“Leave the 12-gauge, take one of the AR-15s, in case it gets hairy, and grab the machete under the seat.” Martinez has a black marine raider bowie knife with a fifteen-inch blade strapped to his leg, and now checks it. He does this compulsively, jaw clenched, all business, as he hears the others coming around the side of the truck. He climbs out of the cab.
They all gather at the front of the cab, in the weeds and buzzing clouds of gnats, their faces drawn and pale with tension. The air smells of rot and burning metal. Austin stands there wringing his hands, gazing off at the crash site. The Sterns huddle together, both their brows furrowed with worry. Lilly has her hands on her hips, her Rugers holstered high on her waist. “What are you thinking?” she says to Martinez.
“Dave and Barb, I want you two to stay with the truck, keep watch.” Martinez shoves his Magnum behind his belt. “If you get swarmed, just drive ’em off … lead ’em away … and then circle back and get us. You got that?”
David just nods and nods, looking like a nervous bobblehead doll. “Yes, absolutely.”
“Keep the walkie with you, keep the frequency open while we’re gone.”
Gus hands the two-way to David, who is still nodding and muttering. “Got it, got it.”
“There’s a box of road flares in the back,” Martinez says to Gus. “Go grab a handful. And get the first-aid kit, too, will ya?”
Gus hurries around the back of the truck while Martinez looks at his watch. “We got a good four hours of daylight left. I want to get out there and back before dark, no fucking around.”
Lilly has one high-capacity magazine left. She slams it into her Ruger, snapping the slide. “The thing is, what if we find survivors?”
“That’s the point,” Martinez says, unsnapping the sheath on his leg, positioning the knife hilt for quick access. “Plus the helo might still be in one piece.”
Lilly looks at him. “We got no stretcher, no medic, no way to get them back.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” Martinez says, adjusting his bandanna, already soaked in sweat, across his forehead.
Gus comes back with an armful of flares, which look like sticks of dynamite.
Martinez gives everybody a flare. “I want everybody to stay together, in tight formation … but if for some reason you get separated, light off one of these and we’ll find you.” He looks at the Sterns. “You run into any trouble back here, you light one off.” He glances at the bald man. “Gus, I want you on the right flank with the machete. Keep the noise down. Use the AR-15 as a last resort. I’ll take the left flank.” He looks at Lilly. “You and Junior take the middle.”
Austin gazes up at the sky. The midafternoon clouds have rolled in. The day has turned gray and ashy. The wetland ahead of them crawls with swaying shadows. It’s been a wet year and now the ground looks impassable, mired in washouts, deadfalls, and dense groves of white pines standing between them and the crash site.
“There’s a creek, runs through the middle of the woods,” Martinez is saying, taking a deep breath and drawing his Magnum. “We’ll follow it as far as we can, and then navigate by the smoke. Everybody got that?”
They all nod, saying nothing, swallowing back the mounting apprehension that passes between them like a virus.
Martinez nods. “Let’s boogie.”
*
It’s tough going for a while, the unforgiving mud sucking at the soles of their boots, making wet smacking noises in the primeval silence of the woods. They follow the serpentine bends of the brackish stream, and the deeper they venture into the hollow, the more the trees swallow the daylight.
“You okay, Huckleberry?” Lilly whispers to Austin, who walks alongside her, his Glock gripped tightly in both of his sweaty hands.
“I’m fantastic,” he lies. His long curls are pulled back from his glistening face with a leather tie. He chews on his lip nervously as he churns through the mud.
“You don’t have to hold your gun like that,” she says with a smirk.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re some kind of Delta Force commando. Just keep it handy.”
“Will do.”
“If you get one in the cross hairs, just take your time. They’re slow, so make your shots count. You don’t have to do the gunslinger routine.”
Austin shoots her a glance. “Just want to be ready … in case I need to come to your rescue.”
Lilly gives him an eye roll. “Yeah, great, I feel totally safe now.”
She peers into the trees ahead of them and sees the faint haze of smoke building in the woods. The air, hectic with bugs, smells of burned circuitry and scorched metal. The wreckage is still a few hundred yards off in the distant pines. The faint crackle of fire can be heard, barely audible above the wind rustling in the treetops.
Off to the right, maybe twenty yards ahead of Lilly, Martinez has taken the lead, weaving through the undergrowth, slicing through foliage with his bowie knife. On a parallel path to the left, Gus trudges along, his hound-dog eyes surveying the shadows for biters, his machete on his shoulder. The sky is barely visible above him, blocked by skeins of tree limbs and vines.
Lilly starts to say something else when a figure appears in front of Gus.
Lilly halts, her gun coming up fast, her breath seizing up in her throat. She sees Gus raise the machete. The large male walker, clad in tattered overalls, has its back turned to him, teetering on dead legs, its head cocked toward the crash site like a dog hearing an ultrasonic whistle. Gus sneaks up behind it.
The machete comes down fast, the blade making a crunching noise as it embeds itself in the gristly dura of the walker’s cranium. Fluids gush, making watery sluicing noises in the silence of the woods, as the walker collapses. Lilly hardly has a chance to breathe again when another noise draws her attention to the right.
Fifteen feet away, Martinez lashes out at another stray walker—a spindly female with gray hair matted like spider webs—probably a former farmer’s wife skulking around the brush. His knife impales the back of her head above the neck cords, putting her down with the speed of a silent embolism. She never saw it coming.