Simon got the wind knocked from him when he tripped over one of them,” Annie offered, obviously tired of not being involved in the conversation.

“Tripped over a halvsie,” Cedric chuckled. “Dangerous things, those.”

“Halvsie?” Nelson grumbled.

“What do you call the zoms that are missing their lower bits?” Cedric shrugged his shoulders. “One of my mates called one of them things dragging itself down the street a halvsie. Sort of stuck with me after that.”

“Hmm,” Nelson grunted with a nod of his head. “Halvsie, eh? I like the ring of it. Might catch on with the hunters when I tell ‘em.”

“Hunters?” Mrs. Raye asked with a raised eyebrow.

“The teams we send out along our perimeter to check the barricades and take down any of the zeds in the area.”

Simon was not listening to any of the conversation. His blood had gone cold at the mention of any of them being bitten. He wondered what these people would say or do if he revealed his little secret. Certainly they would not resort to anything sinister, but then again…

And then he heard something that made him want to turn around and just walk away.

“You won’t mind if our doctor gives you all a physical…strictly a formality,” Melena said cheerfully as she gestured with an arm that they were to follow her past the barricade.

8

Through Jaded Eyes

Shadiyah stiffened at the sound of the voice behind her. She was instantly angry with herself for being careless. If she was going to survive, she needed to be on the ball at every instance. She would not be much help to people if she got herself killed the first time out.

Then the person behind her made his first mistake. He stepped right up to her and put a hand on her shoulder. She did not pause more than a second before responding with a quick thrust backwards with her scimitar. She drove the blade past her left hip and felt it resist for just a second before plunging deep into the gut of the voice’s owner.

Just as quick as possible, she spun, her only real concern being that this person might not be alone. That fear was quickly allayed and she yanked back, jerking her weapon free from the body of the man who still had a shocked look on his face. That expression never changed as she came across and cleaved his head from his shoulders.

She watched with an amused smile while sidestepping the falling corpse whose hands were making curious swipes up around where the head should be as it took two staggering steps before falling hard to the pavement. She was once again amazed at the sheer volume of blood that pumped from the corpse in a hideous spray that darkened the ground in a fan-like pattern.

Returning her attention to the inn, she was struck with an idea. She was making things up on the fly, but she was not going to be foolish. Rushing in headlong would only end up with her dying at the hands and mouths of that swarm of undead gathered in front or perhaps being taken down by those evil bastards up on the balcony.

She followed the trees that bordered the edge of the parking lot until she was around the corner of the inn. Once she felt certain that she was out of sight, she sprinted for the rear of the facility and was only a little amazed to discover no signs of a sentry.

As she slipped up to the door, she was not surprised to discover it locked, but climbing up onto the gable proved to be a relatively simple task as she pulled herself up onto a brick wall and then onto the slanted roof. From there, she made her way forward. The screams had died down and now there seemed to be mostly a bunch of boisterous laughter and the like. Underneath all that, she could hear what sounded like crying.

Just as she reached a spot that she figured to be almost directly above where these bastards were carrying on, she heard one of them call out, “Angus! Yo, you bloody idiot, stop messing about and get your arse back here!”

Some more laughter followed, and then she heard a door open. The voices below retreated into the building and then the door closed, instantly diminishing the noise to little more than the moans of the undead still out in the front of the building. Peering over the edge of the roof, she was able to see what looked like some sort of large, indoor swimming pool area. For whatever reason, this appeared to be where everybody was collected.

As she studied the interior, she was able to see that the doors had been barricaded with all sorts of furniture and debris. She did not spend much time puzzling over their reasons; she simply gave thanks that her first encounter would be with what appeared to be a great bunch of morons.

Swinging her legs over and lowering to the rail, she only had a moment of fright when her foot slipped just a bit and she almost ended up doing what would have been a spectacular back flop into the sea of undead hands that reached up from below. After steadying herself and swallowing the gigantic lump that had risen in her throat, Shadiyah hopped down to the patio and peered inside once more to get a better idea of what she would face.

She counted five men inside, all of them currently gathered around a stack of boxes. When the first bottles were pulled out and handed around, she almost laughed.

“They’re getting positively ganted,” she said with disbelief.

As she watched, she also felt just a slight tinge of annoyance at the three women who were being held captive by this band of fools. She realized that they were probably just trying to do everything in their power to keep the eight children safe from harm, but between their crying and hand wringing, they were little more than useless. One of them was just sitting by herself looking like she had less life in her than the zombies out front while the other two alternated between tending the children who were all bawling, and rushing over every single time one of the males called out. She briefly wondered if they would even be worth saving.

The one thing that she did realize was that the teen boy was missing from those present. That made her edge back to the rail and peer down at the gathered zombie horde just to be certain; at first, the lad that had been suspended over the rail was no place to be seen. It took her a moment, but eventually she spied a young man’s face peering up from the crowd of zombies. He looked a proper mess and she was almost surprised that there was even enough left of him to return. As it was, from the looks of things, his arms had been ripped free. Also, she could only really see him from the shoulders up, but it appeared as if his torso was stripped bare and that a good many bites had been taken from his upper body.

She moved back to the glass doors and saw a couple of the men staggering towards the stairs. That would bring them up to her. Looking around, she really had no proper hiding place. All she could do would be to stand back far enough away from the doors so that they would not see her until they stepped outside.

That would have to be enough. She pressed herself as close to the wall as she could while making sure that she would be able to swing her scimitar. Her mind was set on making her attack as soon as the first opportunity presented itself. She saw no need to wait for any banter. These pieces of filth did not have anything to say that she wanted to hear.

“…should have been back by now. The stupid twat was just supposed to see if that petrol station had any beer left,” one of the men was slurring as the door opened.

“Yeah, well, you better believe you would not get me to go out there just to hopefully scrounge up a few beers. Things have gotten nothing but worse since Leeds started burning,” a second voice chirped.

“True, and I don’t think we can’t stay here much—” the other man was actually looking back over his shoulder as he was speaking.

That made it even easier for Shadiyah as she decided that a thrust would be the better attack at this point. She drove her blade though the side of his neck and had already jerked it free before the second man fully realized his folly. He stumbled over his companion and ended up sprawled at her feet. One chop and she managed to almost sever this man’s head.

Kicking the bodies away, she felt the adrenaline dump into her system, giving her a massive rush. Stepping inside, the overwhelming tang of chlorine burned her nostrils. The voices down by the pool area echoed in the cavernous space, and she was able to peek over the rail and spy her remaining targets as well as the women and children.

Currently, the men were gathered at a table that was littered with wrappers from a snack machine that lay on its back with its front end smashed in. They each had a brown bottle in front of them and one of them was currently shuffling a deck of cards. They were talking, but the acoustics made it almost impossible to understand what was being said.

A small part of her mind was trying to get her to slow down, but she ignored it. That would be too cliché if she were to suddenly act like a weak-kneed femme fatale and back out before she put things in order. Every moment that she delayed might bring those other three men to come looking for their mates. Her best chance of success was in a surprise attack.

After scanning the area, she saw that the stairs at the other end of this vast room would allow her the best chance to approach the men without being discovered. She would have a series of over ended patio furniture and even some indoor shrubbery to move behind that would make it possible to be within just a few feet of the table of men before she had to reveal herself. By then, considering that none of them were holding any weapons that she could see, it would be too late for them to react before she struck.

Sticking to the far wall to make herself even less likely to be discovered, she hurried along. With all the crying and carrying on taking place, she had no concerns of being heard as she padded ever closer. As it was, she could not even hear her own footsteps.

At last, she reached the stairs and the only real tricky part of her approach. The landing where the stairs switched back on themselves would be the only real spot that she might be seen. After one more look to ensure that the men were engrossed in their game of cards, Shadiyah made her move.

When she reached the bottom and no sounds of alarm had happened, she scurried along in a crouch to where she would launch her attack. The men were seemingly engrossed in their card game, and their conversation had dwindled to nothing beyond a few grunts and grumbles.

The women and children were still making noise, but even that had died down to just some whimpers. She reached the end of her cover and braced herself for her attack. She peeked once to get one more look at where each man sat. One of them had his back to her, and the other two were sitting sideways to where she would launch from.

A tingle of excitement coursed through her belly, and she took the scimitar in a two-handed grip. Taking a few slow, deep breaths, she counted down in her head from three and then popped up. With a brisk and deliberate walk, she strode to the man who had his back to her and hacked at the side of his throat. Her weapon hung up for a bit in the vertebrae and the thought that she had not made any attempt to sharpen the weapon after all the use she had put it through filed itself in her mental library, and she vowed to do so as soon as she could possibly manage.

Switching her grip, she drove the tip of the scimitar into the chest of the man to her right and was quickly pulling her other small sword to finish off the third and final target. By now, the one who was not dead or dying had pushed away and was babbling on about something that she could not decipher as a chorus of screams and cries erupted from the women and children at about this time as well.

Raring back, she advanced on her victim as he stumbled over his chair in his effort to flee. Surprisingly, he still did not seem to have a weapon in his hands. She arrived over the man as he tried to roll away. As her sword came down, a single cry cut through her consciousness.

“Daddy!”

***

Simon sat in the small room and waited. He was going to be the last person to see the doctor. The fact that he had found a doctor should have been a thrill considering what he remembered of most zombie stories where the poor buggers seemed to go the way of the dodo in the first days. Yet, he was actually trying not to look like he was absolutely terrified.

The door opened and Mrs. Raye emerged with Annie clutching her hand. The girl had a lollipop in her mouth! Cedric had been the first one seen. That had been an odd series of events all by itself.

The group was being escorted in when another group met them on the road. This new group was apparently a band of hunters—as this place called them—and they were a man short. The leader of the new group asked Nelson if he could join them and Cedric actually stepped forward and volunteered, saying he wanted to earn his way in as soon as possible.

The group had agreed to wait the fifteen minutes it would take for him to see and be cleared by the doctor. Simon had shot Mrs. Raye a curious look, but she had just given a very subtle shrug and that had been it. The man had not even said so much as farewell when he exited the doctor’s office and jogged outside to meet the patrol who greeted him with a good amount of slapping on the back.

“Mr. Wood?” a dark-haired man with graying temples who still looked very fit called as he emerged through the doorway behind Mrs. Raye.

Simon got up and gave his two travelling companions a nervous grin as he followed the doctor into the exam room. He was directed to go behind the screen and undress.

“Not even a box of candy or flowers?” Simon joked, but it lacked any real heart. “I don’t even know your name.”

“Mrs. Raye says that you have a bite on your arm that is several days old, and my name is Dr. Kincaide,” the doctor said as Simon stood on the other side of the screen trying to choose between disrobing and making a run for the door.

Simon actually felt his mouth open in disbelief. He stepped back out from behind the screen, his hand going reflexively to the bite on his forearm.

“H-h-how…b-b-but…” he stammered, unable to string anything resembling a sentence together.

“Is it true?” Dr. Kincaide was seated near a counter that had jars of swabs, cotton balls, and other such things set about it in a neat fashion.

Simon did not trust his mouth to make the words, so he simply nodded. The doctor reached out with gloved hands and Simon rolled up his sleeve without actually being asked. The man examined the bite that looked like little more than a dark bruise with a few small scabbed over bits that were healing just fine.

“And you are sure the person that bit you was infected?” Dr. Kincaide mumbled as he leaned in to take a closer look.

What is it with doctors and stupid questions? Simon wondered. After a brief pause he nodded to the affirmative. “My sister,” he said when he felt his voice would not betray him.

“And how many days ago?”

Simon made a mental count. He had a rough go of it, and could not believe how everything from the past several days seemed to just swirl and melt into one huge and overwhelming slurry of time.

“Five…I think.”

“That goes well past anything that we have witnessed,” the doctor said around an ink pen that he had jutting from the corner of his mouth.

At last, the man sat back and grabbed a clipboard from the counter. He wrote a few things down and then set everything aside. Pursing his lips, the man seemed to consider what to say for an uncomfortable length of time. When he did finally speak, the sound caused Simon to jump.

“I want you to keep this to yourself. If you feel puckish in any way, I want your word that you will make your way to my office without delay. Day or night…understand?”

Simon nodded and the man once more seemed to consider Simon much like some experiment gone awry for several more seconds. Simon took it upon himself to roll his sleeve back down and was about to ask if he could leave when there was a sharp rap on the door before it opened and Melena stuck her head inside.

“Sorry, Doc, but we have somebody here who insists on seeing this man.” Melena moved aside and a massive man stepped past her, ducking habitually to avoid brushing his head on the frame despite there being a good few inches to spare.

“Simon!” the man rumbled, his arms going out wide.

“Cousin Geoff!” Simon rose to greet the man.

“Your cousin is the vicar?” Mrs. Raye’s voice carried in from the waiting room.

Geoff Shoemaker was often referred to as the family oddity. Just a shade under seven feet tall, the man had been the largest child in school from the time he came out of his growth spurt at age twelve where he sprang up to well over six feet tall before it slowed and eventually leveled off. His immense size was only equaled by his gentle nature, and nobody could ever recall him having struck another person in anger; not that there were many who chose to challenge him.

With a mop of dark, curly hair and brown eyes Geoff would have been able to blend in with any crowd were it not for his incredible height. His looks were nothing remarkable, and most people could not truly remember what he looked like and could only recall how tall the man was compared to others. That held true until the man sang. If there was anything that could make people forget how tall Geoff Shoemaker was, it would be his incredible singing voice.

“I didn’t dream to hope that anybody I knew would make it out of Leeds alive!” the mountain of a man exclaimed as he swept his cousin up in a massive hug. When he pulled back, his eyes were wet with tears.

“It is worse than you might think, Geoff,” Simon managed as he regained his ability to suck air into his lungs.

“We can see the smoke from here, and when the wind shifts, we can smell it.”

The two cousins spent a few minutes being reacquainted before the rest of Simon’s group was called in to be introduced as well. It was decided that, for the time being, the four of them could share one of the vacant townhouses on Churchville Drive.

Simon and Mrs. Raye were both quick to volunteer for the detail helping with the dispatching of the relatively few undead wandering the area as well as the building of a barbed wire fence and trench that would hopefully keep the citizens safe. It was all part of fitting in, and from what they were told as they were escorted to their new home, nobody was allowed to be idle.

For three days, things seemed to begin to slide into a bizarre routine of digging, killing zombies, and stringing barbed wire. Despite being strangers, they were greeted with smiles and polite nods of the head when arriving for work details or standing in line to accept their daily meal allotment.

It was late on the fourth night while he, Mrs. Raye, and Cedric were sitting around the table that another level of surrealistic crap was dumped in Simon’s lap. Annie had just been tucked in for the night and Mrs. Raye had poured each of them a tiny dose from her coveted bottle of scotch.

“Anybody up for a game of cards?” Simon asked. This received a groan from the other two.

“If I play another game of cards, I think I might have to just walk out and give myself over to the deaders,” Cedric groaned.

“I don’t think I have ever been so bored in all my life,” Mrs. Raye added.

“And what did you do in life before all this that was so bloody exciting?” Simon quipped as he picked up his glass and took a tiny sip of scotch.

“I worked for MI5.”

That statement hung in the air with an almost visible presence for several seconds until Cedric finally burst out laughing. Simon joined him, but not for long as he realized that Mrs. Raye’s expression had not changed.

“Wait…are you serious?” Simon sat up straight and gave Cedric a gentle nudge with his elbow. “Then what were you doing living at Clyde Court? A bit low end wasn’t it?”

“The view was fine, the rent was relatively cheap. Being a widow, I didn’t require much, and most folks would leave me be. Besides, I was keeping an eye on the place for a former co-worker back at MI5. There were concerns that a drug cartel was setting up shop.”

Simon shot a look over at Cedric. The man had grown strangely silent and now looked just a bit pale. He finally sat back in his chair and folded his hands in front of him.

“So, do we have a problem?” the man finally asked.

“Not at all,” Mrs. Raye said with a shake of her head. “Far as I’m concerned, everybody starts with a clean slate. I don’t want to know the details, and I honestly don’t care. But if you do anything at all from here on out…” She let that last bit just seep in as an implied threat.

Simon was floored. Even worse, he felt more horrible than ever about how they had left Shadiyah behind.

“Why?” It was the only question he could ask. So many things were swirling in his head that he could not process where to even begin. They had chosen to bring along a drug dealer and abandoned a young woman to certain death?

“I had no idea what we would face while trying to escape,” Mrs. Raye answered, turning her full attention to Simon. “If my assumptions about Mr. Black were correct, he would not hesitate in a fight. Also, I needed somebody I felt could kill or perhaps even use as bait if it came down to it.” She looked over at the man who had just started to exude a touch of smugness until that last bit.

“And don’t think I have not been paying attention to the fact that you started up right away on the teams that leave the area.” Mrs. Raye now fixed the man with a level stare. “If I find one single thing that leads me to believe you are trying to resume your old ways, I will lash you to a pole and give you over to the mob. These people may be nice enough, but there is an underlying feeling that they could turn into a bloodthirsty bunch with the right nudge.”

Cedric opened his mouth for a few seconds and then shut it. He sighed and then sat back. A smile split his face, and he began to laugh. Simon was becoming more confused by the second. Certainly this man did not think that Mrs. Raye was bluffing. And not only that, but he, Simon Wood, was not just some pushover to be disregarded.

“Mum, I think I can clear things up right here and put your mind at rest.”

Cedric hoisted his leg up onto the table and pulled up the hem enough so that he could reach inside his heavy boots. He produced a thin leather wallet and tossed it onto the table. Neither Simon nor Mrs. Raye moved at first, but eventually Mrs. Raye reached over and picked it up. She opened the flap and after only a few seconds, began to chuckle. She slid it over to Simon.

He gave the woman a confused frown before picking up the little billfold. Opening it, he saw the face of Cedric Black staring back at him from an identification card that proclaimed him to be Detective Inspector Sydney Brown of the Yorkshire Constabulary.

“I was working the region undercover for the past fourteen months,” Cedric—correction, Simon thought, Sydney, said.

After the laughter subsided, a thought came to Simon and he fixed the man with a harsh stare. “Why did you smash me on the head back then?”

“Actually, I did not know that you were a police officer, and you almost fit the description of one of the men in our dossier. I thought you might be the rival dealer that those bloody pricks were always on about.”

Simon sat back in his chair and felt the conflicting emotions coursing through him. To him, this was just another reason that they should have tried to reconcile things between Shadiyah and the others.

“Why couldn’t you just have told us that back at the tower? It might have saved Shadiyah,” Mrs. Raye said the words that Simon was thinking.

“Actually, I feel like I did a proper job of cocking that whole situation up. I must admit to being a right plonker when it comes to this whole…zombie situation. I still believed the agency line that this would all be under control within a few weeks. This was about to be my biggest arrest, and I was sure to be considered for Chief Inspector when it was all done. I would have been one of the youngest ever.”

The answer did nothing to make Simon feel any better. It also did nothing to improve his feelings for the man he knew as Cedric Black.

“So should we call you Cedric or Sydney?” Mrs. Raye asked.

“I think Cedric is best. That is how people know me here, and then there is little Annie. No sense in getting her confused.”

The next day, Simon had just returned from a long shift out in the sun working on the massive project that was the trench that would supposedly protect the village of Micklefield from the walking dead only to discover his cousin seated in the living room. Mrs. Raye was sipping tea with Geoff and Annie was on her stomach reading a book, a half-eaten sandwich on a plate beside her. There was no sign of Cedric which suited Simon just fine at the moment. He was still bothered by the fact that there might have been a real chance to save Shadiyah if certain things had been revealed.

Geoff set his cup down and greeted his cousin with a smile and then stepped back to give Simon a good look up and down.

Geoff gave Mrs. Raye a polite nod and then walked to the large living room window and looked outside. “Can I have a moment with my cousin, please?”

Once the room was cleared and the door shut, the vicar turned to Simon. His expression was grim, and he motioned for Simon to have a seat.

“Seems rather ominous,” Simon laughed nervously. He unconsciously rubbed the bite on his arm. Despite almost no trace of it still being able to be seen with the naked eye, he could (whether consciously or subconsciously) feel its lingering presence. Had the doctor decided that he was a risk?

“I still can’t believe you are here. Before we lost power, the news was terrible. London was gone, and the fires in Leeds…well, I don’t need to tell you.” Geoff continued to glance out the window.

“Surely you did not clear the room just to tell me that you are glad to see me,” Simon said after his cousin just remained staring out the window for an uncomfortably long period of time with his hands folded behind his back.

“You would be a welcome addition to the leadership of this community, Simon.” Geoff finally turned to face his cousin, lips pursed as he seemed to be considering what to say next.

“This is becoming a bit worrying,” Simon laughed uncomfortably.

“This…event...has brought out the best in some of our people. Unfortunately, it has also brought out the worst. When we lost the grid over two weeks ago, we had a gathering where I was asked to accept the role of authority here for the time being. Obviously the West Yorkshire Police are not making any trips out here from Garforth these days. This might seem hasty and sudden, but it would be nice if you might consider taking the helm here in that department.”

Simon laughed, crossing the small room to clasp his cousin’s hand. “I would be honored.” Geoff followed Simon to his room where a basin of water was waiting so that he could wash up a bit.

He almost blurted that both Mrs. Raye and Cedric would be better and more qualified candidates. Simon’s head spun at all this. He did not know what exactly he had expected in Micklefield, but it seemed as if the people had already come together and decided to take a very proactive approach on how to run their little town. It was highly irregular to say the least.

“Before you accept, you need to understand that the people here in Old Mick have already had a town meeting and made some choices that you may not feel comfortable enforcing.”

“Oh?” Simon was puzzled.

“These people were about to elect me as the chief constable just before you and your band arrived,” Geoff said with a sigh. “We’ve already had a murder here, and then we caught that group from New Micklefield trying to sneak into the primary school. Somebody has to administer justice and be a presence that helps bring everybody back together if we are going to survive. Also, this feud between Old and New Micklefield needs to end, and the best person to mediate that would be a neutral party.”

Simon knew well enough how Micklefield had divided into almost two separate villages. From his recollection, it had something to do with a proposed wind farm. The site would have been just north of the village and that was the reason the Old Micklefield residents hated it; they would be the ones who had to look at those eyesores for all eternity.

“Let’s start with the people caught in the school. Were they stealing text books?” Simon laughed, but sobered fast when his cousin’s expression darkened.

“That is where we decided to gather all the food and such that we collected from the houses of those we lost in those first days. We also managed to bring in a freight truck that was abandoned on the M1. The trailer was loaded with crated chickens, most likely bound for some farm, but that was a blessing as it is a supply of eggs as well as some of the meat you enjoy at evening meal. Won’t be making any trips to Morrisons Supermarket any time soon, and when we found that truck, you would have thought the Queen was paying a visit for all the fuss.”

“And you say there was a murder?” A few weeks ago, Simon would have been stunned. That was just not something you would expect in a sleepy English village like Micklefield.

“Once again, it had to do with food. We were going house to house, collecting everything once it was decided that we should pool all our resources and not just that of the deceased. Some bloke accused another of hiding food, and it turned into a nasty fight. Eleven people brawling in the streets like a bunch of football hooligans was the result. That is also why you might want to think carefully about accepting the post. There was a vote, and it was decided that anybody guilty of murder, rape, and even thievery would be executed.”

A knock at the door came and Mrs. Raye poked her head inside the room as Simon sat there with his mouth open in dumbstruck astonishment. “I hate to break up this family reunion, but some young man just arrived out front and said something about a team of hunters returning with a delegation from New Micklefield?”

Geoff stood and gave the woman a polite nod of his head. He turned back to Simon. “So, what do you say?”

Simon shrugged. Really…how bad could it be?

Walking outside, Simon actually staggered back at what greeted him. A group of a few hundred people were gathered in the street. What he saw reflected in their faces was a mix of fear, anger, and desperation. At the front of the crowd were a group of five individuals (Cedric was among them which came as no surprise to Simon) outfitted much like the people who he had first encountered when they arrived just a few days prior. Bunched close together, and basically at knife point, were three people dressed like they were out for an afternoon bicycle ride. Each had a sheath on his hip, but had obviously been liberated of whatever weapon he was carrying.

“Before we accept the delegation from New Mick, I would like to introduce my cousin Simon Wood to those of you who may not have had the pleasure of meeting yet.” Geoff stepped to the edge of the small porch and raised his arms in the air to quiet the crowd. “He was a police officer in Leeds. I have asked him to step forward as our constable and be the voice of authority. Since we do not have the luxury of time these days, I would just ask for a show of hands as we vote. All in favor?”

Simon was more than a little surprised to see so many hands raise in the air. After all, he was a stranger for all intents and purposes. Even just a bit more surprising was to see Cedric’s hand in the air with the others; for some reason, he believed the man might balk at the idea.  When the vote for those opposed came, he took a second to try and commit a few of those faces to memory.

“It looks like you are the new chief constable,” Geoff said over his shoulder.

Simon stepped forward and felt a chill settle in his heart as he watched the last few hands that had gone up in opposition of him taking the post slowly begin to lower. One of those who had voted against him was the town’s doctor that had seen him when he and the others first arrived. Dr. Kincaide’s eyes were locked on him and the man’s expression was grim.

“This is all fine, but we came to retrieve one of our people,” a man from the New Micklefield trio spoke up.

“Your man was caught trying to steal from our food stores,” somebody in the crowd yelled. This brought on supportive shouts of agreement along with shouts of “We hang thieves!” sounding off from the mob.

Geoff once again raised his hands to quiet the crowd. With what was almost a flourish, he ushered Simon forward to the front of the porch.

“Time to get to work, Constable,” Geoff whispered humorlessly.

9

Verdicts

Shadiyah spun to face the women and children who were now clustered in closely; each of them had a clear expression of pure horror on their faces. She stepped away from the carnage, her scimitar at her side with fresh blood still dripping from the blade.

“Why?” one of the women finally managed through her tears.

Shadiyah was struck dumb by this reaction. Of all the possibilities that she could envision this scene playing out in her mind, this one made no sense. She glanced over at the bodies of the men sprawled around the table where she had butchered them and then back to these curiously ungrateful women and children who were now looking at her as if she might be a demon from Hell.

“You are all free,” Shadiyah finally managed to say as she knelt to wipe the majority of the blood from her blade on a wet towel that was balled up on the concrete floor of this pool room.

“You killed our husbands,” one of the women managed to cry over the wailing of the children that only seemed to be growing in volume to the point where it hurt her ears.

Shadiyah looked up and then all around herself. When had she fallen? Somehow she was now sitting on the floor in a puddle of chlorinated water and fresh blood. Making her way to her feet, she took a step towards the women and children. She did not understand how she could have made such a mistake and she wanted to apologize.

However, when the entire group began to shriek and scream bloody murder, she halted. Over the sounds of crying, a new sound was beginning to make itself known; the steady pounding of the undead on the outer doors to this pool area were growing in volume and intensity. Shadiyah turned and ran for the stairs as one of the barricaded doors began to give way under the onslaught.

Just as she made the upper landing, the door buckled. She paused, thinking that perhaps this new development would cause the group to flee. She could help them get up onto the roof and maybe even guide them someplace a bit safer. Yet, even as the zombies began to climb and fall over the patio furniture and vending machines that had been shoved in place to help barricade the doors, the group simply huddled together and wailed.

She stopped again when she reached the doors that opened out to the balcony where she had first spied these people. Her mind tried to reassemble the scene and find where she had gone wrong, but the jaded eyes through which she viewed the world would not refocus.

As she exited, the sounds of the cries began to change to screams of pain. She closed the door on the echoes and climbed up onto the railing. Looking down, she noticed that many of the zombies that had been gathered outside were pouring in. If she wanted, she could probably lower herself down and jog away.

After a moment’s thought, she decided that she had no desire to wander deeper into what had once been the more populated areas of Austhorpe. She would cross back over the M1 and make her way along through the fields that lay between the road and Garforth. She knew well enough that, once she made it past the borough of Garforth, the tiny town of Micklefield lay just beyond.

As the sounds of the screaming faded, Shadiyah’s allowed her mind to drift away from the sad and unfortunate scene. She quickly isolated the feelings of guilt and stuffed them into a dark recess of her mind where they would wither and die.

Every so often, she would veer just slightly from her course and take down another of the walking dead. She took no notice of whether they were men or women; young or old. They were nothing more than part of the landscape that she passed through.

When she noticed that the sky was once again becoming dark, she shifted her focus and began searching for a place that would offer her safe shelter for the night. She was surprised when she happened upon what looked to be some sort of automobile junkyard. Several obviously defunct vehicles were crammed into a fenced in yard.

She climbed up a tree and gave the area a good examination. She did not see any signs of the undead shambling about. She shielded her eyes from any sort of glare and tried to discern if there might be survivors perhaps living in the small building that looked as if it housed a couple of apartments. However, she saw no signs of life or movement after several minutes of scanning the area.

At last, she crept out on the branch that extended over the junkyard and lowered herself to the point where she could let go and drop to the ground. She had already spied where she would sleep for the night. A large freight truck with no wheels sat jammed into a corner of the automobile graveyard. The cab looked to be large and intact. It was high enough up that she could probably see the majority of the open area as well as over a few of the rows of cars. She would climb in, get situated, drink some of her precious water, and then get some sleep.

Moving down the aisle of automobiles, all of them showing signs of having been in an accident to at least some degree, Shadiyah saw no indication of any zombies that were still mobile. The only body she did happen upon had most of its skull burst open and splattered on the ground, a huge sledge hammer with dried gore on the head solving any riddle that might have existed about what put this particular zombie down. The only odd thing about the rotting corpse was the signs of what looked to have been an animal that had worried at the mangled skull. Some of the larger pieces had obviously been dragged a few yards away from where the corpse rested.

For some odd reason, she felt incredibly tired all of a sudden. Her eyelids felt like they weighed a ton, and she could not stop the tremble that had started in her sword hand no matter how hard she tried. Climbing into the front cab of the rusty freight truck, Shadiyah simply tossed her bag and pack on the floor, leaned her head back, and closed her eyes. She was fast asleep when the strangled gurgle sounded just outside the door to the cab.

***

Simon sat across the table from the three residents from New Micklefield. The one in the middle, and apparently the one who was in charge of the delegation was red faced and his hands clenched and unclenched in a visible display of anger.

“This is barbaric,” the one on the right whispered.

So far, the individual seated to the left had not said a word. As far as Simon was concerned, it was just as well. There were only so many ways you could vehemently disagree with the news that one of your people was to be hanged for stealing.

“You are certainly all aware of what is happening in the world,” Simon said coolly.

In the past half hour, he had gone from not actually supporting the policy that he had been informally voted in to enforce, to wishing he had a couple of extra nooses. As it stood, he saw a very real chance that the man who had been doing most of the talking might end up finding himself detained if for no other reason than so that Simon could feel at least some satisfaction.

“While we might not be from the city, Officer Wood,” the man made the title sound more like an insult than an honor with his disdainful tone, “we do have at least a passing acquaintance with such things as reading and being able to understand what is said on the telly. What we believe to be true is our business.”

“Then you must at least realize that it seems unlikely for order as we were once accustomed to be reinstated any time soon.” Simon absently ran his thumb around a small nick in the butt of the handle of his mace which he was wearing on his hip.

“And so a man is to be hanged for trying to feed his family?”

This had been the circular argument being repeated to varying degrees and with a variety of profanity sprinkled throughout for the past several minutes. Simon had had enough and pushed back from the table with the intent of saying so.

“We will trade one of yours for our man,” the speaker blurted.

“If you have one of ours, and he or she was caught doing something wrong, then that person must be prepared to accept the penalty,” Geoff spoke up from where he had been leaning silently against the wall next to the doorway.

Simon heard something in the man’s tone that he did not care for. Add in the fact that he had not been told anything about how these people might have a prisoner of their own from Old Micklefield. On a whim, he decided to prod into the issue.

“And what has our person done? I have told you that your man is in lockup due to stealing, so what crime has our person committed?” Simon asked.

He saw the eyes of all three people sitting across from him flit over his shoulder to where Geoff had been standing. A second later, he felt a hand on his shoulder. His cousin leaned down; his lips close to Simon’s ear.

“That is not part of the scope of this meeting.”

“You’re right,” Simon replied out loud, not bothering to whisper. “This meeting was supposed to be about putting an end to this ridiculous feud between the northern and southern ends of the same bloody village. Are we really going to allow something from a time that does not look like it will ever return be what separates us and makes us act like fools?” Standing up, Simon brushed away his cousin’s hand. “So, here is what will happen, I want you three to return home and gather whoever is calling themselves the leader of your community. We need to have a meeting and put an end to this foolishness. As a show of good faith on my behalf, I will release the man of yours that we are holding—”

“You don’t have the authority to do such a thing,” Geoff snapped, slamming his hand on the table for emphasis.

“Actually, that little vote you had would indicate differently.” Simon turned on his cousin and fixed him with an appraising stare. “And as soon as these gentlemen have made their exit, you and I will have a talk where you will tell me exactly what is going on.”

Simon showed the men to the door where he was greeted by Mrs. Raye who had apparently heard the entire thing. This whole meeting had taken place in one of the vacant townhouses just around the corner from the one assigned to Simon and the others.

“I guess I don’t need to tell you what has to be done,” Simon said as the woman stepped aside to allow the three delegates past. Mrs. Raye smiled and shook her head before catching up to the trio and falling in with them.

As soon as they were around the corner, Simon shut the door and spun on his cousin. “You want to tell me what in blazes is going on?”

“What do you mean?” Geoff asked showing almost no emotion.

“Where do I start? Shall it be where you have me dropped into the role of law enforcement here with almost no qualification? Or perhaps how your little part of town has shut itself off from the world and is in the process of building a giant moat—”

“It’s just a trench,” Geoff interrupted.

“Call it what you want,” Simon shot back. “You have had some sort of meeting where you just decide that you will execute anybody who breaks the law—”

“Murderers, rapists and thieves,” Geoff interrupted again, still not showing any signs of agitation.

“Once more,” Simon slapped the table for emphasis, “you can say what you will. The facts remain that this is not natural, nor is it the way that I would expect a bloody vicar to act.”

“Why? Because we are somehow not like normal people?”

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“Look, you have to admit, this is not normal behavior for anybody. The fact that you are okay with what is going on here has me concerned.”

Geoff sat back and looked at Simon with almost no expression on his face. Slowly, it was as if a storm rolled in and Simon could actually see the man’s countenance darken. He sucked in a big breath and then let it out.

“The people in New Mick are not killing the zombies,” Geoff finally said at last. “Well, that is not true, they are killing some of them. But, and this is where you may think I am being a bit dodgy, but I swear I am telling you the truth. They refuse to kill a zombie if it is a child.”

Simon let that sink in. Actually, a part of him could understand that; especially after what he had seen back at that school when they were running for their lives. Still, there had to be more than that to the story.

“Okay, so tell me the bit that you are keeping back because you think I will be sure you are a nutter.”

Geoff actually seemed to relax just a little at that remark and the hint of a smile curved his lips.

“Shame this whole zombie thing came along,” Geoff said as he relaxed into his chair a bit more.

“Why is that?”

“You would have made a proper police officer.”

“I appreciate it, but save the kind words until after you’ve told me whatever this terrible thing is that has you all so worked up.”

“It was before the news was really rolling on this, and one of the families had just returned from holiday.” Geoff paused and shook his head. “You have to understand that this is all secondhand information. The folks in New Mick closed up ranks fast before things got bad, and then they had sort of made their bed and were forced to lay in it.

“What I was told by one of their people after church one morning was that this particular family, the Bush family I am told was their name, was all found dead one morning. Apparently there was a bit of a ruckus, and then the screams. That is what brought people running…those terrible screams. Only, after a few of the neighbors rushed over, what they found was beyond anything imaginable…at least at the time. Every member of the Bush family was dead and looked like they had been torn apart by wild animals, then it was discovered that one of the children was not among those found at the scene.

“Police were called, but they never made it here because of all that mess that took place at the train station in Leeds that same day. That was also when the Prime Minister came on and told everybody to just stay put in their homes or make it to one of the rescue centers.”

Geoff rose to his feet and began to pace. Simon recollected back to those first crazy days. He had missed so much of what was going on around him because he was busy trying to take care of Miranda. He recalled seeing something about a riot at the train depot, but he had dismissed it as just an overreaction by some of the citizens. He was not too concerned in those early days. After all, it seemed like the news was always going on about some new flu or strain of bug that was going around. And even with Miranda so sick, he’d simply figured that she was strong enough to power through it and that all would be right as rain in a few days.

“The members of the family that were found were dead. Nobody disputed that fact. When the missus…Katie Bush…when she sat up, I guess people just had no idea what to do. Naturally, the phones began to ring here from some of the folks down in New Mick.

“I was asked to go as a person that might be able to settle the minds and fears as people realized that what was just starting to show up on the BBC news had come to our little village. I saw for myself a woman who had most of her insides torn out as she struggled and fought to be freed from the gurney that she had been tied to.

“I returned to the church that evening to find it full with people standing out front. They were scared, and had no idea what to do. I did what I could, but I saw fear in every face that night when everybody finally left. I went to bed that evening fearing that perhaps the world was facing something greater than ever before in history. I had no idea how fast it would spiral out of control.

“When we lost our first people, it was the Woodley farm at the south end of Old Mick. That day was when it all changed here.” Again Geoff paused. He turned to face Simon, and tears were just starting to brim over.

“The people blamed the folks of New Mick. It was foolish, I knew that the reaction was based out of fear, but there was nothing that could be done for it. There was a meeting called in the school that night, and it was decided that nobody from New Mick would be allowed here. The Great North Road would be blocked just this side of Pit Lane, and that was to be the end of it.”

“But when you asked me to take this position, you said that I would be the one to broker a peace between Old and New Micklefield,” Simon said with a hint of confusion in his tone.

“I did, and that is because there is no way for me to do it. I am part of Old Mick, that is how the town sees things. If I were to suggest such a thing, I might well be run out on a rail. Also, the New Micks won’t hear me, I represent the enemy, and anything that I suggest would be viewed as having an angle to it that benefits Old Micklefield at the expense of the people that reside in the New Micklefield district.”

“You act like this is two separate towns,” Simon said with unveiled annoyance. “The town is just Micklefield.”

“Tell that to the people.” Geoff paused and then fixed Simon with a serious gaze. “No…I’m serious. Tell that to the people.”

“Why should they need to be told?” Simon scoffed. “We are on the verge of becoming extinct. Those bloody zombies are a mindless army that will wipe us out if we don’t come together and shove them back. Fighting amongst ourselves is absolutely idiotic. Do these people really need me to tell them that?”

“Yes.” Geoff gave a shrug of his shoulders. “You have to admit, this is certainly nothing that anybody could have ever imagined happening. Even the type of people who read those zombie comics and novels or watched it at the pictures…they did not believe this was something that would really happen. “

Simon gave that statement a little consideration. He had seen a few of those movies. His mind flashed on 28 Days Later and he shivered. They had used soccer players as the infected. Damn good thing the zombies didn’t run or it would have been a short apocalypse.

“Okay,” Simon finally shrugged, “gather everybody together. I will see what I can do, but I doubt it will help.”

“So,” Geoff asked as the two men exited the townhouse and started up the road on what looked to be a bright and sunny day, “do you think we have a chance of getting through this?”

“Alive?” Simon allowed himself to chuckle. “Maybe. Unscathed? Not a chance.”

“Were you always this cheery?”

***

Shadiyah opened her eyes and had to keep them squinted because of the reflection of the morning sun off one of the bumpers of a nearby car. She yawned and stretched, actually surprised at how refreshed she felt. Grabbing her bag, she pulled out her final bottle of water. She could not recall having consumed so much, yet this was indeed the final bottle.

After taking a few sips, she decided that she would simply have to believe that she could locate more before too long. After all, she reasoned as the last drops trickled down her throat, Garforth was just down the road. If she was careful, then surely she could slip in, break into a house, and find some water.

Her mind was made up that she would not try to venture inside a market. Those would be too dangerous with all their blind corners. No, it was time to get moving and she would start by making a go at one of the small apartments that bordered this junkyard.

After slipping into her pack, Shadiyah opened the door, grabbed the bag that she had liberated from that fool that had thrown it to her after admitting that he would have likely tried to jump her had she been a man. Why would somebody say something like that and then think there could be any degree of trust?

Shadiyah’s foot touched the ground and a peculiar sound made its way to her ears with just enough warning for her to leap up and back into the cab. She looked down to see the head of what appeared to be some sort of Pit Bull as the dog emerged from under the truck.

At first, she believed that the dog was normal and that perhaps the odd noise it made could be attributed to an echo or something since it was coming out from under the vehicle. When its head swung around and up to her, she saw the eyes and she knew that this poor thing had somehow become one of the undead.

“Dogs? Why dogs?” she whispered. “And how about that,” she added with a chuckle. “They can look up.”

She puzzled over the dog for a moment, watching it as it made pathetic and feeble attempts to get up at her as she sat in the cab. She knew that the dog would have had no problems jumping up to her if it had been alive, yet, just as with humans, the zombie version of a dog appeared to have suffered a terrible lack of control in its coordination.

What had her confounded for quite a while was the lack of any sort of evidence that the animal had been bitten. In fact, there was not a scratch on it. A thought hit her, and when she gave the dog’s muzzle a closer look, she believed that she understood how this poor creature had become infected. She recalled the corpse she had seen with all the peculiar bites out of it and its skull scattered about.

That would add a new twist to things, she thought.

That one observation sent a series of thoughts cascading through her mind. If animals could be infected, could this also be carried via mosquitoes like that West Nile Virus? Would it carry over to every animal, or just a few?

As much as it hurt her in her heart to do so, Shadiyah drew one of the small swords that she had grabbed at the museum. It had a thicker blade, and she would not be upset if she damaged her blade on the skull of the dog. Standing up on the step-up lip at the entrance to the cab of the truck, she lined up the point of her weapon with the top of the dog’s head and, after a deep breath to steady herself, she jumped, bringing the point of the sword down almost perfectly and plunging it into the top of the dog’s skull. She landed with enough force to actually pin the poor creature to the ground.

Leaning back against the truck, Shadiyah felt the tears stinging her eyes. So far, she had killed a handful of humans and who knew how many zombies. None of them had had any effect on her soul. Somehow, to her, this was so different. Pulling her blade free, Shadiyah knelt over the creature, her tears splashing in the dirt near its head.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

After a few minutes, she regained her composure and decided to take a better look around to see if there might be anything lying about that would be worth grabbing. The yard itself had a lot of things that could possibly be transformed into some rather nasty weaponry, but it would weigh her down far too much to be worth the trouble. Eventually, she decided to abandon searching the yard and decided to check out the apartments that bordered one side.

When she went inside the first of the two flats, she was more than a little disappointed. The place looked like it had been recently vacated and just never cleaned up and prepared for new tenants. There was trash strewn about and the smell of mold and rotten food permeated the air. That was when she realized that she did not smell the telltale odor that announced the walking dead.

She left the first flat and headed next door. Her confidence only increased when she discovered an unlocked front entry. While the place was a mess and showed signs of having been quickly abandoned, there seemed to be no zombies to worry about.

She made her way to the kitchen and was greeted by the smell of food that had gone off several days ago. On the plus side, she also found cans of baked beans in an open cupboard along with a treasure trove of Super Noodles.

“Mild Curry,” she groused when she realized that the treasure was of only a single currency. Still, she thought, beggars can’t be choosers. She scooped it all into her bag.

The only thing she was currently lacking now was water. She opened every cupboard and the pantry to reveal that the person was a fan of beer, but apparently chose to forgo water as a regular beverage. With a sigh, she exited the flat, refusing to allow herself even one of the many bottles of beer that she’d discovered.

As she walked along the road, Shadiyah found herself enjoying the sun on her face. She kept her eyes open for any signs of wandering zombies, but for a while, there was simply nothing to interrupt what was becoming a rather pleasant morning stroll.

She came to an end of having both sides of the narrow road lined with trees to discover a rather expensive looking house on the left. The property was sealed off by a three foot high stone wall that was topped with wrought iron spikes that added just an extra bit of protection. Were it not for the Mercedes that had smashed into the iron gate at the head of the driveway, the whole thing would have been simply beautiful to look at.

Stopping at the car, Shadiyah looked in at the figure that had its head resting on the steering wheel. Her arrival caused it to sit up and begin to claw at the driver’s side window. The gate still looked to be intact and so Shadiyah made a small bow to the undead occupant and hopped up onto the hood of the silver luxury car.

After appraising the situation for a moment, she decided that it would be best if she were to just toss her things over and then climb. Since there did not seem to be any zombies around, other than the one making a little bit of a fuss inside the car, she even removed her belt and tossed over her scimitar. The last thing that she wanted was to get hung up by the strap and end up dangling from the fence until either a zombie found her or she died from thirst.

It was not an easy task, but eventually she was over and standing on a slick driveway that reflected the heat of the sun back at her with a vengeance. She needed to find something here to drink.

When she reached the front door, she was not surprised to discover that it was locked. People like this obviously had things worth taking and took steps to protect them unlike those flats she had just left behind. Ironically, it wasn’t much trouble to get in considering the fact that the top half of the entry door was a window.

Wrapping her elbow in her jacket to give it some extra protection, she gave the glass a sharp smack. The sound of breaking glass was so loud that it actually frightened her at first. Drawing her weapon, she looked everywhere at once, fully expecting either a bunch of zombies or the police to arrive and put a nasty cramp in her day.

She stood at the door long enough for the sweat to bead up on the back of her neck and trickle down between her shoulder blades. At last, she reached inside and turned the knob. Opening the door, she once again froze after stepping on the broken glass,

“Everything seems so bloody loud,” she whispered, not surprised that even her own whispers sounded thunderous.

Creeping down the entry hall, she was happy that this place had an abundance of windows. It made seeing marginally easier, although there were still plenty of shadows to contend with once she arrived where the kitchen was set off from the living room. Unfortunately, the stink of rotten food was mixing with the smell of death and the stench of undeath as she drew nearer.

There was a small island counter blocking her view, and Shadiyah could not see any way to get to the much desired cupboards and pantry without wading in. Finally, she took a step towards the corner, her scimitar thrust out in front of her.

Just before she was able to see, she could hear the sounds of ripping and juicy slurping. Peeking around, what she saw froze her in her tracks for a few seconds. The worst part of that was that her eyes would not look away from what lay on the floor between the oven and that island counter.

The child could not be any older than seven or eight. He was kneeling over a young girl in her teens, a look of terror and pain still etched on her dead face with its glassy eyes staring up at oblivion. There were a few bites on her arms, and one of her fingers was missing on the left hand. However, it was the fact that this little boy was reaching into a horrendous rip in the young girl’s belly that was so revolting.

Shadiyah took another step forward and her foot struck a small kitchen knife and sent it spinning lazily across the floor where it came to a sudden stop when it connected with the folded under leg of the little boy. It turned its head her direction and seemed to consider her for a few seconds. Then, in a reaction that stunned Shadiyah, it hunched back down over the corpse it was still feeding on and resumed its grisly meal.

“You are a nasty little boy,” Shadiyah breathed.

She raised her scimitar and then stopped when the boy pulled away and the girl started to move. She was fascinated. It was as if the zombie had suddenly and completely lost interest in what it was eating. At least now she knew that they did not feed on each other; not that the thought had ever occurred, but she now had proof.

The boy started to stir, but he was not coming for her! Instead, the boy made his way to his feet allowing Shadiyah to see fully the nasty rip on his throat that had obviously been his end. He began to actually back away from her. She was torn, part of her simply wanted to let the boy go if that was his desire. She was about to when the girl rolled over, some of her insides spilling onto the floor as she did so. This one was acting just like any other zombie, to whit, it was obviously coming for her. With one swift stroke, the girl’s head was split almost perfectly down the part and in line with her hair which had been pulled out in braids on each side of her head.

That action apparently did not sit well with the boy. Like somebody had flicked a switch, the boy came for her, arms out and hands reaching. With one swift jab, she drove her blade through the left eye of the young lad and put him at rest beside what Shadiyah guessed might have been his sister.

She had to move the bodies just a bit to get at the large refrigerator with stainless steel french doors. She took a deep breath and held it as she opened. It was empty of most anything useful, and the stench was such that she did not care to try and pick through for anything she could actually use. She wondered how much longer it would be before hunger changed her opinion on that matter.

Closing the doors, she moved to the pantry. It was a large walk-in type with shelves lined and neatly organized. She felt a tingle in her stomach and wondered if this is what a person felt at a casino when they hit a jackpot. She used her booted foot to push aside an entire case of bottled water as she rummaged about.

As she opened this jar and that, sampling olives, pickles, and all sorts of tasty treats, she began to consider the possibility that this place might become hers. From what she had seen, it had a good wall out front. If the back of the property was as secure, there might be no reason for her to leave.

You need to tell Simon about his sister, a voice called from some distant part of her mind.

After she had eaten enough to actually make her feel a bit overfull, she exited the pantry. She told herself that she would need to dispose of the bodies right away, but first, she would do a walkabout. There was a second floor, and then there was the rear of the property.

She went up the stairs, her weapon ready for anything. Each step brought her a bit closer to relaxing as the smell from downstairs began to fade. She went to one of the open rooms and felt a renewed sense of sorrow. It was probably the little boy’s room. The wall was adorned with posters of rugby players and the bedspread was dark blue with a smiling robot face grinning up at the ceiling.

She crossed to the window, moving a few toy cars out of the way as well as a pair of cleats caked with dried mud. When she pulled the curtains open, she could not help but let out a little scream.

10

Settling In

“They brought this down on us!” a voice yelled from the midst of the increasingly unruly mob.

“No!” Simon bellowed. “This did not start in your little village. You saw the news. It is everywhere. Japan went dark in a matter of hours with almost no warning. China followed and all of Asia. India did not last a week past that, and the Americans fared little better despite the bloody bastards all having guns hanging in the rear window of their pickup trucks.”

There was a noticeable lessening in the grumbles and angry whistles and catcalls from the people gathered in the school auditorium. Simon glanced over at Geoff who gave a slightly perceptible nod. Mrs. Raye was beside him and boosted his confidence with a thumbs-up.

“What we need to do now is come together and do all we can to survive. The big cities are gone. Leeds, Birmingham, Liverpool…even London has fallen to this. There are now thousands of those things…the walking dead…wandering about, and if we waste our energy fighting each other, we will be joining those ranks before too long. And I can tell you from experience, the zombies are only part of the problem.”

Simon scanned the crowd and spotted Cedric in their midst. The man was standing with the group of hunters he went out with now on a regular basis. The man indicated that he wanted to actually join Simon up on the stage. Despite his deep-seated resentment towards the man, he gave a nod and waved for Cedric to come up and join him.

“Hey, most of you don’t know me,” the former detective said by way of introduction, “but I was in Leeds during those final days. Some of the things that I saw committed by one man against another would likely sicken many of you. Believe me when I say that there will be trials ahead. Just recently we have come across what can only be described as ritualistic killings.

“Our hunting group has been ranging west towards the outskirts of Garforth as we have switched roles and are now seeking potential supply resources. Just yesterday, we encountered something that was more than a little disturbing.” Cedric paused and glanced over at Simon.

There was something in his expression that almost seemed as if the man was asking for permission to continue. Simon gave a shrug and then a nod for the man to go ahead.

“Some of you may or may not be aware of what might be a military detachment in the area.” This statement received an immediate tremor of response in the crowd, and then a series of shushing noises as the interest level in this topic was obviously high. “We have reason to believe that there is indeed a rogue detachment of the British Army in the area committing heinous acts against small groups of survivors. While they would certainly have us in a bind when it comes to armament, I believe that we would be able to withstand an attack as long as we are united.”

Mrs. Raye stepped away from Geoff and made her way up to what was now becoming a crowded little stage. That absolutely silenced the gathering, and Simon saw a few confused faces staring up now as the older woman stepped to the front of the stage and stood for a moment with her hands clasped in front of her like a school marm waiting for her class to come to order.

“Ladies and gentlemen, none of you know me. I am a stranger to these parts, but I want to assure you that my little group did see a Foxhound just north of Garforth. We also spotted at least five individuals hanging from a makeshift gallows. While there could be any number of reasons for what we witnessed, there was something rather unsettling about the scene that led not only me, but your newly assigned constable to feel a sense of unease. I have no idea what quarrel you may think you have with the other residents of this little town, but we are at a distinct advantage if we band together.

“I have been out there in what is fast becoming a wasteland of death, and I can tell you that most survivors are in singles or very small groups. Our numbers may be the key to survival, and the more we have, the better it will be in the end.”

Mrs. Raye stepped over to the edge of the stage by where Geoff stood and accepted his hand to help her down. Simon started and moved to the front of the stage again after glancing at Cedric who apparently had nothing else to say.

“I say we arrange for a meeting and bring the people down in New Mick up here and into the fold. There won’t be any wind turbine towers now, so that should no longer be an issue. Let bygones be bygones and move forward. We have a trench to dig, farms that need planting, and a hundred things that we have not even begun to consider that require our full attention.” Simon saw heads starting to nod. “So, I need four people to join me in heading down to speak with the people down in New Micklefield and try to convince them to join us.”

There was a moment’s pause, and then a few dozen arms shot up in the air. Right or wrong, Simon decided to choose a few familiar faces. He pointed out Nelson Wilbanks, Melena Duff, Dawn Spengler, and Kas Asan.

“Everybody get your gear and meet me back here at the school in an hour,” Simon said after the crowd had dispersed.

“I think we need to talk before we head down there,” Melena spoke after receiving nods from the others that Simon had selected.

“What about?” Simon did not like the looks he was seeing on the faces staring back at him.

“Word is that some of the folks down in New Mick are trying to protect loved ones that have been turned,” Nelson growled. “They refuse to accept that those things are the dead come back. They insist that it is just some sort of sickness and that there has to be a way to get them back to normal.”

“This just keeps getting better,” Simon groaned.

Less than an hour later, everybody was gathered in front of the school. Mrs. Raye and Cedric were present as well, along with Geoff and a few of the citizens that apparently made up the village council. Simon had his mace and also managed to acquire a pretty nice machete from Melena that was unexpectedly heavy.

“The walk there and back should not take long,” Geoff said once everybody had gathered around. “If you have not returned by sunset, we will assume there is a serious problem, and I can assure you that there will be a contingent of us coming to see what has gone wrong.”

That little reassurance was rather comforting to Simon. While he did not actually expect some sort of attack on him and the others, it was good to know that there was help on the way if something did go awry.

After a few handshakes, hugs, and slaps on the back, Simon and his four companions were heading south on the Great North Road. It ran in a lazy S-shaped set of curves which kept the visibility somewhat limited. They passed a series of barrel halves that had been converted to planters leading up to a roadside bench. Simon had to wonder how often people actually availed themselves to coming out here and simply taking a seat beside the road for no other reason than to watch life and time creep slowly past.

The road began a gradual ascent and it was not long before Nelson could be heard breathing a bit harder than normal. This earned a few jabs and giggles from Dawn, but Nelson refused to be baited, and the girl quickly lost interest in the teasing, falling in beside Melena who was busy trying to look every direction at once.

Up ahead, they could see the first turn-in for a residence. Just beyond was a handmade barricade of posts and what looked like the bannister to a flight of stairs. Anchoring the scene were a pair of metal fifty gallon drums with the waning tendrils of smoke that indicated fires had burned in them recently.

Just past the second turn-in were a pair of people hunched in close in some sort of conversation that looked to be somewhat serious as one of them kept throwing their arms up in the air and shaking his or her head emphatically. The second person eventually grabbed the other by the arms and barked something with enough force for the words. “AS I SAID!” to be heard by Simon and his group.

Simon raised his hand for the group to halt. Whatever the pair were conversing about, it was intense enough so that they did not seem to realize that they had gained an audience. The two supposed sentries continued on for several seconds until at last Nelson cleared his throat in an exaggerated manner which caused the two men (as it was revealed when they both jump and spun to face the intruders) to start and begin fumbling for their weapons. One of them had what looked like a rather unwieldy axe; while it certainly looked impressive at first glance, Simon guessed that it would be effective for one swing at best. The other had a more conventional weapon in the form of a simple field machete.

“What’s the meaning of sneaking up on people like that?” the man with the axe bellowed.

This individual was rotund and looked as if he might be more comfortable behind a bank teller’s window than out in the open with layers of heavy clothing that made him sweat in great rivulets that ran down his plump face. His dark, beady eyes were wide, but Simon knew the difference between fear and ferocity; and this person, while trying to sound belligerent, was obviously more afraid than anything else.

The second man had a much cooler demeanor and was giving every member of Simon’s group a good look as if he might be trying to determine who would be the biggest threat when things got ugly. He was rather plain looking in most regards, except for his hair being dyed a dazzling shade of cerulean blue.

“My name is Simon Wood. I have come to talk to your people on behalf of the other citizens of Micklefield.” Simon wanted to set the tone by refusing to acknowledge the New Micklefield/Old Micklefield division.

“You that bloke who let our Charlie go free?” the blue-haired man spoke up, putting his weapon in a leather sheath that he wore on a studded harness that looked like it had been stolen from some bondage fanatic’s bedroom.

“If Charlie is the man caught trying to steal from the food stores at the school, then yes, I am the one who let him go free.”

The man with blue hair smiled big, displaying an almost comically bad set of teeth. “Charlie is my brother. My name is Linus Goodkind.”

“Charlie and Linus?” Nelson muttered under his breath. “Do they have sisters named Lucy or Sally…or perhaps a beagle named Snoopy?”

Simon ignored the remark and started to close the distance and meet the now exuberant Linus Goodkind halfway. The man was perhaps in his early twenties, and his face still showed a losing battle with acne. He had blue eyes and fair skin that hinted at Danish blood. In addition, he was a bit broader in the shoulders now that Simon saw the man close up.

“Thank you so much for not letting those Old Mick buggers kill my Charlie. He was just trying to take care of his family.” Linus ignored his companion who was clearly not happy about this exchange taking place.

“Yes, well that is fine, but I am here on very urgent business,” Simon said, having to work to free his hand from the pumping it was still suffering at the hands of the exuberant Linus.

“If it is business on behalf of those Old Micks, you can forget it,” the rotund man huffed as he waddled up to be a part of the conversation. “We won’t be having any dealings with them after what has been done.”

“Really?” Simon turned his attention to the man and gave him his coldest glare. “So you are all prepared and ready for this zombie apocalypse then? No need to band together with your fellow man and all that. So I take it you are not only fully prepared to deal with the zombies, but also to take on the rogue army unit that is prowling these parts.”

“See, Rawlings, I keep tellin’ ya that thems is zombies, but you lot keep insisting they have some sort of Egyptian Flu,” Linus exclaimed, pointing at the round man who was now turning a bit pink in the face.

“You heathens can spout on about this being some fantastic bit of fiction—” Rawlings bellowed, but Simon cut him off.

“Stop being such idiots. You can’t deny what has been seen not only most likely by your own eyes, but also shown on the BBC and all over the bloody internet before it crashed and burned or overloaded, or whatever it is that internets do when several billion people all try to use it at once.” He put his hands up to keep Nelson from advancing on the man and then continued. “Saying something is not so does not negate the situation.”

“And by that logic, speaking it does not simply will it into existence,” Rawlings retorted. “Now, you have our thanks for sending poor Charlie home, but that is where our gratitude and hospitality end, I’m afraid.”

With that, the man spun on his heel and began to stomp away. Linus seemed confused and uncertain, looking first at the back of his companion who was making haste obviously to alert the rest of the residents, and then back at Simon and the others. He switched from one foot to the other and it became apparent to Simon that perhaps the man was a bit dim. Still, he had to do what he could.

“Listen, Linus,” Simon whispered, taking the man by the wrist to gain his full attention. “I want you to go back with your friend.”

“Rawlings ain’t my friend. Until all this sickness, he weren’t nobody’s friend. People used to ignore him more than they did an Old Mick. Begging the ladies’ pardon.” He knuckled his forehead and bowed quick to Dawn and Melena who smiled and nodded in return.

“Can you do me a favor, Linus?” Simon asked. He decided that little chance was better than none. When the man nodded rapidly, he continued. “You tell anybody who will listen that they can come up the road and join us. We are doing everything we can to build defenses against the zombies and any who are willing to help will be welcomed with no problems.”

“Even me and Charlie?” Linus asked, ignoring the bellowing summons that Rawlings was issuing over his shoulder as he disappeared over the small rise and bend in the road.

“Even you and Charlie,” Simon nodded.

“What about Charlie’s wife and little girl?”

“Them too.”

That seemed to satisfy the man and he gave everybody a nod and a furious handshake before turning around and running after the cantankerous Rawlings. Simon turned back to the others and saw curious expressions regarding him.

“So that’s it?” Melena asked skeptically.

“Would you have us march into town and announce it as an edict or perhaps nail it to a post?” Simon said with a shrug.

They were just turning to head back home when a group of twenty or so zombies emerged from the trees and brush that lined the road. The undead were in the perfect location to keep them from simply being able to run away, leaving Simon and his people no choice other than to take them down in order to pass and return home. The sounds of weapons being drawn came in a rush and Simon chose his target as he approached with his mace at the ready.

Just as he swung, he heard a voice holler, “Don’t you dare kill all those people!”

***

The horse reared up at the sudden sound and the figure on its back went flying. Shadiyah watched the person land flat on their back as the large bay stallion galloped away. She quickly let the curtains drop and rushed through the house to the back door and out to a large rock deck. A huge pool was off to the left and a massive brick wall sat just across the deck with a huge built in barbecue grilling station.

She had no time to admire all the luxuries though as she ran for the fence, scaled it, and leapt into the open field where the horse had finally stopped running and was now apparently content to stand in the shade offered in the far northwestern corner. The person that had been flung from its back was lying motionless exactly where Shadiyah had seen the individual fall. She approached with caution, and was actually relieved to hear the person moaning as she drew nearer.

She was still several steps away, but already she was relaxing since she could tell by the form of the body that this individual was a female—the tight fitting riding apparel showed a proper abundance of curves. Her riding hat had come off and lay a few feet away allowing Shadiyah to see the long, dark hair that fanned out around the woman’s head.

Reaching the white, split-rail fence, Shadiyah climbed up on top and then took one more look around. She saw nothing to cause her any concerns; the horse was staying put; it looked like a normal horse, and showed no signs of being a zombie. Still keeping one eye on the horse since it was a bit too far away to actually get a clear look at its eyes, Shadiyah tentatively made her way to the ground.

As she approached to within just a few feet, a soft moan from the figure on the ground made Shadiyah freeze. She had been so concerned about the horse being a possible zombie that it had never occurred to her that the rider might be one. Drawing her scimitar, she took another step, paused…and then took one more. Leaning forward just enough to allow her to reach over and poke the woman who was currently lying face down on the ground.

“Ouch!” a muffled voice complained.

Shadiyah stepped back, startled at first, but then quickly sheathing her weapon and moving to help. After all, she thought, zombies don’t say “ouch!”

“Are you okay?” Shadiyah whispered as she helped ease the stranger over and onto her back.

“Other than being thrown off the horse?” the woman managed, her voice tight from the pain. “I’m just great. Was that you who screamed?”

“Sorry about that. I just got so excited, I don’t think I knew how to react. That scream surprised me just as much as it did you,” Shadiyah admitted with a blush tingeing her cheeks and making her ears feel just a bit warm.

“Yeah? Well I am pretty sure only one of us fell off a horse,” the woman groaned as she sat up. “And what were you doing in the house?” Now the woman eyed her with suspicion and just a bit of apprehension.

“Searching for water, food, that sort of thing,” Shadiyah admitted.

“Then you are either very brave…or very stupid.”

“Why is that?”

“For one, that creepy boy is in there. For another, I heard the screams finally stop which means his stupid big sister finally joined him in becoming one of those beasts.”

Shadiyah considered things for a moment before responding. “You didn’t live here either, did you?”

“No, I worked across the street at the Peddipaws Pet Hotel,” the woman said as she began to pat herself down and check for injuries. “My name is Caron Hirst by the way. Yours?”

“Shadiyah Kasim.”

“Well, I would say I am pleased to meet you, but I am still deciding if I will hold a grudge for you getting me thrown off of Buttercup.”

“You seem to know a great deal about things around here,” Shadiyah observed as the woman stood up.

Caron Hirst was surprisingly tall and slender for being so voluptuous. Her long hair was a lovely brunette color that almost looked black in the sun with just enough curl to make it wavy. Her brown eyes were the color of dark chocolate and squinted so that it crinkled her slightly upturned nose in such a way that she looked to be considering some sort of private joke.

“Like I said, I worked across the street. I’ve had the pleasure of working with the horses that the Bitt family owned for the past few years. Unfortunately, that meant having to deal with the Bitt brats as we called them.” Caron turned and spotted the horse still standing in the shade in the corner of the large field. “Hey, girl, did that scare you?”

The woman started across the field. Shadiyah followed a few steps behind, her eyes still scanning everywhere at once as if she expected zombies to appear any moment.

“So, can I ask why you were riding the horse?” Shadiyah spoke up as they neared the big, beautiful creature.

“Actually, I was going to free her and the others, but I just always loved Buttercup so much and couldn’t resist.” The woman turned to face Shadiyah with a sheepish look on her face. “A bit daft, isn’t it? I mean, here we are…end of the world and all that going on, and I go horseback riding.”

“Does seem like an odd time,” Shadiyah agreed.

“Yeah, well…” the woman reached up and patted the big bay on the neck and sighed, “not much left to do with the time I have remaining.”

“What?”

Caron turned and knelt, giving her pants leg a tug. She revealed a bandage on her calf that was showing just a hint of blood starting to leak through.

“The boy? He got me when I was inside checking to see if any of the Bitts were still alive.” A tear leaked from the corner of Caron’s eye and trickled down her left cheek, hanging at her jawline for a second before giving over to gravity and falling to the dusty ground with a silent plop, leaving a small, dark stain to mark its presence. “I came when I heard a scream. I guess little Gerald had his sister Nancy trapped in the bathroom. I came in through the back door and followed the screams. When I reached the hall, I could see the little boy standing outside the bathroom door, clawing and scratching at it. I yelled at Gerald, but it was so strange…he looked at me, but he went right back to scratching at the bathroom door. I yelled for Nancy to try and push past him but she just kept carrying on.

“I finally started down the hall. That boy did not seem to care or even notice. I guess I can only blame myself. When I reached the door, I gave the little bugger a shove and grabbed the door knob to open it.” Caron paused and looked at Shadiyah with a curious expression for a few moments before her shoulders slumped and she continued. “That girl came barging out and collided with me. We both went to the floor and that is when the boy turned into just another zombie. It actually made me wonder if I’d just been imagining that he was different up to that point.”

Shadiyah only interrupted her long enough to tell her that she’d seen odd behavior from the child versions as well. Caron nodded, but it did not seem to ease her mind any.

“I got untangled from Nancy just as Gerald fell on us. He grabbed my leg and latched on, but I kicked him away. Not soon enough, right? The next thing I know, he was on top of his sister. He had her hand in his mouth and just chomped off one of her fingers like it was nobody’s business. I had gotten to my feet by then and reached for her, but she kept ignoring me…trying to talk to that horrid little creature like it was still her brother.”

There was a long silence. Shadiyah began to think the woman was done with her story.

“Then I ran,” Caron whispered. “I turned around and took off through the house. Somehow, I found myself out in the stables. I climbed up into the loft and that is where I fell asleep. I woke up to the sounds of the horses and climbed down. The poor things were so hungry. I have no idea when they were last fed or even given fresh water, but I’d been hired in the past when the family went on holiday, so I knew where everything was and took care of them. I’d all but forgotten about that little nip on my leg until it began to burn.”

“Pardon if I say, but I don’t see anything in your eyes yet. All the reports say that is one of the first signs of infection,” Shadiyah offered, trying to sound hopeful.

“I heard something about how it can take up to seventy-two hours,” Caron said with a shrug.

“So what made you decide to ride one of the horses?”

“Buttercup has always been my favorite. Any time that the Bitts hired out to have their horses watched, they always made sure to specify that none of them were to be ridden under any circumstances. Nancy rode in competition and I guess they were afraid that nobody but that stupid girl knew how to ride. Since Mr. Bitts is out front in his shiny car and unlikely to ever escape it, and now that both the Bitt brats are no longer around, I did not think that it would hurt.”

“That was probably a good bet until you fell off,” Shadiyah snickered.

Caron looked at her for a moment, and then she joined in. The two women turned their attention to the large horse that seemed more than happy to accept all the praise and strokes of its long neck. For several minutes, the two stood in the shade with the animal and gave it the kindness it had been craving after being locked away in its stable for so long.

At last, Caron turned to Shadiyah and asked, “Do you know how to ride?”

“I’ve never been on a horse.”

“Then let my last actions on this earth be teaching you the wonders and joys of riding.”

***

Simon spun to face the owner of the voice and had to recover fast and swat away the undead hands that tried to grip him. Standing in a small opening between some trees was a tall woman. She was wreathed in shadows, and that made it impossible for him to see any sort of details.

Once again, the zombie he’d been about to destroy reached out and grabbed for him. Its cold, dead fingers slid across his cheek and that was enough to snap him back to the situation at hand. He lashed out, the mace slamming into the skull of the zombie and caving in the side of the face of a man who might have been in his late fifties or early sixties. A spray of black blood and even a few teeth went flying and the body fell with a lifeless ‘thwap’ as it hit the asphalt.

“STOP!” the woman implored.

Melena stepped in beside Simon and drove the blade of her knife into the side of the head of another zombie that was moving in behind the distracted Simon.

“Kill now, deal with that later,” Nelson huffed as he brought around a sturdy pole with a spike at either end up and under the chin of a zombified woman that had a nasty rip on her face and an arm that had been broken at some point and appeared to have a second joint a few inches below the elbow.

A shriek caused Simon’s head to turn sharply. He spun just in time to see Dawn fall backwards with a zombie on top of her. She had tripped over a severed arm; by the looks of it, the arm belonged to a zombie that Kas was fending off. It was massive, dressed in biker’s leathers and, unfortunately for Kas, wearing a helmet. Kas was in no position to help as he was busy at the moment trying to free his own blade from where it had gotten buried in the neck of the biker zombie and apparently hung up on bone or something.

Leaping over the body of the corpse he had just dispatched, Simon arrived just as Dawn thrust her small blade up and through the eye socket of her attacker. He had just enough time to grab the body by the shoulder and yank it off the downed woman when the next zombie was on him.

He kicked it away and then brought the mace down in an overhead swing that crushed the top of the zombie’s head and sent a tingle up his arms. Something collided with his back and he spun to see that Melena was backing up as she jerked her odd farming tool free from where it had wedged deep in the shoulder of her most recent target.

“You need to hit them in the head,” Simon grunted as he kicked out at another zombie before bringing his mace across and catching it on the temple.

“Thanks for the tip,” Melena said as she yanked her weapon free and used the butt of the handle to sweep the feet out from under the recently cleaved teenaged girl and then finish it with an arcing chop that shattered its skull as much as chopped it.

“You two wanna quit playing around?” Nelson heaved as he grabbed a pair of zombies by the shoulders and slammed them together, spiking each in the face before they could regain their feet.

“Please!” the woman pleaded from the shadows.

“If that’s a raktachuShak, I’m gonna be very upset,” Kas hissed as he shot a furtive glance over his shoulder at the woman. He had taken down the biker zombie and was moving to help Dawn with a trio of undead teens.

