Bill swung out to the right. John followed. The trucks stopped nose to tail across the small paved area that lent access to the back of the store. There was the swarm.
We opened up on them from less than fifty yards. Shotguns, rifles, pistols—everyone threw rounds into the wall of rotted bodies. Heads exploded; body parts sheared away. Still, they came. Tony dropped a fast mover. The kid looked no more than twelve, but he was determined to get up in the bed of the truck. Tony swung the barrel down and pulled the trigger, and the kid’s head evaporated. Momentum slammed the corpse into the tailgate. It left a black smear across the red paint before it rolled away. Tony paused for a moment.
“
Don’t stop!” I shouted. “Pour it on!”
Tony went back to work. He thumbed shells into the bottom of his gun to feed it as he shot and pumped. I swept the field with my AR. Some shots I picked. Others just passed through Zeds and moved on to the horizon. One magazine went dry. I dropped it, slapped another into place, and kept shooting.
I heard the garage doors drop into place. I glanced over as my two ground guys started to climb into the backs of the trucks. Then I saw the pack of fast movers running up from the dock.
I shifted the red dot of my Aim-point sight to the head of the first deader. One squeeze of the trigger, and the corpse dropped. I moved to the next. I wasn’t fast enough.
They balled up on Mike and dragged him off the back of his ride. Tony turned to help, but they were too far away for his shotgun to do much good. The trucks sped past me. I heard Mike scream my name. I saw his hand stretched out from the pile. He shoved one of the deaders aside. I could see his face in my scope.
I put the red dot on his eye and squeezed the trigger. Brains blew out the back of his helmet against the sky-blue wall.
I pounded on the roof of the truck, and Bill pulled out of the lot.
Tony looked at me, eyes wide.
“
We never let any of our people turn!” I shouted over the wind. “They’d do the same for me.”
I glanced back at the swarm. Some of them were running after us. Some were fighting over Mike’s body.
“
I sure hope you can take orders from me, Tony. You’ve just been drafted into my unit.”
I dropped into my seat in the truck cab. We sped west through landscaped restaurant and business areas. The intersection was jammed with dead cars. We turned back north, headed down the off-ramp to the Interstate, jostled across the soggy median, and cruised up the other way. A drive that normally took twenty minutes took almost an hour. The redheaded chick babbled, laughed, and cried the whole way to Snareville.
“
I’m glad to see you, Jennifer," Rick murmured to my left. "I’ve missed you."
“
Good to see you too, Rick.” Jenny sat to my right. She worried at the cuticle of her thumb with her teeth. She did that when she was stressed.
“
You don’t sound very enthused.”
“
No. I’m glad you’re back, Richard. Really. How’d you get here? I thought you were stranded in Chicago.”
“
I was. My car was stuck in a traffic jam on Michigan Avenue. Things went crazy that first week. After that, they calmed down a little. People started to lock themselves away. I had a hotel room. When I started noticing things were quieter outside, I stole a cab and drove west. I rolled into Princeton on vapors.”
“
So why not come all the way home?”
“
I was lucky enough to get off the Interstate and get to Wal-Mart. The car died on me just as I rolled into the parking lot. I made it inside with a few other survivors, and there we were… until you rescued us.”
“
Wasn’t a rescue mission,” I said. “We came in for supplies.”
Rick looked at me like I was something he'd just scraped off his Italian loafers.
“
Be that as it may, we've been freed. We can be together again, Dear.”
“
Uh-huh.” Jenny stared out the firing port as the fields rolled by. She didn’t say anything else until we got home.
It was noon when we rolled into the first checkpoint. In town, we off-loaded the trucks. Tony offered to help; no one else in his group did. We sent them all with a few guards for a shower and quarantine at the high school. We'd set up some solar camp showers over there, and they worked. Not real private, but a warm shower was a warm shower.
It took us the better part of two hours to distribute our goods. Then we fueled the trucks and drove them back to the sheds. From there, I walked home with my crew.
In our bedroom, Jenny and I folded our coveralls and put them away for the next time. Jenny pulled on one of her white tank tops—boybeaters, she called them—and a pair of shorts. I tried to hug her, but she pulled away.
“
I have to go talk to him. I owe him that much.”
“
Jen, I…”
“
I
have
to.” She wiped the tears from her eyes with the palms of her hands, took up her shotgun, and left.
I sat on the porch, trying to nurse a beer. I would've killed for a cooler full of ice. I’ve never liked my beer warm, but I needed that one.
I had George tied to the handrail beside me. We didn’t like our dogs running loose in town. They tended to draw a lot of unwanted attention, and we'd decided they were best used as alarm systems.
The sun was nearly down. We always buttoned up for the night once the sun disappeared behind the hills.
I’d give her a few more minutes, then go inside with the others and lock the place down. At least we had a camp light now. We could stay up past dark.
George woofed. I reached for my gun, then stilled as Jenny came around the corner.
“
Scared me for a minute,” I said.
She gave a little smile. Her eyes were red and puffy.
“
Think I was a deader?”
“
Yeah.”
“
I’m not.” She laid her gun next to mine. “I’m very much alive. For the first time, I think.”
She pulled me close and kissed me deep and long. She slid her tongue into my mouth. For a long time, neither of us stopped.
Finally, she pulled away.
“
I love you, Danny.” She held up her left hand. The gold ring was gone. “I gave it back to him. I don't know anyone named Jennifer Mueller anymore. I’m Jenny One Sock, and I belong with Danny Death.”
I grinned at her. She'd always held some part of herself away from me, but not anymore. Not now.
“
And I don't remember anything about Daniel Jackson. I’m Danny Death, and I belong with Jenny One Sock.”
She smiled at me through her tears. We gathered up our guns, I untied George, and we went in the house. Inside, we joined the others' cribbage game. For a long time after that, we were never apart.
