'No. No splitting up.' Bill shook his head as he said it.
'I disagree, I can stay here, I'll sit in the diesel, keep watch and radio you if anything changes. You can high tail it back here and bail me out. Plus you can move faster without a senior citizen along.' This last was said with a meaningful glance at Stewart, who blushed.
'Fuck, I didn't mean that. And you were a quarter mile away, no way you heard me from that far.'
'I heard what I heard. What deary? You think that you are the only one to get something from killing the dead?'
'What zombies have you killed?' Stewart shot back.
'I cleaned up your mess with that woman in Chicago.'
'She wasn't dead!'
'She moved like it!' Ruben said.
'Whoa! Stop for a minute! Ruben, are you saying you heard me and Stewart talking this morning when we couldn't even see you?' Bill asked.
Ruben nodded, still glaring at Stewart.
'That's…awesome! How far can you hear things?'
Ruben sighed, 'I know where you are going with this, but it doesn't work like that. It's not controllable like Stewart's 'Speedy Gonzales' ability or Max seeing the dead everywhere with some 'third eye'. It's more like I kind of wonder about something, then I can hear it. This morning me and Javier were walking the edge of the woods and I wondered where you were, then, I could hear you, and knew which direction you were from where I was. But as soon as I realized I wasn't day dreaming it went away.'
Stewart snorted, 'Sounds like you got some sort of zombie powered hearing aid. That's fitting old man.'
Ruben blinked and looked away, 'Could be. But maybe it will be useful. I'll take what I can get.'
'Well…okay. You can stay at the trucks, the three of us will find the tracks and follow them if we can. But Ruben if you so much as even think there is something coming, you let us know right away. Trust your gut.'
'I will. They already got three hours on you.' Ruben said.
'Alright, we're going. Everyone make sure you have water and something to eat. Let's go.' Bill said.
'Yessir!' was Stewart's smart comeback, which earned her a reproachful glance from Bill.
Stewart turned back to Ruben and asked, 'So, can't you just 'wonder' where Max is and point us in the right direction?'
The old man shook his head, 'No.'
'Fuck all good that does us then.'
'Sorry lady, but my ability didn't come with a set of instructions like yours apparently did. I'm learning it as I go.'
'Ruben…just get in the truck. We'll go find him. Honk if anything comes up.' Bill said.
Ruben nodded and climbed into the truck, where he locked the doors and settled back to wait.
The other three walked over to the corpse sitting a few feet away from the truck and started circling it, looking for an indication of which way their friend had been carried away. Ruben eased himself into the truck and hit the door lock button on the remote. He hated lying to Bill like that; the man was a decent enough fellow, but some secrets needed to stay that way.
'Stewart, you see anything?' Bill asked a few moments after they had circled the body again.
'No. The day light helps, Bill, but we walked all over this place. If I had to guess though, and I do, I would say they dragged him a few feet, then boosted him up and carried him.' Stewart pointed to some scuff marks in the mix of dirt and pea gravel, 'See? This mess ends about here. Then we just have a couple of clear foot prints heading off that way.'
'Not much of a guess then.' Javier said.
'They could have circled around. We'll just make for the trees straight that way and see if we find anything.' Responded Stewart.
'Fine.' Bill agreed.
The three headed away from the body towards the tree line where Stewart had pointed. When they got to the edge of the woods they found a well beaten path leading down through the trees. Stewart squatted and looked at it.
'Boot prints, probably from this morning. Looks like they came up and back this way. See how the prints overlap each other?'
'Yeah, I got it.' Bill said, knowing he could have seen the same thing as Stewart, had he looked.
'I'll keep my eyes on the trail, you two watch, in case they left someone for us.'
'Why would they do that?' asked Javier.
'She means, 'In case they left someone to ambush us.'' Bill clarified.
'Oh. Got it.' Javier glanced about warily.
'I doubt they would have sat here waiting for us for three hours.'
Stewart laughed, 'Why not? They are dead, they have all the time in the world. Still, I bet you are right Bill. Let's go.'
Stewart took off at a brisk pace down the path. After only a few minutes it ended on the banks of a creek. She bent down and looked on the muddy banks. As she rose she shook her head.
'Nothing, they must have gone off the trail somewhere and I didn't notice. Let's go back and see if we can pick them up. Everyone keep their eyes open for anything, bent twigs, foot prints, that sort of thing. I will watch the path and see if I can figure out where they left it.' Stewart said.
They proceeded up the path more slowly and close to halfway up Stewart halted and pointed at the path, 'Here. This is where they got on the path this morning, but I don't see any return tracks, so they went off somewhere between here and the park.'
'This is slower than I was hoping for.' Bill said, eyeing the woods around them.
'What can we do? Unless you have some sort of 'Max radar', we are stuck doing this the slow way.'
The three followed a scared trail through the woods until the sun was high overhead. Stewart stopped them as they trudged along another deer path. Her sudden stop caused the men behind her to come up short, but not quite bump into her.
'What is it?' Bill asked.
'Look up there.' Stewart said, pointed to their left.
'Yeah? It looks like a clearing.'
Stewart trudged up the steep hillside, when she got there she turned back around and said, 'Shit.'
'What?' asked Javier and Bill at the same time.
'Come on up, see for yourselves.'
The two men carefully climbed the slope and saw that they were actually on the edge of a paved roadway.
'A road? So? We know we're…' Bill stopped when Stewart raised her hand and pointed behind him along the roadway.
Bill turned around and softly swore under his breath. Stewart was pointing at a sign that said, 'RVs, Cabins, Camping!' and had a huge red arrow underneath it. The same sign that they had followed the night before to drive into the campground.
'We've hiked all morning and the campground is right there?' asked Javier with disbelief.
'Let's go back.' Stewart said, heading off down the road.
'We can't leave him!'
'Bill, we can't find him either. We've hiked around for two hours and we're five minutes away from the truck. They led us in a circle.'
Grumbling, Bill fell into line behind her, Javier took up the rear. The young man kept glancing back behind them, as if still disbelieving that they had come such a short distance.
The trio walked into the campground and saw the two trucks parked where they had left them. Ruben was not in the cab, when Stewart saw this she sped up into a jog that left the others behind. Her gun came up and she started eyeing the area around the trucks.
Stewart pulled to a stop when she saw Ruben at the back of the diesel; he was looking at the bomb. For a