“A what?” Simon stepped away from his latest kill to discover that they there were no more remaining zombies except those being finished off by his companions.

“How would you think I am a vampire!” the woman in the shadows snapped. At last stepping out onto the road where she was giving the carnage a sorrowful look. “I should box your ears, you great idiot.”

“Yeah,” Nelson chimed, “we already have zombies. Why would you want to make things worse by invoking vampires?”

“I think the bigger question is why you would want us not to take these things down.” Simon reached out a hand to help Dawn over a cluster of corpses.

“I just needed one,” the woman sighed.

“What are you doing down here, sister?” Kas snapped.

“Sister?” Simon scratched his head in confusion.

“Mr. Wood, meet my sister, Wamil Asan,” Kas grumbled.

“That is Doctor Wamil Asan,” the woman huffed.

“You’re a doctor?” Simon said, instantly regretting how it had come out of his mouth.

“Yes, do you not believe that to be possible?” Doctor Asan arched an eyebrow as she knelt beside one of the corpses and produced a pen so that she could poke and prod at some of the viscera that seeped from a small rip in the belly.

“No, it wasn’t that at all,” Simon stammered. “You just look so young.”

“Great,” Kas groaned. “Here we go.”

“Actually,” the woman looked up at Simon with her large brown eyes and let her lashes bat slowly twice before she continued, “I was the youngest of my class. In fact, I am the youngest to complete my degree since Iqbal Al Assaad. I finished school just a week shy of my twenty-first birthday.”

“Now that is what I call girl power,” Melena said as she shook the bits of zombie free from her weapon.

“You still haven’t told me why you were pitching such a fuss about…did you say you needed a zombie?” Simon was taken aback.

“To study,” Doctor Asan said as she stood, giving a scornful look at the useless creature at her feet.

As she wandered amongst the bodies scattered all over the ground, Simon continued to observe her. She was a beauty, of that there could be no denying. She had skin the color of cappuccino and hair that was so black as to almost be blue in the light of the sun. She was tall, slender, and with a sway to her walk even as she roamed a scene as horrific as the one they were currently standing in.

“You keep staring like that, and your eyes are gonna pop out of your head,” Nelson whispered in Simon’s ear with his gruff voice, causing Simon to jump.

“That wouldn’t be the only thing to pop out,” Dawn and Melena said almost in perfect unison. The two women had to work hard to stifle their giggles, but neither seemed to give it much effort and were soon making exaggerated wipes at their eyes as Simon turned a shade of red that verged on purple.

Kas shot them all a dirty look as he tromped after his sister. He even shot what might have been a warning glare at Simon as he made his way past the group. “You are supposed to be back at the house. We can’t risk having our only doctor running around,” he insisted.

“Yes, well I have been asking for you or one of the groups of hunters to bring me back a specimen for the past two weeks.”

“Not as easy as you make it sound,” Nelson spoke up, stepping in between the brother and sister. “These things don’t just fall in and march merrily home when you ask them.”

“Mr. Wilbanks,” Doctor Asan spun on the man and fixed him with a stern look, “I am fully aware, and that is why I came out here on my own. I was tracking this group,” she waved her arms to indicate all the dead zombies on the road, “and was moving in on a straggler when you butchered the whole lot of them.”

“And how were you planning on getting one back home?” Melena snorted.

The doctor produced a leather mask with a metal plate where the mouth should be as well as a long coil of leather that looked to be some sort of leash. “I had a plan.”

“A bad one,” Kas muttered.

Simon opened his mouth to say something when there was a sudden explosion down the road towards the direction of what would be the heart of the New Micklefield part of the village. A pillar of black smoke and flames roiled skyward. A moment later, the shouts and screams of people in fear and pain could be heard.

“What the—” Simon opened his mouth, but the rest of his question was cut off by the foreign sound of automatic weapons being fired in short bursts.

11

Staring Over the Edge

“Just relax,” Caron called. “They can sense your feelings and will take complete advantage.”

“Maybe this is not such a great idea,” Shadiyah hollered back as the horse gave just a little bit of a buck as she tried to squeeze the animal with her knees as Caron had instructed. “Besides, we have more of those wretched creatures gathered on the other side of the fence.”

Shadiyah had a perfect vantage point to be able to see over the fence that ran along the rear of the property and cordoned off the open riding area from rest of the world. Tall trees ran the length, and beyond that were some train tracks running east and west and then more trees before another expensive home and large farm. There were only a few feet of space between the trees and the fence, but it was enough room for a few hundred of the undead to gather if they were not diligent in taking them down.

At first, the two young women had considered just leaving them be and seeing if they would wander off on their own, but by the third day when the numbers had increased to well over a hundred, a section of the fence made a terrible crack and they both rushed over, climbed up, and began to hack and spike the zombies that had gathered.

And that was the other thing that they both kept track of, but neither dared speak. Caron still showed no sign of being infected. Her eyes were still clear with none of the dark tracers. The wound was actually healing and had even reached the point where it began to itch.

Caron reached out as Shadiyah and the devious Buttercup trotted up. She grabbed the reins and it was as if a switch flipped in the powerful equine demon.

Eyeing the horse with absolute mistrust, Shadiyah started to climb down. Just as she swung her left leg over and was about to get clear, the horse took a sideways step that sent her falling hard on her rear end.

“You did that on purpose,” she snarled up at the creature that regarded her with its large brown eyes that did a marvelous job of feigning absolute innocence.

Climbing to her feet and dusting herself off, she accepted Caron’s hand, grateful for the help. Together, the women walked over to the tall fence and climbed up.

“This group gathered quickly,” Caron observed as she stabbed down with her pitchfork, driving two of the tines into the head of the closest zombie.

“Yeah, and look at those poor buggers,” Shadiyah grunted as she jabbed with her scimitar with one hand while pointing to their left with the other. “Nasty burns on them. I bet that lot is from the city.”

“The cloud seemed to be getting worse for a while,” Caron said as she paused to look to the west in the direction of Leeds. The horizon was washed out with a sheet of solid smoke that looked much denser than any old-time London fog. “But I think it has begun to dissipate.”

“I am just happy the wind has been to the west these past few days.” Shadiyah kicked a zombie in the head to knock it back from where it was about to try and grab hold of her leg. “An east wind would have sent us on the run for sure.”

For the next several minutes, the two took down one zombie after another. Shadiyah was marveling at how it had almost become normal. The last zombie for Shadiyah was a young girl in her late teens. As she stabbed it in the face with her scimitar, she was reminded of Simon. More specifically, she remembered his sister Miranda. The man had done proper by her; leaving her with her sword as well as a note that said where he and the others were headed. She had set out with the idea that she would let the man know she had taken care of his sister so that Miranda would not walk about as one of those horrid creatures.

At first, she had thought him a coward for not dealing with Miranda on his own. Yet, she had started to think that perhaps that same good heart that had done right by her had a lot to do with why he had not been able to take down his little sister. Also, as the days passed and Caron continued to show no signs of changing, she believed that just maybe every bite was not necessarily fatal. She had seen the blood on Miranda’s mouth and knew who the likely victim had to be. Simon had not shown signs of infection that she had been able to discern. His eyes had been clear…sad, but clear.

She climbed down from the fence and wiped off her blade; she was so lost in thought that it took Caron calling her name three times before she snapped out of her haze. Her head snapped up and she saw Caron’s expression change instantly.

“Are you okay?” the woman asked as she approached, setting down her pitchfork.

The woman held out her arms and Shadiyah fell into them. She started to cry. What made it worse was the fact that her mind could not lock on to any one single reason. It felt as if all the events of the past few weeks were landing on her heart with tremendous force in this single instant. Her crying grew more intense until she was sobbing in great hitching sounds that echoed in her ears. Through it all, Caron simply held her, stroking her hair and staying silent. Shadiyah was thankful that the woman was not whispering something insane like “things will be alright.”

Things would never be alright ever again. The world was done, and in the process, she had become something broken. Those crevices in her soul were closing up, but the scars were permanent, and they had changed her.

“I have to go,” Shadiyah finally managed through the tears.

“Go where?” Caron stepped back and held Shadiyah at arms’ length.

“I need to go to Micklefield. If nothing else, I must tell Simon about his sister. After that, I can come back.”

“Do you really think you are going without me, you silly cow?”

Shadiyah wiped the tears from her eyes and sniffed. She felt a complete mess…she felt detached from the world; but in this moment, there was a fragile tether that held her fast to her own humanity.

The two returned to the house after Buttercup had been brushed and stripped of all her gear. It was quickly decided that they would travel on foot.

“Maybe someday you will make life easier on us by being able to ride,” Caron quipped over Buttercup’s back during the brushing.

Shadiyah regarded the animal that seemed to be looking at her with the equine equivalent of contempt. She leaned over to the animal’s perked up ear and whispered, “If nothing else, you will keep me fed through the winter, you four-legged demon.”

Buttercup snorted.

***

Simon moved along the walls that ran the length of each house that bordered the Great North Road. Some were simple rock walls, others hedges, but they were high enough to provide him with adequate cover. He could hear the others behind him and he felt a series of mixed emotions.

When the gunfire had erupted, only he and Melena had wanted to investigate the source. The others, led by Nelson who did all the talking in those brief seconds, wanted to return home and let everybody know.

“I would bet they can hear all this just fine,” Simon had retorted. “They will be wanting an idea of what is happening, and I intend to give it. If we don’t know what we might be facing, we will fare much worse.”

That had been all Simon cared to say on the matter. Standing around discussing it might lead to him losing his nerve, and so he took off at a jog. He reached the junction where the train tracks passed overhead and stopped so suddenly that he was knocked forward when Melena collided with his back.

He held up his hands for everybody to halt as soon as he regained himself. He swore that he’d heard voices from up on the tracks. Turning to the others, he pointed to the high wall on their left that separated a series of two-story flats.

“Wait over there. I want to go see what’s up on the tracks,” he whispered.

“You aren’t going alone,” Dawn insisted.

Nods from the others let him know that it would be wasted time if he tried to debate the situation. Since she was closest, he waved for Melena to join him, and they both hopped up on the waist high wall that bordered the brush and tree-covered slope that led up to the tracks.

He made his way through the brush as silently as possible. As they reached just below the top of the rather steep slope, he began to make out the voices and what they were saying.

“…not much in the way of supplies. If we have to go door-to-door, it will be a big waste of time,” a man was complaining.

“The sergeant says that he plans to keep a few of these folks alive to handle that. He will have them unloading everything out to the street and we can take what we want afterwards,” a second voice said, sounding far too cheerful for Simon’s liking considering the topic.

“Trevor said that they got a bunch of the stiffs in a fenced in pasture at the south end of this piss pot. Said that folks actually tried to stop him and the boys from putting the damn things down. Even after he grabbed that one bloke and tossed him over the rail and made everybody watch as those things tore him apart, they still insisted that it weren’t zombies but just some sort of sickness,” the first voice said with disbelief clear in his tone.

“I still don’t think we should have shot them all out of hand. Folks that live outside of the main cities always seem to be a bit off in the head.”

“It put the rest in line.”

Simon reached the lip and crept up on his belly to get a look. Sure enough, there were only two men here. Both were wearing the uniform of the British Army. One was taking a deep drag of a cigarette while the other seemed content to continue to stare to the south in the direction of the small pillar of smoke that coiled skyward.

Simon winced as he recognized the weapons slung over the shoulders of the two soldiers. Each was carrying the SA 80A2 machinegun. He knew the model simply by reputation, having never actually fired any sort of gun in his life. And the only reason that he knew anything about this weapon was because of a BBC documentary on the troops that he’d seen a few weeks before all this madness began; otherwise, all he would have known was that those men were carrying machineguns which were substantially better than his mace.

The two men had stopped talking, but their attention was still directed away from where he and Melena were positioned. What he needed was something that distracted the men if he was going to have any chance at all of overpowering them. As it was, he did not give himself much chance of success. These were soldiers in full gear, and he was just a regular man.

He was about to give up and signal Melena that they should retreat when one of the soldiers spoke up. It was the one who had been smoking, and he flicked his butt away and took a drink from his canteen.

“I’ve got to have me a piss,” the man grumbled. “I don’t think anything will appear out of thin air in the next few minutes.”

Simon held his breath as the man started directly for him! He knew that any movement he made at this point would give them away; all he could hope for was that the man remained oblivious until it was too late.

Simon felt Melena stiffen beside him and now he had to hope that she would not bolt. Just as quick as it came, he dismissed the thought and kept his focus on the approaching soldier.

“You think we will be heading up the road and hitting that other little dump just north of here?” the soldier called over his shoulder as he approached the brush.

Simon could not believe his luck. He decided not to take it for granted and rose up. For just a second, his mind warred with what he was about to do. Taking down the undead had been one thing, but this was a living, breathing human. When his target’s partner spoke, it made Simon’s choice just a shade easier.

“I hope so, we was watching one of their patrols come in and I saw a few fine birds I wouldn’t mind plucking.”

Simon brought his mace across in a fierce, two-handed swing. The head of the mace connected with the man’s cheek just as he was turning back. It was unclear if the man even realized he was about to be struck since he had no chance to react before the side of his face was crushed; the blow to the temple causing a cranial rupture that shut the brain down and the body with it.

Unfortunately, that attack did not take place in a vacuum. The sound of the skull cracking, coupled with Simon’s grunt as he swung and connected along with the peculiar gurgle that the soldier emitted, was more than enough noise to cause the other soldier to start and spin around.

“What the blood—” he started to curse. Those words stuck in his throat along with the knife that now jutted from it.

“Holy crap, it worked!” Melena hissed as she scuttled past to retrieve her weapon.

“Strip the gear and let’s get out of here,” Simon breathed as he looked down on the man lying dead at his feet.

He watched as a dark, liquid stain began to ooze out through the rocks and gravel beside the train tracks. The soldier’s eyes were still wide open, but the man was very clearly dead. Still, Simon could not help but kneel down and feel for a pulse at the man’s throat. There was nothing.

Without warning, Simon vomited. The viscous stream splattered the corpse, bits of the morning meal sticking to the skin of the man’s dead face. For some reason, Simon could not look away until Melena grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back.

He was still in a bit of a daze when he emerged from the trees at the bottom of the hill. Nelson and the others were hurrying over, and Kas was saying something, but all Simon heard was the roar in his ears. He was suddenly beginning to feel very dizzy.

“Don’t you dare,” Nelson’s voice cut through his fog and a hard slap to the face brought him to his senses in a quick, albeit unpleasant, manner.

Simon shook his head a few times to clear it. He quickly related what they had heard.

“But did you see how many?” Dawn asked.

“No, they were not able to be seen from the tracks,” Simon replied as he rubbed his cheek and shot a nasty look at Nelson who did not seem to notice in the slightest.

“I believe we should hurry back home.” Doctor Asan said, giving her brother a gentle shove for emphasis. “I have noticed that sound draw those things like moths to a flame. All that gunfire and such should bring them for miles, and I don’t want to be out like this if they come in great numbers.”

“I thought you were trying to nab one for experiments,” Kas said, only half teasing.

“That is correct, but I am not a fool. I have seen a few of those mobs roaming about that numbered well over a hundred. One or two…that is manageable. Ten or twenty, things get a bit sketchy. When you are talking about a hundred or more, that is just suicide.”

The doctor’s statement received nods from the group. Simon hated not knowing what exactly they might be facing, but he was satisfied that they had reduced the number by two. And, he thought as he gave the machinegun draped over his shoulder a little pat, they were at least a little better off in the realm of defense.

***

The two women had each loaded a pack with enough food to last five days. The trip to Micklefield should actually be able to be made in one, but there was no telling what they might encounter out there. The downside to their load out was that they only had two canteens each. They each plucked ten bottles of water as well, hoping that they would be able to find more as they traveled.

As the day gave way to evening, the two women sat in the upstairs bedroom that looked out at the horses grazing in the small riding area. Both were busy sharpening their weapons with the gear that Caron had brought in from the stable and work shop buildings. Neither knew if they were doing it exactly correct, but they could only do their best and hope. That was also why each woman had fashioned a weapon from some of the tools found out in the shed.

Shadiyah had chosen a hammer that had felt rather heavy when she had picked it up from the tool bench where Caron was busy inspecting her pitchfork, as well as a sturdy little axe, ensuring that the handles were in good condition. It would not do for them to be out and in a situation only to have their weapons break with zombies all around.

Together, they sipped on a bottle of wine that Caron brought up from the cellar. She had insisted that it was quite expensive and made a big fuss while opening it. Even more peculiar, she had poured each of them a glass and then said that it could not be consumed for a while so that it could breathe, decant, or some such nonsense. By the time she was able to actually take a sip, she had to admit that it was rather tasty, but certainly nothing worth a few thousand pounds like Caron insisted that the bottle would sell for.

That was another thing about the zombie apocalypse, Shadiyah thought as she sat staring out at a sky that was all sorts of oranges, purples, and reds with the setting sun turning the smoky haze of destruction from Leeds into something beautiful, those bottles of water sitting on the counter will be worth ten times that bottle of wine before long.

The world was changing, and the things that meant so much just a few weeks ago were now just a bunch of useless rubbish. If you couldn’t eat it, drink it (for replenishment, not to just get pissed), or kill with it, then it held no real value. Even this beautiful house would be worthless if not for the sturdy wall that surrounded it and kept the undead at bay.

She sat, continuing to watch until the sky became dark and a sliver of moon peeked in and out of the overcast sky. It looked like rain was going to greet them as they started this journey. Briefly, she considered putting the trip off, but she knew that every day she did so was another day where it would become less important to her.

“…those lights over there?” Caron’s voice said with a tone that brought Shadiyah out of her ruminations.

Standing to get a better look, she spotted what looked like a dozen camp fires burning in the distance. Of course they were far enough away, and it was so dark, that it was impossible to tell what sort of people could so blatantly flaunt their whereabouts. With that many blazes going in what, at least from here, looked like a straight line, she had to guess that there were a great many people gathered to the north of their position.

“Good thing we are sitting in the dark,” Shadiyah finally said.

“Will you always be so distrustful of others?” Caron asked, sounding genuinely concerned and perhaps just a little sad.

“Will you not?”

“I understand that something terrible befell your sister. I wish it were not so, but you can’t believe that every bloody person still alive is as evil as those men,” Caron said softly. “There might come a day when we meet other survivors who wish to join us. For as wonderful and charming as you might be, I don’t fancy spending the rest of forever with it being just the two of us.”

Shadiyah sighed. It was clear that Caron did not understand what Assi’s attack and subsequent death meant to her. With all the horror and death surrounding them, it might be a simple thing for some to just put everything away and maybe pretend that it never happened.

Come to think of it, Shadiyah thought with a bit of a jolt, Caron had not mentioned one single friend, family member, or loved one. Surely she must have lost somebody. No person alive was so solitary that they did not know a single soul.

“Who?” Shadiyah said that one word and let it hang in the darkness that engulfed the pair as they sat looking out on a dead, silent world.

For a while, Shadiyah believed that perhaps Caron was going to ignore her inquiry. She was certain that there was no need for her to elaborate. It was a simple, straightforward question that required no explanation.

“My husband and daughter,” the woman finally whispered. “We were on holiday…it was our Lizzie’s fourth birthday. We had gone out to Whitby…that is where I met Nigel. Oddly enough, it was while I was on break from university and having a bit of my own down time away from everything. The last thing I planned was to meet a man…much less marry the fool six months later.

“We had just left the Captain Cook Museum and Lizzie was riding around on a carousel with little boats. We planned to pop in to Humble Pie when we heard the crash. Some poor bloke managed to crawl out of his car, and he was a mess. Nigel rushed over to help…that is just how he was when it came to people in need…quite the opposite of me if I am being honest.

“All I saw was Nigel bent over the man. I thought perhaps that he was recovering, because the man sat up after not moving for a bit. He reached up and grabbed Nigel, then I heard my Lizzie scream. I turned as these people were all stumbling over the rail where tourists had been in the queue for their children to take a turn on the ride. One of them had fallen across Lizzie’s little pink boat and had her arm. I thought that he might be some sort of brazen pedophile set to snatch my Lizzie in broad daylight. It turned out that he was worse.”

Caron went silent and Shadiyah did not dare speak for fear that she might not continue. It was not that she wanted to necessarily hear what would come next, but she truly believed that it would do the woman some good to get it out of her system. At last, Caron sipped on her glass of wine and then resumed her tale.

“I will never forget that scream as long as I live. When that thing bit my Lizzie, it broke the spell that had kept me frozen in place. I dashed over and beat that bloody prick with my handbag of all things. When I yanked Lizzie away, I just stared at her as she screamed bloody murder. I was frozen…until the other screams broke through.

“Looking around, I saw people on the ground, fighting other men and women. But what made me take notice was all the blood. These people weren’t hitting or kicking…they were biting and tearing at flesh. That made me remember Nigel, and when I turned to where I’d last seen him helping that bloke who had crashed his car, I was actually angry. There he was helping some poor woman while our Lizzie was screaming and bleeding. I yelled at him, but he didn’t reply, so I hurried over, prepared to give him what for and to insist that we rush our girl straight to the hospital.

“That was when I saw him lean down and tear away a piece of that woman’s face. Once again I found myself frozen and unable to move. Then this horrible looking woman grabbed at me. She was covered in blood and there were bits of her hanging out that shouldn’t be. Her eyes, though, that is what I remember. Those terrible black squiggles and that hideous film that covered them just make it seem so much more gruesome, ya know?

“Anyways, I shoved her away and turned back to Nigel who had gotten to his feet. I yelled at him, and when he turned to face me, I almost dropped Lizzie. He had those same eyes, and there was blood all over his face, dripping from his mouth. His throat was a mess and he only took one step before some bloke crashed into him and they went to the ground. Nigel and three more of those things tore into that man and I guess something in me finally broke loose, because I ran as fast as I could.

“I reached the street and saw a car just sitting there with its doors open and the motor running. I decided that my daughter getting to the hospital was the most important thing in the world. I actually took the time to buckle her in the back seat. Somehow, I guess I just tuned out what was happening behind me as people were being torn into and then joining in on the attack.

“When we arrived at the hospital it was a madhouse. People were actually running out of the place. Perhaps that should have been my clue, but all I could think of was getting my Lizzie to a doctor. I didn’t bother with finding a parking space…after all, it wasn’t my bloody car.

“I pulled Lizzie out of the back and didn’t even notice the way she was acting. At least not at first. She started to paw at me, and that was when I realized that she had stopped crying at some point. I looked down and she was staring up at me. But it wasn’t her. A mother knows her child, and while I have run into a few people who have denied what their own hearts and eyes told them, I knew right then what had happened. My Lizzie was gone, and this…thing…this terrible beast in my arms was mocking me as she looked at me with what was almost my daughter’s face, but not quite.”

Once again, Caron stopped talking and sat quietly. Occasionally she would sip from her glass, but she did not say another word. Eventually, Shadiyah found her eyes growing heavy. The soft snores beside her signaled that Caron had already drifted away. Reaching over, Shadiyah pulled the quilt in the woman’s lap up a bit to cover her.

As sleep came, Shadiyah dreamed of her sister. Assi’s broken body was coming for her with Miranda Wood at her side. She was on the roof of Clyde Court Towers, and her only choice was to jump.

***

“Do we know for certain that they will be coming for us?” Mrs. Raye asked.

Simon looked out at the people gathered once again in the gymnasium. Cedric was nowhere to be seen and he had to assume that the man was out with his team. That was the first thing that he wanted to change for the immediate future. He felt that it would be best if everybody stayed inside the perimeter for now and put all efforts into shoring up the defense against any possible attack.

“Based on what I did actually hear, I would say that is a very real possibility,” Simon replied. That caused a ripple of alarm to run through the crowd. Simon held up his arms to get them to settle. “But I believe that we can hold these people off, and if that is not the case, then we can best them.”

“And how do you imagine we can do that? They have guns…a military vehicle,” a voice shouted.

“How do we know they were not provoked? Those bastards in New Mick might have brought trouble down on their heads with that smug attitude they are so quick to show,” an elderly woman bellowed, raising her cane in anger.

“We don’t even know how many there are!” another chimed in. This brought sounds of agreement from several people and once more, Simon had to still them.

“While I admit that we are in the dark when it comes to their numbers and their intentions, the fact remains that there have been reports of a military unit skulking about and causing trouble…raiding and pillaging small groups of survivors,” Simon said, trying to be a source of calm for the people to draw from. “If they come here, we have to be prepared to do the unthinkable. I can tell you from experience that it is no easy thing to take a human life.” The face of the man whose skull he had crushed flashed in his mind’s eye and instantly brought on a hint of bile that burned the back of his throat.

“And again, how do you expect us to stand against a force made up of our soldiers?” a voice roared.

“This is your town,” Simon said simply. “You know every blind corner and dead end there is. Anybody who comes here will be groping recklessly. If we use that knowledge to our advantage…”

Simon continued for a few more minutes as he did his best to rally the citizens of Micklefield. Slowly, people began to show signs of hope. Before long, there were suggestions as to where the best locations existed where they could set up traps and perhaps take down this rogue band of soldiers that might come.

A handful of people were chosen to oversee specific portions of their planned defense. They knew the time was short and that it would not allow for anything elaborate, but Simon had them believing that simplicity would carry the day. By the time that the crowd dispersed, the talks were not of running or their eventual doom, but instead it was full of optimism. Simon hoped that some of those spirits would remain when the first of their people died.

He did not have to wait long.

“Simon!” The door to the townhouse flew open and Cedric almost fell flat on his face as he barged in the door, panting heavily with a smear of blood showing a bright red on his forehead. “That army detachment is here! They came through the fields south of the town and are over at the football field where they already have five prisoners. They have demanded to speak to the person in charge or they will execute a prisoner every ten minutes until they run out. After that—”

“Then those people are dead,” a voice from behind Simon made everybody jump.

Geoff, Melena, Nelson and Simon were all gathered around a map of the town, busy with planning the best way to defend against the invaders. The voice belonged to Mrs. Raye. She was just coming in through the back door at the same time and her sudden arrival startled everybody.

“I think that may be a bit hasty,” Simon said with a hint of hesitation.

“No, it isn’t,” Mrs. Raye countered. She came up to where they were gathered at the table and pointed to the spot on the map where the football field sat behind the school. “They are here. We are setting up all along the Churchville area with the ambush points at either end and have a fallback planned that meets at the cemetery. We can’t spare one single person.”

“So we just let those people die?” Melena asked incredulously.

“I am sorry to say, but yes. That was always going to be a possibility when they volunteered to try and defend that ridiculous roadblock that would not stop a scooter, much less a Foxhound.” Mrs. Raye shot a look at Geoff. “I warned you all that we needed to stay concentrated and close. I said that spreading out would play into their hands, and that is now exactly what is coming to pass.”

“Does a light come on inside your mouth when you open it?” Cedric grumbled.

“If you think that, despite our having overwhelming numbers, this will go off and we escape without any casualties, then you are a fool,” Mrs. Raye replied with all the calm that Simon expected.

The tempers began to flare, and twice Simon had to physically step between Mrs. Raye and the others. The first time it was Cedric, the second time it was Melena. At last, he sent Geoff, Melena, Cedric and Nelson out with their instructions. When the room was empty except for him and Mrs. Raye, he turned to the woman.

“Do you think we have a chance in hell?” he sighed, running his hands over his face.

“I believe this will be over and done in minutes and that it will not be too terrible in the number of lives lost,” she replied, patting him on the arm.

Simon froze. “Then why all that doom and gloom?”

“If they expect it to go poorly and it does, then they were already prepared for it. But if it goes off well, then it will eventually be attributed to your leadership and quick thinking. You will be the savior of the town. The people will fall in line and it will be much easier from here forward for things to get accomplished.”

If Simon was astounded before, he was positively dumbstruck now. He opened and closed his mouth three or four times before he could actually speak.

“Why would you do that…and why would you tell me?”

“Simon, like it or not, you have been thrust into a position of being the leader here. We are facing something that nobody except a complete nutter could have anticipated. You will have difficult choices ahead. And believe it or not, this might be the easiest in many days and weeks to come. As a leader, you need to be able to prepare for the worst. If you fill people’s heads with a bunch of false hope, you will be the easiest target for their scorn.”

Simon thought it over for a moment and came to the conclusion that he no longer doubted in even the slightest bit that Mrs. Raye worked for the Crown in her younger days. He also decided that he would be keeping her close to help him navigate the rough waters ahead.

“I should get out there and be visible to our people so that they don’t think me a coward. I know that one thing I hated in the past was how easy it was for those in charge to send others to die for their causes.” Simon brought the machinegun around and hefted it. His hands ran over it and his eyes scrutinized it like it was some amazing riddle to be solved. “But before I go, perhaps you could show me how this bloody thing works?”

12

Meeting

Shadiyah stepped around the stumbling zombie that was lunging for her and then broke into a sprint. Her actual target grew larger in her eyes as she approached with her scimitar in her hands.

“Let her go!” she snarled as she swung low, her weapon biting into the leg of her target.

There was a howl of pain and the man fell back, sending Caron sprawling to the ground in the opposite direction. Without waiting for the man to recover, she drew the knife from her belt, hurried over to the man, grabbed him by the hair, yanked his head back, and slit his throat. She then turned to Caron, seemingly oblivious as the man gurgled and kicked his feet a few times in the throes of death.

“Are you okay?” She reached out a hand to help the woman to her feet.

“Yeah…fine,” Caron gasped, rubbing her throat where the man had been trying to choke her. She walked over to the body that now stared up at the sky with lifeless eyes and gave him a solid kick in the ribs.

“I told you there was something off about that bloke,” Shadiyah said with a hint of anger in her voice.

“He couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen years old,” Caron uttered with a hint of sadness.

“He was eyeing our gear the moment we met.”

“But we would have shared, why would he think he needed to try and take it all?”

“Do you really expect anybody to be in their right minds?”

With that comment, the two women continued on as they kept the M1 to their left and the city of Garforth to their right. While there were plenty of fires burning, apparent by the many snaking tendrils of smoke that rose to the sky to be absorbed by the low clouds overhead, it was not nearly as bad as what was happening in Leeds.

The day was cloudy, but it was becoming difficult to tell if it was from regular weather, or if it was enhanced by the number of fires still burning out of control. As they walked, both women were glad to be wearing goggles that Shadiyah had insisted they go back for at the auto junkyard. A continuous sprinkling of fine ash continued to fall as they made their way towards the destination of Micklefield.

It was approaching midday, and they were rounding the outskirts of the northern edge of Garforth when they heard a strange sound. It took them a few moments to figure it out, but they both agreed that what they had heard was distant gunfire. It had been a steady buzz at first, but then faded to a few short bursts, and then nothing. A single curl of smoke rose to the south of their location.

“You think our friend is actually going to be there?” Caron said as she tipped up her canteen and took a drink.

They had stopped at the edge of a large field that had rows of plants with domed covers. Running right through it all was a massive gash of destruction. Only, it was not something that men had done; with the bits of clothing and even a few limbs and hunks of unidentifiable organs, this path was made by a considerable number of the walking dead.

“I have no idea.” Shadiyah accepted the canteen Caron offered and took a drink of the tepid water. “But that is where he said he was headed. If he is there, then I can tell him the news…” She considered what she was about to say next and then decided that the days of sugar-coating things was past. Directness and being frank were what had to be the new norm. “And I am almost certain that he was bitten. If that is true and he has survived and made it this far, then it gives us just a bit more hope for your situation.”

“That would be quite nice, actually,” Caron admitted.

“Yes, well it would be a miraculous discovery to know that a bite is not a definite end. But then I imagine that there has to be some sort of immunity, right. I’m no doctor, but I seem to recall hearing somewhere that there is always a small percentage of people who tend to show the ability to resist certain things. I once saw a story about a man who had three partners die from AIDS. The whole time, he thought that he was being cheated on, turns out that he carried the HIV virus but expressed none of the symptoms.”

“I suppose it is time to start having hope that I will be okay. I certainly would not want to be bitten again and test the theory, though. I had no idea that being bitten could hurt so bloody much.”

Screwing the top on the canteen, the two women re-oriented their approach towards that lone tower of smoke that rose in the direction of Micklefield. It seemed so close, but as they continued to walk, they realized how hampered they were by being on foot.

The undead of Garforth added yet another obstacle as they apparently gathered the attentions of some of the ones on the outskirts of the small town. It was not until they had over twenty strung out behind them, but obviously following, that Shadiyah decided they would have to deal with them.

“If we lead a bunch of those cursed things all the way to Micklefield, I doubt we will be greeted with smiles,” Shadiyah said as she drew her scimitar and doubled back to take out the closest of the zombies.

Caron followed, and the two women went to work like they were dealing with nothing more worrisome than weeding a garden. The zombies were spaced out for the most part, and proved to be no problem…until the pair that emerged from behind one of the nearly ruined dome constructs that ran the length of the row they were moving along in this massive section of farmed land.

“Oh…” was all that Caron managed to say, her face a mask of absolute sadness and heartbreak, her mouth still open, but no more sound coming forth.

Shadiyah winced. Had it not been for the story that Caron had shared the night before, she would have had no idea why the two zombies had caused such a debilitating response. She looked back at the children and studied them briefly.

One of the child zombies was a little girl. This one had been the obvious reason that Caron had frozen in place and looked so distraught. She was probably four or five. She was wearing a shirt with a blue police box on the front and the words “Future Companion” in fancy writing that was laden with glitter so as to look like stardust or something along that line. She had brown hair that was matted and caked with dried blood and filth. A good chunk of one side of her face was torn away. Her left eye looked as if it might fall out if the girl so much as took even a slight tumble. She had blood dried around her mouth that indicated she had bitten or at least fed on some poor fool recently.

Glancing over her shoulder, she was fairly certain that somebody like Caron could easily be the next victim. The woman was still visibly paralyzed. Returning her attention to the pair of zombies, it was actually the second one that made her heart hurt. This one was a little boy; possibly the baby brother of the zombie girl.

This poor soul was missing his left arm at the shoulder and had a nasty rip in his side where his tattered insides poked out. There were bites on the thigh of his left leg and a flap of fatty meat dangled with hideous effect.

“Come to Shaddi,” she whispered, kneeling down, setting her scimitar beside her and slowly drawing her belt knife.

The pair seemed to regard her with a peculiar curiosity that Shadiyah found to be very unnerving. Still, she was actually wondering if there might be something about the child versions of a zombie that made them keep part of their humanity. Unlike the regular undead that simply came at you no matter what, these two were obviously waiting and almost studying her. They rocked back and forth, shifting from one foot to the other and cocking their heads first one way and then back.

“It’s okay,” Shadiyah cooed, holding her arms out wide as if to receive them in an embrace. Apparently that was enough to break the spell that had been put on Caron.

“What are you about?” the woman called in a voice that was partially a whisper.

“They are different,” Shadiyah replied, making certain to keep her voice sounding as calm and soothing as she could, considering the situation.

“No, they aren’t,” Caron insisted, the sound of her voice giving away her approach.

Shadiyah watched the children adjust their attention to the woman who was walking up. For the first few seconds, there was no change, but when Caron hefted her pitchfork; it was as if a switch was thrown. The pair reverted to nothing more than normal zombies as they reached out, hands clutching and mouth opening and closing in anticipation of tearing into flesh.

“Dammit,” Shadiyah cursed as she leapt to her feet and helped dispatch the pair.

The two women cleaned their weapons off and resumed their trek; the smoke that had been acting as their beacon was starting to dissipate, but it would not be long now before they arrived at their destination.

As they walked, Shadiyah could not help but glance behind her, long after the bodies of the children were no longer in sight. There was something about them that was different despite what Caron said. She wished that she was smarter or had the knowledge of a proper doctor. She glanced at Caron and saw the tracks of where the tears had carved their way down her face. Despite what that woman said, she had seen it too, and it clearly did not sit well in her heart.

They continued across the open fields until they at last reached a line of trees. Wading through, they emerged on a two-lane road. Thankful for the relief on their ankles from all that time crossing uneven ground, the pair decided to follow it for a while until they came to a small granite marker that announced they were at the outskirts of Micklefield. The smoke that had been their beacon was still a bit farther to the south.

“What do you think?” Shadiyah turned to Caron with a frown. She wanted to reach their destination, but she could not help her curiosity at whatever had taken place just south of where they now stood.

Caron opened her mouth just as the sound of a vehicle came from the right of their position. It veered sharply and rumbled through a small hedge that separated farming fields from the actual village. Just that fast, the vehicle had vanished from sight. Seconds later there was a loud crash and then a barrage of gunfire.

***

Simon crouched down behind the wall. He could hear the low growl of the engine just around the corner from his position. Not for the first time, he cursed this madness that seemed to grip people in the absence of real law and order. Of course, this also gave you a peek into the true heart of an individual. He wondered if these soldiers had been exemplary, or if perhaps they had been placed on report time and again due to their behavior.

“You ready?” Geoff whispered.

“No,” Simon answered truthfully. “But that is not likely to change. Let’s get to it.”

Putting his shoulder into it, Simon joined Geoff in pushing the small car into the road and then both men ran back to their position behind the wall. Just as they reached their spot, the tan vehicle crept around the corner.

“Wait until I tell you to move,” Mrs. Raye whispered. She grabbed Simon’s shoulder and pointed to the man poking up through the turret sweeping a nasty looking machinegun around. “That is a Belgian MAG.”

The woman hefted the rifle that Simon had snagged from the soldier he had killed. She had explained that she would happily show him the finer points of how to fire the weapon, but that would have to wait until after their lives were not in danger. Bringing the rifle to her shoulder, Simon watched as she made a slight adjustment.

“As soon as that man drops, signal the attack,” Mrs. Raye whispered.

Simon felt the newest surge of adrenaline course through him. This plan was more madness and desperation than anything else, and it relied on Mrs. Raye not missing as its first step. Then came the real madness.

There was a single moment for Simon where the world seemed to stop, and all time froze for an instant. That bubble burst when Mrs. Raye pulled the trigger.

“Now!” she snapped.

The Foxhound had slowed as it approached the car that sat sideways in the middle of the narrow street basically blocking the path. Simon lit the Molotov and then popped up and threw it at the front window of the Foxhound. It burst and flames rippled across the surface.

There was a chorus of shouts as around fifty men and women emerged from every direction at once and rushed the vehicle. Simon and Geoff hurtled the wall and led the half dozen people that had been clustered close to them at the Foxhound.

The military vehicle had screeched to a halt and was now backing up. Only, the team that had been assigned to move a small, white Ford into the road had rushed into action ahead of that effort. The Foxhound still made no attempt to slow and slammed into the little car, sending it sliding back and into a lamp post. That only made things worse for the Foxhound as the metal pole came down hard and ended up being wrapped around the rear of the fighting vehicle.

Still, the driver was obviously experienced at his job, and the Foxhound screeched to a halt and then lurched forward. With a sudden jerk to the left, it smashed through the ivy covered rock wall that bordered the front yard of a series of townhouses and then began to plow through the dividing fences that separated each front yard.

When it crashed through the second fence that crumpled like paper before the powerful military machine, the next part of the trap was sprung. Simon could not help but be impressed at how Mrs. Raye had almost predicted every response that the driver had made.

There was a tremendous crack that sounded right after the sharp twang of a rope being parted. The wooden telegraph pole toppled and crashed down on top of the Foxhound with a terrible sound of splintering wood and the clang of the composite armor ringing from the impact.

However, there was a moment where the engine roared as the driver tried to get free and clear. It was in vain and the people took that as their sign to charge. They scrambled over the vehicle and began banging and pounding with pipes and wooden clubs.

Geoff signaled his small team and they hurried over with their canisters of petrol and climbed on top to begin pouring it in the turret opening with the dead gunner while Simon and his people came in with axes to attack the tires and disable the Foxhound once and for all. It was as he was about to swing at the right rear tire that a hatch flew open and a soldier in full gear emerged with his weapon raised.

A shot rang out and the soldier staggered back a step. Another quick burst came and the sounds of bullets pinging around inside the vehicle could be heard with their distinctive echoes adding to the cacophony of noise. It was for that reason that it was a few seconds before Simon heard the voices from inside.

“We surrender…we will come out with our hands raised…just stop! Please, just stop!” a voice pleaded from within the vehicle.

“Everybody hold!” Simon began shouting.

The mob was in a bit of a frenzy and had already rushed the first soldier, yanking him from the vehicle and shoving him about until he eventually was flung to the ground. Simon waded in, pulling people back and hollering for everybody to stand down until he finally reached the center of activity.

“We surrender,” the man gasped, his helmet askew and a trickle of blood seeping from the corner of his mouth.

There were two others inside the vehicle including the driver, and apparently it was a unanimous choice for these men to give over to Simon and his people. Of course, Simon thought as he grabbed the first of the two remaining soldiers by the shoulder and pushed him forward and then down so that he knelt beside his comrade, there was no reason to be trusting at this point.

“Everybody step back and let Mrs. Raye through,” Geoff called over the angry shouts.

The woman worked her way to where three men now knelt on the ground at the rear of the Foxhound. She already had the zip-strips ready and quickly secured the men’s hands behind their backs. The man with the sergeant’s stripes was the last to be secured, and he was pulled to his feet as soon as Mrs. Raye stepped back.

“You are an embarrassment,” the woman hissed as she leaned in to the point where she was almost nose-to-nose with the man.

“Piss off,” the sergeant snarled, spitting on the ground in defiance.

“Oh good…stupid as well,” Mrs. Raye said with a clap of her hands as she turned to the crowd. “I think we can hold the trial right here and now.”

***

Shadiyah held up a hand, but it was a pointless gesture as Caron had already hit the ground and was on her belly. A large group of people were heading down a cross street just ahead. From what Shadiyah saw before she ducked into a doorway and pressed herself tight in hopes that she would not be spotted, the mob had a trio of what looked like soldiers in front of them; all had their hands secured behind their backs.

She risked taking a look as the noise level indicated that most if not all of the crowd had gone by. Blinking her eyes, Shadiyah felt her heart leap to her throat as the familiar figure of Simon Wood came along bringing up the rear. Even more interesting was the fact that Mrs. Raye was beside him carrying a wicked looking gun of some sort.

Once the last few stragglers vanished from sight, she stepped out and back into the street. A part of her had to admit that she was moderately impressed. It seemed that at least Simon and Mrs. Raye had made it. This little village had been busy by the looks of things. There were blockades along the main road into town that no zombie was likely to get past. Also, she had seen at least the beginnings of some sort of trench around the town. She was curious how they planned to keep that precious farmland secure, but she also had to imagine that security and being safe from the walking dead were the priority.

Seeing what she did had already given her ideas for when she and Caron returned to the house. That horse field would be perfect for a nice farming allotment. Admittedly she knew very little about growing fruits and vegetables, but it couldn’t be that difficult. Could it?

“What the hell was that all about?” Caron whispered as she crept over to Shadiyah.

“Not sure, but did you see the soldiers?”

“No, my face was too busy trying to make like an ostrich and bury itself in the ground. Sort of that whole ‘if I can’t see you, then hopefully you can’t see me’ idea.”

“I saw Simon.”

That single sentence almost seemed to have a physical presence. Shadiyah could see Caron’s face swirling with emotions. The most prominent one was hope. After all, if she was correct and the man had been bitten by his sister all those days ago and still hadn’t turned, then it certainly gave Caron reason for optimism.

“Why are we waiting?” Caron asked after she had taken a few steps towards the direction that the crowd had vanished.

Shadiyah opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Here she was, right where she had set out to be. Yet, there was something inside her that feared actually coming face-to-face with Simon. Could she come this far and simply turn around and leave without telling him?

“You’re right,” Shadiyah finally said with a nod.

The two women still moved with a great deal of caution as they navigated the narrow roads. They could hear the sounds of people up ahead, the sounds were similar to what you heard at a rugby match, and there was an audible violence to them that drifted on the air and contributed to the sense of disquiet; at least for Shadiyah.

When they reached the road that the sign announced as Churchville Terrace, they actually had to pause and orient on the sound of the mob because of the way it bounced around in an otherwise silent and empty little village.

Twice there was an uproar that seemed more bloodthirsty than it did civilized. Each time, the pair would halt. Once, Shadiyah was almost certain that she heard a scream of pain…or maybe anger? She could not be sure because of the roar of at least a couple hundred voices rising in unison in waves that would reach a crescendo and then crash like the rough surf during a storm, only to rise again.

At last, Caron reached over and grabbed Shadiyah by the arm. “Are you sure we should do this? I don’t like what I’m hearing. They sound bloodthirsty…almost crazed.”

“We will be fine.”

She wasn’t entirely convinced of her own words, but Shadiyah was intent on seeing this through now. For some reason, she truly believed that doing this would whisk away whatever cloud it was that seemed to be hanging over her heart and clouding her mind.

When they rounded the corner onto what was Churchville, they stopped in their tracks. Up ahead on the left was a turn-in just beyond a little hitch in the road. That was where the crowd had gathered. They looked to be packed into some sort of large open area. They were all facing in at something and people were shaking their fists, screaming, and pointing at whatever was going on just out of eyesight.

As they moved closer, some of the shouts were becoming discernable in the slurry of voices. None of what was heard sounded right coming out of the mouths of the everyday men and women gathered.

“Kill ‘em!”

“Feed them to the undead!”

“Shoot them in the face!”

Caron glanced at Shadiyah. Her apprehension was growing with every single step. It was becoming increasingly clear that the woman did not want to be here. For all her talk about wanting to meet up and join in with other people, Caron was now suddenly having a change of heart. Then, a familiar voice from behind stopped Shadiyah in her tracks. Her hand immediately went to the scimitar at her side before she even turned.

“Shadiyah? Is that you?”

13

Point of No Return

The three men knelt in front of Simon. The steady drizzle gave everything a darker tone, and he found himself thinking that they were probably quite miserable kneeling in the wet grass. He shook that superfluous thought away and made himself concentrate on the situation at hand.

He let his eyes drift across the citizens of Micklefield that had gathered in this open area bordered on each side by simple townhouses; and behind him, in an ironic coincidence, the village’s graveyard. Mrs. Raye was on one side and Geoff the other. Beside each of the soldiers stood Dawn, Melena, and Nelson with a weapon in hand that sort of drifted about the heads of their charges.

The crowd looked like it might very well be every single member of the town. They were young, old…men and women. The one thing that Simon thought to be a bit morbid was the fact that there were a handful of children hoisted up onto the shoulders of adults that he had to presume to be their parents. Even more surreal, many of them were joining in with the yelling and hollering that demanded these three people be made to pay for their crimes.

Simon let the crowd go for a while. Deep down, he had hoped they might eventually lose their steam; but, if anything, they were becoming more surly and unruly by the minute. Eventually, he raised his hands in the air to try and get the noise to simmer down. If for no other reason, they would very likely be drawing in some of the surrounding undead.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please, we want to deal with this quickly but with at least some sense of decorum.” Simon was relieved that those words seemed to actually be enough to settle people down. He ignored Nelson as the man shot him a funny look and dramatically mouthed the word “decorum” with an eye roll for good measure.

“Just promise me one thing,” the sergeant called over his shoulder, obviously waiting for enough silence from the crowd so that he would be heard by those gathered around, “be sure you have the guts to carry out whatever sentence you decree. Don’t pawn it off on one of your lackeys here.”

The crowd started up again, but Simon quelled it in a hurry as he resumed speaking, starting loud, but gradually pulling it in so that people had to strain to hear. That would usually prompt people to be quiet. That was actually a trick he had learned from his mother who had been a school teacher.

“These men are to be charged with abusing their station, murdering innocent citizens of the Crown, and bringing shame to Her Majesty’s Armed Forces with their conduct.” Simon let that statement hang in the air for a moment before continuing. “They were caught in the very act of trying to continue in their wretched ways on our own streets just a few short minutes ago. Will anybody step forward and act as their defense?”

The crowd fell silent. Bewildered faces looked from one to another in apparent confusion.

“I do not wish to condemn these men simply out of hand,” Simon clarified. “Just because they have exhibited abhorrent behavior does not mean that we must sink to their levels. I would prefer that each of us be able to face ourselves in the mirror when this is over and feel that we acted in a just and fair manner.”

“You’ve been watching too bloody much American television!” a voice jeered. “Let’s just be done with them.”

This received a rousing cheer and even some laughter from the people gathered around. Once more, Simon found himself remembering that scene up on the train tracks. He remembered the blood seeping out and spreading through the gravel in an oil slick-type of stain. He could still clearly see the eyes of that man staring skyward.

The details seemed to become more exaggerated each time he allowed his mind to recall it. He had no idea if perhaps his mind was now creating details that had not existed, or if perhaps it was finally being allowed to paint in the things he had not been able to process. For instance, the pupil of the man’s left eye was dilated to the point of almost eliminating the iris, and the blood vessels had broken, turning almost the entire white of that eye an ugly red. He shook that image away and pressed his lips tight as he regarded this crowd.

As much as the idea sickened him, he thought that he might have the cure for the bloodlust that was rising in the people of Micklefield. Stepping up to Melena, he tapped her shoulder and nodded to the black handle that jutted up from a sheath at her hip. She drew the short field machete and handed it to him with a curious expression.

Walking over to the sergeant, Simon locked eyes with Nelson. “Step back.”

The man did so, but there was a slight hesitancy to his actions that caused Simon to step up and actually nudge the man out of the way. He now stood directly behind the sergeant, looking out at the crowd gathered around. He fought the trembling in his hands and gripped the handle of the weapon tight.

“If this is what you want, then so be it.”

The sergeant was just starting to turn his head in Simon’s direction when Simon swung the machete with all he had. Even with him putting everything behind the swing, the weapon still came to a sudden and violent halt when it slammed into the vertebrae in the man’s neck.

An arc of blood sprayed from the nasty cut, and when the blade was jerked free, it only got worse. The red spray splashed several of the people gathered in the front of the mob. Meanwhile, the sergeant fell to the ground and began to kick and twitch violently. While certainly not his intention, this display actually had exactly the sort of effect he’d hoped for as people gasped, screamed, and in a few cases, fainted.

He attempted to finish the job and end the man’s suffering. Stepping down on the struggling sergeant’s chest, Simon raised his arm to swing again and made the mistake of looking into the man’s eyes.

He had no idea what sort of man this sergeant had been before everything went crazy, but now, the man was in pain and very, very afraid. It was clear in the eyes as well as the way the man was obviously trying to beg or plead. Fortunately for Simon, those words were reduced to nothing more than unintelligible gurgles as the blood gushed from between the man’s lips. Once more, Simon swung down as hard as he could. He really only wanted to put this entire ordeal to an end, but fate was cruel and the stroke came down, glancing off the side of the man’s head just above the left eye. It did take away all the flesh down to the skull, but then the blade bit into the shoulder at the base of the sergeant’s neck on the opposite side where the first deep cut had struck.

Thankfully, the blood loss had become too much and the man went still. Simon stood up and faced the crowd of Micklefield citizens. The screams for blood had died on their lips as they witnessed the brutal execution. Simon looked over at Dawn and Melena and saw horror on their faces. Nelson was not much better and had taken a few steps back from everything.

Simon looked down at himself and saw blood dripping from his hands, soaking the front of his clothing. How had this happened? he wondered.

The two remaining soldiers were the first to break the silence that had befallen the large gathering.

“Please, I beg you…we was only following orders!” one of the soldiers pleaded.

“Mercy!” the other cried, his much more simplistic approach actually sounding more poignant.

Simon returned his attention to the crowd that seemed as if it had backed up as an entity and put more distance between it and the dead body on the ground.

“Well?” Simon called, making sure to look into as many sets of eyes that would meet his cold stare. “Shall we continue with your desires for blood?”

“I think you have made your point,” a voice whispered in his ear.

Simon turned to see that Mrs. Raye had come up without his knowing and taken a place right beside him. She reached over and eased down the hand that still held the machete. The only sound now was the distant moan of a zombie. It was answered by another.

In singles and small groups, the people of Micklefield began to melt away. Eventually, the only people still standing in this little square were Simon, Mrs. Raye, Melena, Nelson, Dr. Asan, and the two soldiers. Dawn and Kas had vanished at some point and, as usual, Cedric was nowhere to be found.

“What is to be done with us?” one of the soldiers finally asked.

“I have no idea,” Simon admitted.

“I think there is a chance that you could earn trust and be allowed to join the community,” Mrs. Raye spoke up.

“We’ll do whatever it takes,” both soldiers said more or less in unison.

“For now, I think we will have you kept under watch until a final decision can be made,” Nelson said, raising a hand to silence Mrs. Raye before she could protest. Her expression made it clear that she was not entirely in agreement with Nelson taking over the scene.

Simon seriously did not care at that exact moment; all he wanted was to be out of his blood soaked clothing and to wash up. He squeezed his eyes shut for a second to try and get himself together, but he was immediately greeted by his mental replay of how he had killed two living human beings within the past couple of hours.

“I think we will need to double the patrols the next few days,” Simon sighed. He suddenly felt very tired. If not for the blood, he would just go home and collapse.

He was about to leave when three people dressed in the typical hunter patrol garb came around the corner at a sprint. When they spied Simon, they actually looked like they somehow managed to increase their pace.

“What the bloody hell is wrong now?” Simon mumbled.

***

Shadiyah remained rooted to the spot where she stood. She had made this journey thinking about nothing more than telling Simon that his sister had been taken care of properly. After that, she would return to that house—hopefully with Caron joining her—and then she would create someplace safe where she could just live out her life in peace.

The person standing before her made Shadiyah remember how, not more than a few days ago, her plan had been to scour the countryside and execute every single evil beast that had crawled out from under a rock in this apocalyptic world and preyed on those they saw as weaker.

She wanted to kill the person standing before her more than anything else in the world at the moment.

“How did you make it here in one piece?” Cedric asked. As soon as the question came out of his mouth, he began to utter and stammer. “Not to say that you were not able or capable. Certainly you are…you are standing here now…”

Four other individuals were with Cedric, two of them women. That made no sense to Shadiyah. How could any female feel even the least bit safe with Cedric Black?

Shadiyah still seemed paralyzed and unable to move or respond. Cedric took a few steps forward, obviously reading her silence as perhaps relief. Could he really think that she would see him as her savior?

“We had a bit of a problem with some soldiers, but your friend Simon took care of things. You would be proud of him. Perhaps I should get you to him in a hurry.” The man walked up to her, seemingly oblivious to everything that had happened.

Shadiyah looked at him, her mouth open in amazement. She looked over at the four people who were with him and she remained unable to speak as her brain simply felt like it was overloading. At last, she was able to say one word.

“Simon.”

“Yeah, Simon is here. He’s fine. I imagine he will be surprised that you are here. After all, of all the places in the world you could have headed for, what are the odds that you show up in this particular spot?” Cedric turned his head and waved his companions to join him. “Shadiyah here was in Leeds as well. But I don’t recall you, miss.”

With that, Cedric stepped past Shadiyah and introduced himself to Caron. He also gave the names of his companions, but Shadiyah could not hear any of that as the blood seemed to be rushing in her ears so loud that she was amazed the others could not hear it.

Slowly, she turned around. Cedric had his back to her completely as he was talking about something to do with soldiers and an attack on the town of Micklefield.

Standing there, Shadiyah felt her mind spiral into memories that came at her hard and fast. It was so overwhelming that she almost felt as if she were drowning. A small part of her mind screamed for her to fight, and that if she did not, she might be consumed in the darkness that even now was filling her lungs and killing the rational and humane Shadiyah Kasim.

For the briefest of instances, she considered putting up a fight. After all, the world had become a much more terrifying place. Also, was there not some slight possibility that Cedric Black really had nothing to do with the attack on Assi that led to her eventual death?

“No,” she whispered. The word was almost inaudible, but there was enough behind it for Cedric to turn around.

“What was that?” he asked.

Shadiyah and Cedric made eye contact and locked onto each other. There was that split second of realization that was just beginning to materialize in Cedric’s expression when Shadiyah lunged forward with the scimitar that she still had in her hand. Cedric had some sort of spiked club in his hand, but his reaction to deflect the stab came too late.

The tip of the scimitar plunged into the man’s chest, driving straight through his heart, killing him almost instantly. His mouth opened, but the only sound that came forth was a long exhale as the man’s lungs emptied themselves one final time.

There were shouts of alarm, and the four people that had been with Cedric all seemed unsure of how to react. Shadiyah turned to them as she yanked her scimitar free and took a step forward. “My sister is dead because of that animal and his little gang of rapists.”

The reaction she received from the foursome split right down gender lines. The men seemed confused and the women both turned to the dead body on the ground and took a step towards it as if they might be able to glean some kernel of insight if they were only a little bit closer.

“Shadiyah!” Caron snapped, appearing suddenly in front of her. “What have you done?”

“What I had to do,” Shadiyah said as she turned her empty gaze to Caron. “What I came here to do.”

“You came to tell Simon about his sister,” the woman implored. “Not to do…” Her voice faded as she looked down at the body sprawled in the sidewalk with the pool of blood spreading around him in a dark oval.

“You know Simon?” one of the men snapped his head up. “And you say that this man was a rapist?” Now a look of confusion clouded the man’s features. “How is it that Simon Wood, a policeman, came to be travelling with a rapist? And not only Simon, but also that nice old bird, Mrs. Raye, and that little girl. How did all of them come to be travelling with old Cedric here if he is what you say?”

Shadiyah turned to the man and fixed him with eyes that were fast losing their human quality and transforming into nothing more than cold orbs that radiated hatred…especially towards anything male.

“My little sister is dead. She was raped by that monster’s gang of scum.”

“And Cedric took part in that, did he?” the man pressed.

Shadiyah opened her mouth, but she quickly discovered that she could not just say the word “yes” in response. After all, she had never seen Cedric with the three men that she had killed in her flat that day…a day that now seemed as if it might be a million years ago. The details had washed away, and all that remained was that image of her sister’s broken body on the ground where she had flung herself.

“He…he…” she tried to answer in the affirmative. Cedric had done it. He was one of the monsters; but the words would not come. Her tongue would not permit the lie.

“I think you need to come with us. We will bring you to Simon and sort this out.” The man took a step towards Shadiyah and in a flash she lashed out with her blade.

The weapon was a blur as it came across in a high arc. The man took a step back and opened his mouth; perhaps he was going to call for his companions to help him. However, no words would come as a thin red line appeared across his throat. For just a second, it was barely even visible, and amidst the dirt and grime of the day, it was very difficult to even see until the trickle turned to a steady stream and blood poured down his neck.

The man clutched at his throat as he staggered back. More blood came, frothing from his lips, dribbling down his chin, as well as pouring through his fingers.

The other three companions had apparently seen enough; all thoughts of bringing her to Simon had ostensibly been abandoned. They took off towards the direction of where Shadiyah knew the crowd had assembled. She was only vaguely aware that things had grown mysteriously quiet in that direction.

“What have you done?”

Caron had Shadiyah by the arms and was giving her a sharp shake to try and snap her out of whatever had overcome her. The problem was that she did not want to snap out of it. There was a comfort to be found in this new darkness. She could not explain it, but ever since she had taken down those animals that had attacked Assi, she longed for that feeling to return where she felt like she was in complete control.

A small voice in her mind tried to tell her that it was all an illusion; that she was never truly in control of anything. She silenced that voice and then fixed Caron with a hard stare.

“Let. Go.” The words were dripping with venom, but it was the total lack of emotion on her face that was the most terrifying.

Caron released her grip and stepped away. A tear welled up and then flowed over the cusp of her right eye and carved its way down her cheek leaving an easy-to-follow trail in all the dust that had collected on the woman’s face.

“Don’t do this, Shadiyah,” Caron almost pleaded. “Don’t let the hatred and anger sweep you away. You came here to do something good. Let that be the part of you that wins.”

“Shadiyah!” a familiar voice called her name.

Looking past Caron in the direction that those three people had run, Shadiyah saw Simon’s familiar form come around the corner a couple of blocks away. It was also easy to identify Mrs. Raye at his side.

Without another word, she turned and took off as fast as she could run. She heard her name called again and again, but she ignored it and kept running. She had no idea where she was, but she was certain that she would not be able to stay here; nor would she be able to return to that house. That would most certainly be one of the first places that they came searching. Caron would lead them, of that Shadiyah had no doubt.

At some point, she had reached the edge of town. She raced through the yard of the house that sat at the edge of the huge field that rolled away and promised wide open terrain. Being out in the wide open was not ideal, and her eyes scanned for anyplace that she might go to hide. The only thing in the near vicinity was what looked like some sort of shipping and warehousing facility. It was just through some trees and on the other side of the train tracks.

She would not stay there, but perhaps she could lose any pursuit by ducking in and maybe breaking into one of the buildings. Surely there would be plenty of places to hide.

She tripped once as she was crossing the tracks and felt a sharp pain shoot up from her ankle. Cursing, she shook off the pain and pushed on. At last she reached her target destination and sort of limped through the entry and the large, open freight loading area.

Two figures across the way turned her direction and began their slow shamble. She considered taking them down, but decided that she could reach the building and hopefully be inside before they got to her. If she could leave them be, then they would be the problem of whoever was chasing her. One of the roll-up freight doors was open and she veered towards it, doing her best to push away the pain that had turned white hot and promised to be a problem for days to come.

At last she reached the blue roll-up and laid flat on her belly after giving the approaching zombies one more look to ensure they were still far enough away. She looked into the consuming darkness. It was quiet enough even with whoever was chasing after her shouting her name on occasion for her to listen for the sounds of anything moving inside the freight bay. There did not seem to be anything, and Shadiyah sort of scooted and rolled under the door.

Getting to her feet, she was not able to see much more than a short distance from where she stood. She cursed as she realized that she had not made allowances for going into anyplace dark. She had no flashlight or anything at all to illuminate the cavernous area.

After a few deep breaths to calm herself, she gave the air a good sniff. Nothing indicated that any walking dead were inside with her. That was a small relief, but a relief none the less. Making her way to the wall on her left, she began to feel her way along in search for any sort of door.

She was surprised when her hands felt a pane of glass. She felt a little further and discovered the door. Unfortunately, it was locked and so she made her way back to the window. She shed her jacket and wrapped it around her sword wielding hand and gave the window a good backhand, smashing through it with the pommel of her weapon.

After clearing any glass so that she would not cut herself, she climbed through. As soon as she did, she froze. Mixing with the musty air was the distinct smell of death and the acrid addition of undeath.

Could zombies see in the dark? she wondered. She certainly hoped not as she pressed against a wall and began to feel her way deeper into the building.

***

“The woman was mad!” one of the two women that had been part of Cedric’s hunting patrol managed through gasps as she struggled to catch her breath.

“She killed your mate as well as Miles Wilson,” the surviving man added. There was a splatter of blood that had sprayed across his face and was dripping down the man’s left cheek. It took Simon looking closer to realize that the man was not actually injured.

“My mate?” Simon was confused.

“Cedric,” the other woman sobbed.

Simon did not need to ask the question. He looked at the stranger that had accompanied the three surviving members of Cedric’s crew. Obviously it was not this woman who had committed these acts. More likely, she had been travelling with the culprit. Still, he needed to hear it for himself for some reason.

“Who did this?” Simon locked eyes with the stranger.

“Her name is Shadiyah,” the woman replied. “She was coming here with a message for you.”

Simon felt his stomach tighten. Could she be harboring a grudge for all of them? Was she going to try and kill him? Mrs. Raye? Surely not little Annie.

“What was the message?’ Simon forced himself to sound calm and as confident as possible.

“Your sister Miranda has been taken care of.”

That single sentence caused a rather broad variety of reactions. For the two women who had seen Shadiyah kill Cedric as well as one of their own, they assumed that meant this terrible woman had likely killed Simon’s sister. Mrs. Raye actually gave a rather stern look to Simon. Nelson raised an eyebrow that could have been concern or confusion. However, for Simon, it was an amazing sense of relief. He had not realized how much leaving Miranda behind as one of those things had weighed on his soul.

“I am going after her,” Simon finally announced.

“You aren’t going out there alone,” Mrs. Raye insisted. “Like it or not, you have a responsibility to this town. You can’t just go putting yourself in harm’s way”

“She’s correct,” Nelson agreed. “I will come along.”

By the time all the debates over who was and who was not going, it ended up being Simon, Nelson, Bruce Bates—the man who was only male to survive the recent encounter with Shadiyah—and Dawn; her being brought along was Mrs. Raye’s one condition that this be allowed at all. (Simon would discuss that little notion with her later as far as her putting forth edicts when it came to what he could and could not do.)

“You need to have a woman with you,” Mrs. Raye had insisted. The stranger had spoken up in agreement, insisting that Shadiyah held some sort of firm prejudice against men. If they were going to have any chance of bringing her back alive as Simon had insisted they would be doing, then a woman needed to be part of the team.

The group took off in the direction that Shadiyah had been seen to flee. Fortunately, the woman had run across a field that was verdant with knee-high shoots of whatever had been planted. Her trail would be simple to follow.

As they left behind the streets of Micklefield for the nearby farmland, the undead became part of the problem. Simon called the group to a halt for just a moment to try and make sense of what he was seeing.

Perhaps twenty or so zombies were visible. They had all turned and were walking away from Micklefield. If he could draw a line from the zombies on either side of the trail, he could almost follow Shadiyah’s path using them like homing devices. That would be something to keep in mind.

It did not take long to discern where it was that she looked to be headed. Simon gave the word to the group and had them all spread out to deal with the walkers. It was a quick and almost boring exercise as they dispatched them. At least in Simon’s case; not one of his targets even paid him any heed until he was almost upon it. Then, as the noise he made during that final approach was enough to be heard, the zombie would lurch to a halt and begin to turn. Not one of them had even completed that action before he caved in the back or side of the skull.

At last they reached the train tracks. This was initially where the trail went cold until Simon heard a distant pounding noise. The sound came from some sort of shipping facility with multiple cargo bays along the front of the building. That is where two zombies now stood. A blue roll-up cargo door was open just a bit at the bottom. It looked like barely enough room for a person to squeeze through. The zombies were both pawing and pounding on that single door.

“Okay, it looks like she went in there.” Simon turned to face his companions. “We can go about this one of two ways. The first is that we could split up and try to find her. The second is that we obviously stay together.”

“You want her brought back alive, yeah?” Nelson confirmed.

“That’s correct.” Simon gave a curt nod.

“Then I vote we stay together. If we split, then we lose the entire reason for bringing Dawn. This woman is unhinged according to what we were told. If we happen upon her without our Dawn, this could go bad in a hurry. I won’t allow some woman to kill me or anybody else just so we can bring her back alive,” Nelson proclaimed.

“Aye,” Bruce agreed. “You didn’t see the way her face almost seemed to take pleasure in the death of Cedric and Miles. I’ve known Miles since primary school. He was always the bloke who helped people. He joined the hunters because he was afraid that we might not treat those survivors we may encounter with kindness. And now he is dead. All he was trying to do was bring this girl to you so that she could make things clear about Cedric.”

“What do you mean?” Simon asked.

“She says that Cedric was involved in the rape and murder of her sister. She says that you knew.”

Bruce had moved away from Simon just a bit. The hand holding onto his weapon had also moved just enough to bring the blade, still dripping with gore from having just killed a handful of zombies, around in front of him as if he believed he might need to use it shortly.

“Cedric was not involved,” Simon replied calmly.

He knew that the situation could escalate quickly and in a very bad way for him. He explained the entire ordeal that happened back at the Clyde Court Towers. He did omit the part about it being Cedric that bonked him on the head and kept the story restricted to what had happened to Assi. He also told about Cedric’s revelation in regards to him being a detective.

“Why didn’t he let everybody else know?” Nelson asked with a shake of his head. “It would have been nice to know who we had helping us. Bloody hell, he might have been nominated to be the town leader if we would have known that.”

“That is why he kept his mouth shut. I think he liked the idea of remaining undercover in a manner of speaking.” Simon allowed himself a sigh of relief when he saw Bruce’s weapon arm ease down to his side. “Now…if there is nothing else, I believe that we should resume our chase. If we continue to delay, she could be to bloody Bradford by the time we get moving.”

That earned some chuckles and they headed as a group for the two zombies clawing and slapping at the blue roll-up door. Nelson and Simon each took one and made short work of them. As Dawn and Bruce dragged the bodies out of the way, it took the effort of both men and then the others joining in to get the door up more than the foot or so it was already raised.

The discussion had been brief when it came to them simply dropping down and scooting underneath. It was Nelson’s comment that made everybody stop and then, after a few seconds of silence, burst into raucous laughter.

“I am still a good three or four months of being enrolled in the Zombie Apocalypse diet before my gut scoots through a space that slim.”

The light poured into the open cargo bay revealing stacks of crates and boxes strapped down to loading pallets. A quick glance revealed that most of what was in this particular bay to be a hodge-podge of spare parts for a plumbing contractor.

“Business storage units,” Simon announced. “These aren’t shipping bays…this place is a storage facility for various businesses. There may be things here worth looking into once we finish with Shadiyah.” He pointed to the broken window. “Now, let’s go find her before we lose her for good.”

The group headed for the window, but Nelson paused at the door and gave it a tug to no avail. He joined the group with an unapologetic shrug. “Never know if you don’t try.”

Dawn went first and opened the door for the group. “We need to be ready. Smell that?” She waved with her arm down the long corridor. “We got zoms close.”

Bruce pulled out a flashlight and clicked it on. He handed it to Simon with what was very close to reverence “We are only supposed to use these in emergency, I say this qualifies.”

“Yeah, not likely to be able to pop in to the market to grab batteries any time soon,” Simon said with a wistful sigh.

He resumed his position in the lead of the pack and pulled up at the first corner where the smell was becoming much stronger. Peeking around, he saw a body that had been torn apart several days ago by the looks of things. Flies buzzed around the long since coagulated and dried pools of blood speckled with chunks of what had probably fallen out of a zombie’s mouth while it tore away bits and chewed with little regard for manners.

Sitting just a few feet away from the main stain on the floor was a head. Its eyes flicked slightly at the movement when Simon and his group stepped into this new corridor. A small flight of stairs going up to a walkway, where a row of windows that revealed sunlight waited along with an open door, was the only obvious exit from this area. On the stairs were three zombies that looked to have been killed very recently as each had dark fluid dripping from their assorted head wounds.

“I definitely want this woman on our side,” Nelson mumbled as he walked past one zombie that was missing the top third of its skull.

The group stepped outside once again. Each of them began searching for any signs of Shadiyah. Dawn tugged his arm and pointed. She was jogging across a marshy field and headed directly for what looked to have been some sort of quarry.

“Well?” Simon turned to the others. “What do we do? We can give chase or we can simply let this go and return home. She has the jump on us and there is no sense in chasing one person all across the bloody countryside.”

“She killed Miles,” Bruce said with grim determination. “I can’t speak for Cedric, but Miles was a good bloke and didn’t deserve what happened.”

“And I agree. But should we continue this at the risk of all our lives?” Simon pressed. “Running around like this exposes us to zombies and who knows what else. I doubt that she is the worst thing prowling the country these days.”

“I say we return home,” Nelson finally spoke up, raising his hand in a sort of informal vote.

“Agreed,” Dawn said.

Bruce looked out across the marshy field at the figure that was becoming little more than a dot as the woman continued to move away. At last he dropped his head.

“Agreed.”

