Beyond the Barriers

I woke to the sound of thunder in the middle of the night. The rain that had set in the evening before was gone, but the sounds of the gods bowling across the heavens tore me out of sleep. I clutched at the warm body next to me and concentrated on her name. Katherine, not Allison. Allison was years ago—a lifetime to me. She was my first true love—and, I thought, the last—but things did not work out the way we planned. I think it was my choice of careers. After Special Forces, I got into security because there wasn’t much else for a guy like me to do. Personal escort was my favorite, protecting minor celebrities.

I moved on to consulting, but the pay wasn’t that great, and I was frequently gone for up to a week at a time. Missed my wife dearly during those days, but she didn’t miss me as much. It was a guy at work who did us in. I remember plotting to take him apart. I had a romantic vision stuck in my head. I would confront him, push him, and when he snapped and took a swing at me, I would separate his arm from his shoulder. Then I would break his jaw, leave him unable to beg Allison to come back. I spent hours and hours plotting. The play ran in my head, but I wised up after a few days and realized it was no use. It would just make me look like an animal to her.

Katherine had a gentle snore that was almost soothing after I’d spent so many months in this place without a soul to talk to. Her auburn hair was a mess in the moonlight, but I didn’t care. To me, she was the loveliest thing I had ever laid eyes upon. I longed to lean over and kiss her neck, but I feared waking her. Instead I lay, content, next to her warm body, breathing in her scent.

Damaged: that was a good way to describe her. Even though she had given herself to me, I could feel a gulf between us. It was as though I stood on one side of a stream, reaching out for her, but she remained on the other side, holding back as if she had a secret. I wanted to ask her about her life before the event, but I was afraid of the answer. She was with me now, and I didn’t want to hear about a past love. Perhaps my reluctance stemmed from my problems with Allison. I was not an insecure person by any stretch. I had always been very confident in myself and my abilities. The fact that I did not hang onto Allison could have torn me in half, but I didn’t let it.

I changed my mind and touched her after all, running my hand over her shoulder, which was bare and pale against the dark flannel sheets. The day had been warm, but nights in the cabin were cool. Thunder rattled across the sky, shaking the roof. Rain started to patter down once again, and I noticed that Katherine’s snores had stopped. She rolled over to face me in the dark, her eyes luminous in the pale light, like a cat’s eyes.

“When did that start?” she whispered.

“About five minutes ago. I’m surprised you slept through it for that long.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“The thunder?”

“After being in that enclosed space, large as it was, with all those people, I can’t believe how much I missed the sounds of nature. We don’t live in the Pacific Northwest because we want year-round sun. We live here for the beauty of the rain.”

“And here I was bored out of my mind with no one to talk to the whole time. Why didn’t I meet you on my way out of town back then?”

“That fickle bitch fate. You know how she likes to mess with our lives.”

I smiled at that and kissed her. She met the kiss but was still holding back, and I wanted to ask her what I was doing wrong. She went through the motions, but something was on her mind.

“Well, thank you for coming back with me. We should really talk about what the hell we’re going to do now. I don’t want to face an army of those things again, but I want to get to Portland.”

“I remember the first ones we ran into, during the whole zombie thing. It was bad enough that we had to put up with these groaning, moaning bastards with no brains that wandered around like lost kids. Alone, they weren’t that scary. I mean, you could see them coming a mile away and put a bullet in their skulls. It was around the third week that we felt like we were getting a handle on them. Masses were rounded up and taken away in trucks while we watched. The fence was just going up, and people were still running around town. Some were even going home at night.”

“Weird. I can’t picture the end of the world like that.”

“It wasn’t really the end. I mean, it isn’t now either. It’s like a bump in the road. Do you believe in evolution?”

That was a funny question. I was not a liberal, yet I couldn’t say that I was a religious man either. I needed explanations for stuff; I needed to see things to believe in them. The idea that there was some god sitting above me constantly judging my actions and planning to roast my ass in hell if I screwed up didn’t make sense. Then again, neither did the dead walking around.

“I think so. People have been changing for thousands of years, getting taller, losing their need for wisdom teeth, stuff like that.”

“And the ghouls are the natural offshoots of the zombies. The virus that reanimated the dead and created the mindless things, well, it affected the living in strange ways. It made them like a half-zombie hybrid.”

“What started it all?” I had never asked that question. Never really had anyone to ask it of.

“No one is really sure. Lots of theories but no answers. Some said it was a swine flu vaccine that went wrong, some said it was terrorists. Some said it was a comet strike stirring up weird stuff in the air. Space spores or something. We spent that whole first week listening to the news channels, talking, theorizing, but we never heard a real cause.”

“Someone has to know.”

“Maybe it is a form of evolution—a shifting bacterial infection that found a way to get rid of us. AIDS didn’t work; the black plague tried it; Ebola was a huge success. Maybe all those antibiotic-resistant monsters got together and figured out a way to kick our ass.”

“I like your ass right where it is.” I pushed myself against her as the rain came down harder than before. It rolled down the side of the house and splashed on the ground, making an ocean of noise.

Lightning lit the sky, and a glance out the window showed tall skeletons in the form of the trees surrounding the cabin. The air felt like it was charged. All those ions bouncing around from the flashes of light in the sky made my hair stand on end. Or maybe it was her shifting against me, under the covers, in that tiny bed.

“Is that right?”

I pushed the mess of hair off her forehead and kissed it gently. She offered me a smile in return. Those hard lines around her eyes softened for a moment, and I felt a genuine sense of affection.

“What did you do before?” I asked. We didn’t really talk about who we’d been before the incident. I think it was a byproduct of our current situation. I believe that, on some level, we were avoiding the ‘before’ because we wanted to concentrate on the now and not on our old lives. Those were long gone.

“I was a teacher. Social studies was my specialty, but I also taught girls’ volleyball.”

“Makes sense. You fight like a teacher.”

She laughed at that, and I smiled at her in the dark.

“I used to study a lot of martial arts. I took some kaji-kempo, and then some other stuff so I could work on my aggression issues. I had …”

I let it hang. I could hear her breathing in the dark, and she stiffened slightly against me.

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“It’s okay. I was hurt once by a man, and I swore that would never happen again, so I learned how to take care of myself.”

I stiffened under the blanket, my body going rock hard as tension primed me for violence. How dare a man lay a hand on a woman in anger. He’d better hope to hell he was long gone from her life in this new world.

“I’m sorry,” I offered lamely. I found I couldn’t let the tension go.

“It was a long time ago, and I usually don’t talk about it.”

“I’m sorry.” I took a couple of breaths to calm down.

“Anyway, I studied and I never feared a person again. Well, until I saw those ghouls and how much damage they can take before they go down.”

“Evolution again?”

“Something like that. They feel pain, and they fall if you shoot them in the head, but a wound just pisses them off. Some are smarter than others, and some are in control. The ones that came at us at the barricade were driven by one of the smart ones. You may think I’m crazy, but we had a theory that the smart ones used some sort of mind control.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“They seem to be able to put the ghouls into some sort of hypnotic state. They whip them into a frenzy, and they go crazy for blood. Did you see how they attacked us?”

She was right; they didn’t act like the zombies at all. Of course, I only had a few days’ worth of experience with the things, while she’d had months. I suppose a form of hypnosis wasn’t that much of a stretch. Look how far it got Hitler.

We chatted for a while longer, and she shifted under the blankets against me but didn’t seem interested in lovemaking. I was just happy to have her with me, so I didn’t press it. Her body was warm against mine, a feeling completely alien to everything I’d known for the last few months. I wrapped my arm around her and, sometime in the night, found solitude in sleep.

Morning came in with the same overcast gray. I struggled up to a sitting position and noticed she had put on a shirt sometime during the night. Katherine slept soundly while I rose and donned shorts and a tank top. The night may have been cold and rainy, but the day was already heating up. My watch was in the kitchen, and I was surprised to see it was after nine. When I was at the compound, we usually woke around seven, but at the cabin I was used to sleeping in—an indulgence I hadn’t allowed myself in years.

I dug out some coffee we’d scrounged from the convenience store and built up a fire in the stove. Water boiled, while I used my old method of suspending the grounds in a wrapped-up paper towel and letting it sit for a while. The water passed through my crude filter as it cooked, and within fifteen minutes, I had a fresh pot of Folgers. I grabbed a box of cereal, Lucky Charms, popped it open and sat down to enjoy breakfast.

She came out of the bedroom a half hour later and joined me. Her long legs hung out of the shirt, and she curled one under her body as she sat down. I felt a rush for her—a burst of emotion I could not readily identify. It was a combination of giddiness and warmth, and I wished I could put the feeling into words.

She smiled when I brought her a cup of coffee.

“Cream or sugar?”

“Neither. I’m used to drinking it black. We had a whole section of coffee saved up during the setup phase at the Walmart, and it was almost as closely guarded as the guns.”

“Priorities and all ...”

I was still getting used to drinking coffee again, having been without it for a few months. I got a quick caffeine buzz today because the brew was dark and very strong. I expected her to turn her nose up at the stuff and tell me it was too thick, but she took a sip, and then another without comment.

She mixed some of the powdered milk with water from a pitcher on the counter and poured it in a bowl with the cereal I was eating. I watched her move around the kitchen looking for things, and I pointed out where I stored items. If I expected her to comment on my placement, I was in for a surprise, because she accepted what I had done and went along without a word.

We ate in silence, glancing back and forth between our food and each other. I smiled more than once, and she returned a tight grin.

“How did you find this place?” she asked.

“It was a friend’s. I stayed here once with Allison, and it seemed like a good place to hide out while I waited for the world to go to hell.”

“Who is Allison?”

“Ex. We came here about five years ago and stayed for a week.”

She didn’t comment.

“So what would you like to do today, honey?” She tacked the last word on with a hint of sarcasm that got a grin out of me.

“I’m concerned about food. The main reason I left the cabin was because I was out, and the stuff we picked up on the way back won’t last long. We need to figure out how to survive.”

“I have a few ideas.”

“Oh yeah?”

Six long sticks poked out along the lake’s edge; bobbers of pinecones and chunks of wood hovered on the calm water while we sat and watched. A bucket of fresh water stood next to the poles in case we caught anything. I had my doubts. During the months I had spent here, I had caught maybe seven or eight fish.

I had dressed in jeans and left the tank top on. She didn’t have any clothes to speak of. Everything she owned had been left behind in the store. The plan had been to rejoin the caravan as it moved away from the city. We didn’t count on getting caught in the mess at the barricade.

So she wore one of my shirts like a dress and looped a piece of rope around her waist. Her pants were soaking in a tub of water with a little bit of soap. She and I set the fishing poles, then dragged down the little chairs from inside the cabin and sat them on the wet ground. The legs sank into the mud, but we were content to sit on rickety chairs as long as we could watch the poles.

We spoke a little, but for the most part, we just stared at the water. The gulf that separated us was in full effect again, and I wondered if it was I who was holding back.

“Penny for your thoughts,” I offered.

“Penny isn’t worth much these days.”

“It wasn’t worth much a year ago either.” I smiled.

“I don’t know what to do. I’m used to being busy, organizing, teaching the others to fight. I’m used to cleaning guns, rationing supplies. There isn’t really much to do here.”

“Except me,” I said with a leer.

“And there is that. I know there’s an attraction, but I’m old, Erik. I can’t have kids anymore, and in this new world, we need to repopulate, to replace the numbers we have lost.”

“You think I’m gonna run off with someone younger than me just because she can have babies? That’s just plain stupid, Katherine. I like you. I like being with you.”

“For now. I am a sad and empty girl. I loved the world more than anything, and then the world took away everything that meant anything to me. I hate it now, and if I died tomorrow in a gunfight, who would remember me? No one, and that’s just fine with me.”

“I’d remember you for the rest of my life,” I said, my voice choked with emotion.

“I’m sorry. I’m just trying to be practical.”

“Damn your practical. I’m happy to be with you for as long as you’ll have me.” I stood up and went to her, took her hands in mine. They were slim and cold, and I felt the edges of the hard calluses on the sides. Drawing her up to me, I hugged her tightly.

“Got one,” she yelled and slipped away. She grabbed the pole with the bobber that had been tugged underwater, hauling out a hard-looking little fish that resembled a catfish. After pulling it up, she ran her hand along the head to hold down the fin, then she took the hook out of its mouth and put it in the bucket.

I smiled at the thing as it swam in circles looking for a way out. We had dug out some worms and grubs and put them in the empty breadbox, so we would have a fresh supply ready all day. The hook went back in the water, and she took a seat to watch the poles. That was how we spent our first day together.

It was coming up on the hottest part of the day when she stripped off her shirt and tossed her panties at me. I hung them on the back of my chair and marveled at her body in the daylight. She stepped into the water, having moved the fishing poles aside, hooks removed and stuck in a branch so we could find them easily.

I shrugged out of my tank top and let my pants join hers. I followed her, and when my feet hit the water, I gasped. It was hot out, but this was very cold water. She flashed a smile at me then moved deeper, so the calm surface came up to her knees.

“Come on and catch me.” Some of the tension went out of her, and I followed. She dashed one way as I closed in, and then the other way when I reached for her. She stepped back, and I moved after her. Her eyes gleamed in the fading light, and I felt a rush of emotion for her once again that was hard to explain. The analytical side of me understood that I had a need to protect her, to watch out for her even though I had seen that she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself.

I sank to my ass and felt my pride shrivel up between my legs. She splashed water at me and I splashed back. A pair of birds flitted across the surface of the water behind her, then fled to the trees. I wished I had a way to catch them.

Her nipples were hard as little rocks when I caught her and pulled her close. We kissed, and I held her to me so she couldn’t get away. The water settled around us, and I thought about making love to her right there, but suspected it was too cold to try, though things below hinted that I was up for the challenge.

“You caught me. Now what are you going to do with me?” She smirked.

“I guess you’re mine now. I think I get to do whatever I like. I mean, as long as you, you know, want me to,” I finished lamely.

“That stuff I told you about was a long time ago, Erik. I trust you.”

“I’m glad.”

I stared past her at the far shore, because I thought I had seen movement. A shape that was vaguely manlike moved into the woods, but maybe it was just an animal. I stared for a long time, and she turned in my arms to follow my gaze.

“What is it?”

“I thought I saw something. Probably a deer.”

“Hmm, let’s go inside where the animals won’t see the things I am about to do to you,” she purred.

“Wait a minute. I get to do what I want.”

“Right. Same thing.”

Shadows moved across the wall after I lit candles in the dark. There were a few of them left, and I felt like it was the right thing to do—a romantic gesture. She stretched on the bed as I moved around the room with the lighter.

Earlier we had hauled in some of the fish, changed the water on the others, and then split them and fried them in a bit of olive oil I had saved. There were spices in the cabinets, things that had expired, but they tasted fine to me. Salt and pepper with a dash of powdered garlic that was so old it was turning white. The fish were delicious, and we ate a couple of them. We boiled beans and ate them with the fish, and when we were done, I soaked the pan in some water and took her back to bed.

We lay together again as I tried to find sleep. Her hand was draped across my waist this time, and every once in a while she would flinch, like she was nodding off. I wanted to sleep, but my mind was on all the things that had happened. Spring was on the way, and I was pretty sure we would be able to live on the stuff we caught here. Hunting would turn up some deer, and we would have meat, but we wouldn’t have any produce—no vegetables or fruit. We had some powdered milk, but not a lot, and the calcium would be sorely missed.

Unless we could find some fruit, I worried about us getting scurvy, the way sailors used to when they were at sea for lengths of time. Lack of vitamin C might be worse than lack of anything else.

I started to drift off as well, but something drew my eye to the window. The moon made the outside world murky at best, but the lack of outside light meant there was nothing to reflect off the glass in the cabin, so I had a good view out the window directly across from us. We could have constructed some sort of curtains, but there was no need for privacy out in the middle of nowhere.

Shadows drifted—diffuse shapes that eluded trees and ringed the cabin like silent sentinels. My eyes were drawn to a copse far away. I could just make it out in the dim light, and I could also make out a shape that I thought had green eyes, which stared into my own. I gasped and sat up in bed, clenched my eyes together then stared again, but the shape was gone.

“It was probably a deer plotting to set a trap for you,” Katherine said the next morning.

We were enjoying breakfast, such as it was. She was sitting across from me, having woken earlier and made coffee and some flat but tasty pancakes. We didn’t have anything to make the things rise, and she used some Cheerios, ground up, to make the mess stick together before baking them in the oven. The coffee was strong, and I enjoyed several cups.

She wore one of my shirts again, and it looked a hell of a lot better on her than on me. Long legs flashed every time she moved around the room, and she wore the top unbuttoned low. She looked rested for the first time, like she had really slept last night. I imagined it was hard to leave the life she had led over the past five or so months and move in with me. All the familiar sights and sounds – just gone.

She cracked the windows so a breeze rolled through the cabin and out the open door. I thought of the shape I had seen the night before, but discounted it as not being real. We were too secluded to attract one of those things.

