No response.
“Charlie team to Alpha.” After no response, he set the radio on his lap. “They must’ve moved in already. We’re on our own.”
I pointed to a large shed. “How about in there?”
“Let’s try it,” Clutch said quickly.
“Okay,” Wes said under his breath while he gripped the wheel. He pulled up to the shed with a sign that read Mac’s Auto Shop.
Panting from the wild ride, I jumped off the back, ran to the first garage door, and rapped on the metal. When no sound emerged, I yanked on the door. By some miracle it wasn’t locked, and the door slid easily to the side with an unoiled squawk. Wes pulled the Jeep inside, bumped into a VW Beetle that was sitting in the bay, and pushed it forward. I scanned outside. Seeing no zeds in the vicinity, I tugged the door shut as quickly as I could.
Wes cut the engine. The three of us watched one another, all with eyes wide open and breathing heavily. I swallowed and forced each breath out slowly.
Zeds were dumb, but they were damn good at sniffing out prey.
Chapter III
Wes was already out of the Jeep, searching for zeds around the car and behind toolboxes. With nothing looking or smelling out of place, I’d already figured the place was clean. Zeds were a messy, stinky bunch with no talent for stealth.
I looked at Clutch to find him still gripping the windshield, his head lowered.
I went over and rubbed his shoulder. “Hey, you okay?”
“Yeah.” He raised his head. Tension highlighted the wrinkles around his eyes. “Just got a bit bumpy back there.”
I’d thrown my back out once, and it had hurt like hell. I couldn’t imagine how dislocating it would feel. I gave him the gentlest of hugs. “Hang in there,” I said softly.
He leaned back with a wince and closed his eyes.
When Doyle’s Dogs attacked Camp Fox last summer, Clutch had been crushed in the stampede of fleeing survivors. Two vertebrae in his back had been dislocated, thankfully not broken as Doc had first guessed. Doc was doing the best he could do. It had to be tough to work in a world without x-rays and emergency rooms. A person couldn’t just snap vertebrae back into place like a dislocated shoulder. Doc had been very, very careful to align Clutch’s back. The backpack Clutch had been wearing was likely the only reason his back hadn’t been broken; it had served as a buffer between his body and the trampling herds. Even then, the swelling on his spine prevented us from knowing yet if it had been permanently damaged or if it was simply the swelling that had paralyzed him from the hips down.
While his back had been his most serious injury, Clutch had also gotten three cracked—or at least badly bruised—ribs, two fractured—or badly bruised—legs, and a broken left wrist. He’d also had a dislocated shoulder and a nasty concussion. Any one of those injuries would have taken him out of action for a bit, but the combination of injuries had left him unconscious for three days.
It was a miracle he hadn’t incurred any internal bleeding, deep cuts, or bites in the stampede. At the Camp Fox medical clinic, if someone couldn’t heal on his or her own, there was little hope. After the attack, Doc warned me that if Clutch didn’t wake in the first hours, he would likely never wake up due to the severity of his injuries. Doc didn’t know Clutch. The Clutch I knew was too hardheaded not to wake up.