14

Bait

Shadiyah slid down the sand embankment and came up with a swift swing of her blade that took the closest zombie in the side of the head. Unfortunately, she did not have enough momentum behind her swing to cut through, and her weapon became stuck in the head of her target.

Yanking one of her shorter bladed weapons free, she dropped to her knees to avoid the sweeping arms of the next zombie. She came up and drove the weapon through the underside of the chin and into the brain pan. She jerked back hard and fast to avoid having the weapon wrenched from her hands as the large man, who looked like he had worked in the quarry, fell sideways.

Twice she had glanced back the way that she’d come to see if Simon and the others were still on her tail. She had risked one look just before she jumped clear of the fence that had bordered the side of the place where she had approached. Four small figures were still back at that storage facility and showed no sign of pursuit. That had prompted mixed feelings. There was a part of her that was relieved to not be chased. The other aspect of her emotional whirlpool was a profound sadness.

What had happened between her and Cedric might have been something that she could have worked past with Simon and the other survivors that he looked to have entrenched himself with in Micklefield. However, she was no idiot. Killing that stranger had put her on the outside. She was a murderer. There was no way to make the truth easier to digest. This was not a simple misunderstanding like back at that pool area of that inn.

She had spent less than ten seconds trying to rationalize her recent actions. There was no way to convince herself that what she had just done to that man was in any way justifiable. So, since that was the case and her new reality, then perhaps she should stop trying to hold herself back.

By the time she had put down the dozen or so zombies in the area, she had allowed that veil of blackness that she so desired to cover her mind to take hold. She crossed the quarry and made her way to the road that ran along the front of this massive gouge in the earth, making no effort to alter her path and avoid any of the walking dead along the way.

The more I kill, the easier it will become, she thought as she used the belt knife on her hip to take down a large woman with a hideous bowl cut and large, sagging breasts that had been savaged by the undead attackers that had added her to their ranks. After all, her train of thought continued as she walked up to a tall, lanky man who was wearing the tattered remains of a button-up shirt with a red and blue striped tie, if I am going to start taking down the evil that remains in this world…I am still just substituting one monster for another.

By the time Shadiyah reached the road, she had managed to banish anything that remained of her conscience to the darkest corner of her mind. She had lined up one justification after another in order to give herself permission to become a new incarnation.

She would roam the country for as long as whatever god might exist deemed that she was worthy to do so. Her mission would be to hunt the hunters…prey on the predators. She let that thought marinate in her soul, and that was what occupied her mind when she came upon a small van that had been smashed into by a rickety old flatbed truck. Her reflection was thrown back at her in the windshield and it made her pause. She ignored the undead creature in the driver’s seat as she pulled the side mirror out to get a better look at herself.

“This won’t do at all,” she groused as she took in the reflection looking back at her.

She was splattered with dark blood that left black speckles all over her face which, even without the blood, was in dire need of a wash. Her hair was a tangled mess that hung clumped in some places by who-knew what. The clothing she wore was probably able to stand up if she took it off and leaned it in a corner.

She shuddered and then actually laughed at the idea of what she might attract looking like this. However, this was not going to work at all. She needed to clean up and make herself more appealing.

She considered the possibilities and decided that, while it would not be wise to stay in the house that she had shared with Caron since the woman would undoubtedly lead Simon and his people there in order to capture her, she could make a quick trip there and gather some supplies as well as get cleaned up. From the house, she would then venture into Garforth. That would be the most likely location to find monsters.

Feeling surprisingly happy, Shadiyah made her way to the place she once thought she might be able to call home. She tapped on the glass as she climbed up and over the Mercedes with its securely belted-in eternal occupant reaching impotently for her. She was almost to the door when she heard the sounds of glass breaking inside the house.

She paused and willed her hearing to sharpen. Whether or not that desire helped, she was soon able to make out muffled voices.

Men!

Rushing to the front door in a crouch, she peered into the gloom and shadows. Whoever was inside was not visible in the entry hall. Holding her breath to try and eliminate any source of ambient noise, she continued to listen. Laughter drifted out to her from someplace inside, but it was impossible to pinpoint it.

She tested the doorknob and smiled when it turned. Of course she and Caron had not thought to lock the place when they left. Besides the fact that they had not located a set of keys (although Shadiyah was fairly certain that they could be located in the ignition of the silver Mercedes at the front gate), they had both agreed that locking doors was a pointless exercise in the face of a zombie apocalypse.

The sounds of more glass being broken caused her to jump just as she slipped through the front door. The voices grew louder, and now that she was inside the house, she could make them out a bit more clearly.

“C’mon, ladies, is there any need for that?” a peculiar sounding voice scolded.

“Makes me feel better,” another voice snapped in response.

“Are we here to find supplies or act like fools?” the first voice continued, obviously not happy with the behavior of his companion or companions if that proved to be the case.

“You want to have us put you right back where we found you?” a new voice slurred, sounding as if the owner had spent a majority of the apocalypse in a pub.

“Is that a real question or are you making a threat?”

Shadiyah did not know what it was about the owner of that strange sounding voice, but she liked him. She might actually let him live if the opportunity made itself available.

“I think I have had just about enough of you,” the slurred voice growled.

There was another crash and a shout. A few seconds later, the sounds of somebody running her direction could be heard. That was accompanied by another tremendous crash, and this time, shards of glass erupted from just up ahead as whatever had been thrown exploded against the wall near where the stairs going up were located.

Shadiyah had her scimitar drawn and was prepared for whatever came around that corner…almost. It could have been a number of things and she would have given it no thought at all as she swung her weapon and did her best to cleave whatever it was that appeared. The one thing that caught her by surprise was the dwarf who rounded that corner and briefly skidded to a halt, obviously surprised by her presence as well.

Her brain had just a second to register the fact that any swing she might have taken would have missed had she done so. She was set to basically decapitate her victim, and a blind swing with that in mind at this exact moment would have obviously sailed high.

The man shot a look over his shoulder, but the lack of footfalls in pursuit told everything. Whoever he had been speaking with was obviously not in the mood to actually give chase. He quickly brought his stubby finger to his lips and made the universal sign for her to keep quiet.

The diminutive man pointed to the door behind her and gave a nod of his head. For just a moment, Shadiyah considered simply skewering the man and then moving on, but she had heard things in the exchange upstairs that had given her the notion to spare this man if she was given the chance. Well…the chance was right here.

They slipped outside and moved over in front of the large attached garage where they would be out of sight from any of the upstairs windows. The man kept eyeing her scimitar, but she was not about to put it away. She did notice that he appeared unarmed. Still, looks might be deceiving. After all, wasn’t that exactly what she was counting on?

“Was this your home, miss?’ the man whispered. She guessed him to be Irish judging by the accent.

“Yes,” she lied. Actually, she told herself, that was only a partial lie. She had claimed it a few days ago, but he didn’t need to know the details.

“Then I profoundly apologize. And I would like to say that everything will be okay, but I am afraid my companions are in the cups. The good news is that they won’t likely stay.”

“Oh,” she patted the scimitar, “of that you can be certain.”

The little man seemed to consider her for a moment with something like sadness. At last, after an incredible cracking sound that caused windows to vibrate in their frames, the man squeezed his eyes shut and then continued.

“Those are some nasty fellows. The lot of us were in the clink when all this zombie nonsense started. Got picked up after a wee bit of a tussle in one of the local drinking establishments. What we did…” He paused and shook his head as if clearing it of a nasty memory. “What they did that allowed us to get out? It’s just not fit to tell in mixed company. Do yourself a favor and find someplace to hide for a bit. They’ll be on their way soon enough. I’ll even stick around and help with the cleanin’ if that will help.”

“I’m sorry…what did you say your name was?” Shadiyah asked with a cock of her head.

“Paddy O’ Rourke, at your service.” The man gave a low bow and came up with a smile that quickly faded as her intentions were obviously etched on her face.

“Thank you for the kindness, Paddy,” Shadiyah said, touching the man’s shoulder as she started past. “But I think I can take care of this.”

She was at the door when a thought struck her. She turned, seeing that the man was still regarding her. His face brightened for an instant until she spoke.

“How many?”

With a deep sigh that seemed much bigger than his small figure should allow, he replied, “Two…just two now that I have gone.”

Turning on her heel, Shadiyah went to the front door, opened it, and stepped inside.

***

Simon stood outside the front door and watched the setting sun carve a purple bruise into the clouds that were giving way. He had his very own shaft of light to stand in and enjoyed how warm it felt on his face. Inside the townhouse, Mrs. Raye, that new woman Caron, and Annie were eating beans and some stale bread that she had toasted over a fire that still crackled and snapped, sending little embers skyward with the smoke.

Several of the Micklefield citizens were walking past the house. A few even made a weak attempt at waving as they returned home from the service that Geoff had given for Miles. Simon had stood in the back of the church feeling very out of place.

It wasn’t that he did not feel bad for the friends and family of Miles Carson, or even Cedric or Sydney, or whatever the hell the man’s name was; it was simply that he did not know the man. With all the death that had occurred in the past several weeks, he was starting to feel just a little numb.

Looking west towards the setting sun, he noticed that the haze in the direction of Leeds was thinning. Maybe the fires were finally burning out. Not that he would be heading into that place anytime soon. There were plenty of places with fewer zombies that they could pick through as they began to stockpile their resources.

“You ready?” Caron asked him as she stepped outside.

“Yeah.”

Simon gave himself a mental pat down. He had his mace, a nifty machete that Nelson had given him at the little memorial service, and two knives on his belt. He had opted to leave the rifle with Mrs. Raye. He was simply not comfortable with using the thing. He had as much chance of shooting himself as he did a zombie.

“You do realize that she is not an idiot. I just don’t see her going back there.” Caron pulled the door shut and followed Simon down the walkway.

“I still need to look. I can’t believe that she came all the way here just to tell me that she had put my sister to rest.”

“I think she was just doing it to square things between you. She felt that she owed you something for leaving her a note?” Caron ended that last sentence as a question. She had never actually seen a note and had to know if it was real or just an excuse by Shadiyah.

“I just told her where we were going in case she wanted to join us. I can’t fathom anybody that would want to spend the rest of their lives alone. And these days, that is asking for death…or worse.”

“I don’t like the idea of making this trip when night is falling,” Caron complained, although she already knew the reason. If there was any chance that Shadiyah was still at the house, it was probably a narrow window of opportunity.

“I told you that you could draw me a map,” Simon reminded.

Caron sighed and followed Simon over a fence. They were now officially outside of the protective barricades of Micklefield. She had only been there a short time, but already it had made an impression. There was a sense of safety and well-being in that little village setting. She knew that it was an illusion, but still, it beat the feeling of being exposed that overflowed every pore with a sense that was very close to dread.

It was not long before they had to pull out their weapons. She briefly wondered if it might be the fact that they were wearing lights strapped to their heads. The dark shapes coming at them were moaning, but in their midst the sound of a baby cry could be heard. Caron froze in her tracks. How could that be possible?

“What’s wrong?” Simon asked as the woman just suddenly stopped walking.

“You don’t hear that?” Caron asked in return.

“What?” Simon paused and then let out an uneasy laugh. “You mean the town crier? Some of the zombies make that noise for whatever reason.”

“That is terrible.”

“I imagine it has cost more than a few people their lives,” Simon agreed.

Together, the pair moved in and took down the zombies. It was surprisingly simple, and Simon said as much when they had dispatched the last one.

“Would you rather we be dealing with Danny Boyle’s sprinting lunatics?” Caron scoffed as she wiped off her blade before putting it back in its sheath.

“Of course not, but it is just so strange to see this happen for real. I saw a few of those shows back when I was younger. Always thought that I would be some sort of hero that rallied people together and took a stand,” Simon said wistfully.

“Isn’t that exactly what is happening?”

“Not really.” Simon was quiet for a moment as the pair walked along in the darkness under a full moon whose beauty was benefitting from the clearing sky.

“Last I checked, weren’t you basically voted in by the people of Micklefield to run things?”

“Mrs. Raye is the real rudder to that ship,” Simon admitted with a sigh. “I listen to pretty much everything that she has to say and use that to make my decisions when I am asked to do so.”

“A good leader knows to surround himself with the right people. Nobody is going to have all the answers. You are smart to rely on people who will give you their help.”

“Yeah,” Simon agreed. “But with Mrs. Raye, you are never certain if you are taking advice or being led by the nose to a specific point.”

Caron chuckled. “Yeah, I sort of picked up on that with her. What is her deal?”

Simon proceeded to fill their travel time with the whole story (as he saw it) about his little group; he also gave more of the story regarding Shadiyah and Cedric. He tried to do his best not to editorialize, especially when it came to Cedric. He left out the part about his having been bitten.

“Wow, you guys had a nasty go of it,” Caron said after hearing everything. “I still don’t really understand why Shadiyah wanted to come see you and tell you that she took care of your sister, and when are you going to let people know that you were bit?”

There was an absolute silence between them for several heartbeats. Simon finally stopped walking and folded his arms across his chest.

“Who told you?” He was going to have to give Mrs. Raye a stern talking to if she had revealed this to a stranger. Granted, this stranger was going to be travelling alone with him, so perhaps she had the right to know. Still, shouldn’t that be his choice?

“Shadiyah.”

Once again an odd silence fell. At last, Simon found his voice. “How could she know?”

“She said that your sister had dried blood around her mouth. I don’t think it was a stretch to guess who she bit.” Caron paused, and then continued. “Actually, seeing you was some very good news for me.”

She explained how she had been bitten and that she believed herself to be a goner all the way up until she saw Simon. To actually be able to confirm (based on his reaction) that he had indeed been bitten all those days ago and had not died and turned was a blessing. Simon listened and suddenly found himself liking this woman.

They were actually having a casual conversation when they heard the screams. They both froze and shut their mouths in order to be able to try and pinpoint wherever the source of that terrible scream had originated.

“That is a man,” Simon whispered.

“Poor bastard,” Caron breathed. “And it is in the direction we are going.”

Another scream came, this one ending with a suddenness that sent chills down Simon’s spine. It sounded like somebody had just suffered an amazingly terrible ending. What it did not sound like was somebody that had just been eaten by a zombie. There was a hitch-and-go to those screams; as opposed to whenever somebody was being torn apart and could not actually get a full enough breath for a long shriek. This particular person had given a good, long cry of pain.

“Come on,” Simon finally said, breaking into a jog.

“What?” Caron grabbed his arm and spun him around. “Are you mad?”

“I have been just letting things go since this started. Maybe if I would have actually acted like the police officer that I was going to become…or at least thought I was…maybe then, Shadiyah would still be with us. Maybe Miranda—”

“You did nothing wrong with Miranda. From what you said, you tried to take care of her in every way possible. I think that we are just lucky. I don’t know if we will meet anybody else like us, but we are truly blessed.”

“I can’t just ignore—” Simon began, but Caron cut him off, jerking him hard so that he almost fell.

“That is coming from the Bitt house…the one we were headed for,” she hissed.

“That makes no sense,” Simon said with a frown.

“I think it makes perfect sense,” Caron breathed as she let go of Simon and started for the house.

“What? Wait…now you are going to the house?” Simon was very confused. “You just tried to stop me and now you are just going to march right up?”

“Shadiyah is still here,” Caron whispered over her shoulder. “I would be willing to wager on it.”

Simon stood there for a few seconds until what the woman had just said finally sunk in. He hurried to catch up, his hands fumbling as he weighed the desire to protect himself against showing up and confronting Shadiyah with a weapon drawn that might send her over the edge.

They reached the rock wall and the Mercedes that had crashed into the gate with its owner still inside and trying in futility to get at the living beings that climbed up onto the hood and vaulted over. There was a glow from within the house, but it was diffused enough that Simon guessed it to be well inside.

Caron tried the front door and stepped inside the entry hall. Simon joined her, wincing when he stepped on some broken glass. The sounds of sobbing could be heard, and hopefully they were loud enough so that his little noise did not get caught.

It was obvious that the person doing the crying and begging was male. There was a smell that Simon was trying to identify when he heard the distinctive sound of sizzling flesh. He gagged a little when he realized that his mouth had started to water at the smell of cooking meat when that sizzle was quickly drowned out by the accompanying scream.

“Yes, keep it up,” a familiar voice cooed. “That should bring a few of those nasty zombies. Right? So scream some more. There will not be anybody coming to help you.”

“I think you’ve made your point, lass,” another voice said. “The boy has probably learned his lesson. In any case…I don’t believe either of them will be hurting anybody ever again.”

“You can go if you like. I’m not done,” Shadiyah’s voice hissed. “Consider that your final warning.”

“Suit yourself. I’ll be on my way then.”

Simon and Caron looked around frantically for someplace to hide. They settled on ducking behind the island counter in the kitchen. They made it just as footsteps came at a steady pace into the living room and paused. Both of them held their breath in the hopes that they would not be discovered.

As the crunch of glass came, announcing that whoever it was that had been with Shadiyah (supposedly of his own free will) was about to walk out the door, Simon risked a peek. He was more than a little surprised to see a man who could barely be much past three feet tall; and there was no doubt with the red stubble on his face that this was a man and not a child.

“I wish you well, lass. But I fear those demons living behind your eyes will soon consume your soul.” With that, the Irishman left.

Simon and Caron stared at each other with a mix of confusion and concern. At last, Simon whispered, “Let’s go get her.”

***

Shadiyah stared at the door for a moment. A small part of her wanted to take the advice Paddy had tried to give her. She could walk away from this now and start over.

“That is the beautiful thing about a zombie apocalypse, lass,” he had said with his big smile that almost looked like it would split his round face in two. “Every single day for the rest of your life is like a reset button has been pressed. Did you do something naughty? Well, unless you are in a group of people, there is nobody to hold it against you. Hell, if you do something really horrible and cause somebody to be eaten by those stench ridden sacks of pus, well, they’re gone and nobody will be the wiser. Reset.”

Shadiyah was also just a bit confused. According to Paddy, these two men had treated him poorly. Supposedly, they had hung him from a lamp post at one point and used him as bait for the zombies so that they could slip in and out of a small market. How could he be okay with that? How could he allow these horrible individuals to exist in this world another day?

She had walked in as calm as you please. Her first break came when the bigger of the two was actually right by the stairs with his back to her as she came up from behind. She had hacked into the back of his legs. While the man rolled around on the floor, bleeding and screaming his head off, she had jumped over and positioned herself beside the doorway of the room where the lantern cast its bright white glow.

When the second man emerged, Shadiyah came in low on him as well. Her blade sliced across the Achilles tendon and put this man down beside his companion. By the time Paddy arrived, she was standing over the pair feeling very pleased with herself.

“By the Virgin Mother,” Paddy had gasped.

“Tie them up,” Shadiyah said calmly.

Now that he was gone, she wondered if he had done so out of fear of her. Whatever the reason, he had properly secured both men who, upon seeing their former companion, began to hurl threats and insults through their clenched teeth. It no longer amazed her at how man could push through anything to express hate and evil intent. One of them had his hamstrings severed, the other those cord-like tendons on the back of his feet—that was evidenced by the peculiar little rope that poked from one of the wounds as the tendon had jutted through the opening.

The one with the hamstring injuries was bleeding the worst and so Shadiyah went to work on him first. She did not want him to die before she managed to deal out her new brand of justice.

“If I let you go…what will you do with me?” she purred, leaning down in the man’s face, tracing his nose with the knife that she had pulled from the sheath on his belt.

“Before or after I cut your tits off?” the man managed through clenched teeth and a jaw so tight that she believed another ounce of pressure would cause both to shatter.

“Good answer,” Shadiyah said calmly as she pulled away and stood.

Reaching down, she undid the man’s trousers and pulled out his manhood. Before he had the chance to make a lewd or vile remark, she severed it with his own knife. When he screamed, she stuffed the meat into his mouth and slammed him in the temple with the hilt of the sharp little blade.

“What the…” was all that Paddy managed to say before his eyes rolled back in his head and he dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

Shadiyah stepped back as the man began to choke. She actually found it funny and began to laugh as the man’s face turned a horrific shade of red, then purple. He bucked and strained against the binding to no avail as blood gushed from between his legs. Eventually he twitched a few times and stopped moving.

Shadiyah turned to the second man who was now blubbering through what sounded to her like the Lord’s Prayer. “…on Earth as it is in Heaven…”

“Do you really think he is listening?” Shadiyah mocked as she approached the man who was now wide-eyed and pale. His lips continued to move fervently, but no sound came out any longer.

Stopping beside Paddy, Shadiyah knelt and caressed the man’s brow. He moaned softly but remained unconscious. Standing, she eyed the man tied to the wooden chair.

“Water.”

He continued to stare at her, his mouth still moving soundlessly. Sweat had begun to trickle down his face and into his eyes. When she stomped over to him and hissed the word “water” again, he responded by wetting himself.

“Not what I had in mind,” she said flatly. “Where is your water? I won’t ask again.”

The man nodded to a green bag sitting beside the bed where his companion lay dead. Shadiyah actually flashed a smile and thanked the man before going over and rummaging around until she discovered a bottle. Returning to Paddy, she poured a little on his forehead. When he still did not respond, she poured more.

The man snorted, drawing a good amount of liquid up his nostrils. This caused him to hack and cough.

“You’re okay.” Shadiyah lifted the man’s head a bit and patted him on his stubbled cheeks.

“Lass…what have you done?” the man coughed as he sat up slowly and accepted the bottle of water.

“I have started making this world a better place.”

Getting to her feet, she walked over to the man tied to the chair and knelt so that she was at eye level with him. She traced his face with the point of the knife that was still dripping with the blood of the body on the bed.

“So, what were you in jail for?” she whispered.

The man licked his lips and opened his mouth three or four times before he was actually able to speak. “Public intoxication and creating a nuisance,” he finally managed meekly. “I weren’t hurting nobody. Just blowing off some steam after a bad week. When the coppers came to the pub I might have called one of them a wanker. He told me that I would be arrested for verbally assaulting an officer if I called him a wanker again. So, I asked him if I would be in trouble for thinking he was a wanker. He told me that he couldn’t arrest me for my thoughts…so I said ‘Good, because I really think you’re a bloody wanker’ and that is when I got cuffed.”

A chuckle from behind her made Shadiyah turn around. Paddy threw his hands over his mouth and then waved her off. “Sorry, lass, but that is a wee bit funny. I think you should spare this young man simply because of his wit.”

“I let him go and then what?” Shadiyah challenged. “How can you even consider letting this animal continue to draw breath after what he did to you?”

“It weren’t me doing those things. I was as much under Ivan’s thumb as the wee man there,” the man in the chair said. He craned his neck at Paddy to see if he might get some support, but Shadiyah grabbed him by the face and jerked him back to look at her.

“Then you are weak and one of those types who commit terrible things while excusing yourself by saying you were just doing as you were told. So when Ivan maybe tells you to rape some girl…then you have a built in excuse, yeah?”

“We weren’t doin’ nothing like that…I swear. In fact, we even helped one poor girl that was trapped in a shop by a few of the stenches. Escorted her to her flat and everything.”

Shadiyah turned to Paddy with a raised eyebrow for confirmation. She saw him look past her to the man in the chair, and his expression drooped just a bit. He looked back up at her and shrugged his shoulders.

“They told me about it. I was in the flat we was using and guarding the supplies we had managed to scrounge up while they went out looking for more.”

“But if they were treating you so bad, why didn’t you take that chance to run?”

“And go where, lass? The streets are full of the walking dead. Alone, you have nobody to watch your back. I am looking for my cousin Seamus, but he was in London when all of this happened. We left Leeds and were making our way south, but that is not an easy task these days.” Paddy walked up to Shadiyah and took her by the hand holding the knife. “Why don’t you let that poor bloke go? You can come with me to London. We will look for Seamus and make a go of surviving this madness. If anybody will be alive down in London, it will be Seamus O’ Hara. The man is a walking mountain of muscle and meat.”

Shadiyah stared at the man for a moment and then pulled her hand away. She looked around the room, her eyes lingering on the body tied to the bed and all the blood. That small voice that begged her to accept the offer of the little man was growing louder. The image of Assi flashed in her mind and that voice went silent.

“I wish you luck, Paddy,” Shadiyah whispered. “But I can’t.”

“Lass—” he began, but his mouth shut when her knife hand twitched.

“I said no.” Her voice had no emotion, and was as cold as her eyes.

“Maybe if—” Paddy tried again.

“No!” Shadiyah silenced him with a very sharp tone that warned him that continuing in this manner might be to his detriment. “You may leave. His fate has already been decided. I have no desire to go to London today. Perhaps someday I will head your way. If I do, then know that I will bear you no grudge or ill will. Now, perhaps it is best if you be on your way and leave me to my business.”

Moving to the lantern that was sitting on a desk, she removed the hood and held the knife to the flame. She occasionally glanced over at the bound man. She did nothing but smile as the man in the chair now hurled threats and curses at her.

“Let’s see if this is ready yet.” Walking over to the man, she leaned over, but had to pull back suddenly when he lunged and his teeth snapped together with a loud clack.

“You really are no better than the zombies,” she scoffed.

“I am going to rip you apart, you lousy bitch!” the man snarled and then spat at her for emphasis. It was obvious that his earlier apparent fear had given way or transformed to rage.

Like a snake, she struck. Grabbing the man by the hair she pressed the red hot flat of the blade to his lips. There was a hiss and a sizzle as the flesh seared. The man wailed in pain, his curses replaced by those shrieks.

“Yes, keep it up,” Shadiyah cooed. “That should bring a few of those nasty zombies. Right? So scream some more. There will not be anybody coming to help you.”

“I think you’ve made your point, lass,” Paddy tried once more

“The boy has probably learned his lesson. In any case…I don’t believe either of them will be hurting anybody ever again.”

“You can go if you like. I’m not done,” Shadiyah’s voice hissed. “Consider that your final warning.”

“Suit yourself. I’ll be on my way then.”

15

Face Off

As the door shut and the little man exited, Simon gave the word and he rushed up the stairs with Caron coming right behind. There was another horrible scream on the heels of the sound of sizzling flesh.

When he reached the top of the stairs, Simon stopped so suddenly that Caron slammed into his back and almost rebounded hard enough to topple backwards down the stairs. Shadiyah was standing behind a man bound to a chair. She had a handful of his hair and used it to jerk his head back in a terribly awkward manner that looked painful in and of itself.

“Shaddi!” Simon barked.

The woman who looked up at him barely resembled the girl he had known. Her eyes were wild and gleaming with evil malice. She was splattered in blood, both old and new. Some of it was black and indicated that it was likely from the undead, but the rest had obviously come from the living. Her hair was a frightful wig of snarls and tangles with bits of leaves and twigs caught in it. Her clothing was filthy and not fitting of the lowliest scratter you might find sleeping in an alley or under a rubbish bin.

“Simon?”

For a moment, the woman’s face changed and her features softened just enough that a hint of her old self could be seen. If he would have blinked at that moment, he would have missed it; it was gone that fast. The hardness came down and locked itself into place.

“Come home with me,” Simon whispered. He took another step into the room, actually having to concentrate and force his foot to rise up and move forward.

“I can’t,” Shadiyah said, her voice sounding strangled.

“Yes. If you come with me now, everything will be okay. We will get through things together. Both of us have lost our sisters. Both of us hurt, but if we lean on each other, we will be stronger and we will get through this.”

Simon took another step closer but stopped when he saw the knife press against the exposed throat of the terrified man in the chair. A tiny line of ruby red life fluid welled and began to send a few small drips down the man’s exposed throat where the knife had slid an inch or two.

“There is nothing for us to get through,” Shadiyah finally answered. “Our paths have gone in different directions.”

“Shadiyah,” Caron stepped out from behind Simon, hands out to show she was not carrying a weapon, “it’s not too late. You are a warm, wonderful person. You witnessed something terrible, and your mind is just struggling with how to process it.”

Shadiyah cocked her head to the side in a way that reminded Simon just a bit of the creepy zombie children. She seemed to be regarding Caron, but it was as if all the humanity had been stripped from the woman’s eyes. There was something dark, and he wondered if this is what the victims of serial killers saw in the end when the mask was ripped away and the charade that had been used to lure the unsuspecting victim was over.

“Are you really going to use inane psycho-babble to tell me that I just need a hug and some time to grieve?” she snarled, which was even creepier since her face continued to hold almost no emotion. “Maybe a few Prozac or Diazepam will numb me while I learn how to manage my feelings? How about this…maybe I just reached my limit and am going to start giving out to the people who went  through life preying on others and have now been given free reign in the absence of law and order.”

“But not everybody is like that,” Caron insisted, Simon put a hand on her arm, but she shrugged it off and took another step closer. “Your friend Simon is not like that…Mrs. Raye—”

“What do you know of that woman?” The blank expression finally shattered and all the hate, anger, and anguish exploded across Shadiyah’s face. “She worked for the bloody MI5. Who knows what kind of person she really is!”

“But you know what kind of person I am.” Simon edged past Caron and now stood just a few feet away from Shadiyah. “You have known me for years. We have shared many memories together. I knew your parents, your sister…so, while certainly not as great for me as it is for you, I feel the pain of their loss.”

Shadiyah was silent for several seconds. Her eyes kept flicking from Simon to Caron and then to the man in the chair as if she might be weighing each of them against each other. When the tears appeared at the corners of her eyes, Simon actually breathed a sigh of relief.

He had begun to fear that she had lost every ounce of her humanity. If she was still able to cry, then he had to think that there was hope for her to recover and return to at least some semblance of herself.

“If you come back with us, nobody will ever have to know about…” Simon looked around the room, his eyes lingering on the body of the dead man on the bed lying in a pool of blood that was already beginning to attract flies. They paused again on the man in the chair. His face had hideous blisters where his lips should be as well as another nasty knife blade-shaped welt on his right cheek that would soon be a massive blister.

There was a small pool of blood at the man’s feet, and when Simon looked closer, he decided that the man was dead and just didn’t know it yet. His feet were secured so tight to the legs of the chair that the belts keeping him secure were acting like tourniquets. When those came off, it was likely that the man would finish bleeding out in a few short minutes.

“You can trust me, Shaddi.”

Simon reached out for her. There was a sudden and sharp pain in his gut. When he looked down, the knife that Shadiyah had been holding in her hands jutted from his abdomen.

***

She ran. Twice she collided with one of the walking dead, but she just kicked and shoved until she was free, got back to her feet, and continued to run as fast as she could. In the darkness ahead, she saw the silhouette of the M1.

She reached the embankment, scrambled up, and then turned to her right and kept running until she was physically unable to go on. When that moment came, she fell to the ground in a heap and rolled onto her back. She stared at the starry sky and waited for the tears to come in a flood.

She waited.

And waited.

When they did not come, she just continued to lie flat on her back and stare straight up. She told herself that she would just stay that way until the walking dead found her. She would not run or fight. She would let them have her and put an end to the pain and anguish that controlled her now.

Eventually, a low moan came from somewhere close. She had to roll her head back and strain her neck to look. She spied a pair of feet moving through a pool of moonlight. They were right on the other side of the car that she had fallen down beside.

This is it, she thought.

But it wasn’t it; the zombie reached the end of the car and simply continued to shamble on its way. She needed to make a noise if she was going to bring the undead to her. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came.

She closed her mouth and rolled back to lying flat. When she felt her eyes begin to droop, she rolled under the car and fell asleep. By then, she had decided that she might not want to live, but she did not want to die either. She certainly did not want to be eaten alive by zombies.

Her eyes flashed open, and she tried to sit up in a hurry. That resulted in her hitting her forehead on the underside of the car she had used as a blanket and shelter for the night. Once the stars receded from her vision, she rolled out from underneath the automobile and pulled herself to her feet.

Looking around in every direction, she was initially disappointed when she did not see a mob of angry villagers coming after her for murdering their beloved Simon. There was also a surprising lack of the walking dead to give her any concerns. The ones on the M1 were spread out and just staggering and stumbling along, paying her little or no interest.

She walked up the road until the sign above indicated that the turnoff would take her to Garforth. Just like Leeds, it looked as if the fires had mostly died down. She considered just continuing on, but by the time she had reached this point, her mind was back on track for the idea of seeking out those who hurt others and ending them.

“You already let one get away,” she said out loud, jumping at the loudness of her own voice.

Heading south, she walked along and allowed the sun to shine on her face. She knew she was filthy and needed to bathe, but at the moment, she would have to settle for bathing in the shafts of daylight. Up ahead about two or three hundred yards were a trio of the walking dead. It looked as if they were also heading into Garforth.

Maybe they have relatives here, she mused, and had to stifle a giggle.

When the marker beside the road indicated that she was now on the outskirts of Garforth, she reached down and touched her scimitar. That momentary comfort was quickly displaced by a feeling of frustration and even a little worry.

She had none of her supplies. She had left everything back at that house, and there was absolutely no way that she could return there. Caron would have returned and told everybody of Simon’s murder by now. It would not be a stretch to think that they would send people to watch the house and wait for her return so that they could kill her. And when that day came where she knew that she absolutely wished to be dead, she now felt assured that she had at least one place where she could go and be treated to her last wish. If she was really lucky, it would be a fast death. But now was not that time, and she brushed those thoughts away and swept them under the rug in one of her mind’s darker corners.

At last, she reached the entrance to a posh looking little neighborhood. The plaque at the entrance read “Cedar Ridge” on either side of the brick wall that acted as a border that separated these people from everybody else and made them their own little community. Judging by the debris, torched automobiles, and dead bodies left to decay in the streets and yards, this place had fared no better than anyplace else in the world.

The first few houses had burnt down to nothing but the skeletal remains and were ugly, black monuments to their finality. The next houses, the ones that had survived the little fire, showed promise. Doors were wide open and almost inviting her inside. The one house she did see that had the front door shut also had a zombie in the window staring out at her.

Walking up to the first house, she had to wave away the swarms of flies that were drawn to the three corpses in the front yard. It was easy to guess what had happened here. The front room window to the right of the door was shattered and dark stains marred the brick façade. The three bodies were splayed out on the lawn with their heads sporting a variety of nasty divots, and completely busted open in one case. The zombie that had most of its head splattered all over the ground was partially on the landing of the entry.

She paused as she went to step over the body and was fascinated how the left half of the face had managed to remain mostly intact. It was grossly misshapen, but still recognizable as a woman’s face. She felt her skin crawl as she watched a fly actually walk across the wide open eye that was staring up at her.

In the entry hall was a family portrait, and Shadiyah was almost certain that what must have been the oldest daughter was the body she now thought of as ‘Flyball’. The two sons were also out front. That left the parents. She had to guess that one of them—most likely the father—had been the person to deal out the killing blows. Had either or both been bitten? She imagined that there were millions of stories that would never be told.

Every single person in the world had just lived through a pop culture event of the worst kind. She wondered if any of them had been fans of that sort of thing. Had it helped them survive? While she had been aware of zombie movies and such, it was not something she got excited about or even gave it much more than a passing glance than she did vampires, werewolves, or mummies.

Ghosts? That was an entirely different matter. She absolutely believed in ghosts. Of course, she now believed in zombies as well for obvious reasons.

Moving along the wall of the entry hallway that was opposite the stairs, she paused in the arch that opened to the living room and discovered the father as well as confirmation of her guess as to who had killed the zombified members of the family. Sprawled on the floor was a man; or, more accurately, his corpse. The man had slit his wrists and one hand still held the straight razor used for the gruesome task. The wife and mother of the house was still nowhere to be seen, and if she had been a zombie, it is very possible that she could have simply wandered off since the front door was wide open.

As soon as she arrived at the kitchen, she knew that it was unlikely that she would find anything worth taking in the realm of food. The cupboards were all thrown open or had the doors ripped off completely and tossed on the floor.

Deciding that she was in no mood to waste time since she had nothing after having left that house so suddenly, she turned around and walked out. The next house was more of the same and then there was the house with the zombie staring out at her from the window.

A thought occurred to Shadiyah, and she went to the house with the zombie. It did not move from the window, but merely increased the degree of intensity that it slapped and pawed at the window. Checking the door, she frowned when she discovered it to be locked. Stepping back, and giving a look up and down the street, she kicked the door as hard as she could…and ended up falling backwards and landing on her behind in the middle of the walkway. The door was still shut, but there was a near perfect print of the bottom of her boot on the white door.

Getting up and dusting herself off, she headed down the side of the house and into the back yard. It was here that she found the enclosed back porch. Breaking one of the windows was a simple matter. She allowed herself to smile when the back door proved to be unlocked.

Stepping inside, she discovered that the zombie from the front window had obviously come in response to the noise and was just staggering into the kitchen as she entered and closed the door behind her. A quick stab with her scimitar ended the zombie and she made the decision to drag it outside before commencing her search. Seeing an open pantry with cans lining the shelf gave her reason to be hopeful, so she could attend to the one simple matter of housecleaning before she began the search.

She decided to leave the back door open in case there might be more zombies that needed to be taken out, as well as helping to air out the house a bit. Shadiyah pulled a bottle of water from a case that sat in the floor of the pantry closet and opened a tin of Spam; she reveled in the saltiness of the minced meat and wished that she had some bread and perhaps a pickle to help finish things off properly.

The house proved to be empty of any other bodies, living, undead, or otherwise. Shadiyah took that as a good sign and laughed at whoever had come through and looted the other houses but chose to skip this one just because of one zombie.

By now, the sun was almost halfway done with its march across the sky. There was nothing in the way of a proper bag or pack for her to use to load up on supplies, so she fashioned one from a pair of pillow covers and grabbed a few essentials in case she had to leave in a hurry.

Once she felt like she had done enough preparation in case of emergency, she made her way to the bedroom. Shoving the large chest of drawers in front of the door, she flopped down on the bed and was asleep almost before her head touched the pillow.

***

“How is he?” Nelson asked.

“Good as we can hope,” Mrs. Raye answered. “The doc says that Caron probably gave him the small chance that he does have by leaving the knife in place until they got back. The fact that it missed everything vital is a small miracle or a big one depending on your point of view.”

“And you knew this girl?” Nelson entered the house with Dawn and Melena in tow.

The three of them took a seat at the kitchen table as Mrs. Raye put cups in front of them all and then went about pouring the tea. There was not much left, but Nelson was leaving with his new team of hunters after this check in to see how Simon was doing; he had promised Mrs. Raye a secret stash from any tea that they found while out.

“This girl?” Mrs. Raye finally said as she blew a wisp of steam from her cup and then took a sip. “No, this girl is a stranger to me. I should have trusted my instinct and dealt with this back at Clyde Court.”

“Dealt with it how?” Melena asked after a long silence where nobody else seemed inclined to ask what she considered an obvious question.

“Shadiyah started to become unhinged when her sister was raped, but after the girl killed herself, that was just more than her mind could take. I’m afraid that not everybody who survives these first few months is going to be a viable person. That poor girl had to kill both her parents, and then she had no better choice other than to leave them outside her front door. Add in having to take care of her sister who broke almost immediately, and the girl just took in more than she could handle. Minds are a funny thing. That is why some soldiers come back from battle and are basically a shell of their former selves. Call it PTSD or whatever you like, but I think we will lose a good many survivors to their own minds in this first year as we are forced to do things we never imagined.”

The room was silent for several minutes except for the sipping sounds as everybody considered Mrs. Raye’s statement. That silence did not end until the front door opened and Caron entered with another woman who was decked out in what was becoming the standard hunter’s gear: heavy denim pants, a leather jacket over her black shirt, hiking boots, heavy gloves, hair cut short and tucked into a bandana and a set of goggles hanging around her neck.

“Is that really a crossbow?” Nelson gasped—admiration and maybe a hint of envy in his voice.

The newest member of the team patted the stock of her crossbow and beamed. “I was so mad when my husband bought this for me last year. I bet he never imagined that the first living thing I would shoot with it might be him.”

Niamh Longstreet had been Melena’s recommendation for the team when it was all but demanded that every team have at least one member on it from the New Micks. Nelson trusted her judgment and had agreed despite not really knowing the woman. He’d only been aware of Connor Longstreet, Niamh’s husband on a casual basis. The man was always travelling for his job. There were many in town who whispered that it was Connor who brought the infection to Micklefield.

He was not sure what exactly he disliked most about the woman before actually ever even meeting her; the fact that she was the wife of the late Connor Longstreet, that she was a New Mick, or that she was bloody Irish. Still, she had Melena’s endorsement, so he was willing to keep his thoughts and feelings to himself for now.

Just on appearances, Niamh most resembled something that you might see from an artist’s rendition of a faerie. She was pale to the point of almost being blue, her hair was a series of pencil-thin red braids that virtually seemed to float around her head, her eyes had a peculiar greenish-blue and he would swear that if you stared at her ears, you could detect where they almost ended in elfish points. Her nose was overly small, her lips thin, and she had a double dose of freckles.

“That’s the weapon that killed Connor Longstreet?” Dawn said with awe as she pushed back from the table and came over to give the weapon a closer look.

“Aye, it is. Care to give it a try?” Niamh presented the crossbow with a smile.

“Me? Oh no…I would not know where to begin,” Dawn gasped, backing away like she’d just been offered a cobra.

“Aim the pointy thing away from you and pull the trigger,” Niamh laughed.

“So, Nelson, you are either very liberated, or you just like gawking at females,” Mrs. Raye said with a chortle as she took in his assembled team.

“Probably more of the latter,” Melena quipped. “But this is more my team than his, we just list him as the leader to keep some of the other more obnoxious blokes at bay.”

“She’s not lying.” Nelson gave a shrug of his shoulders. Then, with a wink, added, “It is more of the latter.” That earned him a punch in the shoulder once Melena realized exactly what the man had just said.

“We should get moving,” Melena announced a few seconds later. “If Simon does wake while we are gone, please give him our best.”

“I will, child,” Mrs. Raye said as she walked the team to the door. “Give me just a minute with Caron, please.”

Annie bounded down the stairs at the sound of everybody leaving and demanded hugs from the group until she reached Niamh. She seemed to consider things for a moment and then extended a polite hand to be shaken.

“My name is Annie, what’s yours?” she asked with genuine curiosity.

“Niamh…Niamh Longstreet,” the woman replied as she shook the girl’s hand.

“Neev? That’s a funny name…are you a fairy princess?” Annie scrunched up her nose and smiled, showing off an empty gap where she had lost one of her top front teeth.

“Maybe,” the woman said with a sly smile as she walked out of the house.

“I like her,” Annie announced, and then bounded back up the stairs.

Once everybody was gone and it was just Mrs. Raye and Caron, the older woman pulled a bag out from the closet. She looked around once more to ensure that they were alone. Apparently satisfied that was the case, she pulled out a black triangular pouch and then another square one and handed them to Caron.

“What’s this?” the woman asked tentatively as she accepted the smallish but oddly heavy parcels.

“This was in the Foxhound under the commander’s chair. It is a SIG-Sauer P226. There is one fully loaded fifteen-round magazine already in the weapon.” She pulled it from the holster and turned it on its side, her finger pointing to a small lever on the side near the grip. “The weapon is cocked in a safe mode for you to carry it loaded with one in the chamber. You slide this down and it de-cocks the weapon and makes it ready to fire. Other than that, this is a semi-automatic. When you fire the last round, the slide will come back.  This button here is the American thumb release,” she pointed to a round button just below the lever, “you push it and it releases the magazine. You just grab the next one and slide it into position, give it a firm smack to seat it and then release the slide.”

“Umm…okay, but why would you give me this?” Caron accepted the handgun that Mrs. Raye presented to her and then held onto it like she feared it might suddenly attack her.

“You are going out with this group, and it is still possible that Shadiyah is in the area. If she is, you have to understand that the girl is simply broken. The world we find ourselves in has no room for her. If she sees you, she might approach. If that happens, you need to be ready to put her down.”

“She’s not an animal in need of a merciful death,” Caron protested, shoving the weapon back at the woman.

“No, she is much worse.” Mrs. Raye did not accept the gun and made a show of putting her hands behind her back. “She is a human being that has become broken. She has no compass. If she can attack Simon, a man she has known for years and had no reason to hold ill will towards, then consider what she can do to others. Do I need to remind you of those men in the room? That one poor bloke that bled out in the chair? Both were murdered by Shadiyah, but she was not simply killing…she was engaging in torture.”

“I can’t kill her.” Caron set the gun on the table along with the holster and the pouch with the two spare magazines. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I just can’t.”

With that, Caron turned and walked out to join the team. Nobody asked any questions about what might have been said, and they travelled in silence towards their target destination of the outskirts of Garforth. This would be the first excursion using a flatbed truck and trailer with a winch and hitch on the front end. The entire thing had been put together by Nelson. The idea was that they could pull any of the cars blocking the path out of the way and then roll in. With the large truck, they would be able to load up supplies in much greater quantities.

They took Church Lane to the A656 and then hooked around at the M1 roundabout to the A642 which would take them into East Garforth from the north side of town. The first obstacle was no surprise and they had already discussed how to tackle it while driving.

The junction where the 642 began was the site of a seven car mess with a military truck in the middle of it all. From the looks, the military truck had tried to park crossways on the road to block off anybody getting onto the M1 from this area. At least two of the cars were riddled with bullet holes and one was mostly just a charred wreck. The others, and this was Nelson’s guess, had decided to try and ram the truck. It had ended poorly for all involved when at least one or more of the cars caught fire.

“How come there wasn’t some sort of explosion?” Dawn asked as they approached the scene of the wreck.

“Because this isn’t the pictures,” Melena answered.

After pulling one of the cars free and making enough of a space for them to get past, they were back on the road towards their target destination. Once they pulled into the residential area, the next part of their plan would be implemented. This was the trial run and would be the one that determined if other teams could use the same tactics.

Dawn would stay in the truck, behind the wheel and with the engine running. Nelson would be paired with Niamh and Melena with Caron. In teams of two, they would each take a residence and take anything and everything they could carry. Food was the top priority, but they were also to give equal attention to anything to do with medicine, first aid, and hygiene.

They reached the turn-in to the first neighborhood and the truck slowed. The signs at the entrance read: Cedar Ridge.

***

Shadiyah woke and stared up at the ceiling. Despite her exhaustion, she had woken numerous times through the night as nightmares hit her with everything that her mind could think of.

Despite her ability to quell her conscience while she was awake, apparently she had not yet reached the point where her unconscious mind could dismiss or ignore her actions. She was thankful for the inability to recall any of the specifics less than a few minutes after waking up.

Rolling over, she made the mistake of drawing a deep breath and sat up immediately, rubbing her nose as if that might help force out the mustiness and stink that had flowed in and coated her nostrils. It was as she sat there trying to figure out what she would do now when she heard an odd noise.

It took her a while to finally realize that it was an approaching vehicle. With the world being so quiet compared to how it had been before the zombie apocalypse, the noise had a quality to it that made it seem just a bit off. Also, she could not tell exactly what direction that it was coming from, only that it was growing louder which meant that it was approaching.

She felt tears welling up in her eyes as frustration warred with anger for the dominant feeling that coursed through her. She had certainly not had time to gather supplies beyond the emergency pack. That would not do much more than sustain her for a day or two. Just in this house alone, she had seen enough stuff to last her for days, if not weeks. She was even entertaining the thought of making this place home for a while as she got her feet back underneath her and decided what she needed to do from here on out.

She quickly got herself back under control and calmed down. Perhaps whoever this was would just pass her by. Why would they necessarily stop here? And if they did pull into this neighborhood, there were plenty of houses.

She crept to the window, her hand resting on the hilt of her scimitar. Just touching the weapon gave her a strange sense of comfort.

The sound continued to echo off of everything until it felt as if it might be bouncing around inside her very skull. It was now being rivaled by the sound of her heartbeat pounding in her ears and vibrating at her temples.

When the source finally came into view, Shadiyah felt that familiar sensation of adrenaline dumping into her system. It was a large truck pulling a nice-sized trailer. No doubt the occupants were looters. There looked to be three in the cab and two standing in the flatbed leaning in close to the side windows.

Movement from the corner of her eye made her look away from the truck as it slowed at the entrance to this residential area. From everywhere, she saw them emerging. While certainly plenty of the population of this area looked to have fled or made the attempt, a good many had obviously stayed behind and eventually joined the ranks of the walking dead. It was this remnant that would do her dirty work for her. She would stay inside the house and hide while these unsuspecting fools that were already slowing in front of the first houses that she already knew to have been picked rather clean would be overwhelmed by the walking dead.

“That thing is a giant dinner bell,” she whispered as she watched them slow and stop.

She shot a look to her left up the street that ran along the side of this house and could see well over a hundred zombies now in the street and shambling towards the sound source that was the rumbling engine of the large truck.

She saw the two in the back of the truck jump down to the street as the doors opened to the cab and two more figures emerged. All of these people were wearing heavy clothing and odds and ends of protective gear. They had gloves hats, and even goggles, but there was something about one of the figures that seemed strangely familiar.

“I’m just imagining things. Who do I know anymore? Nobody.” She shifted her weight a little and continued to watch as the drama unfolded. Two of the figures darted to one of the houses and the other pair took the one across the street.

As the zombies neared, she could barely hear their moans and cries over the sounds of the truck that remained running in front of the target houses. As she examined the scene, she came to another conclusion; this little group was in worse trouble than they might realize. They had been careless despite their protective gear and working in teams while the big vehicle was left running in case they needed to make a hasty escape. They were on a street that was far too narrow for them to have any real chance of turning around. They had stopped right on a bit of a dogleg in the road which, while not impossible to navigate, would still likely provide problems when it came to backing out in a hurry. And backing out would be their only choice since they would not be able to turn around.

When the first zombies rounded the corner, Shadiyah almost felt as if she were watching a movie. Part of her even wanted to yell at the person in the cab of the truck. In the movies, if you yelled at a movie screen, they obviously could not hear you; but if she were to yell now, the person in the truck would have a chance.

She opened her mouth, and then shut it again. If she yelled, she might bring that horde down on herself. Would that be such a terrible thing? she thought. Perhaps that was her own cosmic justice…a chance to atone for all her sins.

But then again, maybe none of it mattered and these people were not her problem.

16

Sound Travels

“This place is absolute shite,” Nelson growled as he walked out of the bathroom empty-handed. “Somebody has already been here.”

“Quite a few somebodies,” Niamh agreed as she appeared in the doorway of a child’s bedroom.

“I was not terribly surprised by the kitchen having already been looted. After all, this house is closest to the entrance of the neighborhood. Anybody and everybody who passed by could duck in, grab a few things, and then be off. No need to venture any deeper. Minimal risk. That is what our hunters have been doing. They have hit houses on the edge of town.”

“So we just have to go a bit deeper. I am certain that not all of these homes have been gone through. For one, I haven’t seen that many bands of survivors roaming the area. In fact, with the exception of those soldiers, I can’t say that I have seen anybody.”

“Our Simon, Mrs. Raye, and little Annie came from Leeds. As did that nutter of a woman that knifed Simon and killed those other blokes.” Nelson stepped over a pile of trash and headed into the other bedroom.

He only did so to be absolutely certain, but he was not surprised by his findings. The closets had been tossed as had the dresser drawers. And to make it just a shade worse, somebody had used one of the piles of discarded clothing as a toilet area. He went over to open the bedroom window just to allow himself a breath of fresh air before wading back downstairs to the thick stench of rot and decay that filled the ground level of this house like fetid water. What he saw looking out over the backyard and up the street of the residential neighborhood made his skin pebble and his mouth go instantly dry.

“Oh bloody hell,” he breathed.

Niamh stepped up and beside him. Her reaction was a bit more visceral as she actually staggered back a step to the point where Nelson caught and helped steady her so that she did not take a tumble. From where they stood, across the street from the house the other team had ducked into, they could see up the road and deeper into the neighborhood.

The undead were coming in droves. Their focus seemed to be on the idling truck. It was just a matter of a few more feet before they would round the little bend in the road and be visible to Dawn who sat in the cab all by herself.

The one thing that Nelson was certain about was the fact that he and Niamh would not make it downstairs and to the truck before the zombies. And even if they got very lucky, that did not mean that Melena and Caron would have the same fortune. Also, there was the issue of the truck having to be driven backwards to get out. Doing so in a hurry would jackknife the trailer and put an immediate end to their trip. The way he saw it…they had one chance and one chance only.

“Run!” he barked and turned to hurry down the stairs and out the front door.

His arrival was just a few steps behind the leading edge of the zombies. Dawn had opened the door on the driver’s side and was standing on the running board, peering over the door with her mouth open in astonishment.

“Leave it!” Nelson barked. “Melena! Caron! Drop everything and get out here! RUN!”

Several of the zombies turned his way and eventually got their bodies around and moving in a new direction. He pulled Niamh past him and gave her a nudge towards the exit of the neighborhood. Dawn had jumped from the truck and was sprinting towards Nelson who had to wave her off. “Just get out of here!”

The woman veered to her right and headed for the exit with Niamh leading the way. Just as the first zombies began to flow around the front of the truck, Melena and Caron emerged from the house.

“What—” is all Melena said before her mouth snapped shut at the sight of all the zombies; several instantly turned her direction when she spoke.

“Can you escape out the back?” Nelson called as he brought his machete around and cleaved the right side of a short female zombie’s face off and kicked the body away.

“Yeah!” Melena shouted over the growing din of moans and even a few baby cries that were becoming louder by the second as more and more of the undead poured around the corner. “There is a big field that borders the house. We will cut across it.”

“Just head for home, and don’t stop until you get there!”

Nelson punched a zombie in the face with his gloved hand. It didn’t really do much except for knock the creature back, but that was all he needed as he twisted away from another set of outreached arms and sprinted after Dawn and Niamh.

The two women stopped at the open entrance to Cedar Ridge and waited for the big man to catch up. As soon as he did, all three started jogging up the road, back in the direction of the roundabout. They had not gone ten yards when they all slowed and then stopped.

“That’s not good at all,” Niamh said with a loud exhale of frustration.

Coming their direction were several zombies. While they were at least slightly spread out and not in anything near the numbers that were back at Cedar Ridge, there were still too many to try and just run through. All it would take was for one to get ahold of any of them and it would be over.

“Why?” Dawn managed to bite back tears, but her voice gave away that she was on the verge of a breakdown.

“The noise of the truck maybe?” Nelson offered.

“But why so many?” Dawn pressed. “Garforth was supposedly evacuated.

“Seems that they didn’t listen any better than we did in Micklefield,” Nelson tried to joke, but it did not seem to offer much comfort. “We can discuss all this later.” Nelson gave the two women a nudge to the right. “Get through those trees and we will cut across the field.”

The trio had to actually hack a few branches out of the way, but at last they were in a massive farming tract with rows and rows of the domed structures that covered the long furrows that would remain untended—at least for the immediate future. The advantage to the domes was that they had long stretches that the three of them could look down and ensure that they were actually empty of any of the undead. The bad part came when they were deep into one of the several hundred yard long stretches when a group of zombies appeared at the end and turned in their direction.

“You didn’t think that we would get home without killing a few of those bloody bastards, did ya?” Nelson wheezed, obviously out of breath and laboring to keep the pace set by the two smaller women.

It was Dawn that put on a burst of speed just as they closed to within around twenty feet from the five undead that were almost single file ahead of them. Of course, there was not room to go a full two abreast; especially if a weapon was being wielded.

The lead zombie was a man in his late twenties or perhaps early thirties. He was wearing a tattered and bloody rugby jersey and had a nasty chunk taken out of his meaty shoulder. He towered over Dawn by a good six inches and she used it to her advantage as she ducked low and came up with her weapon under the chin of the beefy man. The tip of the blade plunged into the throat just above the Adam’s apple and came out the back of its neck, but was nowhere close to a killing blow.

The zombie reached out with his massive hands and grabbed the woman’s right arm. It brought down its mouth and clamped onto her forearm. Just as it bit down, Nelson swung overhand and brought his blade down onto the crown of the zombie’s head. It dropped as Dawn screamed and staggered back into Nelson creating a domino effect as the pair landed on the ground in a tangled heap; neither able to get free and protect themselves from the next zombie, much less be able to attack.

Nelson felt a foot smash down on his face and then his ribs. There was a wail of fury and the sound of a weapon biting into another skull. He managed to look up and see that it was Niamh standing on his torso; she was wielding a cricket bat that had been modified with what looked like at least three iron spikes down the middle. He tensed his body to offer her as solid of a footing as he could manage.

One by one, the remaining zombies marched to their doom. It wasn’t until the last one fell that he was aware of sobbing. As soon as the lithe Irishwoman stepped down from her perch on his body, he managed to free himself from Dawn and rise to his feet. The woman did not move and simply curled up tighter into a ball and cried all the harder.

“Hey,” Niamh knelt beside the sobbing figure and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, “let’s get you up.”

“Just leave me…better yet, kill me and put me out of my misery so I don’t turn into one of those cursed things. I don’t want to smell like that.”

“Sort of a strange thing to be worried about,” Nelson muttered, slamming his lips shut when Niamh glared up at him.

“Where did it get you?”

“My arm,” Dawn sobbed as she offered up the offending limb.

“Which one?” Niamh asked.

“This one!” Dawn insisted, shaking the extended arm for emphasis.

“Then, shouldn’t there be blood or something?” Nelson asked after exchanging looks with Niamh.

Dawn lifted her head from the ground and then glanced at her arm. She sat up and blinked away the tears and then gently poked at her arm with her other hand. She winced from pain, but then poked it two more times. At last, she tugged up her sleeve to reveal a nasty bruise already forming on her forearm, but there was no indication of any broken skin. She looked back up at the two people who were staring down at her with almost identical expressions of interest.

“I don’t think it got through your leather coat?” Nelson said, his voice rising at the end so that it came out as more of a question.

Dawn tugged the sleeve back down and examined the sleeve of the jacket and gave it a few tugs and pulls for added measure. She looked up again, this time with a smile beaming from her face. Scrambling up, she grabbed first Niamh and then Nelson into a massive hug.

“It didn’t get me!” she shrieked.

“How about if we celebrate this wonderful turn of events when we get out of this place and are safely back in Micklefield,” Nelson suggested. He gave a nod of his head at the next bunch of zombies that had just turned up their aisle; no doubt brought by all the exuberant celebrating that had just taken place.

“We have them coming from both directions,” Niamh gasped, pointing past Nelson and back in the direction they had come from.

There were at least a dozen coming from each end; a significant number above the five they had just managed to barely defeat. With zombies coming from each direction, the trio hunched in close to one another out of initial reflex.

“What the bloody hell are we doing?” Nelson suddenly barked. Using his big, booted foot, he began to kick and stomp the side of the dome to their left until he created a large hole.

A moment later the three were once again running, this time on the inside of the long, tunnel-shaped dome. A few minutes later, they were emerging through some trees and back onto the A656, heading towards Micklefield.

***

Shadiyah watched it all play out. When she heard Caron’s name called, her ears perked up and she actually warred within herself to make her presence known. As soon as the two women emerged from the other house, she realized how it was that she had felt like she recognized the other woman.

She watched them go and was so focused on their escape that she did not pay any attention to the front of her house or the fact that several of the undead were tromping across the yard of the home that she had holed up in. When she heard the sound of glass breaking down below, her head snapped around and she abandoned the window that had provided her with an excellent view of the man and two women as they made a run for it. She moved to the bedroom down the hall and looked out front. What she saw filled her with dread at first; then she was overwhelmed by a sense of calm.

Down below, she was able to see several zombies clambering over each other to get through the large opening created by the busted window. She could hear things being knocked over, crashing, and being trampled underfoot.

They were inside, and in great numbers.

Pulling her scimitar, Shadiyah stepped back out into the hallway and crept to the stairs. Part of her said that there was still a chance that just perhaps the zombies might not come up the stairs. Her more rational mind knew that to be wishful thinking. She peered over the banister and received absolute confirmation that, despite their lack of coordination, the zombies were coming up.

She stepped back and hurried to each window and looked out. They were filing in through a busted section of wooden fence that had separated this home from the neighbor’s and milling about. The zombies in the back yard were not as much of a concern as the fact that the main horde was coming from that general direction and attempting an escape through that break in the fence would be placing her in the heart of the swarm. Out front was now thick with the undead; there were those that had gathered out in the street around the still idling truck, several in the yard, and then the others that were in pursuit of the trio from Micklefield.

Basically, she was trapped.

She rushed back to the stairs and looked down. As she did, the lead zombie looked up at her, opened its mouth, and moaned. This was greeted by a chorus from its brethren. She wondered briefly if zombies had a language. That thought was replaced by the final scene in one of the many remakes of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Was this zombie her very own version of Donald Southerland at the end where he looked at the woman, pointed, and then let loose with that horrific screech?

She would have to fight sooner or later. The question was whether or not she could withstand the onslaught of zombies long enough for this dead tide to wash through and move on. Her mind raced as she considered her chances, and that is when she had another thought; she would need to keep quiet during this entire ordeal. She already had enough proof that the zombies acted on sound.

Stepping back from the top of the stairs, she let the first one close and simply skewered it through the face. She tried to help ease it to the ground, but found that to be a bit too much for her wrists to withstand. Still, when it did hit the ground, the noise was nothing too loud. Just then, the next zombie arrived, a small woman who looked like she had just come from a shift working the till at a supermarket.

On and on it continued, and every chance she got, Shadiyah moved to the stairs and looked down. Each time, she was greeted by more of them coming through. Some continued on into the house, and others came up to her. Twice, she had to change her sword arm due to fatigue, and that became problematic the second time she switched to her left hand simply because her aim was not as sharp, and it happened to coincide with a surge of a few zombies all making it up and over the pile of bodies that she kept hoping would eventually be sufficient enough to act as a barricade.

Looking around, she realized that, at some point, she had retreated all the way to the master bedroom. She shot a glance over her shoulder and looked out the window. Her heart sank as she saw at least thirty or forty zombies still milling about the back yard. Also, the street was still far from clear as even what had to be the tail end of this horde was still too much to consider trying to run through.

Returning her focus to the front, she paused when she noticed three children all standing just inside the door staring back at her. Their eyes gave away the fact that they were zombies, but, unlike their adult counterparts, these three just stood rooted in place; each of them appeared to be studying her, tilting their heads first one way and then the other. An adult version forced its way past and came for her, but even as she stabbed out and took this one down, the trio stayed put.

“What do you want?” she whispered. “Are you waiting for something?”

They continued to remain just inside the door, and once more did not react as yet another pair of adult zombies made their way past. After a couple of quick jabs by Shadiyah, both ended up on the floor at the foot of the large four-post bed that dominated this room.

“Come on!” she almost begged.

The three zombie children simply continued to regard her as if they might be studying her movements. Her brain screamed for her to end them just as she had the others, but their actions made it difficult. The oldest could not be any older than nine or ten. Her left arm was dangling uselessly at her side having been savaged in the attack that had ended her life. The only boy of the three was perhaps five and had most of his nose ripped away as well as a large chunk of his scalp. She imagined the child rushing into the arms of somebody he loved and trusted…only to be betrayed. How horrifying were his last minutes as he quite probably looked up in surprise after his head had been bitten, only to have his attacker clamp down on his little nose and tear it away?

The last child was even more confusing. This toddler was perhaps three and not very steady on her feet. She swayed and wobbled a great deal as she stood with what Shadiyah would assume to be her brother and sister since there did seem to be some resemblance; although that could simply be the fact that they were all displaying a blue-gray skin tone and had the filmed eyes shot full of black tracers. This poor soul was missing her entire right arm. From the looks of things around where that arm would have connected to the shoulder socket, it had been ripped off rather violently.

The toddler would occasionally step forward, but the oldest child and big sister would nudge the thing and moan, causing it to stop and even stagger back a step or two. These reasons, compounded with the simple fact that, despite her knowing that they were zombies, made it extremely difficult for Shadiyah to end them as she had the others.

She did notice that they kept looking to the scimitar she was holding. Risking a peek past them, she saw that the coast was at least temporarily clear as no more zombies had reached the top of the stairs as of yet. Being very careful, she made a show of sheathing her weapon. Once she did, the children now focused solely on her.

“Just go away,” she hissed. This received nothing more than additional tilts back and forth of their heads.

“Shoo!” she tried, making a little wave of her hands to try and ward them off. They didn’t budge.

She repeated the gesture, taking a step in their direction and making that motion with her hands even bigger. It was as if a switch was thrown; in an instant, all three of the zombie children became just zombies. Gone was their hesitation as they stumbled forward, hands out and grasping for her.

Cursing herself for putting away her weapon—they were too close and the space was too confined for her to have a chance to get the scimitar out—she would have to resort to the knife on her belt. Pulling it, she was just able to thrust up and into the gaping hole where the little boy was missing his nose. The zombie dropped, leaving the other two to both reach her at almost the same time.

The toddler was simple to dispatch with a simple kick to the face that sent it flying across the room and crashing into the open door with a loud thud. It was not done, but at least it was out of the fight for the time being. All that remained was the oldest sibling, and she had Shadiyah by the wrist before the woman could re-orient the tip of the knife in order to take it down.

She froze, the horror of what was happening simply overwhelming her senses for just that moment in time where it allowed the girl to lean in and bite down on Shadiyah’s wrist. It was the pain that snapped her back to the situation at hand. With a scream of rage and frustration, she stabbed the girl in the temple and shoved the body away.

Looking down, she could see the perfect set of teeth marks on her wrist, blood already welling up in several of the divots. Whether due to fatigue, or her own imagination, she could swear that she felt the zombie infection taking hold in her body. There was a nasty, sour taste in the back of her mouth and she staggered into the bathroom that sat off of this master bedroom. There was not an abundance of light, but there was enough. She could already see the capillaries in her eyes beginning to darken.

“So this is how it happens,” she said to the reflection in the mirror.

Turning, she saw the toddler making its way to its feet with unsteady jerks, wobbles, and fits. She simply shoved it aside as she walked past. She reached the stairs and was amazed to find it still empty of anymore of the walking dead. She made her way down and stepped outside after driving the knife she still carried into the eye socket of the zombie that had turned around at her arrival and tried to come back at her. It had emerged from the arch that led to the living room where a few more of its brethren were roaming about, bumping into things, and causing a surprising amount of damage and destruction; tables were overturned, pictures knocked from the walls, and the contents of shelves sent tumbling to the floor.

She stepped outside and pushed away a zombie that was just reaching the doorway and about to enter the house. It fell back into some shrubs and all but its feet vanished. The image of the zombie’s two legs jutting up from the leafy bush made Shadiyah laugh. That sound caused more of the nearby undead to stop, turn, and re-orient on this new sound.

It was at that moment that she realized she did not want to be torn apart by these things. She recalled the screams and knew very well that she had no desire to experience such pain. Breaking into a run, she bee-lined for the still idling truck that had acted as the dinner bell. She had to shove the zombies that were still gathered around the cab. Somehow, one of the cursed things had even managed to climb inside. She caught the woman by the ankle, dragged her back, sending her tumbling to the ground and then climbed in and slammed the door.

Sitting back in the driver’s seat, she stared out as several more of the undead gathered around and began to pound, paw, and try to bite through the doors of the truck. Her eyes were growing heavy and she considered the possibility of maybe slashing her wrists. In the end, she simply decided to sit back and stare up at the sky. At some point, her head lolled to the side and before her eyes closed, she saw the toddler stumble through the doorway of the house and into the yard.

“Stupid baby,” she slurred.

With those final words, she let her eyes shut. She twitched a few times and then was still. Sometime later, the thing that used to be Shadiyah opened her dead eyes. The truck had expended its fuel and was now nothing more than a hulk of metal with no more life than the creature in the cab.

***

“I think he is waking up,” Annie said with an exaggerated whisper that was almost louder than her normal talking voice.

“What the…” Simon managed before breaking into a fit of coughing.

“We thought we lost you,” a familiar male voice said, a large hand coming to rest on Simon’s shoulder.

Opening his eyes, Simon Wood was more than a little surprised to see Mrs. Raye, Annie, Geoff, and a woman he did not recognize standing around his bed. He shifted a little and felt an immediate pain in his gut that warned him to avoid further exertion. Lying back, he sighed and was very aware that even that simple action was painful.

“Shadiyah?” The name came out as a question. The thing was, he wasn’t even sure what question he was asking or what answer might make him feel better.

“She took off,” Mrs. Raye answered. “After she stabbed you, Caron said that she ran like the devil himself was chasing her. I doubt we will ever see her again.”

“But…” Once again, he let whatever he was about to say just slide off his mind and vanish into the ether.

Perhaps it was for the best if she was never seen or heard from again. After all, she had murdered two of the citizens of the town that he had been asked to watch over as constable. She had tried to kill him. Perhaps she was truly broken beyond repair.

“How long?” he asked once he had taken a sip of water to wash out the dryness that made his throat burn and cause his tongue to feel as if it might be three times its normal size.

“Two days,” Mrs. Raye answered. “We have had somebody with you around the clock.”

He decided not to ask what all that had entailed. Not that he was overly modest, but even in his current state, he did not necessarily want the knowledge of his healed bite to be made public.

“I hand-picked your team,” Mrs. Raye said, seeming to read his thoughts. “However, I think we can take the secret from the closet and put it on display. You are not the only one. With Caron showing the immunity as well, people are actually getting hope that we may well survive this whole thing. Also, it will take away the only chip that the doctor has in his bag in his apparent desire to be selected as the person to assume the role of the village leader.”

“Are we really stuck on petty crap like that?” Simon groaned as he shifted just enough to relieve some of his weight from the left side of his rear end that felt like it might be bruised from him having lain flat on his back for so long.

“It would seem so,” another voice chimed as Nelson walked in.

Simon did not know the man all that well, but he could tell that something had the man bothered. He was scowling deeper than usual, and he had bags under his eyes indicating that he had not been sleeping well.

“Is that group still carrying on about the truck?” Mrs. Raye snapped, the agitation clear in her voice. Nelson did not say a word, and Simon was very lost. When Mrs. Raye continued, he was even more perplexed. “Then tell them to go retrieve that damn thing themselves.”

“Like hell I will,” Nelson snorted. “And that is actually why I stopped in, although it is good to see you are back among the living.” He gave a nod to Simon with that last comment. “I am grabbing my team and we are returning. I have to believe that we flushed most of the damned zombies out of that area. A can of petrol should do well enough to get us back. If possible, we will return with a nice load of supplies.”

“Do you really think that is a wise idea?” Geoff asked.

“I agree with him,” the strange woman that Simon did not know offered.

“Simon, this is Niamh. She was the one sitting with you when you stirred,” Mrs. Raye said by way of introduction.

“Great, now, can somebody let me know what the hell it is you are all carrying on about?”

Nelson gave a rundown of the mission. He explained how it seemed very likely that the noise is what brought the zombies from all over the neighborhood. It was his theory that they would have moved on by now, especially since the truck had to have an empty tank.

“And you want to go back there?” Simon managed.

“We will just pop into a few more houses. They can’t all be emptied out like those first couple,” Nelson replied.

“Sounds like a solid idea to me,” Simon agreed with a nod.

“Well then, good luck and hurry back.” Mrs. Raye stood up and opened the dresser beside the bed where Simon had been confined the past couple of days. “But I want you to take this.”

She showed Nelson the pistol and went through the procedures on how it worked. The man accepted the weapon and turned to Niamh, giving her a nod to indicate that it was time to go.

A moment later, Simon had drifted back to an uneasy sleep. He was haunted by nightmares of Shadiyah. He awoke once and decided that he would not be able to have any peace until this situation was dealt with once and for all. As soon as he was able, he would venture out and hunt for the woman. The only thing he was not sure of was what he would do when he found her.

