He stared into the darkness, cursing his older eyes for losing some of their sharpness. “Okay, let’s go inside, Boomer,” he told the dog and she turned to walk back into the camper.

  She was halfway up the steps when she stopped and sniffed the wind, then a low growl came from deep in her throat. Twigs cracked under the feet of someone rushing from the darkness. Instinctively he slammed the trailer door behind the dog and before he could turn to face his attacker to fire his pistol, she was on him.

  He’d seen a streak of blond hair before throwing his hands up and braced himself so he didn’t lose his footing. Rachel bit hard into his forearm and he kicked out, connecting with her thigh. The chewing didn’t lessen and he bashed the grip of his pistol into her shoulder blade. Rachel’s clavicle collapsed with an audible snap and he brought the pistol down directly onto her shoulder joint, dislocating it. She finally pulled free and he felt a wetness flow down his arm.

  Fuck! Asher kicked hard into her knee and the patella collapsed. He stepped backward and she toppled over onto her side. One of the characteristics that had freaked him out when he faced the creatures in Washington was how quiet they were when they weren’t in a large group. Rachel’s zombie was no different, regardless of what he’d done to her, she stoically continued to attack.

  Even with a buckled knee, she struggled to stand. When she couldn’t accomplish that, she began crawling toward him, pulling herself along with one hand across the gravel while her useless, dislocated arm dragged behind her. He took several steps back away from her to keep out of the reach of her crooked, grasping fingers.

  Asher knew what he needed to do. As he continued to back away slowly, his mind raced. She’s not infected, she’s just sick. I can take her to the hospital and they’ll give her some medications and everything will be okay again. Why the fuck did we stop. I could have driven farther yesterday. I’m such a fucking scumbag for promising her that I’d take care of her.

  He knew that it was his responsibility to dispatch Rachel, but he had feelings for this woman. He’d just been intimate with her less than twelve hours before. Was God punishing him for all the things that he’d done in his lifetime? Over the course of his career in the Navy and at the CIA, he’d done a lot of unspeakable acts. He’d taken part in things that no one would ever hear him say, and now he was paying the price for it. First Allyson and now Rachel; they’d both paid the price for being too close to him.

  He continued taking short steps back away from his former lover, leading her away from the camper while he thought. Asher made the decision to put the pistol back in his pocket; he didn’t want to attract more of them if there were any around. It made him sick to his stomach to think that he was going to have to bash her brains in.

  He risked a quick glance back toward his camper; it was still twenty feet away. He had a baseball bat just inside the door, but a little further inside was his tomahawk with a spike on the opposite side of the axe head.

  After a quick nod to himself, he turned and jogged back toward the camper. The tomahawk would be the most humane thing without using his pistol, which wasn’t registered in Florida. It’s strange the things that go through a person’s mind once they know what they need to do, he thought. Who cared if his guns were registered at a time like this? According to the Smithwick-Greenspan Gun Registration Act, anyone who discharged a non-registered gun in a state or territory not previously declared was subject to immediate arrest. Getting locked up was the last thing he needed when these fucking creatures were coming out of the water in Florida. He’d seen movies where inmates were left behind bars during the apocalypse. Starving to death with no way to kill himself wasn’t high on Asher’s bucket list.

  When he opened the door, Boomer bolted through and put him off balance. “Boomer, no!” he yelled after the dog. She leaped across the short distance and landed near Rachel. The dog darted in to bite the creature’s neck, but the teeth piercing her flesh didn’t register like it would have on a human and Rachel grabbed the dog’s front leg.

  With a vicious twist, the zombie snapped Boomer’s leg and pulled the helpless dog toward her mouth. Asher was too slow to react before Rachel’s zombie sunk her teeth into the Boxer’s throat. She jerked her head back and dark blood erupted into the night. He stopped short and surprised himself by letting out a soft sob.

  “Goddammit, Boomer…” he muttered. There was nothing he could do for her now except avenge her. He went back to the camper and pulled the tomahawk from its nail near the door. Rachel had continued crawling toward him and was now less than five feet from where she’d first attacked him at the camper’s door.

