The dog pranced unsurely, tail tucked. He looked back and forth between Lee and the woods.
Lee clicked his tongue. "Come on, Deuce!"
Come on you stupid mutt! You"re gonna get us f.u.c.king killed!
A flash of movement from the opposite side of the trees. Something-several somethings, actually-slipped in between the houses, heading for the little patch of woods. The only thing that stood between Lee and being torn apart.
Lee felt the adrenaline in his toes first, then his fingers, and then it slammed his chest. They were coming, and Lee stood there with his hands tied behind his back, completely defenseless. Infected in front of him, and men with guns behind him.
He began to backpedal, yelling as he did. "Deuce! Let"s f.u.c.king go!"
Behind him, Kev called it out: "Infected! Move it back, guys!"
And right at that moment, when Lee was almost certain that he was about to get a bullet to the back of his head while Kev and the others made their escape, Deuce finally broke. He jumped away from the trees and began hauling up the overgrown back yards, knifing through the waist-high gra.s.s, tail tucked, ears back.
Lee turned.
Kev was there, grabbing him by the jacket.
They didn"t speak. They just ran. Ahead of them, James and the quiet man with the shotgun backpedaled. When they saw Kev turn and begin running, they followed suit. Lee craned his neck and glanced behind him as Kev dragged him along. Deuce was at his feet, still running scared.
They rounded the corner of the house, headed for the street. Parked at the curb was an old, gray utility van. Exhaust rose up in gray clouds from the tailpipe. Lee could just see inside the slightly-tinted front windows. He could see the driver looking at them and thought that it looked like a woman. The engine revved, the brake lights flashed.
The side door of the van flew open just before James and the Quiet Man reached it. There was another figure in the van, but he was in shadows and Lee couldn"t see much of him. The figure reached out and hauled James and the Quiet Man into the door. As they drew close, Lee tried to get a better look at the man inside the van, but Kev shoved his head down and catapulted him forward into the van so that Lee hit the floor of it face first, skinning his cheek bones.
Kev clambered in after him. "Get your f.u.c.king dog in here!"
Lee rolled into a sitting position. All over the floor there was a collection of scavenged items-canned goods, bottles of water, and what seemed like an odd amount of sweets. Lee kicked through the items as he righted himself and leaned out of the open van door. Deuce was just outside, but still not sure about jumping into the van with strangers.
"Deuce!" Lee shouted. "Get in here!"
A screech echoed through the houses. Followed by a series of barks that seemed to surround them. That was all Deuce could handle. He jumped into the van, immediately plastering himself against Lee"s chest, looking warily at the others and whining loudly. Lee instinctively tried to put his arms around the dog, but was reminded that he was bound by the wrists.
Captured.
The man that Lee had not been able to see leaned forward and slammed the sliding van door, then pointed forward. "Get us out of here, Sh.e.l.ley!"
Lee glanced up towards the driver. It was a woman, as Lee had thought. Young. Pretty at first until you saw the coldness in her. How used up her face seemed. She eyed Lee with a quick, unpleasant evaluation, and then turned back forward, hitting the gas and causing everyone in the van to lurch backwards as the vehicle took off.
Lee struggled to right himself. A cloth sack was suddenly pulled over his head. It was rough, like burlap. Smelled like dirt and cedar. The fabric was coa.r.s.e enough that Lee could see some light through it, but no details. Just smudges.
Kev"s voice in his ear. "Just sit tight..."
"Wait a minute."
It was the voice of the fourth man. The one that had waited in the van for the others.
Something tickled Lee"s subconscious. Maybe a memory.
"Pull the hood off," the fourth man ordered.
There was some hesitation, but not long. Kev clearly deferred to the fourth man. He didn"t question why the cloth needed to be removed, and the fourth man didn"t offer an explanation. Kev simply grabbed it by the top, pinching a chunk of Lee"s overgrown hair with it, and he ripped it up and off.
Lee blinked rapidly.
Focusing on the face that stared at him.
Gaunt. Wild hair. The right side of the man"s face was all angles and cruel lines. The left side was mottled with scar tissue. The man"s beard grew patchy there, and almost white. But it was his eyes that told the story. They stared at Lee and they knew him, recognized him, and hated him all at once.
Lee"s gut tightened. "Deputy Shumate."