17

Closure

Nelson raised a hand to signal the group to stop. They were just emerging from the trees that lined the A642, better known to the locals as Aberford Road. They had cut across the fields with the long domes over the rows and found it a much easier trip than last time as most of the zombies had apparently moved on; the key to that being most…not all. They had to cut down at least two dozen as they passed through.

“What is going on?” Melena had asked after they finished with a foursome of walkers just as they reached the far side of the field.

“No idea,” Nelson said with a shrug and a shake of the head. “Unfortunately, I think this is our fault. Mine if we are being really specific. I’m the one who thought a big truck rumbling into the neighborhood was a good idea.”

Nelson, Melena, Dawn, Niamh, and Caron hunched down close together in the tall weeds and shrubbery that grew alongside the road. Just to their left was the entrance to Cedar Ridge. Directly across the road from that entrance was the charred remains of what looked to have been a rather nice home. Tendrils of smoke still leaked skyward from the debris like gray tears of mourning.

“Those aren’t zombies,” Niamh pointed out the obvious.

“They are going in,” Dawn said, anxiety straining her voice and making it almost sound mousy. The blade she pulled as she spoke stood in stark contrast to that tone and she even started to move forward until Nelson grabbed her arm.

“And that matters why?” Nelson asked, turning to face the women. “Do you think those eight or nine people can carry away everything in the whole neighborhood? Haven’t we had enough of going after each other? If the living don’t get over their old ways, we will end up finishing what the zombies have started.”

“But…” Dawn began, and then let out a long exhale and relaxed.

“Ideally, we should be able to talk to those people, tell them about our place, and bring them in. I honestly believe our best chance at surviving this bloody nightmare is to bring in as many people as we can.” Nelson slid his own blade into its sheath and then stood up. “You all stay out of sight. I will approach these people. If it goes bad, forget the run and return home. Let Geoff know what happened.”

“You really think going out there alone is such a good idea?” Niamh whispered.

“Look, I will be totally honest with you ladies.” Nelson actually blushed as he spoke. “Before all this nonsense happened, I used to read this zombie comic book. In it, terrible things were always happening to the women. I’m not saying that there is a lick of truth to that bloody thing, but I just want to be extra careful. Yeah?”

“Fair enough,” Melena finally said after looking from one of her cohorts to the other and receiving a nod of acceptance.

With that, Nelson started across the road and into Cedar Ridge. He was just abreast of the first house when he spied the group. Now that he could really see them, he was able to count nine individuals. They were all gathered around the truck, staring and pointing.

Nelson had to squint a bit, but he was eventually able to make out the form of a zombie in the cab sitting behind the wheel. He had no idea how that had happened. However, that was not the strangest thing, and also not what was receiving a majority of the attention by the group. Sitting right by the front wheel was a tiny figure. It was obviously a very small child, and also undoubtedly a zombie; it appeared to be missing the entire right arm. Only, this thing continued to just sit and seemingly stare at the group gathered around it.

As of yet, the group had still not noticed him. Nelson took a few more steps closer and then halted. He debated on whether or not to call out, and was still having an inner monolog on the situation when one of the group stood up straight and spotted him.

While it was too far away to hear anything specific, the urgency of a warning was evident. Also, the activity seemed to be enough for the zombie child as it began to climb to its feet. The group seemed confused for a moment and some of them started towards him, a few began to retreat, and the rest turned their attention to the zombie toddler and made short work of it.

“I’m not looking for trouble,” Nelson called, raising his hands and trying to show that he was not a threat.

“Neither are we, mate,” one of the people called in reply.

The man motioned for the others to stay put and continued towards Nelson. He also made a display of keeping his hands out wide with no weapon as he approached.

“A few of us are just out trying to get some food. Also, we got a man hurt. The fool fell off a balcony.” The man stopped about five feet away from Nelson.

“How did that happen?” Nelson asked, only moderately curious. In reality, he was trying to get a feel for this man.

“We found a real posh house, yeah? And so Miller decides to shimmy up a tree and enter from upstairs, saying that if there are zombies inside, they will probably be downstairs. He gets up and has one leg over when this lady zed crashed through the french doors and scares the crap out of Miller. Seriously, the man messed his trousers. Anyway, he landed badly and his leg broke ugly. We been trying to figure out how to set it, but anytime somebody even touches him, he screams and threatens to kill them.”

By now, the rest of the group had come up and stood just a few feet behind this man. A few still had their weapons drawn, but they were also the ones looking around for any approaching zombies that might have been drawn to the scene. Plus, the female zombie in the truck was slapping and actually trying to bite through the glass.

“Well, I can’t make any promises, but we are securing Micklefield…at least Old Mick. We still got room, and I imagine that if you spoke to our vicar and our constable, they would be happy to bring you and your people in. We even have two real doctors.” Nelson was not entirely sure that he should be making such an offer, but if he wanted to be a good guy in this hell, then he figured he was doing the right thing.

“Maybe you could bring your doc to where we are staying?” the man asked.

“Yeah, that is probably not going to happen. We don’t let the doc wander around outside the containment. Worth his weight in gold, he is.” Nelson jumped as Melena and the other women emerged from behind the brick entry wall. “We will be more than happy to see your man, but it happens in Mick or not at all.”

“Oh, my God,” Caron gasped, shoving her way past the others and running to the truck. She climbed up on the step on the driver’s side and put a hand to the glass. The zombie turned to her and pressed its face to where the hand was and gnawed impotently. “It’s Shadiyah,” Caron managed around the tears that were welling in her eyes.

“Bloody hell,” Nelson edged around the strangers and came to the truck. “Let her out.”

“What!” came from almost everybody gathered.

“I don’t mean to point out something obvious,” the man Nelson had been speaking to said as he came up to the truck, “but she can’t do any harm locked in there.”

“Is that how you would want people to act if it was you?” Caron snarled as she spun on the man so fast that he stumbled back a few feet and actually went for his weapon.

“Pardon me,” the man replied with a cool tone that edged on anger, “but if I become one of those bloody biters, I’ll be dead and it won’t matter.”

“So you are okay with wandering the earth as one of them?” Caron jumped down to the street, hiking a thumb over her shoulder at Shadiyah’s zombie.

“Sorry,” the man said, shrugging his shoulder. “Dead is dead and I won’t know the difference. Never understood the whole emotional deal that people seem to have when a loved one turns.” The man was silent for a moment as if he were considering something, then he continued. “I lost my Carol early on. She came home with a bite on her arm. Two days later, she gave up the ghost. The thing that sat up in that bed was not her. I know this because I tried to talk to her, show her pictures of her cat. She loved that bloody thing more than me. And you know what I saw in her eyes?” He paused, his gaze sweeping Nelson and Caron. “Nothing…that’s what. Not a bloody thing. That wasn’t my girl, that was just a thing…a monster.”

“So you just left her?” Caron asked.

“Shut the door and went looking for a safe place when the BBC News told us to seek shelter. That was a terrible idea. So many people that had been bitten by those things and then they turned and the shelter was tits up. I met up with a few blokes and we were doing okay for a couple of days until one of ‘em says he knows a place, yeah? So we follow and he leads us to this little group of flats. The short of it was that he was leading us back to his home so he could end his wife and kids. The bloody prick didn’t even bother to tell us that the kids were both inside. The little ones are tricky…they hide. One of ‘em damn near got me when it came out from the kitchen just as I was going in. I was the only one to get out. Lost the rest just because some idiot wanted to end the suffering or some such nonsense. They ain’t suffering…they’re dead.”

Caron looked up at Shadiyah. She turned back to the man. “I’m sorry about what happened to you, but I know she would not want to be one of those things. She wouldn’t want to hurt anybody.”

Caron walked up to the truck and opened the door. The zombie version of Shadiyah tumbled out gracelessly and landed on her face with a wet splat. Raising its head, the zombie opened its mouth and groaned, low and guttural. Before it could recover, Caron moved in with her knife and plunged it into the back of the woman’s head.

“I am sorry,” she whispered as she rose, leaving the knife jutting from the back of the mess of dark hair.

“So,” Melena stepped up, taking Caron by the hand and then facing the group of strangers, “will you be joining us?”

“Give us a minute,” the man said. He motioned his people to join him across the street.

Nelson brought his own group in close. Caron kept glancing over her shoulder at Shadiyah’s corpse. At last, she whispered, “Can we bury her before we go?”

“I don’t see why not,” Nelson answered after seeing the nods from the others. “As long as we’re not being chased by another mob of zombies, I think we can take the time. In fact, why don’t you find a place while we wait?”

“Actually, I already know where.” She pointed to a house just up the street. A few evergreen shrubs were planted in the space between two driveways. A row of solar-powered lights were placed around the edges.

“So,” the man stepped away from his group, gave one final look over his shoulder as if he wanted one more confirmation in the form of the nodding heads he received, “I think we are going to decline. We have a nice little group, and we don’t plan on staying here. We are going to see about heading to the coast and maybe finding a little island.”

“Not a bad plan,” Nelson admitted. “We wish you luck. And I think there is plenty here for everybody, so can we agree that both of our groups can scavenge here?”

“Seems proper,” the man replied with a nod. “We’ll stick to this side of the street and leave that side to you. That will keep us from stumbling over each other.”

“Agreed.” With that, Nelson and his group went to a house and began loading up their packs.

After doing a walkthrough of a dozen homes, it was decided that they would need to arrange a constant rotation of groups to start emptying the place out. Before they returned home, they found a shovel and buried Shadiyah. By the time they were ready to head back, the shadows were growing long. The solar powered lights winked on and lit up the one shrub that they had replaced in the center of where they had buried the body.

“Poor girl,” Caron whispered as she knelt beside the grave, “you just weren’t meant for this world. I hope you have peace now.”

***

Simon knelt beside the mound of dirt marked with a small shrub and laid some flowers that Melena had picked during the walk to Shadiyah’s grave site. It had taken him almost two months to regain his health to the point where he could join the teams that were doing a fine job of emptying out the neighborhood of Cedar Ridge.

The other group had moved on after only three days when the man who had fallen from the balcony finally died from an infection that festered in his injury. Their forays for supplies had hardly made a dent in the hundreds of homes that waited to be emptied.

One of the large carts rumbled past, four people hitched to it almost like horses. It had been decided that just making these runs with packs would be useless. If they were going to try and build a good supply base, they needed to be able to move things in large quantities…without the noise generated by a motor vehicle.

“Simon?” Dawn called as she jogged up.

“Yeah?” The man stood and wiped the lone tear that had welled up in his eye.

“Nelson says there is a large mob of zombies coming. We need to get the team ready and see if this works.”

“How big?”

“At least a thousand.”

“Tell him to send them.”

Dawn turned and jogged away. Simon headed over to the large building and arrived just as the roll-up doors were opening. Melena was waiting for him, but she was hopping back and forth with excitement.

“This is either going to be the most amazing thing ever, or it will end very poorly,” the woman said by way of greeting.

Simon stepped into the large, wide open bay and shook his head as he watched six people in some serious protective gear as they climbed into the assorted racecars. He had to admit, while certainly a very unorthodox idea, he was excited to see it put into action.

One by one, the cars turned over, their engines coming to life with amazing roars and growls. The vehicles started out of the huge garage and then made a right and then hooked left onto Aberford Road.

Simon made his way up the ladder that led to the roof of the huge building. From there, he could look out at the stretch of wide open fields to the west. Sure enough, making its way across one such field was what had to be at least a thousand of the walking dead. They were all spread out, but the main body was moving in his general direction.

With a scream of high-performance engines, six of the racecars that were housed in the garage of this massive building tore up the road. There was a long moment where Simon was afraid that the whole plan was a bust. Maybe the engines whined at such a high frequency that the zombies did not detect them. Hell, what did anybody really know about the walking dead other than they ate people?

Then, there was a ripple in the massive horde as they began to pause and then re-orient on this new stimulus. It was working!

“Son of a bitch,” Nelson exclaimed, slapping Simon so hard on the back that the man nearly collapsed from coughing.

While he was able to make the journey to see this event, he was still far from fully recovered, and that slap to the back sent a shockwave of pain through his body. He dropped to his knees, hacking and coughing, but trying to cover his mouth and keep it quiet; the last thing he wanted to do was be a catalyst for bringing the zombies back to them.

“Let’s get you back to Micklefield,” Caron urged, slipping his arm around her shoulders and guiding him away from the roof’s edge. “You’ve seen what you needed to see.”

As they made their way back home, Simon could not help but cast one more glance at a small and unremarkable mound of dirt with a single shrub in the middle. For a brief second or two, his mind raced with all the possible ways that he could have done things differently and saved Shadiyah.

By the time he was back home and slipping in between the sheets of his bed, he had come to terms with things. He could not save everybody. That was a lesson that he would need to keep in the forefront of his mind for the rest of his life. The facts were that this was a new world, and the old rules no longer applied. While he would not actively do anything to “cull the herd” when it came to the living, he would accept that some people would slip through his fingers.

When he drifted off to sleep, it was a peaceful slumber. Not a single nightmare came to plague him. He would remember that sleep for a long time. Yes, there would be other nights where he would sleep and not wake up with horrible visions still fresh in his mind, but this was the first time since Miranda’s death.

For the next few months, they used those screaming racecars to lure away any of the larger mobs of zombies that were spotted by the scouting pickets. They eventually stopped when one of the roving patrols returned with horrifying news.

While they had managed to keep the zombies from their own front steps, they had never considered that they might be sending them to somebody else. The scouting team that returned with the news guessed that the community had maybe numbered around fifty or so individuals. They had staked out a massive farm in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately, they had underestimated or simply not considered what a large number of the walking dead could do; they had nothing more than the barbed wire fence as their protection and it had failed miserably against the press of a thousand bodies that don’t apparently feel pain.

***

The days passed and the slow, tedious task of creating a five foot wide, eight foot deep trench along the border of Old Micklefield continued along with a fence structure that tilted out over the trench at an angle that made it terribly difficult for the living to breach. Towers were built every fifty yards and each was equipped with a heavy bell as well as a series of flags that were all given a meaning that the entire community was drilled on until everybody had them committed to memory.

By the time the summer was in full effect, the scavenging runs were called off. Teams were having to venture farther and farther out with the returns diminishing and the risks increasing. The dead were still a massive problem; in addition, there were hundreds if not thousands of corpses strewn about and rotting. That was creating a cesspool of disease not to mention all the vermin it attracted.

One of the most horrific finds was a pack of dogs that had somehow all turned. The hypothesis was that they simply began to starve and had no choice but to turn to the dead and the undead for their source of food. The first team that encountered the zombie dogs lost seven of their nine-person team. The dogs, while in zombie form, still operated on a sort of pack instinct and managed to trap the team in a dilapidated house by herding them to what the survivors insisted was a pre-determined destination.

If the walking dead, zombie dogs, and the threat of deadly disease were not bad enough, there seemed to be a disproportionate number of human survivors that took advantage of the chaos and loss of any sort of society structure to prey on their fellow men and women. It was Mrs. Raye who finally proposed the edict that women be removed from the scavenging teams indefinitely. Simon was surprised that the measure barely passed. He certainly understood the women who wanted to contribute, but there was a real threat to their safety on the other side of their protective barricades.

And then there was the problem of immunity. Eventually, Simon made it known to everybody that he had been bitten and survived. He and Caron had stood before the entire population at a town gathering and made the announcement. It was immediately suggested that he offer up blood or whatever Dr. Kincaide or Dr. Asan might require if it meant a possible cure or even an inoculation. Simon agreed to blood and a number of tests, but after several weeks of painful visits and nothing to show for it, both doctors stated that there was simply no way to do the sort of research they needed without power.

Slowly, more survivors began to drift in and seek refuge in the tiny village of Micklefield. By the time summer began to give over to fall, plans were being made to reclaim New Micklefield and re-annex it with Old Micklefield. Many came in with horrific tales of the living and the dead.

The day that hit the community the hardest was when a handful of survivors from London arrived and told of how the city was a total loss. While it had certainly been speculated, it was another thing entirely to get confirmation.

That night, everybody gathered in the small village green and lit candles while observing a moment of silence. It was that day that most of the citizens of Micklefield accepted that this was going to be their new reality. Any hopes of help or the restoration of their country was gone.

It was that realization that was blamed for the rash of suicides which followed over the next several days. Yet, those deaths were quickly mourned and then moved on from as survivors came in singles, pairs, and even a group of twenty-seven. That group was greeted with the most excitement as they brought in nine children between the ages of six and eleven. Annie was even given the task of showing the shell-shocked children around and helping them ease into everyday life.

As autumn gave way to winter, a new realization came. It was almost impossible to stay warm. No matter what was done, everybody suffered from a constant feeling of cold, wet misery. It was toughest on the children and the few elderly that had managed to make it to this point. Of the three hundred and forty-three people that were part of the community as of Christmas morning, sixty-two would be dead from flu or just plain exposure by the time the first buds of spring appeared.

Over half that survived suffered varying degrees of frostbite, and many people were minus a finger or a few toes. Dr. Asan and Dr. Kincaide were teaching a handful of the citizens basic medicine as well how to amputate frostbitten or gangrenous digits. The problem came when they ran out of the finite supply of anesthesia and pain medication.

However, the bigger problem came in how poorly the various garden starts that they had tried to save for the upcoming planting season fared. Simon felt more than just a little guilty in his sense of relief over their casualties. They would have had no way to feed the number of people who were part of the community prior to that Christmas.

With travel once again something that could be accomplished without having to add weather to the concerns of zombies and human raiders, teams were sent with greenhouse construction as a priority. Additionally, a dozen large domed fire pits were constructed with a crude series of ductworks that would hopefully provide warmth the following winter.

By the time the gardens were planted in the fields, it became clear that the flood of survivors they experienced the previous year was a thing of the past. However, there were occasional arrivals of people who were simply “passing through” or actually just searching the countryside, clinging to the desperate hope that they might find a lost loved one. Most brought an abundance of bad news including a sect that was hunting the immune with a zealousness that was likened to the era of the witch trials in colonial Salem.

However, not everything was bleak. As fear lessened and the closeness of the community kindled such superfluous things as romance, Simon and Dr. Wamil Asan were soon a cause for celebration as well as a source of discovery.

Simon’s romance was not the only one to bloom. However, one romance in particular went so bad so fast that it left the entire community reeling for quite some time. After a thorough investigation, one of the community’s couples actually provided a lot of information in their tragedy.

The pair in question had one thing in common with Simon and Wamil; the woman in the relationship had survived a bite. That blessing turned into a curse when she transmitted the catalyst that turned her lover into one of the infected. The first night they were intimate, the man woke and went to the bathroom where he discovered the black tracers in his eyes. After strangling the woman, he hung himself.

It was Nelson’s security team that smelled the distinct stench of the undead and entered the house to discover the woman in the bedroom. Of course she had turned shortly after dying which is what led to Dr. Kincaide and Dr. Asan hypothesizing that the infection remained in the person who proved immune to the bite. Upon death, whatever was causing people to turn would become active.

The disease could be passed on through fluid exchange. Simon and Wamil waited for almost three weeks to see if she would change. When she didn’t, the guess was that she shared in the same immunity that Simon possessed. She declined to test the theory by allowing an actual zombie to bite her.

Three months later, when Caron became involved in a romance with a man who had lost three of his fingers to a zombie early on, the conclusion about those who had been bitten and proved immune being able to engage in physical relationships without concern were all but confirmed.

Of course the other side of the conversation came from those who were not sure of their status, and it was determined that all who were known to be immune had to declare it. Physical examinations of the entire population ensued and three individuals who had attempted to hide their status were banished from Micklefield. There was even talk of making all those who were known to be immune relocate immediately to New Micklefield; however, Geoff and Simon were eventually able to quell those demands.

By the first snowfall of the second winter, Micklefield was almost thriving. Five greenhouses were given top priority, and another surprise came when wild game apparently bounced back to a state of abundance that kept the community extremely well fed over an even harsher winter than the one before. The long, cold nights also gave the people of Micklefield one more cause to celebrate when the second spring arrived.

Eleven women were visibly pregnant.

Many commented that it was like seeing those first shoots of grass poking through the snow. Life was finding a way, and just maybe there was reason to hope that humanity might endure.

Epilogue:

Happily Ever After?

Simon stood on the platform and looked out across the trench at the approaching horde. By his best guess, there had to be over ten thousand. This was the second such mob in the past three weeks. He looked back and saw the people of Micklefield heading to their positions in response to the ringing of the bells at the church that signaled an attack.

“Good thing we extended and deepened that trench,” Nelson huffed as he climbed the ladder and joined Simon on the platform.

“Yeah, but I am starting to wonder how many more of these we can endure.” Simon began to stretch out his arms, making circles. He knew that his shoulders were going to be very sore by the end of the day.

“Da!” a tiny voice called from down below the catwalk.

Looking over the edge, Simon saw Wamil with two-year-old Elizabeth on her hip. The little girl’s black hair fluttered in the gentle breeze of the day. As soon as she saw her daddy, she reached out for him.

“Da, up!” the little girl insisted.

“Not right now, little one,” Simon answered with a shake of his head. “You have to stay with mommy for a while. Daddy has work to do.”

“Mroarrrr?” the girl mewled in a surprisingly good impersonation of a zombie. She strained to look over her mother’s shoulder after Wamil kissed Simon on the cheek and headed to her station to prepare and receive any of the injured that might occur during the coming fight.

“Yep,” Nelson chuckled, “that’s your daughter.”

“Yesterday she was having her teddy bear pretending to eat her other dolls,” Simon muttered. “I have a hard time believing that is the extent of the trauma she endured.”

He was referring to an incident three weeks ago when a mob almost the size of this one managed to breach a section of the community’s defenses. It was like watching footage of a dam bursting. There was this small trickle at first, and then the section of wall collapsed and the undead poured in through the hole in a torrent. Several of them managed to get all the way to the safety square.

The safety square was a fall back location of last resort. It was made from old train cars; more precisely, the sides of the train cars that were cut away and used to create an eighty-by-eighty square that housed the entrance to the underground bunker. It was a double failsafe that had taken most of a year to complete. They actually thought that it would be a defense against the living.

When the zombies broke through, a few of the people who were running for the doors of the sanctuary got pulled down. Against protocol, the people manning the door ran out to try and help. Of course they were pulled down as well, and the zombies were soon within the enclosure.

Elizabeth had been set inside the door by Wamil who went to shut the door despite the screams of protest from some of the others who were insisting on sending out even more people to try and help the growing number of casualties. Apparently the little girl had a perfect view of the carnage.

“Has everybody been briefed and reminded about the fallback zone?” Simon asked as Nelson took his spot on the wall.

“At least a dozen times,” the man confirmed.

“I sure hope that patchwork repair we did on that section of the wall holds up better,” Simon said between clenched teeth as he readied himself for the coming wall of undeath.

“Is it me, or are they starting to lose their stink?” Nelson chirped as he pulled his long staff from his shoulder and removed the protective tips that covered both ends where the steel spike tips were mounted.

“It’s just you,” Melena said from her spot in the tower on the right where she began to prime the pump that would send a mist of treated oil into the trench once the zombies began to fill it.

“You think this will ever end?” Dawn called from the tower on the left.

“Well, last I heard before the zombie uprising, we had a total of around fifty million people. I figure this will probably last for a while,” Simon called back.

“So basically we will be fighting zombies for the rest of our lives?” Caron groaned. “That sure as hell isn’t how any of the zombie pictures ended.”

“You’re right,” Simon quipped. “They usually ended with the last few people being overrun and wiped out.”

“Why would anybody want to watch something so depressing?” Niamh grumbled as she opened her case of bolts and readied her crossbow.

“How would you end a zombie movie?” Nelson asked with a gruff chuckle as he headed out on the catwalk that would put him above the leading edge of the zombies.

“And they lived happily ever after!” Melena crowed.

A moment with the author…

So, here we go again. A new entry in the DEAD: Snapshot—{insert town here} collection. It was high time that I visited Las Vegas, Nevada. The thing is, I went into this one with an agenda. For the first time, this story will become a major part (eventually) of a storyline in the New DEAD series. Consider it a VERY long character introduction.

One of my favorite parts about writing these little tales of the apocalypse is when an inspiration comes long that excites me. I won’t give anything away, but this group of individuals that you are about to meet will be back—in some manner—in the ongoing adventures of Evan Berry. I imagine that will happen around book 5 or 6, but I am looking forward to it.

The thing about this book that might be different is that I came into it with the idea that I wanted to create a “villain” and let the reader see the world through his/her eyes. It is important to realize that “bad guys” (or gals) do not see themselves as such. Think about it…if you are a fan of The Walking Dead, then picture being the people who encounter Rick and his group. Hate Negan all you like, but that is a fight Rick and his people started.

So what motivates the mind of the supposed bad guy in a story? I believe that many of them are guided by things that drive almost everybody…the big exception is that they often operate at the expense of others.

Is Joel bad…or misunderstood? That is the question you should ask as you go along. Are his rules and “laws” something terrible? Or is it simply practical? Remember, there are many cultures in this world that do things we don’t understand or accept. The reason? Because it is different from the norm we have decided is acceptable. Different is always wrong…it is simply different.

Before you get too carried away, YES, I agree that there is real evil out there. I also believe that an apocalypse will bring out the worst in humanity. There will be good, but selfishness is just easier for many.

When I started this particular story, I had some concerns about the fact that this was not really about zombies. Granted, I try to make that the case with all my stories, but I went into this one with the mindset that I wanted to focus on the thought process behind a person who I would eventually like to bring back into my proper series as a foil for Evan.

I hope you go into this with an open mind. It is a little different for me and I know how much I hate change, so I guess I push that onto the reader. (That would be you.)

Some thanks, as always, go out here. To my Beta Team, you all are priceless. To my real-life friends, Joel and Wanda, thank you for being so gracious and generous. Spending that time with you is still a very fond memory. I can’t think of anybody else I would have enjoyed hanging out in Las Vegas with AWAY from the Strip. As always, my wife, Denise. I couldn’t do this with anybody else, mostly because I am intolerable when I write.

To all of you who have hung with me this long, thanks so much. This is still so surreal to see my books selling to people all over the world. I honestly believed my audience would be a few friends and family.

What happens here, stays here.

TW Brown

June 2017

To Wanda and Joel

Contents

1969

Today

Grounded in the Present

Field Test

“I sentence you to the darkness.”

Into the Heart of Darkness

Grand Ideas

The First Outpost

Killing

Who Lives and Who Dies

Down the Strip

Battle Ready

Pros Versus Joes

Company

1

1969

Joel Landon rolled onto his side and tried to blink the mud from his eyes. As soon as he did, he wished he hadn’t. Lying just a few feet away, staring back at him with dead, expressionless eyes was his best friend, Jake Wilcox—or at least what was left of him.

Jake’s body was a twisted, mangled mess. His left arm was missing, as were both his legs. His face was a mask of surprise which had likely been the feeling Jake experienced just before his death.

Joel had been the lucky one of the two if you could call him that. The shell that had blown his friend to bits had only sent a few smaller bits of white-hot shrapnel hurtling at him and into his flesh. One such piece was in his right side. It burned something fierce and still felt hot despite the fact that he was sprawled on his belly in this cursed rice paddy.

His ears were still ringing, but he was sure he could hear the tinny sound of voices. Their cadence gave them away. They were not his fellow platoon members. They were VC, and they were looking for survivors.

Everybody had heard stories of what was happening to Americans unfortunate enough to be captured by Charlie. There was no way in hell he would allow himself to be captured.

In the blast, Joel had lost his weapon. It was too dark and murky for him to spot his M-16 and he didn’t want to give himself away by sloshing around in an attempt to find it. His hands did a quick pat down. He felt his lips pull back in a sneer when they found the collapsible shovel dangling from his patrol ruck. It wasn’t his beloved bayonet, but it would do in a pinch.

He pulled it free and unfolded the shovel’s blade from the stock. He felt more than heard it lock into place and then he closed his eyes to slits as he waited.

Charlie was obviously feeling confident, Joel mused inwardly as he waited. He could hear them approaching. There would be a few gentle splashes, and then a meaty sound as they stabbed the corpses of his obliterated platoon…his brothers.

A surge of anger tried to cloud his mind at the thought of all the men he’d come to know these past months, most now lying dead in the waters of this godforsaken rice paddy. They hadn’t died in a firefight. No, these men had died because some dumbass had either given or implemented the wrong coordinates. The shell that had ripped his friends to shreds was American-made and fired.

A shadow dimmed the little bit of light seeping through his slitted eyelids and announced the arrival of the enemy. He heard the whispering voices but could not tell how many there were. The water sloshed and then there was a split second of silence before the sound of a bayonet being plunged into a body reached his ears. It was quickly followed by evil tittering and another stabbing sound. One of them was sticking Jake’s decimated corpse.

Those bastards are gonna pay, Joel vowed, his hands clenching the shovel handle tightly in anticipation.

He allowed his eyelids to open just the slightest fraction. He could see three dark figures crowded around the body of his friend. He and Jake had enlisted together. It had been Joel who convinced his best friend since grade school that they would be fine if they joined the army.

“We’ll be able to have each other’s backs,” Joel said as Jake signed his enlistment papers.

Now, Jake was being turned into a human pincushion. Joel wanted to scream. He wanted to roar a challenge to the inhuman bastards defiling the corpse of his best friend. But he knew better. His advantage would be in having the element of surprise. They would come over to him expecting just another dead body, and he would come at them with everything he had left.

Adrenaline was a precious commodity in the jungle. If you didn’t learn to control it, you used it all up and then crashed with a fight still raging around you. That was a sure-fire way to get a ticket home in a metal box…if there was anything left to send home.

Joel managed to keep his breathing very low and slow. He barely caused a ripple on the water’s surface as he exhaled. The water was muddy, but if it had been crystal clear, there would be plenty of blood to indicate that he’d been hurt badly.

Sploosh. Squelch.

They were coming. He could hear their feet pulling free of the thick muck of the paddy. Each time a foot broke the surface of the water. He could hear the slightest splash. The untrained ear would miss it. Hell, eight months ago, he wouldn’t have noticed a thing. Charlie was quiet. He was in his environment.

The dark stalk of a leg stopped right beside his head. He felt a foot nudge him. Then another set of legs arrived beside the first and he heard whispering in the rapid tongue of the VC.

He tensed his body and did a quick mental review of his attack. He knew that it was likely he would die here and now, but that was preferable to being either taken prisoner or being stabbed to death as he did nothing to try and save his own ass.

“God helps those that help themselves.” If his mom said it once, she’d said it a thousand times during his childhood.

His parents grew up during the Great Depression. They’d known hunger and discomfort on a level that he could not begin to imagine. But they’d both made it through to the other side and given Joel a loving home. He hadn’t been the richest kid on the block, but he had never known a day of want. Both of his parents worked hard as providers in a time when women were expected to stay home and raise their children.

They had instilled their work ethic in him at an early age. They were not shy about a butt whipping if he didn’t do as he was told. Eventually, he didn’t need to be told. He knew what needed to be done, and if he saw something that wasn’t tasked to him but needed doing, he did that as well.

He learned how to play chess at age four from his mom. He didn’t win his first game until he was seventeen. Over the years, he learned how to plan. He learned how to look five, ten, even twenty steps ahead and take in all the variables that might arise to knock him off track.

It was that part of his mind that went through the calculations of what needed to happen to give Joel even the slightest chance of coming away from this alive. It was that part of his mind that showed him the likelihood that he was already in his grave.

Clearing his mind of everything, Joel acted. Planting one hand firmly in the muck, he shoved himself over and into the legs of the enemy still foolishly engaged in conversation over what they had mistakenly assumed to be just another dead American soldier.

His body registered a spike of pain in his side, but he compartmentalized it and continued his attempt at overtaking the surprised VC regulars. From his back, he whipped his legs like the tail of a scorpion and took the second man out at the ankles.

Pushing himself to his feet, Joel emerged from the muck of the rice paddy like a ferocious animal. The roar that accompanied him only added to the effect. Lashing out with his shovel, he caught the one VC still on his knees and making the fastest recovery of the two in the side of the neck. There was a split second where he almost thought he’d missed…until the blade of the shovel struck bone.

Bringing one foot up, he planted it in the chest of his first victim and yanked the shovel free. Something hot sprayed his face, and for a moment, Joel thought this an odd place for a warm shower until the coppery taste filled his mouth, still open from that ferocious roar that had ebbed to a snarl by this point.

He didn’t need to look close to know his first target was dead, even if his brain hadn’t received the message quite yet. He oriented on the second soldier and raised the shovel over his head, preparing for a downward strike that would hopefully cleave the head in half from crown to chin.

Joel paused, arms above his head. Charlie was looking up at him. His black eyes glittered with hatred that came through clearly even in the minimal light provided by a shrouded moon. What did not show in the man’s face was fear. He was about to be executed. He had no way out, and Joel held all the cards.

He tightened his grip on the shovel and, just as he gave the slightest nod acknowledging Charlie’s bravery, he brought the shovel down. The impact stung his hands and sent hot pain all the way up his arms to his shoulders.

He stepped back, letting go of the shovel as he did. It was buried almost to the top of the flattened nose of Charlie. Twin rivulets of blood as black as his enemy’s eyes ran down each side of the crease chopped into the man’s head. Even as the light of life left them, that look of bitter hate remained.

And just that fast, Joel shut down the adrenaline raging through his body and collapsed to his knees. A hiss and crackle sounded from nearby. He crawled in the direction of the sound and discovered what was left of Travis “Rabbit” Alvarez, the platoon’s radio operator. The crackle and hiss was coming from the large piece of gear on his back.

“…inbound…two minutes until…–ding just south of checkpoint…”

There was a pop, and then the smell of fried electrical components wafted to Joel’s nostrils. The radio was dead. But, if he heard that garbled transmission correctly, then a helo was coming in and would be touching down just south of the established checkpoint.

He steadied his breathing and listened for the telltale ‘whump-whump’ of the incoming Huey. It didn’t take long for the sound of salvation to reach his ears. He oriented on the source and began forcing his body through the muck. As he moved, he plucked the dog tags from all the men he passed. While there would be nothing he could do for the bodies, he could damn sure make certain that each was accounted for.

Joel felt the wind from the rotors as he entered the clearing. He threw his hands up in the air, waving them back and forth. He saw two men emerge from the open bay door and approach him in a crouch.

“How many?” one of the men yelled above the sounds of the Huey’s rotors.

Suddenly finding his throat clenched tight with the emotion of everything that had just happened, all he could do was point at his own chest. In moments, he was aboard the helicopter. He felt his stomach tighten as the bonds of gravity were broken and he was sent hurtling skyward.

Joel closed his eyes and barely felt the swipe on his right arm followed by the prick of a needle. The sounds of the helicopter were interrupted a few times by the chatter of a machine gun, but even that grew distant as Joel slipped from consciousness.

He awoke in a sterile-looking room that felt like a foreign world after the past several months he’d spent in the shit. Glancing each way, he saw men with an assortment of bandages applied to their bodies. Some were obviously missing limbs. He did a quick inventory and breathed a sigh of relief when he counted both arms and legs still intact. That action was enough to send a burst of pain from his right side where thick bandages were taped to his body under the flimsy piece of material that was supposed to count as a patient’s gown.

“And how are we feeling?” a voice from his left pulled his attention from a man missing both legs right around the knees who was struggling back into his bed from a wheelchair.

Joel looked up to see a man dressed in khakis with a pair of silver bars on his collar standing beside his bed with a clipboard. “Not sure about you, but I feel like crap.”

The corner of the doctor’s mouth twitched up in a slight smile. “You suffered a collapsed lung and a few cracked ribs, but everything seems to be mending fine.”

“When do I go back?” Joel asked, finding it odd that he was suddenly longing for the sounds and smells of the field. There was something foreign and uncomfortable about the sterile smells of the hospital ward.

“Next week,” the doctor said, his eyes scanning the clip board. He looked up and his expression changed. “Oh…you mean back to your platoon? No, you won’t be rejoining them. You are going stateside. You couldn’t possibly return to the field anytime soon with your injuries. It is likely that you are finished here, son.”

The words all seemed strange in his ears as Joel listened to the doctor tell him his time in Vietnam was over. He would be flown back to the States and then probably be put on a bus for home.

“Next week?” Joel heard the word come out of his mouth, but it felt strange and the voice did not sound like him at all.

“Yes, you will be given your medal this evening by the hospital commander and, first thing Monday, you will be taken by bus to the airfield where you will be processed and assigned a transport flight.”

The doctor continued to speak, but Joel tuned him out. He couldn’t believe that he was going home. It felt strange knowing that this would all end so suddenly.

“Also, what would you like us to do with these?” The doctor’s voice pierced his mind and he looked up to see a small baggie containing the dog tags he’d collected.

Joel reached out and took the baggie. “I’ll take care of them.”

He waited for the doctor to protest, but the man simply shrugged his shoulders. Apparently they were done because he moved on to the next bed and began speaking to its occupant.

The next few days were a blur. Joel barely recalled being rolled out to the hallway with a few other members of his ward. Some full-bird arrived, said words about honor and heroism, and then pinned Purple Hearts on the breasts of the wounded. A smattering of applause came from the nurses gathered, and then it was over.

Somewhere along the line, Joel was brought to a bus and transported to an airfield. He was given a series of papers to sign, and then he was escorted on board. There was one transfer, and then the next thing he knew, a voice was announcing that they had reached their destination, finishing with, “Welcome home, men!”

Joel looked out the window and saw a band, a few officers in pressed uniforms, and a small pack of anxious wives, parents, and children awaiting them. He knew there would be nobody to collect him so he didn’t linger on that crowd. The plane came to a stop and a set of stairs were rolled up. Joel was in the third row, but kept his seat until the last man had shuffled past. Getting to his feet, he winced slightly at the discomfort and then made his way to the exit. He emerged into the comparatively dry heat of Washington State and the McChord Air Force Base and was directed to the bus that would take him to Fort Lewis where he would sign his last papers and be processed out.

As he boarded the bus with the handful of other soldiers that didn’t have family waiting their arrival and return to “The World”, Joel could see the gate where they would exit. Standing just outside the fence was another group of civilians.

These weren’t anxious friends and family. His eyes were sharp, and even at this distance, he could see the long hair and loose clothing common for what was commonly referred to as members of the “hippie” culture. His eyes scanned them and a ball of anger began to smolder in his belly. He’d heard stories of these people and how they’d treated some of his other brothers-in-arms who’d been sent home. This group held signs that said things like “Baby Killers!” and “Murderers not Welcome!” and “Get Out of Vietnam!” in hasty scrawl.

Time swirled in the chaos of the day’s events, but by that evening, Joel was checked in to his hotel room where he would stay the night before hopping a plane home to Las Vegas, Nevada. His family lived just outside of town in a small trailer park development. He considered for perhaps the thousandth time whether he should give them a call and let them know he was coming home.

The last thing he wanted was a fuss. Joel simply wanted to walk through the door, hug his mom and start back with the simple everyday things he’d known growing up. The next day, he caught a shuttle that took him to the airport. He was told that it would be best if he wore civilian clothes instead of his uniform. Joel shrugged and decided that it didn’t really matter what he wore and slipped into a pair of jeans, still stiff from having never been washed or worn, along with a black tee shirt. The one thing he did not change were his boots. They made him feel safe and somehow still in touch with all the brothers he was leaving behind. Besides, he figured, who would care what he wore once he reached Las Vegas.

Living outside of Las Vegas was very different from living in it. That was something nobody he ever met could understand. When he would say where he was from, people would make the most insane assumptions. They were shocked when he admitted to never touching a set of dice except for when he played Monopoly, and playing cards were nothing more than noisemakers in the spokes of his bicycle when he was a young boy.

As the shuttle exited the base, it passed another pack of sign-toting hippies. Only, this bunch was armed…so to speak. A hail storm of tomatoes and eggs pelted the windows of the small Army shuttle bus. Joel stared out the window at the angry faces and wondered what these people would do if the bus stopped and he and the rest of the grim-faced occupants emerged to confront them. He’d shove their “Make Love Not War” signs someplace very painful.

At last the crowd vanished around a corner, the only proof of their existence displayed in the slurry of goo dripping down the windows. Joel sat back and watched the miles tick past. He looked at the distant Seattle skyline and wondered how anybody could live like that with that many people crowded in so close.

Eventually he was in the air once more and on his way home…his real home. When his plane landed, he grabbed his bag and made his way through the terminal and out to where a line of taxi cabs waited for the fools about to be parted from their money.

“Where to, buddy?” the man asked as he turned on the meter.

Joel gave him the address and sat back. As soon as he’d revealed that his destination was not one of the casinos or surrounding hotels, the cabbie’s demeanor changed from false cheer to something more relaxed and…real?

“How long you been back?” the man said as they put the false exteriors and electric billboards that would soon light up the night behind them.

“Today,” Joel replied. “How’d you know?”

“Not many kids your age these days with haircuts like that,” the cabbie said, his eyes catching Joel’s in the rearview mirror. Joel smiled.

They drove on in silence for a while until the cabbie spoke again. “You kids shouldn’t be coming home to the sort of bullshit you’re getting. Wasn’t that way when we came back.”

“Where’d you come back from?” Joel asked, trying to gauge the age of the man behind the wheel.

“The Pacific.”

“World War Two?”

“Yep.”

Joel let that sink in. His uncle had shared some stories about the landing of Normandy. Most of them were so incredible that Joel had written them off as over-exaggeration and a few too many shots of bourbon…until he’d seen the things of nightmares for himself.

“What branch?” Joel asked.

“Marines.”

“Damn,” Joel breathed. “I bet you saw plenty of terrible things.”

“One hour on Iwo would be enough to scare the drugs right outta them hippie bastards,” the old cabbie snorted. “Yeah,” his tone sobered, “I saw plenty.”

Once more silence fell. The minds of both men drifted to a host of unpleasant things that lurked in the darker corners of their minds. At last, the cab came to a stop in front of a green and white trailer home with a faded white picket fence marking the border of its tiny lot.

Joel got out of the cab, grabbed his bag and then leaned down at the driver’s window as he fished his wallet from his pocket.

“The ride’s on me, kid,” the cabbie said with a wave of his hand. “Call it a welcome home gift.”

“Thanks.” Joel gave a nod of his head.

“And thank you for serving.” The cab driver gave a nod and then drove off.

Joel watched the taxi depart and then turned to the trailer where his parents lived. Maybe he’d been away too long, but something seemed different. He couldn’t place it right away and started up the narrow stone path that meandered up to the steps leading to the front patio.

As he reached the top step, he finally realized the first thing that was different. His parents kept a pair of lawn chairs on the porch. They liked to come out in the evening and just listen to the birds as the sun set and everything cooled. The chairs were gone. In fact, the porch was bare. His mother was always trying to grow some flower or another despite her obvious lack of a green thumb.

He reached the door and his eyes drifted to the window just to his left. The living room still had the furniture, but that was it. All the pictures on the walls were gone. The small television on the rolling table that was wheeled around so that his dad could see it from the dinner table was also missing.

“Joel?” a voice called from behind him, startling Joel and causing him to spin around with his hands at the ready to fight off whomever it was that had snuck up on him.

“Missus Trainer?” Joel gasped, doing his best to recompose himself.

“When did you get back?” The elderly woman made her way up the stairs one at a time, her cane causing a dull thud to sound in the otherwise quiet evening air.

“Just today.” He stepped back to make room for the kindly old lady that had lived next door to him and his parents for as long as he could remember.

“Nobody has told you.” Missus Trainer patted his cheek. “And I sure wish it didn’t have to be me.”

“Tell me what?” An icy sensation began to grow in the center of his chest.

“I’m so sorry, Joel.”

She didn’t need to say any more. Joel knew. As impossible as it seemed, he’d returned from Vietnam and it was his parents who were dead. Part of him wanted to laugh at the irony.

“How?”

“Car accident.” Missus Trainer sighed and then patted his shoulder. “The police say it was quick. They probably never even felt a thing.”

Joel turned back and peered into the window. He spun back to the kindly older woman who was looking up at him with tired eyes and the remnants of a forced smile.

“When? And where are my folks’ things?”

“Almost three weeks ago. The manager had everything placed in storage.”

Joel turned back and cupped his hands against the window. “The furniture is still there.”

“Easier to rent out as a furnished unit.”

Joel spun, his fists clenching as fresh anger surged through him. “Rent it out? What the hell do you mean rent it out? And that is my mom’s couch…my dad’s recliner. So how does that work?”

“The manager, Mister Garrity, he would know better than me, I’m sure. But—”

Joel didn’t hear another word spoken by the kindly Missus Trainer as he stormed off the porch and took off at a sprint towards the trailer where the manager lived. He didn’t need to follow any signs. He’d lived here long enough, and he knew exactly where he was going.

He reached the run down single-wide and charged up the steps. He pounded on the door with his fist.

“Open up, Mister Garrity,” he shouted. He beat on the door again with his fists and saw a shadow move past the flickering light of the television.

“Hold on to your britches,” a raspy voice said between hacking coughs.

Joel paused long enough to glance in the window. He could see the bent over figure of Old Man Garrity as he stumped to the door, ever-present cigarette dangling from his lips; the red cherry at the tip bobbing with his uneven steps.

The door opened and a wave of stale smoke, grease, and sweat swirled out. “What the hell is so important you gotta bang on my door at this hour?” Walt Garrity snarled. He looked up and his rheumy eyes squinted as he tried to focus on Joel and make him out from the shadows of the porch. “The office is closed, and if you are inquiring about renting and moving in, the hours are from ten in the morning to three in the afternoon.”

The bitter stench of the old man’s alcohol and cigarette fouled breath hit Joel in the face as the trailer park manager slurred his angry words, apparently not recognizing the young man who stood before him.

“Where are my mom and dad’s things? And what gives you the right to rent out their trailer with their furniture still in it?” Joel snapped, his eyes drifting past the hunched over man before him. His eyes locked on the television sitting on a rolling table in Mister Garrity’s living room. He felt as well as heard the blood rush to his ears, turning them red hot.

Without thinking, he reached out and grasped the old man by the neck. He lifted the man’s feet from the ground with almost no effort. Walt Garrity’s reply ended before it began with a harsh cough and surprised gasp that also silenced suddenly as his air was cut off by the hand gripping his throat.

“You’re nothing but a fucking vulture, you son of a bitch!” Joel hissed, pulling the old man close enough so that their noses were almost touching. “Maybe you thought I would come home in a body bag so you could just do what you wanted with my folks’ stuff.”

“Joel!” a calm voice said from over his shoulder. Joel turned to see Missus Trainer at the bottom of the stairs. Her eyes were wide with fear and her whites shone in the reflection of the streetlamp almost directly above her. Despite her obvious fear, she continued to hold him with her gaze.

“This piece of trash is looting my parents’ place. He was gonna rent out their place like it was his to do with as he pleased.”

“Put him down, Joel,” Missus Trainer whispered. “You’re going to kill him.”

Joel looked up at the old man turning an ugly purple in his grip. He let go, allowing Mister Garrity to fall to his knees. The old man hacked and coughed as he struggled to suck air into his starved lungs.

“I’ll call the cops,” he finally rasped.

“You do that.” Joel turned his back on the man. “Make sure they know how you were looting my parents’ trailer and how you were putting their home up for rent and how you were gonna pocket the money.”

“You’re crazy,” Old Man Garrity coughed as he scuttled back inside his trailer and slammed the door.

Twenty minutes later, the flashing lights of a squad car added to the atmosphere of the rundown trailer park. People came out onto their patios or stared out from their curtains or blinds. What they saw was a young man bent over the hood of the squad car for a while until the two officers eased him into the back seat.

The next day, word spread about what happened. A group of residents got together and posted Joel’s bail. Missus Trainer was kind enough to allow Joel to stay in her trailer. She insisted that he stay as long as it took to square things away. That turned out to be less than a month. A judge found in his favor and dismissed the case, scolding Mister Garrity for trying to take advantage of a tragic situation.

That was also how long it took for Emerson Powell, attorney-at-law to discover that the son of Dottie and Hank Landon had returned home from Vietnam. Joel was stunned to discover that not only did both of his parents have a substantial life insurance policy, but apparently they had squirreled away a tidy sum. When it was all said and done, Joel was looking at a mid-six-figure bank account balance.

The first thing he did was make an offer to the owner of the trailer park. The hour the papers were signed, he had Mister Garrity evicted. The man blubbered about having no place to go and not enough money to afford to be able to move his trailer.

“Not my problem,” Joel said as he walked off the porch and to his parents’ trailer where he planted the sign that read “MANAGER” at the head of the driveway.

Within three years, Joel Landon owned four trailer parks around Las Vegas, Nevada. He made it a point to pay attention as the city began to grow. He could imagine a day when Vegas was the ultimate tourist destination. Taking a gamble at the many tables and slot machines was not his style. Instead, he gambled on his vision of an expanding city.

Joel bought gigantic tracts of land all around the areas surrounding the city. He saw his first return in less than five years when a developer arrived with a plan to build an upscale subdivision.

The levels of Joel’s wealth became staggering as the 80s arrived. By then, he had a staff of accountants and lawyers as well as a team of investment advisors. Always looking to the future, Joel showed an uncanny foresight. He made a fortune on a small shoe company that emerged in a town called Beaverton, Oregon as well as some computer program start up in Washington State. There were other investments, and while not all were winners, it was safe to say that most did very well.

Through it all, Joel lived in his parents’ trailer. He lived there until the late 90s when the last resident that had come to his aid all those years ago finally passed. After he’d scored big on his first deal, he had let each of those people know that they no longer needed to worry about their space rents.

If you spoke to any of the associates that came to know Joel Landon over the years, they would have been shocked to know he’d done such a thing. His ruthlessness was legendary, and as a businessman, there were few better.

The years passed, and Joel had conceded that he would probably never marry. The early years he credited to his constantly working. That had left him no time for a social life. As he grew older, as well as wealthier, he decided that he would never be able to trust the intentions of any woman he met. She would see his net worth, and that would be what she more than likely fell in love with.

Then he met Wanda Jean Billings. She was one of his front office staff in his main real estate office. He’d walked in one afternoon and asked to see the office manager.

“Mister Parks is in a meeting,” Wanda had said without hardly looking up at him for more than a few seconds.

“Well, tell him it’s an emergency,” Joel had said through a clenched jaw. If there was one thing he hated, it was waiting…for anything.

“More important than his son’s first birthday?” the raven-haired woman had sniffed. “How about you just take a seat, cool your jets, and as soon as Mister Parks is done with his lunch meeting with his wife and son, I’ll tell them you are here.”

Joel opened his mouth to say something when the woman looked up at him and locked eyes with him. “Look, I get it. You are probably some real estate hotshot, and you think the world rises and sets on your ass, but there are more important things than your next deal. Mister Parks already spends too much time away from his family working for our boss. His kid only turns one once. You can wait. Like I said, I’ll tell him you’re here as soon as he’s done.”

Joel opened his mouth to say something and then promptly shut it when she leveled her stare at him, peering over her glasses with an expression that dared him to challenge her. As he sat on the uncomfortable chair against the wall and waited, he observed the woman who’d been so brash and brazen with him and realized that she had no idea who he was. He also was willing to wager that she probably wouldn’t have cared if she did.

Eventually, Bill Parks emerged from his office. A short blond woman followed in his wake. On his left hip, the man carried a toddler that seemed to be fascinated with tugging in Bill Parks’ mustache. Each time the child gave it a tug, Bill Parks would pretend to try and gobble up the tiny hand. This elicited squeals and laughter from the child.

This game continued until Bill Parks turned and spied his boss seated on one of the hard-plastic waiting room chairs. He quickly shoved the little boy into the short blond woman’s arms and hurried across the room. He was stuttering and stammering out attempted apologies as he almost sprinted past the desk of Wanda Jean Billings. Joel only knew her name because it was on an engraved name plate situated on her desk.

“I am so sorry, Mr. Landon. How long have you been waiting?” Bill Parks managed to squeak out.

Joel got to his feet and gave the man a pat on the shoulder as he stepped to the side and slipped past his flustered office manager. “Am I to understand that this little guy just turned a year old today?”

“That’s correct,” the woman holding the child said, her voice cheerful and lacking any of the worry or fear pouring off her husband.

Joel turned to his manager. “And so my appointment with you was delayed so that you could have lunch with this child?”

Bill Parks made an audible gulping sound. “Y-y-yes, Mister Landon, sir.”

Joel nodded and turned back to mother and child. Apparently she had just figured out who he was. Her face had turned a terrible pale shade except for a fiery splotch on each cheek. “It’s my fault,” the woman gushed, her words all running together.

Jesus, what do my employees say about me to their spouses? Joel wondered when he saw the woman’s fear now matched her husband’s.

“This is Mister Landon?” Wanda Billings piped in from her desk. “Mister Parks, he never said who he was, and I don’t have him on the calendar for today. I’ve never met Mister Landon. I would’ve never had him wait out here if—”

“Everybody just dial it down,” Joel said over the commotion of flustered people falling over themselves. He turned his attention to the mother of the child. “I have to meet with your husband, but while I am, I’d like you to get ahold of my accountant.” He produced a business card and offered it to the woman. She stared at it like it was a poisonous snake about to strike. “Tell him that I want a college fund started in this young boy’s name right away. And then why don’t you and the young man have my driver take you on a little shopping spree.” He reached inside his jacket packet and produced a credit card for a store that the woman had never even set foot in due to its reputation for being expensive to the point of what she considered a bit vulgar.

“I couldn’t possibly…” she tried to protest, but the words were having a tough time escaping her throat.

“I insist.” Joel pressed the credit card into her hand and then gave the little boy a gentle chuck on the chin. He looked over to see his property manager flushed to the point where Joel thought he might be close to having a stroke. “Now, Bill, you and I have a few things to go over before the acquisition next Thursday.”

2

Today

Joel stared out the window of his penthouse at the top of the MGM Grand. He swirled the glass in his hand, oblivious to the sound of the ice clinking around in the heavy crystal vessel. He did not even taste the expensive scotch that trickled down his throat as he tipped the glass up and drained the rest of its contents.

“Mister Landon?” a voice called from behind him.

Joel started and turned to see an elderly man emerge from the suite’s master bedroom. He noticed when the man pulled the door shut behind him and then gave it a slight push as if ensuring that the latch had caught.

“Well, Doctor Carlson…how is she?” Joel set the glass down, his hand automatically seeking out a coaster.

“Too early to say, but…” The man paused. His eyes drifted away, unable to hold Joel’s steely gaze.

“Is she going to live?”

Joel didn’t need the doctor’s words to know the answer. It was crystal clear on the man’s face.

“I can’t give you any certainties until we get her blood into the lab and run some tests.”

“The television is saying that people have seventy-two hours tops from when they are bitten. Is that true?”

Joel had seen the news the past few days. He’d seen that CDC doctor ridicule the rumors that the dead were coming back and attacking the living. Then she’d come on and reversed her stance. Of course, she’d been bitten by one of their test subjects after they’d apparently run experiments that confirmed the worst. At the end of her last appearance, she’d removed a pair of dark sunglasses to reveal eyes that were shot full of the black tracers that seemed to be one of the earliest symptoms that a person was infected.

“Her eyes?” Joel asked, his voice barely a whisper. He dreaded the answer, yet he needed to know.

“There is no firm evidence as of yet to say that—” the doctor began, but Joel cut him off.

“Don’t bullshit me, Doc. You know damn good and well that the tracers are being reported as the most obvious symptom of infection before a person…” Now it was Joel’s turn to have his voice choke off and fade. He couldn’t bring himself to say it.

The two stood in silence for a moment. Eventually, the doctor exited. No goodbye, nothing. He simply left. That alone spoke volumes.

Steeling himself for what he would see, Joel went to the bedroom door. Taking a deep breath, he opened it and entered. The only light came from a small lamp beside the bed. But it wasn’t the gloom that gave him pause. There was the faintest hint of something sour. It was unlike any sort of body odor he’d ever experienced. There was something familiar about the stench, but it was so faint that he couldn’t pin it down. Of course there was also his grief as he looked at his beloved bride of over twenty years lying in their bed.

If not for the bandage on her left arm that had already began to show seepage from the rip in her flesh, she could simply be taking a nap. His Wanda did love her naps.

Moving over beside the bed, Joel pulled the chair that the doctor had obviously been using back so he could sit next to his wife. His eyes found his own reflection in the mirror and he froze. For the first time in his life, Joel Landon thought that he looked like an old man. His hair was wispy and gray, quite a change from his youth when it was thick, brown, and just a hint of curl when it grew out a bit. His piercing brown eyes now just looked tired. The lines in his face seemed deeper, almost as if they were etched all the way down to the surface of his skull. His cheeks were sunken, and his lips were little more than a pair of slashes below his slightly crooked nose. His chest was still broad, but with his shoulders slumped as they were at this moment, it gave him much more of a gut to offset and diminish what had once been one of his best features. It had certainly been Wanda’s.

Looking at his wife, he could see that her face was pale and drawn, and her hair was a nest of tangles that would make her furious if she woke and discovered them. Last night, her fever had risen to the point where he could feel the heat radiating off her body from several feet away. When it broke, she’d been bathed in sweat. So far, a shower had simply not been something that she was able to take. He’d considered simply carrying her into their massive walk-in shower and holding her, but he knew that would make her furious. Wanda hated being babied.

“Joel?” Wanda croaked, her voice snapping him from his ruminations about the temper of his beloved.

“Right here, love.” He took one of her hands in his and patted it gently.

“I won’t become one of those…monsters.”

Joel was about to respond when she opened her eyes. His words stuck in his throat and he felt his stomach clench. The black tracers were stark against the whites of her eyes.

Joel wanted to say something, but he didn’t have the words. He knew what she was saying. He also knew what she was expecting from him. In all their years together, Joel had prided himself in being able to give Wanda her every desire, no matter how big or small. He had the means, and saw no reason to ever deny her anything. Yet, this was different.

“Joel, did you hear me?” Wanda asked, her stern tone fighting its way through.

“Wanda, if you’re asking me to—”

“I’m not asking…I’m telling you.” Wanda pushed herself up a little bit on her pillow and fixed Joel with a look he knew all too well.

“You’re asking me to put a bullet in your head.”

“Again…” Wanda exploded into a coughing fit, but still had the strength to slap Joel’s hands away when he reached for her. “I wasn’t asking. And from what I’ve seen on television, as well as what happened down in the lobby, there won’t be anything of me in whatever it is that would come back.”

“You can’t know that,” Joel insisted.

“I watched a pair of sweet little old ladies rip a young man apart. They pulled out his insides, Joel!”

Joel had seen the news. He’d seen his share of what was going on down in the streets below. And he’d heard the screams.

“You need to put things in order, Joel Landon. Nobody is going to be ready for what is coming. The zombies are only going to be part of the problem.”

Wanda sunk into her pillow and closed her eyes, a long sigh escaping her. She was silent for so long that he thought she might’ve passed. Her breathing was so slow and shallow, that he feared she would not make it through the hour.

“You need to take charge. Get someplace safe, and then set up a defense that will keep the undead out and make the living think twice before messing with you,” Wanda finally said, her voice now little more than a labored whisper.

“What are you talking about,” Joel challenged.

“You know those books I read…those movies that I watch that you hate so much?” Joel nodded. “Well if any of it is even partially accurate, things are going to get very bad. You know my favorite saying.”

“People suck,” Joel recited, just a hint of mirth filtering into his voice as his lips curled up just a bit.

“So, while everybody is running for their lives, you need to pick a spot and turn it into your fortress.”

“But what about you?” Joel groaned.

“Sweetheart, I can feel this infection or whatever it is burning me up from the inside. So I need you to swear that, when my eyes close, you will do what I asked and take care of me.” Wanda gazed up at Joel, her eyes pinched at the corners from the pain, a sheen of sweat adding to her sickly appearance.

“I promise,” Joel finally conceded.

The couple sat together holding hands for a while. For Joel, his only comfort came in that he was there for Wanda like she’d been there for him all these past years. Part of him wished they’d had children, but another part of him was thankful they hadn’t. He doubted that he could endure seeing a child of his own experiencing something like this. These were the thoughts that occupied his mind when his beloved Wanda shut her eyes and let loose with a long, ragged exhale that would prove to be her last.

Almost as if on cue, the phone beside the bed rang. Joel considered just ignoring it, but another voice in his head told him that answering the phone would allow him to delay the deed that he dreaded. Pulling his hand free from his wife’s, he scooted around the bed and managed to answer it by the third ring.

“Joel?” a familiar voice said hastily. The owner of that voice sounded as if they’d just sprinted a few miles.

“Conrad?” Joel replied, making sure he was speaking to the person he believed to be on the other end of the line.

“Yes, sir.” Sounds of screaming came from the background on Conrad’s end, almost drowning him out.

Conrad Parks was the son of the late Bill Parks. He was also one of the finest attorneys in Las Vegas—an education thanks to the fund Joel had set up on the young man’s first birthday. As soon as he passed the bar, he’d signed on to a very prestigious firm. Within two years, he’d been made junior partner. Within five, his name was part of the firm’s logo.

“Have you heard from my mom?” Conrad gasped.

“Not in a few days,” Joel admitted.

“She isn’t answering at home.” A barrage of gunfire sounded to punctuate that statement. “I know this is asking a lot, but can you send a driver over to check on her…maybe pick her up and have her brought to The Grand?”

“I would if any of my drivers could be reached,” Joel said.

There was a moment of silence and Joel wasn’t sure that the call was still connected. At last, a deep sigh sounded in his ear.

“Look, Conrad, I’d go myself, but Wanda…” He couldn’t bring himself to finish the excuse.

“Wanda?” Conrad blurted, a tremor in his voice caused it to crack a bit. “No…she hasn’t been bitten…” Now it was Conrad’s turn to not be able to complete a sentence.

A low moan sounded, and it took Joel a second to realize that it wasn’t more background noise from the other end of the call. This sound was close. All he had to do was turn his body a little to the right and he would be able to see the source. The problem was that Joel didn’t want to see it. He wanted to ignore it and hope to God that it had been a figment of his imagination.

He felt the bed shift slightly against his leg and he could not ignore it any longer. Joel turned his head and saw his deceased wife sitting up in their bed. Her head was turned away from him at the moment, sparing him the pain of having to look into her dead eyes.

“I have to go, Conrad,” Joel said absently, placing the phone back in the receiver He heard the tinny sound of a voice obviously protesting his seemingly arbitrary decision to end the call.

Wanda shifted at the sound of his voice. Her head began to swing back in his direction. Only, it was with oddly halting and jerky movements. At last, her face was revealed. Wanda’s normally smooth and soft skin now hung loosely on her face. It was as if all the muscles had simply quit working to hold up the flesh of her face. The eyes were now covered in a disgusting film that made the black tracers stand out even more.

Her normally olive skin tone was now a sickly grayish-blue, and her lips were almost black. When she opened her mouth, her normally kind voice was gone. All that came out was a low moan that seemed impossible to be coming from Wanda’s mouth.

Joel stood rooted to the spot as his dead wife began to try and fight her way out from the sheets, blankets, and comforter of their bed. Her moans grew in intensity, but her eyes never left Joel as she fought to free herself. He was still standing there when one of her hands came free and brushed his arm. Joel winced at the uncommon coolness of her skin.

“I’m sorry, my love.” Joel pushed Wanda back onto the bed and she ended up flat on her back.

If she’d struggled with the bedding, she was really having a difficult time getting herself rolled over in order for her to stand. At last she made it onto her side. One leg became ensnared by the wadded-up sheets. It was enough to pull her off balance, and the thing that had once been Wanda toppled over backwards and landed out of sight on the far side of the bed with a heavy thud.

Joel only briefly considered exiting the room and perhaps securing the door, but his final promise to Wanda gave his conscience a stinging rebuke.

Joel turned the latch on his nightstand drawer and reached down without looking. His hand found the familiar shape of his Smith & Wesson .44 magnum revolver. He checked it out of reflexive habit and then turned to confront the thing that had once been his wife.

On the other side of the bed, the wad of bedding twitched and roiled as the undead creature struggled with the task of freeing itself from the tangled mess. Joel stalked around the bed and staggered back a step. The smell hit him full force and brought him to the verge of puking.

Joel Landon knew death. He knew the stink of a dead body…even a rotting corpse. It was a smell that burrowed into his being during his time in Vietnam. This was not just the stench of death. The smell assaulting Joel was something more. It was infinitely more rotten, rank, and rancid than just the stink of the dead.

Gathering his resolve, Joel tried to hold his breath as he continued his approach. He brought a foot down firmly on the thing trying to extricate itself from the bed linens. It mewled and moaned in what sounded almost like frustration.

All of this combined—the smell, the sounds, and the way it looked so different in death—made Joel’s task a fraction easier. Pressing the barrel of the pistol against the shape that he was pretty certain had to be the head, Joel squeezed the trigger.

The report from the pistol was still thunderous despite any dampening of sound that might’ve resulted from the barrel being pressed firmly against the target and Joel’s ears rang slightly. Stepping back, he could observe the dark and ominous stain centered on the hole his weapon had put in the bedding as well as the zombie’s head.

He had no idea how long he simply stood there staring down at his handiwork. Part of him kept waiting for some sort of movement, but the main part of him had a bit of a check out. This had been too much to process in one big piece. He needed to break things down into much smaller bites.

As he stood there thinking, Joel did not notice how his mind began to change. He was oblivious to the icy detachment that wrapped his heart in a cocoon of icy ambivalence. He was even less aware of the awakening of the old soldier that still existed in the deepest caverns of his mind.

At some point, Joel withdrew to a chair in the corner of the bedroom. From there, he was able to see out over the city of Las Vegas. He could see the strip and the lie its lights tried to tell. Those lights were part of the illusion that Las Vegas was a wonderful playground. It was the mask that the thief hid behind as it emptied the pockets—and sometimes entire life savings—of the people who flocked to it like moths. Only, this thief did not need to assault somebody to take their money; no, the fools came to give it willingly. The city played on the human weakness that you could get something for nothing. It hid the truth well.

Late afternoon gave way to evening, and all those lights fought to hide a new illusion. Death. Death had come to Las Vegas, and it would not be denied.

At some point, Peanut, Joel’s orange and white tabby leapt into his lap and curled up. Joel stroked it absently as he continued to stare out the window.

A flurry of movement caught his eye and Joel let his gaze narrow to the source of such sudden movement. It was one of the other amazing hotels that lined the new strip in Vegas. To be precise, it was the penthouse balcony.

Joel stood, ignoring Peanut’s meow of annoyance as it was unceremoniously dumped from his lap. He reached in the same drawer of his bedside nightstand where he’d drew his pistol and came up with a set of very powerful binoculars.

Opening the slider to his own balcony, Joel was assaulted by a cacophony of screams, gunshots, and sirens. He ignored it all and brought the binoculars to his eyes. It only took a slight adjustment to find his target.

What he saw was horrible. It was like walking in the living room in the middle of one of Wanda’s awful movies. A pair of women were fighting off at least a dozen attackers. All the attackers were covered in dark stains he knew to be blood. One of the living women sported a similar stain on her right shoulder. She was also visibly slower in her reactions as she struggled to fight off the pack of ravenous attackers.

As he watched, the uninjured woman backed herself into a corner. It was a double-edged sword. The benefit was that she had less area to defend, and it was impossible to get behind her. The negative came in that she had nowhere else to retreat.

The injured woman swung what looked like a large butcher knife at one of her would-be assailants and the weapon struck home, burying itself in what appeared to be the eye socket of the zombie. It dropped like it’d been shot, yanking the weapon from the woman’s hands.

Joel had no idea if she had a weapon in reserve. If she did, she never got the chance to draw it as three more zombies crowded in and dragged the woman down and out of sight. Even from this distance, and despite all the other noise carrying on the night air, Joel heard a scream that was unlike any he’d ever been so unfortunate to hear.

He re-trained his binoculars on the woman who had been backed into a corner and was surprised to see that she’d climbed up onto the balcony’s railing. Oddly enough, he was less shocked when she threw herself from that ledge and plummeted down the face of the tall hotel. His eyes tracked her fall all the way to the pavement below. It was then that he noticed several more dark shapes scattered about the wide walking thoroughfare that normally boasted thousands of pedestrians eager to reach the next location where they were certain luck would change and they would hit it big.

The time for sitting around was over, Joel decided. It was time to act. A piece of Joel that had been dormant for decades woke and asserted itself as if it had never been shelved. The warrior was awake and in charge.

***

Joel stood at the foot of the bed he’d shared with his wife in their company-owned suite at the MGM Grand. There had been a lot of good times between them and he didn’t have any regrets about the life they’d lived together.

And now that life was over. To many people that Joel had known over the years, he knew very well that he came across as cold, hard, and unfeeling. Nothing was farther from the truth.

He did feel. He felt deeply. His biggest strength, if you asked him, was that he was able to separate emotion from reality. When he was doing business, it was always with the idea that his choices were what would make his company stronger and therefore allow him to take care of him and Wanda, as well as his employees, to the utmost degree. He did not dwell on things like how others perceived him. That was their flaw. They let their feelings and emotions get all twisted up in their everyday lives, and when it came to the business world, too many people often lacked the ability to divorce themselves of such things like human emotion.

That was how Joel had done so well during his time over in Vietnam. He saw everyday as one where he needed to do his job. He needed to perform without hesitation. The option to give less than all he was capable of had never been available. At least not as far as he saw things.

Joel had not so much changed in the past hour as he had redefined what his new job would be going forward. Wanda had made that one of her final requests. He would honor it as he had so many others in their life together. He glanced down at the hiking pack that he’d loaded with the most fundamental supplies. She would laugh at him if she saw the half a dozen books sitting on top.

Joel had never given a thought to a zombie apocalypse. It was nothing more than ridiculous fantasy as far as he was concerned. Still, now that he was staring it in the face, it was impossible to deny. The book at the top was the most worn out and also had a title that seemed the most appealing: The ZOMBIE Survival Guide by some fellow named Max Brooks.

He doubted it would read much like a field survival manual, but it was likely to have a few pointers in it that would be relatable. After bowing his head for a moment to offer up a prayer to whatever might be listening, Joel twisted open the bottle of alcohol and doused the makeshift torch he’d created.

“Rest in peace, Wanda,” he whispered as he lit the corners of the bed on fire and then set the torch down in the center of the bed.

Joel picked up his cat and held it in front of his face. “I’m gonna put you in my pack. Just chill out for a bit and everything will be okay.”

The cat stared back at him with its usual catlike ambivalence. The only thing it did in acknowledgement was start a deep purr, its eyes drifting half closed. It seemed to consider its new location in Joel’s pack for a moment before yawing, curling up, and shutting its eyes. On the way out, he paused to hit the start button on the microwave.

Joel was just opening the door to the emergency stairs when the explosion rocked the floor and blew off the door that had belonged to his room, sending it slamming into the wall across the hallway. He didn’t even look back or acknowledge the blast as he turned on the portable LED lantern and started down to the ground floor.

His first order of business would be to get out of the heart of Las Vegas. The place was sheer and utter chaos, and if he was going to have a chance at survival, this was not the place to be.

At last, he reached the ground floor. His ability to hear the screams had kicked in with about three floors to go. He’d been hearing gunshots as soon as ten floors remaining in the descent.

He was not concerned in the least that he had an old school military issue M-16 slung over his shoulder as well as his beloved .44 Magnum holstered to one hip. But in his hands he held a Beretta 92 9mm with a full magazine and in a pouch on the hip opposite his Smith & Wesson were five more fully loaded magazines. His pack held four boxes of ammo for the Beretta, each box holding fifty rounds. He knew that obtaining more ammo would be vital, but he was hoping almost three hundred rounds would at least get him out of the city center.

