They moved to the side of the street, as far from thedead thing as they could. Lou didn't want to shoot it if he had to. Bulletswere too precious now, and the noise of his gun would draw more of the dead tothem. They were around. He could feel it.
They marched past the man, for they could see that it wasa man now, and it turned slowly tracking them. The blonde hair of the man wasred in spots from dried and crusty blood, and his ear was missing. The skin ofhis lips had shriveled up, revealing large teeth and rotten gums. He must havebeen thirty-years-old when he died or close to it. He wore a fashionable dressshirt, the buttons ripped off the lower half so his gray abdomen, now just skinon muscles flexed with each step it took. He was unremarkable, but for hisshoes, fancy leather shoes that probably cost ten times more than any pair ofshoes that Lou had ever been able to buy for himself.
It would follow them. It would follow them until it lostsight and sound of them. It would pick up others, and a horde would begin.Hopefully, they would be long gone by the time that happened. The sight of theman enraged him. He wanted to kill it, prevent it from hurting anyone. It wasonly one dead human; they should easily be able to take it out. But who knew ifone of them would trip and stumble in the process. The last thing they neededwas a hobbled survivor on their hands. Clara and Mort were already limping asit was. Mort had been limping ever since Lou had met the man at the Coliseum.He had said something about an accident when it had all begun, but he neverwent into detail. Clara had been dealing with a bad sprain for weeks, and herjump from the office building had only exacerbated the injury. It wasn't as badas it had been, but she wouldn't be winning any races anytime soon.
No, it was best to leave them alone if you could. Loulifted his eyes from the immediate area and scanned the road ahead of them. Thecity rose to meet the hills in the distance, and he could see scattered shadowsand forms stumbling in the streets. Abandoned and wrecked cars littered thestreet. They didn't bother to search through the vehicles. This was not thetype of place where one took their time scavenging and looting. Five minutes ofstanding still might be all it would take to have the dead clump up around you,and then you would have to fight, drawing more of them to you in the process,causing you to fight some more. It was a losing battle, a slippery slope thatwas almost impossible to overcome. The treasures hidden inside the cars wouldhave to wait for another day, perhaps a day when all of the dead were gone.
Perhaps they would all rot away. Lou flipped a glanceover his shoulder. It was still there, the blonde man with the missing ear. Itstill followed them. It showed no signs of slowing down. None of these thingsshowed any signs of slowing down. He wondered if they ever would. Was there anexpiration date on these fuckers, or were they bound to roam the earth for therest of their days, clawing at the air and waiting for an unlucky human to comealong and be their next meal?
He was no scientist. He didn't know the answers to any ofhis questions. No one did. The only answer he had were his feet. One stepforward followed by another. Get from point A to point B, and so on, untilthere were no more points to get to. That's what the coast was, the end to allof this, a chance to begin again.
In the distance, the dead had noticed them. They movedtoward them at a steady pace. They passed Third Ave, and Lou looked down theside streets. To the south, a large pocket of the dead milled around. To thenorth, there were fewer shapes scattered amid wrecked and abandoned cars. Hethought about what Zeke would do. Zeke would probably zig and zag around thebuildings, preventing the dead from maintaining a line of sight, but that couldbackfire as well if they rounded the corner and bumped into a horde. Then theywould be trapped by the ones following them as well as the dead in front ofthem. Lou preferred to see what was coming. If they had to duck down a sidestreet, they could.
They moved through the intersection, and the dead totheir right and left disappeared. The buildings of downtown became taller, anda sound intruded upon the shuffling of the survivors' feet as they walked downthe abandoned pavement. At first, Lou couldn't place the sound. It almostsounded like thunder in the distance. Then Lou looked up.
"What is that noise?" Katie asked, breaking thesilence that they held close to their chests.
"It's the dead, banging on the windows," Lousaid as he watched a tiny form with bloody hands slap upon the glass of thebuilding that rose to their left. The sound intensified, and Lou saw more formsat the windows, banging and smearing blood on the windows. This was not good,he thought, and then the glass of one of the windows broke.
"Get in the middle of the street," he yelled asone of the dead tumbled from the fourth story of the building to their left.Glass showered upon the ground, followed by the thump of the dead upon thepavement. The fall would have incapacitated a living person, but the dead womanjust stood up, her shoulder hanging limp, while her one good arm reachedtowards them.
In the street, the thundering noise rose until it soundedlike the stomping of a thousand feet on the floor of the bleachers at afootball game. Then glass began to break left and right. The dead tumbled out ofthe buildings around them. Glass