  Asher stepped across the gravel and twisted the tomahawk in his grip. Her fingers brushed his boots as he slammed the spiked side of the tomahawk into the back of her head. Rachel’s fingernails scratched a few more times against the leather on his shoes and then stopped moving completely.

  He left the weapon impaled in her brain and staggered back to the camper. When he got inside, he ripped his shirt off and examined the wound in his arm. “Fuck. Goddammit!” he muttered and slipped sideways into the table.

  His stomach started to twist and perspiration poured from his armpits. This was the start of the change. Rachel’s saliva had gotten into his arm when she’d bitten him. He slumped down onto the bench seat and thought about the antidote that he had stashed away in his first aid kit.

  “What’s the point?” his words came out slurred as if he’d been drinking. He’d lost so much over the course of his life; two marriages, friends and teammates. Now in the course of six months he’d lost two women whom he could have spent the rest of his life with and even his dog was dead, killed by the fucking diseased creatures that he would soon become. The pistol slipped from his pocket and he cocked the trigger to ensure that it would only take three tiny pounds of pressure to fire the weapon.

  He wasn’t afraid to die. He’d faced death so many times that it no longer held any mystery for him. The gun found its way to the side of his head, a few inches behind and above his right eye. The .45 ACP round would crash through his skull and scramble his brain before he even had a moment to think about avenging Rachel and Boomer’s murders.

  What? He dropped the pistol to the table and rode the hammer forward. Asher was ashamed that he’d even considered committing suicide instead of seeking revenge against the zombies. Suddenly, everything lined up in his mind. He would go to Washington and find the Type One that controlled the zombies and kill it. Then the Army would be able to defeat the Type Twos that would blindly continue attacking into the face of their modern weaponry. His debt would be paid, and maybe the forgiveness that he thought of more and more often the older he became would be granted if he could destroy the leader and give his nation a chance at survival. But first, he had to stop the change that he felt coursing through his veins.

  Asher tried to stand, but fell sideways out of the bench to the floor. “Ugh,” he groaned and pushed himself along the linoleum toward the bathroom with his feet. Moving was so much harder than he’d expected it to be. The disease was taking hold of him quickly, but he continued pushing forward. What was it that the FBI guys had said? Within one hour? Two? He couldn’t remember.

  Finally, he made it to the bathroom where the first aid kit was under the counter. He willed his arm to work and brought it up over his head so he could open the cabinet. After a couple of tries, he got it open and pulled the kit from inside. It plopped heavily down on the floor in front of him. The zipper took several more tries to open and he dug through the kit until his fingers wrapped around a small glass vial.

  The handwritten label swam into focus as he held it in front of his eyes, “A-Coll antidote. Dosage: 20cc in vein, NOT artery for faster absorption. Must be administered within three hours of infection. Serum contains C. tetani, a bacterium which causes tetanus and lockjaw. Handle with care.”

  He set the vial down on the floor and dug through the kit for a syringe. Mother fuckers must be stronger than I am if they can last three hours, he thought. He found the plastic tube and pulled that out of the box. With some deft maneuvering, he was able to pull the needle cap off and used his teeth to pull the plunger back and fill the tube with air before pushing the needle through the self-sealing rubber stopper on the antidote’s vial.

  He used his chin to inject the air into the vacuum-sealed glass vial and then pulled the plunger back out with his teeth. He held the needle upright while it was still in the vial and pressed the plunger back in to get the correct dosage. With any luck, he’d have another dose or two for future use. The toilet began to beckon as he wanted to crawl over and throw up, but he had to focus. Which one was a vein, inside or outside?

  He thought back to his days in the Navy when he’d been the Team medic. It was a long time ago, but then it hit him. The Basilic vein was the large, visible vessel that could be seen on the inside of his elbow. The arteries were deeper in the arm. He hoped that he survived long enough to feel stupid.

  The needle slid awkwardly into his arm and he cursed when he realized that the angle was too shallow; all he’d succeeded in doing was to skim the top of his vein and cut it open. He pulled the needle out and blood oozed out of the hole, adding to the mess on the floor. He had to go an inch higher along the path of the vein to get above the area he’d just injured and increased the syringe’s angle. There was a slight resistance as the metal pierced the vein and then it slid in easily. When he was satisfied that the needle was where it needed to be, he injected the antidote.