At last he reached the bottom. Very carefully, Joel opened the door just a crack. The wave of noise as well as a wall of stench hit him full force and caused his nose to wrinkle in disgust. On the plus side, the door opened to a service corridor and was off the beaten path. All the madness was happening to his left. That meant he would go right.

Joel eased out, but set the door stop so that he could retreat back to the stairwell if necessary. He kept in a low crouch and hugged the wall as he moved along towards the end of the long, dark hallway.

He was almost to the exit door marked with a big “EMERGENCY ONLY—OPENING WILL RESULT IN AN ALARM” sign that he could read despite the relative gloom and without his reading glasses when a scream from behind him caused him to pause long enough to glance back and seek out the source.

At the entrance to this service corridor were a cluster of figures. From this distance it was clear that at least one individual was being attacked. There was a great deal of flailing and screaming, but it was impossible to make out who was attacking whom. Joel turned back to the door and was about to press the large metal bar when a voice cried out, “Please help me, mister!”

Joel paused again and looked back. Now he could see a woman against one wall. She was holding back one attacker by the throat. Three more were on the ground and struggling like turtles on their backs as they tried to regain their feet. Joel took a step towards the woman out of reflex. More figures limped or staggered into view, all of them seeming to be drawn to the struggling woman.

There was a moment where a pair of the dark forms merged with hers. Joel knew then that any attempt that he made to try and save the poor soul would be an exercise in futility. The scream that came from her was the punctuation to that thought.

Joel turned back to the emergency exit and slammed the metal bar with both hands to open it. He expected a blaring alarm, but all he got was a weak chiming sound and some flashing lights. Maybe if things hadn’t already spiraled so far out of control, that would actually be something that garnered attention, but now, amidst gunfire and screams, it was nothing more than an undercurrent to the existing ambient noise.

Joel stepped through the door and found himself in the part of Las Vegas that the tourists never saw. This was a back alley of sorts that ran between the sprawl of hotels and casinos. It was still technically inside since it had a roof, but this was where all the pipes and stairwells to various control stations existed. This was where the illusion of the city was maintained.

Joel moved along the maze of corridors with military caution. Blundering headlong into a zombie or six would make for a lousy start in his quest to survive.

That thought caused Joel to stop in his tracks. Survive? What would the point be in something so simple as surviving? No, he was going to live.

Joel encountered his first zombie in a narrow walkway with dirty walls that might’ve been white once. There were a series of dark pipes running overhead with assorted labels ostensibly informing the maintenance crew what they proved and where.

The man was leaning against the wall with his back to Joel. At first, Joel thought he may just be another person trying to get out of the complex. The moment he caught a whiff of that smell he’d first encountered when Wanda turned, he knew better. When the man turned, Joel got his confirmation. Most of the man’s throat had been torn out, leaving a massive black stain down the front of his coveralls. His eyes were filmed over and that pus-colored film made the black tracers stand out in even starker contrast.

The man…no, Joel corrected his mindset, that was no longer a man. It was a zombie. Ghoul. Flesh-eater. Whatever the term people cared to use, it was no longer living. It was a mobile source of infection and a painful death.

The reports on the news had mentioned that, apparently like many of the movies and books in the zombie genre, the only way to take these things down were by traumatic head injury. Without hesitation, Joel veered toward the creature as it disengaged from the wall and began to shamble his way. As soon as it was just a few steps away from being at arm’s length, Joel aimed at the face of the coverall-clad zombie and fired. The back of the head exploded in thick bits of brain with a few chunks of bone that splattered the dingy wall behind it. Without a sound or cry of pain, the zombie collapsed to the ground in a lifeless heap. It didn’t even twitch with post-mortem electricity. It was just plain dead.

Joel continued to make his way through the maze, occasionally finding an arrow or sign that indicated an emergency exit. He was not confident that an emergency exit would get him clear of the building. Hell, it might just dump him into one of the huge connecting passages that allowed people to move from one casino to the next without actually even stepping outside.

Joel wanted to find the main exit that the employees used to come and go from this place. That would put him in one of the large parking garages. From there, he should have no trouble getting out of town. While newer cars were not very easy to hotwire, he was certain there had to be an old model beater in the mix. He was already making a battle plan for how he would proceed.

Besides casinos, Joel figured the most common business in the city and surrounding area had to be pawn shops. All the fools who kept thinking they needed just one more throw of the dice and everything would be okay often turned to these modern day financial vampires to trade in anything and everything they had for pennies on the dollar. These places would have guns.

He needed firepower. There was no doubt about that. Also, he knew better than to believe that he could exist for long all on his own. He would need to recruit some people. That was where things would be tricky. He knew the perfect way when it came to dealing with the undead. He was shrewd when it came to dealing with folks on a business level. But he’d never been much for building deep, meaningful relationships—Wanda being the lone exception.

Rounding a corner, he saw a set of glass doors that led to some sort of open lobby. There were at least three of those things there just wandering around, bumping off each other, counters, furniture.

“How the hell do these things win?” Joel muttered as he observed their uncoordinated movements for a moment.

After he was certain that only three of the undead were in the small entry lobby, Joel made for the door. He pushed it open and paused to let himself get adjusted to the horrific stench that was amplified by either the fact that there were three of these things, or that they were in a small, closed space. Whatever the reason, it was the closest he’d been to becoming physically sick in years.

As he stood there trying to keep his insides from spilling out through his mouth and nose, all three of the zombies turned to face him. He wasn’t sure if they could see, hear, or smell him. Now was certainly not the time to make that discovery. He stepped towards the first one and shoved it back hard. The creature had no real sense of balance and toppled easily.

He allowed the second one to reach for him and grabbed it by the wrist, slinging it past him to collide with and trip over the first one he’d already sent sprawling. He marveled at how insanely simple this was and again had to question how a single zombie managed to get even one victim.

The third one wouldn’t even reach him before he was across the room and out the door. He saw no reason to engage.

Joel exited the small lobby entry and found himself inside a large parking garage just as he figured. A sound to his right caught his attention and Joel crept along the front bumpers of the closest row of cars as he moved to investigate. As he made his way, he looked around to see if any of the walking dead might be close or possibly aware of his presence. At the moment, he seemed to be the only thing moving on at least this level of the parking garage.

At last he reached his destination. Sitting with its sliding side door open was a shuttle van. Most of the hotels and casinos had them running twenty-four/seven as guests poured into the city at pretty much all hours of the day and night. Making one last scan of the area, Joel felt confident that there was nothing close by. That did not mean there might not be something on the bus, so he had his pistol at the ready as a precaution.

Pausing at the step-up that would allow him to see up and down the aisle of the shuttle, Joel gave the air a cautionary sniff. Nothing jumped out at him. He certainly didn’t smell that stench he now associated with the walking dead.

Joel climbed up into the bus, a feeling of confidence growing in him that he would now be able to move towards his ultimate goal. Ensuring that there was nobody on board the shuttle—living or dead…or undead—he moved up to the front and gave the dash area a quick scan. Joel set his pack down and was not the least bit surprised when Peanut did nothing more than open one baleful eye at the disturbance, yawn once, and then shut its eyes again. He pushed a button labeled “Mid-entry” and nodded to himself when the door shut with a hiss of released air.

Popping the shuttle into gear, Joel followed the exit signs. As he drove, he passed a few staggering shapes, and in one instance, rounded a corner to discover a trio of zombies feasting on some poor unfortunate. Having just experienced his own first encounter with the things, he felt no pity for the person whose legs still twitched and thrummed as his or her insides were being pulled out in a festival of gory violence.

At last he reached the security checkpoint. Naturally the metal arm was down and the post was abandoned. Hardly slowing, Joel plowed through the exit and emerged onto the street. He was on East Tropicana Avenue. If he stayed on it, he would be able to get to Interstate 515.

That was his target. Once he reached the interstate, he knew exactly where he would go. If he was going to do this, then he was going to do it right. Somebody needed to take control of this situation.

Why not Joel Landon?

3

Grounded in the Present

While quicker than walking, Joel quickly discovered that driving was not going to get him where he wanted to go as fast as he’d hoped. With the airport to his right, he crept along through smoldering vehicles, bodies scattered everywhere, some down for good, others hunched over feeding, and some dragging themselves along due to the extent of their horrific injuries preventing them from being able to use their legs.

The airport was its own nightmare. Two passenger jets were in flames on the tarmac, in the distance, it looked like another had come down nose first. Some of the figures wandering away from the carnage were actually on fire, but seemed not to notice.

“How did this happen so fast?” he whispered aloud as his hands sought the radio and switched it on.

“…repeat, please do not try to take the wounded to local hospitals. The governor has declared all hospitals a danger zone and a military response is being planned at this moment. There are reports of large bands of the infected now being referred to as zombies—” Joel pushed the button for the next station. “—and can be identified often by displaying injuries that should be mortal in nature. In addition, it is now being reported that the appearance of dark tracers in the eyes indicate infection.”

As he switched through the channels on his radio, and even searched the AM band, he discovered that every station carried the exact same message. Some were delayed by a second or two, but for the most part, the transition was seamless.

The going only grew more and more treacherous as he continued on in his quest to reach the interstate. Twice, Joel had to actually use the shuttle’s nose to shove aside a wrecked automobile. On more than a dozen separate occasions, one or more of the walking dead careened off the front or side, some of them falling underneath and causing the shuttle to jolt as it ran over the downed creature.

At last, Joel was forced to stop. He leaned forward to get a better look at what waited ahead. He could see the Thomas & Mack Center looming. From the looks of it, the military had set up a rescue center at that location. The perimeter of the massive parking lot was marked by waist-high concrete barriers and then a tall fence, complete with strands of razor wire at the top.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to stop there and get my bearings, Joel thought as he inched forward, pressing his front bumper up against the rear quarter panel of a shiny newer model pickup that had obviously caught fire in its cab.

The driver’s side window was down, and black smudges were visible all along the top. The interior was practically consumed by the earlier fire and a charred corpse still sat behind in the driver’s seat with its hands seemingly welded to the deformed steering wheel.

There was movement on the other side of the barrier and fencing. Joel opened the door and stepped out of the shuttle. He was still too far away to really see the details. The dry desert air was rank with the smell of the undead, the dead, and the acrid bitterness of all the fires burning unchecked.

The sounds of low moans came from the direction of the Thomas & Mack Center. That seemed to answer his question. He climbed back into the shuttle and took a visual assessment of his situation. It was clear that the shuttle had served its purpose to get him free of the casinos. Unfortunately, he didn’t see a way around the mess ahead. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he could see a few dozen undead limping along in his wake.

Once again, he wasn’t sure which of the five senses were operating for these things. After ensuring he had a bubble of relative safety around him, Joel grabbed the half-finished bottle of soda from the holder on the left side of the driver’s area, exited the shuttle, and then found a target. Cocking his arm back, he adjusted slightly and then threw the bottle. As it sailed end over end, he hoped that his throwing aim was at least half as good as his shooting.

The bottle slammed into the side of the abandoned UPS truck with a hollow boom that was amplified by the relative lack of noise in the area. Like watching a section of a snowy hillside give way in the initial moments of an avalanche, Joel watched the heads of all the zombies in the area turn towards the new sound stimulus and begin trudging in that general direction.

“Could it really be this easy?” he whispered.

Joel backed up the steps of the shuttle and slid into the driver’s seat to contemplate his next move. As he did, he felt something rub up against his shins and absently reached down to scoop up Peanut. The cat purred loudly as he stroked it under the chin with his index finger.

As he sat there, he let his senses drift outward and scan the general area for anything of interest. That is when he heard the muffled ‘BOOM’ of what he was certain had to be a shotgun. He let his gaze drift in the general direction he’d heard the commotion. One mistake he found that most people made came in looking too hard for something. They narrow their focus and miss the obvious.

That is how he spotted the man dressed in camo fatigues with the wide-brimmed hat and his shotgun slung casually over his shoulder like he was out for a stroll through the park. As Joel watched, the man sauntered along, occasionally shoving aside the odd zombie that lurched out from behind a vehicle. Twice he watched as the man simply caught the offending zombie by the arm or shoulder, spun it around, and then plunged a large-bladed knife into the side of its head.

Joel was still deciding whether or not he would make himself known to this stranger when the man paused, flipped up the brim of his hat and gave a slight nod his direction. After a moment, the man slid his shotgun into a sling that allowed the butt to stick up over his shoulder like the hilt of a sword. Joel took that as a sign of truce and an invitation to make contact.

“Stay here, Peanut,” Joel crooned as he set his cat down and exited the shuttle once more.

The two men approached one another like a pair of gunslingers from the Old West. As he approached, Joel looked the man over. This new stranger seemed to be in his late forties. His face was weathered and worn, giving the look of somebody who worked outside. He was a shade on the short side at perhaps only five-and-a-half-feet tall, but his shoulders were broad. The man had a few days’ worth of stubble on his face, but that might be a more common thing with the world going to hell in a handbasket.

Besides the shotgun, Joel noticed a pair of pistols hanging from the man’s hips, an assortment of blades ranging in size from a few inches long, to a couple of feet, and what appeared to be a few baseball-sized orbs that had to be grenades. The man was also carrying what could best be described as a heavy-duty fanny pack around his waist. He wore heavy gloves and dark glasses that hid his eyes.

About ten feet away, Joel pulled up, stopping and folding his arms across his chest. “Good afternoon.”

“As good as possible, I reckon,” the stranger replied. “Just headed out of town and a pair of them damn rot-bags wandered out in front of me and caused me to crash. Figured I’d just catch another ride on the other side of all this.” The man waved an arm to indicate the congestion around the Thomas & Mack Center. “Be surprised how many folks just left their keys in the ignition.”

“Not really.” Joel gave a shrug. “Keys aren’t usually a priority if something is trying to drag you from your seat and bite your face.”

The man nodded, his expression hardening as if he were giving the situation more thought. “I guess I am in the minority. These things are nasty, but they’re slow as maple syrup in January and dumber than my second ex-wife.”

“Finally.” Joel let loose a deep sigh and allowed himself to chuckle. “That’s been my thoughts as well…mostly. I didn’t have an ex-wife, but I’ve known a few individuals that made me wonder how they managed to remember to breathe without somebody giving regular instructions.”

“If this is the zombie apocalypse, maybe we were long overdue,” the stranger tacked on. “I mean, sure, they can come at you in numbers, but the key is to avoid holing up someplace without multiple possible exits. And I’ve shoved far more of the things to the ground as I passed than I’ve actually shot or knifed.”

“Wasn’t that you that just fired off a round from your shotgun?” Joel tilted his head towards the butt of the weapon jutting over the man’s shoulder.

“I did, but that was more due to me being pissed.” When Joel didn’t speak, the man continued. “You know…the two I said stepped out and caused me to crash. Bastards pissed me off.”

“Mmm.” Joel gave a nod and created a mental file on this stranger, storing that bit of information away in case he had need of it later.

“Where’re my manners?” the man said, wiping his hands on the fronts of his jeans. “Brad. Brad Lehrer.”

“Joel Landon, pleased to meet you…current circumstances excluded.”

“Where you thinking of heading, Mister Landon?”

“Towards Boulder City. Thought I’d hit a few pawn shops along the way and stock up on weapons. I think civilization has run its course in its current form. Thought I might look into setting myself up to ride things out in style. Most folks are going to scrape and scratch with the hopes of surviving. The way I see it, they won’t come up with any concrete plans for a while, and most will die before they reach the point of being able to do anything. That gives me the jump since I think I already know where I want to set myself up, and how I want to live.”

The low moans of a handful of approaching zombies interrupted the conversation. Both men glanced over at the zombies and then back to each other.

“I have a few things in that shuttle bus over there.” Joel gave a nod of his head to indicate the idling vehicle. “We can hop in it and edge around this little snarl. I think it has enough power to push through to the other side.”

“You out searching for survivors?” Brad asked as he fell in beside Joel and ambled toward the shuttle bus, not giving the zombies much more than a passing glance as they stumbled over each other in an attempt to adjust their course to pursue the men.

“Survivors?” Joel mused. “Not really. I think it would be more accurate to say I’ll be seeking out soldiers. This is an unprecedented event in our history. A person could literally rebuild a society in the image of what he believes is best.”

They walked in silence the last few yards to the shuttle bus. Brad broke off once to stick one zombie in the side of the head that would’ve been able to reach them before they climbed inside.

“So you plan on setting yourself up as some sort of dictator?” Brad asked as Joel shut the doors to the shuttle and climbed behind the wheel.

“That is an old word that has lost its meaning ever since lunatics like Hitler. I think I would actually consider myself a warlord if forced to pick a label.”

“Warlord.” Brad let the word roll off his tongue like he might be tasting it. “And I assume you will have some form of chain-of-command.” It wasn’t a question, but Joel heard the prompt.

“I’m going to need people who have the rare ability to separate themselves from emotion. Not everybody should survive. If they can’t offer something to the common good, then they have no purpose. The days of welfare or coddling those deemed to have some malady that gave them special treatment are gone.”

The shuttle pushed through a hedge that once acted as a barrier between the sidewalk and a vast parking lot. Scores of cars were crammed in and made an effective log jam at the exits if a person chose to adhere to the normal driving lanes. Joel rolled up onto a wide pedestrian walkway, instantly colliding with a zombie and sending it toppling over the railing and plummeting to some lower level out of his sight.

“Sounds almost heartless,” Brad finally spoke up.

“I prefer practical.”

Joel slammed on the brakes without warning, earning a yowl of annoyance from his cat and a string of expletives from Brad. He brushed both aside as his eyes widened just a bit at what he was seeing.

“How did I not consider that?” Joel muttered.

“You mind telling me what the hell you’re babbling about?” Brad snarled, pushing himself back into his seat and rubbing his palms to try and ease the bruised feeling in them.

“Who set up that emergency center?” Joel asked, pointing to the sprawling parking lot of the event center that once hosted championship fights, basketball tournaments, and a variety of other things.

“The Army?” Brad’s voice rose in confusion, making his response sound more like a question.

“And how much firepower you think is just sitting there inside that fenced-in death trap?”

“Yeah,” Brad barked, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “The key word there is death. That place is swarming with zombies. I mean…look at ‘em all.” He made a sweeping gesture with his hand.

A dull thud sounded outside the shuttle as some of the nearby zombies outside the fenced in lot had finally made their way over to the vehicle and were now starting to pound, paw, and gnaw on the sides in a futile attempt at gaining entry. Joel didn’t seem to notice, but Brad was looking around now with an expression on his face that gave away his thoughts that he was starting to regret meeting Joel Landon.

“So we lure them to one side.” Joel gave a slight shrug of his shoulders and began to stroke the soft fur of his cat which had jumped back into his lap at the sound of the undead on the sides of the shuttle bus.

“How do you suppose we do that?”

“They seem to be attracted to sound,” Joel explained, struggling to hide his annoyance that this man hadn’t already made such a simple observation. “One of us goes to one side of this place and creates a distraction, the other can slip in and either start grabbing gear, or else at least cataloging it so we know what’s here and what we might want.”

“And what is going to keep the zombies outside of that place from getting to the person making all the noise?” Brad challenged. He rose to his feet and ambled down the aisle of the shuttle, peering out both sides of the van at the gathering undead. “Look, I think we both have different ideas about how to ride this out.”

“Ride this out?” Joel laughed nastily. “You think this is going to just magically go away any time soon? I got news for you, sport, this is the new world. It will be survival of the fittest, and the weak will either perish or serve.”

“Maybe we aren’t exactly on the same page about this.” Brad glanced over his shoulder at the exit towards the middle of the shuttle.

“I don’t doubt it.” Joel shrugged his shoulders again and reached down for the lever with a small plastic square indicating it was for opening and closing the large double-doors. He gave the lever a pull and heard the hiss of the pneumatic system as the doors swung open wide.

A low moan sounded from just outside the bus. Peanut arched up on Joel’s lap and hissed angrily as a dead hand grabbed the top of the divide that cordoned off the stairs. Brad turned and his mouth dropped open in apparent surprise.

Joel carefully set his cat down in the well by the gas and brake pedals as he got to his feet. He was confident that Brad’s focus was solely on the small horde of walking dead gathered at the side entrance. Joel had seen them gathering the entire time that he and Brad had been talking. It had only taken that much time for Joel to be certain that this stranger was not compatible with the vision Joel held for the future. He talked a good game, but he seemed to lack the fortitude to make the tough choices and do what needed to be done.

Just as Joel reached the man, who for some foolish reason, had yet to draw any of his firearms, Brad turned with a look of fear on his face. He looked down at Joel’s hands which were open wide with the fingers splayed.

“Wha—” Brad Lehrer did not finish his question.

Joel gave the man a hard shove, sending him tumbling awkwardly into at least a dozen of the walkers scrambling for position at the opening like a litter of puppies around a newly offered food dish. He watched impassively as the man vanished into the crowd like he’d just plunged into a tank of water.

There was just a moment where the moans of the gathered throng were the loudest noise, then the scream came. Joel turned and walked back to the front of the shuttle and shut the side door before driving away. He glanced in the right sideview mirror and saw the knot of bodies humped over what had once been Brad Lehrer.

“On the plus side, I doubt there will be enough of you to come back and wander about,” Joel mused aloud.

He turned left on what the sign at the intersection announced as Gym Road and then left again almost immediately onto Wilbur Street. He passed the front of a large building identified as the Dayton Complex and hung a right. This would take him along the edge of the parking lot and parking garage on his side of the vehicle with an assortment of buildings and communal areas on his right. He noticed the one large grassy common was now a series of massive trenches that Joel guessed had been set up as huge burial sites. Unfortunately for those who’d sought shelter here, it looked like more of the dead remained inside the fence of what the signs now told him were FEMA Site #6. There were hundreds, if not even a few thousand, undead walking around inside that fenced-in sanctuary. Scattered like grains of pepper in a salt shaker he spied undead soldiers still dressed in their combat camo gear.

He was considering how he might possibly be able to break in to the compound and loot the place when the distinct sound of an approaching helicopter drew his attention back towards the direction of the airport. Joel considered just blowing it off, but then the chatter of a machine gun piqued his interest even further.

Joel only had to back up a little to see the helo as it swung around, coming in low over the airport that had deposited so many tourists over the decades. It was military, Joel realized. He watched as it dipped its nose and made a slow approach his direction. That was also when he noticed a curl of black smoke coming from just under the rotor.

Joel thought that the helo would put down in the massive airfield. He was more than a little surprised when it continued his direction. More specifically, it was angling for the four-story parking garage. He watched it as the smoke began to pour forth in greater volumes with every passing second.

At last it was close enough that he could see a face peering out at him. That individual gave him a curt wave as the AH-64E Apache Guardian tilted slightly and came in for a landing atop the parking structure.

“Things just got a little interesting,” Joel said to his cat as he watched every single zombie in his field of vision turn and start for the parking garage. Whether they were inside or out of the compound made no difference. Perhaps this was the break he needed.

Joel put the shuttle in park and then shut off the engine. He wandered to the back part of the vehicle and climbed up on the empty luggage racks. Making short work of the overhead air vent, he was out onto the roof in a matter of minutes. He could hear the Apache winding down, but it was still easily the loudest noise source in the area. Watching the zombies trudge tirelessly toward the sound, he felt confident that he now had a method to distract the undead. There were other possibilities, but he wasn’t ready to plan that far ahead yet. He was a firm believer that if you looked too far ahead, you were likely to trip over something right in front of you and in plain sight.

As he surveyed things in a more up-close manner, he noticed that the fence was beginning to undulate. His gaze travelled down to the first of several clusters of the undead struggling against the relatively flimsy barrier. He could hear the screech of metal, and then heard what almost sounded like a giant Slinky as at least one part gave way. The perimeter was breached.

Something crackled to his right and Joel spotted an undead soldier dragging itself along on the ground at the rear of a pack that was now pouring through the breach in the fence line. The left leg was entirely gone and the right leg was missing from just above the knee. There was a headset wrapped around its neck, and the noise was coming from there.

“Anybody on this frequency, this is call-sign Sky Angel One. We are currently on the roof of the parking structure of FEMA Six. Our bird is dead, repeat FUBAR. We request extraction from this location,” a man’s voice chirped from the headset.

Joel thought it over for a moment and then hustled over to the downed soldier. The man was lacking any sort of weapon, but the radio seemed like a good item to confiscate. Besides, none of the zombies seemed to even be aware of his presence. Their focus was the noise source on top of the parking garage.

Reaching his target, Joel had to fight back the urge to be sick. The stench from these things was simply beyond anything he’d ever experienced. And in such large numbers, that smell was amplified to the point of unbearable.

He moved in fast and flipped the disabled zombie onto its back. Making short work of it with a stab to the eye socket, he relieved it of its belt and then untangled the headset from around its neck.

Inspecting the radio, he really wished he could just dunk the entire thing in a vat of antibacterial solution. He had to flick a chunk of something nasty that clung to one earphone pad and decided that he would not be donning this piece of equipment.

Hitting the button, Joel spoke slowly and clearly, “Attention occupants of the military helo that just landed at the Thomas & Mack parking garage, the location has been overrun. Your arrival has attracted the attention of substantial amounts of whiskey-deltas. Suggest you try to escape the structure ASAFP. There is a grassy field below and I have a shuttle van from one of the local casinos. I intend to exit the city limits right now. If you want out of here, then I would make for my location.” Joel looked up to see the dark silhouettes of two individuals peering over the edge in his general direction. Joel waved his arms.

He decided not to tell them that he had plans to come back and abscond with as much military hardware as possible. They might not be too keen on that idea. Still, they were soldiers. He would do what he could to get them out of harm’s way. What they did after that was up to them. If they wanted to come back and perhaps try to rescue a bunch of idiots who would likely be dead with two weeks anyway, then that was their call. But, no matter what his own personal agenda, Joel would not forsake fellow soldiers.

“Hello down there,” a man’s voice replied. Joel watched the figures up above and saw one of them waving. “What the actual fuck happened here, over?”

“No idea, over.” Joel looked around to ensure he was still safe. He’d be damned if he was going to stand here and get eaten. His charity and desire to help fellow soldiers only went so far. “I just escaped the MGM a short time ago. Been up there riding this out the past few weeks until…” His voice caught in his throat as he flashed back to his dear Wanda.

She’d gone out to check on some damn friend of hers that had escaped from the casino level and come up in an elevator. Joel knew better than to try and stop her when her mind was made up, but he’d made her carry a gun. While he’d managed to stay away from the madness he’d seen unfolding on his television the past several days, he knew it was bad.

She’d promised to be careful, and Joel had no reason to believe that she couldn’t take care of herself. The two of them went to the range at least once a week, and she had become a damn fine shot with both handgun and rifle. To further bolster his confidence, she’d been the one pointing out things that were being done improperly as the news continued to roll in about how the entire world was collapsing.

She’d had no problem believing that most of the Asian nations went dark so fast. She’d brought up footage of places like downtown Tokyo, pointing out the massive amount of foot traffic. Enormous crowds were only part of the problem. She went on to explain how places like Tokyo would be next to impossible to survive in for more than the shortest periods of time due to the fact that the population was in such close proximity with each other.

“I doubt those rice paper walls did very much to keep zombies out,” she’d said, only being partially sarcastic.

When his Wanda had left that day, she’d assured him that her friend was okay. She wouldn’t do anything to endanger anybody.

One of the first things Joel had done when martial law had been declared in Las Vegas was to alter the elevator so that it only went up and down with the turn of a key. It had been a simple modification of the emergency circuit, and since nobody’d heard from staff or management for the past several days, there was nobody to tell him that he couldn’t.

He’d been sitting on the couch watching the latest EBS announcement when he heard the scream. Jumping to his feet, Joel had burst into the corridor to see Wanda struggling with somebody at the elevator. His heart had almost burst from his throat when the two had fallen into the elevator and vanished when the door slid shut.

He’d run to it, pounding impotently on the button as the numbers ticked down. When the elevator stopped and the LED indicated that it had done so on the fifth floor, Joel punched the wall in frustration. Then, after only a brief pause, the elevator began to return up to his floor.

Joel had been so hasty, that only as the doors were about to open did he realize that he didn’t have a weapon on hand. Wanda was standing in the open elevator, a splatter of almost black blood across her face. On the floor in a heap was a body of a woman with the back of her head blown out and a neat bullet hole in her forehead.

“People suck,” Wanda had said with a weak smile. A trickle of blood came from a small rip on one arm. Neither of them needed to say a word. Both of them knew the eventual outcome.

She’d stepped out of the elevator and almost collapsed as the adrenaline left her body in a knee-weakening rush. Joel had sent one of his staff to the doctor’s room. He’d had the doctor and his family brought to his floor the first days of martial law, insisting that they were safer with him than at some government emergency shelter. And from what the news showed, staying in a residential home was asking to die. The doctor had been grateful, as had most of Joel’s staff when the initial offer had been made.

It’d been after the fire that claimed the entirety of the Cosmopolitan just up the street that the first deserters had vanished in the night. They’d obviously used the emergency exits. It was the pounding of zombies on the other side that had informed Joel that there had been some late-night departures. That had also been the day that Joel had sealed the emergency fire exits.

“Anybody else wants to leave, all they need to do is say so,” Joel had announced to the remaining residents on his floor. “But I’ll be damned if somebody is going to endanger the rest of us by leaving a door open for those things to come stumbling up.”

“Hey, buddy, you still with me, over?” the radio crackled, snapping Joel out of his memories.

“Yeah, still here, over.” Joel looked around again, amazed that no zombies were coming for him.

“Look, the whirly-bird is done. Took a freaking rocket during our fly over a residential area if you can believe that happy crappy. Nearest outpost still online is about thirty miles from here, over.”

“You looking to regroup with your outfit, over?”

Joel shaded his eyes and looked up at the two figures after several seconds passed without him being answered. He could tell that they were in an earnest conversation. Well if they were going to stand up there and argue all day, then they would be doing it without him as an audience. He was about to tell them that they were on their own when his radio crackled with static and then a reply.

“That’s a negative, over.”

“I’m rolling in five, so find a way down here and let’s put this place behind us, over,” Joel replied.

He turned and started back for the shuttle van. Along the way he had to shove away a few zombies, but he barely paid them any mind. His thoughts were focused on the next step.

“You sure you want to just walk away from this place?” the radio squawked after a moment.

Joel paused and glanced back. They’d left the top floor and were out of sight. Obviously they were seeing a trove of items worth taking. Perhaps these two would be a good start to his ultimate objective.

“What is the risk reward assessment?” Joel finally shot back after he climbed into the shuttle and scooped his cat up into his lap as he watched the undead stumbling around inside the perimeter of the fallen FEMA site.

As he sat there, he saw something that almost made him angry with himself for not having come to the conclusion earlier. Moving down the aisle of the shuttle, Joel scanned the situation and smiled at the simplicity.

“If you are not in a bad situation, hold your positions and take a moment to prioritize the best items. I will be coming in hard and fast in a few minutes. Be ready, over.” Joel put Peanut on the dash where the cat promptly yawned, stretched, and then sprawled out in the pool of sunlight.

“What are we supposed to be ready for, over?”

“A fast transfer of goods and hasty departure.”

It only took him a few minutes to lay out his plan. Like good soldiers, they didn’t interrupt or ask a lot of meaningless questions. They took in the information and used that to determine what needed to be done.

4

Field Tests

Joel keyed the radio twice as the signal that he was ready. He’d left the relative safety and security of the shuttle van once again and he’d spied his objective almost instantly.

After giving the Harley a quick inspection, Joel had stood it up and walked the bike out to the four-way intersection of East Tropicana Avenue and Wilbur Street. His own radio squelched twice in response letting him know that his two new companions were also ready.

It had taken them the better part of an hour to do what needed to be done. He hoped that they’d chosen wisely. It wasn’t like he had anyplace else to be, but he hated wasting time.

Having gotten his cue, Joel started the bike and then gave the throttle a hard twist. The noise was instant and almost ear-splitting after so much relative quiet.

Hurrying away from the two-wheeled noisemaker, Joel made his way to a three-car accident and hid in one of the dark nooks provided by the mess. Already he could see scores of the undead turning in response to this new sound stimulus. He had to hope that the response by the zombies in the area was universal. If a good number of the ones wandering around inside the defunct FEMA site made their way out, it would make gathering the military hardware all that much easier.

As the numbers of the undead gathering around the idling motorcycle grew, Joel got down on his belly and wriggled his way to the other side of the wreck. He emerged in a crease between the front bumper of one vehicle and the passenger side rear door of another. He caught a whiff of zombie that was obviously closer. It wasn’t so bad that it coated his throat, but he could definitely taste it. Luckily, he thought he might be growing somewhat immune to the stink as his stomach simply clenched a little instead of threatening to empty itself.

A soft thud that he felt more than heard came from just above and behind him. He hadn’t spotted anything inside any of the vehicles, but there was no other location for this erratic thump to originate. Being very careful, Joel inched himself up until he could peer inside the passenger window where the sound came from.

“Jesus,” he breathed.

Seated on the floor of the car was a child no older than five or six years old. The ripped-out throat dark with dried and blackened blood advertised its fate. It was looking up at him with its filmed over eyes riddled with the dark tracers and an empty expression just like any other zombie. Only, there was something off about this one, Joel decided.

It took him a few seconds to realize that it wasn’t making an effort to get at him. It appeared content to remain seated on the floor in the back of the car and stare at him. That was unsettling; almost as much as what the child held clutched in its filthy hands.

Joel allowed his eyes to take in more of the picture he was being presented with inside the vehicle. There were splatters of blood on the inside of the windshield, and the driver’s side window in front had been shattered. Judging by the scraps of cloth and copious amounts of dried blood coating the inside of the door, it was a safe bet that the driver had been dragged out through that gaping hole.

Somehow the child had been bitten and then obviously turned and that is where the real horror of the scene existed. In the back seat were a pair of car seats. One of them had been unfastened and it was bit of a stretch to think that little boy had freed himself from the restraints. Since the undead showed no ability to operate even the most basic of contraptions, it was next to impossible that he’d turned and then let himself out of his car seat.

However, the second car seat was where Joel kept finding his gaze drawn. The remnants of at least two small blankets had been drenched in blood to the point where they were now almost totally solid. One corner stood straight up as if in testament to that fact. Joel found himself cursing that blanket. If it would’ve folded over, then he would not be looking at the partial remains of a body belonging to an infant. If the blanket had given him a reprieve, then all he would’ve had to endure looking at was the tiny arm clutched in the little zombie boy’s hands like a giant turkey drumstick.

Not sure how long he’d been distracted by the terrible sight, Joel finally tore himself away when his radio made a series of electronic pops indicating that his soldiers were trying to signal him. He pushed away from the nightmare diorama and hurried down the access road to his shuttle.

It was parked lengthwise just a few yards back from one of the breaches in the fence just prior to reaching the parking garage structure. Joel climbed on top of it and scanned the area for the two soldiers. When he saw them, he could not hold back the smile. They were standing just outside a long military tent, each of them waving their arms frantically over their heads.

After a single wave back in response and a click of his radio mic button, Joel scurried down and into the shuttle. He turned the engine over and wrenched the wheel around, driving through the gaping hole in the fence. He swerved to avoid or minimize slamming into the staggering corpses that had opted to stick around the FEMA site until he came to a stop at the tent. He opened the front and middle doors and hurried out.

“Pleased to meet—” the soldier wearing the radio headset began, but Joel cut him off.

“Introductions later. Right now let’s load out as much as possible and get out of here.” Joel edged past the pair and into the tent.

Sure enough, it was exactly what he’d been hoping for. This tent was basically the weapons locker for the military that had been here. There were cases and crates stacked neatly, forming aisles to walk down. Most were very clearly stamped with what they contained.

The two soldiers followed him inside and everybody grabbed something based on the priority that they’d agreed upon before undertaking this little mission. In short order, they’d transferred enough into the shuttle to arm a revolutionary resistance.

Joel gave the signal indicating that they were carrying their last load and hurried to deposit the crate of ammo he’d snatched up onto one of the seats. He rushed to the driver’s seat and watched until both of his new cohorts made it inside before shutting the doors and stomping on the gas to hasten their exit. The weight of their cargo did little to help in that matter, but eventually they got up a head of steam.

“As I was saying,” the man with the headset groaned as he slid down into the seat closest to the driver’s, “name’s Will Barnes.”

Joel looked up and made eye contact with the man via the rearview mirror. He let his gaze drift over to the other soldier who was just removing the battle helmet. The brown hair was clumped together from sweat, and the individual’s face was flushed from the heat and exertion, but when they locked eyes, he had a tough time swallowing his surprise.

“Yeah…I’m a woman. You got a problem with it?” the soldier snarled.

“Just a bit old school? Is that the right phrase?” Joel replied with a shrug.

“Where did you serve?” Will piped in, giving a nod to the tattoo on Joel’s forearm.

Joel glanced down at the old and faded ink. The outline of Vietnam with a field knife plunged into the middle poked from beneath his rolled-up sleeve.

“Nam.” Joel had no need to elaborate. The two soldiers were silent in response.

Joel stared out the window at the road ahead. There were already swirls of sand blowing about. He wondered if the entire city might be swallowed by the desert within the next decade or so.

“My name’s Debra,” the female soldier said, finally breaking the silence. “Debra Allen.”

“Where can I take you two?” Joel asked as he nudged the wheel so that the shuttle avoided a trio of the undead stumbling his direction.

“Yeah…” Will let that word draw out a bit. “The thing is, we ain’t exactly looking to go back. We heard enough on the radio to know that the chain of command is broken. Hell, the president is dead, nobody has stepped forward to say a word about who would take over. That leads me to believe that the government is done. Our base was overrun this morning, so we don’t have a command to report to any longer, and well over half our numbers went AWOL in the last three days. I doubt the world’s most powerful army is in existence. Hell, the rumor on the wind is that a lot of units have simply gone rogue or flat out disbanded.”

“What my long-winded friend is trying to say is that we are basically hired guns now.” Debra patted the assault rifle she had draped across her body.

“Hired guns?” Joel scoffed. “What do you think people are going to be able to pay you with? Not much chance that the banks are still open.”

“More ways to collect than just a paycheck.” Debra’s eyes bored into Joel’s. “The way I see it…the world we knew is gone. This is like nothing anybody could’ve ever imagined. Most folks are going to be spending all their time and energy just trying to survive hour to hour.”

Joel liked what he was hearing. It was almost like he was hearing a younger and female version of himself speak through this woman. He guessed her to be in her early thirties. Her eyes were a deep brown, and looked like they had seen a rough journey. They were squinted a bit despite there not being any sun shining in them. She had a downturn to her mouth that looked permanent. He briefly wondered what it would look like if she were to smile.

“Can I say what I am hoping we are all thinking?” Will said with a nervous laugh. “We aren’t talking about running around on the fool’s errand of trying to save people. We are going to secure our piece of the pie and do what needs to be done in order to make certain that we maintain it.”

“Basically we are the bad guys,” Debra added.

“I prefer to look at and refer to us as…pragmatic.” Joel glanced to the left, his eyes drawn by a flurry of movement.

He peered into his sideview mirror and watched as a pair of obviously living beings dashed out into the street in their wake. One of them began jumping up and down, waving both arms overhead in a desperate attempt to get the attention of the shuttle that had just sped past.

Debra stood and turned to look behind them. Joel was impressed. Obviously her senses were on high alert. Will seemed momentarily confused and had to get up and look back to see what had his comrade’s attention.

Joel returned his focus to the mirror offering him a good look at what they were leaving behind. He’d barely taken his foot off the gas when he spotted the fourth member of that group so intent on trying to flag him down. One of the people was holding a child that looked to be perhaps seven or eight years old. He continued to watch as a cluster of shapes came from all directions, homing in on the group, obviously drawn to their pleas for him to stop.

He continued to watch as one of the members of the group advanced on the nearest zombie and brought a large bladed weapon, most likely some sort of machete, down on the crown of the head of the target. Unfortunately for that individual, the rest of the group now seemed frozen in terror as several more simply took the place of the fallen. He was surprised when he heard the first of the screams. He hadn’t heard their calls for help, yet these screams were at an entirely different level, and thus, obviously they carried farther.

His foot returned its original degree of pressure on the gas pedal as the shuttle continued to roll past wrecked or abandoned vehicles, bodies left to rot, staggered groups and singles of the walking dead, and the last vestiges of what people considered to be Las Vegas.

They were now approaching a plethora of apartment buildings, strip malls, and the sorts of buildings you would find in any normal town or city in the United States. This is where the men and women who kept the machines of vice operating full-tilt day and night, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Now, it looked like a war zone. Buildings were either burning or already burnt to the ground in many instances. The undead population also increased.

He had to slow down considerably as they rolled through the intersection of Tropicana and Topaz Street. “We might have a problem,” Joel announced.

Will and Debra crowded in the aisle next to the driver’s seat and stared out the front window at what waited ahead. Up until this point, they’d only encountered packs of the undead numbering no more than twenty or thirty. What seethed and undulated in the parking lot of what had once been a Walmart Superstore just two blocks ahead no doubt numbered in the hundreds.

“We can’t drive through that,” Debra breathed.

“No shit,” Will agreed.

“We can circle around using Hacienda,” Joel announced, wrenching the wheel around to the right and accelerating.

“You really think going out to the dam is the smart play?” Will asked, his hands fidgeting nervously with the M4 dangling at his side from the shoulder tether.

“I do,” Joel confirmed as he swerved around a nasty collision in the middle of the road and then hooked to the left to start up East Hacienda Avenue.

Up ahead, they could see what looked like a military road block. If not for the dozen undead staggering around the tan military vehicles—many wearing military fatigues—it might’ve been a successful mirage of hope. Joel slowed as they came up to a Humvee with the doors open. A lone figure remained “in” the vehicle. A machine gun turret mounted on top still had its crew member.

Joel stopped the shuttle and climbed out despite the protests and confusion being voiced by his two companions. He looked inside and realized that he was only half correct; just as that lone crew member was only half in the vehicle. His lower half had been torn free, and all that remained was the upper stumps of the soldier’s thighs dangling through a harness of some sort.

“We change vehicles here,” Joel announced to Will and Debra.

The pair looked around, assessed the scene, and then went about the methodical and anti-climactic elimination of the undead scattered about. Once again Joel was astounded that something like this zombie apocalypse had managed to not just gain a foothold, but apparently stomp a proper mudhole in civilization.

The ease and efficiency in which the two soldiers eliminated the threat was not even surgical. It was simple. That’s it…just simple. Other than the horde of several hundred milling about up the road near the local Walmart, the zombies had posed no threat as far as Joel could see. A thought niggled in his mind, but he shoved it away before it became a distraction.

As the soldiers dispatched zombies, Joel began transferring their weapons, ammo, and supply haul from the shuttle over to the Humvee. He glanced at his cat as he came up the steps for his second load. The feline had found a spot on the front seat bathed in the last of the afternoon sun.

“You would not care in the least if you were the last one left,” he muttered, giving Peanut a scratch behind his ear before hustling to grab the next load. Peanut purred in response and shut his eyes.

As soon as the zombies were put down, both Will and Debra rushed over to give Joel a hand moving the last of the gear. Once they had everything, they agreed to check out a few of the vehicles as well as search the soldiers’ corpses for anything useful.

Joel was just finishing a pat down of a female staff sergeant when a loud electronic blast of feedback caused him to jump. His hand was instantly holding his Beretta and he had it leveled at what should be close to center mass of an average adult target.

Will’s hands were in the air and a hint of red creeped up his neck as he blushed in at least moderate embarrassment. Joel made a mental note to himself when he saw that Debra had spun and drawn down as well.

Will gave the hand holding the two-way radio a shake. “Sorry, I didn’t realize it was cranked when I powered it on.”

Joel and Debra each holstered their weapons. “You got a list of channels to monitor?” Joel asked as he returned to checking bodies. He hadn’t realized it until just this minute that he’d been unconsciously collecting the dog tags of every soldier he searched.

“I have one,” Debra announced. She patted her left breast pocket. “Hasn’t been updated in a while, but I doubt there has been much in the way of daily call sign and security swaps.”

Joel nodded and the three finished scavenging. Once they were finished, they loaded into the Humvee with Debra assuming the driver’s role after she got the big machine started. Will climbed into the gunner’s perch and, after doing a quick inspection of the weapon, readied the .50 cal. Joel made it a point to remind the soldier to be very sparing of the ammunition until they could locate more since that seemed to be the one type of ammunition that had not been found at the checkpoint, roadblock, or whatever that mess had been.

“If you take us up to Pecos, we should be past the Walmart and able to hang a left and get back on to Tropicana,” Joel called over the headset once everybody was situated.

They rolled past a neighborhood on the left that looked to have mostly burned to the ground. Joel made the determination that at least some of the damage looked relatively recent. To him, that meant looters had already come through the area. Given the mentality he assigned most of the younger generation, he figured they likely hit all the medicine cabinets and liquor cabinets before setting the homes on fire.

He’d seen enough footage on the news the past several days taken from news and military helicopters that showed the rampant looting. Most of the individuals he’d seen in those clips were younger. They somehow thought firing their weapons in the air and making collective asses of themselves was the best way to ride out a zombie apocalypse. He had a feeling that many of those sorts of idiots were now part of that herd of undead they’d just skirted.

“What the actual fuck,” Will’s voice crackled over Joel’s headset.

“What is it?” Debra asked as she took her foot off the gas just a bit as a precaution.

“Right around your two o’clock,” Will reported.

Joel and Debra leaned forward and looked off to their right in the general direction given. It took Joel a few seconds to make sense of what he was seeing, but once he did, he felt a chill seep into his blood. He actually rubbed his eyes to see if perhaps they’d been playing a trick on him.

“Are those…?” Debra’s voice faded.

“Children,” Will finished, confirming to each of them what they were seeing.

“There has to be close to fifty of them,” Joel breathed.

“Why are they just standing there?” Debra sounded like she still didn’t want to accept what her eyes were taking in. “Zombies don’t just stand there…as soon as they get wind of you, they head straight for you. That’s part of what makes them so damn easy to kill.”

“Well I guess the youngsters didn’t get the memo,” Will quipped.

As if to add credence to Debra’s observation, a trio of adult undead waded through the cluster of zombie children and came straight for the Humvee that had finally rolled to a stop. It was obvious that they were homing in on this newest sound of an idling engine as they made very slight corrections to their course until they were now on a beeline to their eventual target.

“Want me to mow ‘em down?” Will called when nobody seemed inclined to say or do anything.

“Yep,” Joel answered.

The ferocious chatter of the .50 cal sounded and brass casings clattered in a thunderous concert of death and destruction. The human body is in no way designed to take the power of a .50 caliber machine gun, and at such a relatively close range, bodies almost seemed to vaporize into clouds of dark mist. Joel watched as the children disintegrated under the onslaught. The adults that had closed the distance came apart, bits and pieces flying as Will poured hundreds of rounds of hot lead into them.

At last the noise ceased, and the world suddenly fell to an eerie silence even more pronounced than it had been just a few moments ago. The scene before them now was more of a massive stain with larger bits and pieces scattered about.

Debra started the Humvee moving again. As they came abreast of what revealed itself to once have been an elementary school, Joel barked for her to stop. He moved to the side hatch, his eyes flicking to where Peanut hid in a narrow spot between cases of ammo.

Without a word of explanation, he unfastened himself from the seat and exited the vehicle. He made sure to look around and ensure nothing was coming, but at the moment, he wanted to confirm what he’d thought he’d seen.

At last he came to a stop and stared down at the ground at the small object between his feet. Kneeling, Joel pulled a knife from his pocket and opened it, feeling the blade lock in place with a click that he felt more than heard. Poking with the tip of the blade, he had to fight the instinct not to jerk away.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Debra gasped from his left shoulder.

Joel had been so focused on the head of the little girl that he hadn’t heard the woman approach. He cocked his head as he waved the blade first to the left, then to the right. The filmed over eyes followed his every move.

“So they do see,” Debra breathed.

“I never thought otherwise,” Joel groaned as he got to his feet. “But this shot to the head thing is a bit more literal than I think I had realized. This thing was basically decapitated. The head is still…alive? I know that’s not the right word, but I can’t think of any other way to describe their state of being.”

“I hate to confirm my stupidity by opening my big mouth,” Debra said as she toed the pig-tailed zombie head with her military issue boots. “But who cares? What does this mean in the big scheme of things?”

Joel looked around and finally found what he was searching for. He paused for a moment as if unsure how to proceed. At last he turned to Debra. “Do you have any gloves?”

“Sorry.” She shook her head.

Peeling off his shirt to reveal an immaculate white tee shirt underneath, Joel returned to the little zombie girl’s head and picked it up by one filthy braid with his shirt as a very tenuous barrier between himself and the lock of twisted hair. He carried it to a shattered torso that had a softball-sized hole in the chest that had blown out most of the back, pulverizing the slender spinal column where the exit wound existed.

He set the head beside the body and then stepped back, folding his arms across his chest as he simply stood in silent observation for several seconds. At last he seemed satisfied.

“Umm, I hate to interrupt whatever it is you think you’re doing, but can you maybe fill me in?” Debra glanced around nervously, suddenly aware that the sea of carnage laid out before her was not entirely still. There were very small and subtle movements amidst all the flesh, blood, and bone slurry that remained too gruesome for her to actually process.

“I don’t know,” Joel finally admitted. “Something tells me that this is all important somehow. I just wish my Wanda were here. I would be willing to bet she could make sense of this madness.”

“What could possibly be important about—” Will began, but ended his question with a shriek as Joel snatched up the head and lobbed it at his feet.

“You were saying?” Joel snapped. “I believe this will have a purpose. Just give me a little time to figure out what it is.”

“Land mine,” Debra said with a snort. “Only, maybe you dangle these things from trees or something.”

There was a moment of silence before Joel clapped his hands in what could only be described as wicked glee. “We seem to have a window of opportunity here at the moment,” he announced. “Let’s see if we can find more of these.”

Unfortunately, they were only able to come up with three more functional heads. Two of them had most of their shoulders still intact but Joel remedied it with a swift stroke of a machete. They threw the heads into a burlap carry bag that had once contained an assortment of small tools that likely were used to keep the Humvee in working order.

Staring into the bag as Will climbed back into his turret and Debra slid behind the wheel, Joel was fascinated by how the heads seemed completely oblivious of one another. For the briefest of moments he considered where he might be heading. Would this be what Wanda had meant when she’d told him to survive…to live?

He recalled one of their conversations after she’d finished reading some zombie novel he couldn’t recall. She’d blasted the writer and the said the characters all seemed to be willing to rush into terrible situations and die.

“Why would you risk the lives of five people to save one?” she had ranted, slamming the book down on the kitchen counter where Joel had been mincing some garlic for his special spaghetti sauce. “If I was with a group and somebody got themselves in trouble…sorry about your luck.”

“Heat of the moment,” Joel offered. “Happened in the battlefield all the time. Your instinct is to save your brothers.”

“Sure,” she conceded with a shrug, “but some rando you met the day before? Sorry, fella, but you just became a zombie snack. I sure as hell wouldn’t expect some stranger to dive into a bunch of the walking dead to maybe pull me free…and then of course they always find out that the person wasn’t really rescued. They were bitten or scratched so all those other people died for nothing.”

Joel had decided not to press the issue. After all, a zombie apocalypse was fiction…a product of Hollywood and twisted people who couldn’t just stick to real civilization killers like those old nuclear destruction movies of the Eighties, or even a meteor strike, earthquake, or global famine.

“Hey, where are we supposed to turn?” Debra’s voice brought Joel’s focus back to the here and now.

“Left on Pecos and then right on Tropicana,” Joel said, returning his gaze out the front window.

The Humvee rounded the first corner and came to an abrupt halt. Literally sprinting for them were three people. In the distance, exactly where they would need to turn right, dozens of the undead were in a slow but steady pursuit.

“Dammit,” Joel snarled. “Turn right there.” He leaned forward and pointed to a side street just ahead and to the right leading into a residential neighborhood.

“Hang on,” Debra shouted as she stomped on the gas and wrenched the wheel hard into the turn.

Joel instantly regretted not being strapped into his seat as he fell hard into a stack of metal cases, his elbow connecting smartly, sending a burst of electric pain all the way to his fingertips. He pushed himself up and practically threw himself into the front passenger seat, his hands fumbling for the harness that would keep him secure.

“Those people are fucking following us,” Will called in the headset.

“Now is not the time and here is not the place to pick up stragglers,” Joel said calmly. “Anybody we add to our numbers is going to need to be a fighter and capable.”

“How do we know these people aren’t?” Will asked.

“For one,” Debra spoke before Joel could answer, “they are running down the middle of the street being chased by a pack of zombies.”

“But…” Will let that thought die on his tongue.

“If they had any brains, they would be someplace secure. And if that location fell, they would have a fallback. Running down the middle of the street is a move of desperation. They aren’t making any attempt to elude, and they tried to wave us down the moment they saw us. They need saving. That isn’t our mission.” Joel glanced over at Debra and saw her nod in agreement. “Is that going to be a problem for you, Mister Barnes?”

“I guess not,” came the confused sounding reply. “So…do you want me to gun them down?”

“We aren’t animals,” Joel laughed coldly. “Besides, why would we waste good ammunition for a job the zombies will do for us?”

The Humvee rolled through the non-descript neighborhood. Most of the houses showed signs of being either looted or torched. There were dead bodies everywhere you looked. Most of them were shrouded by a cloud of insects. A few were being feasted on by birds.

Debra slammed on the brakes again, sending Joel jerking hard against the restraints. He was about to ask her what the hell she was doing when he saw it.

Standing in the middle of the road was a dog. Based on its appearance, Joel thought it had to be a lab. Its fur was a matted mess that hid whatever its original color had been. One ear dangled from the side of its head and swung just a bit as the pathetic creature lifted its head to regard the Humvee. It tilted its head one way then the other before apparently dismissing them and returning to the body sprawled at its feet.

Joel found himself just a few feet away without even realizing that he’d even exited the vehicle. The body on the ground made a soft whimpering sound and he looked down to see the face of a woman looking up at him with eyes that pleaded for him to end her pain. He drew the blade on his hip and quickly drove the point of it into the eye socket of the dog just as it looked up to regard him again.

The woman’s mouth opened and closed, but only a spray of blood managed to make its way out, dribbling down her chin and from both corners of her mouth. Her eyes flicked to the weapon in his hand and he saw her fear increase. Her head moved weakly back and forth.

“You want me to end the pain, don’t you?” he whispered. She nodded slightly. “Then close your eyes and it will all be over in just a second.”

Again her eyes flicked to the blade. He saw tears start to leak from the corners, and again she gave the slightest shake of her head.

“Fine.” Joel shrugged his shoulders, turned, and walked away. As he walked away he heard a strangled cry.

“What the hell was that all about?” Debra asked as Joel climbed back into the Humvee.

“Fucking dog.” Joel strapped himself into place and then looked over at Debra when the vehicle hadn’t started forward again. “What?”

“What about the dog?” she asked hesitantly.

“It was one of those…things,” he spat.

“You’ve gotta be kidding.”

“Nope.”

“So we have to worry about animals and humans?”

“Looks that way,” Joel said with a shrug. “What’s the big deal?”

“Rats? Birds? Fucking bugs?” she practically yelled, her pitch rising with each word.

“Let’s not get hysterical.” Joel pointed forward. “How about you just drive for now and we worry about one thing at a time.”

The Humvee started forward with a jerk as Debra stomped on the gas. It was not lost on Joel that the woman swerved to run over both the woman dying in the street and the carcass of the dog he’d already ended.

They turned left on Alfalfa Street and then another right on East Reno Avenue. The deeper into the neighborhood they ventured, the worse things seemed to become. More of the undead began oozing from the shadows in their staggered and awkward gait.

Some of the houses had clusters of the undead gathered around. Many of those had various banners—usually made from bedsheets—hanging from one window or another. Huge letters announcing “Survivors Inside!” or just pleading “Help!”

On a few occasions, Joel was certain that he saw movement through one window or another. On one instance, one of those windows flew open and a person jutted from the opening waving arms frantically in an attempt to get their attention. If Debra or Will saw, they never acknowledged it. Joel simply dismissed it as unimportant.

They reached Pearl Street, and Joel instructed Debra to turn left. The Humvee swept wide around yet another collision and screeched to a halt. Up ahead was what looked at first like another defunct military roadblock. Joel saw the flash and winced when he heard the metallic ‘ting’ of rounds pinging off the exterior of the Humvee.

“Fuck,” he hissed when he saw the wide-mouthed barrel of the grenade launcher appear and rest across the hood of the burnt-out husk of a blackened SUV.

5

“I sentence you to the darkness.”

“What do you want me to do, boss?” Will’s voice crackled over the headset.

Joel heard the turret moving as he obviously lined up whatever shot he thought he might take. Joel cleared his mind for a moment and tried to assess the situation with a calm head. These people hadn’t fired the big guns yet, but it was obvious that they were packing at least some semblance of firepower. He made up his mind and unclipped his harness.

“Are you seriously getting out again?” Debra said out of the corner of her mouth like she might be afraid of being heard, or perhaps having her lips read. “This is becoming a bad habit of yours.”

Joel ignored her remarks and exited the Humvee, making a point of putting his hands in the air in that universal sign of surrender. He moved to the front of the idling vehicle and then very slowly dropped his hands, clasping them in front of himself. After a few seconds that began to feel like minutes, a lone individual emerged from behind the vehicle roadblock. He or she was dressed in what looked like riot gear and had what Joel identified as a military-issue M4 slung across their chest. He breathed an inner sigh of relief when the person set the weapon on the hood of one of the vehicles and took a few steps toward him. Joel reciprocated, and the two began a slow and cautious advance. Twice, there was the report of a rifle and an approaching zombie tottered and fell to the pavement with a meaty thud.

At last, Joel and the stranger were standing just a few feet apart. The person in the riot gear flipped up the helmet’s visor to reveal the face of a man who appeared to be in his early fifties. His gray hair peeked out from the edges and framed a weather-worn face that had seen its fair share of sunshine over the years. The man had piercing eyes that were a blue that verged on gray.

“Tim Wistrom,” the man said in a voice so quiet that Joel felt compelled to lean forward in order to hear.

“Joel Landon.”

“We seem to have a situation,” the man said with an easy smile as he leaned just a bit to get a look past Joel at the Humvee idling almost a block behind.

“Doesn’t really have to be anything.” Joel let that seep in, and then continued when it was clear that the stranger was not inclined to say more. “We are heading out of town. Figure the best thing to do right now is stake a claim to a place that is defensible and offers us enough seclusion from the main population while still making it feasible to return in order to make supply runs.”

“So then, you folks ain’t actual military?” the man asked, giving a nod to the Humvee.

“I’m retired, but the two others in the vehicle are both active.” Joel slapped himself in the forehead mentally as soon as that answer slipped from his mouth. He’d just given away vital information for free. And worse, he’d exposed his numbers.

“Well three of the people in my group were part of the last response team to put boots on the ground here in Vegas. The other five are civilians, but they seem to have their heads on straight.”

Joel nodded. He wondered if the person had simply reciprocated sharing information, or if perhaps he was trying to establish that his numbers were superior. Either way, he wasn’t inclined to continue standing around in the street having this conversation. It would be getting dark soon, and he wanted to at least be someplace defensible by the time it was full dark.

“You’re welcome to join us if you like.” Joel tried to sound uninterested in how his offer would be taken. “And if not, we just want to be on our way.”

“Give me a minute,” Tim said with a nod. He turned on his heel and jogged back to the roadblock.

Joel made a count of heads as people emerged to meet the man. He counted six people besides Tim. That meant two were staying out of sight. Smart move, he acknowledged. If he’d been honest in revealing their numbers, then they had the sense to keep what he imagined were designated snipers out of sight and on alert. A moment later, his suspicions were confirmed when the report of a rifle sounded and another zombie that was approaching the scene dropped lifelessly to the ground like a toy that had just had its power cut.

After a very short meeting, Tim turned and jogged back. “My people are amicable about us perhaps joining forces.”

“That’s all well and good, but before you make that decision, you might want to explain that we are not a rescue mission in the making.” He saw the man nod and decided to elaborate a little. “We are looking to set ourselves up not to simply survive, but to live. The world we knew is over. Most folks are going to cling to its decaying corpse for as long as possible. I plan to create my own little Utopia.”

Tim regarded Joel long enough that Joel thought he’d reconsidered. At last he spoke again, his voice barely a whisper, “We gonna become raiders?”

“Nothing quite so sinister,” Joel laughed and patted the man on the arm. “But we will take what we need, and if it means taking it from somebody else…well…that isn’t off the table.”

Tim glanced over his shoulder at his group that were now gathered on the other side of the roadblock—Joel marked that as the first mistake he’d noticed in the group. Trust was simply not something you could afford to be generous with in the current world environment. He would have a bit of work to do as he built what he was beginning to think of as his New World Army.

“I think the best plan for today would be to get someplace for the night and hunker down,” Joel said, putting an arm around Tim’s shoulder and walking with him towards the group clustered in front of the roadblock. He could almost feel Debra’s eyes boring into his back, and had to wonder if maybe now it wasn’t his turn to be making the stupid move.

“Folks, this is…” Tim turned back to Joel, his face just a little flushed with embarrassment. “I feel stupid. All the excitement and I went and forgot your name. Seems almost crazy to even be considering joining up with you when I can’t even recall your name.” He laughed uncomfortably.

Joel did a quick sweep of the people gathered around and saw at least two individuals who were less than impressed with developments. Or maybe they were simply not happy that their apparent spokesman, and possibly even their leader, could be so absent-minded.

“We gonna stand around here in the open like this much longer?” a woman snarled. “I thought we were taking cover in the Walgreens until tomorrow morning before blowing this Popsicle stand.”

“I guess I will start the introductions with the always outspoken, Miss Hope Dalton,” Tim said with a wave of his hand to indicate the woman who’d just spoken.

The woman appeared in her early thirties with hair that was a shade of red that Joel knew did not grow naturally. Her blue eyes were squinted against the reflection of the sun off the side of a nearby building. She had rifles jutting over each shoulder and a hook-bladed weapon on her hip that looked like it’d seen a considerable amount of action. When her eyes met his, the corners of her eyes tightened and her lips pulled back in a bit of a sneer.

“We can do this when we get settled in for the evening, if you don’t mind.” Joel held up a hand, silencing Tim before he could continue. “And do you think something like a store that size is really the best choice for making camp tonight?”

“You got a better idea?” a man huffed, folding his arms across his chest.

Joel turned to see a dark-skinned young man no older than his late teens glaring at him. This had been the person who had been aiming the grenade launcher at them. He held the weapon in his hands with the look of comfort that a person well trained on a weapon will possess. He was wearing a tee shirt advertising one of the casinos, but his pants were military fatigues, and his boots were definitely Government Issue.

“Yes,” Joel said flatly. “I believe I do have a better idea than a store that size. There are plenty of abandoned private residences. A few have sturdy fences around them, a few even have stone walls. We take one over for the night.”

“Not likely to find a lot of supplies for this many people in a single residence,” the dark-skinned man grumbled.

“We don’t need to top off supplies today,” Joel countered. “We hold up until morning and then make planned and organized assaults on locations that are likely to have vital supplies. But even then, we have to be mindful of where we plan to set up our base of operations. Space will be limited unless we find a large vehicle like a UPS truck to haul stuff.”

“I only got one question.” The young man swung his grenade launcher around so that it wasn’t exactly pointed at Joel, but it was certainly in his general direction. “Who named you leader?”

“Nobody. And I could give a flying fuck if you come along or not. I spoke with your man Tim here, let him know my intentions, and now me and my crew will be on our way. Come…don’t. I absolutely don’t care.”

Joel turned and started back toward the Humvee. He quickly dialed in Debra’s face and watched her expression. She would tell him everything he needed to know with her eyes. He fought the urge to touch any of his weapons, opting to hopefully put off an appearance of calm confidence.

Her eyes never found his, but instead continued to watch the people he had behind him. By the time he reached the door and opened it, he could feel a trickle of sweat roll down the middle of his back.

“Are you insane?” Debra whispered, barely moving her lips and keeping her eyes forward.

Joel climbed in and started fastening his seat harness and tugging on his headset. He barely had it on when he heard Will Barnes.

“Umm, what do we do here, chief?”

“Hold your fire,” Joel answered, assuming that the statement had been intended for him.

The group had all started climbing into the assorted vehicles used to block the road at this point. Joel kept his eyes on the one that Tim climbed into. It pulled away first and rolled his direction, coming to a stop beside the Humvee.

After unlocking the small window, Joel removed his headset and regarded Tim with raised eyebrows. The other vehicles were all falling in behind Tim’s, so whatever choice they’d made, it looked unanimous.

“We’re with you,” Tim shouted over the noise of the numerous engines.

“Okay, then let’s get off the streets and clear a location for the night.”

Joel turned to Debra and gave her a nod. She pulled forward without a word, but he saw her jaw clench just a bit. He would ask her later what reservations she might hold, but there were a number of zombies staggering out into the street because of all the noise. Their conversation could wait.

It didn’t take long for them to locate a residence that would suit their needs perfectly. To Joel, the two-story house looked like it belonged to somebody who wished they had more money than they actually possessed. It was heavily landscaped with all sorts of fruit trees, fountains, and had the general appearance of being immaculate. Closer inspection, and being heavily involved in real estate made that one of Joel’s specialties, revealed that most of the work was cosmetic and little more than a coating of gloss over chipped tiles. The water features were not real rock, but poly-resin constructs. The wall was the giveaway. The iron work that topped it was pitted with rust that had been painted over an unknown number of times. Still, that wall would be enough to keep zombies out for the night.

Getting in was a simple matter and all the vehicles were parked along the front of the home. Sentries were posted and a rotation was quickly drawn up. Joel, Tim, Debra, and the young soldier, Malik Wyrick, took seats around the large dining room table and laid out plans for the next few days. Joel explained his goal of establishing a main base at the Hoover Dam.

“We need to move fast. If there are any workers still on site, we secure them. They will be the key,” Joel explained.

“Key to what?” Malik asked. His tone had started off challenging, but as the plans were explained, he’d quickly gotten on board. Now he was almost anxious.

“Power will be the key. This world is about to be thrown back into the dark ages,” Joel explained. “If we can secure that massive source of power and harness it for our consumption while simultaneously choking off the rest of the grid that feeds off it, we would quickly become the most powerful entity in this new world.”

“And we are agreed on the fact that we only bring in viable workers,” Debra repeated. “One of the biggest failures in our country was caring for all the wastes of life that couldn’t get off their ass and get a job.”

“If they can’t work, they are nothing more than a drain on resources,” Joel reiterated.

The meeting broke up after a little over two hours, but everybody walked away from the table feeling like they had a direction. Joel went from the meeting straight to his shift as a sentry perched on the roof of the house. That had been another point that he’d hammered home during the meeting: Everybody pulls their weight…no exceptions.

***

It had taken two weeks to gather over fifty individuals that were willing to fall in with Joel and his growing New World Army. Taking the dam had almost been anti-climactic. The best find had been the cluster of a dozen workers that had secured themselves in the big chamber that housed the enormous turbines.

After very little persuasion, an employee roster was handed over. Joel sent teams out on recovery runs to bring in as many of the individuals that worked at the dam as possible. Many of their searches were fruitless, but in the end, they managed to round up a total of thirty-five dam workers that ranged from engineer all the way to tour guide.

“Why the hell do we want some parks and recreation drone?” Debra had grumbled.

“They know this facility probably better than anybody,” Joel explained. “That includes all the hiding spots and secrets.”

By the end of five weeks, there were over two hundred people living in the visitor’s center and plans were put into play to start creating more living quarters in the multi-floor parking garage. It was just after a supply mission that Joel faced his first real challenge.

Walking into what was now designated the control center, Joel stopped by the radio operator’s station. One of the posts manned around the clock was the communication room. All sorts of monitoring equipment and a handful of shortwave radios were constantly being listened to for any signs of survivors…or enemies. This was how they found the locations of various groups. Joel never ceased to be amazed at how much information was given up by people that were growing increasingly desperate.

“We have what sounds like a pretty large group out there,” the young woman wearing the headset reported. “But they are still in the city.”

Joel had ceased sending groups into the city of Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. Now that the power had been shut off, the city was a death trap. The casinos and hotels were nothing more than hives of the undead. The risk/reward ratio was slanted too far towards risk as bands of zombies and the worst dregs of humanity warred for supremacy. Joel would let them battle it out until winter came and went, then he would return and see if there was anything left.

“Somebody named Conrad Parks keeps coming on every hour and asking for help. Twice he has called for you by name, sir. He says that his group is trapped in the MGM Grand Signature Suites, Tower Two. There are…”

Joel was no longer listening to the report. As impossible as it seemed, young Conrad was alive. If that was true, then he had no choice…he would go fetch the boy. Of course the boy was a grown man, but to Joel he would always be Bill Parks’ little boy.

“I want a team ready in…” Joel glanced down at his watch, “…twenty minutes. Volunteer only. This will be a run into the city.”

“But you said—” the operator started.

“I am very aware of what I said,” Joel cut her off. “And that is why this is a volunteer only mission. Make the announcement. I will be in the briefing room, have anybody interested meet me there.”

Ten minutes later, Will, Debra, Malik, and three other individuals entered the room with the long table that had been designated as the briefing room. Joel scanned each face and knew before the first words were spoken who would be a problem.

Joel thought his name might be Patrick Something-or-other. The truth was that it didn’t really matter. This was going to serve a purpose as everything must these days. Joel had prepared in advance for this possibility, and held his smile in check when Will moved just behind and to the side of the man that Joel’s gaze lingered on.

“I am heading into the city to bring in a group,” he announced. “They are trapped in the Grand’s Signature Towers. I will inform our communications team to make contact and instruct them on how it will work. This will be an in-and-out operation, but there will be risk. As we all know, the walkers have chosen to linger in the heart of the city in the area of the Strip.”

“I thought you made the rule that the Strip was off limits…too dangerous was your edict, was it not?” Patrick challenged almost on cue.

“That is correct, but I believe this group will be of use. My edict, as you have deemed it, was based on the risk versus the reward.”

“I hear the person called for you specifically,” Patrick pressed.

Joel hid his grimace. This meant that somebody in communications had let slip information. That would be a problem he would fix later. Right now he needed to handle the one before him. He needed to do it in a way that would make very clear the degree of tolerance he possessed. More important, it needed to demonstrate that any form of rebellion or dissension would be dealt with harshly.

Joel gave a nod and Will struck like a cobra. The butt of his rifle smashed into the base of the neck of the man, dropping him to his knees. Just as fast, Debra stepped in with zip cuffs and bound Patrick’s hands behind his back.

“We will leave as soon as this is dealt with,” Joel announced. He scanned the faces of the rest of those who had answered his call for volunteers. Not one of them showed much more than mild curiosity.

“You gonna toss him to the stiffs?” Malik asked, toeing the downed figure with his boot.

“Too easy.” Joel made a dismissive wave with his hand. “Bring him with me and have the entire population mustered to the emergency stairwell.”

It took almost an hour to bring everybody down to the open corridor that terminated with an ominous metal door. An elderly woman stood beside the door with Joel. Her gray hair was pulled back in a severe bun and her face showed the ravages that years of smoking could do to the skin. In her hand was a large key.

