The man cringed away, as if she were more dangerous than ever. He raised a bloody hand to stop her from hurting him. “Please.”
“What’s your name?” Hannah asked.
“Scott.” After a second, he added, “Ma’am, I don’t mean any disrespect, but your husband just quit breathing. I don’t suppose you’d be kind enough to shoot him too?”
“Riley!” Hannah cast her rifle aside and threw herself over her husband’s corpse.
Its eyes shot open.
“Watch it!” Scott pulled her off the body and shoved her aside as the dead man sat up and reached for his arm. Scott pulled a .45 from the corpse’s own holster and gave it a reason to lie down again. The shot seemed to echo in the air.
Hannah turned her face away from the gore, sobbing, though she had no more tears. Scott made no move to comfort her.
He popped the magazine out of the handgun and took stock of the number of rounds left, then snapped the magazine back inside the gun. He also sorted through a backpack, which appeared to have belonged to the child. Whoever this woman was, her family had been well supplied.
He opened a granola bar from the pack and tore into it, unable to control himself. Scott couldn’t remember the last time he’d had real food, and it tasted like heaven, stale or not. “Where are you from?” he mumbled through a full mouth.
Hannah ignored him.
Scott finished the granola bar in a second bite. “How have you managed to stay alive this long?”
“What does it matter?”
“Well for one thing, you have food. You’re well armed. Hell, I even saw some antibiotics in this pack. If you’re from some kind of settlement or shelter that survived, I’d sure as hell like to know about it.”
“Where are you from?” Hannah shot back.
“Trust me lady, you don’t want to know.” Scott snickered and ripped into another ration bar. “I’ve been locked up by the dead in a camp straight out of Hell.”
“A camp?” Hannah was stunned. “Why didn’t they kill you?”
“Where have you been, sister? How do you think the dead get their food these days? There aren’t enough of us left out there for them to just round up and slaughter for dinner anymore. They’re trying to breed us like cattle so that they’ll always have food.”
Hannah stared at him in horror.
“Yeah.” Scott nodded. “It’s all that and worse. I still want to know where you came from. You sure as hell weren’t in a camp.”
“My husband and child are dead.”
“I’m sorry.” Scott twisted the top off of a canteen and helped himself to some water. “Seen a lot of people die. One of my friends died just so that I could make it out of there. It looks like your husband died trying to take you to greener grass too. Better get used to it, people dying. That’s how things are with the dead ruling the world. Speaking of which…” Scott closed the canteen. “We need to get moving. Staying in a single spot for a while can be suicide. Who knows who or what heard those shots.”
13
Luke was anything but your typical engineer. Long black hair with spots of gray hung over his purple flannel shirt. He sat crouched on the knees of his worn blue jeans, fiddling with a homemade torpedo casing. He heard O’Neil enter his workshop, but made no move to stop fine-tuning his current project. “I’ll have two more live ones by tomorrow morning,” he said.
O’Neil sat on Luke’s unused workbench. “Why do you always work on the floor?”
Luke smiled. “The freedom,” he answered simply. “It helps me think.”
O’Neil grunted. “Whatever works, I suppose. As long as you don’t blow a hole in the bottom of the ship.”
“You didn’t come here to talk about my work habits, Mr. O’Neil. What’s up?”
“The captain’s planning to raid a port in South Carolina tomorrow night. I’ve got the usual crew ready, and I’ll be in command of the operation. I thought I’d stop by and see if you’d come up with anything new.”
Luke glanced back at O’Neil. “If you’re talking about understanding the dynamics of what makes the dead get back on their feet with hungry stomachs…” Luke pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. “No, I haven’t. That’s Doc Gallenger’s area, not mine.”
“I thought you were helping him.”
“Sure, when I have the time. You might have noticed I have been rather busy lately, what with keeping this old girl running and designing these new toys for the captain.”
“It’s not that I don’t trust that Gallenger’s doing his best, Luke, I just thought—”
“What? That having nine degrees in everything from pathology to physics makes me superhuman? That I am supposed to be able to wave a magic wand and save your ass? I wish.” Luke shrugged. “I ain’t God, ya know.”
“I didn’t say that you were. God has a social life,” O’Neil teased.
“You want me to go with you tomorrow?”
“Hell no! Steven would have me shot if I let you off the
“So you say,” Luke said. “There are plenty of people on the boat who could do what I do around here.”
“Maybe, but not one of them could do it all.” O’Neil got up from the bench. “Just promise me you’ll get to helping Gallenger, okay? We need a way to stop the dead more than we need the weapons to keep running.”
As O’Neil turned to leave, Luke muttered, “Be careful out there, you idiot.”
“I always am,” O’Neil responded with a flash of his teeth, then he was gone.
14
Scott figured Hannah was whacko after what she’d endured, with every right to be, so he let her brood as they walked. The woman insisted on traveling east to the coast, so that’s where they headed.
Scott had managed to get a few hours of blessed sleep while she kept watch, and he counted himself lucky she hadn’t killed him while he dozed. When he woke up, they buried her family and moved on.
“What the heck is that?” Scott asked as he noticed a building ahead of them.
Hannah paused. “It’s a cabin,” she said, and then continued towards it.
“Whoa. What are you doing?” Scott grabbed her by the arm. “We don’t know if anyone’s in there.”
“There’s not. Not anyone alive anyway.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Hannah pointed through the trees. “The door’s been busted open. The windows are shattered. And that appears to be dried blood all over the outer walls.”
Given little choice, Scott followed her into the clearing in front of the cabin. Several bodies, all dead from head wounds, littered the grass.
“Looks like somebody put up a good fight,” Scott commented.
Hannah headed straight for the main door, which dangled by a single hinge. She stepped past it and into the building.
A body missing its legs and arms watched her enter. Old blood stained its mouth and chin. Hannah was sure its tongue had been cut or bitten out; otherwise the thing would have been screaming obscenities at her.
She glanced about the remains of the simple room. Someone had taken shelter in this place, seeking safety in the wilderness just like her own family had done, only these poor people must have been discovered before they could run.
