Epilogue 4

Light through her eyelids. Flickering, orange-y red. Miles had never been a heavy sleeper growing up, and was even less so now. She got to her feet, blinking away dreams of her father, and reached across the short distance between her bed and her window to make a gap in the blinds.

Fire. Three of the main buildings, near the center of camp. She ducked her head to see higher and noticed that the fire had already spread to some of the trees overhead. Fall had arrived, and the leaves had changed, and everything was dead and dry. Worst case scenario stuff. She stepped into her shoes and hurried out the door of her little hut. It had been a shed in a previous life but she didn't need much, and as she looked higher up, following the overlap of dry trees, she saw that she wouldn't have it much longer. If the fire didn't spread overhead, through the canopy, it would spread through all the dry brush on the ground.

She spent another second, only one, staring at the buildings. The fire was loud, but there was no hint of voices. No echoes of cries. For all she knew, she was already the only one left.

She darted back inside just long enough to reach under her bed and grab her dad's old army rucksack, and her course was set in her mind the moment her hand touched canvas.

She sprinted around the woodshed, temptingly full of tools, and went straight for the rusted out Monte Carlo. The door creaked fearsomely, like something out of a horror movie, as she pulled it open. No key in the ignition: that fucker Jones was always so careless. She fished out her little pen light, praying to a god she didn't believe in that the little AAA inside would hold out for this, as she crawled into the driver's side footwell, and reached up under the dashboard. None of the wires were the color she was expecting, so she started tracing them from end to end.

Through the dirty windshield, she could make out the light getting brighter, which was a bad sign.

"Anyone?"

Miles grabbed the steering wheel and hauled herself partially up, enough to peek her head over the dashboard. "Eeeeeey" she said, flashlight still clenched between her teeth. She pulled it out with her other hand and repeated,

"Hey!"

Reese, one of the other women, whipped around like an owl, and darted toward her, repeating "Oh no, oh no," over and over as she moved.

"Gas can," Miles shouted, pointing at the woodshed. "Siphon from the F150."

"Which one is the--"

"The red one!"

Miles screamed, as she put the light back between her teeth, pulled her pocket knife from her hip, and started stripping the insulation off of the one she really hoped was going to the starter.

"Oh boy, oh jeez, oh man, oh jeez."

"Less talking more sucking!"

She heard the bigger woman slam into the truck on the other side of the aged car she was working on. She very much wanted to stop and check that Reese had any idea how to siphon gas, but she needed to do her part first. It twisted her insides to leave an important task to anyone else, but she was starting to feel intense warmth on her legs, where they were sticking out of the side of the car. She very much would have wanted to just take the truck and be on her way already, but the engine on that one had just seized and was probably shot to hell. Replacing it was on their todo list.

There was an ironic kind of relief when, a moment later, she heard Reese retching and spitting.

She nicked her thumb cutting the second wire, but there was no time to slow down. She touched the wires, dimly aware that just about every muscle in her body was clenched in anticipation, and gave a garbled whoop when the motor lurched.

"That's it!" she cried. "Let's go!"

"I didn't get much,"

Reese called back.

"Whatever you got," Miles shouted, "it'll be enough."

"Oh gosh, oh jeez, oh gosh, oh gosh."

Miles kissed her flashlight, then jammed her thumb into her mouth and sucked on the wound while she shoved the flashlight back into her pack and her knife into her pocket, fastidiously returning everything to the exact place it had been. Reese was pouring the fuel into the Monte Carlo, and staring back toward the fire.

"Did you see anyone else get out?" Reese called, near to shouting to be heard over the growing fire.

"Just you," Miles said, as she tossed her rucksack into the back seat. "Did you grab anything?"

"I didn't have time!"

"It'll have to do," Miles said. "Put the can in the back when you're done." Then she slid down into the driver's seat, slammed the door shut, and grabbed the two wires between her fingers.

"Come on, come on, come on," Reese was muttering, loudly, and seemingly to herself, as she screwed the cap back on. Miles pulled on the trunk release, and Reese threw the red plastic can inside, shouting,

"That's it!"

as she ran around and jumped into the passenger seat.

