surrounding buildings and highway. He paused when he was facing the highway, then continued moving until he was facing more east.
“Towards the highway and west.” he said in a low whisper to Stewart without pointing or moving in that direction.
“Nice, you paused there for a second, but that was good misdirection. Can you actually see anything or do you just 'feel' it.”
“Just feel it, what can you see?”
“Nothing. I can see better in the dark, but if it is hiding I will still have a hard time picking it out. Is it one or many.”
“Hard to tell from here, two or three I think. Yeah, probably three..”
“That is mighty god-damned useful. I mean. If it is true.” They had never relied on Max's hunches to this extent before.
'I don't know how I know, I just do.' Max shrugged, “So, how do we do this?”
“Max you know me. Direct is good.”
“Okay. I will lead the way, do we run or just saunter?'
“We better saunter, it is more intimidating. It says 'we not only know where you are and what you are, but that we are not afraid of you'. Now I hope, I really do, that they don't have guns too.”
“Always the optimist.”
“It wouldn't be the first time. I hate the ones with guns.”
“Maybe we could talk to them?'
“Maybe a tasty loaf of bread will fall out of my ass the next time I shit.”
Max shrugged and started walking directly across the parking lot, heading for the south west corner. Stewart was walking beside him on his right. Whoever was up there, they had chosen to stay out of the direct line of sight with the room.
“They see us, or know we are coming. I think two of them are moving to either side of the other one. One is moving to the right, the other to the left.” Max shifted his shotgun to point in the general direction of one of the zombies he sensed moving to the left.
“I see one, on the right. No sign of the others. Just three?”
Max nodded.
“I ain't looking at you. I can't hear you when you nod. You gotta answer me, with real words when we do this Max.”
“Sorry, just three.”
Max felt the zombies to either side of the one in the middle stop and back up, they were in the middle median strip of grass and scrub between the highway lanes. Max whispered this to Stewart and the two approached and climbed over the low barbed wire fence to climb up the embankment. After struggling up the embankment through the weeds and burrs they made it to the highway's surface.
“I hate walking through this shit. Why don't you develop a new power to draw them to us?” whispered Stewart.
“I will give that a try next time, if I remember. I think they are less than a hundred feet away, shouldn't we be quiet?”
“They know we are here, you know that from their movements. What have the flankers done?”
“Moved back a bit, over to the other side of the highway.” The road here was cut into the edge of a low rising plains hill, so the other side of the highway was uphill from them, with a shallow ditch to cross over.
“So just the one is there?” asked Stewart, she slowly cocked the shotgun, the noise was well above the sound of their whispering.
“Yes. The other two are back about a hundred and fifty feet or so. I think there might be more over that hill there, to the west on the highway.”
“Now you tell me. How many more?”
“Lots.”
“Fucking great. We better cut and run. I only brought twenty extra shells for my shotgun, you?”
“Ah, about that, plus I have my revolver.”
“I got my police baton too, if it comes to that. Are the other ones moving?”
Max concentrated, sensing the zombies at the extreme edge of his ability to do so. “No, if I am reading this right.”
“We should still move back, load up and get out of here.”
“If you say so.”
Stewart took another five steps forward, belatedly Max moved up to join her, “I thought we were going back?”
“Maybe it does want to talk.” she started moving forward again slowly. The partly cloudy night did not provide very much light to see by, Max could make out the painted stripes and dashes along the road, but the vehicles abandoned along the side of it and Stewart were just dark areas of shadow.
“Fifty feet. Or so.” Max whispered, “Behind that car there, I think.”
Behind the car in question, unseen by Max and Stewart a zombie listened carefully to their conversation. It cocked its head sideways to get a clearer connection to their voices and slowly nodded to itself before it rose, catlike, to slink away into the ditch on the other side of the road. The zombies two companions waited for him to catch up to them in their retreat, then the trio started jogging back to the west.
“They are moving back, looks like they are heading west.” whispered Max to Stewart.
Stewart set out in a quick jog to the car the zombie had been hiding behind, she made it to the vehicle in time to see one of the zombie's head disappearing into the ditch, then watched until she saw three inky shadows in the ditch disappear over the hill they had come down the afternoon before. Stewart had her gun aimed at their backs, but did not fire.
“Too far, huh?” asked Max.
“Yeah, and too dark. And they're too fast. No point in wasting ammo. Max?”
“What?”
“What do you think that was all about?”
“Scouts for a larger group? I think there are more coming behind these guys.”
“Maybe. They seemed…smart. Like Nancy was.”
“Yeah, but why didn't they attack us?”
Stewart shrugged, “We have guns? We knew they were there were and about where they were?”
“So what do we do?”
“I think we just need to be very careful.”
“We leave now?”
“I would rather not, not in the dark, but I don't see any help for it.”
“Well by the time we get everyone fed and loaded up it will be almost dawn. Plus we can waste a little time in town refueling the generators in case any other living pass through here. And grabbing more food.”
“It won't take that long, but yeah, let's get back and get moving.”
Eating and loading up took less time than they thought, Tom had already told Nick and Erin to bundle up everything and he had tossed most of it into the back of the van by the time Stewart and Max got back. Max explained the curious behavior of the zombies to the others and no one had any constructive thoughts about it for now. In less than twenty minutes from when the zombies ran from them they were on their way into town to top off the diesel generators.
They approached the store with caution, even though Max had the feeling no one was inside. Stewart and Tom ducked inside while Max and Amelia kept lookout outside. Stewart had brought in one of the gas cans and used it to refill the generators in the back room. She also poured another can into the wrecking truck.
“What if the generators need that fuel?” Max asked.
Stewart shrugged, “They will run out in another day or three, if no one is here all that fuel in the other tank will go to waste anyway. I haven't seen any sign that there are other people here. Have you?” Max shook his head 'no', “Then we might as well top off the tank. I bet we only have a range of about three hundred miles in this diesel truck, so either we find more or we dump it. I have to look at our group survival first, but that doesn't mean
