A loud bang from the shack makes all three of them jump in unison. The woman raises the weapon and backs away.
“That was him,” Selina says. “He needs help. Give me the key …” This time, it’s not a question, and she doesn’t wait for an answer; instead, she steps to the woman and plunges her hand into the pocket.
“No, wait!” the woman says, but Selina already pulled the key out and is now headed for the shack.
“It’s probably best if you go inside the house,” Dan tells the woman.
She doesn’t seem to hear him, she’s still staring at Selina, who unlocks the door to the shack.
Dan steps a little closer, whispering: “Careful, Selina. Be ready to jump aside.”
Selina sends him a quick glance, nods, then pulls open the door. She lets out a gasp, but doesn’t move, simply stares into the shack.
“What is it?” the woman calls out. “Is he okay in there?”
Selina doesn’t answer.
Dan goes to her side, peering nervously inside. He thinks he’s mentally prepared for what awaits him, but the sight still shocks him.
Allan is no longer in the shack. Not all of him, anyway.
Dan swallows forcibly to keep down the nausea as the sweet, warm stench of blood rolls out at him. The shack is arranged like a small workshop, a bench and some tools. Dan hardly notices, though; he’s staring down. The concrete floor is more red than gray. Allan has lost what appears to be a gallon of blood. Way more than what could have been caused by the bitemark on his ankle or the nosebleed he had gotten from the airbag. In the middle of the pool, Dan sees the explanation. The lower part of Allan’s leg is still wearing the shoe. The saw is lying next to it.
“Oh, fuck,” Selina whispers, putting her hands in front of her mouth and nose. “He sawed it off …”
“Where is he?” the woman asks, joining them. But as soon as she gets a glimpse of the blood, she backs away, uttering a scream loud enough to pull Dan out of his trance.
He sees the bloody trail leading from the pool to the far end of the shack. A back door is standing wide open.
“He left that way,” he says, pointing.
“You think he’s still …?” Selina doesn’t need to finish the question.
Dan looks down at the blood once more, then shakes his head. “You don’t survive losing that much blood. And you don’t just walk away after cutting off your own …”
Behind them, the woman screams again. Dan looks back to see her sitting in the gravel, the weapon lying next to her. She’s clutching her head, screaming and crying.
She’s going into shock, he thinks faintly. And he can’t blame her. If he hadn’t been hardened by what he’d seen during the past twenty-four hours, he would probably sit down next to her and begin screaming himself.
“But perhaps he died for real,” Selina says. “Like, naturally, I mean. Perhaps the infection or whatever didn’t reach his vital organs. That’s why he did it: he tried to stop it.” She stares at Dan with an almost painful look of hope in her eyes. As though he’s the one to decide the fate of the policeman. “I mean, couldn’t that be? Couldn’t he have left the shack while he was still alive, and now he’s dead somewhere nearby? That would also explain why he hasn’t come back to attack us, right? Right?”
Dan shakes his head slowly. “I don’t know. Maybe. We need to find him to make sure. But we have to be very careful, in case he didn’t stop the infection in time.”
A movement behind the leg of Selina catches Dan’s eye, and he almost yells out in surprise. Then he realizes it’s only a cat, black as the night. It’s strolls over and rubs itself against Selina’s leg before it slips into the shack.
“No, Whiskers!” the woman exclaims, as she finally stops screaming. She gets to her feet and staggers towards the shack. “Don’t go in there! Come back here …”
The cat completely ignores her call and sniffs the blood pool curiously, before it licks at it. Dan feels the nausea returning.
The woman squeezes past them, enters the shack and bends down to scoop up the cat. “No, Whiskers, stop that!”
Whiskers is in no mood to get told off, so he gives off a hiss and strikes at the woman with his front paw, causing her to let go immediately. The cat lands on its feet, darts past them and disappears behind the house.
The woman steps back out of the shack, looks at her arm where Whiskers’s claws have left three thin scratches, and starts sobbing uncontrollably, sinking to the ground once more.
Selina looks at Dan. “Are you staying with her? I don’t think she should be alone. I’ll go look for Allan.”
Dan doesn’t like the thought of him staying here, and he likes even less the thought of Selina walking around the forest alone, looking for a person who might have turned into a zombie. Luckily, at that moment, he hears the sound of sirens.
“That’s the ambulance,” Dan says. “They’ll care for her.”
“All right, come with me, then.”
“Wait,” Dan says, pointing to the gun. “Do you know how to use that?”
“Not at all. But maybe we won’t need it.”
Dan hesitates for a moment longer. His gut tells him they just might need the gun. He doesn’t think the chances of finding Allan as a regular corpse are very good. And he really doesn’t care to enter the forest unarmed.
“Are you coming?” Selina asks, walking towards the trees.
Dan makes a decision. He goes into the shack, careful not to step in the blood, and looks at the tool rack. There are screwdrivers, a hammer, a crowbar, even a small axe.
Everything you need to kill zombies, Dan thinks, suppressing nervous laughter.
He reaches up and grabs the hammer. Then he goes back