The man kneeling in front of him just shook his head. "Not anymore."
Harper stood in the cargo bed of one of the LMTVs, leaning over the roof of the cab and trying to let the morning sun warm him. He stared out into the long, empty section of Highway 421 that stretched out in front of him. They"d spent the night on the side of the road, surrounded by open fields. It gave the watchmen a chance to see any intruders before they got too close.
The highway was four lanes, two heading northwest and two heading southeast, divided by a gra.s.sy median. It was on this median that they had parked the train of vehicles so that they had a clear, 360-degree arc of fire with no cover for attackers.
Standing to his right, shoulder to shoulder with him, was Julia. She was bent over a long, black bolt-action rifle, her left eye squinted and her right staring through a high-powered scope. As she squinted, her lips parted just slightly, showing her left incisor.
"What do you have?" Harper prodded, rubbing his balding head and wishing for a hat.
"Three," she said quietly, shivering just slightly from leaning against the ice-cold metal of the LMTV"s cab. "Two males and a female."
"Infected?"
Julia considered this for another moment, then let out a steady breath that fogged in front of her face. "Yes. Looks like they"re rooting through a pile of trash in the median."
"Guess they smell somethin" good." Harper shifted his weight. "You okay?"
She sighed heavily. "Yeah. I"m good."
"Go ahead then."
Julia slapped the top of the LMTV. "Hit it," she called.
Under that roof was Mike Reagan in the driver"s seat, and his wife Torri in the pa.s.senger seat. The "cute couple" as Julia had observed on several occasions with a sort of flagging sense of sentimentality. Both of them were in their early thirties. Mike dark-haired and athletic-looking. Torri blonde and slender. The type of couple that used to live in upscale condos, drive matching BMWs, and regularly visited the gym together.
In response to Julia"s signal, Mike blasted the horn three times.
Julia settled back to her scope. "Okay...they"re looking up...right at us..." She paused for moment, then sounded exasperated: "They"re aggressive."
Harper leaned back away from the cab as he saw her finger move to the trigger. The first blast from the rifle"s muzzle jarred his chest and cracked at his ears. He winced against the noise and put his fingers in his ears. Down the road, one of the small figures spurt red mist and then tumbled to the ground.
The other two kept sprinting towards them.
Julia"s feet spread wider to stabilize herself as she racked the bolt-action back and slammed in a fresh round.
A long pause as the first shot echoed back to them.
She fired. Racked the bolt. Fired again almost immediately. The second figure went down, now just over a couple hundred yards out. Julia chambered the fourth round and took her time aiming, waiting a full ten seconds until Harper could almost hear the strange barking-chuffing noise of the third infected as it ran headlong towards them.
Another boom.
The thing"s body jerked, a fleshy explosion coming from its chest. It faltered, then regained its feet and kept running for another ten or fifteen yards before it collapsed. Maybe a hundred yards down the road from them.
Julia opened both eyes, and looked over the top of her scope.
The thing was still alive. Its moans were audible as it clawed at the ground, working its way slowly towards them. Harper glanced back and forth between the figure on the ground and Julia. She still leaned over her rifle, but looked like she didn"t really want to take that last shot. Was she going to put the d.a.m.n thing out of its misery or just let it die on its own?
He supposed it didn"t matter. It would never reach them. Its heart was most likely pulverized by the shot to the chest. It was dead. It just didn"t know it yet.
She straightened and lifted the rifle from its rest on the cab of the LMTV.
He fixed her with a suspicious gaze. "Never shot a bolt-gun before, my a.s.s."
Julia shrugged. "Beginner"s luck."
Harper just shook his head and moved to the back of the LMTV. He climbed down off the bed with Julia following and they made their way around the LMTV, walking towards the three bodies Julia had just taken down.
The driver"s door of the LMTV opened and Mike Reagan slid out, holding his M4. "Need some help?" he called as he jogged to catch up.
"Sure." Harper smiled perfunctorily and looked at Julia. "Any of them have clothes on?"
"Yeah." She nodded. "They were all wearing their pants this time."
"Jackpot."
She pulled a pair of latex gloves from her pocket, began to pull them on. "Let"s get to it."
They walked out past the end of the convoy. The last vehicle was one of the Humvees, and the gunner lounged in the turret, seemingly amused by what had just occurred. He was a fifty-something man with a gray beard that made him seem like he belonged in leather and riding a Harley. People tried to question him on what he used to be, but he would just smile and change the subject.
