“The guy was wearing cadaverine?”
Tom nodded. “George followed him and watched him make a kill with a pistol, and then he knew the man was alive. For George it was like getting hit by a thunderbolt. He started yelling and ran down the hill toward the man, crying and babbling because he thought that the presence of this man meant that the long nightmare was over. The man spun and fired a shot at George, almost hitting him, but George hid behind a tree and yelled, telling him that he wasn’t a ghoul.”
Benny grunted at the word “ghoul.” It was what some of the older people called the zoms.
“The hunter, realizing that George wasn’t one of the dead, told him it was safe to come out. George ran to him and hugged him and shook his hand and—as he put it to me—‘acted like a total damn fool.’ The hunter was pleasant and kind. He gave George some food and told him that there was a whole town full of people not too far away, who were alive and thriving, and there were other towns all up and down this part of California. He offered to take him back to his own camp, saying he was part of a group of a dozen men who were clearing the zoms out of this region in order to allow people to reclaim it and rebuild.”
“But I thought—?”
“Wait, hear the rest of it. George told them about the two little girls, and the hunter got excited, saying that it was God’s own miracle that two children had survived for so long. He encouraged George to take him to where the girls were, so they could all go to the camp where it was completely safe. George agreed, of course. After all, this was the answer to years and years of prayers. They hurried through the woods to a farmhouse where George had been living with the girls for the last year. At first, the girls were terrified of the man. Lilah hadn’t seen another living adult since she was two, and Annie had never seen one. Lilah almost attacked the man, but George restrained her and took her weapons away. It took a long time to cajole and convince the girls that it was safe, and all the time the hunter sat on the floor and smiled and waited patiently, making sure to do nothing threatening.”
“He sounds like a good guy,” said Benny.
“Does he? Yes … I suppose that from this part of the story he does. Anyway, the hunter told George to gather up anything valuable and go with him to his camp. George brought the wheelbarrow filled with food, books, and other things that were useful or precious to them. It took four hours to follow the winding country roads to the camp, which had been set up in a big cornfield. The men in the camp all looked very hard, and everyone had weapons—and that much was okay, because of the nature of the world and what they were doing—but he didn’t like the way they smiled at him and his wheelbarrow or the way they looked at the girls. Even though he was delighted to see so many people, George began to get suspicious.”
“Wait. Were these guys bounty hunters?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?” Benny asked with a sinking feeling.