“You mean that two and half hour movie, the two seconds of film you’re referring to, do I remember it? No, Chase. You wanted to see that movie not me. I think I had my phone under my shirt and was on Twitter through most of it.”

Bang, zoom. Was all I could think. “Tell ya what. You see me hold up a fist, if any of us holds up a fist, if you, Alley, if you hold up a fist. We stop. We get low. We be quiet. Deal?”

“If you’d of said that before you became the squadron leader, we wouldn’t of had this terrible miscommunication. So why did we stop,” Allison said.

I looked forward. Looked around. “Shit.”

“Shit, what?” she said.

“I had something important to say.”

“But you don’t remember now?”

I gritted my teeth. Grounded them. “Let’s get to the parking lot.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

I held up a fist. Everyone stopped, was quiet.

“I remembered,” I said. “When we get to the parking lot, we’re not just going to cross it. We’re going to check it out, find the best way to move back out in the open.”

Allison gave me a look. She didn’t say it, but her eyes said, Duh.

“What’s that?” Dave pointed.

I followed that direction. Something was behind one of the pine trees. I clearly saw jeans and boots protruding.

“They could be dead,” I said.

The left leg moved.

We all flinched. “Shit. Okay. Dave, Josh, you guys go around to the left. Allison and I will approach straight on. Not a sound.”

The . . . forest . . . was thicker the closer we got to Tops. It was harder and harder to see the backs of houses on either our left or right. We were in the middle of the thicket.

Allison and I did the leapfrog thing again. Moving from tree to tree. We were extra careful about where we stepped. A snapped twig, a pile of crunchy leaves, and our stealthy converging would be blown.

Allison moved ahead of me. Stopped by a fat round Maple. She pressed her back to the tree. She held up a fist.

I waited.

She looked at me, brow furrowed. She waved me to her.

I walked as silently as possible.

“I did this,” she said, holding up her fist.

“I know. I stopped.”

“But I didn’t want you to stop back there. I wanted you up here.”

I pursed my lips. Hoped they looked like I was smiling and nodded. “What?”

“It’s a kid. A teenager. Doesn’t look like a zombie.”

I peeked around the tree we hid behind. I could see the kid. The teen. He now had his arms wrapped around knees pressed to his chest. He was shivering.

I looked, saw Josh and Dave. Held up a fist.

The fist was getting old.

They stopped though.

“They coming over here?” Allison asked.

“No,” I said. “They’re not.” Her head went to one side.

“What are we going to do?”

“Cover me. Just in case he attacks. Be ready.” I stepped away from the tree. I held my arms up, the shovel in one hand, blade down.

I took steps toward the large pine.

“Hey?” I said. “Hey, kid.”

He was alert. Might be cold, but he wasn’t sleeping. He jumped to his feet.

I hadn’t noticed the Glock earlier. He held it in both hands. The barrel aimed at me. From where I stood, about ten yards away, looked like a head shot for sure. I raised my hands higher. “We’re not zombies,” I said.

“What do you want?”

“We’re just passing through.”

The kid looked left, right, real fast like. If his peripheral vision focused on anything, I’d of been surprised. He was checking his surroundings, didn’t blame him.

Wish he didn’t have a gun pointed at me. “We just want to get past you. No trouble.”

“We? How many of you are there?”

I didn’t want to throw us all under the bus, nor did I want to throw Alley under there either. “Two,” I said. “My girlfriend. She’s hiding. Doesn’t like guns.”

“Tell her to come out. I want to see her. How do I know she doesn’t have a gun pointed at my head?”

“She doesn’t.”

“But I don’t know that, do I?” He had to be about sixteen. Maybe seventeen. Aside from his jeans and work boots, he had on a grey hoodie over a maroon Greece Cardinals Football shirt and jean jacket. He wore the hood. I couldn’t see his eyes. They were overcast in shadows. I couldn’t see much else, actually, beyond the front of the handgun pointed at me. “Put the shovel down, and have her come out.”

“I am not going to have her come out. She’s not a threat.”

“Put the shovel down.”

“Not going to do that, either kid. And stop yelling. Your voice is going to attract zombies, all right.”

“I’ll raise me voice and you can’t do shit about it.”

“I can’t,” I said. “Not from here. Not with you aiming your gun at me. But he can.”

“He can, who?”

“Behind you.”

The kid laughed. “I look like a fucking moron?”

“I don’t want to see you get hurt. We want nothing from you. We just want to pass by. But if you don’t lower the gun, you’re going to get hurt.”

“I’m not turning around. You’ll charge me.”

“From here?” I laughed, quietly, shook my head. “I don’t think so. But then again, I don’t need to charge you.”

“Oh, right. Because, ‘he’ is going to stop me,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“Why don’t you go f--”

Dave swung in a swooping arc the handle of the pitchfork. It slammed onto the kid’s forearm.

I worried the kid might misfire.

Instead, the Glock fell from his hand.

The kid screamed, cradled the limp wrist close to his body. “The fuck,” he said.

Josh tackled him. Threw a hand over the kid’s mouth.

Yeah. I’d lied to him about how many we were. But not about just wanting to pass by, not about not wanting anything from him. It didn’t have to go down this way. “Get up,” I said.

Josh pushed off the kid and stood up.

“You, too,” I said. “Up.”

He’d stopped yelling, but still clung to his hand. “He broke my wrist.”

“I don’t think so,” Dave said.

I knelt by the kid. “Let me see.”

He held out his arm. His hand dangled. His wrist was red, swollen. I felt around the bones. He winced.

“Might have,” I said.

“I’m right handed. What the hell am I supposed to do now?” the kid said. I helped him sit up.

“Why did you point a gun at us?” Allison knelt next to me.

“I don’t know who you guys are,” he said. Nothing tough about his voice. “I lost everyone. Those things, those zombies killed my parents and my little brother. I barely got out of the house. I tried to help them; I grabbed my dad’s gun out of the desk in his study. But he never kept it loaded. So I had to find the key to unlock the box in the closet that had the ammo. By then. . .”

The kid cried. Lowered his head to his knees and cried.

Allison touched his shoulder. He shrugged away her hand. She moved closer, sat beside him and wrapped an arm around him. He leaned into her, cried with his head against her chest.

I looked at Josh and Dave, who both stared at Allison and the kid.

I checked the Glock. Had 2 bullets in it. It was one of the newer clips, following the laws that made it illegal to have more than 5 bullets in a handgun. Five bullets would help about as much as the two in this one.

“You can come with us,” I said. “We can’t leave you alone. Not with a broken wrist. You’ll be defenseless. And this,” I set the gun down next to the kid. “This will not save you from much. Take down two zombies with head-shots if you’ve got awesome aim.”

The kid sniffled, lifted his head off my girlfriend’s breasts and drew the sleeve of his jean jacket under his nose. “Where are you guys going?”

Chapter Twenty-Five

The kid decided to join us. We were up to five, with me. I didn’t mind, but there were issues with growing. We’d be louder. We were more obvious. There was a chance for more bickering, head-butting, and arguments. It would be easier for one of them to slow us down. The kid was already injured. He had the Glock, with two shots left, but he wasn’t going to be able to swing a shovel, or baseball bat, or anything. As it was now, we didn’t just have to get past the Tops parking lot, we had to enter the grocery store. Allison wanted to splint the kid’s wrist.