Then again, why hadn’t I ran some sort of snares or alarms? Bottles hanging from twine might be just the thing to give me a heads up. I would have to scour the cabin for stuff to use. There are probably enough bottles left over from the preserves to make something. The biggest problem would be covering the entire area around the cabin. If I did it, I would have to be careful where I placed everything.

I tossed the rest of my coffee back, wandered to the back window, and stood there for some time. The trees made it hard to see far, so I crouched down to the level where I’d been when I saw the figure and stared for a long time. I found the copse and watched it. Birds flitted from tree to tree, and I heard the unmistakable call of a hawk as it soared somewhere over the woods. It was green, pastoral, and I felt at ease once again. The sense of normalcy, the comfort of having Katherine with me, sank in, and I smiled at my imagined apparition, then went to join her in the other room. The smell was all Pacific Northwest. Trees and fresh dirt. Moisture in the air. Everything just as normal as it should be.

“No monsters?” She sat on the chair, legs crossed demurely while she sipped her coffee.

“Not that I could see.”

“Then come and kiss me.”

The trail was hard to pick out. I had been this way a few times while hunting last year, but it was far from the lake, and I didn’t think I would have much luck hunting here. Now, with food being scarce and necessary for the two of us, I would settle for cooking squirrels if I was fast enough to take one down.

I was dressed in my jeans and a long flannel shirt. She wore her jeans and a shirt of mine belted at the waist. She had to roll up the sleeves, and she wore one of Ray’s camouflage caps at an angle that made her look just as cute as could be. She followed behind me, hunting rifle pointing at the ground. I had the .20-gauge in hand and one of the handguns in the waistband of my pants.

“I think it was near here,” I said as we crashed through the low vegetation. Any pretense at moving in quietly as we stalked prey was cast aside as we made for the spot. I was still trying to convince myself I hadn’t seen anything at all—just a trick of the light, a ghostly mirage brought on by mist and the low moon.

The air was crisp and clear, and the smell of evergreens was pungent. There were fallen pinecones to crunch across, wild blackberry branches to step over and push aside. Too bad it wasn’t closer to summer. With all the berries, we could solve our vitamin C problem and make a sweet treat. She kept an eye on the ground, because she wanted to find some tubers and cook them. Tubers sounded strange, but she told me they were similar to potatoes.

I dropped to my knees as if I knew what I was doing, looking for footprints or broken vegetation near the ground. Nothing stood out, so I moved around the spot, but still nothing caught my eye. I didn’t really know what to look for anyway. I was far from a scout. In fact, if a game trail jumped up and bit me, I wouldn’t know what to do with it.

“See. It was nothing,” she said as she moved behind me.

“I know, but thanks for humoring me.”

“No problem. Someone has to straighten you out, living out here alone for this long. I’m just glad you don’t run around naked with a bunch of paint on your face yelling that the cavalry is coming. A person needs companionship.”

“Well, I have you now. You’ll just have to stick around for a while and make sure I’m not crazy.” I grinned at her. “I was thinking of running some sort of alarm. Just some fishing wire with bottles. It would alert us if something was trying to get to the cabin.”

“Good idea. There is a lot of land to cover. How are you going to differentiate between game and a green-eyed asshole?”

I shrugged. She had a good point. We should be so lucky as to have a buck wander near the cabin and alert us to his presence. He might as well show up with a dinner bib on.

She blew a piece of hair out of her face where it escaped her cap. Her eyes had a bit of tightness to them, like she was still holding back. I was willing to wait her out. She was worth it. All the horror of the world that we lost, she had seen it. She witnessed the worst and came out of it stronger. I admired her willpower, and promised myself I would keep her safe. Of course, she was one tough cookie. She would probably end up keeping me safe. I smiled at myself. Later I would ask her to spar with me, teach me some of those reverse hook punches I had seen the first night. She put a wicked snap on them.

As if one of them had read my thoughts, I managed to bring down a deer a few hours later. We dragged the whole thing back to the cabin and butchered it. She even sipped at some of the blood, so I joined her. When I looked up at her, I recoiled. She reminded me of the ghouls we’d fought just a few days ago with the blood dripping down her mouth and chin.

I shuddered and looked away.

We cut up the meat, and then she showed me how to make strips of it so we could smoke it. I made a fire outside, and we used an old barrel lined with small branches to chamber the smoke. We put as much meat in as we could, and let it sit outside all evening. We had fresh steaks, and then I made a stew with some of the meat and rice. It wouldn’t last long. In fact, none of the meat would.

“We can’t stay here,” I said.

“I know. We have no way to refrigerate stuff, and if we don’t cure the meat before smoking it, we run the chance of getting sick. We would need a lot of salt for that.”

“Think we should go back to that store and see if we can find some?”

“It’s worth a try, but I think we should try for Portland.”

I had to agree with her. The thought of staying in the cabin was one I found hard not to love. I wanted to spend as much time as I could with her. I wanted to make her happy, and show her how much she meant to me now that she had rescued me from loneliness. She stared into my eyes in a challenging way. I think that if I’d said no, she would have tried to go without me.

“I think so too. It’s a good idea to go soon, since we may have wiped out a lot of those ghouls from town. We can probably zip through that barricade, or what’s left of it, and then set out after the group.”

She leaned over and kissed me, but I caught a hint of sadness in the gesture. I looked away, because I was reminded of Pat’s sacrifice at the barrier.

We buried the remains of the deer a ways from our home. I went out with an old shovel while she straightened up the cabin. I put all the parts in an old, black plastic bag I had been using for various functions and dragged it away. The thing had a hole in it somewhere, so it leaked a trail of blood behind me. At first I tried to flip the bag over, but it was overloaded, and I was afraid it would break. I tried to cover it up by kicking leaves and pine needles over the stain, but I knew it was useless. A predator would smell the blood from a mile away.

I found a patch of ground and went at it with the shovel. It was hard, and there were a lot of roots in the way. I had to really work at it, but it felt good to stretch my muscles. At one point, I found a thick root and went back to the cabin for my axe. I tugged it from under the edge of a bench on the porch. When I looked in the window, I saw Katherine with her back to me. She was standing in the kitchen, staring out the window. I watched her for almost a minute, but she didn’t move. Then her hand went to her forehead, and I saw her shoulders move up and down as if she were sobbing.

I walked back to the hole and finished with some judicious use of the sharp blade. As I dug, I thought of my companion. She was close to me in years, but she had the weariness of someone much older. I found it very hard to put myself in her shoes, to imagine losing my entire family to those things. I knew that it made her a bit of a wildcard; I had seen the battle and the way she reacted to the things at the barricade. She had been almost gleeful while she fired into their ranks. As we drove away, she had swerved to hit some of them with my car. Just ran them down, even though they were trying to get out of the way. I had a feeling that when, and if, we did battle again, I would need to keep a close eye on her.

I looked up, because I had a strange feeling between my shoulder blades, like someone just ran a feather over my skin. I had that feeling before, a few times, when the action was hot in Iraq. Ducking had usually been the thing to do, reacting to the strange sixth sense that we humans had when being watched.

I spun in a circle as I studied the thick vegetation. It was probably Katherine coming to get me for help with something.

“That you, babe?” I called out with a smile, determined not to let her know I had seen her earlier.

Nothing.

I walked around the spot and looked toward the cabin. I sighed, dumped the bag in the hole, and pushed dirt over it. Covered in sweat, I slipped my shirt off, just as I heard movement in the distance. I snapped my gaze up, and could have sworn I saw a man walking away from the site, a good fifty feet away. Goosebumps burst out all over my body, and I reached to the back of my pants for the gun.

Only I had left the gun at the cabin.

I should have gone back and grabbed a weapon, gotten Katherine, made sure it wasn’t her I had seen. I should have done a lot of things, but instead I picked up the axe and walked toward the place where I had seen the shape. I moved as quietly as I could for a man in size 12 iron-toed boots, which wasn’t very quietly at all. Branches and twigs crunched under me, as did pinecones and green needles left to rot.

A pair of birds shot out of the woods ahead. I gasped when they took flight, but kept my cool. If I had my shotgun, I might have dropped them and had roast bird tonight. They weren’t quail, but they looked very tasty after the stuff I had fed on for the last few days. Deer was tasty but gamey, with a slight musk that reminded me of lamb. The little birds, though, with some salt and pepper on the open fire would be quite a fine meal, even if I had to spit out buckshot.

There was a small clearing ahead, and I stopped to look around, turning in a full circle. I listened when I didn’t see anything, just stood in place with my eyes closed, but nothing … wait. Was that a keening sound?

It reminded me of a dog or something, maybe caught in a trap. As much as I had traipsed over this area, it was still possible that I missed a snare left by a hunter. If it was a raccoon, I wasn’t sure what I would do. I’d probably have to kill it rather than face getting bitten trying to set it free.

I moved toward the sound, which came from the direction of the sinking sun. The bright light blinded me, so I shaded my eyes with one hand as I crept up on the location.

I came upon a man who seemed to be stuck on a tree. A branch had snagged his jacket, and he wasn’t able to get loose. He was dressed in rags, like he had lived in the woods for a long time. His hair was disheveled and full of twigs and pine needles. How long had he been out here? His jacket was green, which explained why it had been so hard to see him. It wasn’t camouflage, but the color was just the sort of green to make a person’s eyes slip past it in the woods.

“You okay?” I asked in a low tone that was meant to make him aware of my presence. I was carrying an axe, after all, and having someone creep up and scare the shit out of me was a good excuse to turn around and attack first, then ask questions while cleaning up the wounds. He did turn around, but I wasn’t expecting the vacant look on his face that proclaimed him to be dead.

I backed up as the zombie turned. He moved slowly and moaned at me. His face was a nightmare of wounds, I guessed from walking through the woods and getting his face scratched. I supposed when you didn’t feel pain, you didn’t really care about twigs whipping against your face and body.

I shuddered at the thought, then I got a look at his mouth, which was dry and covered in old blood. This contrasted against the blue lips and jagged, yellow teeth. He continued to turn and shuffle at the same time. He keened in that tone I had heard earlier, taking it for an animal. The analytical part of my brain pondered how the thing could make noise like that when he clearly wasn’t breathing. His jacket was open, and his shirt was in shreds. He even had a gaping wound in his gut, and out of that horror fell a mass of maggots and things that would haunt my sleep that night. He tried to stagger forward but remained caught. I backed up and wanted to run. I wanted to go back to the cabin and forget about what I had seen. I wanted to run screaming, then come back with one of the assault rifles and blow this horror away.

Instead, I unlimbered the axe, as if suddenly remembering it was there. I held it in two hands and regarded my opponent. Though it offered no real fight, I had to kill the thing on principle alone. When I was back in Vesper Lake, I had been fighting for my life. Now I was just doing preventive maintenance. It had to be done for our safety; I would put a rabid dog down the same way.

I lifted the axe high above my head. The back of it was flat, and I hoped it would splatter less if I hit him on the temple, and then crushed his skull while he was on the ground. I lowered the haft in a horizontal plane to the ground, watching him raise one arm toward me like an automaton. Then he tugged forward, and with a rip, the man’s jacket tore as he staggered toward me.

I swung too late and hit him in the shoulder, which pushed him to the side. He spun nearly around with the impact, but turned again to come at me. I backed up, stepped on a fallen branch, and stumbled backward. Reaching out with one hand, I found nothing to catch me, so I had to take a few steps to recover. He came at me, eyes livid and teeth bared. He moaned, and the remains of his jagged teeth and torn lips were the only things I managed to focus on.

If he touched me with those teeth, I would be dead before I could curse him. Just a bite—that was all it took. I would have enough time to fall over before he was tearing into my flesh, and in the event I managed to fight him off, I would still have the wound to contend with.

Giving in to gravity, I fell back, landing on my ass in a heap. I rolled to the left as quickly as I could, dropping the axe in the process. Before his hands came up to grab me, I was back on my feet. I pushed his arms down then thrust him away. As he spun to the right, I planted my boot in the small of his back and kicked him back the way he had come.

I was panting hard from the rush of adrenaline, from the sudden exertion, and from the fear that was ripping at my brain like a bird of prey. I looked for the axe, but it was lying in the brush, and I was frightened of going for it. I didn’t want to take my eyes off him for even a second. I kicked him again, harder this time. He was driven into the tree, and, as he staggered away, he went down. He made no attempt to break his fall; he just flopped over like a rag doll.

Staring up at me, he cocked his head to the side and went for one leg. His teeth were bared in a rictus that looked plastered there. This thing wore one expression, and that was anger.

I lifted my boot and smashed his face before I could think about what I was doing. Oh Jesus, it crunched under my heel, nose compacting and blood spurting. I lifted my heel again, and this time thrust down so hard that I felt his face cave in under the blow. He still flopped his hands around and kicked at the ground like a struggling animal. The third kick cracked his skull like a giant egg, and soft brain matter flowed around my foot, so that I slipped and almost fell down for the second time that morning.

I staggered back and rubbed the bottom of my shoe on the soft vegetation, as if I could wipe away the guilt of what I had just done to the man. I wanted to throw up my breakfast. I wanted to run back to the cabin and hide in the bedroom for the rest of the day.

I backed away from the corpse. He didn’t move one bit, no final shake or shiver. Limbs didn’t twitch; he was just dead. Again.

Feeling sick, I turned away and went back to the hole I had dug and finished the job. Pushed dirt over the remains of the deer, stared at the ground for a few minutes, looked back at the place where I had crushed a man’s skull.

How in the hell had the guy found this place? Was there another cabin nearby? Were there more of them? I should have taken a moment to walk the area and check for them, but I needed a gun for that. I wasn’t eager to be faced with hand to hand combat again anytime soon.

I returned to the cabin, and Katherine was herself once more—composed, cool, and relaxed, except for the tightness around her eyes. When I kissed her, she hugged me tight, but it felt mechanical. How I wanted to ask her about the sadness that had come over her, about the pain that made her hold back, but I was too afraid of the answers to those questions. I wanted her to be mine. The selfish part of my brain wanted her to belong to me, and not to her family from before the event. I wanted her to love me, not the memory of the things she had lost.

Sighing, I went to collect a gun and some ammo. I told her what had happened in the wood, and she agreed that we should sweep the immediate area. I took one of the handguns, a .40-caliber pistol, and checked the load. The magazine was full, so I tucked it into my belt and loaded my shotgun with as many shells as I could shove in there. Then I tucked a few into my pockets.

She took a 9 mm to cover me, slinging the hunting rifle over her shoulder. I wished we had another shotgun, for up-close work if we needed to fight. The spread would be devastating with both of us shooting. She held the pistol at her side as we left the cabin. I wished I could lock it, but we had never found a key. It was silly. The thing that had attacked me in the woods was surely a lone incident, a lone man—zombie—lost in the woods, and I just happened to stumble upon him. Maybe he had lived somewhere nearby, another cabin or lodge, perhaps. Maybe he had some vague recollection of the area and was just lost. He was probably the same shape I had seen the night before.

We walked outside the cabin, establishing a perimeter a hundred feet in every direction. The day was cool, which suited me just fine. I was too amped up to deal with heat today.

We found—nothing, and I was more than a bit relieved. We went back to the cabin, both exhausted after stomping over the vegetation, through bushes, over piles of needles, around large copses. She kept a compass out and was good with the device, keeping us on the perimeter at all times. She would point back in the direction of the cabin with a grin every time I looked worried about how far we had gone.

We passed the car, looked it over, and then walked to the road as the last part of our reconnoiter. I hugged the bushes while Katherine stood back and covered me. Unmoving, I kept an eye on the entry for a few minutes. My focus roving around, I listened and watched, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. With a heavy sigh, I turned and smiled at her, so she joined me at the gate.

“I hope he was the only one.”

“Me too. I don’t want to go through that again.”

“You’ve killed them before. What’s the big deal?” Her voice was as dead as the thing in the woods I had smashed into the dirt. I regretted the killing, but she seemed blasé, as if taking a human life was the norm.

“I did, but that doesn’t mean I liked it.”

“You get used to it.”

She spun on her heel and walked up the road toward the cabin.

That night was much as the last, except we talked about where we should go next. They had put some gas in the Honda at the fort, but it wouldn’t last long enough to get us around the mountain from this side. We would probably have to head back to Vesper Lake and try to get through the city. I was hoping that if we could keep up enough speed, we would be able to just zip through the tiny town, and then get on the freeway and follow the caravan before a horde figured out where we were going. They should be in Portland now, enjoying the good life. I bet it was all smiles, flowing beer, and plates of hot food. Or at least something to eat, I thought as I chewed on a hunk of dried deer meat that had a strong smoke flavor and nothing else.

We lay in bed, side by side, my head near her ear. Her hair frizzed out, probably from not having any sort of conditioner. I tried to imagine what she had been like before the event, but I had trouble picturing her as a classic soccer mom with a minivan and kids in the back.

