"That's covering fire," Vanessa said. "You're right. There are people down in that valley."
We ducked low in the grass as the ATVs pulled up. I only caught glimpses, but they appeared to dump the limp body of one of their colleagues. The limp man was not dead, but twitched his fingers and moaned a little bit. He'd been shot somewhere. The man in the chair smiled. The men chatted in casual, jocular tones. Their voices were low-class, criminal, and crude.
"Fuck these guys," Vanessa whispered. "These are murderers."
"Seriously," I said quietly.
"I have a guess about what's happened here," Vanessa whispered. "But I really hope I'm wrong."
"Tell me," I said.
"The other group-the one with my sister and our kids in itwas traveling in a school bus we'd found out by Coshocton. When the bus approached the college, it would have come by that road there-driving toward the hill from the south. But let's say they pull up in their bus and find the college is under siege from these murderers. They aren't able to turn around, so they veer off into that valley."
"You think a school bus is down in that valley?" I whispered.
"Exactly," Vanessa responded.
I tried to judge the depth of the little valley. I guessed it might just be deep enough to conceal something like a bus from our perspective.
"So?" I said, trying to put it all together.
"So they're trapped," Vanessa said. "They can't get to the college, which is up at the top of the hill. And your friends at the college can't get down to them. Look at those bodies by the lip of the valley. Those have to be ones who made a break for it."
I remained thoughtfully silent. None of the clumps of clothes had looked particularly female, but there was no guarantee that Vanessa's sister and children were not among them.
The men in the ATVs shared a final evil laugh with the sentry in the tennis chair, revved their rides, and headed back toward the hill. The sentry made a quick sweep with his binoculars-including in our direction, though there was, again, little chance he'd notice us-then took up his gun and laid down covering fire in the direction of the valley.
"They must be fighting back," I said. "Your people in the busthey must be shooting back from the lip of the valley if they have to do suppressing fire like that. That's where these guys are vulnerable-when they have to cross the field."
"Well, what do you think?" Vanessa asked. "Can we take them?"
It was the obvious question. I had been wondering the very same thing. The answer, however, did not feel obvious at all.
"I don't know," I said, thoughtfully stroking a shotgun wound in my belly. "I just don't know."
It would be nothing to creep up and shoot the tennis-chair sentry in the back, but what then? How many of these hooligans had taken up positions around the college? And what of the far side of the valley? Might they have stationed another sentry (or several others) on the opposite side? I could make out a few clumps of trees and a small maintenance shed beyond the valley. Though I saw nothing else, it stood to reason that they'd have to watch it from more than one place.
Straight out from us, the men on ATVs crossed the far edge of the field and made their way into the cover of the woods at the base of the hill. The sentry in the tennis chair put away his weapon and relaxed back into his seat.
"It'd be easy to take him out," Vanessa said. "I could hit him. From here."
"I know you could," I told her. "But I think we should stop and think."
"Don't take too long," Vanessa warned me. "I know it feels like spring, but sunset still comes earlier than you think."
I swallowed instinctively. She was right.
Vanessa and I stayed low, covered in the grass and dead leaves and muck. The sentry also stayed where he was, getting up only once, to piss. Far in the distance, the ATVs could be heard revving. Now and then, distant gunshots were also discernible. When this was the case, the sentry in the tennis chair would put his binoculars to his face and gaze intently up at the hill, but I don't think he could actually see anything. The trees were too dense up there.
Then, after perhaps half an hour, we heard a rustling noise in the woods nearby. It was to our immediate left as we faced the college.
My first impulse was to sit upright and grab my revolvers, but undue movement might be noticed by the sentry. Vanessa and I looked anxiously at one another.
I motioned that we should retreat backward into the woods, and as gingerly as we could. She nodded, and we crawled back, keeping our eyes on the sentry's back the entire time. He did not turn as we slunk away.
Back inside the folds of forest, I drew my revolvers. The rustling, though tentative, continued. It sounded as though the other person (or persons) was also trying to remain quiet. That made it worse.
