It wasn’t my intent to treat him like a dog, but if he didn’t know enough to shut up and just be still, I had no issue reminding him.

The bus backed up, the double doors swooshed open.

“Close those!” I said.

Gene, Michelle and Megan stepped off the bus with a rifles in their hands. They looked bad ass, I’d give them that. I remembered when we’d first met on the street by the high school. Getting off a crashed plane and seeing these guys with their guns was very intimidating. Right now, it would be best if they stayed out of it.

“Get back on the bus!” I said, and pointed with the tip of my sword blade. Michelle and Megan moved to the front of the bus, where the cars they’d smashed would be.

The side of Gene’s head exploded; brain and skull and hair bits sprayed onto the ajar bus door.

“Son of a bitch,” I said.

Dave reached the end of the aisles first and stepped around the corner fast. He positioned himself quickly into a firing stance with his feet shoulder length apart, both hands on the grip and let off three rounds. Looked like two went into one guy, the third into the guy a little further away.

I rounded the corner. If the two guys he’d shot hadn’t died immediately, they were certainly dead now.

Melissa came off the bus screaming. Couldn’t Kia or even Charlene have restrained her? “Get back on the bus! Close the doors!”

She didn’t listen to me. She dropped to her knees beside to her dead husband.

“Andy,” I said. “Get up here!”

Holding his twelve gauge and the machete I gave to Dave, he stared at me with his mouth closed tight and tears streaming down his face. “Get on the bus. Keep everyone inside. Watch out for that other guy. Here, here, give me the machete.”

I didn’t know where the third guy was, the one that killed Gene. And I couldn’t see Michelle or Megan.

Andy held the shotgun up as he backed against the threshold, and did a quick peek around the building. “He’s over by the cars, checking on the others stuck inside.”

“Be careful,” I said.

Dave walked up to me. I tossed him the machete. “Don’t just leave it lying around, okay?”

“Sorry about that,” he said. He looked at Gene and Melissa, and back at me shaking his head. “What the fuck, man.”

Andy moved. I wasn’t ready. He was faster than I’d expected. He scooped up Melissa and carried her onto the bus. The doors closed. She didn’t make a sound. I don’t think she even knew what was happening until Andy already had her safely off the pavement.

There was more gunfire. Handguns. “Michelle? Megan?” I said.

Dave crouched, crossed from the store to the bus, and flattened his back against it. He waved me over. “I don’t see them.”

I heard a rifle shot. They were fighting.

The bus’ headlights shone on the wrecked cars. I couldn’t tell if anyone was inside either of them. “Michelle! Megan!”

Nothing.

Dave and I moved to the cow-scoop on the front of the bus. I looked around the pointed edge. Both women were standing, and firing.

I couldn’t make out their target. “Get back on the bus.”

Megan faced me. “There are three of them. They climbed out of the cars. They’re just over there.”

“I don’t care,” I said. “Let’s go. Come on, come on!”

A gun shot. Michelle fell. Blood spurt from the back of her thigh.

Dave and I came out from behind cover, and ran past Megan.

“Run,” I said.

Megan knelt next to Michelle, who was screaming. She writhed on the pavement, threw back her head and reached to hold her leg with both hands. I slid my sword into the scabbard, and squatted down beside them.

“I’ve got you. I have you,” I said. Dark blood sprayed from her leg in time with each rapid beat of her heart.

“My God, Chase, it hurts. I mean, it really stings,” she said, and smiled.

“Grab onto me,” I said, and Michelle wrapped her arms around my neck.

“I can help,” Megan said.

“Get her rifle,” I said. “Megan, the rifle.”

I saw the hole in the center of Megan’s forehead. Small. Round. Blood trickled down her face. She fell forward. Michelle screamed.

Dave grabbed the two rifles. “You have her?”

“I got her,” I said.

He opened fire. I don’t know if he saw who he was shooting at, or if he just fired blindly into the darkness stretched out in front of us.

We made it back to the side of the bus. Kia was in the driver seat, the door opened. “Get on, get on!”

“What about Gene?” Dave said.

“Get on the bus, Dave,” I said.

“We can’t leave him out there,” Dave said.

“I want you to listen to me. Gene’s head was blown off. His wife is on that bus. We’re not bringing him on the bus. I don’t want to leave him out here either. You know that. You know it. Look at him, Dave. Look at him.”

Dave cried as he looked down at Gene’s remains. He did not wipe the tears that fell from his eyes.

“Let’s go,” I said.

Michelle was getting heavy. Hot blood coated my arms, and was wet against my shirt and pants. I glanced back, and saw in the bus’ headlights where the two vehicle-corpses lay tangled in a knotted metal mess.

Dave opened fire. I didn’t expect anyone to shoot back, but you never knew. I climbed onto the bus first, with Dave right behind me.

The bus lurched forward. I heard the engine grind and groan, but power up and accelerate until the purr was steady and rhythmic. It was the only sound for a few miles, the only sound, until Char spoke up and directed Kia onto I-264 West.

We put Michelle on a bottom bunk.

Charlene was ready with water and some clean rags. “I have a bandana you can use as a tourniquet.”

“Thank you,” I said. I attempted to tie the bandana around Michelle’s thigh. It wasn’t going to fit. She was losing a lot of blood. “I need something else. Something bigger, longer,” I said.

Dave took off his shirt. “Try this.”

It worked. “I need a stick. A knife. Something long.”

Charlene grabbed a snow brush. “This?”

I snatched it out of her hands. “Perfect.”

I used the snowbrush to torque the tightness of the tourniquet.

“Now what?” Charlene asked.

Kia was at the wheel. We droned on and on. “We wait,” I said.

“Wait for what?” she said.

I did not have an answer.

Chapter Twenty-Four

1202 hours / 750 miles to go

It was my first time in Memphis. I’d never seen the Mississippi. Now here I was on Interstate 40, and cruising through Tennessee. That mighty river was coming up, and in no time at all, we’d be in Arkansas. There were so many places I’d have liked to have stopped. So many places to see. My life had been so limited to Western New York. Canada and Niagara Falls were the places outside of New York that I’d visited most. Sixty miles from where I’d lived my whole life. That was sad and pathetic.

Gene’s bus saved us more than once. The thing had the power to push through anything blocking the road.

The mid-sky sun lit the land like nothing was wrong with the world, like people weren’t dead, dying or turning.

“We’ve made good time,” Kia said. “You want me to take a turn at the wheel. We’ll keep on going. No stopping.”

The river was just ahead. There were signs.

“Everyone doing okay back there?” I asked.

“Melissa is kind of a mess. She’s still on a bunk, her back to us,” she said. “And Michelle is hanging in there. Your daughter has kept up on cleaning the wound.”

“We’re going to have to get that bullet out,” I said. “Can’t leave it in there.”

“You keep saying that,” she said. “We’re going to need to stop to do that.”

“I know, but not yet.”

“When?”

I didn’t want to stop. Stopping exposed us to danger. If it wasn’t zombies, it was motherfucking bandits. There were seven of us now. Seven. If we were going to stop, it had to be somewhere safe. I didn’t know the area, had no idea where it was safe. “I don’t know.”