“When we reach a place with people, I’ll understand if you want to leave me and find someone else.” She spoke softly into her pillow, barely above a whisper.

“I don’t want to be with anyone else,” I assured her, tugging her naked body closer to me under the sheets. She was so soft and warm under the blanket that I wanted to stay this way for a week.

“I can’t have children,” she reminded me after a long, quiet moment.

“I don’t care. I don’t have any, and never put much thought into the idea of having them anyway.”

“But it would be irresponsible, Erik. How many people are dead out there? We need everyone to help repopulate the world. I don’t have a place in that world. I can’t contribute a child.”

“Katherine, you aren’t a breeding machine. No one is. Life will return no matter what and no matter who I want to be with. I don’t want to run around and bang rows of girls in the hopes of making one pregnant. There will be plenty of horn dogs up for that job.” I tried to make a joke of it, but she didn’t laugh.

“It’s not funny. All the children are dead, so many are just … gone. We need to have more, and I can’t help. I had cervical cancer, but Frank didn’t care. He and I had two already, and we were happy.” She sobbed into the pillow, and I held her close. It was the first time she had mentioned the name of one of her family.

I didn’t know what to say. I was going to tell her I loved her, and I think I did. I certainly had strong feelings for her, but was it enough to overcome this ... this insecurity? Her body shook, and she pressed her head deeper into the down pillow and tried to stifle the sobs. I wanted to tell her everything would be okay, but there was no way to know that with certainty.

“Kat, I …”

A pair of green eyes stared into the window from less than twenty feet away.

“Oh fuck!” I stifled the exclamation at the last second. I was out of bed in another second, and into my pants before the glow disappeared. Snatching up the shotgun from where it rested near the bed, I checked the load while I was getting into my boots.

Katherine came to her feet, and the blankets piled around the middle of the bed, while she stared at me like I had seen a ghost. I had seen a ghost, or a ghoul, to be precise. And the son of a bitch was right outside the cabin.

“Ghoul,” I whispered, and she dropped down to find her clothes. I tossed the gun on the bed, shrugged into a shirt, and buttoned up the top. I glanced outside as I moved, watching for the green thing in the bushes, but it was gone.

I went to the front of the cabin with Katherine close behind. She didn’t even question; she just grabbed the handgun, popped the magazine and double-checked the load, slammed it into the piece, and then slid the top back to load a round. She followed as she performed the movements, all smooth, all by the book. I was impressed once again with the way she went about this. She was a seasoned pro, and I, the former military guy, was left looking a little frazzled.

I checked the windows, ducking low as I did so, but I sucked in a breath and stood up. Those things didn’t use guns; they attacked en masse and didn’t care for the consequences or losses. They were one step above mindless zombies—the monsters that had started the whole event. I hoped it was just one of the damn ghouls. I didn’t know how we would defend against a hundred of them. It had to be one, just like the zombie I killed in the woods earlier. It had to be a single ghoul, lost and alone in the woods.

Maybe I was just seeing things, just imagining the man with green eyes, the shape in the woods, and the impression of someone watching me with Katherine in bed. Fury filled me, and I gripped the shotgun tightly. I strode to the front door and opened it, letting it swing back wildly to bang against the wall. How dare one of those things invade my privacy. Was there no place free of them?

I had the irrational dread that they would overrun us, take us, eat our flesh, or change us into them. The details on the ghouls had been scarce, but Thomas had told me enough to scare me. He told me about how the things had become smarter, how they had seemed to be making plans and following through with them. How they drove the first zombies before them like an army. An army of the dead.

I aimed the gun in the wan light, but all I saw were half shapes—shadows of things that were barely visible in the three-quarter moon. The trees around the cabin made it twice as hard to see, rendering it darker than it should be.

I wanted the darkness now; I wanted to fade into it and hunt the monster down. It was just a dead man who would soon have no head. They didn’t have any special powers, and they certainly didn’t possess strength beyond that of a human. What they did have, from what I had witnessed in my few skirmishes with them, was a rage that went beyond anything I had ever seen before. Soldiers on the front line didn’t even act that insane. The ghouls had shrugged off wounds, gunshots, kicks to the head, and came on more pissed off than before.

“Where are you?” I whispered to myself as I panned the gun around the area.

I heard Katherine moving behind me on the porch. I risked a glance back, and found her leaning against a post that supported the porch roof, so she blended into the darkness like part of the cabin.

She blinked, her eyes bright white against the dark, and I grinned at her.

Turning, I took a step toward the woods and stopped right at the edge. I didn’t move, stood as still as I could for a few minutes, but I didn’t hear any movement. I was prepared to admit I was seeing things; one of those dreams you have in the day when you close your eyes for a few minutes. I had probably slipped into that half realm of sleep and didn’t even realize it. But as I prepared to go back to the cabin, I heard movement.

It was to the right, so I swung the gun that way. Then movement to the left. I backed up a step and panned the gun around me. Whipping my head around, I tried to focus on one sound, but movement in front of me threw me off.

I heard Katherine gasp and turned to look. She had taken a step down the stairs and stood on the bottom one, staring away from me, into the darkness. Following her gaze, I saw a figure move into the moonlight. It was a woman in torn clothing, and she moved like she was injured. I ran in that direction, gun locked against my shoulder.

“Hey, hey! Are you hurt?” I knew the words were stupid right after they came out of my mouth. She was a zombie—had to be. Living people didn’t move like that. That slow, shambling half-stagger like a drunk trying to look sober—but less coordinated.

I didn’t get a chance for further inquiries, as Katherine pulled the gun up to eye level, aimed, and put one right between the woman’s eyes. The woman stopped as if in shock, then sank to her knees and fell face forward into the dirt with a finality that sickened me. Her arms didn’t even flop; her legs and arms didn’t twitch.

I spun around as something crunched across the grass, catching sight of an enormous man with no shirt on, who moved in slow motion. He was dressed like a farmer—overalls on, suspenders half off of his massive frame. His mouth was missing its jaw, and ribbons of flesh swayed from his head, just like they did at his open gut. I followed my girlfriend’s actions by raising the gun and blowing his head off.

No matter what you think about me from reading this tale, I do not take any pleasure in killing. I flinched when I did it. I don’t think taking a life is an action that anyone should ever contemplate, let alone perform. But it was necessary, and the fact that they weren’t exactly alive helped propel me along the path to becoming a mass murderer.

His head half-disappeared, and he fell backwards as the buckshot threw him off his feet.

Katherine’s gun popped a couple of times behind me, so I spun around. She was contending with a pair of zombies that came out of the woods. From what I saw of them, it looked like they were on a hiking trip before they died. An older man and woman, they were both covered in blood. He stooped as he staggered, and, despite missing an arm, his backpack remained on one shoulder. He carried it low, like some bizarre hunchback.

They both dropped, and I had to back up as three more came out of the woods toward me. Curse the night. It made them almost impossible to see unless they were right in front of us. I fired low, intent on at least hitting them if I couldn’t make a headshot. I was backing toward the cabin, gun level, and I knew that Katherine had my back. The gun fired again, this time twice, and one more of the things dropped.

I moved toward her, toward the sounds she made as she lifted the gun and fired. At one point, I thought I was right next to the cabin, but I was much farther away than I estimated, and I took a look back. I met her eyes, and they gleamed in the dark. While I hated killing the people in front of us, she loved it.

Then I swung my attention back as more came at us. I saw a flash of green in the woods, and I knew that the one in charge had shown himself. I aimed in that direction and sprayed with buckshot, even though he was about forty feet away. I didn’t really stand a chance of killing him, but I would settle for a wound, maybe a lucky eyeful of shot.

“In the cabin,” she yelled, and I turned and hit the step. Then I reconsidered. If we went inside and more of the things arrived, we would be stuck, forced to defend four sides against them, because as soon as the windows broke, they would be on us. If the dead things weren’t driven by the ghoul, I was pretty sure we could disappear in the cabin and they would go away, not bothering to look inside.

“Let’s get out of here, Katherine. Let’s get in the Honda and go!”

She nodded. “Where are the keys?”

“Kitchen. Right next to the stove in the big wooden bowl.”

“Okay.”

She dashed in through the open door, and I heard her stumble into something. Then something else fell over. I should have prepared a bug out kit, a backpack with weapons, food, ammo, but it just hadn’t seemed all that necessary. I saw at least five of them closing in on the cabin, but I was busy shoving shells into the shotgun.

“Get me some more shot for the shotgun,” I yelled at the door. Rifle loaded, I put it to my shoulder and shot one of the things in the throat, which punched it backwards where it flopped to the ground. I jacked another shell in, lifted the gun, aimed carefully, and took one’s head off.

The darkness was getting to me. The blasts of the gun stole my sight away each time. I didn’t have time to get used to the dark after I fired. I stayed at the foot of the stairs and waited patiently for Katherine. I heard her back into something else in her haste. We didn’t really put things anywhere with any logic, and I cursed the poor planning. Usually, I was much better at that kind of stuff, but I wasn’t seeing the future as brightly as I should have. I should have been better prepared. Should have, could have, and would have—no use in dwelling on mistakes.

“I can’t see!” she yelled, and I heard things thrown about as she felt around in the dark. The gunshots had to have stolen her eyesight as well, and it would be a while before she had her night vision back. I’d have given about a million dollars for a pair of night vision goggles right about then.

One was almost on me when I shot him in the chest. At least I think it was a he. The figure was just a blur in the dark. It moaned, deep and long. I spun to my right and dropped another one. Some of the shot went wide, taking one of the zombies behind this one in the leg. That zombie fell down and started crawling toward me.

“Got ‘em!” she yelled. I wondered if she’d gotten more bullets or the keys or both. She came dashing out, just in time to drop one in her tracks. The zombie was dressed in bright orange sweats that made her stand out, even in the dark.

Katherine handed me a box, and I hoped it was the shotgun shells. I dropped to a crouch, dumping the container on the ground. Big shells went everywhere, and I scooped them up, putting them in my pockets as fast as I could. She covered me, ejecting a magazine and slamming one home in one quick motion.

“Let’s go, Erik!” She shot one of the things in the face. They were coming in force now. There was a trickle before, but now there were a lot more. I took off, her holding my hand and covering me as I ran for the car. There were a few ahead of us, but it seemed like most had been headed toward the cabin.

A few more appeared as we ran in the dark, but for the most part, it was a clear path. We dodged a pair that stumbled past, and then I shot one in the face when he drifted in front of us from a section of the road.

The Honda was just ahead. I could make out its shape as we ran. We put on a burst of speed. The car was soon surrounded by moving forms. We were in even deeper trouble. I raised the gun and shot one that was shambling in our direction, but, as I watched, more walked toward the vehicle, as if they were being driven. I glanced around from side to side and, sure enough, there was the green glow of that bastard. I wanted to peel away and run after him. Shoot him in the head and see if he could control anything with his brains all over the fucking forest.

Katherine must have followed my focus, because she emptied the magazine in the thing’s direction, then slammed in a replacement just as quick as a whip. She had one hand on me, on my shoulder, so I was guiding us in the dark. I had to rely on the poor moonlight as I pounded over ground covered in gravel and bits of wood. One wrong move and we would be eating dirt.

A shot rang out, and I felt Katherine stumble against me. She let out a cry. I slowed and turned to see if she had tripped on something, but she was holding her arm. In the moon’s faint glow, her eyes showed shock.

“What happened?”

“Shot! Someone fucking shot me!”

“That’s not possible. Those things don’t use guns.”

“Well, someone in the woods has my number, because I’ve been shot.” She groaned and stumbled against me.

“Shit!” I ran ahead and fired off a few blasts, dropping zombies as they staggered toward me. The smell of gunshot and blood was heavy in the air. The undercurrent of pine and spruce couldn’t disguise it. I wondered if I would be smelling blood tonight in a more intimate way. My own blood, as my flesh was torn from my body.

I hugged Katherine to me as I stumbled into the back of the SUV. The barrel of the gun clanged against the top of the vehicle. I had half a mind to dive in the back, grab the M249 and open up with it. I could take out dozens of them and every tree in sight.

A crash behind me told me they were in the cabin. Stuff smashed against the floor. They weren’t my things, but I still felt a sense of loss at the intrusion into our lives, into my new home.

I groaned and maneuvered Katherine to the passenger side seat. One of the bastards came out of the dark, so I lifted one leg and kicked straight out, smashing the undead man in the chest with about two hundred pounds of pressure. The kick was under control, yet panic rode my body like a wave. I felt it cresting in my chest and threatening to bubble to the surface. I knew how to react to it, how to hone and form it into nothing but pure violence.

I was around the car in a flash as she slammed the door shut. I heard the metal plate rattle from the motion, then more metal on metal as the gun nozzle was extended. She fired once, groaned, and then fired again. I was in the driver’s side seat in a pair of heartbeats, and I slammed the door in one of their faces. A man about my age, who was missing an eye and all of his teeth. From his gums hung strips of flesh that flapped when he opened and shut his mouth, making him look as if he chewed a piece of meat.

I shivered at the dreadful image, then slammed the door open into his face. He fell back, and I slammed the door again. I could see Katherine clutching her shoulder with one hand as she grimaced and tried not to cry out in pain. I took the keys from my pocket and found the big Honda key with ease. It slid in, and I waited for the inevitable part of the movie where the car won’t start. It always happened when two people were in a vehicle and creatures were closing in, but this time we were greeted by the small but powerful engine kicking over. I hit the headlights and gasped at the mass of zombies in front of us.

The front of the car was not covered by metal as the windows were, and I wondered if I would be able to make it through the dead. I counted three of them directly in front of the car and at least five or six more behind them.

Pushing the panic down again, I directed my energy toward a cool and calm violence—something at which I was becoming very good. I eased the car forward until the bumper pushed into the first pair of monstrosities, then gave it some gas to nudge them. One spun away to the right, but the other went down in an uncoordinated mass of limbs. I drove over him, his body responding with a sickening crunch. I pressed on, one body at a time, until we had pushed aside or flattened all before us, but a quick glance in the rearview mirror revealed a couple of them in pursuit.

They weren’t moving fast, but they were being driven. I noticed green and felt the urge to grab the machine gun, pop the top, and lay into him. I couldn’t risk it, however; not with Katherine bleeding next to me. With every bump, she groaned, and more than once cried out in pain. I reached over and put my hand on her leg, but she didn’t respond to my gestures.

We made it to the gate, and I ignored it, assuming we would never return, and this time punched the gas. I took out one more of the things and smashed through the wooden planks as if they were kindling. The green aura faded behind me as I swung the car to the right, so that the ghoul was no longer in my rearview mirror. I set it at thirty-five and, when the road was clear, took it up about ten miles per hour. I hadn’t gone this way and didn’t know what to expect. I had driven toward town before, and that didn’t turn out so well, so I went the other way. I had no idea where this led, except deeper into the mountains. I did look at maps the last time I was here, with Allison, but the memory of those was long gone.

“You okay?” I asked.

“It hurts,” she whispered. I could hear the pain in her voice but could do little for her. I drove on as indecision gnawed at me. After another mile, I pulled over to the side of the road and had a chuckle at myself—at my old habit of getting out of the way. No one was going this way except us. I bet I could have stayed there for a day and not have spotted another soul in an automobile.

“Let me see.” I turned on the overhead light, which barely illuminated the interior. It was dim and dull, as if the light bulb were going out.

“Just drive,” she said softly.

Turning, I took her bloody hand in mine. I pulled it down gently as I stared into her eyes. She held on at first, gripping her sweatshirt like it was her prized possession. Then, after a very brief battle of wills, she gave in and let down her guard. I tugged at the shirt as gently as I could, but she winced and gasped as I touched the wound.

Her pale skin was marred by the puncture. It puckered out above her shoulder blade, and I worried about fragments of bone exploding from the shot and causing more damage. I tugged her forward and verified that there was an entrance and an exit wound, so at least the bullet wasn’t stuck in her. How the hell had this happened?

“Did you see who shot you?” I reached for the glove box and found some old paper towels. Probably left over from the last time I cleaned the car, months and months ago. I tore off the first few and threw them in the back, then folded one into quarters and pressed it to the wound. She cried out and moved to push my hand out of the way, but I batted it aside.

“I’m sorry it hurts. I’m concerned about the blood loss, so please keep these packed close.” I tried to sound reassuring, but even a wound this small could be deadly. She needed antibiotics, a doctor, stitching at the very least. I would settle for a vet right about now.

Portland. The name rang in my head, and I knew that was where we needed to go.

“No,” she said.

“What?”

“I didn’t see who shot me, but it couldn’t be one of those things. One of the zombies. It had to be a ghoul, which means they are getting smarter, learning our ways.”

“They used to be us. I would say they already know our ways.” I folded another paper towel and put it over the back of the wound, then carefully slipped her shirt back over it and put her hand on the wound. “Hold that tight.”

