Traveling close to houses, we kept to the shadows, and at one point, stumbled upon an armory of yard tools. I gave up the hockey stick for a wood handled shovel. Allison stuck the flashlight through a belt loop and retrieved hedge clippers. Josh tucked a hand shovel into each pocket, and carried a hoe like he was an Amazon native armed with a spear. Thing resembled a fireman's halligan bar. Dave went all old school with a four-tined pitchfork.

There was no denying it, try as I might. It did feel safer with the four of us. Perhaps it was the additional weapons. More than likely, it was the two extra men, and Dave being a brick wall at that. It wasn’t that Allison couldn’t handle herself. She was still alive and had proven to me that she could. She’d destroyed the fat zombie that had attacked her from out of the bathroom. No, this was something different. Maybe it was because these two guys didn’t mean as much to me. Didn’t mean I didn’t care, or wouldn’t have their back. Just meant, with Alley, it was different. I was too close.

We didn’t move house to house, hiding behind bushes. Could have. Instead, we stayed close to houses, and walked across yards. Four wide, instead of one behind the other. We started that way. Taking cover behind anything and everything we could find to take cover behind. When we went ten minutes without seeing a single zombie, we got lax. I knew we’d be using our new garden tools soon. Just wasn’t sure when. And relaxed or not, the knot in the pit of my stomach was tied, tight.

My cell phone rang.

We all stopped. I dug it out of my pocket. Hands fumbling. It wasn’t just that I was anxious to answer, the ringing sounded like the Liberty Bell tolling in the silence that enveloped the area.

“Chase, the fuck, man?”

I shot Dave a look that should have said, shut your fucking mouth or I’ll use the blade on this shovel to slice your head off your body and bury it deep up your ass. Must have worked, because he broke eye contact and settled for looking down at the pavement.

It was my daughter. “Char? Charlene?”

“We left the house, Daddy. We had to. Mom, and Donald--they’re sick. They tried to attack us.”

“Where is Cash?”

“Here. He’s with me.” She was sobbing. Her words difficult to understand. The next few words though, I didn’t catch them.

“Honey, what? What was that? Where are you?”

“We hid in the garage. Don came out there,” she said. “He looked crazy. I told him to stay away. I put Cash behind me. I was protecting him.”

“You’re an awesome sister, Char.”

“But he wouldn’t stop. He kept coming at us. I hurt him,” she said.

Can’t deny it. A bit of pride swelled inside me. Think my chest protruded some to show it, too. “It’s okay, honey. These things -- they aren’t human. Not anymore. Where are you guys now?”

“I chopped off his hand, Daddy. I used an ax. It was his. It was leaning against the wall. I used it to chop off his hand.”

I couldn’t imagine. It had to have been a nightmare. She was a kid. Fourteen. Chopping off a hand would disturb me, and I’m as fucked up as they come. “You had to, Charlene. To protect yourself. It’s okay. Are you okay?”

A few seconds of sniffling. “I’m--”

The line went dead. “Charlene? Charlene?”

I looked at the phone. Call was dropped. Towers are either working quadruple time or sporadically. And the green bar at the top of the display let me know the phone was not going to last much longer. I should have stopped home; at least I could have thrown some things, including my charger into a backpack.

I redialed her number. Fast busy signal. I disconnected the call. Tried again. Fast busy. I almost threw my phone. Took tons of strength not to. It was the only means of contact with my kids at this point. That single thought kept me from smashing the palm-sized piece of plastic onto the pavement.

Allison had a hand on my shoulder. Might have been there the whole time. “They’re not there?”

“They ran. Char and Cash took off. My fucking ex and her husband attacked them.” I shook my head. I thought it would be easy to say, that the pride I’d felt would make me want to tell everyone, but the words were trapped in my throat, and sobs of my own sat on top of them. “She used an ax on the guy. Cut off his hand.”

“Where did they go?”

“She didn’t get to tell me,” I said. I swallowed it. All of it. There’d be a time for it, later. Now was not that time. “We’re still going to the house. I need to see what’s happened.”

“You think that’s best? We know they are not there.” Allison’s eyes stared into mine, like she was trying to figure out my motivation for still going to my ex’s if the kids were no longer there.

“We’re not going anywhere right now, guys.” Josh stared straight ahead. A motley crue looking group, a gang of people, filled the streets down near Maiden Lane. It intersected Mt. Read. A gas station, a vacant gas station, a Rite Aid and a small Greek restaurant occupied the four corners. “They’re coming this way.”

“Slow, jagged movement,” Allison said. “Zombies.”

“We’ve got to get off the road. Completely.” Josh ran toward the closest house. He tried the knob. “Locked.”

He was right. We needed to get into a house. Ride this wave out and hope the monsters just passed by. Best I could tell, there were forty, maybe fifty of them. They seemed different from the other zombies encountered. These appeared organized. Just the way they walked the street together gave off a sense of order, order I didn’t like seeing.

“Should we back track?” Dave was looking the way we’d come.

“Try those houses,” I said. “Be quiet about it.”

Dave took off, running up the porch steps of the house we’d just passed.

“That’s the retirement home across the street,” Allison said. I looked. “We don’t want to be anywhere near there. You know they all got the shot.”

I tried a smile. It felt awkward. It wasn’t for my benefit. “We’re going to find a house. We’ll get in--”

“Chase!”

I closed my eyes. Not sure what part of quiet confused Dave. Was it the whole word? The double syllables? I took Allison by the hand. “See, we’ll hole up in the house until they pass. Then we’ll be on the move again. Won’t be in there long at all.”

Josh was already running toward the house his brother had found. Allison and I fell in behind him. We stayed in the shadows as best as possible. The zombies coming our way were in the street, under the lights. Hopefully they didn’t have vision like cats.

Dave stood on the white porch. He held open the screen door to the house. He waved us in. It was the shit-ass stupid grin he wore that made me want to pop him in the mouth. Tried to remember the fact that he wasn’t right in the head. “Good job,” I said, instead of a knuckle sandwich. The guy beamed.

Once inside, we shut the door, engaged the locks.

“We need to clear the place,” Josh said.

“What?” Allison looked from Josh to me.

“He’s right. Before we go boarding up windows and locking doors. We have no idea who might be in here.”

With the little moonlight available or it was a street light, I don’t know--don’t care, I saw Dave’s fingers on the wall.

“Don’t touch the lights,” I said.

“But we can’t see anything,” he said.

“David, leave the lights off.”

I looked outside. The zombies were not walking as slow as I’d thought. They weren’t directly outside the house we’d hidden in, but they were close.

“I have this.” Allison pulled the flashlight out of her belt loop. “The batteries died, but if we can find some?”

And then the living room we were all in, went bright. Lit up.

Allison cursed, and fumbled with the flashlight. “They were dead,” she said, switching the light off. “They didn’t work before.”

“Shit,” I said. I had been looking out the window, fingers slightly parting thin drapes. “One of those things is . . . ah shit. They’re coming this way.”