“Nope.”
“And you can’t shoot your way through them?”
“That wouldn’t work; there are way too many of them.”
“How about shooting them from the car?”
“I only have twenty-two bullets left. I already counted them.”
“Twenty-two ain’t bad,” Dan says. “That’ll thin the herd at least.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” William says, his voice growing even more downcast. “Even if I make all of them perfect headshots, twenty-two would be like a drop in the ocean. I mean, have you looked outside? There are at least two hundred of them now.”
Dan chews his lip. “How about Ozzy?”
“What about him?”
“Can he do anything to help? He’s immune, right?”
“Yeah, but I don’t see him killing two hundred zombies. That would take him like a week.”
“Wait!” Dan snaps his fingers. “Can’t you, like … disguise yourself? Maybe if they can’t see you, or … I don’t know … if they think you’re already infected, they’ll leave you alone.”
A brief pause. “I thought about that. In Walking Dead, they do this move where they rub themselves in gunk from a dead zombie and then the other zombies can’t smell them or something. They’re able to walk right out among them without getting attacked.”
Dan feels hope rise. “You think that could work?”
“I don’t know, it depends on whether they go by smell or something else.”
“But it’s worth a shot, don’t you think?” Dan looks over at William’s car. “The dead guy in the window—can’t you use him?”
“If I begin messing with him, I risk the others making their way in. Right now, he’s the only thing keeping them out.”
“Okay, but—”
“I do have someone else, though.”
“You do?”
A brief pause. “There’s a woman here. I suppose she was the owner of the car. She was already in here. I shot her.”
“That’s perfect! Try it, William.”
A longer pause this time. “I’m not sure I can do it.”
“Why not? Can’t you get to her?”
“Yeah, but … you realize what we’re talking about, right? Rubbing myself in the juices from a half-rotten corpse? That’s not exactly a turn-on.”
“I know, but you need to—”
“And I don’t even think they go by smell anyway.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s a lot more likely they go by sense. You said it yourself, remember? How would they have found us at Holger’s place? Don’t tell me they could smell us from miles away inside a house built of bricks. There are no predators in the world that could pick up a smell like that. And yet they came from town and headed straight for us.”
Dan thinks about it and realizes that William is right and that Dan already knew that. He was just grasping at straws.
“Okay, so there’s no way we’re getting you out of there,” he goes on. “Can we get the car to you, then?”
“I don’t see that happening either.”
“If I could just cross the middle lane …”
“Yeah, but it stretches for miles in each direction. And even if you found a hole to slip through and you got the car close to mine, how would we do it?”
“We would park the cars right up against each other and you would climb through the windows.”
“Dude, listen to what you’re saying. You’d spend hours getting the car over here and parking it just right, and even if you managed to do all that, there’s no way I can get from this car to yours without them reaching me and scratching me.”
Dan begins to feel his mouth dry up. “Okay, then there’s one option left: we get rid of the zombies.”
William snorts. “You’re gonna find a machine gun and go Rambo on them?”
“I could … I could set them all on fire.”
“Using what?”
“I could drive to Bergen and find some gasoline.”
“That’s not going to work. You’ll just cook me alive in here.”
“What about luring them away?”
“You’d have to get closer to them than I am, and that can’t be done.”
“Okay. Okay, then … then we …” Dan tries very hard to find something to say, but the words escape him.
“Dan, listen,” William says, and there’s that tone of voice again. “I already went over this in my head …”
“No,” Dan says fiercely, suddenly grinding his teeth, staring over at William. “You’re not doing it. You’re not giving up. You hear me? We’re getting you out of there.”
He gets a glimpse of William shaking his head. “Unless I can get this thing started and drive out of here myself, there’s no way,” he says. “Anyway, there’s nothing more you can do. I think you should get going.”
“No …”
“Drive to Bergen and find a ship that’ll take you to Denmark.”
“What about you then?” Dan’s voice is trembling now. “Are you just going to sit there and wait to die from thirst?”
“Eventually, maybe. I’ll try to get the car started first, but I’m not too hopeful. These newer cars can’t just be hot-wired like Bruce Willis used to do in the eighties. But I’ll give it a shot, I promise. I still have power on my phone, so I can probably Google it.”
“Yes, do that,” Dan urges. “Try to get it started. I’ll wait.”
“It could be hours.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“I think you should go.”
“I’m not leaving!”
William sighs. “Yeah, you are. And you know why? Because it’s the right thing to do.”
“No, it’s not.”
“It is. You’re going to save the world, remember? That’s way more important than saving me.”
Dan feels like crying. He already left William behind once, but this time it’ll be for real. And he’ll be leaving him with the certainty that William will die.
“Listen, I’ve got your number now,” William goes on. “If I manage to get this thing started, I’ll call you.”
“What if … what if I already left for Denmark by then?”
“Then I guess I’ll try to catch up with you. But these are pretty big ifs, Dan. Don’t count on any of it. Just focus on getting back to that house. End this thing so it won’t all have been for nothing.”
Dan is surprised to hear William’s voice shake. He looks over at him, but when he catches a glimpse