Once it looked as if everybody was assembled, Joel began, “When this dam was constructed, they had to build a set of switchback stairs to go up and down. I would like each of you to make your way through this doorway and travel in far enough so that everybody gets down to the first landing.”

There were more than a few looks of confusion, and even a few of concern. Anticipating this, he gave Debra a curt nod.

“Everybody follow me. I’d maybe keep a hand on the person in front of you so nobody gets lost.” Without another word, she ducked through the open door, past a metal gate, and down the stairs.

Joel watched as everybody began to follow suit with the exception of Will who remained and kept Patrick at gunpoint. It took well over twenty minutes for everybody to file in and past. Once the last person went through the door way, Joel moved over to a circuit breaker switch.

“I will ask you to indulge me for a moment,” he called down the stairs. “Stay put, and do not worry, what you are about to experience will only be temporary.”

With that, Joel stepped back, shut the heavy metal door and turned the breaker switch to off. Even through the solid metal of the door, shouts of alarm could just be heard. He glanced over at Will who was shaking his head slowly.

“Do you have a problem, Mister Barnes?” Joel tapped the switch but still did not turn it back on.

“That is some cold shit,” the man replied. “And there won’t be any going back once we do this.”

“If you lack the stomach…” Joel allowed that statement to hang in the air.

“Nope.” Will shook his head. “Just saying that we are going to be committed to this once we cross that line.”

“Let me be perfectly clear.” Joel folded his hands across his chest and regarded the man with a cold stare. “We will have order. This is not a world were anything can be left to chance. The moment one of ours refuses to do what is asked of them, or believes they can rely on the old way of making a fuss to draw attention to what they deem is some sort of social injustice, we return to the same hamstrung politically correct world that failed and brought us to where we are today.”

Without another word, Joel flicked the breaker back on and wrenched the lever up. With a grunt of effort, he swung the door back open. He didn’t have to say a word as people flooded out and back into the light. Many were blinking and rubbing their eyes. A few were busily wiping tears away. He made a point of memorizing those faces. Fear could be a weapon that he could exploit if the need arose.

“Bring the prisoner forward,” Joel announced once Debra filed out. She gave him a slight nod, her lips hinting at a smile that once again threatened to give Joel chills to his core.

Will grabbed the man from where he’d been kneeling and brought him to Joel where he forced him back to his knees again. Joel looked into the man’s eyes and saw fear. But there was something else. He didn’t have long to wait to find out what that might be.

“Are you all going to allow this?” Patrick croaked. “This is not what we are. Building a new life doesn’t mean we have to lose our humanity. And how can one person set the rules and change them arbitrarily? This is doomed to end poorly.”

“One person setting the rules will ensure we have order,” Joel said in a voice almost too soft to hear. “These are the ways and thoughts that brought us to where we are now. If you give everyone a say, then the center is pulled apart in every direction. To achieve what is best for our chance at an actual life in this disaster, there must be one hand on the rudder. I am here to guide and bring us to the other side.”

“And so anybody who disagrees with you is murdered? That is a dictatorship. We have seen how that plays out through history,” Patrick spat.

Joel felt a kernel of sadness grow in his heart. He respected the man kneeling before him. He was strong. Only somebody with real courage could face certain death and not be reduced to tears and begging.

“What is your name again?” For some reason, that was important to Joel in the moment.

“Patrick Sweeny.”

“Very well.” Joel nodded to Debra and Will who stepped up and grabbed the man in the crook of each elbow. “Patrick Sweeny, you have been found guilty of sedition. Your actions endanger the community, and therefore, you must be removed.”

Joel looked around at his gathered community. He saw what he expected in the various gazes he locked onto. Some were curious, others afraid, a few still in shock and visibly numb. But there were a few that stood out. He knew well what the feverish look of the devoted looked like. These would be the ones he would pull in closer. They would keep his rules and not hesitate to move against any who did not conform.

“Do you have anything else to say before I pass sentence?” Joel looked back down at the man and now saw the hint of desperation creep across his face like a cloud.

“You’re mad. This will not end well…not for you…not for anybody mad enough to follow you,” the man replied, his voice shaking just a bit now as the inevitability of an unknown but terrible fate loomed.

“Then, Patrick Sweeny, for your crimes…I sentence you to the darkness.”

With that, Joel gave a nod. Will and Debra jerked the man to his feet and dragged him to the open doorway. In a flash, Will produced a knife and sliced the zip cuffs right before shoving Patrick through the open doorway and down the metal stairs.

Debra pulled the gate shut and locked it before the man could recover. “You will find water at the bottom.” With those words, she stepped back and slammed the metal door shut with an ominous clang, instantly silencing the man’s first real scream.

Joel turned back to the crowd gathered around. “There will be order. Each of you was told when you first joined us that there would only be one person in charge. You were asked if you could accept that. Each of you said that you could. Make no mistake…this is not a democracy. If you stay here, it is under my protection, but it is also under my rules. I want each of you to take part in a scavenger run in the next week. I want you to see what is out there. I want you to see for yourselves what chaos and anarchy can bring. I want you to experience with your own eyes the lawlessness that now claims this world and understand that this was what seethed under the surface of our society with its bleeding heart sympathy for people who refused to care for themselves and instead burdened society with their care. A criminal justice system that failed long ago and housed the worst of society in conditions far better than what some of our own people who worked hard and struggled daily to put a meal on the table could hope for.”

As he spoke, Joel paced back and forth with the metal door behind him as a visible reminder of what awaited any who would think to rebel or disobey. If his dream of carving out not just the chance of survival, but a place where life could flourish were to have any chance at success, then he needed absolute obedience.

“When you go to your quarters, we have power, we have hot meals and showers. We are not merely surviving…we are alive. Outside this bubble, the world is dark. Death is now the norm. People are devolving into creatures worse than the walking dead. Make no mistake…this was our ultimate destiny. We lived in a world where every person cared only for themselves and their own tiny circle. Courtesy, decency, and personal accountability were relics. What I offer here is a world where you will all be part of something greater than yourselves. We will rebuild a beacon that will shine against that darkness. But for that to become a reality…there must be order. Are you with me?”

Joel looked around. There were a lot of blank expressions. Not quite the rousing cheer he’d expected. Perhaps they believed the question was rhetorical.

“I ask again…are you with me?”

It started with individual shouts of “Aye!” or “Yes!” and then grew into cheers and applause. This was his time to strike.

“We will make a kingdom here that will be the envy of the world. We will return to the ways that made this country great!” The cheers grew louder and some of those he’d seen with a devoted fervor were now beginning to actually weep. “I need each of you to commit to this with all your heart and soul. I need you to accept that I will always put the community’s strength and health ahead of everything else. I will build an empire where each of you will reap the rewards, but you must be willing to work hard for it. The days of having things handed to you are gone. You must earn your place…daily. What you did yesterday will not matter. It will always be about what you do today…what you do in the moment.”

He let the cheers grow. He brought his hands up and encouraged the applause to continue for a few minutes. He also took that time to scan for any who might still be holding back. Those would be the ones to watch. At last, he signaled the crowd to quiet down.

“Know that I will see to it that we have a paradise here in the midst of the hell that the world has become.” His voice grew solemn, and he smiled inwardly when he saw his people lean forward in order to hear. They craved his message. “If you fail to do what is asked of you, there will be consequences. I will not kill you. I will not return you to the world where you might be swallowed by the evil that exists, or worse, try to come back here and destroy what we have built…what we will build. No…I will bring you here before the community and sentence you to the darkness where you belong. There, you will be denied the light that the rest have earned. There, you will exist with your own thoughts and poisons for as long as you care to cling to the misery of your failed life.”

Joel waited for a moment, and then dismissed the crowd. Once they were gone, Debra and Will approached him. Malik stayed back with the three other individuals that volunteered to leave with him on his mission to try and rescue Conrad and his people.

“You brought down the four pallets of military rations and the water source is active?” Joel asked Debra.

“Yeah,” Debra answered with a harsh laugh. “I sure don’t envy the poor bastard that has to make that trek all the way down to the bottom. We switched off our lamps for a minute or two once we got all the way down there. Even with the door open at the top, there is no light down there. It is a darkness I never knew existed. And with the door shut, the entire stairwell is a void.”

“Where the hell did you get that idea?” Will snorted.

“One of the tour guides told me about it when she was taking me around,” Joel answered. “I knew we would have the need for a jail sooner or later. It seemed to fit the bill.”

“Why not just toss ‘em out…or over for that matter?” Debra asked with a deadly glint in her eye.

“Tossing them over is too quick. And it isn’t really much of a deterrent. Everybody has been exposed to the stairwell and I have a feeling that will stick with them for quite a while. Also, I refuse to be a cliché and allow some rebellious trouble-maker to be expelled from the community only to return with a small army and attack with full knowledge of our setup.”

“I thought you weren’t into this crap before the Zee Event.” Debra drew a blade from her belt and began to run the point under the tips of her fingernails.

“I wasn’t. But my wife loved it. While I managed to avoid it most of the time, I was not able to duck it entirely.” Joel clapped his hands together, signaling that this part of the conversation was over. “So, we have our team. I assume you have a vehicle gassed up and ready?”

“Absolutely,” Will piped up, his tone making it clear that he was glad to be able to contribute to the conversation again. “I figured that Humvee we came here in would suit perfect for the lead vehicle. We also have one of the big M35 deuce-and-a-halfs. That should allow us to bring back this group as well as some supplies if we find anything worth grabbing while we are out there.”

Twenty minutes later, Joel was in the front of the Humvee with Debra. Will had given over the machine gun turret to Malik so that he could drive the M35. Joel had made it clear that he was not yet ready to put that level of trust in anybody else yet. That was only partially true. His main reason was that he wanted to see Malik in action. The young man seemed very confident and sure of himself. Joel needed more people that he could trust out in the field, and Malik would fit the bill nicely.

The two-vehicle convoy rolled out through the gates that had been the first thing installed once they’d arrived. The sturdy iron gates ran between two massive power supply stations with ten-foot walls acting as a funnel for anything that might approach his outpost. By the time they were on the Great Basin Highway and headed towards Las Vegas, Joel had counted two lone undead and both turned around and started away from his growing complex to follow after this newest form of stimulus.

“I want a patrol out this far every day,” Joel said to Debra as they cruised up the onramp. “Have them equipped with some sort of noisemaker.”

“Alrighty,” Debra’s voice came back in his headset.

Joel sat back and smiled. That was just another reason that he liked the woman. No questions. She simply did what was asked. She was the perfect soldier. The fact that she was just a bit terrifying didn’t hurt.

6

Into the Heart of Darkness

It had been perhaps just over a month since Joel had been in the city. It was impossible not to be taken aback by how things had unraveled. The degree of destruction was beyond anything he’d ever witnessed. More houses and structures were torched and now reduced to little more than blackened skeletal husks. Bodies and partial bodies were scattered about and attracting swarms of insects, and in more than a few cases, showed signs of animals having snacked on them.

They were perhaps an hour’s drive from what had once been a global Mecca for debauchery and excess when Joel called for Debra to stop. Just ahead, on the side of the road, was what would almost be considered a normal scene these days.

From the looks of things, a small party of failed survivors had taken a stand on the outskirts of what the sign announced as Boulder City. It was really nothing more than a simple sign beside the road. The terrain was mostly just flat with the usual variety of plant life that survived in the desert until the first signs of development asserted itself. There were three large RVs ranging in size from twenty-four to thirty-five footers parked in a line. All around were perhaps a hundred or so undead that had been put down during this battle.

None of the proper battle area stood out any more than any other display of humans attempting to make a stand that dotted the post-apocalyptic landscape. It was the upper half of what had once been a woman with dark hair that had pulled itself to the middle of the highway that made Joel pause.

He pulled a set of field glasses from his bag and sighted in on the female zombie. She was surrounded by at least twenty cats. The collection of felines were darting in, taking a bite out of the flailing creature, and then darting back to a safe distance to feast on their newly acquired prize. From the looks of things, a great deal of the insides of this pathetic zombie had already been pulled free. Joel had to assume the cats had already picked at those soft and gushy bits.

“This is not making things any clearer,” Joel grumbled.

“What do you mean?” Debra asked, slowly getting the Humvee moving again.

“The transmission of this virus or disease or whatever it is that has wiped out humanity.” Joel’s eyes stayed fixed on the unsettling scene as they rolled past. “We’ve already seen a few cases of what appear to be spontaneous infection and then there was that dog.” The memory made Joel shudder.

“Yeah, but I haven’t seen anything else. I expected rats or birds and figured that no matter what we did, unless we just went totally underground, humans were done for. But nothing else has popped up.” Debra stepped on the gas and swerved just enough to clip a lone zombie stumbling down the center of the road for them. “And I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but there have been a handful of zombie dog sightings by patrols and scavenge teams.”

Joel had heard. And it was that sort of thing that had him trying to guess how the zombie infection might be spread besides just the typical bite or scratch. He’d already passed a rule that anybody going on patrol was to wear a surgical mask and eye protection. He wasn’t absolutely convinced that this would do any good, but it was better safe than sorry. Also, every person coming back from the field was put in quarantine for seventy-two hours.

***

They followed the highway to Vegas. The closer to the city they drew, the worse the damage. And now they were starting to see various spray-painted messages warning people to either stay away, or beware entering by whoever had claimed a particular area. These were the outlaw-style gangs that Joel expected, and they would be the first to be removed. He knew that there would be other communities of survivors that would spring up, and these would be perfect sources for supplies. Some would eventually be “taxed” and others would be absorbed. Each would be a case-by-case situation.

With the outlaw gangs, Joel simply decided that there would be no negotiation. These would be the sort to victimize others and cause trouble. These people would be the dregs of society crawling from under their rock and doing unspeakable things. Nope…these would simply be exterminated.

“We got incoming,” Malik’s voice announced through Joel’s headset.

Looking around, it was easy to spot the dust cloud that gave away the approaching band of survivors. “Pull up here,” he said, unharnessing himself. “Everybody take up positions. Debra and Will, split to either side and find a spot in the weeds where you can snipe.”

Joel did a self-check of his own armament as he took his place in front of the Humvee. Cradled in his arms was his M4 with the laser-dot scope. It had been his experience in the past few weeks that people often backed down when they noticed a red pinpoint of light or two on their bodies. On his hips were his beloved .44 Magnum and the simple-yet-practical Beretta. He also wore an assortment of blades including a nasty field blade that could chop a coconut in half like it was melted butter.

“Don’t wait for my word, Malik,” Joel called up over his shoulder. “The moment it looks bad, just lay into ‘em with everything you got.”

“Sure thing, boss,” Malik called down.

Joel didn’t hide his smile. The young man had certainly taken a firmer stance in his loyalty as Joel offered him more responsibility. Malik’s greatest advantage came from his mouth. Joel could almost remember back that far when he believed himself to be invincible.

Once they were in full view, Joel was able to count five motorcycles and two large panel vans. He would guess their numbers to be no more than twenty, and he was already dismissing them as just the sort of raider he felt compelled to eradicate.

The lead bike was one of those overly loud three-wheel affairs. The man riding it was so much of a stereotype that Joel refused to hide the smirk on his face.

“You folks must’ve missed the signs,” the man said in a rumbling voice.

He was easily over six feet tall and pushing three hundred pounds—very little of it muscle by the way the man’s gut wobbled to the thrum of the bike’s powerful engine.

Trike, Joel corrected himself. This biker wasn’t even hardcore enough to ride what Joel considered to be a real motorcycle.

Looking the man over quickly, Joel made a checklist of every B-Grade movie’s cheesy biker and this guy was acing the test. Small, black open-faced helmet—check; tinted goggles—check; leather vest (although a bit new in appearance, which was certainly a deduction in points)—check; open-fingered gloves with spikes on the knuckles—check; long, braided beard and handlebar mustache—check.

The man had a dingy sort of hair color that, if washed, might reveal itself to be ginger. Even from a few paces away with decaying corpses littering the landscape and a bunch of engines running, the man’s rank body odor was gut-turning.

“Last one I saw that meant anything said ‘Welcome to Boulder City’ if my memory serves,” Joel said casually.

“And I must say, that weapon you’re holding looks like it was stolen off our fine military,” the man continued, seemingly oblivious of Joel’s response. “The Hells’ Avengers laid claim to all military hardware in these parts, so I think you’re gonna need to hand that over.”

The stupidity of some people never ceased to amaze Joel. He saw the realization dawn on the man’s face just a moment too late. His eyes were just tracking up to where Malik sat in the turret manning the .50 cal on top of the Humvee that Joel stood so casually in front of.

There was a mechanical ratcheting sound that Joel heard with just enough time to allow his rifle to drop and dangle from its strap as he covered his ears. When the machine gun opened fire, Joel actually took a few steps to the side and back to avoid being hit by the flying debris of metal as the motorcycles and their riders were cut to pieces by the high-velocity ammunition. The vans made a clumsy attempt to escape, colliding with each other as they backed up too fast. Before they could wrench themselves free of each other, Malik was already walking bullets across the ground in short bursts until he had his newest targets sighted in.

The entire event took less than a minute, but when it was over, the carnage was indescribable. Bodies had been pulverized along with the machines their riders had arrived on. Both vans were smoldering hulks with an assortment of fluids draining underneath them in large dark puddles.

“Okay, folks,” Joel called out as he returned to the Humvee, “let’s get this show back on the road.”

“That was easy enough,” he said as he strapped himself back into place and Debra stomped the gas sending them lurching forward. “You got a problem?” He turned to face the woman in the driver’s seat.

“I want to ride in the nest next time,” the woman grumbled. “I’ll be damned if I’ll let that punk kid have all the fun.”

“You know I can hear you, right?” Malik’s voice called down.

“I want everybody to keep their eyes peeled for any activity,” Joel said into his headset, ignoring the barbs between Debra and Malik. “If that was the extent of their little gang, then I’m surprised they managed to last this long.”

He had barely finished speaking when plumes appeared in the distance on either side of them. He had just spotted them when Will’s voice broke in. “You mean like what we have coming from our three and nine o’clock positions?”

Joel scanned the area. Just ahead was a four-way intersection with what looked to be the remains of what had probably been an exclusive community.

“Turn left.” Joel pointed at the intersection and Debra jerked the wheel around hard.

“How about a warning next time?” Malik shouted.

The deuce-and-a-half followed, a plume of gray-blue smoke coming off the tires as it slowed dramatically to take the turn.

“This isn’t a freakin’ sports car,” Will bellowed in the radio. “Maybe try to keep the speed down in the corners. If we get separated, I will be lost. I’m from Colorado. I never even visited Vegas before all this zombie shit popped up.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Debra quipped. “Hot shot like you never been to Vegas?”

“I saw no need to throw my money away. I’d rather spend it fixing up my Harley and taking road trips during my leave times.”

“As interesting as this all might be,” Joel interrupted, “can we keep our minds on the fact that we have what might be the rest of a biker gang chasing us?”

“I have a visual on approximately twenty individuals,” Malik chimed in.

“Next intersection, break left, Will,” Joel ordered. “Have your passengers set up ambush positions and give them the word to open fire at will.”

Debra reached the next intersection and turned right without being told. She continued to rise in value in Joel’s opinion with every passing minute. She knew exactly what he had in mind and eased between what had probably been some soccer mom’s minivan and a two-seater sports car with the driver and passenger still strapped into their seats. As the vehicles passed by Joel’s window, he saw yet another stereotype. The man was perhaps in his late fifties, thick dark hair with gray streaks down each side. If not for the paleness of his undead flesh, he imagined the man once sported quite a tan. His skin had the appearance of elephant skin with its leathery quality. The woman, and that was stretching the definition, barely looked twenty. And it was unlikely that she was his daughter considering her attire which would make a stripper blush.

The woman had suffered the worst by the looks of things. Her throat had been ripped out, and she was missing her right arm at the shoulder. The man had been bitten on the face and lost his nose, most of his lower lip, and left cheek.

The Humvee came to a stop after turning around to allow Malik the full view of anybody approaching in their wake. Both Joel and Debra exited the vehicle with Debra running in a crouch to take up a position on the ground wedged up against the minivan. Her rifle was snug against her shoulder and two spare magazines were on the ground beside her.

Joel scanned the area and spotted a rock fence that ran between a pair of houses. That position would make him useless in the opening minutes of the firefight to come, but it would also allow him to slip behind the enemy and flank them.

The rumble of the approaching motorcycles began to echo off the vacant houses and fill the abandoned neighborhood with a deep thundering noise that brought out the undead. Joel felt rather than heard the creature come around the corner of the house he was beside.

Glancing over his shoulder, he saw it stop and regard him. This child was perhaps eight years old. Her hair was cut short and one colorful ribbon still clung to the matted mess. Her mouth had a dark stain of very old dried blood and her teeth looked almost as gray as her skin when she opened her mouth to let loose a soft moan. She was wearing a pair of faded jeans and what remained of a powder blue blouse. He glanced down and saw that all the fingers on her left hand had been chewed off in a rather grisly manner. Splinters of bone and tattered flesh almost gave the hand the appearance of being tipped with claws. Her right forearm had a chunk missing, and if he were to guess, he imagined the little girl had tried to fend off her attacker. The size of the bite on her forearm was small, which led Joel to believe that her attacker had been a child as well.

He didn’t have to wait long for what he took as confirmation. A little boy of perhaps five came around the corner of the house in his sister’s wake and stopped just behind and to one side of her. Their similarity, despite the distortion of their features due their facial muscles growing slack in death, was uncanny and left little doubt that they were siblings.

“Go on,” Joel whispered. “Nothing to see here.”

The children regarded him, and something about their lack of simply attacking him outright caused him to pause. He had no issue with killing a zombie. If need be, he wouldn’t hesitate to drop one no matter the age or gender, but these two weren’t acting like the zombies he’d seen or encountered thus far. They were acting like…children.

“This is a bad place to hang out,” Joel whispered.

The pair continued to simply stare at him with their filmed-over eyes shot with the black tracers. When they did move, it seemed confined to the head which would twitch and jerk in small fits like a toy trying to start but not quite managing it.

“You need to be away from here,” Joel hissed through clenched teeth.

He could hear the bikers approaching and guessed that they were just now coming up the main entry to this development which, as Joel got a closer look, wasn’t as devastated as he’d initially thought. Still the kids remained put. He used the barrel of his gun and jabbed at the air making a shooing noise as he did so. In that moment, the pair almost appeared to transform before his eyes. Both lurched forward, mouths open and hands reaching for him just like any zombie he’d seen in person, on television, or at the movies.

It was no problem to allow the rifle to drop as he pulled a knife from his belt. By the time the zombie children reached him, he’d made it to his knees. He grabbed the closer of the two, which turned out to be the girl, and plunged his blade into her temple. Pushing her aside as he withdrew the knife, he caught the boy by one arm and yanked him in, driving the point of the dripping blade into his open and staring eye socket. Just that quick, it was over. At no time had he felt like he’d been even in the slightest bit of danger.

Kicking the corpses away with one foot, Joel took his place again and sighted in on the intersection as the first motorcycle prowled into view. One of the snipers from Will’s group fired the first shot and the rider toppled to the side, dumping the big hog in the process. That was the signal to everybody else, and a barrage of high-velocity lead flew as the rest of the bikers rolled into view.

In seconds, the scene was almost a comedy from Joel’s perspective as the bikes collided with one another as some of the riders made the choice to attempt to flee. It didn’t matter once Malik opened fire. The group was cut down without any of them so much as getting off a shot.

When the cacophony of weapons ended their deathly symphony, a silence fell on the scene that lasted just a few heartbeats before moans of the dying were met by the groans of the undead. Joel got up and walked into the street, shoving an elderly woman wearing way too much makeup and jewelry aside as he returned to the Humvee.

“Mount up and let’s roll!” Joel called.

As they exited the once upscale housing community, Joel glanced back. The zombies were falling on the bodies scattered about the intersection. Even in the Humvee with his headset on, he could hear the screams begin.

They continued on towards what had once been the city of Las Vegas. Despite being several miles out, there was a noticeable and very visible smudge in the sky. The number of fires that had burned out of control were beyond counting. Being in the desert there was an added feature that only helped the destruction: the wind.

The steady breeze that blew now was sending the scattered plumes of smoke southeast towards Joel and his team. The closer they got, the thicker the smoke became until Joel finally called for a halt.

“Let’s take Interstate 215 and head west. Maybe we can skirt around the worst of the smoke,” Joel announced in his headset. “I don’t know how much worse it gets, but if we keep driving into it, I think we put ourselves in a bad situation.”

“Yeah, it would suck to survive the zombie apocalypse this far and then die from smoke inhalation,” Malik snorted.

While it was a little clearer, the smoke in the air was still omnipresent and irritating. Before long, even Debra was coughing and complaining about her throat.

Eventually, they found themselves hooking around and coming to the junction of Interstate 15. They headed north directly into the heart of what remained of the Las Vegas Strip. Several of the iconic hotels had numerous plumes of smoke billowing from too many windows to even guess.

“There are too many.” Will’s voice was the first to break the silence.

Joel once again ordered them to come to a halt. He climbed out of the Humvee and then onto the hood. Using his binoculars, he scanned the landscape. It was almost impossible to believe what he was seeing.

“Why are they still here?” Debra asked, finally exiting the vehicle as well.

“I am going to guess the ready food source,” Joel replied pensively.

As he scanned a few of the massive hotels, he saw pockets of activity. From what he could gather, small groups of survivors were attempting to hold up in one of the many resort hotels that lined the strip. He also saw signs that things were not going well for the living. Just as what existed outside of the city proper, it was clear that certain elements were taking full advantage of the situation to the utmost.

As they passed a golf course and the airport on the right, a new theme was appearing. Just ahead was an overpass with at least a hundred bodies hanging from it. None of them twitched or squirmed indicating to Joel that these people had been among the living and executed. Each had a placard around his or her neck with a Roman numeral between one and ten. All of them had I, IV, and X on their cards. There was a smattering of other numbers with the most prevalent being VII.

“What the hell?” Debra breathed.

Joel glanced over to discover that she’d brought her own field glasses up and was taking in the same scene that he was looking at. He was just as confused.

“Some sort of code?” Malik called down from the machine gun turret.

“I don’t know,” Joel admitted, but something tugged at his mind and he believed the answer was very likely something simple and probably obvious.

“Whatever this is, I’d rather we not hang around too long,” Will spoke up, his voice sounding a bit distant in Joel’s headset, almost as if he were not actually speaking directly into his mic, but instead from a few feet away.

A whistling sound snapped Joel’s attention away from the scene ahead. On instinct, he yelled for everybody to get down as he dove for cover under an abandoned taxi that still had its undead driver behind the wheel. He hit the ground harder than intended, but still had the presence of mind to roll and then scramble on his belly for cover just as an explosion shook the ground several yards away.

“Find out where that is coming from!” Joel snapped as he jumped to his feet.

In seconds, they were moving again. Despite not liking the idea of driving into a city that was visibly infested with the walking dead, they were left with very little choice as a wall of fire erupted and spanned the interstate behind them about two hundred yards back. While he did not doubt their vehicles’ abilities to simply drive through something like a wall of fire, he wanted to at least give the impression to whomever was behind this attack that they were in the driver’s seat.

Admittedly, they might have the slightest upper hand at the moment in that they obviously knew his location and he had no clue about theirs; that was a minor advantage as he saw it. By giving them a false sense of control and power, he felt things were even if not perhaps tilted in his favor somewhat.

Keeping their speed down to a crawl, they continued forward until they actually passed under the overpass with all the hanging bodies. That also allowed Joel to confirm that each of those individuals had been a living person when they’d been hung. None of them were zombies, and he confirmed that by making certain that none of them had been shot in the head. Nope, these were simply corpses of the “normal” variety. That thought almost made Joel chuckle.

As they crept past the Mandalay Bay complex and approached another overpass. They could see more figures hanging from it. As they passed the towering golden-faced building they were able to see that the front of it had been defaced. However, it was clear that this bit of vandalism was not only very intentional, but also required no small amount of planning. Windows had been busted out from about the tenth floor almost to the top as well as a good distance across just past the midway mark to form a massive cross.

“The Ten Commandments,” Malik whispered.

“What?” Joel said absently as he stared out his window at the strangely unsettling display.

“Those numbers on the cards around those people’s necks,” Malik answered, his voice uncharacteristically barely above a whisper. “I don’t have them memorized or anything, much less know the order they supposedly come in other than the first one being something about not having any God other than Me, the Lord your God.”

“Great,” Debra snarled. “Bikers ain’t enough. We get to deal with religious nuts.”

“I think those may be far more dangerous,” Joel muttered.

Just because he was not a fan of gambling did not mean he didn’t pop into town on occasion. Without fail, it seemed he could not walk a block down the strip without some group of religious zealots accosting him and others in the street with proclamations of how they were destined for hell. Maybe they were even right, but all it took was a single glance into these people’s eyes to see the truth of their frenzied devotion.

Truth be told, Joel had no trouble with religion. His problem existed in the people and the actions they perpetrated in the name of it. For too many, it was an excuse to harass and even assault others simply because they held on to a different belief.

Towards the last few days when he and Wanda had watched everything unfold, he’d seen some of the scarier sorts of zealot types crawling out from under their rock. Many were making the ever-popular claim of this being the “Last Days” prophesied in the Book of Revelations. Others simply called it God’s judgement against man.

“Shoot anything that moves,” Joel announced.

He knew better than to think any sort of encounter with the perpetrators of those hangings could end in anything short of bloodshed. The old ways were gone. There were no such things as “due process” or “innocent until proven guilty” as far as he was concerned.

The first chatter of machine gun fire came from the left and Joel called it out to Malik who swung the .50 cal around and started pumping rounds into the face of what appeared to be a simple two-story parking structure. Another explosion sounded, this one to the left, sending a gout of concrete, smoke, and flames ten or twenty feet into the air. The heat was enough that Joel could feel it even inside the relatively safe confines of the Humvee.

“Religious nuts with military hardware?” Will shouted in the headset as the metallic plinks and pings of bullets hitting the deuce-and-a-half tried to drown him out.

“Break right at the next exit,” Joel barked, ignoring the comment. “Then turn right onto Tropicana. We are headed for the MGM Towers.”

The Humvee rocketed forward as Debra decided that creeping along was making them far too easy of a target. They rolled up the off-ramp and reached the corner well ahead of Will and the truck. She cranked the wheel around to make the right turn and stomped on the brakes.

“This is a bust, Joel,” Debra said between gritted teeth as she slammed the Humvee into reverse.

“There has to be a way,” Joel said, but it was more to himself as he craned his neck to see the wall of undead that clogged the street.

“Nope,” Debra snorted as she turned as tight a one-eighty as the Humvee was capable. “Anybody in those buildings are on their own. They are trapped in there until either the zombies get in, they hang up, or they run out of food. Personally, my money is on the second option.”

“Military vehicle fleeing the area, this is Pastor Billy Dean Smoltz. We have over one hundred souls, good and pure, currently isolated on top of the entrance to the large white castle just ahead of you. Due to the entrance being breached, the people were forced to retreat to the concrete awning above the main entrance. The heat is taking a terrible toll, and it will only be a matter of hours before people begin to perish. I beg you to resist the urge to flee. If you are truly members of this nation’s armed forces, then you are driven by a sense of honor and duty that I hope you still possess. Please, many of those trapped are children.”

Joel glanced behind them and saw dark shapes that could very well be people on top of the structure that extended over the entrance to Excalibur, the castle-themed hotel. He saw that they were indeed trapped as the undead had the area surrounded and were perhaps fifty or hundred deep on every side possible—at least from what he could see.

“Well?” Joel said as the vehicle slowed.

“Well what?” Debra asked.

“Why are you slowing?”

“I thought I would see what you wanted to do.”

Just then, Will pulled up alongside in the deuce-and-a-half. He looked past them to the sea of undeath and scowled. “Ain’t no way we can get up that road, boss.”

“I know,” Joel admitted.

“So what do we do?”

“Tell your radio operator to call base. See if they can make contact with Conrad Parks and the group we came here to find.” Joel fought down the urge to gag as the breeze blew a wave of stench past his nose. He had to guess they were still almost a half mile away, yet there were so many zombies gathered that the smell carried.

“You want us to sit here in the open like this while we try to figure this out?” Will sounded dubious and his eyes kept darting to where the zombies were gathered. As of yet, only a few had turned their direction.

“…able to hear me?” a woman’s voice drawled in a thick accent that sounded more at home in the Deep South than Las Vegas.

“Hello?” Joel pressed his ear piece in a bit more snug so that he might be able to hear better.

“Is this the group in them military vehicles, or just the bunch of idiots on the roof of the entrance to Excalibur?”

Joel wasn’t about to answer that question. “Who might you be?”

“I am the vengeance of the Lord.” There was a fervent quality to the voice that told Joel that this person was not speaking in metaphors. She believed what she was saying with an absolute certainty that only an extremist can believe.

“Does he know, or is it a surprise?” Malik snorted, earning a scowl from Joel.

“This world has become a cesspool of depravity and perversion. This is the coming of the dead promised in Revelations. Soon the world will be purged of all sinners, and those of us found worthy will be swept up and brought before God to sit as his feet for eternity,” the woman railed. In the background, shouts of “Amen!” and “Praise God!” were heard.

Joel reached over and shut off the engine of the Humvee. He waved at Will and made a slashing gesture across his throat. In a moment, the only sounds were those of the undead gathered around the white awning packed with desperate survivors still waving their arms and obviously hoping that Joel’s group would return for them. Then he heard it, off to the left.

He scanned what looked like a ten-story parking garage next to the New York, New York Hotel and Casino complex. It only took him a moment to see the flash of something reflecting off of a shiny surface that could be glass or metal. He also saw a flurry of movement. Either these people weren’t trying to hide because they were foolish, or simply didn’t know any better. He was going to bet on the latter while still accepting that it was just as likely to be equal parts both.

“Got yourself some military hardware, do ya?” Joel asked.

“It is the sword of salvation,” the woman replied coldly. “And we are simply the tools of His righteousness. We are bringing before the Lord those who would try to cower from judgement.”

“So you’re saying God can’t take care of his own business?”

“Do not mock the power of the Lord,” the woman snarled in a furious warning laced with unveiled venom.

“Always amazed me how you religious nuts make all these claims to be working for God as if he wasn’t able to handle his business.” He tapped Debra and nodded for her to start the Humvee now that he knew what he needed to know in regards to the location of what he now deemed the larger threat. He heard Will start the deuce-and-a-half a few seconds later. “You always claim that you are acting on His behalf, or as His will dictates. It’s never about how you are just some sort of delusional basket case that should be locked in a rubber room in one of those white coats that tie up in the back.”

“Perhaps you need to meet our Lord in person and see if that mocking tongue still wags.”

There was a chorus of cheers, and then an electronic click. A few seconds later, Joel saw a puff of smoke from the roof of the parking garage structure.

“Go!” he barked.

He felt himself jerk in his harness and pressed back into the seat as the Humvee lurched forward. The truck vanished from view as both his drivers acted without question. A heartbeat later, there was an explosion. Joel knew instantly that it was nowhere near them. He looked in the mirror as the sounds of something crumbling and coming apart sounded. The roof of the overhang had been hit and was breaking apart.

He saw a section of it come loose and tilt like some sort of slide that sent dozens of people, some injured by the blast, some not, sliding down into the sea of undeath that waited with reaching hands and gnashing teeth. Another section broke free and landed on a cluster of zombies, most likely turning them into jelly. That only served as a false reprieve for those who’d ridden that piece of concrete in its wild free fall. Despite how slow or uncoordinated they might be, the wave of walking dead closed on that group with finality.

The screams that came to Joel’s ears were terrible and he was shaken by how they differed from anything he’d ever heard, even in the killing fields of Vietnam. These were screams of unimaginable pain and fear.

“Go, go, go!” he shouted. “Malik, lay down fire around the upper decks of that garage.”

“Roger,” Malik responded. Almost instantly, the chatter of the .50 cal sounded, accompanied by the clatter of its large shell casings bouncing off the roof or even the hood of the Humvee.

“Will, get somebody to lob a few frag grenades onto the top of that place.” Joel pointed to the exit that would take them back to Interstate 15. Debra grunted in acknowledgment as she veered down what would have been the interstate’s off-ramp.

“Hello?” a voice came over the radio.

Joel felt his mouth go dry. He knew the voice of Conrad Parks anywhere.

“Conrad?” he said into his mic with as much calm as he could muster. “Where are you, son?”

“Tower Two of the Signature Suites,” the man replied. “Is that you, Uncle Landon?”

“It is, Conrad.” Joel swallowed the lump in his throat at what he would have to say next. “Son, we tried, but it seems that the zombies are thick here around the main hotels of The Strip. It just isn’t possible for us to get to you.”

There was a moment of silence. He glanced over at Debra and saw that her eyes remained on the road as she wove her way through the few undead and scattered cars on the highway. If she was feeling anything, it was impossible to tell by her expression.

“I understand, sir.”

Joel felt his stomach churn. He’d always considered Conrad to be like a son. If that sentiment held any truth, wouldn’t he throw all caution aside and do what needed to be done in order to save him?

“You have a radio, so I want you to stay in touch with us. If the situation on the ground changes, do not hesitate to reach out.” Joel twisted and turned in his seat to try and get a glimpse of the towers. At the moment, they were hidden by one of the countless parking structures. “I’m not sure how much food you have, but I might be able to help when it comes to water.”

Debra glanced his way, an eyebrow raised in curiosity. “And what exactly do you think we can do?” she asked over the rumble of the engine.

“Power,” Joel answered. “We have access to power. That power will turn on all the pumps so that at least water will flow freely.”

“So we are going to turn the lights on in Las Vegas?” she sniffed. “Seems like a bit much.”

“That is only part of the plan.” Joel leaned back as his mind began to mull over the possibilities. “But first, we have some business to finish.”

“So we are heading home?”

“No,” Joel said, leaning back in his seat and shutting his eyes. “Can you get us to Nellis Air Force Base?”

7

Grand Ideas

“This is a big mistake, sir,” Debra said through clenched teeth.

Not for the first time, Joel wished that he could turn to Wanda for advice. It seemed so simple. Just hop on the freeway, drive to the base, and have his two pilots locate an attack helicopter if possible.

“I don’t understand,” Joel whispered. “Where are they all coming from?”

Outside the Humvee, there were swarms of the walking dead, and with his vehicle and the deuce-and-a-half the dominant noise source, they were all coming his way. Twice they’d had to stop and clear bodies from underneath the Humvee after trying to force their way through. The front of his clothes were still fouled from his having been sick.

And he hadn’t been the only one. His entire team had vomited until there was nothing left in their bellies as they’d worked feverishly to pull the twisted and mangled bodies from under the vehicle.

“It’s simple, you are taking us out into the suburbs. This is where most folks probably died,” Debra said with a tone that indicated she believed he should already know this.

“What about the FEMA shelters?”

“Those were a joke. They were set up hastily and before protocols were enacted to deal with incoming citizens who’d been bitten. Once a few people turned inside the wire, the shelter was doomed. A lot of the soldiers sent in were just part-timers. They bailed at the first sign of trouble.”

“You and Will bailed,” Joel pointed out.

“After we were basically shot down by the fucktards we were trying to protect,” she bit off angrily.

“This is not working, boss,” Will piped in. “This truck isn’t the easiest thing to maneuver. If I get stuck someplace…” His words faded with the meaning that he obviously did not want to elaborate on.

Joel slapped the console of the Humvee. “Turn us around and take us home.”

Debra yanked the wheel around and gunned it. It was obvious that she was almost as anxious to abandon this fool’s mission as her cohort.

The rest of the drive back to their base at the dam was in silence. There was a degree of discomfort in it for Joel. It wasn’t that he felt the need to be friends or even liked by these people. What bothered him was that he’d wasted a day doing something that he knew in his gut was doomed to fail.

However, there were a few things that he could use and take away from the excursion. For one, he now had a firmer grasp on what he wanted to do. It wasn’t enough that he simply set up a base at the dam. What he wanted to do was get the power up and running to the main part of Las Vegas. He would have to bring in manpower, but he also wanted to build a wall around it. It would become the true gleaming gem in the desert.

If there were survivors, and he had no reason to believe that there weren’t, he would bring them in—provided they could offer something to the community. They would need to be able to work long and hard. But when it was done, any who remained under his umbrella would reap rewards beyond their wildest dreams.

As they pulled past the checkpoint and the gate began to shut behind them, Joel was almost anxious. He would call a mandatory community meeting. During that meeting, he would lay out his plan. They would work hard to create a military base of operations here at the dam; guarding their power would be vital. They would also amass supplies in abundance. They would stockpile food, water, fuel, and firepower. As soon as it was feasible, they would start to expand outward into the communities surrounding Las Vegas. Hopefully many of the gangs would do each other in by then. He would be able to scoop up the strongest…the real survivors. Also, maybe the undead would move on by then as well. It would be much easier if that particular nuisance was either gone, or at least drastically reduced.

As soon as he cleared the quarantine, he called the meeting. Joel gave the speech where he laid out the skeleton of his plan. He made it clear that it would be adjusted as they went and learned more of what would be required. The workers who knew the ins and outs of the dam were tasked with coming up with the plan to isolate the power generated by it. A few were also tasked with making similar arrangements for water. Las Vegas was, after all, a city pulled up from the sands of the desert and dependent on external sources for water.

A week later, he met with the head engineers. That was when he was told about how this location was a vital, if not the most important, source of water for large parts of Southern California, including Los Angeles, San Diego, and many other places.

“As many as eighteen million people rely on the Colorado River for their water,” one of the female engineers said.

“And most of them are probably dead by now.” Joel gave a dismissive wave. “Our sole focus and concern is right here. This community.”

“But anybody still in that region would basically be without any sort of fresh water source,” another engineer piped in. This one sounded angry.

“Did you watch any of the news those last few days before the EBS took over?” Joel challenged. “The big cities were lost…they were war zones. We had no idea how bad back then thanks to the denials coming from that Dr. Sing woman and her flunkies. I really don’t give a damn about anybody or anyplace else except for us, and right here.”

“I won’t do it,” the man said coldly. “I won’t willingly be a part of the murder of possibly millions of people.”

Joel’s barking laugh caused a few individuals to jump. He stepped from behind the podium he’d been speaking at and walked to the edge of the platform. The man who was openly defying him stared up, his jaw set and his arms crossed over his body.

“What is your name?” Joel asked.

“Mick Hassan.” The man glanced around and realized that all eyes were on him. If that bothered him at all, it did not seem to show in his expression or demeanor.

“And are you telling me right now, in front of all our people that you are refusing to do what I have asked?”

There was a moment of silence, and several people actually leaned forward as they awaited the answer. Even Joel found himself curious as to what this man’s answer would be now that the situation had obviously escalated.

“I will not help engineer shutting of the flow of water from here to California and wherever else it is directed. I will not take what little chances people have at surviving and dash them to serve whatever plan you may be hatching,” Mick finally answered.

“Then, Mick Hassan, I sentence you to the darkness.” He nodded at Will and Debra who had both moved to flank the man.

“What? You mean that stairwell? You can’t do that,” the man shouted, looking first to the left, then to the right and seeing that his exit had already been cut off.

“I am the final authority here,” Joel said calmly, his eyes scanning the room and making contact with as many of his citizens as he could. “And disobedience will not be tolerated.”

“You’re a maniac,” Mick shouted. His eyes were now wide with fear as Will and Debra moved to within just a few feet. As they’d started their approach, everybody in between them and their target had cleared a path.

“No, I am quite sane,” Joel said calmly as he approached Mick. He gave the slightest of nods and Debra moved in with Will to grab the man by the arms and quickly bind them behind his back. “I know that there must be order if we are to live and rise above in a world that is lost.”

“Do you hear yourself?” Mick gasped. “You’re spouting some kinda Jim Jones bullshit. What’s next? Make everybody drink poisoned Kool-Aid?”

“Jim Jones claimed to be God. He did what he did under the guise of his own twisted perversion of Christianity. What I do here has nothing to do with God, Allah, or any other deity. I do this to preserve our chances at living a full life despite what has happened.” Joel stopped directly in front of Mick and placed his hands on the man’s shoulders. “I am the one who makes the rules. This is not a democracy. That is a failed idea that has brought us here to the brink of extinction.”

Joel pushed Mick aside and stepped forward. He scanned the faces of his people. Some looked scared, others angry, and a few appeared to be on the verge of orgasm. These would be his zealots. These were the faces he made it a point to commit to memory each time he saw them. These would be the ones who would act on his orders with vigor. They would be the ones he sent on the deadliest excursions.

“Some of you have been out there,” Joel said, his voice loud enough to be heard by all who had gathered. “You know the wasteland that the city has become. You have seen the lawlessness, the raiders who take for themselves whether they need it or not. Soon enough, they will come here seeking to take what is ours. It is vital that we create something that is so powerful that it inspires fear. If we become strong and can simultaneously make all those who might dare come here with bad intentions just a bit weaker, then we will continue to stand. That only happens if there is somebody willing to take charge and do what others might fear to do…hesitate to consider.”

“You’re a lunatic,” Mick hissed. “And I don’t know if you pay attention to popular conventions, but it never ends well for your sort.”

“Bring him,” Joel said, and moved past where Will and Debra held the man between them.

Most of those gathered simply fell in with the procession and entered the dam. They passed the huge generators that continued to spin and create power.

At last, they arrived at the door. Joel opened the door himself and then turned to Mick.

“I would normally offer you one final chance to change your mind, but I do not believe it would do any good in this instance.” Stepping back from the prisoner, Joel once again allowed his gaze to skim across the faces of his people. “Mick Hassan, for the crime of insubordination, I sentence you to the darkness.”

***

“Five people in three days?” Will rubbed his face with his hands and shot a look at Joel. “You think this is the best thing for morale?”

“I don’t give a damn about morale,” Joel snapped. “What I do care about is that people follow orders. I also care about the safety and security of this community. That young lady this morning was caught for the third time in as many days asleep at her post.”

“So what does a person have to do around here to just simply be executed?” Debra ran her blade along the stone, paused, examined the blade’s sharpness, and then returned to the task, obviously not satisfied with it yet.

“Rape, murder…negligence that results in the death of another of our citizens…desertion.” Joel ticked each item off on his fingers.

“So that guy being held in the cell right now is to be executed?” she pressed.

The man’s name was Shaun Simpson. He and a woman that he claimed to be his wife had shown up at their gates five days prior. Early this morning, the wife had been found trying to climb the fence and escape the compound. Initially, she’d been held as a potential deserter. During questioning, the woman revealed a number of bruises on her abdomen and thighs from the abuse perpetrated on her by the man who had claimed to be her husband.

Leanne Sasser related her story to a pair of female guards—one of which immediately sent for Debra—about how she’d become a prisoner of Shaun Simpson. She’d been a dancer in one of Vegas’s many exotic reviews. At almost six feet tall, and with a dancer’s body, Leanne had been no stranger to gaining the attention of men. When all hell had broken loose, she’d been trapped in her apartment for almost a week when Shaun Simpson and three other men arrived. They’d set about searching the apartments for supplies and discovered Leanne. She’d been so grateful, that she almost willingly gave herself to the men. After all, she reasoned, they’d saved her life.

Over the next several days, she quickly began to regret being saved. Her treatment grew more abusive by the day, eventually, the men showed no regard for her at all. She was almost happy the day they got trapped inside a small grocery store. She thought that she would die there, and was almost ready to accept it.

Shaun had somehow managed to overpower one of his fellow survivors who happened to be on watch one night. He created a diversion that brought the walking dead to where the other men were sleeping and then escaped with Leanne. For the next several hours, they ran for their lives. Each time they thought they’d found sanctuary, either humans or the undead would force them to run again.

The next day, they’d seen Joel’s little party as they headed out on that failed attempt to save Conrad Parks. Shaun had just managed to elude the gang that Joel and his party all but annihilated. He decided that perhaps it would be to their best interest to join up. He’d made one thing very clear to Leanne; he would protect her, but she would adhere to the story that they were a couple. If he found out she tried to escape him, she would end up zombie bait.

Debra had Shaun brought to her quarters that same hour. He was bleary eyed and stunk of alcohol which was already going to put the man in hot water. He was scheduled to be on the morning rover patrol, and the rules were that no alcohol was to be consumed within twenty-four hours of any job that revolved around security or working on the community’s power grid.

Debra had looked the man up and down for a moment as he stood with his hands folded over his genitals. She’d smirked when the two guards who’d dragged him in and threw him on the ground had obviously not given him time to dress. His skin was pasty and flabby. It was made all the more unattractive by the thick reddish hair on his chest and back. He had splotches of freckles that were so dense in some spots that it almost made him look like he had some sort of horrible condition. His ginger-hued hair was thinning, and a pronounced bald spot was forming on his crown. As he pushed up to his feet after being thrown to her floor, she noted that even his teacup-sized bald spot had large, ugly freckles.

She’d stared at him for minutes, enjoying the feeling of seeing the man break out in sweat before her eyes despite the chilly temperature in her room. His knees had been scraped either during his apprehension or as a result of having been thrown to her floor, and one of them bled freely until a trio of rivulets ran almost the length of his shin.

“You like to threaten women?” Debra finally asked, pulling a knife from her belt and running the point of it under her nails.

“What….no…who…?” the man stammered.

“Leanne was caught trying to climb over the fences.” She paused and looked up, fixing the man with her hard gaze. “What does it say for you that a woman would rather risk being eaten by zombies or punished for desertion rather than spend another minute with you?”

“I never did anything but save that woman,” Shaun tried to protest, but his words were weak and forced. His gaze went to the floor; which, for Debra, was a dead giveaway that he was lying to her.

“Maybe I should be your new girlfriend.” Debra stuck her knife into the top of her desk and stood. “Would you like that, Shaun? Would you like me to be your new girlfriend?”

The man shrunk back, his head shaking slowly in the negative. Debra stood and moved around her desk.

“Am I not pretty enough?” she cooed with false sexuality, batting her eyelashes at the man and running her hands down her sides.

In a flash, she lunged forward, sweeping the man’s legs out from under him with one booted foot that caught his ankles hard enough to make him yelp in pain as much as in surprise. Dropping down to her knees, she straddled the man and had him by the throat before he had the chance to understand what had happened.

“Or am I just a bit too unlikely to take your crap?” Debra leaned down, her nose almost touching his. “You like your women soft and beatable, isn’t that right?”

Shaun tried to shake his head, but Debra squeezed his throat tighter and he froze. His face began to turn a dark shade of red, and a few blue veins began to show up at his temples.

“Am I making you angry?” Debra whispered, easing up on the man’s throat and sitting up just enough so that she could look down and see all of Shaun’s face.

“I don’t…I didn’t—” he began, but Debra silenced him by placing her fingers over his lips.

“Shhh, don’t speak. You see, the moment you talk, I’m gonna have to assume that you are lying, and being lied to pisses me off.” She narrowed her gaze, her eyes little more than slits with darkness glittering in them. “You don’t want to really piss me off, do you?”

Shaun gave the slightest shake of his head. Debra smiled and let one of her hands reach behind her until she found his flaccid manhood. She gripped it in one gloved fist and then looked back down to lock eyes with the man beneath her. His eyes were wider than ever and she watched a single bead of sweat trickle down his left temple and vanish into his ear.

“P-p-please,” he whimpered.

“Did Leanne beg for you to stop doing whatever it is that you did to her? Did she cry as you beat her? Did she scream against the gag you stuffed into her mouth as you pounded her ribs thinking that nobody would notice that like they would a black eye or busted nose?” Shaun shook his head causing Debra to squeeze tighter. He changed his shake to a nod, and now tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. “Did you pretend that her cries during sex were simply out of pleasure from what you were doing to her?”

There was a pause, and when Debra squeezed again, he nodded once more.

“What do you want from me? What do you want me to say?” he bawled. “I saved her. She owed me…I protected her.”

“No!” Debra snarled, this time squeezing hard enough to make him yelp in pain. “You victimized her, kept her hostage, and you raped her.”

“I never raped her!” Shaun protested.

“You told her she had two choices…fuck you or be tossed out into the wild.” Debra released her grip and popped up to her feet in one swift move. Just as fast, she snatched her knife from the desk and knelt back down between Shaun’s legs. “You can call it whatever you like…but it’s rape.”

With a flick of her wrist, she sliced Shaun’s penis down the center from the tip. He screamed in pain and began to thrash back and forth. Debra stepped over him and opened the door to her quarters. The same soldiers that had brought Shaun Simpson to her stood outside at a military parade rest.

“Get him off my floor and to the infirmary. I want him saved if possible.” She stepped back and allowed the two guards to enter and grab the writhing form. “If he dies…big deal. But I’d like him to be saved if it doesn’t tax our resources. Tell the folks in medical they are not to use anything to lessen the pain.”

Shaun had survived.

He was being kept in a cell at the moment. The last report from the guard was that he seemed to be succumbing to an infection; that was an unacceptable ending in Debra’s mind.

“We haven’t had a trial, but if he’s—” Joel began.

“A trial?” Debra spat. “Are you serious?”

“Very,” Joel said calmly. “We are not animals. There are still formalities that must be adhered to if we are going to build a proper society.”

“There’s no way in—” she began, only for Joel to cut her off again.

“So why don’t we go down to his cell and get that formality out of the way.”

It wasn’t a question, and Joel was already on his feet. Debra cocked an eyebrow in curiosity at the man and then glanced over at Will who only shrugged in response. The trio exited Joel’s office and made their way to the cell where Shaun was being kept. The guard hopped to his feet at their arrival, making certain that he was not mistaken for being asleep while on duty.

“Mister Landon, sir,” the man said in a rush, making a mess of getting caught between trying to bow and salute at the same time.

“We’re here to see the prisoner.”

The guard fumbled with the keys and opened the door, stepping aside to allow the trio of Joel, Debra, and Will to enter the room. A man lying on a cot looked up, his pale face almost gray.

“Your name Shaun Simpson?” Joel asked calmly. The man nodded. “Did you inflict those bruises on a young lady named Leanne Sasser?” He nodded again. “And did you tell her that her safety relied on her allowing you to have sex with her at your discretion?” This time the man’s eyes flicked to Debra. He paused for a moment, but eventually nodded very slightly.

“Bring him to the top of the dam,” Joel said, turning on his heel and leaving the room.

He walked to his room and picked up the microphone that had recently been installed. There were speakers throughout the complex. If things worked as they were supposed to, his voice would be heard by everyone present inside the fences.

“Attention, all citizens.” He paused and took a sip of water. Once he felt he’d given enough time for everybody to stop what they were doing and give him their full attention, he resumed speaking. “I want all personnel not on watch or performing a vital task to meet atop the dam in ten minutes. That is all.”

It only took about five for everybody to gather, but Joel waited the entire ten. Occasionally, his eyes went over to where Debra and Will stood on either side of the kneeling Shaun Simpson. The man’s head was down, and his shoulders shook every so often with what Joel assumed were sobs. He’d held the man in disregard, but now he found that he despised him. He hated weakness. Anybody that preyed on those weaker was the epitome of that state of being.

At last, the time had elapsed and Joel stepped forward. His back was to the Arizona side of the dam, and all his people were gathered in front of him. The white stripe that marked the two states’ borders were right at his heels.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you have all been present for the times when I have had to sentence one of our people to the darkness. It is not a judgement that I take lightly. And I will say to you all that there may come a day when some of those so sentenced will be allowed to return to the light. They have committed crimes, and have been justly sentenced.” He cast another look towards Shaun and frowned. “But there are some crimes that will not be given a commutation. I want to make it clear right here and now, before all present, that if I hear that one of my people has committed the act of rape or murder, they will be tried, and when convicted, they will face a permanent punishment.” He paused again, and this time he turned to where Shaun was being kept. He strode to the man and gave a nod to Debra who unceremoniously yanked Shaun to his feet.

“Death.” He spoke that word just loud enough that all those present could hear. That single syllable seemed to float in the air for several seconds.

“This citizen, Shaun Simpson, has committed the act of rape. He forced one of our women to have sex with him under the premise that it would be the only way she could remain safe. I have found him guilty of this crime, and now I will pass sentence before the community.” He motioned for Debra and Will to bring him forward.

The man’s head rose and confirmed Joel’s suspicions. The tracks of his tears were visible and his eyes were bloodshot and puffy.

“I didn’t rape her,” the man whimpered.

“Trial’s over, you lost,” Debra snarled, punching the man in the kidneys and dropping him to his knees.

“If the victim would like to come forward and make any final statements to the accused, she may do so now,” Joel called out. He hadn’t expected any response, and so when a woman stepped forward, he was more than a little surprised. “Are you this man’s victim?” Joel reached a hand out to the woman, beckoning her to join him.

She nodded. The crowd up to this point had been quiet, but there is always a buzz of conversation when you have everybody gathered in one place. In this moment, there was nothing. Silence. The only sound was the thrum of the dam and the sounds of water below. Every person gathered had gone still. All eyes were focused on the woman who stepped forward from the crowd.

“What will you do to him?” Leanne asked. Her voice started soft, but gained strength with every word. “If you toss him over the fence, he’ll just do this again to the next girl he finds.”

“You bitch!” Shaun roared, struggling with his captors. “You were trapped and about to be zombie chow when I found your sorry ass. If not for—” His tirade ended with a loud grunt and exhale.

Debra stood over him, her shotgun unslung from one shoulder. The way she was holding it, Joel was certain that she’d just hit him in the gut with the stock of the weapon.

“I think this shows us everything we need,” Joel said after Debra gave a curt nod. “Before I summoned you all, the accused actually confessed to the crime he was accused of. This outburst only displays his true character. If anybody would care to step forward on behalf of the accused, I will allow you to express why you believe that leniency should be shown. Otherwise, we will move forward with the sentencing.”

Nobody moved, and the silence was replaced with a low buzz of conversation as people obviously talked amongst themselves; probably asking each other if anybody knew the man. After several seconds, and once it was clear that nobody would be stepping forward, Joel raised his hands to silence the crowd.

“The sentence for rape is death. Will the accused step forward.” It wasn’t a request, and when Shaun shrunk back and away, tugging his arm to try and escape Debra and Will’s grip, he was jerked around and cuffed on the side of his head by Will who now seemed like he just wanted this entire ordeal to be over.

“Shaun Simpson, you have been found guilty of rape. There can be no sentence that will give back to the victim that which you have taken. You are not able to make amends, and this community will be safer by removing you.” Joel paused long enough to look at Leanne. He noticed that her eyes were fixed on her attacker and that they gleamed with something cold and fierce. That truly made him feel good. If she retreated into a shell and became useless to the community, he would eventually have no choice but to have her removed.

“Fine, toss me out. I won’t ever return, I promise,” the man almost pleaded. His voice was strained, and Joel could see his cheeks had turned almost purple.

“We can’t do that.” Joel paused to ensure that everybody heard what he was about to say next. “Nobody leaves here once they commit to our community. I won’t have somebody coming in, learning about how we operate, and then maybe sneaking out to join some other group that has designs on taking what is ours. That is what I have you swear to when you ask to join us, and I’m certainly not going to unleash your kind on a world already in a weakened state. If I let you go, and if you were to repeat these terrible actions, then I would be an accomplice. I can’t live with that possibility on my conscience.”

“Then wha—” the man started to speak, but Joel gave a nod with his chin to Debra.

He actually had no idea what she would do. He wasn’t even sure she would be the one to kill him. Will could just as easily do the job. He didn’t have long to wait.

Grabbing the man by the scruff of the neck, Debra went to the edge of the dam. She had one of Shaun’s arms wrenched behind his back, but the man still struggled since it was immediately obvious what she had planned. Will had let go, but he trailed along, a baton in hand to subdue if necessary.

Casting a look back at the crowd, Joel noticed that nobody had left, but a few had drifted either to the front, or to the back depending on the level of morbid curiosity that each possessed. Leanne was one of those who followed closely. By now, Shaun was struggling and starting to cry and beg for his life.

“Is this what we are now?” he pleaded over his shoulder. “Are we going to allow one man and his little circle to decide our fates? Is this—”

Will struck hard, the tip of the baton driving into the man’s kidney, buckling him and causing him to squeal in pain. Shaun Simpson fell to his knees, arching his back and then trying to twist as Debra wrenched harder on his arm until Joel was certain that he heard a pop.

“On your feet,” Debra snarled as she yanked hard to bring her charge up from his knees.

Will stepped in and hooked an arm under the man’s other arm pit and began helping to haul him towards the edge of the dam. Each step now became a fierce struggle and, despite the yelps and cries of pain from the prisoner, the man put up an incredible fight.

It took even more work to get him up and on the edge. By now the man was bawling. Will let go and stepped back. He seemed perfectly confident that Debra had the situation under control. And Joel agreed.

Shifting slightly, she pushed the man back until only the toes of his boots were on the edge. His heels dangled over hundreds of feet of empty space.

In a flash, Leanne lunged forward and shoved. Debra let go and stepped away as Shaun Simpson flew backwards into the air. In the split second that it took for gravity to take control and jerk him from view, there was a single moment when everybody close enough could see his face. For days, people would talk about the fear etched on it, and how many swore that he tried to clutch at his chest in that single moment before his body tumbled end over end, bouncing a few times off the sloped surface of the dam on its way down.

The first time, it’d just been enough to accelerate his pinwheeling. The second time, he must have struck at an odd angle because his body bounced far away from the sloping face of the dam where it plummeted for quite a ways until it finally slammed into it again and appeared to slide the rest of the way. When it struck the water, there was a white dot that marked where his body had entered…and then nothing.

The departure of the crowd was slow at first, but eventually everybody returned to their routine. The only people remaining were Joel, Debra, Will, and Leanne. The woman had not left the railing and continued to stare down to where Shaun Simpson had disappeared.

Eventually, Joel returned to his quarters. As he walked, he considered the possibility that some people might decide in the heat of the moment that they no longer wanted to stay. Of course, he couldn’t have anybody leaving. While he was confident that they had few weaknesses, that did not mean he was perfect, or that the right information in the wrong hands could lead to a well-organized attack. He sent word to double up on the perimeter security. Before the night was done, three individuals were apprehended trying to leave.

The next day, a very brief gathering was called and all three heard the judgement.

“I sentence you to the darkness.”

After a few days, things seemed to settle. Five days after the execution of Shaun Simpson, the power grid had been isolated and the water had been reduced to a trickle since the need for power was so greatly concentrated. Phase One was complete. The next thing they would do would be to completely sweep Boulder City. This would be the eventual home for Joel and all who would be accepted into the group.

That meant there would be a need for more citizens. The radio operators were handed a script, and every ten minutes, the broadcast was put out on as many channels as possible.

“Attention, if you are able, make your way to Hoover Dam. We have electricity, food, and the ability to sustain ourselves. Come to the main gate and present yourself to the watch for processing and take a chance at not just surviving…but living.”

8

The First Outpost

Joel pointed to the left and waved the five-person team ahead. The block-by-block assault on Boulder City had seemed simple on the map. The little town wasn’t some thriving metropolis. When they’d passed through on the way to Las Vegas, the zombie activity hadn’t been anything overwhelming.

What they hadn’t counted on was how many people had gotten trapped inside their homes. And they were staying clear of the schools since it was apparent they were hives of activity. The schools had been designated rescue centers and were almost as bad as the hospitals.

After a sweep through to get an idea on the ground of how they would assault the area, it had been Will Barnes who came up with the clever idea of parking a few fire engines at the western edge of their first neighborhood. Also, while there was some good, open land on the other side of Buchanan Boulevard, it was agreed that they would use that road as a pre-made boundary along with Highway 93 to the north. They would begin with clearing the community where they’d had that showdown with the biker gang that once laid claim to the area.

As a fairly secluded community, it was decided that it would be the perfect place to begin. Once that neighborhood was clear, they could push outward. It was this neighborhood that Joel and his team currently worked to clear of all undead. Two days prior, the team responsible for building the barricade that circled the entire community had announced that they were finished. Now it was time for the cleaning teams to move in and do their part.

Continuing with his belief that a true leader should be willing to do anything that he asked of others, Joel chose to be on the first team out for clean-up detail. Once he’d made a few of these excursions, he felt it would be acceptable to turn it over to others, but for now, he needed to share in the risks.

A lone zombie stumbled out from the bushes of the house that his team were about to enter. Without a word, one of the team members walked over and dispatched it with a spike club to the side of its head. The elderly woman crumbled from the hit and the person wielding the bat jogged back to the door of the house his three-person team would clear while Joel and the other two members of the team stayed outside and kept their eyes peeled. The teams would alternate at every house.

The job was not to gather any sort of supplies, but rather to simply ensure that the house was clear of zombies. As sections were cleared, teams would eventually be sent in to start gathering the supplies. That edict had brought questions.

“Why would we empty out the houses that we are going to be moving in to? One of the people in the crowd had asked during the community meeting.

“Not every house is going to have the same amount of supplies. Everybody here will be on the same footing.” Joel’s answer had been brief, but in the end, it seemed to satisfy everybody.

Eventually, the team exited from the house Joel had been stationed in front of. They dragged two bodies out to the front yard and then painted a red circle on the front door. A truck would be coming through later to collect all the corpses and take them to a burn pile that had been built in the open field across from the target community.

Now it was time for Joel and his two people to enter the next house. They reached the front door after a quick check of the back yard. Joel turned the knob and scowled to discover it was locked. He had the young woman step forward with the lock picking tools and open the door. The stench of the dead and the undead came rolling out on a hot breeze that had everybody in the group bringing up their bandanas that were slathered with Vick’s.

A soft moan from the darkness of the home followed the fetid breeze and Joel stepped across the threshold with his machete in front of him, his arm cocked just enough so that he could strike without hesitation. The others followed, forming a line with a few feet between each member.

The house had been opulent once-upon-a-time. The walls were adorned with tasteful art that broke from the normal Southwestern theme, and instead, held a nautical motif. The entry hall broke off with stairs going up, a room to the left, and a continuation into what appeared to be a dining room with a pass-through to the kitchen with wooden shutters that had been splintered. There was also a door separating the kitchen, but it had been busted down as well. Long-since-dried smears of blood caked the side where the door knob would’ve been on what remained of the door. A large axe was buried in the wall right beside the doorway.

Another moan drifted from ahead, and it was clear that it came from the kitchen. Even in the gloom, the tiled floor of the kitchen was smeared with an abundance of blood that almost gave the appearance that the floor was actually black. Joel held up a hand, signaling the other two people to stop. Once he was certain that they’d complied, he continued forward the last few steps.

The smell of undeath was growing thicker, but then again, so was the familiar smell of old death. Peering into the shadows of the kitchen, something stirred to his left. Joel tightened his grip on the machete he held and slowly took another step into the vile smelling room. The sickly sweet stench of rotting food, decaying flesh, and feces mixed with something heavy in its ammonia-like bitterness.

At first he wasn’t certain of what he thought he might be hearing, but then a soft rumble of a cat’s purr made itself known when a black feline sauntered into the open, pausing in a clean section of floor to lick its paws.

“Hey, puss,” Joel whispered, suddenly missing his own beloved cat, Peanut, who was, no doubt, stretched out on the windowsill of Joel’s room, soaking in every bit of the sun possible.

Another sound like the softest scuff of a shoe on the linoleum was instantly followed by what sounded like a baby’s cry. Joel felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He’d only heard about these particular zombies up to this point. Some of the folks on scavenging runs reported the occasional encounter with a zombie that made a sound eerily similar to the cry of an infant. That is why Joel wasn’t surprised when the young man stepped out from what looked like it had been a pantry. No older than ten, the little boy was young, but certainly not an infant. It opened its mouth again, and this time, Joel stared at the creature as it let loose with that awful sound once more.

He waited for the zombie to approach, but instead, it stood fast, cocking its head first one way then the other as it appeared to study him. Joel couldn’t help but stare into its filmed over, tracer riddled eyes. He wondered why it didn’t come any closer. Zombies never hesitated when they spotted a living person. He wasn’t sure how they could tell; whether it was by smell or some other manner. What he did know for certain was that zombies did not attack each other; and they did not hesitate if they located a living being. Yet, this child did not advance. This was the second time he’d seen this behavior.

Curious, Joel took a step forward. The zombie child retreated! That was absolutely something new and different. He was wondering if this might make the child versions easier to kill, and brought his machete up as he cocked his arm and prepared to strike when the child lurched forward. Just that fast, it was the same as any of a million other undead. It came for him, hands clutching at the air, mouth opening and closing with an audible click as tiny teeth snapped together.

Joel struck fast, bringing his heavy-duty blade down on the crown of the zombie child’s head. There was a crunch, and the child crumbled to the floor—again, just like any other zombie. A moment later, what had once been a rather rotund African-American woman stumbled out into the room from the same pantry closet. She had small bites up and down her arms that were probably defensive wounds, and one side of her face looked like it had been savaged. Bare skull peeked through in places, adding to the zombie’s sinister appearance. He stepped in and finished her off as well and then ensured there were no other surprises lurking in the pantry before returning to the team.

He related what he’d witnessed in the child zombie and did not miss the raised eyebrows of his two much younger team members. The only thing they seemed to take as gospel was his explanation of the baby cry sound. That was a story that was already making the rounds through the community.

They finished the check of the house, exited, and marked it. This continued through the morning as they went through the process of going house to house, ensuring each one was empty. Best estimates had this single job taking as much as three days before the entire Lake Mead View community complex was secure.

A barricade had been erected where Quartz Road exited the main community at the southeast corner as Red Rock Road made its wide, lazy bend. A wall of sorts had been erected on that hill that made up a natural barrier to the south with lookout towers every hundred feet to allow them to look towards the rest of Boulder City. The hills that made the eastern border had a similar setup with the towers a bit more widely spaced. Cars and trucks had been brought in and used to create a barricade along Highway 93 and the western border. The northern border was marked with a ten-foot-deep and six-feet-across trench that was butted by a berm made by the excavated earth and then a fence topped with razor wire.

As far as the perimeter, Joel was happy with the measures taken to ensure their security. With the engineering team assuring him that they would have power on within the next seventy-two hours, he was anxious to get the place clear. While there had not been any complaints yet about the accommodations at the dam, he knew that it was simply human nature to become accustomed to a certain level of comfort and then long for better. This should keep the masses placated for the foreseeable future.

The clearing was going well as the day wore on. His team was outside a residence while the other team cleared when he heard the scream that could only mean somebody had been bitten.

“Keep alert and stay put,” Joel ordered as he approached the house.

The closer he got, the louder the sounds of some sort of scuffle could be heard. He took off at a jog as he reached the stairs leading up to the open front door.

“Get her off, get her off!” a strained sounding man’s voice begged.

Joel stepped into the entry hall and paused just long enough for his vision to acclimate before hurrying up the stairs to where the sounds of his team locked in what sounded like a horrific battle drifted down to his ears. When he reached the top of the landing, he paused. Part of him understood what he was seeing, but another part of him struggled to make sense of it.

Two of the team were on the floor struggling to fend off a dozen zombie children. The third member of the team was in a corner with his back against the walls, slashing out at another four of the tiny terrors that were hissing, moaning, and snapping their teeth as they sought to get hold of him. One child was sprawled on the floor, a massive divot in the middle of its forehead where the hand axe the man wielded had obviously connected.