She settled back in her seat and pressed on her shoulder. I flipped through the glove box and found an old bottle of Advil. I wasn’t sure if it would thin her blood out, but a couple might at least take the edge off. I rattled the bottle in her direction, and she gave me a half-smile. Opening the lid, I asked her if she wanted two.

“Give me four.”

Nodding, I handed them over, and she dry swallowed them. I grew thirsty watching her suck them down. I would have given anything for a glass of ice-cold water right about then.

Starting the car, I looked back the way we had come. If I went forward, we might drive for hours before I found a way out of the gorge between the mountains. If I went the other way, I knew we could make it back to Vesper Lake, but I was sure it would be just as bad as the last time I was there, when the things almost got me. Now I would be with someone who was wounded, which meant keeping a constant eye on her. I couldn’t count on help from the Walmart crew; they should all be long gone. I would have to get to town and find a back way out of it without attracting too much attention.

“I think we need to head back to town, pass through and either catch up with the caravan or get to Portland. They are waiting for us there.”

“How are we going to get out of there without the things tearing us apart? I know how many there are, and how much they want our blood. There’s no way, Erik. No way.”

“I’ll have to find a way around,” I said, glancing at the gas tank, which was about a quarter full. I was sure we could get there, and then maybe halfway to Portland. We would have to stop and fill up somewhere. I was thinking that we could drive around and find a trucking station, maybe a car dealership. They always had gas on hand, and we only needed four or five gallons to get us there. The problem was that we could well run out before we found a place to fill up.

“It’s dangerous.”

“So is letting you bleed to death.”

“I won’t bleed to death. It’s slowing now; the paper towels are helping.”

Leaning over, I kissed her. Her lips were cold, and she was tense from the pain. I turned up the heat and put the car in gear. After doing a one-eighty, I punched the gas. The metal plates on the outside of the vehicle rattled and groaned as I sped up.

We went past the road that led to the cabin, and I glanced up it, but in the dark I couldn’t make out anything. There could be fifty of them and I wouldn’t know it.

I kept Katherine’s gun at my side as I drove up the freeway. I was still concerned about things on the road—abandoned cars or rocks, people, zombies, or even ghouls—so I kept the speed down. She sat beside me, in silence, suffering. I set the gun in my lap and took the wheel with my left, then put my hand on her leg to comfort her. I could feel her staring at me, and when I looked over, she was watching me in the pale light. Her eyes were almost luminous, and I felt very deeply for her in that moment. I felt that I should tell her how much I cared about her, but I was afraid she would not return my feelings.

Out of habit, I turned on the radio and scanned the channels. I found the station that was playing old songs again, and I was surprised when she sang along with Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo under her breath. Having been hurt before, I knew how it felt to want to keep your mind on anything but the pain. I took a knife to the arm once in a brawl in a place I’m not supposed to talk about. Oh hell, who am I fooling? No one gives a shit about that stuff anymore.

The road was lonely, cold, and desolate. A chill seeped through the windshield in icy mockery of the car’s heater. I wanted to reach out and touch the glass, feel the dread that waited on the other side, but I kept my eyes on the road and ran along at a steady speed. When we were a mile or two from town, I took a left and went down a main road that ran parallel to the highway. I slowed down but kept my high beams on.

The road was draped in a curtain of trees. They were already starting to encroach on the asphalt, and I figured that in a year it would be completely overgrown. The road itself was covered in branches, leaves, trash, and the bones of things I wished were animals. There were also corpses pushed into ditches and hanging out of cars. In some cases, it appeared people had died in their vehicles, or their heads were blown off while trying to get out. It was all a harsh reminder of the fate we had escaped.

Coming around a bend, I realized I was close to the highway again. I shut down the high beams and slowed. I tried to weave over the road in an attempt to pick out any ghouls, but it was bare with the exception of trash and a couple of abandoned cars. A door on one car stood wide open, and an old, skeletal hand draped over the broken window frame. I avoided looking at it, slowing the car further as we came up on the site where we blew up the fuel truck.

I eased the car to a stop and left the engine running. Grabbing the assault rifle from the back, I opened the door with a quick glance behind then slid out.

The car’s engine purred along as I stepped onto the cold asphalt. The metal frames the engineers had put on the vehicle rattled gently, and I realized that when I was at speed, it probably sounded like a Mack truck from the outside.

I wished, once again, for night vision goggles, but I might as well have wished for an army at my back. I slapped the rifle’s stock to my shoulder and crept forward.

The night was cold, and I felt dread wash over me as I moved away from the car. It felt like a thousand eyes were on me, just waiting for the signal to run in and tear me limb from limb; mindless things ripping my flesh apart in an attempt to find some sort of life in my blood—the life they lacked.

I was about ten feet away when the headlights from the Honda revealed that part of the road was gone. Parts of the truck—a skeleton really—lay in a heap, like some god had picked it up and slammed it into the ground. I studied the road, and even broke out my small pocket light to walk the perimeter of the blast.

The hole wasn’t deep, but it was immense. I could imagine the volatile gas rushing out, as air fueled it into an explosion that mushroomed and swept anyone near it into the inferno. Sure enough, there were bodies everywhere—most looked like charcoal caricatures of life. I remembered seeing videos of the affects of nuclear weapons used in Japan.

Most had arms outstretched, as if they’d had their hands raised in supplication before being burned to a crisp. It must have been the blast wave that swept over them that made their arms fly up.

As I walked among the bodies, I saw one move—a subtle twitch that almost made me empty a magazine into it. Its mouth was open, and its eye sockets were black and crisped, while its lips pulled back over teeth covered in soot. The head jerked, and I almost screamed. Then the rat, upon sensing me, left the body it was gnawing on and scurried into the night. I watched the animal speed away and had a crazy thought. What if the zombie virus affected them?

Taking a deep breath, I tried to ignore my heart, which was beating a staccato pattern of desperation against my chest. It felt like it wanted to rip itself free. I backed up to the truck, and a howl in the distance set the hairs on the back of my neck at attention.

I slid back into the car and found a gun pointed at my head. Katherine had her pistol drawn and, ignoring the wound in her shoulder, kept that barrel just as steady as I had ever seen her hold it.

“How’s the road?” she asked as she lowered the piece.

“Fucked.”

“What’s plan B?”

“You’re assuming I have a plan. I think we’ll head for my house. I have some supplies stashed.”

“Oh good. I always wanted a nice man to take me home. I hope you have a giant bottle of Vicodin.”

I reversed the car, turned around, and took a side road.

We pulled into a scene I had not expected. Granted, it wasn’t the idyllic neighborhood where kids play, families stroll, streets are clean and swept, lawns mowed, trash cans left on the curb. Still, it was far from the chaos I had anticipated.

When the world went to shit, I thought for sure there would be roving gangs of people banding together, going house to house as they looked for supplies. My old haunt was barely touched. Sure there was crap in the streets, but for the most part, it was clean. There was no graffiti, no bodies in the streets, and no houses torn apart.

It was a while since I had been in this part of town. I took a turn, hoping it would look familiar. Instead of finding a block I knew, I found another endless row or cookie cutter houses. The sky ahead had an odd, orange glow. I rolled down the window and stuck my head out as I slowed to just a few miles an hour. It didn’t help my view but it brought the smell of smoke to my nose.

Something was on fire, something big. I stopped the SUV, and the door groaned from the added weight of the metal armor as it opened. After stepping out, I walked a good ten feet to see if I could make out what was on fire, but it was no use. It was around the corner.

I rolled forward very slowly. With the headlights off, the orange glow was my beacon. As I made the turn, I came into view of a house burning out of control. Cars were parked all over the front. One was a huge military transport that I thought was a Stryker.

Shit! This was not what I needed right now. Katherine was hurt. I needed to get to the old house and find my bag of supplies.

I was about to back up when a familiar figure came into view. He was standing on the sidewalk like a conquering general. The burning house lit his frame from behind. Tall, gaunt, and bald. The dead give away was those damn snakeskin boots that gleamed in the light of the fire.

It was Lee.

A pair of bodies laid on the ground. One of his men was going at one of them. I let out a gasp as I recognized what was happening. They were raping someone. The person on the ground fought, but didn’t seem to have much strength. She screamed and reached for the other person, but they didn’t move.

So this was what had become of Lee. He was letting his men rape and pillage like it was the middle ages.

“What’s happening?” Katherine had her eyes open, and she looked to be in a lot of pain.

“Remember Lee? The guy I have had a few run in’s with. He’s here, and his men are raping a woman.”

She sat up then groaned.

“Stay still.” I leaned over to check her dressing.

I placed my hand over hers and pressed. She winced and sat back in the seat.

“What are you going to do?”

I wasn’t even sure what I was planning. I had half a mind to shoot Lee. The gun was in my hand, and I would stand a pretty good chance if I stood up and opened the turret.

There was laughter from the men. At least a dozen, maybe as many as fifteen, were standing around watching the show. It made me sick, but what had I expected to find? People living together in harmony while the zombies were kept at bay?

I swore quietly then sat back in frustration. Slipping the car into gear, I rolled forward until I was a good twenty-five yards from the house. Reaching into the backseat, I came up with the assault rifle.

“Don’t.” Katherine snapped.

I stared at her for a few seconds in the pale light, then looked at the men and back at her. What could I do? I was one man and they were so many. It wasn’t fair, but I was helpless to stop what was going on.

“Hey!” One of the guys had caught sight of me. I should have backed up when I the chance.

Guns were pulled and leveled in my direction. With the armor plating, I was somewhat protected, but a stray shot or ricochet would kill me or Katherine just as easily as a direct shot. If I used the turret, I probably wouldn’t even get the gun out in time to fire back.

I tossed the M-16 in the backseat and drew my .45 as they came towards me. I backed up, but a couple of them broke into a trot. Then, to my horror, the military transport slid out and blocked my path.

“Shit!” I cried. Katherine had her gun out. Her eyes were wide open.

I would have to go through them.

Indecision made me hesitate. By then, they had stopped in front of the car and several automatics were pointed in my direction. Lee didn’t seem to think I was any sort of threat. He strolled toward my SUV like he was out for a Sunday walk.

“Fancy car you got there. What say you get out and my men and I will let you live.”

“Fuck you, Lee!” I yelled out the open window.

“Oh. My reputation precedes me. Well ain’t that something. Come on out of there, son, and we can chat. Whatever I did to you, I can let bygones be bygones.” He was smiling from ear to ear, like a politician at a rally.

“I should have killed you when I had the chance.” I said.

He stopped and stared, squinting as he tried to make out my shape in the dark car. I had a small advantage there.

That gave me an idea. If I hit my bright lights and gunned it, we might have a chance.

“You,” he said.

“That’s right, me. Name’s Tragger. We met a few months ago. Back then, you seemed like a man that had all the answers. Now look at you. A thug. A looter. A rapist. How does it feel?”

“Feel? I don’t feel any more. So just take your high and mighty ideals and shove ‘em up your ass.”

“You have fallen a long way.”

“You don’t know the first damn thing about me, son. But you are going to learn. Gonna learn the hard way.”

I leveled the .45 in his direction. I might have been able to kill him, but it would mean I was a dead man.

Just then, a shot shattered the night. I ducked down in the car. Katherine let out a little yell and waved the gun around, trying to find a target. Another shot, and then Lee’s team started shooting into the darkness.

I looked for Lee, but he was on the run. Tugging the .45 up, I took aim, but he disappeared behind a beat up Suburban.

There were shapes all around. They came out of the night like wraiths. I felt a chill as one passed the car. He was dressed in dark overalls and had an AK-47 to his shoulder. I made out strong Latino features.

The dark Suburban roared to life and took off. I pointed my gun and fired off a few rounds. The back window shattered, but the car disappeared around a corner. The men ran into the night, and the vehicle behind me roared off.

Free to move, I hit the lights and backed up as fast as I could, angling the car into a driveway. Slamming the gear into drive, I shot out, down the street, and fled.

I had half a mind to circle around, hunt down the big Suburban, and take care of Lee. A man like that couldn’t be allowed to continue his reign. But who was I to police the new world? It wasn’t my business. What he had done was horrible; what his men had done was worse. They all deserved to meet a grisly end.

Right now, I had to take care of Katherine.

I punched the gas and accelerated away from the battlefield. Coming around a corner a bit too fast, I had to slam on my brakes to avoid running into someone standing in the street. The tires screeched and Katherine cried out in fear, as I came to a stop a few feet from the figure.

From a distance, it had appeared to be a person. When they turned to look into the bright lights, I saw that it was one of the dead. It was a pitiful thing. An elderly woman with long white hair hanging in her face turned to regard me. She moaned around a half of a jaw, and then shambled off into the night.

I hit the high beams and crept through roads I had not seen in months.

There was a line of trucks just ahead, as though a convoy had arrived and circled the wagons. I came up on them and slowed to a stop. Slipping out once again into the night, I moved away from the safety of the car. I played the rifle over the trucks and felt like scratching my head in confusion. How the hell did the road get blocked? My house was a mile or so up the road, and I would have to climb over the blockade to reach it.

I heard a noise in the distance, as if a motor was starting up, and then a burst of light shattered the darkness as high-intensity beams ripped the night apart. As they came to life all around me, I shielded my eyes. I felt like a deer caught in massive headlights. Like the world had just turned on a gigantic sun. I backed up one step at a time as I tried to train the rifle all around me.

The car door behind me slid open, and I knew without a doubt Katherine was behind me, watching my back. Noises from ahead; movement and the clink of metal on metal. Whatever this trap was, I had fallen for it, hook, line, and sinker. I tried to shield the light, but all I managed was to warm my palm.

I worried that I had found a group of Lee’s men. If he had made it here, I was a dead man.

“What the hell is going on?” Katherine yelled.

Before I could reply, a voice came from the barricade of cars and trucks. “Lower your weapon and identify, or we will shoot you.”

I just about dropped the gun in shock when I heard the voice. It was a woman, and it held a great deal of authority. I had no doubt she would shoot. She and whoever was with her.

I lowered the rifle, but I didn’t drop it. Still backing up, I was determined to jump in the SUV and get out of here. Whatever little fiefdom these people had set up, I was not interested in getting to know them.

“Stop moving or we will shoot!”

If I turned and made a dash for the car, I could be there in a few seconds, but even a ten year old with decent aim would be able to pick me off.

Stopping, I faced the blinding light. “My name’s Tragger, and you’re blocking the way to my house. I just want to get some stuff and leave.”

There was movement, but I couldn’t tell what was going on. I was going to climb out of my skull at this rate. I did not like standing in front of these people with no protection. If they opened fire, I was as good as dead, and Katherine would be next.

More clanking around, and I wanted to make a run for it. Fuck this. Then an engine started, and a truck backed up to make a small space. A slim figure came out of the gap and walked toward me.

“Erik?” A female voice called out almost softly.

“Yep.”

Her voice played with my senses, and I saw someone from the past. The way she spoke and moved reminded me of Allison, but that was ridiculous. There was no way she could have made it to our old home together. The last time I had talked to her was almost a month before the incidents started happening. I felt my heart swell at the thought of her, of what she had meant to me at one time, and the crushing anger that had burned for months after she had left followed. It made a powerful contrast.

“Alli …” and I stopped, because I knew it wasn’t her.

“It’s Lisa.” She stood a few feet from me, dressed in a jumpsuit made of some thick material that zipped all the way to her neck. She had on a scarf and gloves. She looked familiar. Still, I almost backed up again when she stepped to me and put her arms around me in an embrace.

Automatically I returned her hug, and stood as she sobbed against me for a full ten seconds before I realized who she was. My neighbor—Devon’s wife.

I had to pick Katherine up and help her out of the SUV. She leaned against me as we went into the barricade. Once we were past, the truck started up again and pulled forward to close the gap. The lights were easy to bear from this angle, and I was able to appreciate the simplicity in the design. With the trucks and cars facing out, it made a much harder barrier for the zombies to get through. In fact, with enough firepower, this place could hold out for a good long time.

Behind the vehicles was a series of fences with concrete barricades up against them. From a tactical standpoint, it reminded me of the Walmart, where a killing maze had been set up. The people here didn’t have enough fencing to encircle their location, but they did the next best thing by staggering sections so the zombies could not get in.

I followed Lisa in and glanced at the faces on either side. There were at least twenty people that I could see, but none who looked familiar. They appeared like us—tired, dirty, and sore. A woman leaned on her gun as she tried to stay upright. I wondered what they had endured over the last six months. I heard whispers and tugged Katherine tighter to me.

“Where did they come from?”

“Lisa knows him.”

“She does not look good at all.”

An older man looked me up and down, nodding to himself as if I met some criteria. I nodded back at him just the same. The low hum of a smaller generator kicked in, and dim lights lit the houses behind the barricade. It seemed like my life was coming down to what barricade I was able to hide behind at any given time. Many had wished for a new world, but I didn’t think this was what anyone had in mind.

Lisa spoke with someone in low tones behind me before she ran to catch up with me. She looped one hand in the crook of my arm as another person came and took Katherine.

