“Yeah we’ve come from Chicago,” Luke said. “We’re looking for the camp that’s at the end of the I- 35.”
“And where did you hear about this camp?” Nancy asked.
“Another group, in Illinois,” Jackson said.
“Not the university?”
Jackson frowned. “What university?”
Nancy paused for a moment and eyed the rest of her group. “Don’t you people have zombies to kill? Might as well clean house while we’re here.”
They grumbled and muttered but the majority of them went quickly enough, heading for the houses lining the street. Jackson noticed each smaller group that branched off from the main had four people in it. One for each pack member maybe? She was unsurprised to note that Mack did not join the groups. He took his daughter over to one of the trucks she could now see parked up and sat her inside.
“There’s someone there,” Nancy said, dragging Jackson’s attention back from the man and his daughter. “At the university campus in Chicago. Polly her name is. She’s sent a couple of survivors our way, to our camp, and yeah, you can call us Laredo if you like.”
Jackson gasped, her heart thudded wildly, and her legs felt ever so slightly weak.
“There aren’t any survivors around that way,” Luke said, interrupting her frantic thoughts. “I lived by the campus and I never saw anyone.”
“Polly tends to keep to herself,” Nancy replied, gesturing for them to follow her over to their parked trucks. “I’m not surprised you didn’t see her. But the other group, the Illinois crew, they’re a weird bunch. Be glad you didn’t stay there.”
“How do you know all this?” Jackson asked, her head spinning. “Are you in contact?”
“We are.” Those words came from a skinny Asian guy, who was chewing what Jackson assumed was gum, in a maniacal fashion.
Jackson’s heart thumped some more. How she’d hoped…it was unbelievable!
“But we can tell you about all this later,” Nancy said. “First, Sammy. What happened here? Like I said, she’s been missing since they took her night before last.” She lowered her voice. “We never expected to find her alive. Thought this would be a revenge mission rather than a retrieval.”
“Well…” Jackson exchanged a look with Luke and he nodded.
The remaining people—seven in all—clustered around them then, a loose circle of more people than Jackson had seen in many months. She swallowed unsteadily, a little surprised by how disconcerting it was. She’d been so used to it being just her and one other. “She was bait,” Luke said, straight to the point as always, beating Jackson to the punch.
Gasps filled the air, followed by low murmurs.
“What?” The question came from the gum-chewing guy. “What did ya say?”
“What Luke means,” Jackson replied, nudging him. “Is that as far as we could see they left Sammy on the open road as, well, yeah, bait.”
“What do you mean?” Nancy asked.
“We saw her as we were driving past and she was just there,” Jackson replied. “We thought she was a zombie at first, but we realized pretty quickly that she was still alive. We followed her in there.” She hooked a thumb at the garage. “But it’s been no more than a half hour since we found her. We were totally in the shit before you guys arrived. They had us trapped.”
“You think they left her in the road to trap us?” Nancy asked, and the tension in her face was obvious. “That’s impossible.”
Jackson shrugged. “But it’s what happened.”
“Jesus Christ.”
They turned, all of them, to look at Mack and his daughter. He met their eyes—shock stamped across his features—before lowering his gaze back to her. “Where have you been, baby?”
Sammy gasped a sob and clutched her dolly to her. She was sat on the driver’s seat, her little legs not even reaching the floor.
“Baby?” Mack prompted.
“With them.” The girl’s words were just a whisper, and everyone leaned forward a little closer to hear it.
“With the bad guys?” Mack asked.
Sammy nodded. “They made me sit in the road and I was thirsty and then they made me run.”
The crowd exchanged looks and Nancy shifted uneasily, her gaze scanning the street. “Made you how?” she asked.
“They told me.”
“They spoke to you?
Sammy shook her head. “No.”
“Then how?”
“They just did,” she cried and her little lip wobbled. “They were waiting.”
“For who?”
Sammy stroked down her dolly’s dress and looked from one shocked face to another. Her braids bobbed slightly as her little shoulders shook, and tears tracked down her face, creating a path free of mud. “For everyone.”
Chapter Twenty-six
The drive to the survivor’s camp did not take as long as Luke thought it would, just over forty minutes in total. He looked around as he drove and realized pretty quickly why that was the case. The camp was not in Laredo, but rather in a small town called Realitos, a little farther from the border.
“Used to have a population of about two hundred,” Nancy said as they passed the town sign. She’d jumped in their car, that uneasy look still on her face, and had peppered them with questions. Only when she was done did she start answering theirs. “About six months before it all went to shit some big-shot developer bought a lot of the land around it. He started building a gated community. Not sure who the fuck he thought he’d be able to sell the houses to.” She shook her head. “But it worked in our favor. He had some issues with theft, and so the guy walled off the construction area—made it into a fucking fortress. By the time everything started to fall apart most of the houses were built—not finished internally, but built.”
“Then it’s a safe zone?” Jackson asked.
“Sure is,” Nancy agreed. “And most of the original residents of the town came straight here. One of the construction guys had the keys. I knew about it because I lived a couple of towns over and we don’t get much news. This development was a huge deal.”
Jackson nodded slowly. “So the army didn’t set it up in the beginning?”
Nancy snorted. “Like I said there’s no army here. Not anymore.”
“And the zombie population?” Luke asked.
“There’s a fair few,” Nancy said. “Mostly hanging around in Benevides and San Diego. We try and clean them out as often as possible, but they tend to keep coming.”
“Why did the zombies take Sammy so far from the camp?” he asked, the question swirling in his mind. “And more to the point, how?”
Nancy shrugged. “I have no idea. None of this makes sense. They’re getting smarter, we know that, but to set up such a trap? It goes against everything we thought we knew about them.”
“It’d take them hours to sprint this distance. Hours.”
“Yeah. Like I said, it doesn’t make sense, just like the fact that one snuck in the camp, and I don’t need to tell you how much it’s worrying me. You’ll see what I mean when we get there,” she added. “We’re like a virgin’s panties—or at least we used to be. I’ll need to get everyone doing a thorough sweep, see if we can find where
