His voice sounded familiar, so before he was out of sight, I raised my scope to get a better look.

It was Johansen.

While I had not enjoyed my first meeting with the man, I did not wish him to die as one of the infected. Come to think of it, I would not have wished that on anyone.

About a hundred other people and I, including the survivors from the RV encampment, watched in silence as the doomed men were led away. Johansen’s increasingly panicked screams carried to us over the crest of a hill until the boom of a pistol echoed through the woods.

The shouting stopped.

Seconds later, there were three near-simultaneous cracks. Shortly thereafter, a few men lowered a small bucket loader from the back of a HEMTT and drove it in the direction of the shots. Half an hour later, their work finished, they returned to the convoy, faces drawn and somber. No one tried to speak to them. Morgan came over the radio in a quiet voice and ordered to convoy to get under way.

*****

We couldn’t follow 281 forever, so we cut toward Highway 16 and used any flat, wide, unobstructed stretch of ground we could find to take us north until we were within four miles of Interstate 20.

Along the way, we found a gas station with diesel tanks that had not been looted, allowing us to refuel and restock our gerry cans and fuel barrels as well as supplement our meager provisions. Near where we stopped, a side road led into a heavily wooded region away from any significantly populated areas. According to the map, there was a large natural pond nearby. Morgan’s senior sergeant ordered a HEMTT and a few Humvees to break off and get to work purifying as much of that water as they could. Morgan himself radioed us to wait for him and approached our position in his command vehicle.

“Got a mission for you,” he said as he pulled alongside.

“Let me guess,” Blake called back. “Recon I-20, see what we’re up against.”

“You are a man of impeccable logic.”

Dad exchanged a look with his old friend, then said, “Can do. But we’ll need to refuel first.”

Morgan motioned to his driver. “Not a problem.”

After topping off the tanks, we headed north toward the interstate. The section of highway we approached lay in the middle of a steep, broad V that had once been a hill. There were many such places along the interstate where the highway builders had blasted through the landscape in order to keep the road nice and straight. The resulting formation allowed us to park the vehicles at the base of the hill and approach the summit on foot, staying low to avoid detection. At the top we fanned out at ten-meter intervals along the hillside and surveyed the scene through our optics.

By that point, I thought I had seen some bad things. Crossing the bridge over I-35 that flaming evening had been something out of a fevered nightmare. The City of Houston in flames in the dark red distance was a sight that would haunt me for years. The 281/290 junction had been a blood-soaked cluster-fuck of epic proportions. But when I looked down that hillside at Interstate 20, for the second time in my life, I felt a sinking, bowel-constricting panic that I had died and my soul had been damned for all eternity.

It would have taken me years to count the infected. There were cars piled on top of cars on top of even more cars. Tractor-trailers and buses and RVs and every other vehicle imaginable lay overturned and crashed and burned down to skeletal husks. The stench of corpses was a living, crawling thing that reached down my throat and closed a hand around my windpipe. Dead bodies lay everywhere, some still in their vehicles, some on top of them, some on the side of the road, still others crawling, too damaged from the infected who consumed them to mount much mobility.

Organs, limbs and bloody streaks covered every surface, stained the ground red, splattered against windshields, and lay rotting in the ditches on the side of the road. I scanned left and saw a Blackhawk helicopter crashed in the middle of traffic, tail rotor pointing skyward, the skeletal visage of the pilot slumped against his restraints. I scanned to the right and saw a vintage convertible with the top down, the driver in pieces on the ground nearby, and, to my horror, a baby seat in the back. For a moment, the baby seat looked empty, then I realized the padding was beige under the red, and that lump at the bottom was-

NO!

I dropped my rifle, scrambled back down the slope, and got as far away as I could before I was violently, gut-wrenchingly sick. I heaved up everything inside me and kept going, dry-heaving, ribs cramping, abdomen trying to tear itself apart.

Finally, the seizures subsided and I managed to crawl away from my own bile before I collapsed and lay on my side, gasping for breath. A few moments later, I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Hey,” Blake’s voice said. “I’d ask if you’re okay, but I think the answer is pretty obvious.”

“Can’t …” was all I could manage to croak out.

“Come on, Caleb. It’s not safe here. Let’s go back to the Humvee. We’ll wait there for the others.”

I followed  him, barely conscious of where I was going, dimly accepting my rifle and slinging it over my shoulder. Blake helped me into the passenger’s seat, then climbed in, cranked the engine, and turned the AC to its highest setting. After a few minutes, the cold air blowing in my face started to make me feel better.

“Sorry about that,” I said, feeling a flush come up my neck.

Blake shook his head. “Don’t be. If I’d stayed a few more seconds, I wouldn’t have been in much better shape.”

“That makes me feel a little better.”

“Man, I’ve seen some things, but that …”

“Yeah. No shit.”

“How the hell we gonna get past that?”

“I’m sure the good captain will think of something.”

We waited with no further conversation until Dad, Mike, and the two combat engineers came back down the hillside. On the way down, one of the soldiers hesitated, turned to the side, and heaved his guts behind a pine tree. The others waited, faces stoic, until he had mastered himself and started on his way again.

Back in his vehicle, Dad calmly and in detail explained the situation on the interstate. Morgan told him to stand by, presumably to confer with his staff, then came back on the radio and requested we return to the convoy.

“Roger that,” my father said. “En route. Recon one out.”

*****

The first time you see heavy artillery fire on a target at close range, you never forget it.

Like the others in the convoy, I waited at a good safe distance for the fireworks to start. Morgan’s men had scouted the various access roads until they found a flat approach on a narrow two-lane. The Abrams and two Howitzers took point, the Bradleys backing them up, APCs waiting the wings in case infantry support was needed during the crossing.

I sat in a Humvee with Blake and Sophia at the rear of the column. My father, Lauren, and Lance were in front of us. Tyrel and Lola waited behind, Mike bringing up the rear in his truck. Dad had loaned his Ram to a trio of pregnant women from the RV encampment so they could escape the discomfort of the deuce-and-a-half they had been riding in.

Travis had observed the transaction, and afterward offered Dad a handshake and a tight-lipped thanks. He did not look in my direction.

Later, we sat on the road eyeing the woodlands around us for signs of infected and waited. There was just enough bend in the road I could see the armor as they rolled forward, stopped about two-hundred yards from the teeming, screeching mass of infected frothing through the twisted metal obstructing the interstate, spread out, rolled to a stop, and aimed their guns.

The radio crackled to life. “All stations stand by. Engaging in three, two, one …”

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM