He cleared his head and saw that his men had cleared the parking lot of all of the dead between them and the woman with the bald head. Lose one, gain one. It was a strange thought to have. He had just lost a man, but here was another living soul to replace the one he had lost. She would most likely be a poor replacement for Day.
"Hello!" he called.
The woman looked around her, her shotgun loaded and ready to be fired. She had a panicked look on her face, and he realized that the woman must be terrified out of her mind. "We mean you no harm," he said. "Just thought you might need a little help is all."
"It's all mine," the woman said. "I fought for it. You don't get none of it."
Tejada took a look at the woman's cart. It was piled high with cans of stuff. The odds of her making it through the snow with that cart were about as good as his odds of growing a tail overnight.
"We got our own food," he said. "But, if you don't mind my asking, are you planning on pushing that cart through this snow?"
"What I plan ain't none of your business," she spat.
Tejada was beginning to get the impression that their presence wasn't appreciated. Fury rose in Tejada. They had just lost a friend to save this woman from her own stupidity. "How is it that someone so stupid is still alive?" he asked.
The woman's eyes bugged out, and for a moment, Tejada pictured his own death at the hands of a bald woman in front of a Target. It wasn't how he had necessarily envisioned his demise.
"Fuck you. Some of us don't got an army full of buddies. I do what I can to get by."
Allen said, "Yeah, well. You ought to start running. You just alerted every Annie on the highway that there's a free lunch over here."
The woman looked panicked for a second, as if she hadn't considered the idea.
"Yeah, well. About that. If you all help me get some of this food back to my house, I'd be willing to share some of it with you."
Tejada chewed the inside of his lip. Day… Day… Day… in the grand scheme of things, he was no big loss. He was proficient at surviving. He could help carry stuff. He was an extra person to talk to, but Tejada had no great love for the soldier. But to see his life wasted to save this piece of shit that stood before him, that was too much, even for him.
"Nope, Not interested. I say good luck to you. Let's move out." He twirled his hand in the air and turned his back on the woman. It felt good to stop looking at her, standing there with her shopping cart full of food and no way to get it home. Dumbass gets everything she deserves.
"We're not just going to leave her, are we?" Epps asked as Tejada strode away.
"Fuck her. She got out here on her own; she can get home on her own." He could tell his answer didn't sit well with Epps. "Listen, I'm sick of helping people and getting shit on. We just lost Day, and for what? So that lady could get a shopping cart full of food."
"Hey, she's following us," Brown said.
Tejada stopped and saw the woman pushing her cart in the snow following in their broken trail. She was a good thirty yards behind them, but she had obviously been pushing the cart through the snow in their direction, her shotgun sticking up out of the basket in easy reach.
Tejada turned back to Epps and said, "Keep an eye on her."
They returned to a road called Evergreen Parkway, which ran between all of the stores, a four-lane affair judging by the width of the field of white ahead of them. It was not easy work moving among the dead, cutting them down, and then plowing through the snow. He felt like one of those Clydesdales from the Budweiser commercials, forging through the snow. Unfortunately, he wasn't delivering beer. He was trying to deliver his soldiers someplace safe, someplace where they didn't have to die.
He tried to scan the world ahead of him, planning their next move like a Chessmaster, but the death of Day clung to him like campfire smoke.
Periodically, he would look behind them, tracking the lady's progress. She was closer now, bringing up the rear. Once, he caught sight of her running to avoid a closing gap between a set of Annies that they had just passed by. She made it, and Tejada silently cursed her. It was the first time in his life that he had put the safety of his soldiers above the safety of a civilian. It didn't sit well with him, but that's what the world was now. There were no more soldiers, no more civilians. There were just survivors. He felt like a fool for taking so long to get that through his thick skull. If he had realized that concept one day earlier, Day would still be here.
The road they were on ran west, paralleling the highway to the