One hundred miles, three weeks on horseback, and now they were stuck on the wrong side of the creek with a pack of Zeds behind them.
Cori sat astride her Thoroughbred, eyeing the churning water five feet below the horse's hooves. Two of her students shot glances over their shoulders. The horses danced nervously. They, too, knew the Zeds were closing in.
“
What do we do, Miss Cori?” asked Rachel, a slender, blonde girl of twelve mounted up on a big, chestnut Dutch Warmblood.
“
We have to get across. I don’t know where.” Cori gazed across the span. She saw a deader tied with cables to one of the supports halfway across the creek. “I didn’t expect the bridge to be blown.”
“
We gotta go,” said Joe, up on a bay Irish Warmblood.
“
Sherrie, anything down there?” Cori called to her sixteen-year-old niece.
The girl rode another Irish Warmblood. The bunch of them had left the riding academy in Coal Valley, one hundred miles west, and the ride thus far had cost the lives of two other students. But Rachel had received a text from a friend in Snareville who said folks were safe there, and Snareville was where they were headed.
“
Nothin’, Aunt Cori. Banks are all cut like this, and the water’s up from the rain.”
“
Damn.” Cori stared at the chocolate-colored water as it swirled below them. “We'll have to ride across.”
Tied to the pillar in the creek, the zombie let out a moan. Others answered the call as they stumbled down the road behind the riders.
Cori shot a look over her shoulder. Four more Zeds had joined the six.
“
Get behind me,” Cori snapped. She pulled the riot gun she'd liberated from a burned-out squad car. Three shells left. She'd have to make them count.
Her first blast took out the zombie leader. The horses jumped, but they held. They'd grown accustomed to gunfire, but not to the Zeds.
Another shot took out an old woman with a missing breast. Cori's last shot went too low. Her round blew the shoulder off a younger woman. Cori slung her shotgun and reached for the pistol she'd taken from the remains of the dead cop.
Before she could fire a shot, a deader’s head exploded. Black gore spattered its packmates. Another round barked; another dead Zed hit the ground.
Thunder from a hidden gun tore the air apart, followed by shouts of victory. Five corpses lay on the roadbed. More corpses kept on coming.
The gunfire paused.
“
Get across the crick, dammit! We’re gonna draw more of 'em!”
Two more gunshots, and now only still bodies lay where the pack had been shuffling down the road before.
Cori urged her Thoroughbred forward, and the kids followed. As the horse plummeted into the flood, the cold shock of the water took her breath away. Cori’s mount pulled hard for the far bank. The others hung in there with her. In a few short minutes, the animals pulled themselves from the creek. They stood on the sandy bank, shaking water from their bodies as their riders gasped for air.
Up on the roadbed, a bent, gray-haired man waited for them, an old bolt rifle in hand. He fired a shot and dropped another deader as it wandered out of the woods.
Cori managed, “Thanks, Mister…”
“
Name’s Walt, Missy. An' I don’t reckon I’ve seen me a black girl out here for an awful long time now.”
Cori shrugged. “Name’s Cori White. My niece is Sherrie. Blondie there is Rachel Van De Vordie, and the lucky guy with all these chicks is Joe Heffernan. A friend of Rachel’s told us it was safe here.”
“
Well, wouldn’t say
safe
so much as
secure
. Who’s the friend?”
“
Shea Jonas.”
“
Yeah, I know Shea. Always out on her horse. C’mon, an' I’ll take ya into town.”
Walt swung around to head for the golf cart parked on the edge of a cornfield. He hobbled more than he walked, his shoulders swinging side to side as his legs, bent inward at the knees, swung forward in quick, slanted arcs.
“
What happened to you, Mister Walt?” Joe asked.
“
Joe!” Cori snapped.
The old man chuckled. “Mine’s bowed in as far as yours is bowed out, boy. Don’t worry, Missy. Kids his age ain’t never seen no one who’s had polio. Damn good blessing, too.”
The horses clopped along behind the golf cart as the old man led them through a checkpoint over another bridge. At the edge of town, a young man with blonde hair and a thick, blonde beard came out to meet them. A young woman with dark, waist-length hair moved in step with him at his side.
“
They say they got word from Pony Shea we was safe down here,” Walt said. “Must've figured here was better’n where they was.”
“
Thanks, Walt," the young man said. "How’d the trap do?”
“
Pretty good. Ol’ Petey brought his friends in just fine. Dropped near ‘bout a dozen deaders. Damn near hit these folks when they stumbled into the middle of things, though.”
“
I’ll take ‘em from here, Walt. Thanks.”
“
All yours, Boss.” The old man shuffled back to his cart, climbed in, and turned back out of town.
The four newcomers sat on their tired horses, uncertain. Wet, bedraggled, clothing hung from their frames, ripped to shreds in places, and the kids' backpacks hung limp from their shoulders. The guards at the checkpoint hadn’t backed away to let them through.
“
Which one of you is Shea’s friend?” the young man asked.
Rachel raised her hand.
“
How do you know her?”
“
We show together, Mister. Up at Shone’s Farm.”
The young brunette nodded. “I’ve heard Pony talk about it, Danny. She’s still upset about missing show season.”
“
Let ‘em in,” the young man said. Guards stepped back as the young man looked over the newcomers. “When's the last time you folks had a decent meal?”
“
I don’t remember when, Mister…” Cori began, hesitating.
The young man smiled. “They call me Danny Death. This’s my girl Jenny One Sock.”
“
Those’re funny names,” Joe said.
Danny shrugged. “Last names don’t mean much these days, kid. Take Shea… we call her Pony around here, ‘cause she's always out riding around town on one of her horses.”
He slung his rifle over his shoulder and held out a hand.