She then instructed all the draugar to stop the attack and ordered the draugar atop her to get off.
She realized breaking the connection had been a dangerous move, but she now had some valuable information. They seemed to stop their attack before the orders, stopping solely in response to establishing the connection, although she wasn’t sure of that.
After retrieving the shotgun, she sent them ahead again, broke the connection, called out to them, and observed them run to attack her. She re-established the connection without giving an explicit order to stop the attack. They stopped running, instead just walking toward her.
This meant she could form a bubble around her while walking toward the rental car place—a moving bubble that kept her safe, like the stationary bubble she’d formed around the safe room. This moving bubble was even more exhausting and required a lot of concentration.
Once she finished testing, it took twenty minutes to finish the walk to the rental car lot without incident. She picked out a van with a key fob on top of the center console. She stepped on the brake and pressed the Start button.
Nothing happened.
After a few attempts, Jocelyn started the hybrid van, its battery low. She knew it would recharge as the internal combustion engine operated.
As she drove back to Clarence’s house, draugar loaded in the back, shotgun on the passenger seat, she reflected that it was beneficial that the self-driving car effort failed. If the van didn’t have a manual drive mode, she couldn’t navigate off the road and onto the median strips around all the traffic jams to get back to Clarence’s place. Instead, it would remain blocked on the road. The self-driving zealots did not take a zombie apocalypse—or any apocalypse—into account, especially if GPS failed. That, however, at least still worked, and she saw herself in the right position on the map on her view screen.
As she pulled up to Clarence’s house, she remembered she had left the cat in the old van in her carrier. Shit. She’d have to retrieve her after she retrieved the sword. If both of them survived.
Committed to helping Jocelyn in her quest, Clarence agreed to help her retrieve her sword, even though her plan was risky and dangerous. He drove the van with Jocelyn and the shotgun on the passenger seat. Seven zombies crammed in the rear seats, the windows open to diffuse the zombie odor. Because he didn’t need them much for Jocelyn’s mission, and he didn’t want to risk breaking them, he left his eyeglasses in the safe room.
The van, traveling south, approached the strip mall on the left where two armed survivalists guarded the front entrance of Beaver Park Market. Two others, unarmed, carried grocery bags toward a flatbed parked out front.
With large beards and green fatigues, the survivalists looked like something out of a Duck Dynasty rerun—except if these people had been wealthy before, they weren’t anymore. Then again, controlling an entire grocery store passed for wealth nowadays. Clarence vaguely wondered at what level of the Dow Jones trading had stopped.
One guard spotted the van and alerted the other. The two carrying the shopping bags looked their way, dropped them, and ran into the store. The two guards readied assault rifles, as Jocelyn expected. As long as they don’t ready their shotguns . . .
As soon as the van was in the parking lot, with a clear path to the front, Clarence gunned the engine and closed in on the front of the store as fast as he could.
The survivalists opened fire. Perhaps they’d interpreted the van’s acceleration as hostile. Both Clarence and Jocelyn ducked down, Clarence’s head exposed just enough to drive the van. Some gunfire hit the van, but nothing seemed to do any serious damage. A bullet hit the windshield but did not shatter it. Clarence turned ninety-degrees while slamming on the brakes, sending the zombies careening toward the left inside the back of the van. Now incessantly peppered with bullets, the van screeched to a halt right in front of the market. Jocelyn cried out, but given her healing ability, Clarence didn’t give it a second thought.
Clarence pushed the button to open the sliding van door. The zombies poured out and stalled in the face of the assault weapons fire. The guards did not switch to shotguns, probably because then the zombies would overtake them, so they were at a temporary impasse. But one zombie broke through to one of the guards, who gave a blood-curdling scream. Clarence stomped on the gas pedal, and Jocelyn cried out again as the accelerating van tossed her around—neither of them had fastened their seat belts.
Clarence continued north around the corner of the market at the end of the strip mall. He slowed the van, as they were no longer in a hurry. They needed time, in fact, for the rear guards, if any, to leave and join the fight. He turned around, now heading south toward the rear entrance of the market.
As the back door of the supermarket came into view, Clarence’s heart sank in horror as two survivalist guards began to shoot at them with assault rifles. Attempting to avoid the weapons fire, and deciding to retreat and re-assess the situation, Clarence turned the van to the left into a parking lot aisle. But he took the turn faster than the van could handle, and, losing control, plowed into several parked cars.
The airbags exploded.
The van came to an abrupt halt.
He felt a sharp pain in his knee before he passed out.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Day Eleven
Clarence woke up to strong hands pulling on his body, extricating him from the van. He fell onto the asphalt, knee in excruciating pain, eyes squinting in the sunlight as he looked up at a survivalist with red hair and beard standing over him.
Red-hair kicked Clarence in the ribs, and Clarence cowered from the extra pain, shutting his eyes and clutching at his knee.
“Get