Then we heard whispering. Indistinct at first. One man, then two.
We were matched, if not outnumbered. I quickly decided that our only hope would be to surprise whoever had crept into these woods with us.
"Stay here," I whispered to Vanessa, who was intently clutching her rifle. "If you hear shooting, turn and run. That sentry on the chair will be coming." Vanessa nodded, and I slunk away on my knees and elbows in the direction of the whispered voices. They were near. Very near.
I edged along the forest floor-stopping whenever I made a sound, then proceeding quietly as I could.
I pushed through a hollowed area between two tree trunks and encountered a man's legs (inside of camouflage pants) dangling over the side of a log. I drew a bead on them, and continued to edge forward. Before long, I made out three men. They were bearded and looked haggard and sad and worried. Two were wiry thin. The other, thicker one was my old friend Sam.
My bead changed from Camo Pants to the forehead of my "friend."
And I wondered, "Do I just take the shot? Do I just kill him now, and get it over with?"
I recalled that in movies-though my addled, zombie brain could recall no specific films-heroes (and villains) always erred by opening a dialogue with their enemies, instead of killing them right away. I also remembered old philosophical thought experiments about whether or not it would be moral to kill Hitler in different situations-like if you meet him back when he was just a failed art student who hadn't yet called for the final solution to anything. (And you always think: Of course you do. Of course you kill Hitler. It doesn't feel neat and tidy, or like it all wraps up in some kind of moral syllogism, but of course you do it. Of course you kill him.)
And here I was, with the man who had murdered me-or at least murdered the first me-in my sights (and he was German to boot).
Calling yourself Sam ... Whatever, Adolf .. .
And I might have done it. I might have pulled that trigger, then and there, and ended his life. (Probably, I could also have shot the other two, and Vanessa almost certainly would have been able to beat a safe retreat.) But my head suddenly lolled as if I had become drowsy. I lost my bead on Sam.
At first, I didn't understand what was happening. My neck seemed to have grown a mind of its own. Then my eyes-though it hurt to turn them so extremely in their sockets-found the source of my confusion.
The long barrel of a rifle was pressing itself hard against the temple of my zombie-numb forehead. I didn't move. Not even to lower my guns.
"Don't fucking move," a voice said. It was gruff and belligerent. And I thought I recognized it.
"Music professor," I said, not even daring to turn my head and look at the man. "You're the music professor. We've met. Your name's ... your name's ... Puckett."
A beat. Then the gruff voice again. "Jesus ... Pete? Is that you? Oh my fucking God ... It is."
"I'm gonna lower my guns now," I whispered, and did.
With my weapons pointed at the ground, I turned and looked up into the face of the stunned music professor. His stubbly face looked tired and sallow. (Compared to me, of course, he looked like a fashion model who'd just had a ten-hour nap. But still ...) It had been a difficult few months for the man, and I c
ould see it all over him.
"What the fuck happened to you, Pete?" he asked.
"I'm a zombie," I said. An instant later, I wondered if it was the right thing to say. I remembered Puckett's evident pleasure at smashing in the zombie's head in the Kenton graveyard.
Much to my relief, he lowered his gun. Then he called to the other men, including Sam.
All of them looked exhausted, and all shared aspects of Puckett's grim countenance. Sam's face lit up when he saw me. (Though I would have guessed such a sad visage might never smile again, that was exactly what it did.)
"Peter, what the fuck are you doing here?" asked Sam, bewildered.
For every part of me that still wanted to say "Fuck it" and shoot Sam in the face, there was a part of me that knew it would bring us no closer to helping Vanessa's sister and children. "I got here like an hour ago," I said. "Vanessa's with me. Wait ... Vanessa!" The men looked in the direction where I'd rasped. A moment later, we heard her kneefalls as she edged her way over to us. "Vanessa, it's safe," I rasped.
She came into view, clutching her rifle hard to her chest.