The old Monte Carlo, a heavy thing of Detroit steel, the pet project of someone long gone, rumbled to life and started moving.

"I'll get the--"

"No time," Miles said, as she pressed down on the pedal and accelerated toward the chain link gate. The fire was spreading along the brush now, creeping toward their escape route.

Reese stretched out next to her, planting her feet in the well, grabbing the door in one hand and bracing the other against the roof, as they slammed into and through the flimsy, padlocked barrier. The metal frame banged open, partially dislodged, and a piece of it slammed into the windshield, leaving a long crack that ran from the passenger side ceiling corner down to the driver's side hood corner, but they were free. They were free, and they were surrounded.

The moment they swung out onto the little dirt road, they could see

them.

Dozens of them. Some were illuminated in front of them, in the dim yellow of her headlights, and others she could only see by the way the firelight reflected in their eyes as they moved toward a bright, loud disturbance. As if the fire hadn't been bad enough.

"Ooooooh," Reese whined, wild-eyed.

"Hold on tight!"

The old car spun its wheels for a second, when she was a little too ambitious with the clutch, and then they were moving. Most of the dead around them were focused on the fire, but the ones directly in front of her had noticed the very loud, very bright, very-much-moving car maneuvering through them, and were shuffling toward it. She knew she could afford to hit a few of them head on, but the headlights wouldn't take very much in the way of direct hits before shattering, and every time one of them got ran into near the waist, they'd slam down on the hood and bend it more and more until it was stuck shut forever or, worse, pushed it down into something that wasn't designed to be pushed into.

The brakes were soft, and she had to whip the wheel around pretty far to turn the thing at all, but the motor was big and loud and powerful. They rocketed down the shabby little gravel driveway, away from the derelict scrapyard that had been her home for over a year.

A minute later, they burst out onto Evans, careening sideways into the still mobile corpse of a very old man, and Miles' heart was in her throat. There was easily a hundred of them, spread out down the street, in the front yards of the houses on her right and in the fenced-in field behind the elementary school on her left. Except for the handful that had noticed them, all of them were facing the fire, now licking up over the treetops on their right. Reese hadn't shifted an inch the whole time, and looked like she might rip off the door handle if she didn't chill out, her massive thighs clenched to a sculpture-like tightness matching her white-knuckled grip. She was muttering the whole time, though rarely loud enough to be heard over the throaty eight-valve.

"...And sail off... out of sight, out of... while they sleep... come clean, and start..."

"Stop that," Miles snapped, as she gunned it onto Perryman. She craned forward over the steering wheel, trying to peer around the edge of the church at the corner to gage how wide or tight she could take it.

Reese did not stop. She didn't even seem to be aware of Miles. She just stared forward, eyes zipping between different zeds ahead of them, and pressed herself down so hard that the chair was creaking as she continued to mumble.

The Monte Carlo roared once they turned on to Main, and Miles got it all the way up into third gear by the time they were passing the Gigamart. That was short lived, though, because there were two clumps of them ahead, about a hundred yards apart, and she had to make a sweeping S turn to get around, between, and past them.

"Left," Reese grunted, as they came up on Route 60.

"Left!"

But the road to the left was more crowded, and there were three bad wrecks she could see even just approaching that way. Her group had been diligent about clearing the roads of Rosewood, but they hadn't set their sights on doing much more than town and the way to the corpse disposal dump. Miles turned right.

***

Reese did not start to relax until the car crossed the bridge, even though the number of bodies shambling across the street thinned out to almost nothing once they started heading east. Dawn was getting closer, rendering the fire less noticeable against the low clouds. There were few places that Reese wanted to be less than where they were headed, but the place they'd come from was one of them.

The car started making little shudders, and Miles pulled over off the road. She kept going once they got onto the grass, and brought it to a very gentle stop with the nose of the thing kissing a tree.

"So people just think it's another wreck," Miles said, seemingly answering the question that was forming in Reese's head. "Then, maybe one of us can get some more fuel and come back for it."

"Ah," Reese said, as she relaxed a little. Everything ached, and relaxing hurt more than she'd thought it would. "Okay."

