the military truck.
“Speeders!” Travis yelled.
A wall of zombies was running full tilt across the fields. “Mount up!” A sergeant who had been smoking a cigar said from the driver’s side of the lead hummer. “Private how much ammo you got?” The sergeant asked the gunner on the second humvee.
“Couple hundred rounds max.” The private shouted back.
“Richmond, you?” The sergeant asked the gunner on his own truck.
“Seven, Sarge.” Richmond answered back.
“Seven hundred?” The sergeant asked for clarification.
“Seven.” Richmond said. “Just seven.” He added for clarification.
“Alright let’s get the fuck outta here.” The sergeant bellowed. “Big man, you want a ride or do you want to drive that truck?”
BT didn’t want to do shit except sit on his ass and wait for the end of the earth, which according to the zombies was roughly four minutes away. BT got up and without answering got behind the wheel of the Ford.
“Guess that answers that.” The sergeant said.
Travis and Tommy hopped into the Ford with BT. Henry stayed with Mike and Tracy, Justin was still under the influence of some heavy sedatives and had missed everything. For seemingly endless hours the trucks traveled across a ghost land. Nobody spoke in the Ford as each person was lost in their own thoughts, trying with great difficulty to reconcile the events that had just happened.
“Is this worth it?” Travis asked of BT.
BT looked over, his eyes burning. “Well you are your father’s son.” And he turned back to the road.
Long minutes passed, the road blurred past. “That didn’t really answer my question BT.”
“No, it sure didn’t. Before today I would have given you a different answer.”
“And now?” Travis prodded.
“Now...now I’m not so sure. I just watched two people I care for die and a third who is nowhere near out of the woods. I’m no philosopher, but I am a religious man. I know that eventually every man has to meet his maker in his own way. It’s what you do while you’re alive that defines how that meeting is gonna go. I cannot imagine that there is a God who wishes for us to merely survive, we would be no better than sheep. We are left behind for a reason, Travis. It is up to us and others like us to right this great wrong. Some will fall along the way. It is the price that must be paid, sacrifice of the ultimate kind. Without the blood of the righteous, the wicked cannot be smote.”
“You’re not going to go all Reverend Sharpeton on me? Are you?”
BT nearly lost control of the truck his laughs shaking him to the core. “Holy shit if it was ever in doubt whose son you were, you slammed that door shut.”
CHAPTER TWO - 
“Yes, they got away.”
“How is that possible, you pathetic human?”
Durgan fell to his knees as it felt as if someone had laid his scalp open and was dragging razor blades across his exposed brain. The pain was terrifyingly blinding. He could not even begin to comprehend how to answer his master. Blood began to flow freely from his nose from whatever form of psychic torture was being administered.
“Please.” He said weakly. He buried his head into the snow hoping that would diminish the shards of glass rattling around in his brain bucket. It didn’t.
Eliza wanted to crush his feeble brain. It would have been no harder than smashing an egg. She hated the fact that she had to rely on a human but she was not yet strong enough to pursue Talbot and The Other. She released her death grip on Durgan and he gasped in great gulps of cold refreshing air.
“That is the last time you will fail me.” She said directly into his mind.
Durgan could tell that Eliza had turned her attention away from him. The feeling was both distressingly lonely and agonizingly wonderful. He stood up, wincing, his missing leg still pained him as he gripped the plastic coated prosthetic. His other leg itched uncomfortably from whatever Eliza had done to him to make him heal so rapidly. She had given him power, not enough, but it helped him to walk months ahead of what the most optimistic orthopedic surgeon would have set for a timetable. Blood flowed rapidly from his nose. He absently brushed it away with his cuff. The fat droplets fell to the snow covered ground and were quickly descended upon by the zombies. Durgan was fearful that with so many chomping teeth close by he would be inadvertently bitten. 'Vermin, I hate being around these things, just one more reason I’m going to enjoy killing you and your entire family, Talbot!” The zombies eyed Durgan greedily. More than one looked like they were a moment away from taking a bite of his flesh. Only Eliza was keeping them at bay and she was hundreds of miles away. Durgan tried his best to not break out into a run as he pushed past the zombies and stood as close to the burning house as he could to regain some heat. The zombies followed him closely, trying desperately to break through whatever was gripping them and tear the warm meat carrier to bloody, ragged, tasty shreds.
CHAPTER THREE -
“Clear!” The medic shouted as he applied the defibrillator paddles to Mike for the fifth time. Mike’s lifeless form arched 6 inches off the stretcher. The monitor still blazed a bright flat line, the monotonous wail of its siren more piercing than the worst alarm clock.
Tracy and Nicole embraced each other as they watched. “What are you doing?” Tracy asked the medic as he turned the monitor and the paddles off.
“Ma'am it's been seven minutes.” He replied as if that explained everything, and ultimately it did.
“You will not give up on me!” Tracy screamed.
The medic didn’t know if she was talking to him or her husband. He figured it out though when she slapped him.
“Ma'am!” The medic said. “He’s dead!” He yelled hoping the volume would solidify his answer.
“He’s fucking dead, when I say he’s fucking dead!” She yelled. “Hit him again.”
The medic thought she was probably insane, but the best way to prove someone’s insanity is to show her the light, so to speak. Against his better judgment he sparked the paddles back up. ‘Great’ He thought to himself. ‘We get to ride the rest of the way back to camp with the smell of burnt flesh, that oughta make the MRE’s go down better.
“Clear.” The medic said without any sense of urgency.
Mike’s body arched up again and struck back down with a solid thud.
“You see? He’s dead.” The medic said trying to put as much sympathy into his words as he could, but after seeing so much death it was becoming a more difficult emotion to muster.
“Hit him again.” Tracy growled through gritted teeth.
The medic couldn’t stop himself. “He’s going to start to burn.”
“So help me you little FUCK, you hit him again now or I’ll take those paddles to your balls!”
The sergeant turned from his driving. “You’d better get to it Murphy, I think she’d do just that.” He said half laughing.
Murphy was nearly in shock as he said the word “Clear,” for the seventh time.
“Seven times a charm.” The sergeant said without looking back.
Mike’s body didn’t so much arch as it did spasm, as if the hand of God himself was thrusting his life back into his disabled and broken body. The medic had never taken his eyes off of Tracy as he had administered the charge, fearful she would grab the paddles and do just as she had threatened. “He’s dead.” Murphy the medic said with a hint of fear.
“Mike?” Tracy asked as she pushed past Murphy. “Mike?”
The medic looked down to the fluttering eyes of a cadaver. “No fucking way.” He said as he turned the monitor back on, fearful that they had brought a zombie into their midst.
The sergeant had an inkling of what might be going on. “Get the fuck away from him!” He shouted as he
