He had to admit it was pretty, though. If an army of the dead wasn't hot on their trail, he would have been more than happy to walk through the numbing cold… for a little while, at least. They had twisted and turned several times, cutting through backyards and side roads to try and lose the tail, but everywhere they went, there seemed to be more of the dead. The concentration wasn't as dense as Portland, or else they would have had no chance in the snow.
They passed abandoned buildings, restaurants, gyms, storage facilities. Grime covered their windows, their interiors shrouded in darkness. Epps imagined hundreds of Annies behind every window, and it was all he could do to keep himself from sprinting down the street in pure panic.
Ahead of them, the dead were staggered, loosely bunched, but ever-present. It wasn't the dead ahead of them that presented a problem. It was how the dead moved. While the soldiers could move between and around the dead, occasionally shooting any that presented a problem, doing so alerted any random Annies to their presence. Meanwhile, in going around, the dead behind them made up ground, and the ones alerted to their presence by a muffled gunshot began their pursuit, shuffling through the snow in their direction. Even the ones they moved past turned to follow them up the street.
The end result? They constantly had a tail of a hundred slow-moving Terminators chasing after them. They didn't tire. They didn't quit, and they wouldn't stop until Epps and his friends were dead.
"Let's loop around again," Tejada said, "drop some of this tail."
Epps and Allen took a left onto what they assumed was a driveway that led to a large industrial building. They stuck to the middle of the driveway, just to be safe. Even so, Epps cursed to himself as he sunk deeper than he had expected in a pothole. He pitched forward to avoid damaging his leg. He pushed himself up out of the snow, gasping as he brushed the cold, wetness of the snow from his face. "Watch out for that pothole," he said to the others, thankful that he hadn't sprained or broken his ankle. If he wasn't cold before, he certainly was now.
They rounded the corner of the industrial building, its dark windows revealing nothing of the interiors.
"Alright, let's pick it up," Tejada said.
They double-timed it, rushing through the parking lot and staying away from where the curbs and sidewalks were. They moved down the entire length of the building as fast as they could. When they reached the far corner of the rectangular structure, they turned the corner and caught their breath. Damn this snow. It took more energy than it should to run through snow. If they weren't careful, they would find themselves exhausted on the other end of the journey.
They walked carefully across the buried landscape around the building, and when Epps reached the corner of the building that faced the road, he paused, then slowly peeked around the corner. He waited until the last of their tail disappeared and then gave the signal. As a group, they fled out into the snow, hopefully losing their pursuers in the process.
Epps tried not to look at the others. He tried not to look at their faces, at the fear he saw there. He knew their faces mirrored his own. All it took was a slip at the wrong moment, a twisted ankle, or a torn muscle like Sergeant Tejada had. Disaster was there, underneath the snow, waiting for the right opportunity to strike.
Up the street they went, heading west. Gregg's trusty compass let them know the right direction underneath the sunless sky.
The wind picked up, and they moved cleanly, efficiently, lost in their own thoughts. To talk was to make noise. To make noise was to attract the dead. To attract the dead was to invite their own demise.
The muscles in his legs burned with exhaustion. He was fatigued, and he knew it, but he pushed himself because no one else complained. Complaining could get a unit killed faster than an actual enemy. Still, he knew he was at his limit. His body, filled with adrenaline for hours on end, was shutting down. He stumbled and knew the crash was coming.
"We gotta find a place to hole up," Tejada said as if he had just read Epps' mind. "Keep your eyes peeled." Epps could have kissed the man. At the very least, holing up would allow him to organize his pack a little better, get the straps just right with the new weight his backpack held. And he could get a little food in his belly. His breakfast seemed long ago and far away.
With the prospect of a break looming, Epps scanned all of the likely buildings in their path. If they found a good one, they would have to do a loop and lose their tail, which had steadily swelled over the last half-mile.
Epps took aim at an Annie blocking their way between two wrecked cars. He squeezed the trigger, and as a group, they moved through the bottleneck. There were less crashed cars out here. The roads weren't deadlocked like they had been in Portland. Perhaps, if they could get a car started, they could make their way out of the city in style. Although, the roads weren't necessarily in the best of conditions. Hell, it might be quicker to hike