Most had settled on him somehow being involved with the local chapter of the Outlaws.
A theory that came in a close second was that he had been a bounty hunter.
Dave, Harper thought, but everyone called him Gray, short for Gray Beard.
And somehow he knew how to use the M2.
Harper nodded to him, and Gray nodded back.
"You get "em?" Gray asked Julia.
Julia nodded. "Yeah, I got "em."
"Good job, Jules." He sat back, hitched an elbow up on the M2.
The three of them made their way down the highway. There were a few cars shoved off to the side, but otherwise no serious snarls between them and the dead infected. An old traffic accident lay farther on, perhaps a half a mile. It looked like it involved several vehicles and had caused others to back up and crunch in close to each other, blocking all the lanes of traffic and even the parts of the shoulder that could be used to skirt around the wreck.
It was these cl.u.s.ters of broken vehicles that had caused sixty miles to take two days to travel. Their primary objective was to reach Eden, North Carolina. But their secondary objective was to clear a supply and transportation route on the way, which meant winching fallen trees and wrecked and abandoned cars out of the road. And there were plenty of both.
They arrived at the first body. It was the one that Angela had shot last, through the chest. It was a male, probably in his mid-twenties. A s.h.a.ggy, dreadlocked head of sandy hair. A mangy-looking beard, plastered with crusted blood and only G.o.d knew what else. He wore a tattered pair of gym shorts and a single sneaker that had stayed stubbornly affixed to his foot through months of whatever torture he"d put himself through.
Harper made a face and looked off. "Don"t think you"ll find much there."
"Yeah," Julia"s voice strained as she bent down and patted the two side pockets of the gym shorts. "Nothin" there."
"On to the next."
The next one was the female, shot cleanly through the neck, severing her spinal column. Young, probably in her late teens. A pair of jeans that had probably once been skin-tight, but now hung loose on her emaciated frame. A tattered old bra with the cups long since ripped away, exposing her small b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The smell of this one was particularly bad when they approached. Distinctly fecal.
They curled their noses and looked at the jeans that had contained every movement of the infected girl"s bowels for the past four months. They were dark and stiff with it, and Harper could only imagine what kind of horrendous, infectious rash her skin had developed underneath the denim.
Julia held a hand in front of her face, cringing, and poked at the front pockets of the jeans with a single index finger, felt nothing, then pushed the body over with her foot so that it slumped onto its side, exposing the back pockets. There she saw a collection of small plastic squares, imprinting from inside the pocket. She knelt down quickly and stuck her hand in the pocket.
"Got something," she grunted, then stood quickly and moved away from the body, holding up a pair of credit cards and an ID.
Harper scratched his beard. "Alright. Let"s hear it."
Julia discarded the two credit cards, but held up the ID. "From Raleigh."
Harper nodded. "Good so far. We"re one for one."
Julia tossed the ID back onto the body and they continued on.
Fifty feet from the dead girl lay the first infected that Julia had killed. A middle-aged man, wearing the shredded remnants of khaki dress pants and half a tank top that hung in tatters from his shoulders and waist. Julia poked through his pockets and managed to come up with a brown, leather wallet.
She flipped it open. Found herself staring at a smiling family.
Harper stood next to her, almost flinched at the sight of the portraits.
Julia flipped quickly through-a set of baby photos, a picture of the dead man sitting beside a Golden Retriever. She ripped the photos out of the wallet and tossed them away from her. There was nothing to be done for him now. He was dead. In all likelihood, his family was dead, too.
And he"d probably been the one that killed them.
Harper watched the photographs flutter through the air, the plastic lining flashing briefly in the sun before it landed on the ground. Like a dead bird. He turned away from it. Didn"t want to think about all of that right now.
Julia rifled through the rest of the contents and found the ID. This time she looked at it with some interest. Her eyes flicked up to Harper"s. She extended it to him, slotted between her index and middle fingers.
Harper took the ID card and looked it over.
"Danville, Virginia," he said.
Julia chewed her lip for a moment, looking up the road. "Could just be coincidence."
Mike Reagan leaned over Harper"s shoulder to look at the ID himself. "It"s only the second Virginia ID we"ve seen."