“Cover me,” Sidney said as she walked cautiously around the truck’s bumper toward the Campbell homestead. They hadn’t seen any infected on their way from the house where the rest of the family was holed up, but only a moron would think that they weren’t out here still. They couldn’t let their guard down. But, if there was a bright spot to the former Iranian presence, it was that they’d killed tens of thousands of the damn things during their time here. That would help to make long-term living much easier than if they’d remained.
She walked cautiously up the steps and peeked through the open doorway. There were a lot of dried up corn leaves and some other garbage that had blown into the foyer, but that seemed to be the worst of it for having the door open for so long.
Sidney made her way around the first floor, trying in vain not to step on creaky boards or make too much noise in case there were any infected inside the house. Once the first floor was clear, she reemerged onto the porch and called Mark up to the house. The infected couldn’t really climb stairs, so she was confident that the only thing up there could be a trap left by the Iranians.
Once Mark was on the porch, Sidney went upstairs to clear the rooms. There didn’t appear to be any problems inside at all. They were lucky.
“Barn?” Mark asked.
“Yeah. Might as well get this all finished up.”
They walked cautiously toward the barn. Something about it felt weird. When they were near the door, Sidney sniffed hard. The smell of death emanating from inside was faint, but it was there. She put up a hand to warn Mark and he nodded.
They circled the building slowly, trying to determine how it had gotten in there. All the doors were closed and barred from the outside. The Iranians. Was this the trap that Sidney had feared?
She pantomimed her plan and he understood. It wasn’t a particularly hard one. She’d position herself in front of the door with her suppressed rifle and Mark would open it. Then, she’d shoot the beast as it came out. Easy peasy.
Mark gave her a countdown and then opened the door. The sounds of several infected reached Sidney’s ears a moment before the inside of the barn erupted with a roiling mass of bodies.. It wasn’t just one. There were a lot of them. And they were fast. They looked to be newly turned.
“Shit. Shit. Shit,” Sidney said over and over as she fired until the rifle clicked empty. She’d gone through thirty-one rounds in the blink of an eye.
Her fingers fumbled with the magazine release button and she dropped the replacement. She hadn’t been expecting this many.
“Sidney! The house!” Mark’s voice energized her and she ran. They could barricade themselves in the house and then pick the infected off one-by-one through the window.
She raced toward the doorway and Mark surged past her. He made it up the stairs and inside before she’d even gotten to the porch. Sidney fell through the door and he slammed it behind her.
“Dresser!” he cried out.
She pushed herself up and went to the piece of furniture that Vern had placed in the foyer for this very reason. She pushed with all of her strength, but it was too heavy for her alone.
“I… I can’t move it,” she heaved.
The insane screams of the infected echoed through the house as they fell up the steps and clawed their way onto the porch. Mark threw the deadbolt and shuffled over to her. They slid the dresser in front of the door and both lay heavily across the top of it as the door shuddered from the impacts of the infected bodies against it.
“Guess that answers that question, huh?” Mark said after a moment.
“What?” The infected outside beat relentlessly at the door and side of the home, making it nearly impossible to hear.
“The race,” he replied. “You gave me crap about how slow I was. But I had that machine gun, remember?”
“Oh yeah…” She couldn’t help herself as she burst out laughing.
He grinned back at her. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing, kiddo. You’re just…” She sobered quickly. “I’m sorry I got you into this.”
“You didn’t get me into anything, Sidney. We’re a team. We were clearing the property and the Iranians set a trap for us. It’s not your fault.”
“You think that’s what happened out there?”
“Absolutely. I had a minute to see those infected from the side before you ran out of ammo. They don’t look like they’ve been out here for a year like the other ones. Those people were only turned a little while ago.”
Everything clicked in her mind with his confirmation that the infected outside were newly turned. The Iranians had rounded up the last of the survivors in the area and put them in that barn. That was the Redskins’ punishment. Those people had died because of Sidney’s actions.
She shared her thoughts with the boy. “No way. Those people would have died anyway. The fact that they died in Vern’s barn is just a matter of location. The Iranians wouldn’t have let them live.”
A window broke in the kitchen and Sidney rushed toward the sound. The window over the kitchen sink was out and several arms snaked through. Sidney wasn’t concerned with them getting in that way. It was much too high for their uncoordinated efforts.
Then the window in the sitting room on the other side of the foyer broke.
“Shit!” she completed her magazine change and chambered a round.
“What’s that noise?” Mark asked.
“What?”
“Listen!” he directed, putting a hand on the carrying handle of her rifle.
She took a moment to listen. Engines. There were engines. The infected