Rushing in, Joel grabbed the first child by the collar of her shirt and threw her to one side, hardly noticing as it crashed into the wall hard enough to knock a collection of mounted photographs to the floor in a crash of breaking glass. He kicked the next one’s feet from under it and stomped down hard on the back of its neck before chopping into the back of its head with his machete.

Three of the child zombies turned toward this new distraction and came for him with none of the hesitation he’d seen earlier. Wasting no time, Joel moved in and shoved the closest one aside, chopped on the next one, and kicked out at the third; all in a span of a few heartbeats. The one he pushed started for him again, but he was able to end the one he’d knocked down before exterminating the third.

The closest team member on the floor was holding a single zombie child at bay with each hand. He held one by the throat, and the other by the hair. The one he held by the hair was a little girl of perhaps six or seven. She had long, blonde hair in a matted and filthy ponytail which the man on the floor had wrapped around one fist. The left side of her face—which was the side Joel approached from—had been torn and she was missing her eye. The nose had been ripped away, leaving nothing but a dark crater in the center of her face where it had once been.

Joel was stepping in to help when the girl jerked hard. A small rip on her forehead began to part. Joel froze. He couldn’t help but watch in fascination as that tiny part in the skin began to widen. The skull beneath was a dull gray, and thick dark blood oozed across its surface making it seem even darker. The rip widened, and then a huge piece of the girl’s scalp peeled back.

A split-second later, the man started to scream as the zombie child’s mouth clamped onto his lower lip and chin. Thankfully, those screams were quickly muted as blood filled the man’s mouth and then went down his throat, choking him and signaling his end. Booted feet thrummed on the floor as the man initially began to kick and thrash. Joel shook his head, stepped in, and ended the poor man’s struggles with a swift chop that severed the man’s head from his body as well as cutting through the girl who’d bitten him, effectively and figuratively killing two birds with one stone. He moved onto the other zombie child that had gotten free from the man’s grip after the girl had bitten him, and then ended the one trying to reach its feet and come for him now that Joel was the most active living thing in its view.

By the time he finished, the person in the corner had cut down two more attackers, but the other person on the floor was a goner. That had obviously been the one whose scream Joel had first heard. There were a few bites on the person’s arms, face, and hands, and a good-sized pool of blood had spread around the body to stain the hardwood floors in a crimson sheen. Joel didn’t wait for what he knew would be coming and stepped in to end the person’s chances of returning with a machete chop to the head. Once he finished off the children that had been feasting on the body and practically ignoring his presence except to hiss up at him when he moved in to end each one, he took down what proved to be the last zombie that had been trying to get to the person in the corner.

As the last zombie child fell to the floor, the man in the corner dropped to his knees and began to sob. His body shook and his eyes seemed to be trying desperately to avoid looking at the scene that lay out before him.

“What in God’s name happened?” Joel finally asked after the person, whose name he realized he could not recall, did nothing but continue sobbing in great hitching fits.

“There was just one,” the young man sobbed. He looked up at Joel, and then again his eyes scanned the carnage scattered about. “We thought it would be a simple in-and-out job. One zombie kid couldn’t be much of a problem…right?”

Joel looked around the room. He counted seventeen bodies sprawled about. That didn’t count his two people that he’d had no choice but to kill.

“We came up the stairs and it just stared at us…the strangest thing I’d ever seen. We kept thinking it would start down the stairs after us. Hell, Doug even started calling to it, telling it that everything would be okay and that all its troubles would be over in a matter of seconds.” The man glanced at the body of the man Joel had killed second—the one who’d obviously been the source of the scream. “We were just a few steps from the top when the damn thing turned and walked away. None of us had ever seen anything like it.”

“Like what?” Joel felt his blood chill a few degrees. If he would’ve glanced down at the small patch of bare skin between his shirt sleeves and his gloves, he would’ve seen his skin pebble with goose flesh.

“It was like they were waiting for us…like a trap. We reached the top of the stairs and it was still just the one. All the doors looked like they were closed, but they weren’t. Not all the way at least. At least I’m pretty sure. God, please let that be true or it’s even worse—” The man’s tempo had started to speed up. And it was clear that he was verging on hysterics.

Joel smacked him with a firm backhand. The man didn’t appear to register the pain, but he swallowed once, and then continued much calmer.

“They came from all the rooms. It was like they heard some signal, because all the doors opened at damn near the same time and all of a sudden we had all these…” The man waved his arm to indicate the bodies scattered on the floor. “But these ones didn’t attack at first either. They just stepped out and seemed to be studying us. They just stood there, heads tilting one way, then the other.”

The man went silent again, and his eyes scanned the room, but this time, it looked as if he might really be seeing the carnage for what it was. His eyes lingered longest on the fallen bodies of his former comrades.

“They weren’t trying to attack us. Doug knelt down and tried to talk to the damn things…for real this time. It was like he couldn’t see their eyes…the horrible injuries that gave them away for what they were. Then he went to put his knife in his belt.”

This time, when the man went silent, Joel knew what he would be seeing. It was like a switch being thrown, he was willing to wager on it if he were a betting man.

“They just became…zombies. All that hesitation…all that bit about them being different? It vanished in the blink of an eye and that closest one threw itself on Doug. He never stood a chance.” The man shuddered and squeezed his eyes shut. “Then they all just came at us. It was like trying to escape a wood chipper.”

“On your feet,” Joel finally said after giving the man a moment to gather himself.

Without waiting, Joel turned and headed down the stairs. He reached the door and glanced back to see that the man had indeed gotten to his feet and was now following him outside the house.

“We’re cutting it off early today,” Joel announced, and then marked the house as cleared.

“But it’s barely past midday,” one of his people argued. Joel didn’t look to see who, and didn’t care.

The group loaded into the transport truck and returned to the dam after the other two groups were also called in and told that the day was over. All the way back to the dam Joel thought about the child he’d encountered and then ran through everything he could remember about what had happened to his team. By the time he reached their base at the dam, he had at least a rudimentary solution.

Thirty minutes later, all personnel who ventured outside the perimeter were mustered in the auditorium of the visitor’s center. Joel had the one survivor of the group he’d been teamed with come forward and relate the events just as had been reported to him. Once that was finished, he stepped behind the podium and waited for the murmurs to die down.

“I think we can now make the leap that the youngsters who have been turned are just a little different,” Joel started and then went on to relate his own experience. “I want to make it clear that, from this point forward, any child zombie encountered is to be shot on sight. Anybody who can’t follow that order needs to have themselves reassigned right now.”

After waiting a few moments to see if anybody would take his offer of resigning their position, Joel continued, “The teams will now consist of five members each. That will reduce us to five teams. I want four teams out at a time working in the perimeter. The fifth team will be stationed at the main gate to act as support. All teams will have two designated radiomen. I want check-ins every quarter hour with a location. The team staying in reserve will update the map we have of this place with locations of all mobile units.”

When the meeting broke and everybody was told to be ready to move out at first light in the morning, Joel allowed himself to process everything. Zombies had been bad. Humans had proved to be a larger threat than he’d originally figured, and now…zombie children that appeared to have at least some form of limited cognition or reasoning power.

He hated to let that thought free in the cosmos since he knew it was usually answered with something even worse, but he could not help but think, What’s next?

***

Joel moved down the hallway. He stepped over the body that had rotted to the point where it appeared to have melded with the carpeted floor and paused at the door to his left. He could hear wet smacking sounds mixed in with the occasional mewl of what might be somebody in pain.

Taking a deep breath, Joel closed his fist and held it up to halt the individuals behind him. Continuing to hold his breath, he leaned just enough to see inside the room.

The fact that this side of the house faced the rising sun would be a blessing any other time. But now, it allowed him to see in graphic detail what had been making those horrible wet noises.

The man was naked. The back of his right leg was torn apart, but the wound was almost dry, indicating it was an old injury from early on in the zombie uprising no doubt.

From the looks of things, the man had been aware of his eventual fate and chosen to end it by putting a pistol in his mouth and blowing his brains all over the wall. Crowded around the corpse were at least twenty cats of various sizes. His eyes fixed on what had once been a large, silver Persian. It regarded him for just a few seconds before resuming in its attempt to pull away a piece of flesh from the dead man’s side. Its whiskers were dark with blood, and its teeth almost appeared black.

“Welcome to the Hungry Cat Buffet,” Joel muttered. “Your server will be the main course.”

He knew that cats were sort of famous for being considered heartless animals, and that it was popular to tell the stories of cat owners dying only to be found days later with their cats feeding on them. Personally, he didn’t see the problem. Survival is instinctive. Some creatures show a greater aptitude than others.

Another of the cats looked up at him. This one a Calico with patches of black, orange, yellow, and white all over. It opened its mouth and let loose with a loud mewling sound that matched what he’d heard just a moment ago. However, he also noticed that every single cat’s head popped up. Every set of eyes rolled his way and fixed on him as he stood in the doorway. A few of the cats closest to him began to slink his direction.

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Joel said, fighting to keep the sudden shiver that ran down his spine from leaking out in his tone.

Behind him, the rest of the team were busy searching the other rooms. He’d been chosen to actually remain in the hallway as support, but was free to roam its length as long as he was available for anybody who might find a nasty surprise while they cleared the residence.

He was leaning against the wall when a flash of light caught him off guard and caused him to jump. He heard other members of the team curse or yelp at the same time as lights when on throughout the residence.

“Power’s on!” somebody yelled needlessly.

Something hissed and popped in what Joel had figured to be the master bedroom when he’d passed by its open door. There was a crackle, a pop, and then…a human voice.

“…we are based at the Hoover Dam. If you can work, and are prepared to join us wholeheartedly, then come to one of our entry gates and submit to being checked by our medical staff. We are only accepting able bodies free of injury. Children under the age of fourteen are prohibited.” There was a pause, and then the recorded loop began again. “If you are within the sound of my voice and want not to simply survive, but to carve out a life for yourself, then consider joining us. We are based at the Hoover Dam…”

Joel smiled. He’d approved the basic script written and recorded by Debra. A few of the citizens had paled at the part about not accepting children when it had been announced. The meeting had been an eye-opener for many of the citizens.

“Tell me what purpose there is to admitting an infant?” Debra had risen from her seat and climbed to the podium when the first murmurs had flowed through the assembled crowd. “Can they labor? Scavenge? Patrol the perimeter?” She paused long enough to allow her words to sink in. “The answer is that they cannot. All they can do is drain our very finite resources.

“It’s the human thing to do,” somebody shouted.

“Is it really?” Debra stepped to the edge of the dais and planted her hands on her hips. “And which of you is willing to forgo their food or water each day? Who will offer to go without sleep in order to not only perform the necessary tasks involved with caring for a child, but also their duties required to ensure the safety and security of the community?”

A silence fell over the group and Debra smiled. “If you people don’t get beyond the way things were done in the past, I’m afraid you won’t last long in the new world. Make no mistake…things have changed.”

“All clear,” a voice said from behind his right shoulder, bringing his mind back to the present. Joel turned to see Debra wiping off the blade she held in her hand.

“Gather everybody up and meet me out front,” Joel replied. He patted the woman on the shoulder and headed down the stairs.

Once outside, he removed the scarf over the lower part of his face and allowed himself to breathe in some of the fresh air. This particular house was on a hill in the northeast corner of the neighborhood. It was the last house on what the signs called Stone Canyon Road and almost sat as a lone sentinel over the entire community.

This would be Joel’s home. He’d known it the moment he saw it. It was in the perfect location, offered an excellent view of this, their first established community. As an added bonus, it was on the edge closest to the dam in case a hasty retreat had to be enacted.

As Joel stood in the driveway, he watched the other team, led by Will, as they held their defensive positions in support of his team. As soon as he made eye contact with the man, Joel motioned him over.

“What’s the word, boss?” Will asked as he trotted over, the sounds of his various weapons jangling acting as a sort of  synchronized soundtrack to his movements.

“Power came on inside,” Joel said, stepping aside to allow the man to look into the open door that revealed a well-lit entry hall.

“I’ll be damned,” Will breathed. “They actually got it done, and ahead of schedule, no less.”

“Our broadcast is coming across the radio loud and clear. Send a message back to the control room and let them know.”

Moments later, Debra and the rest of the team exited. It was almost at that exact same moment that everybody spotted the single flare fired from someplace to the west of them. Both teams shaded their eyes from the sun and watched the sputtering flare as it left a trail of smoke to mark its descent.

“H-h-hello?” the portable radio on both teams’ radio operators crackled to life at the same time, creating a surreal echo that made the voice seem to be coming from the actual desert landscape of this luxury home’s front yard.

Joel held up a hand and shook his head in the negative in response to the inquiring looks that begged the obvious question. Everybody made ready whatever weapon they favored for what might be an attack by a group of living beings.

“My name is Dustin Gollyhorn. My group has ten people and we are trying to make contact with the people based at the Hoover Dam. If you can read me, please respond.” There was a slight pause, and then a hastily added, “Over.”

Joel shook his head again. There was nothing but a soft hiss from the two portable radios for long enough that people began to relax when they crackled to life again.

“We are currently just west of the highway, across from a sign for something called the River Mountains Loop Trail parking lot. We have secured a single residence, and want to join you, but our people spotted a group enter the housing community across the highway several hours ago. To our knowledge, they have not yet left. We would rather not draw their attention as they looked heavily armed and very organized. They might be military.”

Again there was a pause, but this one was only for a moment. “Hell, they might be listening in, and one of my people says that now they would know we are here. We’re just regular folks. I was postman from Salem, Oregon for Pete’s sake. We just voted and are going to try and make a run for it. So, if you see a group of folks who look scared out of their wits with what looks like a small band of soldiers on their heels, please don’t shoot us. We’ll work real hard.”

There was another crackle, and the sounds of people arguing about the wisdom in all the information that the speaker had freely given was being debated rather heatedly. Then…nothing.

“I’m gonna make a silly-wild-ass-guess and say we were the possible military group that his people saw,” one of the radio operators chuckled. “I know the lot he’s talking about. It’s right across from us which would also make it more than likely that these yay-hoos are the ones who fired the flare.”

“Let’s get out to the road and make contact,” Joel announced. He saw more than a couple of surprised expressions.

The teams shouldered their weapons and headed out of the Lake Mead View neighborhood and to Highway 93. Just as they reached where the vehicles were parked outside the barricade of packed in cars and trucks, they spied a group of people moving at a jog through the scrub brush on the far side of a large paved lot.

Joel held up his hand and signaled the team to stop. All of a sudden, something didn’t feel right. As if she could read his thoughts, Debra moved up beside him and unslung the grenade launcher she carried.

“Why would these people fire a flare if they were so worried about us?” she whispered as if the people far in the distance might be just a few feet away.

And there it was, Joel thought.

Something had started to feel…off. He just couldn’t figure out what that might be. He pointed to two of his people now gathered around and looking all over like they were expecting an enemy to materialize out of thin air. “Get the trucks started.”

As soon as the pair slipped past and started across the four-wide barricade of assorted automobiles, Joel turned to the others. “Will, Debra, get to the .50 cals as soon as we break for it. Shoot anything that moves.” Each of them gave solemn nods. “Everybody else keep your head on a swivel. There is something fishy here.”

The sounds of the pair of modified deuce-and-a-half transport trucks shattered the quiet with their diesel grumblings. Without another word, Joel turned and started for the trucks. While he took the first few steps, he slowed as soon as some of his other companions began to scurry past.

He was starting to feel silly about his feelings that something was amiss. Everybody was just about across the vehicle wall. All that would remain would be for them to load into the trucks and roll out.

The single crack of a rifle made its way to his ears, barely discernible from the noise made by the two transports. Joel might’ve even been able to convince himself that he’d been imagining things…until the woman to his right sprawled flat on her face with a metallic thud. Her face bounced off the hood of a sports car that probably cost a few hundred thousand and was no more valuable than the late Seventies model station wagon that its front bumper was crushed into to prevent anything from being able to wiggle through. Joel grabbed her head by a handful of hair and jerked it up, although the dark pool already seeping from it made that totally unnecessary. There was a neat bullet hole through the woman’s forehead.

Another crack sounded, and another of his people, a man who’d reached the end of the automobile wall and had just put his feet on the road, staggered a step and then fell hard. This one landed on his side, making it easy for everybody to see that he’d also been shot in the head. This time, the dark, puckered hole visible an inch below his right eye.

“Sniper!” somebody yelled needlessly.

9

Killing

Joel threw himself forward and hit the ground hard enough to make him wince. He rolled twice and came up against the rear wheels of the nearest Deuce. The smells of the diesel were gaggingly strong and he held his breath as he pushed himself to his feet. Staying in a low crouch, he hurried to the passenger side door of the cab. It flew open just as he arrived and a hand was reaching over to help him up.

Joel was just up and settling into his seat when he felt something sting his right cheek at the same time that a warm, viscous liquid splashed his face. The driver slumped over and toppled his direction. The back of her skull was a mess from the exit wound of the bullet that had ended her. Realizing quick that he would now make a prime and easy target, Joel pushed himself out and away from the truck. Again he landed hard enough to feel serious pain and began to vow terrible vengeance on the perpetrators of this attack.

“Cover!” somebody yelled from just behind him.

Joel rolled his head to see a young man on his hands and knees shoving his body tight against the wheel well of the Deuce he’d just evacuated. The young man gave him a curt nod as he unslung a scoped rifle from his shoulder, checking it to ensure it was ready to fire. Stretching out on the ground, he inched over until he was looking underneath the transport truck. With a detached precision, the man eased his eye to the scope, adjusted slightly, and then squeezed the trigger. There was a booming report, but it hadn’t even faded when the man was ratcheting another round into the chamber, adjusting slightly, and then firing again.

Four times, the young man fired. Joel had no idea if he was actually hitting anything, but he was willing to bet that this kid was chipping away at the enemy with brutal efficiency. After the fourth round was fired, the young man rolled back and sat up, again using the wheel as his cover.

“One sniper left, but I think he is pulling back. I might’ve nicked him, but he moved just as I got off my shot, so it wasn’t clean,” the man said.

“Who are you, son?” Joel asked, the tone of respect with a hint of amazement clear in his voice.

“Richard Simmons…no relation to the fitness guy,” the young man said with a hint of laughter in his voice.

“You handled yourself well, Richard.”

“Not well enough, sir. We still have one of their snipers out there, those other people are on the run, and this whole situation makes less sense than the finale of LOST.”

“I will take your word for it.” Joel shrugged his shoulders, not entirely certain what this Richard Simmons person might be talking about.

“All that radio chatter, the flare…it was as if somebody tried to lure us out, sir,” Richard said as he reloaded his weapon.

“We got zips incoming!” somebody shouted before Joel could voice his agreement with the observation.

Looking from behind the rear of the Deuce, Joel saw the undead coming from all directions. Getting to his feet, he called for everybody to load into the trucks. It was time to get out of here right now. They would return, and do so with a force that would make others think twice before engaging.

***

The trucks slowed and then rolled to a halt. Joel tossed aside the handset for the radio and stared out the front window. While he’d not gotten a good look at the people that had fled and taken off into the scrubs at the border of Boulder City, he was confident that these were the same individuals.

“Let me just end this,” Debra’s voice crackled on the radio.

The small group of people had stopped running and were now facing them. Some had their hands in the air, others were dancing nervously from foot to foot. All of them seemed to be trying to find someplace to run where they could hide. He recalled seeing very similar body language and posture during his time in Vietnam. This was common anytime he and his fellow soldiers would encounter and inspect a village.

Shoving those images away before they could take root, Joel opened his door and hopped down to the ground. Without having to be told, he heard or saw the others doing the same with the exception of Will and Debra who remained stationed at the machine guns. His people quickly fanned out, weapons at the ready, covering this small group of men, women…and children.

“P-p-please…” A man stepped forward, hands held high. “We don’t want any trouble. We didn’t want anybody hurt, but they said they would kill us if we didn’t run for it.”

“Who told you this?” Joel stepped forward and signaled for his people to stay put.

“These soldiers…at least they were dressed like soldiers,” the man said.

As he spoke, Joel looked him over more closely. It hadn’t been that long since all hell broke loose, but this guy and his people looked awful. Some were so filthy that it was almost impossible to tell if they were male or female. Their clothing was tattered and coming apart in places. A few had their shoes wrapped in cloth; presumably to keep them from falling apart.

Tourists, he determined.

“What are you doing way out here?” Joel asked.

“We were on a bus tour a few weeks ago. There was a military roadblock that stopped us from returning to Las Vegas. We were all put into an emergency shelter. One day, almost all the soldiers were just gone. The ones who were left told us that we were on our own. Several people just drifted away, but some of us stayed.” The man stopped talking and rubbed his throat with one hand. “Listen, can I get a sip of water? We’ve been locked in a basement for the past few days, and we ran out of water yesterday. Talking to you is not doing me any favors.”

Joel didn’t see the harm. After all, if there was one thing he access to plenty of at the dam, it was water. He snapped his fingers and waited as the man gratefully accepted the proffered canteen and drank long gulps. He finished and then glanced back at his group. Joel nodded and the man hurried over, handing them the container of precious fluid.

“Early this morning, they told us all that we would be released. They said that it was going to be a sort of game…they would open the door, and we had to run in the direction they told us. We were getting a head start.”

“Head start?” Joel asked, raising a hand to stop the man for a moment.

“They said that they would give us five minutes from when the flare was fired. After that, we would be…fair game.” The man spat the last word with the first display of anger Joel had heard.

“And these soldiers, how many?” Joel pressed.

“Fifteen maybe?”

“Are you guessing?”

“I didn’t actually take the time to count them, but I can give a good guess based on what I saw.” The man was starting to get nervous as the undead could be seen trudging their direction. They were still a good distance away, but Joel saw no reason to add to what had obviously been a crappy day for this man and his group. He also had a feeling that it was about to get just a little worse.

“Are you people from the dam…the ones making the broadcast?” the man blurted. Joel gave a nod, and the man began to almost babble he began speaking so fast. “We were heading for you. We would work hard, do whatever you needed. We just can’t keep going out here.”

“Yeah,” Joel let that word draw out as he scanned the group clustered together a short distance away. “But you don’t really fit the bill.”

“What?” the man spat incredulously. “Sure, we may not be militarily trained or anything, but I think I can speak for all of us when I say we’d be in your debt and work our collective asses off. We would do whatever you needed.”

“The kids.” Joel let that statement hang.

He looked once more at the group. Of the eleven, three were obviously under the age of ten, and a couple were borderline as to if they might even be teenagers.

“What about them?” the man whispered. “They won’t be any trouble. We will care for them. You won’t even know they are there.”

“Until one of you can’t do your duties because a child needs tending. And what about food? Who is going to give up their portion so one of the kids can eat?” Joel said coolly.

“They’re children…they won’t eat that much. Surely that small amount could be spared.”

“And when the next group arrives…and the next? And pretty soon we have this huge drain on supplies from a portion of the population that serve no function.”

“No function!” Spittle flew from the man’s lips and his face began to turn red. “What sort of monsters are you people? Please tell me we didn’t get away from one group of evil just to stumble into another.”

“Save it.” Joel stepped back, wiping at his face. “Your passion would be better served finding someplace safe before nightfall.”

The man looked past Joel to the rest of his people. “Are you all okay with this?” He stepped toward one of the women, obviously thinking that he would get more sympathy. The woman just stared at him, her face stony, no emotion flitting across, not even the eyes showed pity. “These drains on supplies as your leader calls them are the future. They are our chance to continue.”

“Let’s go,” Joel called out, pushing past the man and returning to the truck.

His people backed up, following his lead. As Joel climbed up and prepared to get into the cab, another voice got his attention.

“Wait!” a young woman detached herself from the group of bedraggled survivors and half-jogged, half-staggered towards Joel. “I get it. No problem. Take me with you, I don’t have any kids. I’m by myself.”

She reached Joel and threw herself onto her knees, looking up to him with a face that showed numerous trails where dirt had caked up, tears had cut through, and then more dirt caked on. Her hair was clumps of knots and tangles that looked like they might defy any attempt to undo. She was wearing a tattered blue shirt and jeans that had equal parts mud, blood, and possibly even vomit. He could smell her, and his nose wrinkled at something familiar.

“Are you infected?” Joel asked.

Despite not seeing the tracers in her eyes, he knew the smell. There was a hint of the stench associated with the walking dead.

“No, this…” she plucked at her shirt with finger and thumb, “…was one person’s bright idea that smearing ourselves with zombie guts might make us invisible to them.” She cast a dirty look over her shoulder and then brought her eyes back to Joel. “It didn’t work. Fortunately, the idiot who thought of it was one of the five we lost that day.”

“Anybody else?” Joel hiked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the cargo area of the truck. “I only make the offer once. But I am very serious when I say we won’t be taking any of the individuals unable to earn their way through hard work.”

He saw a few traded glances, and then two more people stepped away from the group. Joel gave them a nod and tilted his head over his shoulder, indicating that they could get into the back of the Deuce as well.

“You can’t be this cold…this heartless,” a man shouted. He started towards Joel but froze in his tracks when the two machine guns on top of the transport trucks swung in his direction.

“This has nothing to do with being cold or heartless,” Joel said softly, trying his hardest to sound calm and relaxed. “If I was as you say, then I would kill everybody that I didn’t deem acceptable of joining us.”

“You’re a bastard,” a woman sobbed.

“Perhaps, but I would really use this chance to find someplace safe.” Joel hiked a thumb at the approaching streams of undead that were drawn to all the commotion. “They won’t care one way or the other who they rip apart, so I would maybe gather what you can. I’m pretty sure we got all but one of the snipers, but who knows how many other people are in that little group. They used you as bait, so I wouldn’t bet my farm on how they might treat you next time.”

“What’s to stop us from just following you?” the man who now seemed to be acting as the spokesman for those not willing to abandon their group, more specifically…the children, asked.

“That’s a stupid question.” Joel hiked a thumb at the machine guns.

“So you’d be willing to kill us in cold blood.” It wasn’t really put as a question, but more as perhaps a confirmation.

“I am willing to do what it takes to see to the safety of my people,” Joel confirmed.

“And they would be willing to follow that order?”

“Hey, buddy?” Debra called down. “I can’t speak for Slick Willy over there, but I will put you all down and consider it a merciful ending. Now, enough of the chit-chat. You need to run and hide, and we have to go back to our base and gather our people so we can start getting down to the business of establishing our community.”

“Comm—” the man started with a bark of sarcastic laughter. His response was cut short by the loud chatter from Debra’s .50 cal.

What had once been the man known as Dustin Gollyhorn flew apart in pulpy chunks as the massive, high-velocity rounds of the machine gun tore into him. Bits of bone and chunks of flesh flew, some of it splattering on the people huddled together in terror at what they were witnessing.

“I suggest you people get a move on!” the woman snarled, swinging the barrel of her weapon over to the main group still clustered a dozen or so yards away. Many of them threw themselves on the ground as they screamed in fear, a few broke free and took off, running wildly with no apparent destination. 

Joel was in agreement. The undead were coming in large numbers, and now that the .50 cal had roared and belched smoke, flame, and high-velocity lead, the conversation could officially be considered over.

“Let’s roll!” he called out as he turned his back on the scene and returned to his truck. In a matter of moments, the small expedition force was rolling out again. By morning, a much larger convoy would be returning with the first wave set to occupy the now zombie-free, semi-secure community.

***

The next few days were spent bringing out the people who would make up the first wave of settlers. A meeting was held the night before the first group rolled out where Joel gave details on housing selection and security protocols.

Joel rolled out with the first group and went to his new home. Shortly after, the supply trucks came with the allotted boxed goods that each residence would receive based on the number of occupants.

All of this was running smoothly, however, there was one fly in the ointment and Joel was furious with himself for not thinking it through. When they had brought the power up and on line to Boulder City, they hadn’t thought to go through and shut everything off.

On the plus side, since most of the residents had apparently evacuated and had the presence of mind to shut things off, the power grid hadn’t tripped any breakers and shut down. However, there were several fires burning as you looked toward the heart of what made up Boulder City.

At the moment, the winds were in their favor, but these were the sorts of mistakes that he could not afford. It was time to expand the inner circle and bring in a few people to help with the planning. He had already brought in Debra and Will, but they were not of much use beyond the military and security aspects.

After all his supplies were stored, he sat down with the most recent roster of residents. That had been one thing he’d done right away; he’d had every resident added to a running census that also noted their Old World skills as well as current work assignments and their new address.

Kurt Billings was the man who oversaw the operations at the dam, and he would be a perfect candidate. He was tough as nails and a very no-nonsense kind of guy. In fact, he hadn’t been the man in charge when Joel first met with the surviving employees of the dam’s hydroelectrical plant. Just a shade over six feet tall, and sporting a beer belly that was slowly receding due to what some residents termed “the Post-Apocalypse weight loss program”, Kurt reminded Joel of a young Sam Elliott. He even had the bushy mustache that always fluttered when he would blow out a sigh of exasperation.

During the first meeting, the actual supervisor had balked at many of Joel’s ideas, but Kurt had seen the logic. The old supervisor had tried to leave and promptly been tossed from the dam. This had happened before Joel discovered the stairwell that was now simply known in the community as ‘The Darkness’ after that first pronouncement of sentence.

After Kurt, Joel decided Malik was somebody that he felt could be trusted. The man had a level head in a fight, but also had helped devise the assault plan that they had used to clear this first neighborhood. It had been Malik that thought of using all the abandoned vehicles to create a secondary barricade on the highway.

After that, Joel chose a woman named Daisy Porter. This woman had the meanest and nastiest disposition he’d ever encountered in a woman…Debra included. Her face was in a perpetual scowl, and not once had he seen it any other way. This woman reminded him of Beulah Balbricker from Porky’s…only somehow less attractive, as improbable as that would seem.

Once he had his council selected, he held a meeting with all the residents of the newly established community and introduced them to the masses. In a matter of days, a full security roster was selected and put into action. This included roving patrols inside and outside the perimeter.

Something about the relative ease of things did not sit right with Joel. He tried to dismiss it as perhaps just his naturally pessimistic nature. The days were passing and things were coming along well. The community had been out of the path of the fires that were now starting to finally burn themselves out. Supply runs were yielding a plentiful stockpile of goods, and a greenhouse complex had been located and cleared out of all the useless flowers. It was now seeing the first shoots beginning to push through the soil as a variety of vegetables had been started.

It was that core of cynicism that gave him strength on a morning that started no different than several over the past few weeks. Joel woke, made coffee, and sat at the table reviewing watch logs and the couple of arrest reports that had been turned in the night before. He was just pouring the second cup when a knock sounded at his front door.

Joel tightened the sash on his robe as he opened the door to reveal three uniformed personnel on his porch. A young man in his twenties stepped forward from the others. He removed his cap and began to wring it in his hands.

“Yes?” Joel prompted.

“Mister Landon, sir, I have been sent by Captain Debra Allen. She says that you are to come to the radio building with all haste…sir.” He blurted that last word out almost like he was afraid he had not been formal enough.

“What for?” Joel sipped his coffee and let his gaze drift past the trio on his porch. He didn’t see anything that would indicate there might be an immediate problem. Still, just because he couldn’t see anything did not mean there was not something wrong.

“She just said we needed to fetch you back to the center now and that we were not to leave without you.”

Joel scowled. He glanced down at his cup of coffee that still had wisps of steam coming of its dark brown surface. With a sigh, he set the cup down.

“I need to change.”

The young man opened his mouth, presumably to protest, but Joel had already slammed the door shut and headed upstairs. He opened his closet and decided on a set of military fatigues. Chances were that he wasn’t being called upon to share a cup of tea.

A few minutes later, Joel walked along the road with his trio of escorts. None of them would make eye contact with him, but that could be for any number of reasons. They had maintained that they were not informed as to the reason Debra had insisted upon his presence.

At last they stopped in front of what could’ve been any other house in the neighborhood if you did not pay attention to the seven towers of varying height that aided in the transmission and reception of radio messages.

The center had been set up for the dual purpose of staying in touch with the portion of their population still at the dam as well as to monitor for anything else that might be out there. So far, the radio traffic had been almost nil. None of it seemed to originate from the Las Vegas region. That surprised Joel since he figured the religious nuts he’d had that run in with a few weeks back might be attempting to lure people in to swell their numbers.

Joel walked inside the house-turned-radio-room. It was noticeably cooler from the six high-powered air conditioning units that were set up to keep all the electronics cool. If a person were so inclined, they could almost pretend that the world was normal. All they would need to do is look past the racks of ready-to-use firearms, machetes, spiked bats, assorted compound bows as well as crossbows.

He was not even all the way down the entry hall that would take him to the wide-open living and dining room where desks lined the walls when he could hear what sounded like a radio drama of an epic battle. An assortment of radios and even a couple of CBs were set up and monitored around the clock. A group of people were all clustered around two of the stations. Some were scribbling notes that would likely be transcribed into the daily logs later, but others were simply listening.

“…south entrance is breached, we have them in the building!” a woman’s voice was practically screaming.

“…a grenade just destroyed the east fire exit…more incoming…I repeat, we have a breach on the east!” The person making this report barely sounded old enough to have reached puberty, but he seemed amazingly calm considering what he was reporting.

“Fall back to the upper floors!” another person ordered. “We need to get the fires under control and then secure the upper floors. We can seal them off but the fires need to be extinguished,” a familiar voice barked.

Joel knew the voice of Conrad Parks well. He struggled to tamp down the guilt that tried to rise through the morass of his already burdened conscience. He’d been so close, yet unable to render assistance. And now, his sentence was to listen to what would likely be the death of a man he’d known literally since the day he was born. A young man he’d promised to care for as if he were his own son.

“And there was war in heaven…Michael and his angels fought against the dragon,” another familiar voice began to bellow. Joel could almost hear the fervor that he knew would be in the woman’s eyes. Obviously they hadn’t put that group down. “…and the dragon fought and his angels. And prevailed not…neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world…he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, ‘Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ!’ For the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives unto the death. Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! For the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.”

“Is she quoting Iron Maiden?” a man muttered.

“The Book of Revelations,” Joel said, causing all heads to turn. “Foxholes and prison cells are a breeding grounds for religion. I read the Bible a few times when I was in the shit.”

“Do we respond?” the woman sitting at the radio asked, her voice displaying just a hint of anxiousness.

“Not over the airwaves,” Joel replied with a grimness etched into his features.

He was angry with himself. He knew better than to leave an enemy in a position to get under your skin. He should’ve dealt with this group with absolute finality when he’d encountered them. After all, they were acting like a stereotype, so why wouldn’t they go whole hog and play the role of some sort of End Times rapture cult?

“So we just let them—” Debra started, the anger in her voice not masked in the least.

“We don’t let them do a damn thing,” Joel snapped, cutting her off.

When this was over, he was going to have to sit the woman down and have a discussion with her about how to address him in front of the others, but for now, he would utilize her hotheaded anger and aggression to his benefit.

“I am going back.”

Joel glanced around the room until he saw what he was looking for. Walking over, he picked up the mic that would broadcast via a series of speakers that were mounted on some of the streetlights around the community.

“Attention, all residents. In thirty minutes, I will be departing the community. I will not be asking for anybody to join me, but I will not stop those who wish to come. I will be driving back to the main Strip. My intention is to engage and completely eliminate a group of cultists that might represent a future danger to this community. As they are a considerable distance, this is mere speculation on my part.”

He paused, knowing what he was about to say, but wanting to let the tension he could already feel just in the radio room grow among those who were listening. He caught sight of Debra out of the corner of his eye and had to suppress a smile when she leaned forward while waiting for him to continue. He hoped that his words were having that effect on at least a few dozen others.

“I must also admit that I have a personal and vested interest in this trip that goes against our community doctrine. I am going in with the hopes of rescuing and bringing back a personal friend. Those of you who have ventured close to the Strip know that it is thick with the walking dead, and I am hoping to extract my friend from the MGM Grand Signature Towers. In the event that I do not return, we have protocols in place to continue on. This community is bigger than any single person and I trust that you all will continue to keep what is best for the whole in mind as you move forward.”

Joel set the mic back in the cradle and turned to face the room. The sounds of chaos were still flooding the room from the assorted speakers, but nobody seemed to be paying them any attention any longer. The focus of the room was on him.

“There is no way in hell you are going out there without me,” Debra said as she crossed over and stood beside him.

No sooner had she done so when the front door to the radio center slammed open. “Don’t even think about leaving here without me!” Malik bellowed as he jogged into the main room. He paused when the sounds of screaming and shouting blared from one of the radios, signaling that at least one position had just been overrun.

Joel patted the man on the shoulder and then headed for the exit. He could still hear Conrad’s voice coming through in between bits and pieces of a fire-and-brimstone sermon that promised eternal death and suffering for “the sinners, blasphemers, and fornicators” while extolling the so-called believers to fight and “bring all glory to God” with an underlying soundtrack of screams that ranged from pain-filled to panic-stricken.

Ten minutes later Joel stood before over forty members of the community that had all rushed out in full battle gear. He’d actually had to send Malik to his house to retrieve his own weapons and equipment since he’d just thrown on a set of fatigues without thinking to arm himself for the field.

Debra had jogged off with a few people to get vehicles from what had been dubbed, the Barn. It was a single plot where a house had once stood but had burned down perhaps in the first days of the apocalypse because the fire had been contained and it had obviously been put out by the fire department. That was a luxury that ended much sooner than many people would’ve imagined. Now it was mostly just an empty lot and made the perfect spot to park vehicles centrally for the compound.

Once everybody was loaded into vehicles with Joel in his familiar seat of the Humvee that Debra would be driving and Malik in the turret manning the machine gun, the convoy rolled out. They had to use the south end of the community near Joel’s home, and drove through the opened gate, the security waving them through and then pulling the massive iron gate shut with a haste as if they feared zombies might pop up from the sagebrush and come for them.

They skirted wide and then reached Highway 93 which they would follow until it changed over to Interstate 515. The plan was to follow that interstate until they arrived at the junction of Interstates 515 and 215.

As they rolled through Boulder City, there were still a few fires burning, but most had finally extinguished on their own. Looking west, Joel spotted a dark smudge on the horizon that hinted at what might be the first big spring rain. Most likely, it would be a sudden torrential rain accompanied by thunder and lightning. If he was the sort to believe in omens, he might feel a hint of trepidation as they headed towards the now dead city of Las Vegas, Nevada.

They were almost at the edge of what constituted Boulder City when a flash erupted from Joel’s right. The truck in front of him lit up with white flame just a heartbeat later. Debra swore as she swerved to the left and crossed the median that dipped just enough to create a bit of a culvert. They rolled up the other side, all four tires leaving the ground briefly before coming down with a jarring rattle.

“Holy fuck!” Malik shouted loud enough to be heard not only in Joel’s ear piece, but above the roar of the ensuing explosion that consumed the transport truck and the revving engine of the Humvee.

“Bandits incoming at our three o’clock!” Will’s voice came over the radio. “Somebody found serious hardware, boss.”

Joel had to wrench himself around in his seat to see as Debra shot across the highway and down the slight embankment, obviously in an attempt to keep them shielded from incoming fire. Once again, Joel had to admit being impressed with the woman, all thoughts of scolding her for her earlier impertinence a distant memory.

Joel thought he caught a glimpse of a vehicle with some sort of rocket launcher on top. The vehicle was briefly masked by white smoke as three more missiles fired in quick succession. The contrails led to a second truck which practically evaporated in a ball of flame.

“We got trouble at about zero-four-zero relative,” Joel barked.

The sound of the turret adjusting could be heard, quickly followed by the hammering chatter of the .50 caliber machine gun. Joel grabbed his field glasses and sighted in on the target. It didn’t look at first like the machine gun would penetrate the vehicle’s armor. He was about to call Malik off when he saw a series of five-round bursts walk up the hood of the vehicle and then shatter the front window. Whatever resistance the vehicle had designed into it to protect the soldiers manning it, apparently a direct barrage of rounds from a .50 cal was not part of the equation. Something dark sprayed the windshield from the inside and the vehicle started to roll forward and at a slight angle as the driver slumped over the wheel.

Small-arms fire sounded from the same direction the now disabled missile launching vehicle crept along, apparently impotent and out of the picture at the moment. Joel pointed that direction and Debra jerked the wheel around, sending the Humvee in a bit of a power slide as her foot never came off the gas. Once again they were airborne for a heartbeat or two before bouncing down on the highway’s blacktop. Then they tipped over the edge and plunged down into the culvert, angling just enough to keep from bottoming out as they came up on the other side.

“Ease up a bit down there!” Malik shouted.

If Debra heard him, she gave no indication as she accelerated across the highway and this time flew off the edge, the engine suddenly revving as all four wheels left the ground for a few seconds. Just after they landed, Malik opened up with the machine gun again. Joel searched to locate whatever target the young man had spied and his eyes caught the puffs of dirt as the rounds walked along the ground until they came to the side of a non-descript tan house. The rounds slammed into an area right beside a large window and Joel swore he saw a dark shadow flutter at the edges for a moment before disappearing.

One of the remaining transport trucks rolled up beside them and came to a loud, screeching halt. A cloud of smoke and dust billowed up and almost completely obscured the front of the vehicle as men and women threw themselves from the rear of it. The former occupants split into two teams, each one sprinting up the side of the stopped transport vehicle, all of them crouched over to minimize their silhouette.

Obviously somebody had seen something and given instructions because both teams converged on a single residence a couple of houses down from the one that Malik was still pouring rounds into. Joel went to open his door.

“Stay put, boss,” Debra said quietly.

“Excuse me?” Joel turned to the woman who was easing her own door open.

“We got this.” She threw off her harness and leapt to the ground, her shotgun coming off her shoulder in one fluid motion.

They’d come to a stop just a few feet from a rock wall that fenced in the residence Malik had finally stopped chopping to bits with the .50 cal. Joel barely had time to register that a person was popping up behind that wall when the woman brought the weapon to her hip and fired. At close range, a human head—living or undead—stands no chance of enduring the blastoff a shotgun.

Scanning the area, so far there were few of the walking dead, but with all this noise, that would change in a hurry. This was supposed to be the next phase of their systematic taking of Boulder City. Now that he was getting a closer look, a lot of the homes had pretty serious damage.

He was so intent on keeping his eyes open for any approaching trouble that he didn’t realize Debra had returned to the Humvee until she smacked the hood with one gloved fist. He glanced over and his eyes went just a little wide at what he saw.

Debra had a man that was easily a foot taller and well over a hundred pounds heavier in her custody. The man had one arm held behind his back, but Joel could see how she had her captive in what he knew to be a very painful wrist lock. The man was bleeding from a nose that looked freshly broken. Both his eyes were already showing dark circles to add credence to the likelihood of the nose being thoroughly busted. Will and a few of the others were also returning with four more captives.

Opening his door, Joel shoved his harness aside and exited the vehicle. “What do we have here?”

“The last of the Mohicans,” Debra quipped. “This little band thought that they were running things in these parts. I guess you took out their only rivals last time through.”

“And this is the thanks we get?” Joel walked up to the man as Debra applied enough pressure to his wrist and brought him down to his knees. “We eliminate the thorn in your side and you thank us by attacking our convoy?”

“We—” the man began to protest, but Debra increased her pressure even more, turning the attempted excuse into a yelp of pain.

“If I had more time to deal with the likes of you, I’d do a proper job of it.” Joel drew the pistol on his hip. “But I don’t.”

Without another word, or any sort of warning, he brought his weapon up and shot the big man in the forehead, Turning to the other prisoners, he considered for the briefest of seconds asking them to turn themselves over to him, but they were heading into a hostile and probably chaotic situation. The last thing he needed to worry about was a bullet in his back.

“Kill ‘em,” he sighed, turning to climb back into the Humvee. In his wake, he could hear the beginnings of those last ditch pleas for mercy…quickly followed by single reports from a pistol.

Moments later, and down half the numbers with which they had started while not even to the heart of Boulder City, they were on the move once more. Joel glanced over and watched the corpses on the highway until they vanished around the bend. He had to fight to keep down the anger as the black coil of smoke rose as accusatory fingers pointing out to God—if he did, in fact, exist—that Joel and his people were still far from secure. It was a reminder that the problem they faced did not come in the form of the mindless walking corpses.

The problem they faced was the living, breathing refuse of humanity that clung to life and thought nothing of killing other members of the living to satisfy their own desires. This attack had not been about supplies, or in retaliation for anything. At least Joel did not believe that to be the case. After all, his group was simply passing through.

No, these people were killing simply because they could. Who knew what their inner monologs had said to provide them justification for what they had done. If it had been the people he’d sent away and refused sanctuary…that he would’ve been able to understand. The outcome would not have been any different, but at least he would have been able to make sense of the situation.

“Is this what we will become?” Joel asked nobody in particular.

“What do you mean?” Malik answered in his headset.

“Are we simply going to become killers? Will we devolve into feudal lords or warring gangs…intent on the destruction and death of anything that does not conform to our wishes…that dares to defy us?”

“Become?” Debra sniffed. “I don’t know what rock you’ve been living under, boss, but that has been who and what we are for a long time.”

“Amen, sister,” Malik chimed in.

Joel frowned and turned to look out at Boulder City scrolled past his window. They were now entering its heart. Here, there were still fires burning from the power being turned back on. The undead were now more visible as they stumbled and staggered from doorways and shadows.

Did they really need to expand out this far? As of yet, they had not filled half the houses in their tiny fenced community.

Joel pushed all of it away. He needed to have his mind on what lie ahead. If there was a chance to save Conrad, he would do his best. But the more he stewed over it, the more he believed that the complete eradication of that cult was the priority.

They would not be safe unless every single one of those zealots were wiped from the face of the earth. And just killing the apparent leader was not enough; that would simply create a vacancy that would be filled by the next nutcase.

“Kill ‘em all,” Joel muttered. He didn’t notice Debra smile and nod.

10

Who Lives and Who Dies

As Boulder City passed by their view, a few of the team could be heard making sounds of astonishment. The consequences of bringing the power back up in this area without advanced preparations had taken a bigger toll than they’d realized. Joel was mentally berating himself for not taking that into account. He realized that he was learning on the fly, but he would need to be smarter moving forward, and making the same mistake twice would be unacceptable.

Joel’s eyes could not help but drift over and search the scene on the driver’s side. A slight pang came unbidden when he saw what remained of the mobile home park that slid past. It was still shrouded in a haze of smoke that wafted from the remains of what had once been part of his real estate portfolio.

He’d made it a point every year to visit each park at least a half a dozen times. He’d refused to let any of them slip into disrepair. He’d built quite an empire for himself over the years, and likely made in a month more than most of his tenants did in a year if they combined their incomes. He prided himself on knowing almost all of his tenants by name. From what he saw, he doubted that few if any had managed to survive.

“Holy fucksticks,” Debra gasped as they rounded a bend.

Hanging from the overpass they were approaching were at least fifty bodies. All of them were truly dead, but somebody had certainly been busy to fashion each of those nooses and toss each body over the edge. However, that was only part of the horror of the scene.

The overpass was thick with a few hundred zombies. The long line of now defunct school busses the most likely source of this particular group of walkers. Not one of them was over ten years old.

“It’s like they’re watching us,” Malik whispered in Joel’s headset.

“Get us through as fast as you can,” Joel barked, patting Debra on the shoulder.

The Humvee began to accelerate, its powerful engine rumbling louder. They plunged into the swath of shadow the overpass provided and then burst into the sunshine just a few seconds later.

Joel let out the breath he hadn’t been aware he’d been holding. He was just glancing into the sideview mirror when Malik’s voice came through with uncharacteristic horror.

“Dear mother of God, there’s no fucking way this is happening,” Malik moaned.

Debra slammed on the brakes, her own eyes riveted to her sideview mirror as well. Joel was still processing what he was seeing when the sounds of Malik opening fire with the machine gun erupted.

Both embankments were a writhing mass of the walking dead. These were not children, but instead, just massive swarms of the adult version.

“What the hell…?” Malik’s voice sounded strangled as it faded.

Then Joel heard it. The first time, he wasn’t sure of what it was. But as the Humvee’s engine dropped to an idle and the sound came again, he was able to locate and verify what he was hearing.

“That’s just wrong,” Joel breathed.

In his sideview mirror, he watched as several of the zombie children had migrated over to the other side of the overpass. Many held an assortment of solid objects in their hands, and in a hellish cacophony, they slammed, smacked, or beat those objects against the metal guardrail of the overpass.

“They’re ringing a goddamned dinner bell,” Debra gasped.

“This isn’t possible,” Will’s voice crackled over the radio.

“Everybody shut the hell up!” Joel snapped.

He knew well enough from his time in combat that fear could be contagious. If a few people started getting panicky, it could turn to a landslide in a hurry.

“We need to get our asses moving before we get cut off,” Joel said with as much calm authority as he could muster.

Debra started forward. Glancing in the sideview mirror, he could see the other vehicles that remained in their convoy starting to roll as well.

Looking around, Joel felt a chill go through his body. Much of the highway was wide open. Unlike the movies that often depicted miles and miles of bumper-to-bumper traffic clogging the streets, there were only pockets. Those pockets often coincided with a major collision of sorts.

This was one of those spots. Up ahead about three hundred yards was what looked like a nasty pile-up. People running for their lives had taken it upon themselves to swing out into the emergency lanes as well as oncoming traffic. The westbound lanes had been probably fairly clear until the accident in the eastbound lane had caused people to try and escape by any means necessary.

People leaving Las Vegas using this particular highway had probably been heading east towards Arizona. The accident up ahead involved what looked to be military transport as well as large chartered busses. In the mix were a variety of privately owned vehicles as well. Some of the smaller ones were probably what made up a good portion of the debris scattered everywhere.

The problem that he had at the moment was that this seemed to be too much of a coincidence. Why would the zombie children gather in this particular spot? Why hadn’t they wandered away from those school busses on the overpass? It was as if they’d congregated here with the sole intention of springing this trap. For the most part, they would be forced to remain within the confines of the highway as concrete walls lined both sides along this part of the corridor that wove through Boulder City.

He would worry about that later. Right now, he just wanted to get free and clear of this mess. Glancing to the left and right, he saw the waves of undead stumbling, staggering, and lurching down the hill toward them. Perhaps later they could come back and check the area out and try to figure out what had brought this horde to this precise location.

“Curiosity killed the cat,” he whispered.

“What’s that?” Debra asked absently as she swerved to get around what looked like the rear half of a sports car that had literally been blown in two.

As they neared the major part of the accident, Joel could see several squirming figures inside the vehicles. Fortunately, the glass was either so cracked or smoke filmed that it was almost impossible to see the interior clearly. His eyes did land on a figure that was on its belly, crawling out from under a large pickup truck.

The man’s face had mostly been burnt away, leaving bits of charred flesh and lots of exposed skull. His mouth was made even more hideous due to the lack of lips. Dark teeth gnashed and a black tongue darted out and swished around like an angry cat’s tail.

By the time they managed to get past the wreckage, the army of the undead had closed almost half the distance. Joel was surprised at the sigh of relief he breathed once they were clear and the Humvee was able to accelerate and leave the scene behind. He would worry about how they would deal with the situation on the return trip later. Right now, his sole focus needed to shift back to what they would face when they reached Las Vegas.

Once Boulder City was behind them once and for all, the drive remained uneventful almost to the point of dull. Only, nobody seemed to be able to relax. Joel noted the way that Debra kept gripping and re-gripping the wheel. They all knew that this little stretch of highway was only temporarily void of activity. They would be coming to the Mission Hills area next, and that would signal the end of any sort of break they might be trying to enjoy right now.

Up ahead, they would have the choice of Highway 582, or Interstate 515. Both would take them through what had once been a heavily and densely populated area. Joel already knew what waited for them on the interstate. The road, while not empty of abandoned vehicles, was traversable. This was largely in part to the fact that a few of the neighborhoods had been entirely razed by fires that had burned out of control in those early days when power had been on everywhere but all civil services had become non-existent.

He’d recalled the reports of the highways being nothing short of a zombie feeding ground. That had caused many people to actually try and flee on foot. Some of the last local news footage had been of crowds of the living running for their lives…smack dab into walls of the walking dead.

They would stick to the interstate. That much had already been established. They were rounding the big dog leg on Highway 93 and entering a section of road with weathered hills rising up on both sides when Joel called for Debra to stop. The sign on the left hand side of the road read: Railroad Pass Hotel Casino.

The parking lot was massive and included what appeared to be some sort of truck stop. At least ten of the big rigs were still parked, and a few merited stopping on the way back to inspect provided this operation went well and he was alive to make the return trip.

He wasn’t sure why he’d not paid any attention to this location his last time through. The logos on the sides of the trailers were enough to warrant checking the place out. Two of them were gasoline tankers. One was from one of those big box hardware stores, and three were from Walmart. There was an 18-wheel flatbed loaded with what looked like roofing supplies and another with pallets of bags that might be concrete. Of course, the highway would need to be cleared, but that shouldn’t be too difficult. But driving these rigs back to their community would be like an early Christmas.

“Note this location,” Joel said into his mic. “I want us to work towards getting a security post here. That will effectively put us at both ends of Boulder City.”

Debra made a noise that he took as an affirmative. There were an assortment of affirmatives from several others as they rolled past. And then they were back in what Joel was now considering “the Wasteland” as the highway gave over to the larger interstate. But this stretch was short-lived as the smudge of what had once been the Las Vegas suburbs came into view.

“No way,” Debra breathed in an uncharacteristic display of astonishment.

It had been just days, but in the time since his last trip to the Strip, Las Vegas was deteriorating. He did not think that it would be more than a matter of a few years and there might be almost no sign that this area had once been a burgeoning city with suburbs that had begun to sprawl fearlessly, if not foolishly, into the desert.

Joel was no stranger to a war zone. He’d seen his share during his tour. This was something else entirely. Buildings were shot up, burned down, and/or graffiti tagged beyond belief. Most of the graffiti was easy to determine the origin of with phrases of “He is Risen”, “The end has come! Praise God!” and a variety of scripture chapter and verse tags. But there was still a fair share of obscene images, words, and phrases sticking out like weeds.

Amidst all the chaos were buildings or residences that appeared untouched. It reminded Joel of how a tornado could rip through a neighborhood, destroying some houses entirely while others were left without a scratch. And now that they had rounded the big bend, the dark smudge on the horizon told them exactly where the city of Las Vegas sat in relation to their current location.

Joel opened the map that he’d insisted be placed in each vehicle and began to study it as they rolled along. Twice he glanced up when somebody would remark about what were simply the latest in a string of horrors that gave the impression they were rolling into the gates of Hell itself.

The second time he looked up, he was just in time to see a group of four or five people sprinting after them, waving their arms wildly over their heads in a futile attempt to flag them down. There was one Humvee a deuce-and-a-half, and a panel van still in his convoy.

Looking up, he saw the signs for the Interstate 515/215 interchange. An idea came. Part of him wanted to push it away. But it was perhaps the best strategy considering what they faced.

“Okay, listen up,” Joel keyed the radio. “We are rolling into an unknown situation against hostiles of both the living and undead variety. I want half the team to go with Will. The Deuce follow Interstate 215 into the zone. I will be circling around and coming in from the north. Both groups will use Interstate 15 to approach. Once we separate, I want us to maintain radio silence. I am not sure what their monitoring capabilities are, but if we hit them from two directions, I believe we will have the best chance at success. Both teams have the noisemakers, and are to utilize them at their discretion.”

“Roger that,” Will answered after a brief pause.

“See everybody on the other side.” Joel pulled his headset off and tossed it on the floor.

For the next several minutes, the only sounds were of the engine of the Humvee as it churned along the interstate. Eventually, the sounds of a firefight could start to be heard intermittently. The Strip was to their left, so Joel would have to crane around and past Debra if he hoped to catch any glimpse, but he knew that it was a pointless exercise. Nothing could be done until they came all the way around the city and dropped on to Interstate 15 heading south and into the heart of Las Vegas.

As it was, they still had to roll through the heart of the residential suburbia that surrounded what had once been considered an adult vacation Mecca. As they rolled along, the going did become a bit more treacherous, and Debra spent her time equally between cursing the abandoned vehicles that were now more numerous and trying to avoid hitting the growing number of undead that were stumbling along.

Many of them had likely been drawn out by the sounds of gunfire and explosions in the distance, but more still were coming out as the growling engines of the Humvee and the van echoed off every flat surface that bordered the interstate.

According to the last sign they’d passed, the Interstate 15 junction was two miles ahead. Joel could feel a single bead of sweat on his neck as it rolled down his spine, sending a chill through his entire body.

“I just want to be on record as saying that this is not your best idea,” Debra muttered as they rolled along.

Joel glanced over and saw that she’d removed her headset. The conversation would be just between the two of them. It seemed that she gave him more reasons every day to respect and admire her.

“I understand,” Joel said with a nod. “And I know I am the one who has stated repeatedly that emotions would be a weakness. However, this young man represents a promise that I made. Also, if we can manage to rescue him, I believe we will grow our population in a big way and to our benefit. Every single person we save will see us as the sole reason they are alive.”

“That sort of gratitude only lasts so long, boss.”

“But in the time we have, I believe we can weed out those who don’t fit our mold and hone those we wish to keep.”

They drove in silence for a few moments, but eventually Debra spoke again. “This is still not a good idea. And you have to understand that we’ve already lost some people in this. We have to be able to not only refill those vacancies, but also come away with enough manpower to make this viable. You risk the morale of the entire community with this move, and I would not be doing you or me any favors by not pointing this out.”

Joel heard the hidden message in her voice. Part of him wanted to lash out, but he knew that would be pointless.

As they continued to drive on, he considered her words. He’d denied other attempts at rescues in the past claiming that it was not worth the risk to their manpower. Yet, here he was doing exactly what he’d forbidden. Of course, he couldn’t show any doubt in what he did. That was how leaders lost their flock.

He was about to try and make some sort of statement asserting his decision when what had once been the main strip of Las Vegas came into view on their left.

“Wow.” It was the only word that could find its way out of his mouth.

He had not really thought about this part of the city in the past several weeks. He certainly hadn’t realized that it was not nearly as interconnected as the newer area that he’d considered his home away from home.

“It’s a wasteland,” Debra breathed.

While the fires had gone out some time ago, many of the landmark casinos that had helped build Las Vegas into what it had become were little more than smoldering ruins. And then there were the undead.

“There must be thousands,” Joel said as he found himself unable to look away.

With many of the taller structures little more than mounds of smoking rubble, the undead could be seen in great numbers. It was also obvious that they were all headed in one direction.

He was scanning the road ahead when he heard a rumble that was not from his group. This was in front and growing louder.

“Stop,” he said, placing a hand on Debra’s arm.

The wait was short. The bullet-riddled sign ahead announced that they were approaching the Interstate 15 exits. North led to Salt Lake City and south would open up to Los Angeles. Coming down that southbound off-ramp were a procession of motorcycles.

Joel had not been as into the whole zombie genre as his wife, but he’d watched a few of the films with her. This one instantly brought to mind the motorcycle gang at the end of Dawn of the Dead. The reason Joel could remember this particular instance so well was because he’d commented on the idiocy of riding around in the zombie apocalypse on a bike. Add in what he knew about how the walking dead were apparently drawn to sound and he was stunned that this band of morons were still alive.

“Malik?” Joel called, still not keying the mic to maintain radio silence.

“Yeah, I’m on them,” the man shouted back.

It was also clear that the bikers had spotted them. The procession slowed and came to a stop just beyond the bend in the overpass that came from Interstate 15. They did not cluster, but instead, remained spread out.

Joel was deciding whether to just give Malik the go ahead to light this group up when one man engaged his kickstand and climbed off his bike. The rider pulled off his helmet and hung it on his handlebars before starting off on foot in Joel’s direction.

“Stay put and don’t hesitate to do what needs to be done,” Joel said as he removed his harness and exited the vehicle.

He felt the heat roll over his body as it reflected off the hardtop from the sun that was now almost directly overhead. Making a show of unholstering one of his handguns and placing it inside the vehicle, Joel started toward the man. Of course he still had a variety of weapons, but most were concealed enough that this person wouldn’t be aware until it was too late if things went south.

“I think we’re close enough,” the man finally called out when they were still at least ten yards apart. “I notice you didn’t bother to open your jacket when you made that display of removing a weapon. If you’re out and about with just that single pistol, you won’t be sucking in air for much longer.”

“Name’s Joel Landon.” He decided to dismiss with any of the banter.

“Reggie Keller.” The man folded his arms across his chest. “We aren’t looking for a fight. And since you have that machine gun back there…” He made a nod towards the Humvee behind Joel. “I figure you could take us down without even a single casualty.”

“A big biker gang like you?” Joel snorted. “I imagine you have had plenty of practice in the fighting department. Seems odd that you would just roll over without a problem.”

“We’ve handled our business when we needed to, but the reason we are still rolling is because we didn’t pick a fight we are not positive we can win handily.”

“So you’re bullies.” It wasn’t a question.

“Nope,” Reggie answered. “We are survivors. We don’t just roll in and take shit. In fact, we were heading through town to try and find some group supposedly hanging out at the Hoover Dam. Been listening to their recorded message for two days now. Only, we seemed to have shown up in the middle of a fight.” The man paused, rubbing his hands down his face in a sign of exasperation. “I sure hope we didn’t roll out here for nothing. We actually had a pretty nice setup just outside of Reno. All was going well until a rogue military group came in and screwed it all up.”

Joel smiled. “And what can you offer the community at the dam?”

Reggie cocked his head and then looked beyond at the Humvee again before returning his attention to Joel. “Numbers for one. Ain’t a single one of us hasn’t put down our share of the stenches.”

“Stenches?” Joel arched an eyebrow.

“Walkers…zombies…whatever you want to call them. Can’t deny that those things reek.”

“There might be a way you can assure yourself a place in that group at the dam.”

“Oh yeah? You know ‘em?” The man seemed an even mixture of skeptical and interested.

Joel didn’t answer. He continued to eye the man.

“Look, pal, not sure who you are or think you are for that matter. I had my folks pull up and I came to you by myself to see if there was a way we could pass without a problem. If that ain’t the case or you think you will just roll over us, you’re welcome to try it. And you’ll probably survive it, but you will take some serious losses in the process. We don’t have a beef with you or your people—”

Joel had heard enough. “It’s my group you’re heading towards. We’re from the dam. I set things up there. I say who joins and who doesn’t.”

“Sounds good, but anybody can say that.”

Joel recited the message he knew played on a loop.

“Okay, maybe that is you. Not that you couldn’t just have a good memory. So what the hell are you doing here? This isn’t someplace I’d be scavenging. Lord knows there are places closer and probably less populated with stenches and wanna-be road warriors.”

Joel gave a very brief description of why he was indeed heading into someplace that he’d warned his people away from long ago. “Being able to liberate this group and have them join us would be good in and of itself if their numbers are even close to what we’ve managed to ascertain. But eliminating this group of lunatics is just as important. People like that could pose a problem if they are allowed to get up a head of steam.”

“You mean the Jesus-crispies who keep spewing how this is some end-of-times bullshit?” Reggie scoffed.

“Yeah,” Joel laughed. If this guy did prove to be interested in joining his community and accept the rules he prescribed, he might actually like him. “That’s who I’m talking about.”

“So, if you are in fact the leader of this group, let’s hear your spiel.”

“Excuse me?” Joel was growing impatient. He had people waiting on him and every minute he spent talking to this guy could mean losing more of his people as well as being able to salvage fewer people if Conrad’s group proved useable and willing.

“I think I need to know what I would be getting myself and my people into.” Reggie folded his arms across his chest.

“Here is the short and simple answer since I don’t really have time to waste. If you join us, there is no going back. I won’t have somebody come in, scout us out, and then come back to try and take us down. I have the final say on things, but we do have a small council. If you and your people prove…helpful,” he caught himself before saying the word ‘useful’ and possibly giving the wrong impression, “then you will likely have a member on the council before long.”

“Not sure if we are up to that sort of commitment.”

“Fine,” Joel gave a dismissive wave and turned to head back to the Humvee. “We pass each other with a truce in effect. And tonight, when I’m in my house taking a hot shower, I’ll hope that you and your crew are at least someplace safe.”

He was about to climb into the Humvee when a voice called out from behind him.

“Wait! You have hot water? Like…real hot water?”

Joel turned to see the man walking towards him. He heard the sound of the machine gun adjust to track the man.

“And lights. Maybe we should lead with it in our updated message. But to answer your question, yes, the power is on in our little community,” Joel said as he climbed up and looked over the open door to the vehicle.

“Well then, maybe I spoke a bit hastily.” Reggie glanced up at the machine gun pointed at him and then returned his attention to Joel.

“My terms haven’t changed.”

“Wouldn’t expect them to,” Reggie admitted.

“And if you are serious, then I could use your numbers right now.”

“On this rescue mission you mentioned.” Reggie nodded and clapped his hands together. “I think we can agree to that.”

“Then fall in.” Joel didn’t wait for any further response. He climbed into the Humvee and slammed the door shut, giving Debra a nod to roll out.

As they drove past the post-apocalyptic motorcycle gang, Joel gave them a nod. He also made a quick inventory of the weapons he could see. While they were well equipped, they’d been right to give over to his Humvee and the machine gun mounted on top.

They were just rolling past a small three-car wreck when he noticed the convoy of motorcycles rumbling up from their rear. He smiled. If nothing else, they had fodder for the fight. If things went well, they would have some more fighters to fill out the ranks that had been dented by that earlier attack.

By the time they’d passed through the cloverleaf overpasses that led off in all directions, the bikers had come up and were now mixed in around Joel and his half of the team. Debra’s hands had tightened on the steering wheel at first, but she eventually eased up and focused her energy on driving around the scattered vehicles left to slowly be consumed by a world that would not need their services any longer.

As they cruised along the Las Vegas Expressway, Joel caught sight of the massive medical complex that made up the University and Valley Hospital Medical Centers. Despite the fact that those locations would probably be a hive of undead, there would have to be at least an attempt to glean what they could from those locations.

There remained a lack of any serious amount of the walking dead on the interstate probably due to the tall fencing that lined it. But as the Sahara Avenue exit came into view, a few small clusters began to appear. Joel was about to tell Malik to handle things at his discretion when the motorcycles began to peel away.

Debra slowed and allowed them to take the lead. The bikes with sidecars all took point. In each sidecar an individual stood up, each holding what looked like a katana. They were also wearing some sort of harness rig that kept them tethered to the bike.

“Maybe I was a bit pre-mature in my assessment,” Joel muttered.

“So we won’t be having them join?” Debra asked.

“Quite the opposite.” Joel turned to Debra. “I was almost ready to dismiss them. I figured they would make great fodder and nothing more.”

He turned his attention forward just in time to see the first of the motorcycles reach a small group of zombies. The man in the sidecar leaned out just enough and swung. His blade severed the head in one quick sweep. The body toppled and the head rolled away and disappeared under an abandoned vehicle.

It didn’t matter that the head would still be animate. The body was now out of the picture which effectively removed the zombie from play.

“I think these individuals will make a welcome addition to our numbers.” He considered things for a moment as he watched the brutal efficiency of the bikers as they cut a path through the undead. “Perhaps more so than those individuals who have spent this entire time hiding and hoping for a miracle.”

“Whatever you say, boss,” Debra sniffed as they rounded another bend and now were able to see the once inviting skyline of the newer Las Vegas Strip.

11

Down the Strip

They rolled along on Interstate 15, approaching the area most people now considered to be Las Vegas. They cruised past the Sahara Avenue exit and drew ever nearer to what Joel saw as their ultimate destination.

The next sign overhead read: Spring Mtn. Road.

To the left, what had once been a gold-tinted hotel had obviously suffered a massive fire and partial collapse. The sounds of muffled laughter filtered into Joel’s ears.

Covering his mic, Joel called up to Malik, “What’s so funny?”

“Rump Tower on the left,” was the reply.

Joel looked over and saw that indeed the damage to the structure had eliminated the letter ‘T’ from the logo at the top of the building. “What are we…twelve now?”

“C’mon…it’s a little funny,” Malik snorted. Even Debra let out a slight chuckle. Joel shook his head and continued to keep his eyes scanning in front of them as they neared their exit. This would bring them in at the exact opposite end of the strip on South Las Vegas Boulevard that Will’s group would arrive.

As they’d drawn closer, it was apparent that several fires were burning. Once they reached the exit and passed over the interstate and eventually reached the main strip, the real horror of the situation became apparent.

The haze of smoke was thick in places to the point where it was impossible to see much past the end of the hood of the Humvee. It was also that cloud of smoke that was hiding just how much damage had actually been inflicted.

The sounds of gunfire came in bursts. After each one, a blanket of silence would cover the scene, made even more ominous by the sound dampening caused due to the ever-thickening smoke. The smoke was also practically alive with dark figures that wove, staggered, and stumbled about.

“This sucks,” Debra snarled between clenched teeth as one of the undead meandered directly in front of them.

The Humvee struck it hard with a wet crunch. The zombie vanished from view and the wheels rolled over it, rocking the vehicle and making a terrible noise that made Joel flinch reflexively.

A scream tore from someplace to the right and Joel pressed his face to the window in an attempt to see something. The only thing he saw even the slightest bit clearly was the shadowy form of a motorcycle rolling just a few feet away on his side.

“We need to get out of this shit,” Malik called down. “I honestly can’t shoot a damn thing without the risk of hitting the bikers.”

“Just keep your eyes peeled,” Joel called up.

Just as he spoke, they emerged from the dense cloud of smoke into an area that was relatively clear. For just a moment, Joel wished they were blinded by the smoke again. Already it had been apparent that what had only recently been considered the crown jewel of the New Las Vegas was in ruins. But now, he could see clearly the scope of the destruction that had befallen this once grand section of the new Strip.

His eyes flicked to the ruined CVS sign. Any hopes of possibly hitting that place on the way out evaporated in the flames pouring from the windows. Debra had taken her foot off the gas as the scene unfurled before them

To the right, what had once been Treasure Island had a few black smudges from old fires, but did not seem as bad as what waited for them up ahead. The pirate ship in front had taken the brunt of the damage on initial glance. It was now little more than a smoldering husk of its former self. However, a pair of thrashing corpses still dangled from the main mast.

“What’s the point?” Debra leaned toward Joel as she took in the scene with a sniff of disgust.

“If that is the worst thing we see, I’ll consider us very lucky,” Joel said as he brought his binoculars up, confirming that the bodies were indeed zombies. Both were still moving their legs and reaching out with their arms, making no attempt to lessen the noose around their necks.

On their left, the Palazzo hotel and casino complex had not fared nearly as well. From the looks, somebody had used it for tank firing practice. There were gaping holes that sometimes extended two and three floors with smoke still seeping from them. There were also a number of bodies scattered about on the pavement and even a few dangling from or poking through the decorative plants that were now as dead as the bodies rotting in their midst.

Up ahead, the going proved to be a bit tricky. An overpass that allowed foot traffic to cross over South Las Vegas Boulevard had a large section blown out. All the debris littered the road and they had to swing over and drive against what would’ve one been the regular flow of traffic as their entire lane was clogged. As they rolled past, Joel was certain that he saw assorted limbs jutting from the debris…many of them still moving and twitching.

They crossed back over as they rolled past the Venetian. On Joel’s side was what had been a large man-made water feature made to look like an oasis. The water had stopped long ago and now it was populated by the undead. The sound of the Humvee had drawn their attention and many were trying in vain to climb up and out of what had once been a pond fed by a multi-tiered, ziggurat-shaped waterfall. Nose down in the dry pond bed was the typical shuttle bus with its massive advertisement for, of all things, a zombie-themed burlesque show. These “zombies” looked nothing like the ones now staggering about. The scantily clad female beckoned with bright blue lips and flowing ruby-tinted hair as a man with far too many defined ab muscles, in Joel’s opinion, held his arms wide to embrace what looked to be a nun with massive breasts. Closer inspection revealed the nun to be a man in drag. Joel wondered if any of them had fared well and then just as quickly dismissed them from all thoughts.