“I can’t believe you’re alive,” she said, and I heard a strong hint of relief. I could only imagine what she and Devon had gone through after the zombies showed up.

“Where is Devon?”

“Gone,” she said simply. “What’s wrong with your … friend?”

“Katherine. She was shot by one of those ghouls.”

“They don’t shoot. They only direct the undead things to do their bidding.”

“Well, someone with glowing green eyes did a good job of learning how to fire a gun,” I said in frustration. I didn’t want to talk about it; I wanted to get Katherine fixed up and out of here. This fiefdom was fine and dandy for them, but I wanted to go in pursuit of the caravan and hit Portland as soon as possible. I was sick to death of living in fear and living on the run.

“We have medical supplies and a nurse. She has done some amazing things, even though she isn’t a doctor. She can take care of her.”

Lisa guided me to a house; I think it used to belong to Mark Wilson, a neighbor with whom I was never very friendly. He seemed like a nice enough guy, if a bit aloof. The door was open, and they were helping Katherine down a hallway to what must have been their triage room.

“Have you been here since the shit went down?” I asked.

“We tried to leave once. Devon wasn’t sure what to do. He wanted to wait for some instructions from the government, or at least someone who seemed to be in authority. We waited and waited for at least a week after you left. One night, the power went out, and we sat up in the dark. The next day, we wandered around the neighborhood, but it was so empty. It seems most of the neighbors left shortly after you did.”

“Who was still around?”

“Well, Mark didn’t leave either. He had a hunting rifle, and he took the doors off all his upstairs rooms and nailed them over windows. He tried to build a fortress, but that was in the early days, and we weren’t organized like we are now.” Her tone was almost shy. Her hair was once a sheet of auburn curls that hung over her face when she laughed. Now it was a lighter color, and it was straight. I realized that hair that looked so natural was an act, just like the act kept up by the other survivors around us.

“I’m so glad to see you alive. I have seen some horrible things—some not too far from here. That was you at the house that was on fire, wasn’t it?” she said. “We almost shot you, you know.”

“That was your people?” I asked in surprise.

“We weren’t going to get involved.” She stopped me with a look, probably reading the shock in my eyes. “We try to stay out of the way. When it became apparent you were going to start a shooting match, we decided to spook the other guys.”

“Lee’s men,” I said.

“Who is Lee?”

“Long story. Let’s just say he’s a bad man. I wouldn’t be sad to see him dead.” I sighed.

“Is that his first name?”

“Come to think of it, I have no idea.”

Lisa studied me, but didn’t pursue the matter. I was sure we would have time to talk about it later. I was on edge, worried about Katherine. I’m sure Lisa was aware of my constant glances toward the room Katherine was in.

Lisa had a new bearing about her. She was no longer the shy housewife that used to giggle at my jokes when she and Devon stopped by, before Allison left. She had come into her own, and I was willing to bet she was the one who yelled at me earlier.

I found an unoccupied La-Z-Boy and took a seat in it. She came around and sat on a beat-up couch that was probably once a fine leather sofa imported from somewhere expensive, if I knew Mark.

I glanced down the hall and wanted to pursue Katherine, wanted to be by her side when they worked on her, wanted to be there in case they had some bad news. One of the men who had helped us out came back and nodded at me.

“Nurse said she is gonna be all right, man. She is lucky that bullet went in and out clean. She’s gonna stitch her up and give her some antibiotics. We don’t have a lot, but we can spare some for a neighbor.”

He was light skinned but had a slight Hispanic accent. He carried a shotgun over his shoulder and was dressed like the others—jumpsuit with a scarf tied around his neck. I liked him right away for reasons I couldn’t pinpoint. Being in Special Forces, I had learned pretty quickly who I could and couldn’t trust. I had a feeling about him as soon as I saw him. I was pretty sure he was also the man I had seen pass the car when they spooked Lee’s men.

“I’m Scott, by the way.” He offered his hand, and I shook it, noticing he also wore gloves.

“The outfits must be protection from the biters.”

“Smart guy. We should keep you around.” He grinned.

“Thanks, I think.” I smiled back.

“Now this is nothing personal, man, but I’m gonna have to ask you to take your clothes off.”

“Excuse me?”

“Gotta check you for bites, man. Like I said, nothing personal. It’s a brave new world, brother. We don’t stand on modesty much.”

“What, here?”

“You want a private room, amigo?”

Lisa had a churlish grin on her face, but tastefully turned her head to the side to give me the illusion of privacy. Stripping down to my skivvies, I shook my head. They were old and torn, and I felt ridiculous in them. Scott gestured, so I held my arms out and spun around.

“Not the tighty whiteys, I hope,” I said.

“If a zombie bit your ass, you got bigger problems. You’re cool.”

I nodded and put my clothes back on, while Lisa fought back a cough.

He wandered back outside, and I was left alone with Lisa, who sat back and studied me.

“Is that how you greet every survivor?”

“If I didn’t go out for you, you would have been stripped and spread eagle on the ground before you were even let into the perimeter.”

I liked how she used words like that, like she was in the military. This was not the sweet but simpering Lisa I had met a few years ago. This was a confident woman who was used to giving orders and having them followed.

I took a seat in the La-Z-Boy again and tried to look relaxed after doing the striptease. She studied me, and I studied her in return. She was still pretty, but she had the same hard look to her eyes that Katherine had. I hoped she was doing well in their care. I couldn’t imagine she would be too happy with their methods of inspecting for bites.

“I thought the bites were fast—like the movies. You get bit, you die and change. Come back as one of those dead things.”

“It used to be that way, but the virus has mutated. In some cases, it can take days to make its presence known. The ghouls have sent in more than one survivor who didn’t even know they were going to change. Those things are too smart by far. We need a plan to kill them all.”

“I think I know what you mean. We had trouble too. It was like they were driving a bunch of the zombies to kill us. They seemed to have a strange power over them. How can a virus do something like that?”

Sighing, she sat back. She put her hands in her lap and looked small all of a sudden. If I had been close to her, I probably would have patted her hand in a familiar gesture, like one friend does for another.

“We don’t know much—just theories and rumors. There was a lot of talk of a bad swine flu vaccine, and then others said it was the regular flu shots. Then there was a rumor about some experimental gas in North Korea that got out of hand. None of it makes sense.”

“Understatement.”

“Yeah. What have you been up to? You look like you’re in good shape.”

I had been hoping for answers, but like the other survivors, these didn’t know anything either. I wanted to pound the chair in frustration, but what good would it do? Would it even matter, knowing how the cursed virus started? It would just be one more thing to file away for a rainy day when we were all old and retired from zombie hunting—if we lived that long.

I had done more thinking along the lines of food and supplies. The stuff in stores wouldn’t last forever. We would need to start farming, raising animals, taking care of crops. How could we do that when the world was overrun by the dead?

“I hid out at a cabin until I ran out of food. Then I came back and hooked up with a bunch of crazies holed up at the Walmart.”

“Oh them. We have been in communication a few times. They wanted us to join them, but we were happy here.”

So there was dissension in the tiny fiefdoms after all.

“You didn’t want to join forces?”

“We worked hard to build this place. We brought in generators, a tanker full of diesel. We have semis full of food lined up. We brought in a truck filled with water bottles, and we’re doing all right. When we need more stuff, we go on recon and get what we need. We didn’t need them trying to bring it all to them.”

“They had a pretty nice setup. Very secure.”

“We have a nice setup.”

I had to agree. They had a defensible position and they were well supplied. If overrun, they could always pile into the trucks and make their escape.

As if to punctuate my thought, a gunshot broke the still air outside. Another followed. From the blasts, I guessed it was an AK-47, which had a very distinctive sound. I would have loved to have gotten my hand on one; they didn’t look as nice as my assault rifle, but they were a lot more reliable.

“Shit,” she said and jumped up. I followed her out, but I glanced back down the hallway through which they had taken Katherine. Lisa saw my look and nodded. “I’ll be out there when you’re done. As soon as you can, ask around about a jumpsuit. They’re pretty good protection, and your clothes are a mess.”

I nodded my thanks and turned to check on Katherine.

The hallway led me to a kitchen, where a respectable triage unit had been set up. A pair of tables draped in white made up the beds. They both appeared to be padded. There were a couple of kitchen chairs in a corner, and a whole counter full of tools and medications. There were syringes and a box of sutures, piles of gauze and bandages. This place was ready for war.

Katherine sighed as the nurse slid a needle out of her arm. She smiled in a goofy way at me, and I wondered what kind of painkillers they had given her.

“You know something, Erik? My life was a lot simpler before you walked into it.”

“If you’re getting romantic, then I’m all ears.”

I went to her side and took her hand. She was still cold, but the woman attending piled a sheet and a quilted blanket on her. Katherine’s shoulder was exposed, and the paper towels had been pushed aside. The woman took the same syringe, wiped it and Katherine’s skin with alcohol, and then administered a couple of shots to the area. Katherine didn’t even seem to notice.

“She’s floating on a sea of morphine right now. She may get sort of loopy.”

“I’m Erik. Thanks for the hard work, Doc.”

“Oh I’m no doctor, but I’m the next best thing. I’m a nurse, used to work in a facial reconstruction office, but I have all the chops.”

She was dressed in the familiar jumpsuit, but she had a white strip tied around one arm, which reminded me of the corpsmen I used to see in old World War II movies. She was tall and thin with strong Asian features.

“I’m Maddy,” she said and gave me a short wave in lieu of a handshake.

“Hi, Maddy.”

“I’m numbing the area. I don’t have a lot of morphine, so I have to use it sparingly, but I do have a few bottles of Lidocaine. Same stuff they use at the dentist.”

I was familiar with the drug. I once had a small procedure to remove a cyst, and they shot the area up while I tried to relax and play it cool.

I looked away when she got out the blades, but she seemed confident with them in hand. I found a chair and sat down so I could see Katherine from the right side but not view the work. The smell of alcohol filled the room.

“You’re not exactly a romantic guy, but you’ll do, I suppose.”

“I have my moments.”

“You do. But you usually have a big knife or gun when they happen.” Katherine smiled.

“Who shot you? Did you see anything?” I asked for the second time that night, wanting answers. I refused to believe that one of those ghouls was capable of picking up a gun, aiming it and firing. In my mind, the ghouls may have been smarter than the zombies, but they barely had motor skills. There was so much I didn’t understand about them.

“I think it was one of those guys with green eyes. I don’t think a regular human would be hanging out with them.”

“Are you sure? Did you or the others ever see one holding a gun or weapon of any sort?”

“Nah, but they always stayed pretty far away from us. They seemed intent on just corralling or directing the dead bastards.”

It didn’t make sense, but who could make sense of any of this? The dead were back, and they ruled the world. We were now the minority, and our existence was a big question mark.

She started to say something else, but drifted off into lala land. I stayed by her side, and, sometime during the night, my mind drifted far enough away for me to fall into a deep slumber.

I was rocketed out of sleep like a sled down a mountain, or such was the impression my dream left on my mind. In it, I was at the cabin, and it was covered in snow. We were surrounded on every side by the dead. After running out of ammo, Katherine had an idea. She dragged me to the rooftop, where we had a sled like the one Santa used. He was one of them now, a jolly fat man in red. Red the color of blood. He waited for us and he was hungry.

We got into the sled and left the top of the mountain at high speed. We flew over a freeway, skidded onto it, and kept on going until we ran into a swarm of ghouls.

Something loud banged outside, and even in my half-sleep state, I recognized the AK-47 again. I came out of the seat and whipped my head around in search of my shotgun. A shooting pain rocketed down one shoulder. Somehow I had fallen asleep in the wooden chair, and no one woke me. I had been left exhausted as soon as my body stopped running on high-octane adrenaline. The night had been a blur. The escape, the fight, the flight, and then meeting up with Lisa and her crew of holdouts.

I rubbed my eyes, but they were so dry they felt like they were coated in sand as if I was rubbing tiny grains into my pupils. After a minute, I stood up and went to check on Katherine.

Drugged or not, she was used to living on edge, and her eyes popped open, hand moving toward a nonexistent gun, the moment I entered the area . She saw me, and a flash of confusion was washed away by a genuine smile. It touched me, I won’t lie. I had spent a lot of time with her, and I was attached, but she was still very reserved around me. The concern she had brought up about not being able to bear children meant little to me. She could take her common sense and piss on it, because I wanted to be with her no matter what.

“Morning, sunshine,” I said and kissed her lips. She was warm to my touch, as I pushed some hair out of her face then took her hand in mine.

“Hi.”

Her shoulder was bare where the wound was covered in fresh, clean gauze. I had to wonder how long their supply of bandages would last. It couldn’t be easy to have a tiny village like this without renewable supplies. I should feel grateful to them, but I felt anything but. They were in my way. I wanted to get to Portland, join the fight and make a difference. I didn’t want to sit around, bored out of my skull, after already experiencing four months of that.

They didn’t even care to move. They were happy to wait for something to happen or stay until they were overrun. The mob we saw when we left the Walmart had been huge. If a similar army of shambling dead came at this position, they wouldn’t be able to hold them off forever, unless they had a massive supply of ammunition. Were the ghouls willing to sacrifice enough of their army for a few live bodies to feast on?

“How are you feeling?”

“Like I’m on morphine. I feel a bit lost, and my body is warm, but I’m glad you’re with me.”

“I don’t see you as the romantic type. You’re more of an action girl.”

“I wasn’t always like this. I used to be a mom and a wife, and I was happy. I don’t like what I’ve become. I want to go back to the old way, but I guess that isn’t ever going to happen.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I leaned in to kiss her warm lips. I liked her candor and her toughness. I liked how she could turn into a sexy woman when she wanted to, and how she could tell me what she wanted and how she wanted it.

I was on safe ground with her, which made me content.

Another shot rang out. A hunting rifle, this time, was my guess. Then another, and I was itching to get outside.

“I’ll be back.”

“Okay. Don’t forget me.” She squeezed my hand. “Thank you, Erik, for everything. I don’t think I ever told you that, and I meant to.”

I had the urge to hug her, but her recovering body probably would not take too kindly to it. After planting another kiss on her forehead, I left the room.

In the living room, I saw a pair of people I didn’t know leaning over a map. They looked up as I entered. The man nodded, and the woman, an older gal who had a matronly look, eyed me up and down.

“Bathroom?”

The man pointed toward the other end of the hall.

“In there. If it’s too full, use the bucket on the side to pour just enough water in until it flushes, then stop.”

It stood to reason that simple things like water were hard to come by, and there would be the constant need to get more. In the cabin, we had an outhouse in the back that was a simple hole in the ground. I wondered if anyone had thought to make one here. Probably easier to just dig a big hole and piss off the side.

After taking care of business in the dark, trying to ignore the stench, I left the small room and went outside. The sun was high, and if I had to guess at the time, I would have judged it just before noon. I hadn’t worn a watch in months. What was the point? I didn’t have to go to work—no appointments. I didn’t have to worry about what time to watch shows on TV, when to cook, or when to wake up. Our brave new world had precipitated a lack of technology, and in some ways, this pleased me. I would have liked about a half hour a day on the Internet, but even that need was fading with time.

The circle of cars and trucks made quite the impressive barrier. They were parked so close together that the only way into most of them was through the rear window or trunk. A group of large SUVs created a sort of gate. A couple had open hatches, and I was betting they were the getaway plan.

One of the bigger trucks, an enormous vehicle that looked like something one would see at a monster rally, was idling. Wires ran out of the hood to a box, which in turn was connected to a bunch of car batteries. So that was how they got portable energy. Just charge the batteries every day, and with enough jury-rigging, I supposed you could run a light for a few hours with a DC convertor.

On top of the truck was a man in the same type of jumpsuit the others wore. He had a rifle pressed to his shoulder and was lying prone, watching the entryway to the neighborhood with a pair of binoculars. I stared down the road and saw a body in the street. It was too far away to make out many details.

A large hand clapped my shoulder, and it was hard not to reach up, clamp my hand around it, then turn and put its owner in a shoulder lock. Living away from people had made me an edgy fucker. I looked over my shoulder into the grinning eyes of Scott. He had on a camouflage cap like hunters wear, but the same jumpsuit and scarf from the night before.

“Hey man. Up at last?”

“Barely. I feel like I slept in a wooden chair all night. Oh yeah, I did.”

“We got beds. Just ask next time.”

“Next time I won’t be dead on my feet, and I will.”

“Don’t say dead on your feet around some of these guys. They’re likely to take your head off with a Louisville Slugger.”

I smiled at his grim humor.

I saw my car out beyond the barricades. “Should I bring that in?”

“Unless you’re leaving. We weren’t sure. Nice work turning a Honda into a tank. Some of the guys were checking it out earlier. That turret is great. Too bad it doesn’t have a weapon mounted in it through a big hole. That would be badass.”

“You don’t care if we leave?”

“Why would we?”

“I don’t know. You guys have a nice fiefdom set up here. I figured you would have a big recruiting speech for newcomers. Put the love of Jesus in us.” Something about Scott brought out the ex-military in me—the camaraderie, the way we spoke to each other.