"Vanessa?" Sam said.
"Hi, Sam," she managed, pulling herself up and sitting on a stump. I noticed her wincing as she did this, and thought again about getting her wounded arm to the college doctor.
"What the hell is going on here?" one of the thin, bearded men asked. "What is this thing?"
"This `thing' is Peter Mellor," Sam replied.
"Jesus," said the bearded man. "That's Pete from Philosophy?"
"Don't worry," I told him. "I'm not going to eat your brain. I'm still like a regular person-I just can't remember much."
"But you've got bloodstains all down your mouth," the bearded man said.
"I said I'm not going to eat your brain," I told him.
"Oh," he replied, suddenly thoughtful.
"How did you die?" asked Puckett.
"Somebody killed me," I said, matter-of-factly, hazarding a glance Sam's way. "But let's not get into that right now-"
"What are you doing back here?" Sam asked, cutting me off.
Vanessa and I explained how we were set to rendezvous with another group of humans, and how our own group had been attacked by hostiles. I told them that everyone had scattered or was dead. "And let me guess," Vanessa added. "There's an old yellow school bus stuck in that big ditch over there?"
"Exactly," said Sam. "The bus pulled up a few hours ago. But we were under siege from these goddamn bastards on ATVs."
"We've been fighting them for almost a week straight," said one of the bearded men.
"They come and go, and they've staked up a perimeter around the hill so we can't leave," said the other bearded man.
"That's right," Sam added. "When the bus pulled up, there was a little firefight. Nobody knew exactly what was happening, and we all shot at one another. Now we've realized that the people in the bus-or, I should say, in the valley are friendlies. They've been trying to reach tis up on the hill, but they're pinned down too tight."
"But that ends tonight!" said Puckett, just a little too loudly. "The four of us are going to fan out into the woods and outflank them. As soon as the sun sets, we're going to take out the sentries all at once."
"Fuck," I said.
"What?" Sam said. "What's the problem?"
I explained about the government airlift coming at sunset to take us to the Green Zone.
"Really, they just want me," I clarified. "I'm famous with these guys, or something. I expect they want to study me. Learn how it is that I'm a zombie but I can still talk and think. I'd like an explanation myself, cone to think of it."
"We were going to take you all, too," Vanessa added. "The government said they'd bring enough transports to lift out both our groups, and anyone else on the hill."
"So you're the bargaining chip?" Sam said.
"Fuck you," I told him. It was the first time my rage at the man had boiled over. It came out easily. It felt good.
"Whoa," Puckett said.
"I'm nobody's baigaining chip," I said to them. "I'm doing this to help these people. Because some of them-some of them-were, and are, my friends."
"So this is good, then," Puckett said. "We take out these son-ofa-bitch bastard sentries, get the people out of the bus in the valley and up the hill, and bingo-we're outta here. Everybody wins."
"Except the helicopters are coming at sunset," Vanessa said.
"Won't they wait?" said Sam. "Won't they get out and help us fight?"
"I think the answer is no," Vanessa said. "They aren't like the army used to be. They had to be cajoled into coming here and doing a quick `get in, get out.' If they show up and anything's amiss, they're liable to leave. I think they already half-suspect this is some kind of trap."
"Do you have a radio up on the hill?" I asked. "Anything we could use to contact them?"
"Fuck ... No, we don't," Puckett said.
"We only have cell phones that don't work," said one bearded man.
"And are out of batteries besides," said the other.
"So what do we do?" Sam said, looking genuinely curious.
"I'm not leaving without my daughters, and my sister and her kids," Vanessa said. "And as far as I know-if they're still alivethey're with that group pinned in the valley. We have to get them out."
"We'll get them out," I reassured her, resting my hand on her shoulder. She smiled nervously and looked away.
Puckett blanched a bit at my display of physical affection, and the two bearded men exchanged a pregnant glance. I suspected they had thought of zombies as subhuman-as walking offal-for so long that it broke their minds a little bit to see one comforting a woman near tears. (Or were they going one step beyond, and imagining Vanessa making love to this rotting, cold-blooded version of me?)