Miles reached into the backseat, grabbed her bag, and gave Reese a crisp nod.

"Oh," Reese said, opening her door and getting out at the same time. She winced at how loud the doors were, but it couldn't be helped. "I was hoping to rest a little, but I suppose it's probably best to keep moving."

Miles didn't say anything in response, but she did give her a flat look over the top of the car once they were both standing.

"If we keep heading this way down 60, we'll come up on..." Her voice failed her for a moment, so Reese cleared it as she moved around the back end of the car. "We'll be just south of Muldraugh."

Miles got the backpack over her shoulder, flexed her arms around to get it settled, and stared at her for just a moment. "You were in Muldraugh."

"For a bit," she replied, nodding and clearing her throat, which was dry. "A year. Yeah."

"Other groups still making it out there?"

Reese shook her head. "There were a few at the beginning, but..."

"Suppose you wouldn't have trekked all the way to Rosewood if you didn't have to."

They started walking, and Reese had never been so glad to see that the clouds were dark and heavy. A few times, while they were still relatively close to the car, Miles turned to look at her. It was brief, and Reese got a bad feeling from it.

"It's okay that I'm walking with you, right?"

The look Miles gave her was surprised, mixed with something else.

"Sorry. I just assumed." She ran a hand across the back of her neck, and didn't like how sweaty it felt. She'd hoped to have put the brutal calculations of water intake and rationing behind her. "If you're

leaving

-leaving, that's fine." She jerked her thumb over her shoulder, and added, "I can wait by the car for a bit until you're out of--"

"It's fine," Miles said, as she started walking again.

"Oh good. We never really connected before, and I just realized that maybe I'm putting you in a bad position by just, like, tagging along in your very well-prepared wake with all my unpreparedness. No bugout bag. No supplies."

"It's fine."

"I'm a nervous talker," she added. "I'm sorry."

"That's not the impression I got," Miles said, lengthening her stride a little. After a quiet moment, she added, "More of a talker-talker, right?"

"Yeah," Reese replied, laughing nervously. "Guilty. Holy shit, I am so dirty right now."

"Smoke does that."

Reese wiped at her clothes, and then rubbed the back of her hand on her cheek. "Eugh. Great. I look like a miner."

Suddenly, Miles came to a stop and turned toward her. "You were right. I

was

a little surprised. I... don't know how to do this alone, but I also, like... It's weird, you following me, because I don't know shit."

Reese didn't know how to respond to this. She glanced around, coughed nervously, coughed a little harder when black phlegm came up, and grimaced at how loud the noise was. She was thirsty, and very aware that she didn't have any water on her. She abhorred being back in Muldraugh, but it would do no good to point that out. They were in no position to be shopping for real estate.

"There's, like... I think... a self storage near here? And maybe this one warehouse? I wonder if they still have something usable in them... I mean, we need supplies? Right? Some more than others," she added. She had stuffed her hands in her pockets and came up with a box of matches and a paperclip, which she'd probably stuffed there at some looting run and never remembered to fish back out. That was not a lot to go on.

Miles looked at her, still quiet, and Reese got nervous that she was about to be herded off. She had been on her own before, but never with this few supplies. Her mouth got even dryer when she tried to ignore the thought.

Miles narrowed her eyes and looked ahead on the road. Daylight didn't improve the view very much. Empty road, trees, some car wrecks ahead, one of them burned badly; the fuel tank must have gone up like a bomb. Dark clouds loomed overhead, making the view desolate and brooding.

"Okay," Miles said. "We'll check those places. You don't have any weapons on you?"

Reese shook her head. "I could pick up a branch, maybe?"

Miles glanced at her again. "You do that. And take this."

Reese reached for the offered hammer and slid it into one of the belt loops in her jeans. She felt a little better. A branch would give her more reach, but branches were unreliable. She felt silly for being so empty handed, but she had been in the camp, after all, safe inside the walls, fast asleep... she had managed to get her clothes on, and that was something, wasn't it?

Wasn't it?

Miles kept watch when Reese combed the roadside shrubbery. When she re-emerged with a sturdy length of wood, Miles was taking a sip of a canteen. Reese looked at it longingly, and Miles, after a slight hesitation, handed it over.

