We ran back to the bunker. Clutch disappeared inside and came back seconds later with a stuffed backpack. He fastened the door closed and set a combination lock that I hadn’t noticed on top of the door before. We covered the door with tin and debris.
Clutch eyed his big rig, which looked like the Dogs had fun taking a bulldozer to it. “She was a good rig,” he growled.
“We’ll take the Dog’s truck,” I offered, not seeing Clutch’s pickup truck or Jeep anywhere. “I left a car at Jase’s house along with enough supplies to get us by for a few days.”
We sprinted back to the truck and tore down the lane. Clutch turned onto the gravel road, and fortunately, there was no dust in either direction indicating that Dogs were on their way. “We got lucky this morning,” Clutch said.
“I’ll take every bit of luck I can get,” I said.
Clutch nodded. “We can’t risk stopping and grabbing the car right now. We’ll come back for everything else in the bunker and the car after we’ve secured a new location.”
I leaned back, a weight on my chest. I’d already been thinking through how soon I had to transplant the seeds from the garden before it was too late. Not to mention having to start all over with looting runs. It was hard the first time, when we had so much to work with. Now? We were fucked. I swallowed. “Any thoughts on where we can hide that’s safe from Dogs?”
Clutch shrugged. “They avoid Chow Town.”
“Oh, hell, no,” I said in a rush. When he eyed me suspiciously, I tacked on, “Trust me.”
“Any farm we move to won’t be any safer than mine was,” he said. “That leaves our only option to head out of the area. Or…wait a second.” He snapped his fingers. “I got it.”
He cranked a hard left on the next road and stepped on the gas.
“Where are we headed?”
“Fox National Park. It’s as far from any town as we can get without venturing into unknown territory.”
Thirty minutes later, we drove through the park’s winding narrow roads. Clutch took us deep and high into the hilly park, and we saw no zeds, though I knew the monsters lurked in these woods just like they had everywhere else. Clutch stopped at the DNR office that seemed to be near the park’s highest point. Only a park ranger’s truck sat outside.
“This might be the best location for our camp,” Clutch said, reloading his shotgun. “We’ll check the cabins, too. They should keep keys to all the cabins somewhere inside.”
I looked around. The A-line cabin sat on a ledge, leaving only three sides vulnerable to zeds. The narrow park roads would be easy enough to block. The place gave me a good vibe. I picked up the rifle I’d lifted from the Dog. “Let’s do this.”
Birds chirped in the distance, and a warm breeze blew scents of evergreens over me. Side-by-side, we moved to the two-story cabin.
Clutch checked the door. It opened.
He glanced at me, and I nodded, clutching the rifle. He rapped on the window. Nothing. He rapped again. Still nothing.
After a moment of waiting, Clutch took the lead inside. A familiar stench polluted the air. Dammit.
Clutch grimaced.
I sighed before calling out, “Hey, stinkface. Where are you?”
Something shuffled from above. My gaze shot upward to see a lone zed move around the open loft. It was wearing a brown DNR uniform and had wild, shaggy hair. It groaned and tried to walk toward us, but the railing stopped it. It continued to batter the railing, reaching out, until finally it toppled over and crashed to the ground floor.
The zed landed head-first, the impact sounding like a shattered light bulb. Its brittle skull collapsed into itself.
“That was easy,” I said. Then the stench hit me. I pinched my nose. “God, that’s awful.”
Clutch held his forearm over his nose. “Let’s hurry up and get Smelly outside.”
Each grabbing a foot, we dragged the corpse outside and sent it off the deep slope that went off each side of the cabin. It tumbled down, disappearing into the trees below.
The rest of the office was thankfully clear, and the zed had made surprisingly little mess upstairs.
“He was here alone,” I said.