“Another half mile,” he said at last. “Then you’ll go around with me?”
“Okay.”
They nudged the horses forward. As soon as Dal and Lena’s horses moved, the other three joined them.
A cozy subdivision bordered this part of Bastopol. They were craftsman bungalows built in the early fifties. Dal wished he had a pair of binoculars. Shit, he just wished there were a little more light to see. Bastopol was nothing more than a black silhouette.
When he gauged them to be about a half mile away, he shifted his weight backwards to stop the horse. He patted the animal.
“It looks so ... quiet,” Lena said at last. “Are you sure we shouldn’t risk it?”
At the question, the weight in his stomach intensified. He decided to be honest with Lena. It’s not like his childhood was a secret to her.
“I used to know when my father would beat me.” His throat went dry and scratchy. This was a subject he didn’t like thinking about, let along talking about. “It was like ... I could feel it, you know? Like the static and humidity in the air before a thunderstorm. It was like that.” He shifted, not looking at her.
“Is that what you feel now?”
“Pretty much.” He wanted to tell her about the attack at Rossi junior college, about how that sense of foreboding had saved his life. But his throat was too dry. The words lodged in his aching stomach.
She reached across the distance and squeezed his hand. “Okay. We’ll go around.”
The air whooshed out of his lungs. Partly because he was relieved she’d agreed to go around Bastopol, but also because she held his hand. Her touch sent a ripple through him, which he did his best to ignore.
Over the years, he’d become adept at shutting off the way she made him feel. It was practically habit by now, though there were times like this when she still got to him.
They turned north, cutting through the orchard with their small pack of horses. Dal kept his eyes and ears peeled for signs of danger.
“What should I name him?” Lena patted the flank of her horse affectionately.
“I don’t know. Blackie?”
“That’s so boring.”
“Licorice?”
“Not regal enough. This fellow is majestic, don’t you think?
He was a majestic horse. There was a race track in Rossi where they held horse races a few times a year. The junior college sometimes got track cast-offs, animals that were either injured or had aged out of their prime and were no longer racing candidates. He guessed Lena’s tall animal was one of those.
“Stealth,” Lena said.
“What?”
“How about Stealth for a name?”
“I like it. What about mine?”
“Let’s see.” She looked the horse up and down in the darkness. “How about Thunderhoof?”
“Thunderhoof? That’s a little long.”
“How about Thunder?”
“Thunder. Yeah. That suits him.” Dal patted his horse. “Do you like it, boy?”
Thunder nickered softly.
Lena’s eyes found his in the dark. His throat closed. He should not be noticing how beautiful she looked in the dark. With just the two of them in the apple orchard with the horses, it was almost possible to forget they’d just escaped hell on earth.
“Dal?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad you’re with me.”
He broke eye contact. “Me, too.”
The subdivision fell away and gave way to the high school. The apple orchard transitioned to an undeveloped field of yellow grass.
Dal breathed in the smell of the summer. He loved this smell. He loved Bastopol High. There were a lot of good memories for him in that place. Sometimes he felt like his real life had begun freshmen year when the Cecchinos took him in.
Thinking of freshmen year inevitably brought thoughts of Mr. Cecchino.
Lena must have been thinking of him, too, because she said, “How are we going to tell them?”
He knew what she meant. How were they going to tell Anton, Leo, and Nonna that Mr. Cecchino was gone? There was no easy way. “I guess we just have to say it.” There wouldn’t be a way to soften the blow.
“I miss him already.”
“Me, too.” Hell yeah, he did. Dal would miss Mr. Cecchino for the rest of his life.
The football field came into view. Dal had often volunteered to work in the concessions stand so he could watch the games for free. He’d loved watching Leo and his friends kick ass on that field. They’d been division champions their senior year with Leo as team captain.
“Dal.” Lena’s hand shot out to grip his arm. Her horse halted.
Dal saw them. The football players. The kids Anton and Lena had gone to school with.
There were at least a dozen of them wandering around the field in their jerseys. They were in a tight cluster near the fifty yard line.
There were also bodies. Dal could pick out the lumps in the darkness. Unmoving lumps that were undoubtedly bodies. Either they hadn’t zombified yet, or they were really dead.
“I guess that answers our question about Bastopol,” Lena murmured.
Dal had known. Between his sixth sense and the eerie quiet that sat over the town, he had known.
One of the horses wuffed. Another nickered in response.
The nezhit on the field jerked, every last one of them turning to look in their direction.
Dal felt the breath leave his lungs. “We gotta go,” he whispered.
Lena dug her heels into Stealth. Her big black gelding leaped forward, breaking into a gallop. Thunder was right behind him. Dal gripped the animal’s mane with white knuckles, the transmitter thumping against his back. The other horses fell in around them, hooves rumbling against the ground.
To his horror, several students began to howl. The undead football players streamed in their direction. To make matters worse, their howling alerted other nezhit on the campus. Infected students began to pour from around the buildings, all of them running.
He and Lena exchanged looks of alarm. The horses, either cognizant of the danger bearing down on them or picking up on the panic of their riders, whinnied in alarm. Their hooves threw up chunks of dirt.
In less than two minutes, they had a pack of at
