From the woods, she could hear the hungry groans of the dead. They were all around her. She threw up then, her hands on her knees, the fire in her shoulder threatening to overwhelm her. Not here, she thought. I won't die in these fucking woods.
She pushed herself upward. Her entire body quivered with adrenaline, or was it fever? She pushed through the snow, moving as quickly as she could, the rifle gripped in her hands. To her left, she saw one, a woman in jeans, plain and undamaged, but judging by its tell-tale shambling gait, as dead as a doorknob. To her left, she spied another one, a child this time, slow and clumsy. It didn't matter because the circle was closing in on her, and she had no delusions that any help was coming for her.
Joan was too injured, Dez was too crazy, and the other women wanted nothing to do with her. They would probably be ecstatic if she died in the woods. So she pushed herself forward. Her vision swam in her eyes, and her rifle felt heavy in her hands. She glanced from side to side. There were more of them now, homing in on her.
She burst through the trees, stumbling and falling into the clearing around the compound. She had never been so happy to see the ring of trailers and the peak of the old ranger station jutting into the sky. "Help!" she called in a strangled gasp.
She had to scream a couple of time before she found her voice. There was no response from inside the compound. She reached the gate, two large swinging doors hammered together from plywood and chain-link fencing. She leaned against it and pushed at the gate, but it didn't budge. She fumbled with the chain that held it closed, but the padlock was locked tight, and the key was missing.
"Open this fucking gate!" she called.
Then she turned around, because she heard them getting closer. She should have tried to climb the gate as soon as she saw it was locked, but she had wasted her time, hoping that someone would open the gate for her. It was too late to climb. The dead, though they moved slow, had moved fast enough to catch up to her. There were five of them now. She had more than enough ammunition, but she was so tired, so exhausted, that it took all of her strength to lift the rifle and aim down the sight. She took aim at the nearest of the dead and squeezed the trigger. She tried to hold her breath, but she was too fatigued, her lungs begging for oxygen. Even her heart was messing with her. With every beat, it seemed the end of the rifle wobbled. She fired anyway, and the dead thing fell to the ground.
Behind her, she heard the rattle of the gate. "Hold on," Tammy said in her mousy, white trash drawl. "I'm gettin' it."
Katie sent up a silent prayer, though she wasn't religious and didn't think anyone would answer. The second of the dead, the child, approached her, snarling to reveal tarnished braces. Its left arm ended in a ragged stump where something had gnawed the hand off. She raised the rifle and aimed. Her breath was coming back to her, but hot fire still shot through her shoulder. She was able to hold her breath longer this time, and when she pulled the trigger, it was with the certainty that the dead kid was going to go down. She fired, and down it went, collapsing like a puppet with its strings cut.
"Stop shootin'!" a voice yelled from the other side of the gate. She thought it was Theresa, but she couldn't be sure. Liz and Theresa both had the husky voices of long-time smokers. "You're going to bring more of them dead."
Katie almost laughed. What the fuck did Theresa want her to do? Stand there and let the dead gnaw on her in silence?
She heard the chain rattle, and the gate opened behind her. She stepped backward into the compound, never taking her eyes off the dead. Tammy and Liz pulled the gates shut while Theresa threaded the chains through the two ends of the gate, locking them shut with a padlock. She gave the padlock and the gates a good tug, and then turned and gave everyone a thumbs up.
Katie collapsed in the snow, breathing hard, her heart pumping blood as fast as it dared. Sweat poured down her face in rivers, but it wasn't from the exertion. Something was most definitely wrong. Her vision swam from side to side, and she felt the baby inside her kick harder this time. She felt pain, but she couldn't tell from where.
"Where's the firewood?" Theresa asked.
"There isn't any," Katie said.
"Then where the hell were you?"
"I was looking for my friend," she said. She wasn't afraid to tell them the truth, and nothing they said mattered to Katie anyway. They were breeding stock, pure and simple. That's how they had behaved; that's the role they had made for themselves in the apocalypse, so that's how Katie saw them. That they shared the same health condition, namely being pregnant, didn't cross her mind once.
"And damn near got yourself killed, too," Theresa said. The other women, Liz and Tammy, just looked on, but Katie knew they were thinking the same thing.
Katie sat up and wiped the sheen of sweat from her forehead. "Yeah, well, when we're all too pregnant to go running around out there and gather wood, you'll be glad I found him."
"Did you find him?" Tammy asked.
"I don't know. Left him a message. We'll see in the next day or two."
Theresa harrumphed and stalked off with Liz to sit around the campfire. They ignored the dead outside banging