"We've got to get them out from the school bus, and we've got to do it before sunset," I told them. "I'll do it myself, if I have to."
"Can you take a bullet?" Puckett said, looking me over. "I mean, I don't want to be rude, but it looks like you already have. Like, more than a few."
"Uh-huh," I told him. "Like I said, I'm a zombie."
"So a head shot can still take you out, then?" asked Sam. There was an awkward pause. I just stared at him. Puckett looked back and forth between us, confused.
"Yes," Vanessa said, breaking the silence. "He's like any other zombie, as far as we know. A shot to the head can kill him."
"We'll help you, obviously," Puckett said. "I want these guys dead, too. They're fucking murderers. I'm sick of being shot at."
"Okay," I said. "How many of you are there? How many that can fight?"
The four men looked at one another, and there was some shrugging. The consensus was around twenty-five, counting themselves. About twenty up on the hill, and then their little expeditionary party.
"And how many of them are there?" I asked, motioning in the direction of the man in the tennis chair.
"I think there are slightly more of them," Puckett said to nods all around. "But just slightly. I'd put it at thirty. Four of them are staked around like snipers-like our guy over there in the chairand the rest are on ATVs, trying to find a way up the hill."
"Why are they attacking Kenton in the first place?" Vanessa asked no one in particular. "It's so horrible."
"Why did that gang attack us the other night?" I asked rhetorically. "We have stuff-or appear to have stuff-and they want it. There aren't cops around to stop them. Even the army's shit-scared to go very deep inside Knox County."
"He's right," Puckett said. "You'd be surprised how a few local cops were the only thing keeping some people from killing and raping and stealing. Not to wax, you know, philosophical ... ," Puckett glanced at me before continuing, "but I think the dead rising has made some people think that maybe no god is watching either. Like you can do anything you want, and nothing matters."
"Say, did you learn anything from being dead?" one of the bearded men asked me. "Like ... what's it like?"
/>
I thought for a moment, but only a moment.
"Hmmm," I said. "I didn't see God or anything, if that's what you mean. As for what it's like ... I think the technical term is `sucks.' It really sucks. My body's numb and dying and feels weird, and things don't work like they should."
"Oh," said the bearded man. "Sorry."
"So we need to figure out a plan," I said, hoping for no further existential queries. "It has to be something that gets all the friendlies out of the valley and up to the top of the hill by sunset."
"When's sunset?" Puckett asked. "Because, you know, it changes. And then there's the start of the sunset, when it's just getting dark, and the very end of it, when the sky is almost dark but there's that blue sliver left where the sun is just shining a little."
"We don't know," Vanessa said. "Back when we were talking to the army, we agreed on `sunset' so that nobody would be confused. A lot of people don't know if their watches are right anymore. You know how it is."
"I think we ought to be ready at the start of the sunset," I said. "That leaves us, what? Two or three hours, tops."
"Has anybody tried talking to these guys on the ATVs?" Vanessa asked. "All we need is a temporary truce."
Puckett rolled his eyes.
"I don't think they'd negotiate," Sam said. "Besides, what would we offer them? What would we say? `Could you please let those people join us at the top of the hill so we can all be airlifted out together?'
"Well, now ... it sort of makes sense," I said. "They want to take the college, right? If they agree to that plan, then they get the college-plus anything left over after we're gone. The supplies. The food. Everybody wins."
"It's not much; the supplies, that is," Sam said. "And what makes you think they'd believe us?"
"Yeah, I don't want to talk to them," asserted Puckett. "I only want to kill them."
"I agree with you," I said, seeming to reverse my position. "I know I just got here, but I think you're right on the money with that one. We need to kill these guys. If we negotiate, there are too many chances for them to betray us."
"What about the plan you guys had before?" Vanessa asked. "Can't we just do it a little earlier in the day?"
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