“Farms,” Ivy said. “They often have small tanks near the house or barn. We could check out a few. There wouldn’t hardly be anyone around a farm, I’d imagine.”
Being a born and bred city girl, I really hadn’t thought about farms at all, except as places where my food was grown. I appreciated them but knew nothing about them. “Okay. We’ll try that if this next town is a no go.” This car was one of those modern jobbies that let you know how many miles you had remaining on your tank of gas and we still had almost fifty. The next town was only eleven miles away and it was worth checking out before we started traveling farm roads.
“Daddy? I have to pee.”
I slowed the car and pulled to the side of the road. We hadn’t seen any crazies since the last town and there weren’t any for miles that I could see. I figured it was safe enough for Owen to get out here. Just in case, we all got out, each of us staring out across the fields as Owen stood on the far side to go potty. When he was done, I realized I had to pee too and they stood watch for me.
As I finished up and Lana passed me some fast-food napkins, movement in a nearby field caught my eye. I wiped hurriedly and stood, yanking up my pants. “Guys, there’s something out there.”
Everyone tensed. Dan hustled Owen back into the car while I checked over my shoulder to make sure nothing was sneaking up on us from behind. All clear.
“What is it?” Lana asked, standing on her tiptoes as she tried to figure out what the brown blob in the distance was.
“Deer, I think,” Ivy said. She, too, took a look around, then eased herself into the ditch and hauled herself up the other side. She stood next to the rough-hewn fencepost and stared off into the distance. “Yep, a deer. Oh, look at that, I think it heard me.”
The deer had indeed spotted us, his head lifting majestically, the light from the sun highlighting his antlers.
“Nice rack,” I said out of the corner of my mouth.
Lana smacked me lightly on the arm.
“Uh,” Ivy said. “Uh, holy shit. That thing is coming toward us. Fast.”
Sure enough, the deer had his head lowered and was running at us full tilt. At us? Why the hell would it run at us? Ivy took the ditch too fast and slipped, plopping on her ass in the knee-high weeds. She cursed loudly, as did Lana when I jumped down into the ditch to yank her to her feet.
“Hurry up! It’s almost here!” Lana shrieked.
“Get in the car!” I shouted back, shoving Ivy from behind to get the older woman back onto the road.
I could hear the pounding of the deer’s hooves now and my heart thumped faster in response. I tore around the car to my door, getting it slammed in time to see the deer sail over the fence, horns lowered, eyes gleaming.
It slammed into the side of the car, slapping Ivy’s door shut and missing her foot by an inch. The bang was loud enough to startle Owen into crying again and the deer’s impetus rocked the car. I’d bet fifty bucks we’d find dents later. The damned thing had hit us full force.
Then it hit us again.
“Let’s get out of here before it breaks a window,” Ivy said with a tremor in her voice. “That was too damn close.”
“Why did it attack us?” Lana asked, sounded almost offended.
The deer’s muzzle was speckled with blood.
Dear goddess, did we have to deal with zombie animals too?
“Aren’t deer vegetarians?” Ivy asked into the silence, her mind headed the same way mine was.
Dan cleared his throat. “They aren’t, actually. Herbivores, I mean. They’ve been known to eat from carcasses, even their own kind.” At our looks, he said. “I like to hunt. It’s good to know your prey.”
Right.
The zombies certainly knew their prey. They knew just how to scare the shit out of us. I wouldn’t think adding cannibal deer to the mix would make things worse, but somehow it did.
“I don’t think it’s a zombie, for what it’s worth,” Dan said when we were a few miles down the road. “It was probably in rut. Even deer that are used to humans get aggressive when it’s mating season.”
“And is it mating season?” Ivy asked.
“A little early, but only by a week. And I suppose deer hormones don’t rightly care about our human calendars,” Dan said.
“You don’t know how relieved I am to learn that,” Ivy said. “Never in my life would I have ever thought I’d be giddy to know horny deer are angry deer.”
The laughter that filled the car was uneasy but it was there. I hoped Dan was right and the only dead things walking we had to worry about were the two-footed kind.
Trust me, that was bad enough.
16
Now
Something wakes her. A noise where it shouldn’t be. Or silence where it should be noisy. She lays sprawled in front of the fire, her sleeping body forgetting to be afraid. She wants to curl into herself, but she doesn’t dare. If she moves, if one of them is in this room with her, they’ll be on her in seconds.
The ceiling is full of shadows, and they all scream danger. She scans the room as best she can without moving her head. The fireplace is an orange glow in her peripherals. The room that stretches out to her left is bare. She can see everything well but for the area toward her feet. Her damn boobs are in the way and she can’t tell if one of them stands in the hall just beyond where her
