“Alright, but I’m not a good reader. Remember that professor I told you about? She said I had the reading level of a ten-year-old.”
“We can work with that, if you’re willing,” Fred said.
“Yeah.” She would have said more, but she was too cold. She rubbed herself under the blankets. “I’m colder than a penguin’s pecker. That’s what my stepfather would say when he was cold.”
“You ever seen a penguin?” Fred asked.
“Just pictures in a book. They live at the North Pole, right?”
“South Pole, mostly. Why don’t you try to meditate?”
Nikki tried to concentrate and think warm thoughts, but after a couple of minutes decided it was impossible. She changed the subject.
“When is the last time you missed?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“That big zed. Your bullet caught him on the side of the head, but for you, that counts as a clean miss.”
“Yeah,” Fred said after a moment.
“So, when’s the last time?”
“I think I was fifteen,” Fred said.
Nikki stared in the dark. “You were fifteen-years-old the last time you missed what you were aiming for?”
“Sounds about right.” He paused another long moment before speaking again. “I think I’m losing my edge.”
Nikki thought she heard a slight amount of dejection in his voice. “I don’t think so. I think you may have injured your hand in that fight and it’s affecting your aim.”
“I suppose it’s possible, but I’ve been in fights before and never had any problem shooting the next day.”
“The winter cold might have something to do with it too. Do you get in a lot of fights?” she asked.
Fred grunted. “I guess I did back when I was a younger man. I did bronc riding in a rodeo circuit. I did trick shooting too. That was in between semesters of school. I got in my share of fights both with cowboys and frat boys.”
Nikki gave a clipped chuckle. “I bet you were something else.”
“I certainly thought I was. Eventually, I grew up, got married, started a business, and had a kid. A daughter. She would’ve been a few years older than you.”
He paused a few seconds before speaking again. “She had a reading disability. When she was a child, I bought some children’s books and had her read me stories every night at bedtime. It seemed to work out.”
“So, I’m going to read you bedtime stories?” Nikki asked.
Fred grunted. “Not like that, but we can work on it. I’ll have you reading at a college level in no time.”
“Is it true you went all the way to Los Angeles to find her, and you did, and that she was infected?”
“Yep.”
“And you killed her,” she said.
“Yep. Let’s change the subject.”
“Oh, okay. Sorry.”
“It’s going to be a hard ride back,” Fred said.
“How long?”
“If it were only Aisha and me, we could make it back in a day and a half. It’s a little too far for Leeroy, so two days, minimum. And we shouldn’t ride at night, not with the way these zeds are behaving. We’ll have to take breaks to allow them to eat and drink. Yeah, a solid two days.”
“What does your intuition say about the weather?” Nikki asked.
“What does yours say?”
“I think it’s going to be cold as a penguin’s pecker at the South Pole,” she said.
“Yep.”
She was about to say something else but paused and cocked her head. Fred saw her and waited for her to say something.
“Did you hear that?” she asked.
Fred had to admit he did not, but his hearing was not the best anymore.
“It sounded like, I don’t know, it sounded like ice crunching,” she said.
Fred was instantly up. He edged over to the bay door and peered out one of the broken windows. Nikki was right behind him. She crouched down where she was at his knees and leaned against his leg to peer out. They both saw the zeds at the same time and jerked back. They were several yards down the road, but they were slowly moving toward their location.
“How are they still moving in the freezing cold? I thought they couldn’t do that?” Nikki asked.
“We can figure it out later,” Fred whispered back. “Right now, we need to get out of here before they surround us and make life difficult.”
They packed their blankets and saddled the horses as quietly as they could and mounted up. The bay door on the opposite side had a long rope still attached at the bottom. Fred retrieved it, slid the bolt open, and remounted before focusing on Nikki in the dark.
“The plan is to head west. Shoot only if you have to. We have to stick together, but if we can’t, head back home. If I’m alive, I’ll find you.”
Nikki nodded. Although she was young, she did not scare easily, but she was scared now. She watched as Fred yanked the bay door up and followed him as Aisha sprinted out. She did not even need to prod Leeroy. He was right behind her.
It was immediately clear if they had waited one more minute, they would have been surrounded. Like Fred said, the zeds knew they were there. Nikki saw at least a dozen working their way toward the quick-lube business they were fleeing from and a dozen more coming up from the opposite end of the street. The zeds were lunging for them as they ran by and they both had to kick the zeds off multiple times. After approximately a mile, they stopped the horses in what appeared to have been a children’s park at one time. After listening and scanning the best they could in the darkness, they dismounted.
“We’ll stay here a minute to let them rest, but we’re going to need to walk a while,” Fred whispered.
Nikki watched as Leeroy began pawing at the snow to get at the grass beneath. Both horses were breathing heavily. To Nikki, it sounded loud enough to be heard for miles around.
“Both of them are tired and hungry,” she exclaimed.
“We’ll have to be easy on them,” Fred said. “That’ll mean we’re going to