At the familiar arch of a McDonald’s, they once again had to change lanes as the giant globe with fragments of the Harrah’s logo sat in the middle of their side of the street. This was also about as far as they would get in their vehicles. Just ahead the road was clogged with traffic that would never clear.

“There,” Joel said, pointing to what looked like the descending driveway that would take them below the hotel and casino known as the LINQ. They could cross back over to that side of the street and whip the vehicles around so that they were pointing out.

As soon as Debra wheeled the Humvee around, Joel grabbed his small pack from between the seats and jumped out of the vehicle, leaving her to park it as he met with the bikers pulling up.

“You sure about this?” Reggie pulled his helmet off and looked around with uncertainty.

Joel looked at what waited for them as well as what was now stumbling towards them from the direction they’d come. He was about to answer when all the radios his team carried came to life at once with static and then gunfire. Eventually, a voice carried. The deathly quiet that existed made it seem as if the voice bounced off the walls and echoed the length of Las Vegas Boulevard.

“Boss man, this is Bravo Team. We are in position and can see you. Please confirm status.”

Joel smiled. There had been no plan or contingency made for him coming across a group of bikers. Will had broken radio silence to confirm that he and his team weren’t in trouble.

“Bravo, this is Alpha Actual…we have some extra hands on the ranch who are willing to buck some hay.” Joel glanced at Reggie and shrugged.

“Umm…okay?” Will replied, confusion obvious in his voice.

“You do know that Barnes gets flustered easily,” Debra scoffed as she walked up with her M4 assault rifle fitted with a grenade launcher under the barrel slung across her chest, and a pair of nasty sickle-shaped blades dangling from each hip. Adding to her portable arsenal were a pair of .45s at about mid-ribcage and a shotgun over her shoulder.

“You sayin’ Will is just a pretty face?” Joel quipped.

Debra leveled her gaze at him, her lips pressed tight. “If he can see us, then where the hell is he?”

“Umm…I think I know where,” one of the bikers said, pointing up the street.

Joel shielded his eyes from the sun and scanned in the direction the woman was pointing. Up ahead was an intact overpass. Dangling from the middle was a gigantic pirate flag. A few people stood at the rail with one of them waving both arms overhead.

“Subtle,” Debra said as she walked away from the group, angling towards a pair of undead shambling in the direction of the idling vehicles. With two quick thrusts, she plunged her blade into the temple of each and then turned back to the group. “If this is our staging area, then I say we shut down the vehicles and move out of here. Odds are we’re probably going to have to fight off more than a few of these things when we get back unless we leave a few people behind to keep the area clear.”

“Who wants to volunteer to stay with the vehicles?” Joel asked. “I want one of my people here and one of the members of our new companions.”

After a few moments of people looking back and forth at each other, Joel blew out an exasperated breath. “This isn’t some sort of a test. I won’t penalize anybody for staying here.”

Finally, a young man stepped forward. Reggie pointed to a woman in his group and motioned for her to join the young man.

With that, the rest of the bikers fell in with Joel’s group and started up the road. They crossed over to the side of the road where the smoldering ruins of Caesar’s Palace remained. The undead coming from the direction they were heading altered their course, some of them falling over when they tried to navigate the palm trees that marked the center of the road.

“There’s no way we make it to your group up there without getting dirty,” Reggie said as he stepped in beside Joel, matching his stride as they headed into the parking lot that sat across an open drive that led to the main entrance of Caesar’s Palace.

As if fate chose that moment to prove Reggie correct, there was the sound of breaking glass from just ahead and to their right. A horde of undead vomited from the main entrance and into the area where countless people had pulled in as they checked in for a vacation with hopes of striking it lucky.

The group altered their course to intercept the undead. As they neared, Joel called out, “Try not to use any firearms unless it is a last resort. We don’t want to bring any more down on us.”

“Or give away our position,” Reggie said in a whisper meant only for Joel to hear.

Joel realized that, for all his dismissal of the undead as a legitimate threat, he hadn’t had that many encounters that he hadn’t gone into either in full control of the situation, or at least on the offensive. There was certainly a different feeling now that they were out in the open and reacting to the zombies. If there were only a few, then that would be one thing, but as Joel watched, more and more of them came streaming out of the shattered entrance to Caesar’s. The revolving doors must’ve been jammed with the things and finally given way at this exact moment.

The first zombie he reached was exactly what he was used to when he encountered tourists any time he left his suite and filtered down to the ground level. The woman was at least a hundred pounds overweight and dressed in the remnants of gaudy, flashy clothing meant to give the appearance of wealth. When did rhinestones ever equate to monetary success or fashion sense, he wondered briefly as he drove his blade into her eye socket.

The next couple were even worse in matching shirts. The man was easily six feet and sporting a beanpole physique. The woman was just over five feet, if that, and pushing two hundred pounds. That was always a dynamic that made him curious? Did the man simply have an amazing metabolism, or did the woman just eat that much more and get off her butt that much less? Whatever the case, both dropped just as quick when he drove his blade into their eye sockets. (He’d heard a lot of the individuals that made numerous runs out into the area for supplies saying that was the most efficient way to finish a zombie and had quickly adopted that method.)

Only once did he find himself in the slightest bit of danger. He was finishing one of the undead and had wandered close to the entrance. There were decorative shrubs in place and one of the zombies had somehow drifted into the greenery unnoticed. It had lunged from the bush and caught Joel’s right arm just as he was pulling his blade free from his latest kill.

The small Asian woman bit down before Joel could jerk free. Her teeth were not able to rip through the combination of a heavy leather jacket and all he suffered was a dull pain that would undoubtedly turn to a bruise. He was also surprised at the bite strength. He’d been in a few ugly hand-to-fights during his time in Vietnam. More than once, he’d been bitten in those fights. The first time had caught him entirely off guard. This was different somehow. He would reflect on it later when he could spare a part of his mind for it, but for now he filed it away that zombies obviously had improved bite strength.

Jerking free, he used his left leg to sweep the zombie woman’s feet from under her. Stomping onto her chest, he pinned her to the ground and then brought his knife down to end her for good.

At last they’d cleared the horde and Joel looked around to realize that they’d had to battle many more undead than he’d first thought. Either that, or there just looked like more with the bodies strewn about the ground. They hadn’t suffered a single casualty; that was the important thing at the moment. Just as they finished, Will and his group arrived with weapons drawn.

“A little late for the party, Barnes,” Debra scoffed as she wiped off one of her sickle-shaped blades and returned it to a loop on her belt.

“What the hell happened?” Will gasped as he took in the carnage scattered about.

“They were probably all clustered at the front and the glass finally gave,” Joel said as he started toward the walkway that led over the street that was becoming even more congested with the walking dead. “But we need to get moving before we bring more of those bastards down on us.”

The entire group didn’t seem to need to be told twice. They fell in and started up the stairs to the walkway. As they crossed over, a new burst of gunfire sounded from somewhere up ahead. The way noise bounced off all the tall buildings coupled with the unnatural silence that had fallen on the city, it was impossible to pin down the exact location, but Joel had no doubt they needed to head toward the remaining towers of the Signature Suites.

“I think the best course of action would be to get to the monorail tracks and follow them. If it is safe enough, we could cover most of our distance up on those tracks with little chance of having to deal with any of that.” Joel waved his hands at the growing number of zombies filing onto the streets from behind what seemed like every vehicle and shadow. He had to wonder how they’d made the trip as far as they had with so little resistance.

They reached the other side and hurried down the stairs to street level again. The stench of the growing numbers of zombies had become gaggingly thick by now and a couple of the bikers paused, hands on knees to wretch, the sound of liquid splattering the sidewalk adding to the hellish soundtrack of the moans of the nearing army of undead.

Joel was now reassessing his dismissal of the undead as a threat. Anything by itself was not something he necessarily would be afraid of, but anything in great numbers was a different story. This was the strength of the zombie. They congregated and grew like a snowball being rolled in the yard to create the base of a snowman. In time, they would be too much…too overwhelming in their numbers. And while he was seeing some with massive injuries, he realized there was one thing he wasn’t seeing…decay. Biology would indicate that these things would have to eventually rot and just fall apart. It had been weeks, and some of these things looked like they’d been in the first group to fall. Their injuries were dried and the blood had turned almost completely black. Even the internal organs that were visible looked almost like leather. Some of that might be attributed to the heat of the Nevada sun, but there had been a few rainstorms along the way. These bodies should be deteriorating.

This would be just another thing he would add to his list of things to look into when he had some spare time. He refused to listen to the voice in his head that said the list was becoming unmanageable.

Reaching the intersection, they turned up Flamingo Road and had to make the quick decision of using the pedestrian walkway or running down the street. Joel’s mind had already decided that giving up the limited protection that the sidewalk offered would be made up tenfold by the ability of their group not to have to stagger into an almost single-file line. Also, they would have multiple options if they had to maneuver.

Everybody spread out as they ran along, the only sounds from them coming from their boots hitting the pavement, but to Joel, it sounded like thunder. He was certain they were bringing out more undead with every step they took and that the return trip might be a bit more of a challenge.

An explosion sounded as they passed the entrance of Bally’s on their right. A flash was visible up ahead and to the right which only made Joel more certain that they were indeed headed for their main objective.

They reached the monorail tracks which were overhead and out of reach. He knew there was a platform someplace close, but they were also in front of a building that had obviously been ransacked. All the front facing glass had been shattered and a letterboard sign had the words “GET DRUNK AND DIE HAPPY” in mismatched red and black letters. There was a concrete barricade on the side of the building that would make it possible for then to climb up on top of the small building and then traverse over by using a power pole.

It seemed like a lot of work, but Joel knew well enough that they would have to venture into some tight spaces and dark areas to reach a proper boarding platform. Also, they would have to backtrack into where the zombies had apparently been all stirred up by their passing. Besides, his people had the gear they would need and it was no surprise when Debra stepped forward, hopped up onto the barricade and then hoisted herself onto the roof of the ransacked liquor store.

In what felt like forever but was just a moment or two, she had tossed a line over to the monorail racks with a grappling hook and secured one end to an exhaust pipe on the building’s roof. She’d had Will help so that she could get the line a few turns around the power pole to add to the line’s stability. Grabbing it with her hands and her back to the monorail, she threw her legs over the line and then began shimmying across the open space. When she reached the power pole, she let her legs slip off the line and then swapped over to the taut line on the other side and repeated the process until she was at the monorail tracks. Grabbing with one arm, she threw it over and then hoisted herself up.

“Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy,” she called down in a loud stage whisper.

Joel noted a few of the bikers cast uncertain glances, but none of them said a word. Joel was the next to go. One by one, everybody made it up to the roof without any troubles. A few of the bikers kept holding back, gesturing for others to go ahead of them.

They had over half the crew up and over when a mob of undead emerged from the nearby parking garage. Joel swore silently. They hadn’t been making any noise, but the fighting had continued off in the direction they were eventually heading. Obviously these zombies had been drawn by all that racket. Unfortunately, they now spotted prey and veered towards the building where the rest of the bikers that had not yet crossed were still standing around either ushering others ahead or shifting back and forth anxiously as they waited their turn.

It only took a few moments to realize that this mob was extraordinarily large. They washed through the parking lot like a raging desert flood, knocking aside a Dumpster in the process. With the people on top of the building their new objective, they flowed around the building as the numbers continued to grow. In a matter of minutes, a few more people had made it over, but the building was now surrounded by a mob of the undead that was at least ten deep on all sides. All of them were reaching skyward toward the living, mouths open in a chorus of moans and those hair-raising baby cry noises that were visibly upsetting to some who’d obviously either not heard this sound, or possible even not heard of it.

Finally, they were down to the last three bikers. The men were huddled together and having an animated conversation that nobody on the tracks could hear, but it wasn’t necessary to hear in order to understand what was being argued about. None of them were confident with their ability to make the crossing.

Joel hadn’t thought about it. He’d simply done it, but he’d had a moment when he was almost across and his muscles were starting to burn that he’d wished he was a few pounds lighter. None of these men were under two hundred and fifty pounds. One of them had to be pushing three hundred easy.

Finally, one of them threw his arms up and just turned to the line. At first it looked like he was trying to figure out if he could cross it by lying on it on his belly, but this line was much too thin for that. It was braided paratrooper cord, so it was pretty strong and holding the weight of any of these men was not a question. The question was their ability and upper body strength required to traverse it.

At last, the man was leaning out with his back over open space and he had no choice but to throw his legs up and over. Joel felt his stomach clench when the man decided he was going to dangle and try to make the crossing. He obviously didn’t realize that throwing his legs over would make the strain on his arms and shoulders less.

He wasn’t even five feet out, but only a few more hand-over-hand moves before he would be to the phone pole which would give him a chance to regrip and take a break.

And then he fell.

12

Battle Ready

Both men still on top of the small building lunged forward and watched in obvious terror as their companion was engulfed by a sea of undead that began to tear into his body sending up a crimson fountain as major arteries were torn asunder. A few of the people that made it across peered down, but most of them turned away.

Joel waited for the terrible scream of pain to be drowned into a gurgle before he turned to the group. “We need to move.”

“But what about them?” one of the bikers gulped, pointing at the two men still on the roof of the liquor store.

“Unless you can teach them to fly, they’re screwed,” Debra snarled. “We can’t wait around for them to either grow the stones it takes to make it over…or figure out a way to defy physics and haul their fat asses across that line, they’re stuck like Chuck.”

“Reggie?” Another of the bikers turned to the man Joel was now certain had to be the leader.

“You heard ‘em,” Reggie grunted, starting up the monorail tracks after Joel, Will, Debra, and the rest of Joel’s team.

Joel suppressed the smile. He was becoming more confident that this group would be a good addition to his community. And if they shed some of the dead weight in the process, so much the better.

They moved fast, glancing down on occasion at the carnage below. Many of the undead on the fringes that had gathered around the building had turned away and were now following Joel’s group, but Joel noticed that the main cluster was still several bodies deep and paying him and his people no mind. He quickly wrote off the men on the roof as casualties. The likelihood that they would be able to either get across or find a way down that didn’t involve a swan dive into Zombie Lake seemed basically nil.

They made the big curve that took them around Bally’s and slowed. They would be going into one of the places Joel had not wanted to venture. He’d forgotten about the Bally’s platform in all the excitement and haste. Once again he’d made a blunder that could prove fatal.

As they reached the arrival port, Joel saw a few dark shadowy figures stumbling around, but nothing in the numbers he’d feared. Perhaps this was one of those times where it was indeed better to be lucky than good. He didn’t doubt that they could take down anything that might wander out to the tracks.

As they entered the gloom of the terminal, Joel felt a small sense of vindication. If they’d had to fight their way up the stairs and to the platform, they would’ve had some difficulties. The stairwells were not conducive to battle and the undead were in big enough numbers to be a concern in such close quarters, but by being on the tracks, they were able to move past them without the slightest problem.

They came out from the darkened area and back into the blazing sunlight and came upon a horrific killing field of sorts. It had once been the Bally’s outdoor pool area. It had been designed to look like yet another tropical paradise—a theme that Joel felt had been overdone ad nauseum by many of the Las Vegas establishments—but it was now a sea of carnage.

Bodies were still in stacks, and it looked as if there had been an attempt to empty the pool and turn that basin into a massive makeshift burn pit. The stench was not as bad as he thought it might be, but then realized that this was a scene of old death. Time, carrion eaters, and rot would eventually claim the scene. Once again, he also noticed a dusting of sand covering a lot of the area. To him, that meant that it hadn’t been disturbed in quite a while. In fact, if not for being up on the tracks, he would likely have walked past and not seen a thing.

Up ahead was a massive parking structure, and it took Joel a moment to decide that this had not been where he’d earlier encountered the group of zealots. Further ahead on the right, he saw the massive blue-tinted façade of the Hilton just beyond yet another parking structure. He wasn’t in a position to see them yet, but any moment, he knew that the Signature Towers would come into view on the left.

If his mind was working properly, that would bring them in on the back side of where they’d been engaged before. That was of course predicated on his enemy not having relocated. Every step forward from here on had to be one of caution. He would not risk his people’s lives foolishly. He would do everything he could to extract Conrad and his group, but he would only do that after he dealt once and for all with the zealots. Ending them would have to happen before he could turn his attention to Conrad.

Of course, he also had to accept the fact that it was possible some of Conrad’s people would not be of any use. He would not bring dead weight back to the community. But if the young man knew anything about Joel, he would be expecting such a response…wouldn’t he?

At last he could see them. Tower One had already burned to the point that it had caved in or fallen away in many places leaving huge gaping holes. He could also see fires burning on several floors of both remaining towers. With no hope of those fires being put out, Joel guessed that neither with be standing by nightfall.

There was a lull in the sounds of battle up ahead and Joel raised his hand for everybody to hold up. A tinny sound could be heard, but between the distance and the echo of sound bouncing off the tall buildings, it was indiscernible. Motioning again, he resumed their advance.

They were even with the backside of the X-shaped Paris Hotel building when Joel signaled for them to halt again. The gunfire had not started back up, but there were occasional shouts coming from up ahead, and they sounded like they were growing nearer.

“Everybody, if you haven’t already…lock and load,” Joel said in a conversational tone and volume that sounded loud in the relative silence.

Joel was surprised when he heard a few sounds indicating that everybody had not, in fact, prepared for a firefight. It was one thing not to draw attention to themselves when it was just zombies. This was about to be a fight to the death with the living. Being quiet was off the table. The sideways look that Debra gave a few of the bikers, and even a couple of their own people who were chambering rounds told him he wasn’t alone in his assessment and shade of disappointment. If he was maybe twenty years younger and even remotely interested in investigating a romantic relationship, she would be the perfect choice. Of course, he also saw such a relationship ending in a shootout where one of them definitely died…maybe both.

“You think this is a good idea?” Reggie muttered, making sure to keep his voice neutral as well as quiet so as not to be overheard.

“I think it’s stupid. And if it were anybody else doing it, I’d wish ‘em luck and then write them off.” Joel brought his own assault rifle to his shoulder and scanned ahead, looking for something moving fast enough to possibly be living.

“Then tell me again why we are—” Reggie started, but Joel cut him off.

“While not by birth, that is basically my son in that tower. I asked my people for volunteers because I made the city off limits. As for you and your people, you can still go back.” Joel folded his arms across his chest, hugging the gun with the barrel pointed skyward.

“Nope. Your group is the one we want to be a part of, and if what I am seeing is any indication, we are on the same page.” Reggie leaned forward and whispered almost conspiratorially, “We had a few of our group we had to do away with after they wanted to try and turn into superheroes. Can’t save everybody…am I right?”

“Indeed.” Joel nodded, but he now placed Reggie on a personal watch list. While he had no trouble dishing out justice to those who stepped out of line, he took no real pleasure in sending anyone to the darkness. Reggie sounded a bit too enthusiastic in sharing the fact that he’d had to “do away with” members of his group.

He had no more time to consider his evaluation of Reggie. Up the street, there was a loud metal bang as a door was flung open and slammed into the concrete wall behind it. Three figures emerged and quickly appeared to be scanning the area. Once satisfied, they dashed across the parking lot that still had a few cars parked haphazardly throughout. They slid in behind a shuttle bus that was on its side and opened a large gym bag that one of them had been carrying.

Joel had them in his sights, but the trio were hunched over whatever it was they were doing and prevented him from seeing anything. After a few moments that dragged for an eternity, the trio got up to a crouch and hurried across the lot and then dove through some hedges, coming out on the back side and racing across what had been East Harmon Avenue towards the two remaining Signature Suites towers.

Figuring that these individuals were part of the enemy’s forces, Joel brought his rifle up to his shoulder. Sighting on the center of one of the men’s backs, Joel squeezed the trigger. His rifle made a muted report that still seemed much too loud despite the muffling apparatus rigged on the end of the barrel of his weapon. The man carrying the duffel staggered forwards as if trying to sprint ahead, but then stumbling over his own two feet.

The man hit the pavement hard and Joel waited for the other two to tend to their fallen companion. The pair never broke stride and threw themselves into some bushes near what looked like some sort of service or emergency entrance after snatching up the bag on the fly.

Joel was sighting on the second one when the duo reached the targeted door. One of them slid something into the edge and made short work of opening the metal emergency door. The second one already had what looked to be a drill or something. A moment later, the door had been removed from its hinges and set aside.

Joel was trying to figure out what they were up to when a loud noise erupted from the darkness of the gaping stairwell. Just as suddenly, the pair sprinted away. Joel didn’t need to look around to know exactly what had just been done. Still, he couldn’t help but appreciate the tactic as he scanned the area. Zombies were all turning around or adjusting their course and heading for that noise.

“The next stage of warfare,” Joel muttered to nobody in particular. “Use the zombies as shock troops and then probably draw them back out and clean up.”

“I was gonna suggest something along those lines at our next meeting,” Debra snorted. She sounded annoyed at watching what was obviously an idea she’d been contemplating being put to use…from the other end in a way.

Joel watched as the undead came to the loud siren sound that came from whatever device the duo had tossed into the now wide-open building. He noticed some movement in the shadows, but he couldn’t be sure that his eyes hadn’t been playing tricks. As he tried to focus in, he felt a hand grip his shoulder.

“Up there,” Debra whispered into his ear.

Pulling his eyes from the binoculars, Joel followed her hand to where she pointed. Up the tower his gaze roamed until he reached about halfway. A section of windows had been busted out, and groups of bedsheets tied together were being draped through the opening.

“That is a very bad idea,” he whispered, bringing his field glasses up again. “But I think they are running out of choices.”

Five floors up, smoke was starting to trickle from a few of the open balcony sliding glass doors. Desperation was obviously the prevalent mood inside the tower. Zombies were coming in from at least one point that Joel knew of, and from the looks of it, he was certain that the front had been breached already. Hadn’t he heard something on the radio about the undead coming up some of the stairwells?

When he pulled his glasses down again, he saw that everybody was staring at him. A few of the bikers appeared uncertain and that same look was on the faces of more than one of his own people. He’d been very clear on the mission, and this possible change of heart was troublesome in Joel’s mind.

“If you can’t handle this, then go. This is the last chance to turn around,” he said as calmly as possible.

“This just ain’t our fight, Hoss,” one of the bikers said as he clapped Reggie on the shoulder while he edged past and started back the way they’d come.

Four more bikers, gazes aimed at the tracks and obviously avoiding eye-contact, quickly followed. Joel watched them passively, once glancing over at Reggie to see the man’s reaction. To his credit, the man was just as stone-faced as Joel hoped he appeared at the moment. When he brought his attention back to the group, he noticed two of his own people making raised eyebrow gestures to each other. Then he noticed that Debra had left his side.

She’d moved past the group, and at first, Joel thought she might be dismissing things and simply taking it on herself to get the group back to heading for their objective. Then she stopped walking and turned very slowly.

The large blade in her hand caught the sun just right and flashed a beam of light into the eyes of one of the individuals with the waggling eyebrows. Joel knew what she was about to do and felt a smile curve the corners of his lips.

“You knew the rules,” she whispered before she gripped the first of the pair by a handful of hair and slid her blade across the man’s throat. “Desertion is not acceptable.”

“We weren’t deserting,” the other person yelped, unable to move quick enough to avoid a spray of blood across the face from his would-be companion.

“And where did you think you would go if you left us?” Debra took a step towards the man, allowing the other to drop unceremoniously to the tracks. With one booted foot, she pushed the body over the side where it landed with a meaty smack on the road below. “Did you think you might just head back to the vehicles and wait it out? Or perhaps you thought to take one?”

The man opened his mouth and snapped it shut with an audible click. “I’ll stay,” the man whispered after a moment where the tension grew as the sounds of the man below being ripped apart and feasted upon carried on the desert wind.

“Too late for that,” another voice said from behind the man causing him to start and then attempt to spin around.

In one swift motion, Will Barnes drove his KABAR up under the man’s ribs, yanked it free, and shoved him from the tracks. There was a cringe-inducing crack of bone as the man’s legs shattered.

Joel glanced down, curious why there’d been no scream. A pool of darkness was spreading from the body and the man looked up, his mouth open wide, but no sound came forth.

As a few of the undead shambled over and knelt to begin clawing and biting into the newest offering to fall from above, the man finally found his voice. It started as a weak sound and eventually grew to a shriek.

“Musta knocked the wind from him,” Will sniffed as he wiped his blade and shoved it back into the sheath on his hip.

“You want me to go run my guys down?” Reggie asked.

Joel glanced over his shoulder at the fleeing figures that had left at a walk but now obviously ran for all they were worth. He shook his head and returned his gaze to the tower and the sheet that had dropped far enough so that somebody might be able to get themselves about ten or fifteen feet from the ground before they would have to let go and drop.

“They weren’t one of us and hadn’t ever stepped a foot inside our community,” Debra explained when Reggie seemed to be confused by the response.

Joel didn’t listen to any more of the talk. He edged past and resumed his trek towards the towers. He’d seen a few people looking out in their direction, but obviously self-preservation had taken over as the first person flung a leg over the rail of the balcony and planted his or her feet against the edge before pushing out and lowering themselves with a hand-over-hand method.

Picking up the pace, Joel continued to scan the area in the direction that the pair who’d popped off the door and left the noisemaker vanished. By the time he and his group had reached the intersection of Harmon Avenue and Audrie Street, he’d managed to catch one more glimpse of something moving too fast to be one of the living dead.

They’d been moving in a crouch and using the abandoned vehicles that were becoming a bit more prevalent in this area for some reason as cover. They’d crossed Audrie and made their way towards the parking structure across from the towers. All they needed to do now was cross Harmon and they would be on the same block. That was the easy part.

Below them, on the streets, the undead were plentiful. In some places, there were so many that the entire section of road would be impossible to cross as the zombies were packed in shoulder-to-shoulder. These groups were starting to mass up and collect others as they moved in the general direction of the planted noisemaker.

Joel signaled a halt as they watched the first person reach the bottom of the improvised bedsheet emergency exit rope. The individual looked around and then dropped. As soon as he or she landed, they rushed the nearest zombie and took it down.

Joel expected the person to make a run for it in some predetermined direction that would hopefully provide safety. He was momentarily surprised when the person ran for the busted open door, stabbing and chopping through the numerous zombies that had reached this particular opening. When the person disappeared into the dark opening where the door had been, Joel understood. His guess was confirmed a few seconds later when the person emerged with the device and took off through the palm trees and headed away from his position and along Harmon.

Moments later, the person vanished around the corner on the far side of the driving range that sat across the street from the towers: Topgolf or something, Joel believed was the place’s name. He looked up and was surprised to see the bedsheet rope being hauled back up.

“Wonder how they chose the person for that job?” Debra said with the slightest hint of amusement in her voice. “The person either lost a lottery draw, pissed somebody off, or was brave to the point of stupid.”

“Well, it worked.” Joel pointed as the stream of undead changed course, moving away from the doorway.

“Yeah, so what’s our next move?” Reggie asked with a dismissive shrug of the shoulders. “Thought we were here to recue your people and increase the numbers of our army.”

Joel made sure to clear his face of any emotion before he turned to face the man. “Yes, but this is the part where we assess the scene and then choose the path least likely to have us joining the numbers of the dead heads.”

“I say we hop down onto the roof of that credit union drive-thru,” Will suggested, indicating the nearby single-story building.

Joel nodded and the team started making the jump one by one. When it was Joel’s turn, he thanked whatever powers-that-be for his relatively good health. His desire to stay fit made it less likely that he would blow a knee or break his hip. Still, when his feet left the relative safety and sturdiness of the monorail track, his mouth went dry and his bowels clenched. The landing was much worse than he expected and for a moment he thought that perhaps he’d shattered both his knees despite his tuck-and-roll landing.

A hand appeared in front of his face and he looked up to see Debra offering him some help to his feet. He accepted, and when she pulled him up, she kept the momentum going enough to bring Joel in close so that she could whisper in his ear.

“Your landing was shit…if you’re hurt you need to shake it off in front of these pricks…and I want to be the one to kill that prick, Reggie, when this is over.”

Joel pulled back and regarded the woman with a raised eyebrow. Was she that good at reading his expressions, or was he that bad at hiding them?

“Last straw was when he wanted to know if he should kill off his people. That was where you drew the line,” Debra said softly, barely moving her lips so that Joel wasn’t sure if he’d just been fortunate enough to read them, or she had indeed spoken loud enough so that he could barely hear her.

Joel cleared his head once again as he regarded Debra. He felt a twinge of concern at her obvious ability to read him. He would have to make certain that he maintained somewhat of a poker face in her presence.

When the last person finally made it across, the entire group climbed to street level on the backside of the building. The few zombies in the parking lot were easily taken down by the time everybody was on the ground and Joel started off towards Harmon on the direction opposite of what the person carrying away the noisemaker had gone.

There was a small alcove on the corner with what looked like a power meter setup against the back wall. That would allow them to climb up and over easier. Joel decided that he should go first in order to assess the scene.

He was just pulling himself up to the top of the wall when a blast of feedback like you would hear from a bullhorn echoed up and down the streets. He froze, initially fearing that they’d been spotted and things were about to get nastier if that were somehow possible.

“You have refused all my demands that you surrender yourselves,” a familiar female voice crooned. “I promised your salvation and you spurned my gift. How could you refuse to be able to sit at the feet of God? Is living a life steeped in sin and evil so precious to you? And now…you will perish. Your death will come to you at the hands…and teeth of those who, like you, refused his mercy when it was offered freely.”

“I’ve got ‘em,” Debra hissed. She pointed to the pink-hued building across the street. “It’s coming from the Carriage House.”

Joel had almost narrowed it down himself and was glad for the confirmation that he’d been looking in the correct general direction. The only problem facing them was that the building was surrounded at least twenty deep from what he could see. The brick wall that ran along the side of the building had been breached in at least three places. Two locations looked as if cars had crashed through and one had obviously been blown open by some form of explosives.

“You can try to send your people down one at a time, but eventually you will run out of bodies,” the female voice continued. “We will just keep planting those noisemakers. Your undead brothers and sisters will keep coming in waves. Perhaps you can save us all the time and just come down and accept their embrace. Your fate is sealed…the sooner you accept it the better.”

“Okay, we’ve tip-toed as much as possible. It is time to get our hands dirty,” Joel said after the last member of the team had climbed over the wall to now stand inside the decimated grounds of the Signature Towers.

He hadn’t been able to tear his eyes from the one tower that had been practically demolished. The debris strewn about reminded him of what he’d seen on television a few years back when a bunch of warped radicals had crashed airplanes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. In his mind, it didn’t matter what religion you followed, the moment you started calling for the death of people who did not see things your way…you were perverting the ideology, and thus, a danger to the world around you.

His secondary mission here was to extract Conrad and his people in order to bulk the numbers of his community. His first task was to rid the world of the plague of this particular band of zealots. He shook his head to clear the doubts. Shouldn’t rescuing Conrad come first? That had been the mission he recruited his people for. The idea of adding to their numbers needed to be a priority…didn’t it?

“We can hit both,” Debra said, startling Joel. He hadn’t realized he’d been thinking out loud.

“I think we would be best served to keep our group together.” Joel’s eyes flicked towards Reggie. The man had the look of a person seeing a buffet after being deprived food for weeks as he eyed the zombies in the distance that were clustered around the main entrance to the first of the two remaining towers.

“He won’t be a problem.” Will stepped up beside Debra and tapped the blade on his right hip. “Let me take him and a mix of ours and theirs inside that tower to see if we can get to the people.”

“That leaves the rest of us to take out those fruit loops,” Debra said, licking her lips in an almost sexual expectation of the coming fight.

“Conrad is the priority. Tell him I sent you, and if they have kids, you need to pull him aside and let him know the rules.” Joel clapped Will on the shoulder and the men nodded at each other.

“Reggie, grab two of your people,” Will barked. “We are going inside the tower to see if we can get to the survivors.” As he walked away, he pointed to three of the volunteers that had come along. Joel almost vetoed Malik’s inclusion, but Will needed people who were good in a fight.

He watched as the team of seven dashed across the debris-filled swimming pool area and vanished into the ruined decorative vegetation. As soon as they emerged and hurried up the stairs to where the door had been removed and the noisemaker planted, he turned back to the others.

“This is not a capture mission,” Joel said to the remaining people in his group. “We are going in with the intention of maximum death count. No survivors. Is that clear?”

There were a few nods, but most just stared back grim-faced. One of the bikers raised a hand. “Everybody? I mean…what if we find women or children?”

“Maybe you weren’t listening, but that voice spewing nonsense was a woman. As for children…we don’t take children. You would be doing them a favor by giving them a quick ending.” Debra stepped forward and glared at the group. “If you aren’t on board yet, this is your last chance. Once you enter our community, there is no going back. We have an edict against children being brought in. They are an unnecessary drain on resources that will be too precious to spare for any who can’t pull their weight in the community.”

Joel hadn’t planned on saying anything quite so gruff, but he had to admit…it was the truth. He scanned the bikers and was not surprised when three more stepped away from the group.

“You gonna kill us like you did those others?” the woman with tattoos creeping up her neck asked with a sweet voice that was definitely at odds with her gruff exterior.

“Nope.” Now it was Joel’s turn. He was tired of the delays. It was time to get down to business. “Those people were ours, they deserted having sworn to our charter. You have never set foot inside our compound. You don’t know anything about our defenses or actual numbers.”

The trio of bikers that had stepped aside started to confer. Joel decided he didn’t have time for any more nonsense.

“Talk amongst yourselves if you want, but we’re moving out.”

Without another word, Joel started towards the storage buildings at the edge of the outdoor swimming area. He climbed up again and saw that the undead were thinning a bit, but there were still too many that had been drawn by the noisemaker in the area.

He had to wonder again how these things operated. On the surface, they seemed very simplistic. He was hoping that his deductions about their behavior was correct in that they would head after a sound and simply continue in that direction until something drew them in another.

He was about to find out. Easing down from the top of the wall, he looked down at the group.

“I need one volunteer.” He let his eyes scan the people massed below him. He was surprised to see that the three dissenters had apparently changed their mind about leaving and were still with the group. “There is a plus and minus to this mission. The good part is that you won’t be in the battle with these folks.” He hiked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the Carriage House. “The bad news is that there are still too many zombies in this area. We need to pull some of them away.”

“And how do you plan on us doing that?” one of the bikers asked, his voice more curious than upset or challenging.

“We use their own trick. The volunteer will make as much noise as possible and try to draw at least the mob on Audrie Street away.”

There was a moment of silence until one of the original three that had shown hesitation in continuing on with the mission stepped forward. “I’ll do it,” the tattooed woman said. “What should I use to make noise?”

“Bang on cars with the flat part of that axe on your belt,” Joel suggested. “It’s really only important that you make some noise and get as many of them to follow you as possible.”

The woman sighed. She turned to one of the other bikers and shrugged out of her small pack. “Take this. Something tells me that I’m gonna need to be able to run, climb, and who knows what else. If we both make it to the other side…I’ll get it from you then.”

“Okay…hug or whatever you need to do and then let’s get this show on the road,” Debra scolded.

“I’m about to risk my ass for you…maybe show a little courtesy?” the woman shot back.

“Yeah…you’re risking your ass and can basically run anywhere you want.” Debra stepped close to the woman until their noses were almost touching. “The rest of us are about to charge into what will likely be a nasty shootout against an unknown number of hostiles. Forgive me if I don’t lean over and kiss your ass.”

The woman’s mouth opened and then shut again. She pulled the hand axe free from the loop at her hip and climbed up to the top of the wall. She looked back at Joel and gave a nod. He returned it, and then she was gone.

A few seconds later the harsh clang of metal on metal sounded. The racket was punctuated by a terribly off-key rendition of what Joel thought might’ve been an old Pat Benatar song.

Moments later the sounds of gunfire came from within the tower where Will’s team had vanished. Joel peered over the top of the wall and saw that the herd in this area had thinned some. A small part of him wanted to wait just a few minutes more, but he knew from his time in Nam that battles often only last seconds. Every minute he delayed might be enough to cost them this fight. If they were going to strike, it had to be now.

“Let’s move,” Joel hissed, throwing one leg over the wall.

He landed on the ground just feet from a pair of walkers that were trying to turn around and face him with almost comical results as they bounced off each other in their uncoordinated effort to get at him.

Before they had a chance, Joel stuck one and then the other. He would not wait for the rest of his team any more than he would expect them to wait for him. Joel took off across the street, shoving zombies aside and, in one instance, grabbing one by the arm and slinging it into a small group that might present a problem if he didn’t get rid of a couple. His attempt was almost like some twisted version of bowling as his projectile-zombie stumble-slammed into the little cluster.

A few fell backwards and that was enough to create a domino effect beyond his hopes. Only two remained standing, and neither were close enough to lay hands on him. It almost felt like he’d had to sprint the distance of four football fields, not simply the four lanes of this one street, but at last he reached the other side and jumped up, grabbing the top of the wall that bordered this part of the Carriage House and pulled himself up.

He shot one look over his shoulder and winced as he saw two of the bikers running for one of the breaches in the wall. Obviously they’d decided that the easiest way through was preferable to the clearest section of street. As he threw his other leg over and dropped to the ground, he heard a scream that quickly changed in register.

Looking around, Joel spotted a solid metal door—obviously some form of emergency exit—and sprinted for it. A blur passed him as Debra sped past and vaulted up onto the stairs. She gave the door an experimental tug and then stepped back and to the side as she brought her shotgun around.

Joel held up and waited as Debra fired. There was a thundering boom and then she grabbed what was left of the handle and jerked the door open. A man inside the entrance was bringing his rifle to his shoulder, but Debra fired again, her blast catching the man in the chest, sending him staggering back, a splatter of red spraying the wall behind the man as his back was blown out.

“Anything that moves!” Joel shouted again as he charged in with Debra.

13

Pros Versus Joes

There was just a brief moment when Joel thought that maybe they would at least have an easy start of things. Then the sounds of footsteps approaching erased any such hope. And there were a lot of them.

Debra slammed into a door to their right, crashing through and splintering the frame. Joel followed suit and charged to the first door on his left. He felt a dull pain in his shoulder and winced as he smashed through and tumbled to the floor of an empty hotel room.

Scrambling to his feet, Joel pressed himself against the wall as three bikers and one of his own people charged in behind him. A fifth person was just reaching the doorway when a hailstorm of gunshots sounded. The woman was looking right at Joel as her body jerked and twitched. For some reason, he thought he saw the exact moment that life left her as the eyes dulled and she slumped to the floor.

Throwing the barrel of his M4 into the hall and pointing it in the general direction their attackers should be, Joel squeezed the trigger, sending a volley in return as the rest of his team joined either him, Debra, or busted in another door in a desperate attempt to find cover.

Another barrage of gunfire came, drowning out any ability to shout orders. Joel could see across the hall to Debra and noticed a dark stain blooming on her left shoulder. She didn’t seem to notice as she rummaged through the small pack she carried. When they’d been clearing the first neighborhood, Joel had commented about how she seemed to always have the right tool or item in it.

“Batman had a utility belt…I have this,” she’d said with a shrug.

When she pulled out a canister and a small, round device, he actually smiled. He continued to watch as she pulled the pin and tossed it up the hallway towards their attackers. He followed her lead, turning his back just as the muffled blast sounded. Even with his back turned, he saw spots in front of his eyes when the flash-bang went off. He continued to keep his back to the doorway, knowing that she wasn’t done. That was confirmed seconds later when an explosion shook the floor enough to topple one of the lamps on a nightstand beside the bed in this room.

Before the ringing in Joel’s ears could die down, Debra had rushed out into the hallway and opened fire with her shotgun. He briefly wondered if his hearing would ever recover. Even as close to her as he was, the weapon was seriously muted.

Bringing up his own rifle, he followed her lead and stepped out into the smoke-filled hallway. Bodies were scattered on the floor. A few were very obviously dead. Some were seriously injured and despite his disdain for them, Joel could not leave them to suffer. He shouldered his rifle and switched to his Beretta. As he waded through the dozen bodies scattered on the floor, he put a single bullet into the head of any that showed signs of life.

Debra was of a similar mindset, but she opted for her blade. Joel had considered it, but decided that noise wasn’t an issue at this point. Additionally, he felt a quick death with a pistol was easier and less personal. After all, despite what some people might believe…he did have a conscience.

They reached the first stairwell and one of the bikers was reaching for the handle when Debra lunged forward and cold-cocked him square in the face. The man fell back, his hands flying to his nose. Blood was already pouring through his hands and a few of the bikers were already swinging their weapons around to the woman.

“Trap,” Debra said calmly as if a handful of pistols and rifles weren’t trained on her.

Joel looked past her and saw a thin copper wire running from the handle and through the door jamb. She knelt down and examined it, lips pressed tight in concentration. As for the bikers, they glanced at their comrade and then amongst each other, none of them entirely happy with how she’d handled the situation, but apparently each one deciding that a punch in the face was preferable to whatever waited for them on the other side of that door.

“Somebody grab a mattress from one of the rooms,” Debra called over her shoulder.

Joel was amazed at how she continued to act as if nothing had happened. It was only then that he realized he’d aimed his own pistol at one of the bikers. He dropped his own arm when he realized that the man was still staring at him with more than just a little concern.

It took a moment, and Joel sent a couple of people back to where they’d entered to ensure they didn’t get any surprise guests from that direction while they waited for the mattress to be manhandled out into the hallway. While everybody did what they were told, Debra slid the blade of one of her knives into the door where it latched. Next, she produced what looked like a leather shoelace and tied it to the door handle.

Once the mattress was brought to the door, Debra had two members of the team hold it in place from the sides. She gave the leather cord a tug, pulling the door open. There was a loud sizzle and then an explosion that, even though it was muffled by the mattress, still caused the ringing in Joel’s ears to return with a vengeance.

When the smoke began to clear, Joel could see that the mattress was now a smoldering mess and both of the people who’d been holding it were sitting on the floor against the opposite wall. Both of them looked more than just a little dazed. Debra was helping one of them to their feet, and Joel stepped in to help the other.

It took a moment to shake off the daze, but then everybody was ready to move out again. They started up the stairs with Debra on point. They hit the next obstacle on the sixth floor. A very fine trip wire was set at almost the perfect location. Joel was certain that had anybody else been leading the way, they would have snagged it.

The entire time they climbed, Joel could hear muffled sounds of gunfire in sporadic bursts coming from up above. Also, the person who’d spoken earlier was occasionally saying something on a megaphone, but being in the stairwell made it impossible to make out.

“I want to get to wherever these lunatics are, if for no other reason than to shut that bitch up,” Debra snarled as they passed the seventh floor.

As they reached the ninth, this was their destination, of that there could be no doubt. The voices could be heard as orders were being relayed. Also, there was some sort of odd rhythmic droning taking place. Joel was trying to figure it out when one of the bikers said, “Is somebody singing?”

“A few somebodys,” Debra agreed. She reached for the door after giving it a careful inspection.

Her hand grasped the lever that would open it and she suddenly began to jerk and twitch violently. Joel jumped back as her free arm came out and flailed wildly. Just as suddenly as it started, it ended with the woman glancing over her shoulder, a wicked grin on her face. “Just kidding.”

“That’s messed up,” somebody muttered.

Joel agreed, but he couldn’t help but smile. He gave a nod and she pressed the lever slowly to try and prevent any sound from giving them away. Part of him felt that this had been too easy, but then he remembered he was dealing with what were probably just regular civilians. They more than likely thought their little attack team on the ground floor, along with the pair of traps, would be enough to keep most people from reaching them.

As soon as the door opened a crack, a wave of sound poured out into the stairwell. Something odd drifted in with the noise and the low hum that might be a group of people singing Amazing Grace. It took Joel just a few seconds to process it, but what he heard were the sounds of people screaming through gags or something that muffled their voices. That meant that perhaps not everybody was here of their own free will.

Any other time, he would perhaps see about setting hostages free. At the moment, that would not be a priority. While some would consider this a heartless move, Joel saw it as practical, based on the situation. His main objective was to end this radical sect that was acting under a guise of some twisted religious ideals that had nothing to do with anything close to biblical.

They were in a corner and could look left down a long hall that ran parallel to the towers, and to the right down a shorter corridor. Doors lined both walls, and most of the ones along the side that looked out at the towers were open. Most of the sporadic gunfire came from those.

The singing came from the right. Joel tapped two of his people on the shoulder and then pointed to them, his eyes, and then the shorter hallway. They nodded in understanding and slunk away, each of them hugging a wall. Joel started down the long one, stopping at the first open door and signaling for everybody to halt as he peeked inside.

The room was exactly what you would expect for a middle-class hotel room. All except for the three people at the full-length window with rifles to their shoulders. Against the wall on either side were a half dozen more weapons leaned against the wall, and on the bed, were broken open cases of ammunition and a few dozen magazines: some loaded…some not.

Moving into the room after making certain that everybody knew to stay put, Joel moved briskly and with purpose. He crossed the room without alerting the trio and reached them, choosing the individual on the right at random. As quick as he could, Joel stepped in, grabbed the man around the throat and drove the blade in his hand into the lower back where he guessed the kidneys to be. The other two barely had time to react before Joel whipped up his pistol and shot both of the other two in the chest.

They all dropped or slid to the ground and Joel gave a low whistle signaling everybody to join him. He gestured to the rifles and ammunition. Then he went to the bed and started inserting rounds into any of the empty magazines. It only took a moment for everybody to catch on and join him. In no time, they had the magazines loaded and divided up among those who snagged one of the rifles in the room.

They repeated the routine twice more. Each time, Joel wondered if perhaps he’d given this group too much credit for being a threat. It was becoming clear that they didn’t really have a solid structure. They were also grossly overconfident. Nobody was even glancing back at the open door…at least not before he’d gotten in and stuck somebody.

It was the fourth room where their luck changed. Joel had looked inside and seen exactly what he’d expected. Three individuals were at the window with rifles. Once again, Joel slipped into the room intent on taking down the first target and utilizing the element of surprise to eliminate these people.

As soon as he heard the sound, he cursed himself for being so foolhardy. He’d barely registered that the door to the right as he entered was almost completely shut. He felt more than heard it open and turned to see a young man exit the suite’s bathroom. The only thing that saved him was that this person, who could be no older than sixteen, was perhaps more stunned.

With his handgun resting impotently in its holster, Joel’s only choice was to throw his knife. He exhaled his relief when it buried itself in the young man’s chest. The kid crumpled, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, blood trickling from the corners of it, and eyes wide in fear and confusion. For a moment, Joel’s mind flashed to a similar reaction from a young boy in the jungles of Vietnam who’d suffered a similar fate at Joel’s hands. Just as fast as it came, he shoved it away. Now was not the time, and he spun to see all three people at the window turning to see what the ruckus was about.

He saw three rifles come up almost in unison. His only choice was to dive behind the bed. He rolled to his side and found himself staring into the pleading eyes of the young man with the knife still jutting from his chest. Glancing toward the open door, he saw one of the bikers peek around the corner and then stumble back when what could only have been a lucky (or unlucky depending on a person’s perspective) shot caught the man in the face, sending him staggering back to slump against the wall across the hall.

There was a single second where silence seemed to fall upon the room right before total hell broke loose.

The doorway suddenly filled with leather-clad bikers all wielding pistols and even a few shotguns. The three people at the window never had a chance to fire a second volley.

However, the shouts that came from down the hall let Joel know that their presence was probably no longer a secret. He climbed to his knees and swapped the magazine in his pistol to ensure he went into the coming fight fully loaded.

“Get in here, you idiots!” he snarled at the few individuals still standing in the hallway.

“What the fuck, boss?” Debra elbowed Joel. “How do you walk past a closed door and not at least nudge it open?”

“Out of practice,” he admitted with a shrug.

“Maybe you let the pros start leading the assault until you get rid of the rust.” She didn’t even have the courtesy to phrase it as a question, but Joel knew deep down that she was at least partially correct. Partially, because she should also know better than to do this in front of the troops.

Poking her head out the doorway at below waist height to minimize being seen—or if she was spotted, sighted in on and shot—Debra scanned the hall. She ducked back in quickly as a volley of gunfire sounded, shards of wood and chunks of the wall flew.

“Yep, element of surprise is FUBAR,” she hissed as she plucked a nasty looking three-inch splinter of wood from her cheek.

Joel watched as she holstered her weapon and pulled the grenade launcher from her shoulder. She patted it as the bikers gaped. “This is the difference between the pros and the Joes,” she said with a deadly glimmer in her eyes.

“We picked the right team,” one of the bikers gasped.

“Yeah.” Debra stepped up to the man, her gaze boring into his. “You might want to be sure and remember that if you ever decide to bail on us.”

She stood there for what felt like hours but could only have been seconds before stepping back and smiling. That smile had to be what a polar bear flashed when it considered a baby seal, Joel thought with an approving shudder. He watched her as she loaded the M203 grenade launcher and then waited for the bullets to stop flying before she stepped out into the hallway and returned fire.

She hopped back in the room as a mixture of shouts and sporadic gunfire started. A few seconds later, there was a floor-shaking explosion followed by a heartbeat of silence…and then the moans of the dead or dying. She quickly reloaded, popped out, and fired again. Joel was pretty certain that the second round was overkill.

He started for the doorway, but Debra put an arm up. “Give them a second to bleed out,” she said like it was an absolutely normal thing to say.

Joel shrugged and waited as she popped her head out and then ducked back just as a few shots rang out. She looked back at Joel and smiled. “Gotta give ‘em credit for spunk.”

After another minute, Debra emerged once more. This time she stood in the center of the hall and just waited. When nothing happened, the rest of the group followed Joel out.

The corridor was a nightmare of gore. Bodies had been blown apart in many instances and others were scorched or charred beyond recognition. The smell was one that Joel knew well, but a few of the bikers stopped, hands on knees as they threw up the contents of their stomachs.

He’d gone only a few steps when somebody staggered out of a door just a few feet away. Debra stepped over and shoved a knife Joel hadn’t even seen her pull into the side of the man’s throat. Up ahead another two individuals came out with weapons drawn. Joel and Debra dove into the nearest open door, as did a few of the bikers.

A couple didn’t make it, and Joel rolled over to see a woman looking at him, her eyes already glazed over. Joel got to his knees as the two individuals came running. He almost felt bad when they reached his open doorway and were met with a hail of bullets.

The last words to be uttered by the pair had something to do with “Glory to God!” or something to that effect. He moved behind Debra who’d just peered around the corner. She leaned forward and then stepped back into the hallway.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she sing-songed as she pulled the pistol-grip shotgun from the custom holster she had on her hip.

There was a stirring, and then a woman emerged from the doorway just three down from where they now stood. She was tall and thin to the point of gaunt. Her black hair was pulled up in a severe bun that, even from a distance, Joel could see that her eyes were almost slanted to the point of being reduced to slits making them seem to be nothing more than dark specks on her pale face. Her thin lips were downturned in a perpetual frown, and her cheeks were flushed just as he’d imagined.

For being so skinny, her breasts were large and on the verge of comical. Joel briefly wondered if she walked so stiffly in order to keep from tumbling forward.

“You will not defile the lambs of God!” she shrieked, her voice going shrill as she yelled the words far too loud considering they were not more than twenty feet away.

“We aren’t here to defile anybody.” Joel stepped forward. “In fact…” Joel raised his own voice in hopes that he might be heard by some of the individuals that could possibly be on the fence. “And if some of you are here against your will, then you can leave unharmed if you go right now.”

“Pay them no heed, my children,” the woman railed. “This is the voice of the Great Deceiver speaking to you through this vessel. He is here to lead you to eternal damnation and only wishes for you to share in the torment he will reap based on his life of sin.”

“Do you actually believe the stuff pouring out of your mouth…or is this part of the carnival act?” Debra snorted.

“And now the Whore of Babylon speaks,” the woman shrieked. Her voice was pitching like a revivalist preacher, and every word from her mouth was accompanied by flecks of spittle as she threw her hands up, and then threw them wide as if to embrace the world. “Heed not her words either, my children. Her words are coated in honey, but they are bitter as Wormwood once you truly taste the lies that fall from her tongue.”

“Do I have to listen to any more of this?” Debra snarled. She brought her shotgun up to her shoulder and jacked a round into the chamber.

Just then, Joel heard it. There were a series of crashes and from the closest room he heard what sounded like a thrum. Placing his hand on Debra’s arm, he gave a slight shake of the head and put a finger to his lips indicating that she be quiet. There was a strange, muffled sound coming from the room just ahead. He advanced slowly, his eyes darting back and forth between the crazed woman, Debra, and the open doorway.

At last, he reached it and could look inside the room. Joel had to shake his head to ensure he wasn’t seeing things.

A chair had been kicked over and two bodies hung suspended in a pair of open closets. Their hands had been bound behind their backs and tied to their ankles. Just as he made eye-contact with the third person in the room, the man leaned back against the wall, put the barrel of what looked like a .30-06 rifle in his mouth and pulled the trigger. Even with some suppression, the boom still rattled the walls of the hotel room and hurt Joel’s ears.

“Heathens!” the woman’s voice bellowed. “You think to come here and silence the word of God?”

“Nope…just you,” Joel said. He glanced at Debra and nodded.

The boom of her shotgun echoed up and down the hallway. The tall, gaunt woman stumbled back and fell hard. She was likely dead before her body landed as her heart had been pulverized and blown out her back by the close-range power of the shotgun.

It was then that Joel heard the sound of singing again. He was almost certain that it’d stopped at some point, but he wouldn’t be able to swear to it.

He continued along the hall, glancing into the other rooms as he did so. It was the same scene being repeated over and over. Two people hanging or even laid out on the bed with a plastic bag over their head and a section of electrical cord around their throats. The one part that seemed strange were the fact that many of the individuals had been restrained with either their hands tied behind their backs or something along those lines. To Joel, that screamed that not everybody had been willing to meet his or her maker.

At last, he reached the end of the hallway where it would turn right. The singing was coming from behind a door to his right opposite the rooms that had looked out onto the Signature Towers across the way.

Steeling himself for any number of possibilities, Joel motioned for everybody to gather around. Once they were in place, Joel took a deep breath and then kicked the door in. Debra moved fast, almost throwing herself into the room.

Despite his hardened exterior, Joel felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. Then the smell hit him and he doubled over. Not even Debra could hold back from being ill, and everybody was backing out of the room while trying to give themselves space between each other as everybody either bent over with hands on knees or dropped to the ground to vomit.

Eventually, Joel and the others were able to gain their feet. Through it all, the singing had not stopped. Joel staggered into the room and rubbed the tears from his eyes that had come involuntarily as he’d been sick.

On their knees against one wall were a dozen children between the ages of perhaps ten and fourteen. They were filthy and their clothing had been reduced to rags ages ago and now probably only clung to each tiny frame due to the grime. They were singing the song, Amazing Grace.

Despite their outward appearance, they sang like angels. They all had their heads cocked to the side, obviously curious as to the source of the noise in their room, yet not choosing to stop singing. A few had dark glasses on, but the others showed the typical signs of being blind.

The few that had cataract film over their eyes almost looked like the undead except for the lack of black tracers. Still, that was not the most disturbing aspect of the room. Chained together and barricaded in what had once been a luxurious bathroom were an unknown number of zombie children.

The arrival of Joel and his people had stirred up the undead children who were all straining at their bonds to try and get at the new arrivals. Beside the bathroom door was one of the living children. He had a large plastic bucket and was ladling what looked like chunks of raw meat and slinging it in to the zombie children. Some were distracted enough to stop struggling as they grabbed a piece of meat and began to tear and chew at it with gusto.

“What the hell?” Debra breathed, her arm across her face to try and mitigate the stench.

“I can’t begin to even guess,” Joel replied.

“We are trying to bring the lost children of God back from the grips of Satan,” a small voice said.

Joel turned to see a little girl of perhaps twelve get to her feet. She moved amongst the other children, touching each one on the shoulder as she did. Eventually, the singing stopped.

“Are you the angels promised to deliver us to our Heavenly Father?” the girl asked as she came to a stop directly in front of Joel. “We were told that God would send his angels to bring us home when it was time.”

He didn’t know what to say. He stared down at the little girl in confusion. He knew that he’d been correct in declaring his edict of not accepting children into the compound. The ones he’d encountered thus far had not been so up close and personal; they’d always been at a distance which allowed him to look beyond their tears, their fear, or their last shred of hope that the nightmare would be over.

“Yes,” a soft voice whispered from beside him.

Joel turned to see Debra step forward. She quickly moved behind the girl, covered her mouth with one hand and drove a blade into her temple as if she were one of the living dead. The girl’s eyes went wide for just a split second, and in that moment, Joel wondered if her sight might’ve returned because she seemed to stare directly at him.

“Let’s get this over with,” Debra hissed, motioning towards the children that had been part of the chorus.

Only a couple of the bikers stepped forward. She spun to the group, her face a mask of impenetrable ice showing no emotion at all. “If you can’t handle this, either get the hell out of the room and keep a lookout, or deal with them.” She jerked a thumb towards the zombie children.

A few heads swiveled back and forth between the living children in the room that continued to stare sightlessly and the undead version that now struggled to get to the living with none of the hesitation they often showed. Joel wondered if it was bloodlust from the recent kill…or perhaps something else.

Determined not to show any cracks in his exterior, Joel drew a knife and headed to the living and began to dispatch them in the same manner Debra had done. It did seem the quickest, and he saw no need for these poor waifs to suffer further.

At last, both groups were eliminated. “Clear the floor on the way out,” Joel called as he stepped into the corridor that still reeked of carnage with its bitter bouquet of cordite, shit, and the other smells of death and undeath.

He was just reaching the stairwell when a massive roar sounded from outside. He hurried back and rushed into the first open door just in time to see a cloud of dust billowing up to obscure the ability to see out to the street. He knew in his gut that another of the Signature Towers had suffered at least a partial collapse.

Knowing that he wouldn’t be able to see a damned thing from where he was, Joel rushed back out and hurried down the stairs. By the time he reached the second floor, he had to pull his shirt up over his mouth and nose in order to breathe. At the bottom of the stairs, his vision had been totally reduced to less than a foot or two and he stopped suddenly, his body rocking forward when somebody collided with his back.

“How the fuck are we supposed to go out into that?” Debra snarled in Joel’s ear.

“Everybody bunch in close. Grab onto the nearest person and do not let go!” Joel barked.

“Why don’t we just go back upstairs and wait for it to settle?” a voice called out from the haze starting to swirl up the stairwell on the air currents.

“A noise like that is going to bring every zombie for miles around. If we get stuck in here because nothing else happens to draw them away, we might be finished,” Joel answered.

“I was just gonna say because we ain’t a bunch of weak-ass bitches,” Debra snorted.

Joel ignored the comment and gave everybody a moment before moving through the bright rectangle that had to be the door that they’d entered through. From every direction, the moans of the undead could be heard. They needed to get moving, and all he could do was to inch forward.

The probability was very real that not only had Conrad just perished, but also Will and another handful of his people. If he kept letting their numbers be chipped away due to his own foolishness, he was liable to wake up with a dagger in his back; and he would deserve it. The entire operation had become one cluster-fuck after the next.

Twice Joel had to shove aside a zombie that just seemed to appear out of nowhere. With the fires burning and all the death (and undeath) surrounding them, it was not like he could tell if one was getting close until it was literally upon him.

They’d gone a short distance when Joel heard somebody calling his name. Stopping, he tried to focus on the distant-sounding voice. Very slowly he turned his body to try and orient on the source. He called back twice and then shut his mouth after another of the walking dead staggered out to him and lunged. Its cold, dead hands actually swiped down his face sending a shiver down his spine.

“Joel?” a voice from his left whisper-shouted “You out here, boss?”

“That’s Will,” Debra breathed, sounding almost relieved.

Joel paused and waited until he heard the call again. As soon as he did, he turned slightly and called back. “Will? Are you guys okay? Did everybody make it out? Was that your building?”

He hadn’t intended for all his questions to come out in a rush. It probably sounded desperate, but he couldn’t help but be a touch anxious.

“Most of us made it,” Will’s voice said from what sounded much closer now. “And yeah, that was our building. Somebody set off a bomb.”

“That was most likely the Children of the Redeemed,” a familiar voice said.

Joel felt his entire body vibrate with relief. Conrad Parks emerged from the haze with an arm over Will’s shoulder. It took less than a few heartbeats for Joel’s relief to turn to sadness and a hint of anger. Even with a thorough coating of dust, the dark stains shown clearly. The one that ripped his heart out from his chest was on the man’s left forearm.

It was obviously a bite.

“Where’s Reggie?” one of the bikers asked, moving forward and trying to see a familiar face on the three other figures limping through the cloud of dust that almost seemed to be thickening.

Joel glanced over at Will, but he was wearing sunglasses that made it impossible to see the man’s eyes. Had Will taken the man out, or had he simply been a casualty—

“Right here,” a voice rasped from the haze as one of the obscured figures came close enough that Joel could make him out. It was indeed the leader of the group of bikers. “And, yeah, it was those religious freaks that blew the fucking building. If I’d been allowed to shoot the—”

“She had a suicide switch, you idiot,” Will snapped cutting the man off. “We would’ve all been blown to hell. As it is, we’re lucky we got out of there alive.”

“I think there’re a few individuals that would beg to differ,” Reggie muttered just barely loud enough to be heard.

“Enough!” Joel snapped. He glared in Will’s direction and then the biker. He was about to suggest that they get moving when more shapes started to stumble forth in the haze. One of them was coming up directly behind Will and Conrad He was about to draw his pistol when the figure coughed. As far as he knew…zombies didn’t cough.

“Only about half of my people made it, Joel,” Conrad said as he freed his arm from where it had been draped over Will’s shoulder. “I’m pretty sure we lost the rest in the stairwell when the building came down.”

“How many?” Joel asked.

Part of him wanted to just grab the man and hug him. But his relief was false. Conrad had been bitten. He might not even survive the trip back to the compound.

The man pulled back from Joel, gripping his arms and looking into his eyes with what initially looked like concern. His own gaze flicked down to the wound and then back up to Joel.

“This?” he said in a voice almost a whisper. Joel nodded. “Well I don’t know what to tell you. It got aggravated during the fight to get out of the building, but that bite is five days old.”

Surely Joel hadn’t heard him correctly. Nobody lived past three days after being bitten. Apparently Conrad saw the doubt.

“We actually have a few people with bites older than mine,” Conrad leaned in and whispered into Joel’s ears.

A million questions swirled through Joel’s head, but here and now was neither the time nor the place. There were a growing chorus of moans and cries closing in on them. It would have to wait.

“Let’s get out of here,” Joel announced to the group.

14

Company

The return to the bikes and transport rigs proved to be much easier than getting to the location. For one, all the noise had brought the undead from every direction, but most groups and clusters were easy to avoid. Once they reached the monorail, the journey was actually uneventful.

Joel wrote a lot of that off to the fact that they were no longer concerned with the living. With just the undead to contend with, it was a simple matter of evasion. As they walked above one particular stretch where the undead below were so thick that he couldn’t make out the road, Joel’s mind drifted back to one of Wanda’s favorite movies. In truth, he hadn’t minded this one as much since it was obviously a bit of a parody. Joel kept hearing a voice informing him that zombies, much like dogs, don’t look up. Whether that was true or not did not seem to matter. The zombies continued to pay them no mind since everybody in his group moved as quietly as possible.

Malik had to drive the Humvee since Debra had been clipped in the shoulder. The wound wasn’t terrible, but now that the adrenaline had subsided, she admitted to being sore enough to worry about her ability to handle the big vehicle if serious defensive driving were called for.

By the time they all got loaded up and started back towards the highway, Joel felt that he could almost catch his breath. He realized his own adrenaline had long since ebbed from his system and now he was tired as well as sore in a few places. That had been another thing he’d scoffed at with the zombie movies. People ran and jumped and climbed like they were doing little more than playing on the school playground. That sort of activity took its toll. And, as a few of the members of the group had proved earlier in the day, it wasn’t quite as easy as it looked.

With the convoy stretched out now, the bikers in a sort of ring around the vehicles Joel had brought from the community, Joel’s mind could finally cycle down a bit along with his body. A shake jolted him back to the present when Debra woke him to let him know that they were approaching the compound’s gates.

“Did I doze off?” Joel asked groggily.

“Judging by the snores?” Debra quipped. “I’d say you did more than just doze.”

Sitting up straight, Joel glanced back to see her sitting beside Conrad and two of his people in the rear of the Humvee. The rest of the survivors had been divvied up between the other transport vehicles.

“How’s the shoulder?” He nodded to the dressed wound that made it look like she was wearing shoulder pads on one side.

“Honestly, it just aches a little. The bullet chipped off a bit of meat…nothing serious.”

“Unless it gets infected,” Malik quipped.

“Thanks for that, Mister Sunshine,” Debra snarled.

“Those zombie kids?” Joel asked, changing the subject and recalling the encounter on the trip out.

“No sign of them.” Malik brought the Humvee to a stop as they rolled up to the gate.

A pair of armed sentries came out, one going to each side. The dark silhouette of a large machine gun behind a wall of sand bags could be seen on the roof of the first house inside the actual compound perimeter.

“Glad to see you made it back,” one of the sentries said, sticking his head inside the Humvee. “Saw a lot of smoke on the horizon. We started getting worried.”

“Yeah, also, the crew in the radio shack asked to see you as soon as you return.” The second man stepped up to the other side and leaned his head inside. “Is the rest of the team bringing up the rear? And what’s with all the motorcycles?”

“Nope.” Joel met the man’s eyes with his own and saw the younger man flinch. “We took some losses. There are still some people out there that need to be dealt with as we expand and claim the area. As for the bikers, we ran into them along the way and they helped with the mission objective.”

“Umm…” the first sentry piped up, “we do still need everybody to report to the intake area for inspection.”

Joel nodded. Now was not the time nor the place to reveal they would be bringing in a few people that may or may not be immune to the zombie infection.

“Send somebody from the radio center to see me,” Joel said. “Whatever it is that is so important, they can tell me in quarantine.”

“Quarantine?” Conrad said from the back of the Humvee.

“Standard protocol for anybody coming in from outside the wire,” Debra said, then shut her mouth with a click of her teeth. The vehicle started forward before she continued. “Umm, boss?”

“Yeah, I know.” Joel stared out the window. Perhaps their medical types would understand the situation better.

Twenty minutes later, everybody had filed into the house which had been converted into an entry exam area. It hadn’t been set up to accommodate so many. That was all the more reason they needed to expand. And, while it would be a risky mission, they needed to claim one of the area hospitals. They did receive one pleasant surprise when it was revealed that one of the bikers was actually a veterinarian. While it would certainly be good to have the services of a human doctor, a vet was almost better.

Many people believed that vets were failed doctors and had no idea that the situation was actually often the exact opposite. When the EMT that was currently the senior member of the medical staff came into Joel’s room, the look on his face was grim despite the initial good news that he would soon have somebody to share the workload with once the biker/vet cleared quarantine.

“Did you know we have three people that suffered injuries by the zulus?” the man asked after he shut the door.

“Wait…three?” Joel knew about Conrad. The young man had mentioned that at least one other of his people had been bitten and not turned. But three?

“Yes, one of the bikers.” The EMT paused, a look of concern on his face. “I can’t be certain, but it would seem that your friend and the person from his group might either be immune, or else they are exhibiting the signs at the slowest rate I’ve ever heard of…but the other young man…one of the bikers, already has the tracers.”

“Put him down,” Joel said.

“So, I will hold the others to the seventy-two-hour quarantine, but you and Miss Allen are both cleared to leave.”

“I want Will and Malik released as well.” Joel got up and pulled on his coat. Sitting had made the aches and pains even worse. He needed about half a bottle of ibuprofen, but he couldn’t let on right now.

He wasn’t two steps out the door when a woman with a clipboard fell in beside him. “I have the new totals for you, sir.” Joel gave a grunt and a nod. “As of now, if everybody marked as clear survives and comes out of quarantine, we now have seven hundred and forty-three citizens here and another fifty-six back at the dam.”

Joel let that sink in. He’d seen groups of survivors numbering in the tens, and here he was with almost a thousand. Perhaps it was time to get aggressive. Despite the recent losses, and he knew there would be more to come in the future, he had the numbers to own the area.

They arrived at the radio center and Joel gave the woman a nod before going inside. The room was a steady buzz of activity.

“…inbound with an ETA of less than an hour,” a voice crackled from one of the radios.

“Be advised, you will need to clear quarantine before you are admitted,” a man said into his headset.

“Commander in the room!” one of the radio operators barked.

Joel paused and looked around before realizing that they were referring to him. That was new, he thought.

“Commander Landon, sir,” a petite, middle-aged woman with Asian features addressed him. “We are currently in contact with five groups of survivors making their way to us. The repeating message is yielding excellent results, sir. Each group has been briefed on the conditions of admission. The largest group numbers over twenty.”

Joel nodded. “Is this what I was asked to come here for? It seems that a standard report would suffice.”

“No, sir.” The woman gestured for him to follow her to another room also filled with radio equipment. She picked up a log book and handed it to him. “We have been in contact with a large group numbering over a hundred.”

“Excuse me?” Joel took the log book and began to scan the entries. “I want copies of this sent to my house.” He handed the log book back.

“Already done, sir.” The woman nodded and handed him a duplicate copy.

“I want to be notified immediately the next time contact is made.”

Joel turned and left the room. His mind swirled with the possibilities. This group would be a huge addition to his community. It was also obvious that these people were not fools. They had made it clear they would not be able to make the journey until after this winter. They didn’t want to get stranded someplace in a snow storm.

Time had certainly flown. He’d ridden out much of the early days of the apocalypse in his suite. Then there had been the taking of the Hoover Dam, and now they were reclaiming Boulder City. They had power in the form of electricity as well as in sheer numbers.

The cornerstones were in place for a community that would be unmatched. No raider would dare confront them. Just as he’d told himself early on, Joel would not simply survive…he would live. Certainly the flow of survivors would begin to lessen. Fewer people would have the ability to hear his signal.

“I hope I made you proud, Wanda,” Joel whispered as he reached his front door, opened it and stepped inside.

After a hot shower and a handful of much-needed ibuprofen, Joel turned on the MP3 player docked in the home’s entertainment system. Easing down into his recliner with a double dose of scotch on the rocks, and some Mozart drifting throughout, he sat back and began reading the logbooks.

He drifted off with less than half the scotch gone. In a rare instance Joel’s dreams were not the haunted nightmares that were the norm…instead, he was walking on a beach with Wanda. Neither of them spoke. They just walked hand-in-hand. The only thing odd was the deep crimson of the sunset. It reminded Joel of blood.

The growing voice in horror

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TW Brown is the author of the Zomblog series, his horror comedy romp, That Ghoul Ava, and, of course, the DEAD series. Safely tucked away in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, he moves away from his desk only at the urging of his Border Collie, Aoife. (Pronounced Eye-fa)

He plays a little guitar on the side...just for fun...and makes up any excuse to either go trail hiking or strolling along his favorite place...Cannon Beach. He answers all his emails sent to twbrown.maydecpub @gmail.com and tries to thank everybody personally when they take the time to leave a review of one of his works.

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