road, some wrecked, others abandoned, their doors left open from when their occupants had fled. Some of them, unfortunately, hadn’t fled far.
There weren’t many of them—Jeremy could go for minutes at a time without spotting one—but when he did, he always looked away. The bodies were horribly mutilated, torn or hacked to pieces. Some even appeared as if they were partially eaten by a pack of animals.
Jeremy had seen only three survivors since he’d driven into town. Two of those had been crazy like old Luke, and he’d avoided them as best he could. The third, he thought, may have been normal, but as Jeremy’s truck approached, the man ran into the depths of the paper mill. Jeremy got out and called after him, but didn’t dare go into the dark, winding corridors alone, even with the rifle and handgun.
The Ford’s radio was broken, and everywhere Jeremy went, the power remained off. He knew little more than he had back at Luke’s.
On the edge of town, he pulled the truck to a stop at the Exxon station and killed the engine. The sun was setting, and long shadows stretched across the pavement from the pumps. He climbed out of the Ford, leaving the .30-.06 in the seat, but he pulled out the .38 and didn’t bother to conceal it. He knew better than to try the pumps themselves, so he walked towards the station.
The place was eerily silent. Like at the Center Pigeon Market, the doors were shattered, and Jeremy’s boots crunched on glass as he entered. The smell of rotten meat made him gag.
In front of the first aisle, the cashier lay on the floor with a gaping hole in her chest; it looked as if someone had shot her point-blank with a shotgun. Urine, tinted red, pooled around her corpse, and the summer insects buzzed about her, laying their eggs in her gray flesh.
Jeremy covered his mouth as he moved deeper inside the station. Displays were overturned; coolers were left open or shattered, the aisles ransacked, and about the only thing left untouched was the cash register. Money had become just green paper again, useless. From what he’d seen in town so far, people took what they wanted or died trying.
Jeremy searched the store and loaded a bag with everything useful he could find: a jar of peanut butter, a lighter, a few warm beers and some bottled water, a crushed loaf of bread. There wasn’t much left in the store, and it took a lot of effort to find even those few things. He also managed to find the store’s first-aid kit, buried under a pile of junk behind the main checkout counter. All in all, he considered himself very blessed.
He unloaded his treasure into the truck and went back to the storage shed behind the station. He shot the lock off the door and took a jug and a siphon cable from inside. Maybe he couldn’t get gas from the pumps, but there were more than enough vehicles waiting out there; it wouldn’t be a problem.
As he returned to the truck this time, he saw them coming down the road: five men and three women in tattered clothing. Their eyes seemed to glow yellow in the fading sunlight.
Jeremy threw the siphon and jug into the truck’s bed and leapt inside the cab. As he locked his door and cranked the engine, the people broke into a run. He floored the gas pedal and squealed out of the parking lot without looking back. He drove for over ten miles before he stopped to get gas from a Buick, which lay stuck in a ditch by the roadside.
As he waited for the jug to fill with gas, he wondered where he would go. If Canton was like this, he couldn’t imagine what Sylva must be like, much less Asheville. He thought hard about where he might be able to find help. Where the hell was a close enough place that might still be normal? He slumped against the side of the Buick in defeat, watching the road and tree line for any sign of movement.
It popped into his head then like a bomb going off. All his life in Canton, he heard stories about a military base up in the mountains. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember what it was called. Hell, he didn’t even know if it was real, but he knew roughly where it was supposed to be, and if anyone could get through this mess okay it would be the army.
He snatched up the jug and yanked the siphon cable free of the Buick as he ran for the truck.
10
New York was a distant memory, something from a previous lifetime. Amy shook her head to clear her thoughts. In her sweaty palms, she clutched a M-16 rifle she had stolen from a long-dead looter; she and Katherine were hiding behind a stack of crates on the dock.
Dan, God rest his soul, had driven them through the worst of it before he’d finally flipped out; Katherine had put a bullet in his skull. The boy, Jake, had died too. Apparently he suffered from some kind of asthma, and without his meds neither Amy nor Katherine had been able to help him. But all of that was the past now, clouded and murky like a fading dream.
Right this second, they had other things to worry about. Amy glanced over at Katherine, crouched several feet away. There was no question of who was the leader. Katherine, Amy had discovered, was an ex-cop, and she was good at what she did.
On the other side of the docks, a pack of human-creatures milled about, sniffing the air, occasionally turning on each other even as they stalked their prey.
Coming to the docks had been Katherine’s idea. They’d noticed them from the interstate, and she had suggested they could find a boat and set out to sea, maybe find an uninhabited island and start over, just the two of them. Even with their limited supplies, it sounded like a great idea. Traveling by sea was much safer than any road on the mainland. Out there, the creatures could never reach them.
Of course neither of them had planned on running into a pack of the creatures. Their new hope had blinded them, had made them careless, and now they were trapped, cut off from both the van and the boats.
She and Katherine would have just killed them—they were both well armed with gear they’d found or lucked into along the way—but the pack was over two dozen strong and this was their hunting grounds. Lord only knew how many still lurked in the buildings. Hiding from them had become the only option, and even that had made things worse, giving time for more creatures to show up as the women waited for the first ones to wander off.
Amy could see the strain on Katherine’s face. She couldn’t recall when either of them had last slept. Sweat glistened on Katherine’s tanned skin, and her glance said that this was it, the end for both of them. All that remained was deciding how they would die: either hide here and pray, or go out fighting to reach the van. Amy already knew what Katherine would choose, even as the ex-cop stood up with her shotgun and blew a hole in the nearest creature’s chest.
Amy wanted to leap to her feet and help her friend, but she refused to believe that all their suffering had been for nothing. Deep down she wanted to live, and she was forced to admit that Katherine’s pointless exit strategy was just macho bullshit.
Amy, still hidden behind the crates, watched the creatures charge toward them as Katherine pumped a round into her weapon and shot another psycho in its stomach, loosing its intestines onto the dock. Despite her bulging muscles, Katherine appeared helpless in the face of the horde closing in around her.
With tears in her eyes, Amy turned away as the things reached Katherine and tore at her with their nails and teeth. She tried to block out the screams for help as she crept towards the edge of the docks and eased herself into the water below.
Amy let the currents carry her into the dark beneath the planks, hoping the things would be too occupied with Katherine to search for anyone else. As far as she knew, they had not seen her.
Katherine fell silent, and Amy began to weep.
Hours later, when the sun had set and the docks had grown still, Amy hauled herself out of the water. None of the creatures had stuck around. Even Katherine’s body was gone, leaving only smears of blood where she’d fallen.
Dripping wet and wrinkled from the water, Amy stumbled to the van, her muscles aching from hours of keeping her afloat. She carefully checked the vehicle to make sure nothing was waiting inside, then slid into the driver’s seat. She clawed the extra set of keys out of the glove box and shoved them into the ignition. The moment the engine roared to life she knew the creatures would come pouring out.
She turned the key, and her heart froze as the van sputtered loudly without catching.
Amy tried again as she noticed movement on the docks and in the shadows of the buildings; the night came
