Supplies. Hadn’t even thought about that. No way, we could keep leaving valuables behind. “I like it,” I said. “Cross your fingers that the keys are still inside.”

“Check it,” Dave said. “I’m keeping watch.”

I approached the van with caution, each step carefully placed, as if I were on stairs in a house I was burglarizing. I peeked into the front windshield. No one or nothing was inside. The van was empty. “Lots of tools in there,” I said.

“Keys?” Charlene stood beside Dave, sword in her hand. She didn’t say to hurry. I heard it implied in her tone of voice.

Everything felt eerie. It was day time and there were no visible zombies or people. There were black pillars of smoke both near and in the distance spiraling up into a blue sky and we had the feeling we were being watched.

I opened the driver side door, leaned in. Keys.

“It’s got ‘em,” I said. I climbed into the van and turned the keys.

The engine sputtered. I expected the worst and held my breath. Instead of not turning over, it started.

I saw my daughter bob her head toward Dave and she was smiling.

“Climb in,” I said.

They went around to the passenger side. Dave knocked on the window. I reached over to unlock the door. Charlene pulled it open.

“It has a flat,” she said.

“Tire?”

Dave stared at me like I’d just replied in German. “What else might be flat?”

I shut the engine and punched the steering wheel. Once. Twice. I should have stopped there, but didn’t. Three times.

My fist hit the horn.

It beeped. I cringed and pulled my hand back, as if I’d been burned, as if I’d just touched a hot stove. The horn continued to blare. I only realized how silent we were, everything was, when the horn started to blare.

“Shut it off, Dad,” Charlene said.

I gripped the steering wheel in both hands. “It won’t.”

I hit the horn again. Nothing.

“Open the hood.” Dave stood in front of the van.

I looked under the steering wheel, found the release and pulled it. I heard the pop. Dave opened the hood. I couldn’t see what he was doing. The horn stopped. I climbed out of the van and walked around to the front. Dave stood there with a cable in his hand.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Dave said.

“My bad,” I said.

“Dad,” Charlene said. “They heard us.”

“Who heard…” I stopped. The zombies approached from the banks. Both sides.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

There were far more than a few zombies. They came onto the road from both sides of the small embankments. Dave, Charlene and I stood by the van with the flat tire. The sun had barely risen, the morning had just started, and already, I knew this was going to turn out to be another mother fucking sucky day.

It would be pointless to stay and fight. We had to run. The question was, run to where? Toward the bus? That didn’t make sense. Away from it might have made even less.

“That car, Dad,” Charlene said.

That car. The one with the keys in it. The one about a hundred yards from the bus. It was a good call. If we could make it to the car, we could at least get away from this herd. We could lead them away from the bus, keeping the others safe inside.

“Fast zombies,” Dave said. He pointed behind the van.

“The car,” I said, and nodded. “Let’s go, let’s go!”

We sprinted. It was an all-out run. Dave had the lead. Charlene was right behind him, and I was directly behind her. I could hear the zombies fast approaching. I could smell them. The odor of burning homes and buildings was quickly overpowered by a stench of decay. That was not an exaggeration. A putrid aroma of rotting meat assaulted my nostrils.

“Keep running. Get to that car,” I said. I stopped and spun around, as I yanked my sword free of the scabbard. I didn’t think Dave or Charlene realized I wasn’t running alongside them anymore. I needed to cause interference. If I couldn’t, the three of us would die. It was that obvious, that simple.

The fast zombies were fast and close. I had only mere seconds to get into a fighting stance. This was not going to end well. I saw no way out of this. I raised my sword.

I saw their faces.

This was much different from sitting behind the driver seat in the bus and running them over like animals. Doing that had filled me with an unexplainable empathy. I knew then that it wasn’t the fault of the creature, that they had once been people, and I thought for each one I’d run down, I saw some sort of spark in their glossed over eyeballs.

I’d been wrong.

These things may once have been human, no different than me, but looking at the hunger in their eyes as they barreled forward, I knew the human element was gone, that it had been replaced with a simplistic survival instinct: kill, and eat.

I didn’t even know if these things slept.

It didn’t matter now.

They had to die. All of them. Somehow, ridding the earth of this infectious plague had to be accomplished. There was no way to coexist with such mindless beasts, even if they’d learned to open doors, and especially if they figured out how to plot attacks. They needed to be completely annihilated. It was unfathomable to believe that God’s next choice for a race to rule the planet was zombies. Dinosaurs, man, zombies? That did not seem like a natural progression. I’d have picked cockroaches next, rats even. Not zombies.

I swung my blade. And twisted and turned and swung it some more.

I screamed as I thrust the steel into throats, and sliced off limbs.

The fast ones were on me. I was down.

The smell was more than I could stomach. My throat tensed. Muscles tightened. I feared I might pass out or vomit.

Rapid gunfire erupted. It sounded like a machine gun. The fast bursts were deadly. The sound echoed against and alongside and over the zombies moaning and crying.

Skulls shattered overhead as if detonated. The thing with its mouth open, teeth bared, ready to bite a chunk out of my face was decimated. I closed my eyes, and mouth against spraying brain matter and coffee ground blood.

I squirmed and bucked underneath the weight of the other zombies on top of me, and cringed as something pierced the skin on my leg above my ankle. I suddenly prayed I hadn’t been bitten, that something else had broken my skin.

Kicking out and thrashing around, I was able to wiggle free and scrambled to get back onto my feet. My sword was gone. Buried under the mass of decaying corpses, some still animated, some finally fucking dead for good.

I reached over my shoulder for my machete.

It was gone. I’d loaned it to Dave, and couldn’t recall him giving it back to me. Motherfucker.

Secured to my hip was the hunting knives. I removed them, and held one in each hand. I took a step forward, and nearly fell, unable to place weight on my right leg.

“Dad! Run!”

Charlene and Dave were behind me. My daughter ran at me while Dave used the assault rifle and fired until the clip went empty.

“Put your arm around my shoulder,” she said. “I’ll help you.”

There was no helping me. “I want you to run! Get out of here! You shouldn’t have stopped!”

“We don’t have time for this!”

If I argued, I wasted time. It would be easier just to let her help me. She supported some of my weight and that helped. We were able to run.

Dave had killed most of the fast zombies, if not all. The slower ones were still ambling forward, but we had a chance to make it to the car at least.

Running ahead of us, Dave made it to the car first. He opened the door. We were not that far behind and the zombies were not that far behind Charlene and me. It was coming down to the wire.

I felt tears well up behind my eyes, each step caused pain that shot up my leg.