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But goddamn Ted and Zach went on chatting about the Saints and the niggers and the fucking Waffle House like any of it still mattered. Sca
“That one there,” Zach said, indicating an 18-wheeler a few hundred feet away.
“What about those?” Ted was talking about the four smaller delivery trucks between them and the semi. “Could be some good shit in there.”
“Could be. Probably is,” Zach said. “But we try the big truck first. Find what we need and get the hell out of here.”
Wayne looked around. No movement anywhere, only cars and trucks bumper to bumper for all-time, some of them unscathed, some blackened and twisted, others glass and steel tombs whose misshapen and sun-baked occupants watched soundlessly as the three men strode between them.
It would be so damn easy now. A little later, and he’d lose his chance to get the drop on them. The whole thing could fall apart. And if his suspicions were true-if the last five guys to die on supply runs with Zach and Ted had been popped to keep rations fat back at the warehouse, couldn’t they already have the drop on him? Could he be walking toward his execution?
“Slow day,” Wayne said. Ted grunted again.
“The fuck you talking about?” Zach asked. Wayne could hear the disdain in his voice.
“None of them around yet.”
“Yeah,” Zach said. “So far so good, I guess.”
About twenty feet from the semi, Zach cursed. The loading door was partially open, and the ground around the truck was littered with rusted and broken kitchen appliances-toasters, blenders, indoor grills-sitting among the faded and disintegrating remains of cardboard boxes. They lifted the door and peered into the trailer. The boxes near the door were weathered and rippled. Toward the back, they were intact, their contents as useless as the trailer in which they sat.
“Okay,” Zach said. None of them were surprised. “We’ll go back and check the smaller trucks, and then we’ll-damn.”
“What?”
“Here we go.” Zach nodded in the direction from which they’d come. A few hundred feet away, a lone form shuffled toward them.
“Ah, jeeze,” Ted said. He scampered onto the cab of the semi, shielding his eyes and sca
“No problem,” Zach said.
“Just stumbling around-they don’t know we’re here yet.”
“Good. Now get down before you fall and break your fucking leg. I’ll leave your ass, I swear.”
“I got this one,” Wayne said, leaving the dolly and walking toward the slowly moving corpse. Fifteen feet away from the thing, he stopped. He smelled it through the dust mask. In a van to his right, what had once been a small boy of no more than three years watched him from its car seat. Desiccated hands pawed at the restraints. There was no one else in the van.
The other thing was closer, but not by much. It was a slow one. Its flesh was purplish-black and swollen, and its massive, rigid stomach was split down the middle like a tomato rotting on the vine. Its gaze rarely rose from the ground, and it seemed unable to lift its head. Its eyes lifted in its sockets and found Wayne. It tried to grunt, hands twitching at its sides and trembling upward. Wayne pushed down his face-shield and lifted the bat.
Three blows, and the corpse went down, its head a lumpish black sack. Wayne walked to the van and opened the door. A dry yelp escaped the dead kid’s drawn lips. He placed the blunt end of the bat to the side of the child’s head and pushed. It didn’t take long.
There was a Batman action figure on the floor of the vehicle. He picked it up and placed it in the child’s lap. Saying nothing felt wrong, but nothing he could think of sounded appropriate. As he shut the door, he noticed two cases of water in the back of the van along with several unmarked boxes. He went around back and checked them. Each contained various ca
He looked around. No walking corpses, no sign of Zach or Ted. They’d moved on, taking the dolly with them.
Wayne removed the face-shield and wiped sweat from his brow. He plucked a bottle of water from the van and, pulling the dust mask beneath his chin, downed it. His heart raced, and just like that, the silence and the heat were almost too much. He felt alone and small, and he wanted to be with Zach and Ted, even if they were maybe going to try and kill him today.
Wayne tucked three bottles of water under his arm and walked until he saw Zach and Ted. They were standing at the rear of an unmarked truck that had stalled in the wildly overgrown grass beside the freeway.
Ted looked back and smiled. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said.
Wayne handed them each a bottle of water and let what he was seeing sink in: pallet upon pallet of military rations, the kind he and his family had lived off of in the weeks following Katrina.
Wayne said, “Damn.”
“Yeah,” Zach said. “Damn.”
There were hundreds of boxes, each containing sixteen complete meals. From what he could see, several pallets toward the back were piled with cases of bottled water. The same stuff as in the van.
“See that,” Ted said. “FEMA is good for something after all.”
“Okay,” Zach said, all business. He hopped into the truck, ripped away the thick plastic wrap securing the boxes to the pallets, and began tossing boxes down to Ted and Wayne.
The dolly held five boxes. Wayne pushed it back to the Jeep, walking behind Ted and Zach, who each carried one box.
The first trip was without incident.
On their second run, Ted got a chance to use his bat. The thing that clambered like a lizard out of the forest was naked, creeping around on the ragged stumps of its arms and legs. No ears, lidless eyes, lipless mouth. Ted enjoyed putting it down.
“Damn,” Ted said on their third trip to the truck. He knocked back a water bottle and belched. “Can we start the truck? Maybe move it or something?”
Zach stared at him for a moment, blinking, his face glistening with sweat. Dark stains seemed to emanate from the guns beneath his armpits. “Yeah, Ted,” he said, half-gri
“I don’t know,” Ted said, shrugging. “I was just saying.”
“Yeah, yeah. Okay. Moving on. We need to load up what we can for now and come back tomorrow with the truck. We’ll get Seth to-”
Somewhere nearby, a dead thing howled, long and mournful.
“Aw, crap.” Ted said. “Where the hell is that coming from?”
“There,” Wayne said. Not far from where he’d encountered the first corpse of the day, another form stood. It howled again, louder and longer. There was urgency in the thing’s voice.
“Oh, shit,” Zach said. Here and there, the creature’s call was answered. “Not good. Run.”
They ran, their bats raised and ready. On either side of the interstate, the walking dead emerged from within the cool confines of the forest. Soon there was a chorus.
They overtook the howler. Not slowing, Ted took a swing at it. He missed, staggered, and almost fell, dropping the bat, and then the Jeep was in sight. Zach leaned against a tree, winded. Ted bent over, his hands on his knees, panting.
“You not going back for your bat?” Wayne asked, his back to the Jeep.
“Why the fuck would I do that? There’s like six more in the back of the Jeep,” Ted said, and Wayne shot him in the face, blowing away most of his jaw. Ted dropped, mewling and clutching at where his chin used to be. Blood poured between his fingers.
He should have shot Zach first-Zach was always more on the ball and now he was just gone, dropped from sight. “Shit,” Wayne said, and Zach appeared from behind a tree and started firing the Tauruses.