"Better not guzzle," she said. "We need to secure a water supply as soon as we can. The problem is that the river is far, and we don't have anything to boil it with. I used to have this small saucepan attached to the bag, but I needed it a while back, and then I think someone borrowed it, and I never saw it again."

She shook her head, lips pressed into a condemning frown. Reese shrank a little, falling into stride to the left and little to the behind of the other woman.

Miles was taller than her, but only just. Taller and thinner. Reese suspected Miles was also older than her, but that could have been just the stern aura about her. Miles had been in the community when Reese joined, but even after several months they didn't really know each other. Miles kept to herself, was keen on fishing and hunting on her own, and didn't talk much.

Reese ran this all through her head over and over, turning the few brief conversations they'd had over in her mind as she tried to find things to talk about. She'd survived on her own before, but did not think she'd last long this time. She needed Miles.

"Why do they call you Miles?"

At the first houses looming behind wooden fences, they stopped and listened. The sounds of the forest were undisturbed, and as they crept along the side, they couldn't hear anything out of the ordinary. It was a relief in its own way, but Reese knew better than to let her guard down.

"Something my Dad called me."

They circled around the fence, which was too high to see over, and came to the opening. A few small houses that barely qualified for the term, were huddled up around a small clearing, and Miles nodded toward the closest one.

"You check that, I'll start from the other end."

Reese had thought they'd check the houses together, but didn't find it in her to resist. She tiptoed into what was little more than a shack, heart pounding, going around a door that was hung crooked on one hinge and doing everything she could not to touch it. It was like a game of standing Twister, and she acutely felt how exposed she was as she did a slow motion pirouette.

For her trouble, for her patience and care and slow movement and an attention to not making any more sound than she needed to, Reese found nothing. Jack squat. The second shack was the same. Reese checked every cupboard and shelf dutifully, but didn't find anything usable.

She snuck up to the third shack, the middle of five, with her head craned to peer further down the road looking for Miles, and heard one of them inside. In groups, it was the groaning. A low, burbling, wordless conversation they all seemed to be having. Sometimes, it was the shuffling of their feet. In isolation, though, when it was just one, it was the wet breathing. The dead did not know how to breathe quietly, which made them a little easier to pick out.

Reese stepped up onto the porch and saw Miles further inside, ahead of her. She was crouched and still, right next to a door. She must have made a noise, because Miles turned to look back at her in surprise, and then things started happening.

The breathing got louder, and there was a shuffling, and then a heavy bang on the door. Miles tumbled onto her side, across the hall, and stared up in horror as, one good thump later, the door swung open.

Reese exploded down the hallway, branch raised over one shoulder, and brought it down like a hammer onto the head of the zombie who stumbled through the now-broken door. The branch shattered immediately, spectacularly, and although it made a terrific squelching sound that made her innards twist, the thing was still standing.

One arm reached for her. Fingertips mostly worn away, exposing the bone underneath.

Reese dropped the branch as soon as it was clear it was done, as rotted and dry as the zombie was rotted and wet, and she grabbed its arm. Gave it a good yank, twisting its body away from her to face toward the back of the house. She reached up with her other hand, grabbed the back of its head, and drove it into the wall with a clench-jawed war cry. Most of the head went through the drywall, with only the very back of the head behind the ear clipping against the stud, but that was enough. The thing got its jaw stuck on what remained of the drywall and hung there, slumped but partially upright.

Reese backed up, flexing and shaking her hand. Some of the skin of its scalp had been a disintegrated mush, and she tried to hold in her vomit while she wiped her hand on its shirt. This proved to be one bit of downward force too much, and the dead thing crumpled to the floor.

"Ah," Reese said, eyes widening when she saw the kitchen knife that had been buried in its chest. She gripped the handle, gave a good yank, and smiled as she stood up.

Miles was still sitting on the floor.

"Better than a branch!" she said, brandishing the blade. It looked like it had a good thickness to it and might not snap the first time she went to use it. When she offered Miles her other hand, Miles took it and stood up with a disgruntled shake of her head. "You okay?"