“Sure.” A sense of purpose spanned his features. “Do you have a map?”

A smile crept up my cheeks. “It’s good to have you back,” I said quietly as I pulled out the sectional maps I’d marked up last night and handed them to him.

He watched me for a moment, and the tiniest hint of a smile curled his lips. He opened his mouth to speak but then closed it, choosing instead to say nothing.

“All right,” I said with a sigh. I pointed to black circle that marked the park and moved my finger an inch or so. “We’re about here right now and our flight path is that penciled line there. We’ll be on a heading of zero-one-zero. The map continues on this side.” I flipped the large sheet over.

“I’m a Ranger,” he replied with a smirk. “I’ve read a map once or twice.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I guess you have.” After a moment, I grabbed a pen from my pocket and handed it to him. “We need to mark down every large herd we fly over. Be careful to mark down their current locations. If you can see any kind of path they’ve trampled, try to note their trajectory, if you can. Hopefully, we’ll be able to figure out if any herds will come near the park or if we’re in the clear. If any are headed our way, I think Tyler’s counting on you to help figure out some kind of response plan.”

“I figured as much,” he said, his smile fading.

“I’m still hoping Manny was exaggerating, and there aren’t any big herds headed this direction.”

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Clutch said quietly.

This morning, while we were at the stream, I’d brought Clutch and Jase up to speed on everything Manny had said. But, it wasn’t until Jase had left to grab the truck that I’d told Clutch just how large the herds were reported to me. I swallowed and gave a tight nod before going through my pre-startup checks. Satisfied, I looked outside to Jase who was busy keeping an eye out for zeds. “Clear,” I called out. I turned the prop on the engine and it came to life. The magnetos were starting to run rough. Unfortunately, I knew nothing about the mechanics of an airplane besides the most basic items, and neither did anyone at the park. There were two guys who maintained the Humvees, and they were doing their best to keep the plane in shape as much as their knowledge would allow. If the FAA still existed, they would’ve grounded this operation months ago. As it stood, it was just a matter of time before I’d have to find a new airplane for transporting cargo and going on longer scouting trips like today’s.

Once the engine warmed up, I taxied the plane onto the road and ran through my pre-takeoff checks. It took a few minutes to tame the coughing engine by leaning the mixture and playing with the throttle. Once everything was in the green, I motioned to Jase who, after one final three-sixty, ran over and squeezed inside behind me. Takeoff was the most dangerous part of the flight. There was no way to mask engine noise and full throttle, and even though any zed that neared the park was quickly dispatched, more zeds showed up all the time.

As Jase buckled in, I put on my headset. While there was no use for headsets to communicate with control towers or traffic, they did make it easier to talk with the passengers and to report in to Tyler when we were returning from scouting trips so he could make sure the runway was cleared for landing. To not draw zeds to the area, I liked to fly straight in and with the throttle pulled back to keep my landing as quiet as possible.

“Everyone ready for takeoff?” I asked.

Clutch nodded. “Ready.”

I looked to the backseat.

“I’m ready,” Bill said, his voice coming through loud and clear through my headset.

Jase was still adjusting his boom. “Let’s rock and roll,” he said.

I smirked and then turned my focus onto the road in front of me. I pushed the throttle full forward, and the plane rolled ahead, slowly at first, and then passing each yellow divided highway line faster and faster. I tugged back on the yoke, and the plane lifted off the ground gently, the smoothness of the air instead of tires against rough concrete was the only sense of transition from the ground to the sky. As the plane climbed, I turned toward north on my compass heading.

I set the stopwatch taped on the panel, a backup to help remind me how much fuel I had remaining. I looked at Clutch. “While you look for herds, keep an eye out for landmarks and let me know if we start to veer off our flight path.”

“Got it,” he replied, all business.

“If I have to ride backseat, I call dibs on the music,” Jase said, and I found an iPod dropped onto my lap.

With a chuckle, I plugged his MP3 into the audio input and kicked off the playlist he always listened to on our scouting runs. Flying was one of the few times we could listen to music without fear of zeds, and we always played rock-paper-scissors to see whose music would be played. Though, listening to any music was nice. Pop music filtered through our headsets, and I turned up the volume.

We flew for an hour, everyone given the same task: search for herds. I kept the plane three thousand feet off the ground so that any herds would be easier to spot. Bill nervously chattered, his voice cutting over the music. Once I threated to pull the plug on his headset, he was a better passenger.

The air was smooth and cool, and the sky was clear. It was an absolutely perfect flying day, and I found myself feeling lighter and breathing easier. There was something surreal about being in the sky, removed from the death and destruction below. It was the only time I could still feel completely at peace. After all, the sky was the only place left without man-eating predators.

“There’s one! Down there, below!” Bill exclaimed.

“Down where?” I cranked my head around to see him pointing out the window to my right. I looked, searching for zeds. My gaze narrowed on a field of dirt that seemed to go on forever in the distance, and I turned the plane in that direction. As we approached, the dirt morphed into what looked like a giant, flat anthill. Chills covered my body because this was no anthill.

“Holy bejeezus,” Jase said. “That’s no herd. That’s…that’s…”

“Fuck,” Clutch muttered.

“Yeah,” I added, my jaws lax. As we drew closer, the movement began to split into individual humanoid shapes all moving together like fans at a music concert, only far bigger than any concert or sporting event could be. The herd was larger than I could’ve possibly imagined. Hell had opened up and spurted forth millions of demons from its gorge.

“I told you guys these herds were huge. And it looks like another one in the distance out there,” Bill said from the backseat. “Now that you’ve seen it, can we check on my family?”

“Hold on,” I said, as I continued to stare at the mass of zeds below us.

“I wasn’t expecting a herd like that,” Jase said. “What could we possibly do if it found the park?”

After a tense moment of silence, I pulled off to return to our flight path.

A heavy stone was already growing in my gut. I found it hard to breathe, and my chest pounded like I was about to have a heart attack. I could already guess their trajectory from seeing the relatively straight trodden path over a half-mile wide that went on for as far as I could see. Camp Fox didn’t stand a chance.

As I flew north, parallel to the zed path, Clutch continually updated the map while muttering under his breath every few seconds. The herd had crushed all the grass and fields in its path. We lost the path a couple times when we flew over larger towns, but quickly found the path again on the other side.

“God,” I sighed. “There’s another one.”

Clutch looked up and followed my finger. “Jesus.”

Another herd, at least half the size of the first, looked like it was only thirty miles or so behind and headed the same direction.

“I’ll mark it down,” Clutch said as I tried to stay focused on my heading, but my eyes kept darting back to the herd. Worse, not ten miles later, another herd appeared in the distance.