“Shit, man, you can come and go. We aren’t some outfit that makes people drink the Kool-Aid. We have enough problems as it is. Besides, if someone wants to stay, they have to show that they are useful. Are you useful?”

That was a good question. I could strip and clean guns, I knew military tactics, and I was good at hand to hand combat, but having been out of the mix for four months meant I missed a lot of the action while I was stuck up in the cabin. The men and women around were much better zombie slayers than I was.

“I don’t know. I can fight, and I can teach people how to grab zombies behind the ears and drive their knees into their rotted faces.”

Another shot called out like a cannon blast, and I couldn’t help but jump, but so did Scott. We looked at each other and grinned.

“Target practice.” He pointed at the guy with the hunting rifle plastered to his chest on top of the truck. “The stupid things must be able to smell us. A few wander by every day, so we take them out. No sense in letting a bunch of dead fucks loose.”

“Ever see any of the guys with green eyes?”

“Nah, they’re too smart. They come out at night, and only when they have an army behind them. But we have a lot of firepower, and we’re well protected, so they stay away.” He sounded convinced of this. After what I saw in town, I wasn’t so sure.

“How many other communities are set up like this?”

“A few. We know where they are, and we trade stuff sometimes, but we remain autonomous. There isn’t a lot of mixing. Maybe it’s a trust issue. You’d think at the end of the world people would start trusting each other again.”

I nodded. The kid was doing pretty well with the gun, but he was jerking the barrel up with each shot. I watched and wondered how much ammo they had to spare that they could do target practice.

“You set for ammo?”

“We have enough for now, but it won’t last forever. We got a guy who keeps track of all the rounds. He could tell you more. Why?”

“Because the Walmart might have some ammo. I don’t think they could carry out the massive stock pile. They’re in a big metal cage in the center of the store. I know how to get at them.”

“They gonna give the stuff up for free? I doubt that.”

He didn’t know.

“They left almost a week ago. The place is empty now. They might have buttoned up and left some supplies. We should make a run before someone else does.”

“Why are they gone?” He looked confused, but he also looked like he was calculating, thinking of what a boon that would be, then his face clouded. “See, I like you, Erik. You seem like the kind of guy that says stuff straight up. I can respect that, especially in the new world. But it is kinda suspicions that you show up and want to lead us to an armed compound.”

Oh.

“You have the wrong idea, Scott. I wouldn’t dream of it, but I see why you would be suspicious. You can go with me, and we can scout it out. I was at the store for a while, but they bugged out, headed for Portland. Did you hear an explosion about a week ago?”

“Yeah, it shook the ground. We thought a nuke had gone off somewhere. I know it sounds stupid, but being cut off means we gotta rely on what we see and hear, and that was a ways off, so we automatically feared the worst.”

“That was me and Katherine setting off the distraction, so a caravan could get out of town and drive to Portland. We rolled a gas truck away from the Walmart and made a lot of noise until the things were all around us. One of our friends died, but we managed to get to my car and make our escape before the truck went up. We probably took out about a hundred of those bastards.”

“Huh.”

“Then we hightailed it back to my little corner of the world—a cabin up in the hills. We hid out until we were found by those fuckers with green eyes.”

He nodded, but he was suspicious. He didn’t have to say a thing; I could tell by the way his brows drew together. How would I feel in his shoes? Would I just trust someone who showed up and claimed to know things about outside events? I wouldn’t; no one in their right mind would. And why did I care anyway? These guys were doing just fine without my help. They had built a small fortified city here. They didn’t need me.

“We really do need to follow our friends back to Portland. Maybe in a day or two. I have a bunch of guns back in the car. Maybe I could give you one for your hospitality.”

“What can always use more ammo especially with guys like Junior there getting in some practice.”

I thought of the rounds we had left behind during the escape. We did have a few boxes of shells, but I needed to hang onto those if we were going to be on our own soon. Then again, without these folks, Katherine would be in pretty bad shape. It would be nice to go back and get more from the store, but I would need to convince them. Maybe a show of goodwill would help.

“I’ll give you a hundred rounds of seven point six two,” I said, watching his eyes. He knew what that was all right, and he nodded.

“We can use it.”

“Great. Now look. Why don’t you go with me? Just a scouting mission, and if it looks too dangerous, we’ll head back. No fuss, no muss. Katherine is here just in case.”

“We don’t take prisoners, man.”

“Fine, then she stays here as an ambassador of goodwill.”

He laughed at that and then, with a pat on my shoulder, he left and went into the house. I stood in the road a mile or so from my house and looked down the street. If I got to the other side of the barricade and I was extra cautious, I could be there in about fifteen minutes. I decided to take the chance, wanting to know how the neighborhood had fared.

I slid over one of the cars by jumping on the hood and then over the roof. A couple of men watched, but they didn’t try to stop me. My car started up easily, and I drove it off the road and onto the sidewalk, in front of an old Volkswagen van that was turned sideways. A wall of bricks was built up under the chassis so no one could get under it. It really did look like someone had driven over a low wall and left it. I could even pick out the mortar between the bricks.

After taking a couple of boxes of ammo from the car, I loaded my pants pockets with a couple of magazines, then strapped a beat-up Colt .45 under my arm. Once I slung the M-16 over my shoulder, I must have made a sight. If they really didn’t care about me coming and going, then I was going to do both.

I stared down the road in the opposite direction of the barrier, watching a pair of rotting creatures shamble across a four-way intersection. One turned to regard me, and then veered off. The other kept going. It was about twenty-five yards away, or so I surmised. I swung the assault rifle up to the crook of my shoulder and took aim. While I wanted a headshot, I would settle for the neck. It seemed like a shot to anywhere near the brainstem or brainpan stopped those things in their tracks. A shot to the body just forced them to fall over, and they’d just get back up. I had yet to nail one of the guys with glowing eyes.

Flipping the safety off without looking at it, I exhaled and stroked the trigger. The shot echoed around me as it left the barrel. It struck just off center, and a puff of pink and gray mist exploded outward, then the thing dropped in its tracks. It fell to its knees, toppling backwards like a puppet with no strings attached. The other zombie paused in mid-step, turned to look at its companion, then dropped to all fours and went for its ex-buddy. She took a huge chunk of cheek in her mouth, ripping upward. I struggled to keep my stomach calm while I fired again. The second one fell forward, and they lay there like lovers.

Mission complete, I headed back the way I had come.

“Nice shootin’, Tex,” one of the men called out. He was older, gray around the temples, and had a pair of thick glasses on. Licking his lips, he spit to one side.

“Thanks.”

“I don’t think you killed the second one. It’s still twitching.”

I looked back, and sure enough, the other was trying to move one hand away from her body, like she was crawling under barbed wire. Putting the ammo on the ground, I slid over one of the cars—a red Ford that looked to be at least twenty years old. I took to the street, which was bathed in pale light thanks to the early morning sun. It was red and pink where it bounced off clouds. I was reminded of an old saying from my father: Red in the morning, sailors take warning.

The only red I was about to see was blood.

Over the last few months, I had faced a number of these things and walked away unscathed. I fought them with guns, knives, and even hand to hand. They had been faceless monsters that I killed with impunity. I had slaughtered them—there was no other way to put it. These monsters that used to be men and women but were now mindless killing machines.

Now I had the chance to get close and study one. I took the handgun from the back of my waistband and checked the safety. Sliding the chamber back a quarter of an inch, I checked to make sure there was a bullet in it. Once I clicked off the safety, I approached the undead.

It was pitiful. The woman’s dress hung in tatters around her body. Her legs looked like fat sausages, complete with a thin layer of casing to hold everything in. Her skin was nearly translucent, and the stuff under it looked putrid and rotten. As she crawled, it jiggled like congealed fat. She reached for me with a clawed hand that grasped in slow motion.

Her hair was coated in grime and blood. Her eyes were dull, white, and one was rotted in the socket. The other swiveled as she tracked me moving around her. Her chin was covered in blood, and chunks of meat hung out of her mouth.

Even as she reached for me, her mouth closed down over a hunk of her companion’s neck. I grimaced and took in the rest of her body. I don’t know how she died; if it was the bite or if she was killed and came back.

“You gonna kill that thing or ask it to dance?” one of the men yelled.

Kill it. How do you kill something that is already dead? I crouched down on the balls of my feet and touched her arm. I didn’t want anything to do with her, and I really didn’t want any physical contact, but curiosity got the better of me. She was cold to the touch, and there was no blood flow under her skin. No pulse. Breaking my grip, I took a step back, lifted the gun, and blew her brains all over the road.

The walk back to the barricade took longer than it should have.

After delivering the ammo, I decided to hoof it to my house. It was less than a mile, and I had the daylight to my advantage. I walked around the perimeter until I got my bearings and determined which way I had to go. Though I had driven these streets many times, they had changed now. The houses were still there, lined up in perfect rows, but they were also overgrown, as shrubs and trees grew any which way they wanted to without man to interfere with them. There were no cars in the street, with the exception of the ones that made up the perimeter. The rest had been driven away.

Most homes had their doors and garages wide open. I imagined the group here must have gone over every inch looking for supplies. There were things tossed aside in yards—empty boxes, cans, and bottles. Now-useless electronics lay everywhere. I could see the panic as everyone ran from the approaching horror, then the opposite as those who stayed started looting. I saw a high-end laptop tossed aside.

The air was much cleaner now. Maybe it was the lack of exhaust or the affect of all the flourishing plant life. It was going to be a warm day; that much was obvious from the already thickly mounting humidity.

Scott caught up with me and walked by my side. I glanced at him. He had an almost gleeful look on his face. I found it infectious and grinned back, which felt good.

“Where you goin’, man?”

“My house is less than a mile from here. I’m going over there for a minute. I need to pick up some things.”

“You know it’s probably looted, right?”

“I have a stash. I’m pretty sure no one has found it.”

“Well, I can’t let you go and do a dumb thing like that by yourself. So I’m goin’ with you.”

Not for the first time, I wondered if he was mentally unbalanced. Then I laughed out loud. We were all unbalanced.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing, man. I’m just glad for the company.”

“Well, all right. Let’s go on a quest and shit. I get to be Frodo.”

“You are definitely a Sam. I think I should be Frodo.”

“But I have more common sense.” He grinned. “Like I would never go out into this crazy world alone. You gotta have someone at your back at all times.”

“Good point.” We headed for the line of trucks.

Most of the morning was noisy. Birds flitted here and there and chirped at everything. There were massive flights of crows and other birds that had to be scavengers of some sort. I bet the seagull population near the water had exploded in growth.

There were blue jays with their angry chant, screaming at each other and probably at us as we interrupted their conversations. I looked up as a hawk called out from where he circled far above. The world had gone to the birds, literally.

Scott was a good companion. He kept his focus everywhere as we walked through the wreckage of the neighborhood. There was a pair of scorched houses that were just burned-out husks. One was a large two-story with a gated entryway. It reminded me of the house from last night.

I wondered how many times the same story had repeated itself over the course of the last few months. How many houses were torn apart, families dragged out and killed. How many survivors were there? I hoped Portland wasn’t a disappointment. I didn’t think I could live like this forever, unless I found a safe community like this one to live in. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Then again, how long would it be before the groups started fighting each other for control? How long until the food ran out? It wasn’t like we could grow anything. A field would be a terrible place to work—a wide-open target—like farming in the middle of a giant bulls-eye.

A flash of movement in the street ahead caught my attention, and I had the gun to my shoulder in a heartbeat. After I sighted along the barrel, I wasn’t sure what I had seen.

Scott reacted the same way. He had a shotgun—big Remington with a pump. He worked it like a pro, head moving with the gun as he walked forward.

It was an old car behind which someone was crouching. I moved to one side of the street, and Scott moved to the other. Houses were closer together here, and smaller—town homes that had very little room and even less space between lots. With all the shadows they cast, it would be hard to see anything coming out of them until it was too late.

Scott scooted forward. He had the close-range weapon, so that afforded me the opportunity to cover him with the M-16. A shape moved at speed away from the car, running like it was on fire. It looked like a kid, but it was in the gap between two houses before I could even wonder if the apparition had been real.

“Damn creepers,” Scott muttered when he joined me.

“Hey man. I was one of those until a few days ago.”

“Really? You do look kind of creepy.”

“Maybe they don’t know they can just walk right up to you and say ‘Hi, I want in.’ You live on the run long enough, and it becomes hard to trust anyone.”

We walked along in silence. I looked over at Scott to find his eyebrows drawn down, as if in deep thought.

“Yeah, you’re right, but we can’t exactly put out a welcome sign. We only have so many supplies.”

“I know, but how long can that continue? What are you going to do when you run out, and you’re ranging out from the hub for hours at a time just to find some canned food? I’m surprised you all have lasted this long. I’m serious. If you want a fighting chance, you need to take some trucks over to Walmart and clean that place out before someone else does. Or move in. The place is like a fortress with a electrified fence.”

“We might talk about that later. Right now we got this quest to complete. What is so important that you have to get to your house for?”

Our voices echoed up and down the street, and I had to wonder if many creepers were in the surrounding houses, watching us—if they had guns trained on us. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and I took a deep breath to calm my nerves. Four months away from humanity, and I was already scared to go looking for it.

“Just some stuff I should have brought with me—that’s all. Mainly a picture of my ex-wife.”

“Hope that shit is better than a memory. We stick around out here too long and we are gonna be a memory.”

We were on Callow Street and had to cut over a block when we ran across an old accident. It looked like a semi had run into a UPS truck and both vehicles had been shredded. Chunks of rusted metal were everywhere. I didn’t want to climb over the wreck, so I led him instead to an old pasture that ran catty-corner to the street. We took to it and passed more than one cow corpse. Someone had shot the things and left them to rot in the sun. They did not smell pretty at all. Not that the pasture would ever have won an award for its stench of old cow shit prior the apocalypse.

We traipsed over land that was being reclaimed by tall grass. There was some skittering, as small animals dashed here and there in the undergrowth. Probably mice or rats, or the occasional snake. Those little critters must have been having a field day now that they were free to repopulate without rodent killer and giant lawnmowers tearing up their world.

The housing complex in which I’d lived was just ahead. The old fence that bordered one of the farmer’s lots was still there, and I thought I could see my house, but it was so close to the overgrown weeds and blackberry bushes that it was hard to be sure from this angle.

The fence was an old chain link job that some cheapskate had built about fifteen years ago. It was sagging and rusted in spots, and I remembered where the greenbelt grew close to the field. Here I could slide in between the shrubs and the metal barrier.

I went first, and couldn’t help but snag my shirt on the fence, which set it tinkling. Scott reached out to touch it to muffle the sound. He followed, and just like that, we stood in my neighbor’s back yard. I drifted to the window that looked into his kitchen. It wasn’t that long ago that I left him here, his dead wife banging at the window. The house was dark, but I saw a pair of rotted legs sticking out of the hallway that led to the living room. I slid along the side of the house and lowered the gun as I got a view of the street. Here, I felt very exposed, even though I was less than a mile from my new friends.

The street was clear, and I breathed a sigh of relief. My house looked much like the others we had passed. The door was open, and my possessions were scattered in the front yard. Pots and pans lay in a heap near a burned spot. It looked like someone had used the yard as a camp and cooked something there.

I looked past it, at Lisa and Devon’s house. It was a ruin. Burned to the ground.

Scott and I had never worked together, but I used signals nonetheless. I pointed at the house and made a cup with my hand like it was binoculars. He nodded, and I hoped he understood that I meant for him to keep an eye out.

Slipping around the corner, I kept my gun high and went to the front porch.

The first thing I noticed was that the shrubs were a mess. The rhododendrons, of which Allison had been so proud, were nearly dead. They hung in clumps of miserable brown that looked woven into the weeds that were taking over the rest of the bushes. The grass, like all the lawns in the lots, was now measured in feet instead of inches. I felt like I was walking through a field and not a yard. If I laid down in the stuff, I would be all but invisible to any casual observer. This gave me some tactical options, if this little jaunt went to shit.

I stepped up the concrete steps and onto my porch for the first time in nearly half a year. My furniture was gone, and it wasn’t hard to guess that the burned marks in the tall grass were all that remained of those possessions. I crouched down by the door, which wasn’t open but was ajar. The window facing out had the blinds drawn, so I had no idea what I was walking into. I slung the assault rifle over my shoulder and drew my handgun, double checking the load for what seemed like the tenth time that day.

The living room was murky when I pushed the door open. Shadows cut through the blinds at the rear of the house. Dust hung in clumps from the corners, and each had a small population of spiders with webs spun and ready for prey. The carpet, once light gray and pristine, was covered in dirt and things one might find in a trashcan. Wrappers, empty cigarette packs—I think one nasty pile was human feces. It was hard to be sure; it might have been an animal, but no matter what it was, I knew that someone or something had used my living room as a bathroom. I had to maneuver over several similar piles until I reached the kitchen.

I kept my weapon raised the entire time as I searched for anything living in my house. Standing at the kitchen entryway, I stared at the mess for a full minute before my mind could comprehend what I was seeing. Everything Allison and I had collected was either on the floor or smashed on the counters—dishes, glasses, cups, and coffee mugs. Pots and pans were strewn about as though at a garage sale. There were cigarette butts on the floor, and wrappers from food all over the place. The refrigerator was open, but it was bare of anything except a pile of green gunk in one vegetable drawer that looked like some mad scientific experiment.

I had to step over the remains of an expensive set of china. Beautiful plates I asked Allison to take when she moved out, but she refused to. Said it wasn’t hers anymore. I think shame drove her to leave so many of the things she loved behind, and now they were everywhere. Not that they would have fared much better with her. Last I checked, she didn’t have access to a bunker.

The family room was just as bad as the rest of the house. My LCD TV lay on the floor with several holes through the back. It appeared someone had used it for target practice. I wished I could meet the people who trashed my house.

I lowered the weapon and turned in a full circle to take in the mess. I wanted to break something, wanted to smash my fist into anything that would shatter.

I heard a noise then, just a thump, but it was loud enough to set me on edge. Something or someone was still in the house. I walked to the bathroom next to the living room, past what had at one time been a nice couch. Now it was a ripped-up hunk of Italian leather that needed to be burned. It probably had rats living in it.

The door was slightly open, so I pushed it the rest of the way with the barrel of the gun and kept my focus everywhere at once.

Nothing. Just an empty room. I heard scratching at the front of the house, and slid around the corner of the kitchen to see what it was. When Scott slipped in with his big Remington extended, I nodded at him. I motioned with one hand to tell him to slow down, then put a finger to my lip and pointed upstairs. He nodded back that he understood and took point. I stared at the closet where access to the house lay. Looking at the closed door, I decided to check there first. No sense in leaving an opening unexplored before going upstairs.

Putting my hand on the wood, I almost jumped out of my skin when something hit the door hard enough to shake it. As I stepped back, I raised the handgun. I was pretty sure that every hair on my body was standing at attention and ready for inspection.

I took a deep breath to calm my nerves, but it did no good. My hand was shaking from the scare. Taking another breath made it stop. Scott stared at me with big, round eyes, like he had seen a ghost. I reached for the door again, and he shook his head.

Closing my hand on the knob, I jerked it open, and stepped back just in time to avoid being bowled over by a shambling horror.

It was hard to tell how long the creature had been in the closet. Its body was covered in rotted skin, and its eyes were nothing but dried-out white orbs. It stumbled forward, and I drilled it through the head with one shot then another before it could acknowledge the blast of lead. The second bullet went through the bridge of its nose and exploded out the back of its head. Blood and congealed chunks that looked like Jell-O splattered over the wall in a pattern that would make a four-year-old finger painter proud.

The body slumped back and fell into the closet. I still had to get in there and open the access to the space under the house. I didn’t want to have to crawl over a floor slick with blood. Grabbing the man by his ankles, I pulled him back and away from the tiny room.

Scott looked like he wanted to throw up. Maybe he wasn’t used to the up-close stuff. I offered him a mad grin and set the man’s feet on the floor. He was just as rotted as the woman I had killed in the street. His eyes were off center where the bullet had punched through his forehead, and he was covered in dirt and blood. He had green streaks all over his clothes, like he had crawled through the grass to get there.

I wanted to sweep the rest of the house before I went in. No sense having one of those things come downstairs while my ass was hanging in the air. I wished I had brought a flashlight. When I opened the door to the garage, it was hard to see anything in the murkiness. No movement, but it looked to be just as wrecked as the rest of the house.

I went upstairs on the balls of my feet. The doors were wide open except for one—the bathroom. It was odd to creep through my own house. It felt empty and alone, and I felt failure pressing down on me. The failure of a race that had given up the fight and decided to huddle together in tiny enclaves.

I had to pause and take a deep breath to steady the pounding of my heart. Was that all we were? Rats scurrying around, trying to carve out a better barrier to hide behind?

I poked the gun in each of the two bedrooms and the bathroom, but they were clear. Dressers held nothing but dust. My old clothes were gone. No underwear or socks. I had been wearing the same pair for so long that they were getting holes in them.

We went back downstairs, and I got on my hands and knees and tugged the small doorway open. It was just a big square of wood with insulation attached to the sides so it would form a seal. There was no way to determine for sure if anyone had been in here, but it did not appear to have been touched. I hung my head over the side and tried to get used to the darkness to see if anything or anyone was in the space.

I waited for a full minute, but there was nothing alive there. I crawled in, slithered through the dirt to the place I had left my stash of goodies, and grabbed the bag. I hauled it back out with me and dragged it and myself up. As I moved back, my feet hit the legs of the corpse, and I just about let out a scream.

“Well, what is so important that you had to drag us here for it?”

Smiling, I opened the bag. I took the laptop out and set it aside, as well as the portable hard drive. Taking the picture out, I slid it from the frame and set it on the dirty carpet. Allison would have gone insane if she saw how badly damaged the floor was. No amount of professional cleaning would restore it to its original condition.

There were cans in the bottom that clacked together, and when I pulled them out and set them down, Scott just about started drooling. He stared at them and at me.

“We should,” I said, popping the lid on the pineapple chunks. It had a little ring on top for easy access. Grinning, I took a sip of the juice, which was nirvana. I had eaten whatever could be thrown together for the last day, and the stop at the Walmart saw me wolfing down dog food gruel that tasted like crap. Nothing but meat at the cabin. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had fruit.

I dug a couple of pieces out and handed the can to Scott. He didn’t waste any time taking a sip, then rolled his eyes back like he was having the best sex of his life. He ate three or four chunks as well, but he chewed on them slowly, one at a time, so he could savor them. The can didn’t last long, but we enjoyed every second. I still had mandarin oranges, peaches, and a can of refried beans. I tossed him the can of beans.

“What, ‘cause I’m fucking Mexican you give me the beans?”

I just about spat out the bit of pineapple.

“Come on, man, how about those peaches? You got two cans.”

I laughed and handed him one.

“Thanks for coming with me.” I smirked, and he grinned back. I felt a friendship forming with him. He was a good guy with a sense of humor, and I could see that he would be a great guy at my back and vice versa.

“Better than nothing, man.”

“Gives you nasty farts.”

“I don’t need much help with that.”

He laughed.

I laughed at his face, which he had screwed up as if he were deep in thought. Before I started cracking up for real, I slipped outside, but stopped dead in my tracks.

It couldn’t have been the creeping around; it had to be the gunshot that drew them. Whatever it was, we had a serious problem. About twenty of the rotted things were closing in on us.

“Ah fuck!” Scott whispered behind me.

The day had gone too well. We’d only had one of the things to contend with, and it was locked in the closet for so long it was probably completely brain dead—if it even had brains. Being stuck in there for a long time couldn’t have been good for it. It basically fell out, and I finished it off. The ones in front of the house were much different.

They wore tattered clothing, the ones that were dressed. Some only had on tops or bottoms. There was a large woman with a gash running across her forehead and dried blood caked all over her face. She wore the remains of a pair of corduroy pants, green but covered in refuse. Her shirt was missing, and her breasts were shriveled things that looked like big raisins. Next to her was a man in a full three-piece suit that had seen better days. I expected it to reek of mothballs if he got close enough—that and rot. They were all rotted; some were falling apart. It was a pathetic group that had their eyes set on me and Scott. A feast for the dead. I didn’t plan on being dinner.

Dropping the bag, I started popping them one at a time. I aimed and took care that I had each shambler in my sight before I stroked the trigger. Scott wanted to run; I could see it in his body language. I had him pegged in the corner of my eye, but he stuck by my side, which raised his status quite a bit in my mind. It was easy to give in to panic and make a run for it, but a true soldier did the best he could with what he had. And we had each other.

I brought another one down—a child this time. A kid with long hair that was faster than the others. He or she was already halfway up the driveway when I took it in the throat. It stumbled to a halt as half of its neck disappeared in a spray of gore that I never wanted to remember.

More were on their way in their shambling mass. We would have to make a run for it after all. At least they were slow, but if one of the ghouls was around, it might use its strange influence to push them at us.

I took to the tall grass with Scott right behind me. It was tough going, as we had to high-step it over the mass of green that was taking over the front yard. I hauled ass around the corner and came to a stop as more of the things came out of the greenbelt surrounding the yard. There were dozens of the shambling creatures, and they all had hungry eyes set on our flesh.

Even if I could find a place to shoot from, we didn’t have enough ammo to take them all out. We couldn’t call for help; no radios. Now if I had asked about those, it might have been the genius move of my life, but I was so convinced that the little communities were keeping the zombies at bay that I got hasty and didn’t plan well enough. Shit!

I stopped in my tracks and stared at Scott. “Can we run through them?”

“It just takes one bite, man, and when they start dragging at you, I’ve seen people brought down by three of the fuckers.”

I popped the first few that were closing in on us. One fell with a neat hole between its eyes. Another lost the side of its head but came on, so I shot it again, and it fell in a heap.

I looked around desperately and spotted something I didn’t expect. A splash of red in the tall grass next to my rusting lawnmower. It was near the house and within easy reach. I let out a yelp as I spotted it and ran to grab it. It was still pretty heavy, like it was at least half full. I wasn’t sure how long ago I had used the stuff, so I wasn’t sure if I had left it in that state. Still, I supposed with all the cars lying abandoned, folks had no problem finding enough fuel to keep their cars running. What did they need my piddly can for?

The top was one of those pop-off caps that allowed the can to breathe, so it might have been full. For all I knew, with the fumes pouring off for the last half year, it could be half water. I didn’t have time to worry about it. I jerked the cap off and splashed the fluid all over the ground in front of the ones coming out of the greenbelt. I splashed it in high arcs that cascaded in a beautiful display of rainbow that coated a few.

Scott turned and covered my back by bumping three or four booming rounds of buckshot into the monstrosities on the side of the house. We were surrounded, and I had doubts about us escaping. There was no way to get through them unless I burned a path, and that was what I intended to do. If it came to it, I would lie down and put the handgun to my head.

I dashed, avoiding as many of them as I could while laying down the line of fire. I didn’t have a lighter, and I hoped Scott did.

“You got some flame?”

“I don’t smoke,.”

Oh shit.

He ran to my side and stared at the horde before us. He looked at the grass, at the gas-drenched zombies, and then at me. Grinning, he lowered the gun, then took a step right up to one of them—a man missing half of his left arm and most of one cheek.

“Hello, asshole. Welcome to the bonfire.” Then he fired the shotgun into the ground at the thing’s feet. The resulting blast ignited the grass. The gas had become vaporous, and the flame spread quickly. It was probably just my imagination but I swear the zombie went from slack-faced to horrified in a half-second. It turned to move away from the flame but was consumed. It howled deep in its throat—an almost forlorn cry that stilled the day.

“We need to move!” I yelled at Scott. He didn’t need any further prodding and launched himself at the fence. We had to leap over the spreading flames, and I was scared that my pants would catch fire. I ran for it, but the blaze was spreading rapidly. It was also saving us, because the things were staggering away from the flames. There were a couple of them standing near the fence. Scott and I came on like a pair of linebackers. I hit one with my shoulder and barreled into a man around my age or maybe a few years younger.

Another snagged me from behind. Hand on my shirt but there was no grip and I shook it loose. I kicked back and felt a satisfying thump against a body. A glance over my shoulder told me it had been pushed back into the fire. It stared at the flames that licked at its cotton shirt, then shrieked and ran right into the rotting thing behind him, a woman in her sixties if she was a day. Then it was chaos as the zombies became the prey—a prey to fire. We were used to being on the run. Now it was their turn.

Scott kicked one in the chest. I slipped behind a zombie and pushed it toward the rapidly spreading flame. The guy was so rotted that his skin caught on fire instantly, and the smell of sizzling bacon was in my nose. I was disgusted at myself for the way I practically drooled.

The reek of smoke was all around us, and I risked a glance back at the house. The yard was in flames, and it was only a matter of time before the fire took my pride and joy and burned it to a cinder. All the memories, both good and bad, all the stuff we had collected, all the house payments I had made toward our mortgage and property value, all my equity, gone the day the world went to the dead, and now I was going to baptize that old life in fire.

I drew my handgun and shot as I ran. The big shotgun boomed beside me, and I lost the hearing in that ear for a few seconds, but it splattered one of the things like a bucket of gore tossed against the fence. The zombie’s flesh hung from the chain link, making it look a slaughterhouse. Part of its head and something I was sure was brain matter also hung there. I wanted to be disgusted, but I had no time to think about it, no time to consider the human life that was splattered all over the place.

Smoke everywhere, and it was hard to catch my breath. We hit the fence with the flames behind us. It was the only route now, as they ran in pursuit of us. I scaled the chain link and did a neat flip that had much more to do with fear than acrobatics. Landed on my feet, and felt the impact blast up my legs. My left knee almost buckled, but I ran on regardless.

Dead ahead, dead and toasted behind. They were coming from both sides, but it was hard to tell which were after us and which were running from the smoke and flames. I fired at one that was snarling at me and caught it in the shoulder. He fell back, but not for long. I had to shoot him again, and, even running, I was able to put the bullet through his head at less than ten feet.

“Ghoul!” Scott shouted from my left. I followed his wide-eyed stare to my right. He turned toward me, and I veered away, trying to follow his lead. Sure enough, just to the side of the herd of zombies was one of the green-eyed creatures, and he did not look happy. With pasty, white skin, he was a real waxen nightmare of old and dead combined with something resembling a human.

I developed a new plan that didn’t involve escape. I hadn’t run into anyone who had a clue what these guys were up to. I wanted that green-eyed bastard in my hands, wanted to drag him back to the barricade and find out everything I could, even if it meant blowing his brains out to see what was in that head.

“Erik!” Scott called from my side, but I shot another zombie in the face and raced toward the ghoul. I was still a good thirty or forty feet away when it caught on that I wasn’t interested in just getting away.

I had to drop another, then I ducked as one came at me with arms open wide like it wanted a hug. I turned my run into a flying front kick that was just as pretty as you please and dropped the big zombie in his tracks. The boom of the shotgun behind told me the guy wouldn’t be getting up again.

Then there were a pair of them ahead, but I was dry. I didn’t have time to pull the assault rifle over my shoulder, and I was too close. By the time I got it up to my cheek to aim, the other would be able to close in on me and get a bite, so I tossed the handgun and drew my big knife.

With the blade touching the inside of my forearm, I held it in a reverse grip, then came in with a slash that took one of the women across the throat. It was so fast that she didn’t have time to react, and she fell back gurgling. The second one managed to loop a hand over my shoulder and pull me in. Her mouth was rancid, like old meat with teeth stuck in it. I saw brown crud growing between them and felt my stomach flutter. She looped her other hand around me, but I batted it aside. The knife was at my side, so I dragged it up, slashing into her stomach and tugging upward. I would like to say I felt a splash of warmth, but it was anything but. I’m sure her intestines fell out, but they felt like a bunch of cold snakes that wanted to wrap around my arm.

She didn’t seem to mind the wound that would have brought a normal person to her knees and left her bleeding to death. She held onto me like a vice. I hit her a couple of times with my left hand as I tried to dislodge her, but she wanted a piece of me. She snapped at my face, and I barely got my hand out of the way in time to avoid the bite.

I pushed her away and ripped the knife up. The blow was quick, and I think I cut through most of her forearm. She loosened her grip enough for me to get the knife out. When she tried to bite me the next time, I had my blade ready and cut her across the face, taking part of her lip off in the process. Then I reversed the blade and, with a whip like motion, drove the knife into her temple as hard as I could. It went in cleanly, and she dropped like someone had cut her strings. I dragged the knife free as she fell, and caught sight of the green-eyed ghoul. His eyes met mine. He snarled like a dog then turned and tried to run.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” I yelled, anger burning beneath my skin. The rage of what these things had done to the human race was like acid.

I hit the ghoul from behind with a kick to his lower back. At the last second, I lessened the blow so that I wouldn’t snap his spine. He stumbled forward and hit the ground. He managed to get one hand out, but it snapped with an audible pop. I wasn’t messing around. Reversing the knife, I slammed the pommel into his temple. He tried to rise again, so I repeated the blow. The second one collapsed him.

The zombies had no brain, no pulse, no life. They were the walking dead, as improbable as that sounds. They were an abomination—a thing that should not exist. They were an offense against nature. These ghouls were worse; they were like the dead, only they had a brain of sorts. To my surprise, the ghoul beneath me was moving. His lungs rose and fell as he breathed.

What the hell were these things?

With the unconscious and stinking ghoul between us, we made our way back to the camp. We had to drag him, and at first I didn’t like the idea of his filthy skin touching mine. I was on the right and Scott on the left. The closer we got to the base, the more I wanted to put a bullet in this thing’s brain and leave him to rot.

