What was advantageous was the house’s semi-rural location, nestled on a hilltop that offered a vantage overlooking the highway. Shortly after graduating high school in 1975, Charles Barnes and his wife, Barbara, reluctantly purchased a seventy-five-year-old fixer-upper just a few miles outside the town of Lyons. While starting a family in such an ancient house wasn’t their first choice—wasn’t even in their top five—it was all they could afford on Charlie’s assembly lineman salary.
But four decades later, the property’s inconvenient location turned out to be an asset when people began dying—and then undying. The Barnes family still encountered their share of living dead, but in numbers far fewer than the people holed-up in Lyons proper.
Noah squinted through a crack in the wood slats covering the window on their front door. No movement. He stepped outside and quietly closed the door behind him.
Noah never knew what to expect when he left the house. Most of the time it was safe, but sometimes they would be lurking—usually near the old doghouse. A chained dog was an easy meal. Whether that was something they learned or knowledge retained from life, Noah could only speculate.
Sometimes there would be two or three. Whenever that happened, Noah darted up the hill adjacent to the house. The trespassers invariably gave chase, but the hill was steep enough to trip them up, making them easier to deal with from the high ground. Any more than three and the Barneses would sit quietly until they moved on, which sometimes took all day, and that wasn’t easy for a seven-year-old.
Noah circled around the house before moving into the front yard. With no sign of immediate danger, he headed down the driveway. Noah turned up a wooded path running alongside a creek that flowed from the direction of the burning grove, where the dead would occasionally enter the Barnes’ property through the woods and then linger near any smoldering remains.
Through the forest canopy, Noah spotted a few turkey vultures circling beneath the cloudy sky. Up ahead, a coyote darted across the path followed by a pair of rabbits. A moment later, three doe jumped over the brush on the other side of the creek. They hopped through the water and bolted right past Noah, ignoring him completely.
He rubbed the umber stubble on his chin. It’s like they’re running from a forest fire, he thought, and then he stopped hard in his tracks.
Noah looked in the direction the deer had come from. Flashes of red fabric appeared through the undergrowth. He hid behind an oak tree and waited for it to come nearer. It moved too fast to be deceased, even if only recently, but that didn't make it any less threatening.
Suddenly, a balding man with a sandy beard came flailing through the brambles. His buffalo plaid shirt was tattered and covered with burdocks. He stumbled into the creek-bed, cutting his knee on a rock.
“Motherf—!” He yelled in anguish.
The heavyset man labored to his feet, took another step, and fell again. He cried out in pain once more before finally getting up, plodding through the water, and collapsing on the opposite embankment.
As he watched the man splayed out on the dirt gasping for breath, Noah knew what was coming next. The dead were on baldy’s trail, but how many? In the near distance, leaves rustled and branches snapped.
If there are more than two, he thought, I’ll have to let them have him.
One after another, three corpses came staggering out of the brush. Noah pursed his lips and issued an inaudible damn it. They were his neighbors, the Fitzpatricks, from down the road. They stumbled down the bank and into the creek.
Mr. Fitzpatrick was missing a large chunk of flesh from his neck. His head lolled toward the opposite side of the marbled bite-wound. Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s nose had been bitten off, leaving a hood of reddish bone over two narrow, black slits. Bloody holes in her blouse led to mouth-sized pockets in the flesh beneath. Their teenage son Hunter, in addition to various bite wounds, had his forearm torn off. Tattered skin and tendons hung from the boy’s humerus like party streamers. As bad as they looked, he’d seen worse.
Predators and prey were completely engrossed in one another, and Noah knew he could easily slip away unnoticed. He hadn’t crept more than a few paces downstream when the chubby man began blubbering. Noah stopped. He closed his eyes and exhaled deeply before turning back to the hunt.
As the trio slogged through the creek, Noah switched off the rifle’s safety, took aim at Mrs. Fitzpatrick, and fired. The bullet went clean through her skull. Her body splashed into the shallow water, falling against a bed of rocks. Unfazed by the demise of their matriarch, father and son Fitzpatrick remained wholly focused on their impending meal. The camaraderie of the dead, it seemed, was exclusive to the animate.
He fired again and missed. The receiver spit out a used shell as he slid the bolt back and forth. The last bullet pierced the father’s side, but Noah knew that wouldn’t be enough. He dropped his rifle and sprinted toward the creek.
Mr. Fitzpatrick fell onto the edge of the shore, and the chubby man let out a yelp. Before he could recover, Noah jumped down the embankment and brought the machete’s full force onto his neighbor’s neck.
The chubby man’s eyes bulged as old man Fitzpatrick’s head
