“We have to find a replacement wheel. Maybe at a dealership if its not too bad in town,” Dan said from the back where he sat with Owen. He’d charged the pad at Norma’s and his son was watching movies again, headphones on. His dad held an open bag of snack crackers for him and every so often, Owen would dip his hand into the bag and poke one in his mouth. Watching him in the rearview was fun, though distracting, and Lana would nudge me when I forgot to look at the road for too long a stretch of time.
“That’s how they’re always screwing up in zombie shows,” she murmured. “Take their eyes off the road a second and blammo, zombie chow.”
I rolled my eyes but minded the mild reproach and stayed focused from then on out.
Ivy sat up as soon as we saw a sign for Alliance. “Big railroad town,” she said, and directed us off the road to the left. “I’m hoping since they live south of the railroad, they have fewer crazies.”
She said it like she wanted me to validate her, so I did. “Plus, you talked to her just a couple days ago and she was doing all right.”
“Right. Right.” She nodded and kept doing so as if the movement were some sort of spell to make it so.
The train yard was huge, and I imagined it had been noisy when everything was running, with train cars banging into each other and train horns announcing their approach. The trailer park sat off to the left, and she directed us to turn onto the first road, a pothole infested dirt road, to be precise. Evan and his group filed in after us, all of us taking it slowly.
To our right, a bright yellow car sat in front of a trailer, a woman and two kids trapped inside, their milky white eyes following us as we drove by. I was glad they were trapped in the car, but it disturbed me to see the two boys, a bit younger than my own, clawing at the windows when they saw us.
Had they all gotten sick at the same time? Or had one gotten sick and then turned the others? I would never know, but it made me sad to imagine what might have happened.
That could have been us, I thought. If April had bitten Lana, if the little girl we tried to save had—
“Turn here,” Ivy said, cutting into my dark thoughts.
Grateful for the distraction, I did as she bid, and followed her directions to a large grey trailer on a corner lot, a big RV parked beside it. We stopped, then Evan in his minivan pulled up at a forty-five-degree angle to us. Isaac parked last, finishing the crude triangle Dan had drawn in the dirt back at Norma’s.
Before I had my seatbelt off, Isaac was already in the middle, rifle propped on the roof of his car.
The rest of us watched for signs of them, the windows facing the middle rolled down so we could quietly call out info.
“Two coming up on our side,” Jean said softly.
“Got one headed our way from my direction,” Isaac said. “Want me to shoot them?”
We hadn’t talked out our strategy this far and none of us were keen on advertising our presence with rifle reports.
“Last resort,” I said. “We have the crowbar, the hammers, and the poky cone thing. Come on.” I grabbed the poky cone thing and got out, trying to sound more confident than I felt. I didn’t want to use it on anyone, but I would to keep Lana and the rest safe.
Ivy got out beside me gripping a golf club in one hand and hammer in the other. When I raised my eyebrows at her, she said, “Push ‘em back,” and she jabbed with the club, “then smack ‘em in the head.”
“Good plan.”
My heart rate sped at the oncoming crazies, one of them a child not more than ten. My grip grew sweaty and I hoped to high heaven my hands wouldn’t slip when I went to take out my target. I had to think of it as a target, as an it. I wasn’t sure how else I could deal with the nightmare otherwise.
The child was a girl, her brown bobbed hair clumped with dried blood, her bottom lip torn free to reveal her teeth. She growled at us. Her companion held out her hands. “Help me? Help? Help?”
Ivy swung the club at the woman’s head. I thrust the poky cone thing into the girl’s face, apologizing internally as I did. Her teeth broke under the weight of the cone and the sound made my stomach twist. Black, clotted blood clung to the metal as I pulled back to deliver another blow. I gagged as I shoved the cone into her face again. She staggered back with the blow and tumbled onto her butt.
Panting and crying, I forced myself forward. She was growling, the sound more of a gurgle in the ruin of her face. She reached for me, her dead eyes locked on my throat. “I’m sorry,” I choked out and plunged the cone deep inside her mouth.
The lights went out in her dead eyes.
I turned my head and puked.
The noise Ivy made with the hammer made me puke again.
When I turned, the crazy she’d killed was on the ground, her face no longer recognizable as a face. “I hope my grandbabies aren’t looking out the window,” she said hoarsely.
I looked up at the house in reflex. The curtains were shut tight and the place had a dead look to it that worried me. “You okay?”
“Fuck no. Are you?”
“Nope.”
Another sound on the opposite side of the cars told us