Scott didn’t say much; he just grunted as we dragged the man. He glanced at the ghoul from time to time, and then at me. I didn’t offer any thoughts. I wasn’t even sure what had possessed me to capture the creature. A ghoul. I supposed that if I were a bastard, I could torture this thing. I didn’t relish the thought; I had no desire to do it. I had met people who could do it. I had met men who would grin and shake my hand, maybe clap me on the shoulder, and then go on to their torture devices.

My hand was on fire where I had brushed the burning grass. Adrenaline had helped me ignore the pain, but now it was back. My palm felt rough, and I was pretty sure there were blisters. I hoped the damage was minimal. It was hard to see, though, because my right hand was covered in soot. I wished I had a container of ice-cold water I could pour on the burn. And while I was wishing for stuff, I wished I were on vacation in the Bahamas with no zombies around.

“You guys have anything to drink back at the camp?” I asked Scott.

“A little. We got some cheap whiskey, the kind that comes in plastic jugs, but we save that shit for special occasions. Some days I would kill for a shot of tequila.”

“Drink of choice?”

“I’m Latino. What the hell do you think I like, Bud Light?”

“Name like Scott, that’s real Latino.”

“Mom thought it would be cool if we had names that fit into American society better. My sister is named Mary—or she was. I don’t know if she’s alive. I have a brother named Sean, and it’s spelled with an E-A just like Sean Connery. I think she liked his James Bond the best.”

“Who doesn’t?”

The thing between us stirred; his legs kicked. I considered smacking him upside the head again, but I was worried about killing him before we got back. We were across the field, and, when I looked back, the smoke was rising into the sky. I wondered how much of my old block I had just torched. At least the houses were spaced pretty well apart. My yard was separated from Edwards’s by a stone path that led back to the greenbelt. I think the community had once thought of running a full walking path behind all the houses, but it never happened.

“Hold up. I’m worried about this thing waking up and biting one of us. Does the virus spread the same with these ghouls?”

“I don’t know, man. I think they ate some of the fucking dead flesh and the virus mutated in them or something. I haven’t heard of one of them biting anyone.”

“I’m not taking any chances.”

Yanking out the knife at my side, I used it to cut the thing’s sleeve off. We had to drop him, but he barely stirred. He smelled like rot, just like the zombies, but he had an undercurrent of something like old fish. His arm under the sleeve was white with massive patches of gray. He had open wounds that oozed pus, and I didn’t want one of those sores touching my clothing. It was bad enough having him between us.

I used the sleeve to gag the creature. It opened one eye, which blazed a shade of green. I wasn’t in the mood, so I drew back my arm and punched him in the temple. He went down like a sack of potatoes.

The barricade was buzzing when we got back. Men and women, armed to the teeth, patrolled the tops of cars and the perimeter. The air was filled with the shouts of the community as they came out of tents and houses.

“It’s Scott. Hold up!” My companion yelled as we approached. He raised one arm and waved it. I looked behind me at the mess we had left, but all I could see was a column of smoke slowly rising in the early morning breeze. The sky was crystal clear with the exception of a few light puffs of cloud.

People had long worried about the impact we had on the environment. That we were going to destroy it. One thing was for sure: Humans were a dying race, a breed that was bound to pass on like so many that had come before, but the earth would still be here long after us.

Lisa was on top of a car, staring down an automatic barrel at us. My skin crawled as she drew a bead on me. I wondered what she made of the ghoul, wondered if she was thinking of blowing us away just for hauling it back. Trust was hard to come by nowadays.

She would be right to kill him and us. I wondered if I would do the same in her shoes. I realized what a mistake it was to bring this thing with us. I should have ended him when we were back at the house, but this was an opportunity to study our enemies’ leaders. What sort of information could we learn?

“What the fuck is that?” she yelled as we drew within fifteen feet.

“One of the ghouls.”

“What?” Coming off the car, she slid to the ground in a neat, practiced move.

She came at us with assault rifle raised, stopping a few feet away before she lowered it to her waist. The gears were spinning—I could see it in her eyes as she considered what we had brought with us. This was a great opportunity; she had to see that.

“You can’t bring that ghoul in. Lay it out and take care of it, then drag the body somewhere. I don’t want to see the thing.”

She turned to leave.

“Wait!” I set the unconscious creature down on the ground. Scott leaned over to help, then straightened and stretched until something popped in his back.

“Heavy mother fucker,” he grunted.

“What? You think that thing is going to come in here? Maybe we can feed it, give it a room to stay in? Maybe we can ask its name and treat it like family, the way we did with you and Katherine last night?”

She had a point, but the tactical advantage had to outweigh the risk. We could learn so much from this ghoul. We could find out how they controlled the zombies, how they lived, where they lived, and how many there were. I was afraid to admit that the ghouls might have some sort of organization, that they might be living in groups and communicating, like we did. If that were true, then we would need to find and eliminate them, because they would certainly be unwilling to peacefully share the world with us. They would want to destroy us—or worse, gather us up like they were farming cattle.

“We need to find out if they’re organized. We need to learn everything we can. Don’t you have a secure room where we can keep him while we gather intel?”

“Gather intel? Is that another word for torture?”

“What the hell does it matter if we torture this thing? It’s not even human.”

“I can give fuck all about him. I don’t want him in the camp.”

I wanted to chalk up her reaction to being a woman, but that wasn’t it, and it would be cheap to think so. Lisa had worked very hard to maintain this enclave in the midst of hopelessness. She had been a beacon for the survivors, given them a place to gather and live together as a family. They relied on each other. They protected each other, and I had no doubt that each would sacrifice himself or herself for the others. It reminded me of the military, and that was why I felt so attached to them after only one day. I couldn’t betray them, but I didn’t want to lose valuable information we could learn from the ghoul.

A scream from ahead drew my attention toward the end of the road. There were a couple of zombies headed in our direction. A loud moan filled the air and lifted the hair on the back of my neck. I looked down at the ghoul, and his eyes were open and glowing.

“Are you doing that?” I wondered how intelligent he was.

“You will die,” he hissed in a burst of foul breath that made me want to turn aside and throw up.

I looked back, and there were more of them. They were filling the street, heading in our direction. I considered the ghoul—this man that used to be human but was now some sort of monster. Who was I to become judge, jury, and executioner?

“Call them off or I’ll blow your brains all over the road. You want to die?” Pulling my handgun, I pressed the barrel to his head.

“I’m already dead … just like you. You just don’t … know … it.”

His speech pattern was a mess. He could only choke out a few words before wheezing.

“Fuck! How do you do it? How do you call and control them?”

“Why are you still... among the living?”

White rage filled my vision. It tore across my eyes and filled them with hatred for this thing. He was human once, like me, like all of us, but he had no humanity left. He was worse than an animal. He was a demon that needed to be put down.

I was holding his collar as I kept his head off the ground. Dropping him, I stood and blew his head open with a pair of rounds that turned the concrete red and gray, like a bowl of putrid spaghetti had been spilled.

More moans filled the air. I did a full turn as I took in the hordes that were closing in on us. I saw five or six coming in every direction, with more behind them. A shambling army of rotted dead that walked like living men and women. Their cries and snarls filled me with more rage. This was not supposed to happen!

“Call everyone back!” Lisa yelled.

A pulsing sound ripped through the air, like they had routed a semi’s air horn into an air raid siren. Houses opened on all sides, and people came streaming out and into the street. They were strapping on clothes, packs, guns—it was a perfect example of organized chaos. There must have been thirty people, which would put the population of the enclave at something like seventy. Would it be enough?

Scott grabbed my arm and tugged at me. I stared at the ghoul on the ground as the light left its eyes. The body didn’t even twitch; it just lay listless like it had been on a morgue table for days.

The rage washed over me, but I used it rather than let it take over. I had met men who would go blind with rage in the heat of battle and make mistakes. Blind anger was a powerful tool, but it could lead to mistakes. There would be no mistakes. I was going to mold the rage.

Forcing down the adrenaline shakes, I took a deep breath, then another, before focusing on the zombies coming at us. Men and women with horrible wounds that no longer bled. Strips of flesh hung over rotted clothing as they came after us.

Lifting the rifle, I stared down the iron sights at a man dressed in a suit. His tie was still pulled up tight, but most of his shirt was missing. I put one in his forehead, and he fell back without a sound.

I walked as I shot, my gaze sweeping with the end of the gun as though the weapon were some sort of strange eyewear that allowed me to see the dead. And when I saw them, I dropped them. I fired fast, exhaling as I squeezed the trigger. Most fell with one shot, but some took two.

A voice called to me, then two, but I ignored them and fired. The voice in my mind was counting, and when I ran dry, I was already reaching for my back pocket for another magazine. The old one went into my waistband, and the other was slapped home without a look. My gaze never left the things coming after me.

They snarled and groaned as they moved in on me. There were no tactics; all they cared about was getting a piece of my flesh. I was probably fifteen or twenty feet from the barrier when other shots started to fill the air. Bullets buzzed past—angry wasps that tore holes in the air and passed with a brutal blaze through the zombies.

A group of three left the safety of a bunch of overgrown rhododendrons when they saw me. I spun to my right and coolly dropped two of them. The third one was too close for a shot, so I stepped forward and snapped my foot up in a front kick to the thing’s chest. The kick was cool and coordinated; I exhaled as I struck, and every muscle in my body tightened on impact. The blow was horrendous, and I felt ribs snap under the kick, but the zombie merely fell onto its back and, after a couple of seconds, started struggling to its feet. I turned and dropped a pair that had gotten too close, and when I spun around to kill the one that I had kicked, a bullet ripped from my right and tore its forehead open.

Looking back, I found Scott with his shotgun. He pumped a round in and fired at nearly point blank range at a pair that had been closing from my right. One fell, so I dispatched the other. She was probably in her sixties and dressed in rain gear. It was easy to imagine she had chosen the thick clothing to protect her from bites, but she was missing most of one hand. They must have started there when they turned her into a meal.

I shot her in the head and then started to fall back. I was not done with the fight, but I needed to get to the other side.

“Let’s go!” I called to Scott, but I didn’t stop to see if he heard me. I ran for the line of cars and jumped on an old Ford, landing with a boom that probably left a dent in the hood. In two breaths, I was over it and sliding to the ground, then through a line of defenders.

Zombies parted, but it soon became a tangle as I strove to get around the combatants. Guns in all forms came out as the zombies came on. From all sides, they poured out of the woods and into the streets. They came in pairs and then in tens. It was the worst scenario I could possibly imagine, submitting my newfound friends to this horror. They came covered in blood, some fresher than others. Some had only strips of flesh left, and some were missing limbs. One poor woman in a jogging suit was missing part of her face; she was no longer ‘juicy,’ that was for sure.

Reaching the other side of the compound, I slid over another car and into the street. I dashed for my Honda and flung the rear door open. The M249 came out, as did an extra pair of magazines.

The gun was immensely heavy, and I would be better off getting to cover so I could mount it on something. At this range, I would be far from accurate.

None of that mattered. I wanted to blast these things back to Hell. I wanted them all dead.

The gun was a terrible pounding that tore open the day like a plane was flying overhead. It jerked back against my shoulder, so I leaned in and fought the recoil as I sprayed a healthy dose of .223 rounds into the oncoming creatures. Parts flew off with sickening ease. Bodies fell back as the bullets hammered into them over and over. One would almost call it a bloodbath, but there wasn’t much blood.

Long before I was ready to stop, the gun ran out of rounds, so I dropped the giant drum and tossed it in the back of the truck. I slammed another magazine in and let out a fresh burst. The chatter of shots came from behind, but there was also the sound of engines starting up. One, a very low rumble, sounded like a big diesel engine.

I glanced over my shoulder to see an army of men and women setting up lines of defense. It looked like something out of a textbook on how to defend a line. Some lay on top of trucks and yammered away with assault rifles. Some, like Scott, had dropped the big guns and were going at it with handguns. He had what looked like army-issue .45s in each fist. He spun and shot, moved and shot, and when he shot, something fell.

It was a massacre, plain and simple.

But they kept coming.

The first car to leave was a beat-up station wagon. It had someone in the back, and I suspected it was Katherine. Another car swerved around it and, with a roar, shot into the lead. A couple of other cars came after, then a big wrecker inched along around them. I kept glancing back to see how the warriors were holding up. Gunshots echoed everywhere. The ringing in my ears settled in and would be there for a while.

Scott came to my side as I unloaded a fresh magazine. He had one gun under his arm while he reloaded. He slapped a magazine in, then repeated the process.

“What’s the plan?” he yelled.

“Staying alive.”

“I didn’t ask if you could dance, man. I want to know if you have a fucking plan to get the hell out of here before the place is overrun.”

I didn’t have a plan besides killing as many of the zombies as I could. I had brought them here, and it was my duty to get rid of them.

The gun hammered to a stop, and the last recoil left my shoulder feeling sore. My ears rang, but the sound of the dead rang louder than any shots. They came on, slipping over bodies, and they fell among the corpses. Moving corpses among the still corpses—it was a nightmare. All I wanted to do was run away screaming. My flesh crawled as I watched the zombies clamber for me.

Scott continued shooting them, but we were seriously outnumbered. More cars were starting up, but I wasn’t ready to leave just yet. I dug in my pockets and pulled out the keys. “We can take my car.” I tossed the keys to Scott.

“I look like a fucking chauffeur?” he said and tossed them back.

Catching them, I grinned. He grinned back and shot one in the face. There was a splatter of blood that was nothing more than congealed red, like the blood that pools in the bottom of a container of leftover meat in the refrigerator. I grimaced and tossed the M249 in the back of the car. My trusty shotgun was in the back seat, so I tugged it off the floor and checked the load. Picking up a box of shells, I stuffed it into my pocket. I could kill a few more while the survivors made their escape.

They were all around us. I emptied the shotgun and started to reload, realizing we would not have much time. They were ten or fifteen feet away, and I could pick out details. Things I wished I could not see. The empty eyes, faces covered in blood. Some gray, others pale and white. Listless features on moving bodies. And behind them I caught the sight of green eyes that burned into me—seared like fire. I saw one pair then two, then several others popped up. And they urged the undead on.

I had a new target.

I emptied the shotgun and reached into the back of the car for the hunting rifle. It was on the floor, and I didn’t have time to check its condition. I opened the front door and used it as a brace to lean my body against. Then I lifted the gun, slid the bolt back, and watched a round fall into the chamber. Lifting the gun to my cheek, I took careful aim.

They were about fifty feet away, and they had their hands out at their sides as if corralling the zombies. One gestured, and a group stepped forward. I waited until he gestured with the other hand, and then I blew his brains out.

“We need to get the fuck out of here, man!” Scott yelled from somewhere behind me, punctuating his words with a shotgun blast then another.

I spun around, and he was almost swarmed. He staggered to the SUV and got in, slamming the door shut and popping up in the turret. He squeezed the gun between his body and the opening, then turned away from me and shot a pair.

I had to fall back, but they closed in on the other side. Now my way to the car was blocked. I fished the keys out and called out to Scott. He turned to see my wide eyes, and I threw the keys at him. He nearly dropped the gun as he made to catch them, but he managed to snag them in one hand. He stared at me, and I could not read his eyes. I wanted to tell him to take care and to watch out for Lisa and Katherine, but it seemed unnecessary.

I slammed the butt of my gun into the face of one of the zombies, and it fell away with a crunch. There should have been a spurt of blood. I was afraid that the only blood I would be seeing anytime soon would be my own.

The rifle was empty, and I didn’t have time to load, because they were everywhere. I spun away from the car and kicked one in the chest, then I swung the gun like a bat and laid another one out.

A small space opened, but I felt hands reach for me. The stench of the dead and rotting made me want to puke my guts out. I tried to breathe in the mass, but it was damn near impossible. I knew it was panic eating at me—an absolute dread sinking into my gut like a dark night. I had no escape. The SUV was ten feet away, but it might as well have been a mile away for all the good it did me.

I swung the gun hard into another zombie, and the stock came loose. Goddamn cheap Walmart rifle. More cold hands. Drawing my knife, I went at them with my own version of teeth. The blade was a crescent of death that I used to slice my way free. There were so many of them, but I might buy myself a few more seconds. The clothing might hold up against a small bite, but it wouldn’t if one set into me with intent.

Hands. Rotted breath. Moaning. Cries. What would it feel like when they tore me apart? I should have saved a bullet for my own head.

Then a space opened up, and one of the green-eyed bastards stood ahead of me. I dove for him, but something came down across my back like a lead bar. While I staggered under the blow, I still launched myself at the fucker one more time. I just needed to close in and sink my blade into his throat. Then another blow, this one to the base of my skull, and the lights went out like someone had covered the sun. My knees hit the ground and sent pain rocketing up my legs. I tried to get my hands out to stop my fall, which was the last thing I was aware of, except for one hazy thought. At least I wouldn’t feel pain when they tore me to pieces.