  *****

  20 October, 1913 hrs local

  Green Hill Plaza

  Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey

  Maria nudged her sleeping partner. “Hey, wake up,” she said. “It’s getting dark outside, we should get ready to move.”

  Shawn rolled over on the hard tile floor and groaned. “Crap. This wasn’t all just a bad dream?” he muttered.

  She frowned and started to say something bitchy, but that wouldn’t help their situation one bit. Instead, she smiled and replied, “Nope, we’re living our own little shitty version of the apocalypse; right here in New Jersey. On the plus side, it was a beautiful day of zombie watching, guaranteed to keep even the angriest Cuban woman entertained. Wake up.”

  “Ugh. Are we gonna try to move like we’d planned this morning?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been watching through the blinds for about twenty or thirty minutes since I woke up, but I haven’t seen much movement outside except for some trash blowing across the street. They’re all gone again.”

  Maria watched her fellow refugee walk to the deli’s front window and carefully pry apart the blinds to look out into the vacant parking lot. When they’d gotten trapped outside of the wrong building two nights ago, they’d ran as fast as they could away from the horde sweeping through the Lanidex Plaza where they’d been assigned as observers by the Army for a few days.

  They ran as fast as they could, dodging around the trees in the parking lots in an attempt to lose the zombies that pursued them. The creatures once again acted differently than they’d expected them to. The change was the third alteration to their behavior in as little as two weeks, so the pair was confused about their true nature or if their reactions to events were random.

  When they first met the zombies in the bog, they’d attacked mindlessly, not caring about their injuries or death. But they’d also been cunning and could track down people who hid from them. Then, they acted as if they were concerned with losses and withdrew to find a way around the defenders in Parsippany—which is why they had to abandon the city or risk getting encircled. On the night that they fled from the horde, they’d acted like Shawn had always read about fictional zombie behavior. Once the humans had escaped the mob’s line of sight, the creatures continued on in the last direction that they’d been heading without any inkling that their quarry had gotten away. It was very puzzling for the two of them.

  They’d slipped the creatures and stumbled upon the little shopping center that they were in now just after nine o’clock that night, which when Maria thought about it, was simply pathetic. The shopping center was less than half of a mile from the plaza and it had taken them almost three hours of meandering and hiding to reach the strip mall.

  Shawn had used Maria’s rifle to break the lock on the door since he’d lost his when he had to take his jacket off because a zombie had grasped his arm. Once the lock was gone, they’d tumbled inside and hid out of sight from the shuffling group of zombies that pursued them. Within a few hours the creatures disappeared and they watched for movement outside well into the night until sleep had finally overtaken them in the early morning hours.

  The sound of distant gunfire woke them up. A quick peek through the windows showed hundreds of zombies milling around the street in the pre-noon sun. Throughout the day, the creatures were thick in the surrounding area, but as the sun started to go down, they began to disappear. By midnight, they’d completely disappeared and the two of them watched most of the night without seeing any more. Then, this morning, the creatures had reappeared. Once more, they’d eventually gave in to their exhaustion, but not before they decided that the creatures must not be active at night and that their best bet for moving would be after darkness.

  Maria walked back to the deli’s restroom to relieve herself. It was disgusting in there, what with both of them doing their business for two days, but it beat shitting on the floor or going outside for the fresh air. She wrapped one of the green aprons that the employees had once worn around her mouth and nose and entered the room.

  When she was complete, she wished for running water for the hundredth time—both to flush the toilet and to wash her hands—but the water had been out for several weeks. It stopped flowing shortly after the power grid completely failed. Of course, she had no way of knowing for sure, but she figured that the apocalypse was worse off for women since they had different requirements for staying clean.

  Maria shook her head as she squirted hand sanitizer onto her hands and walked from the back of the store. She couldn’t let herself go around calling this outbreak the “apocalypse” anymore. If she did so too many times, she’d end up believing it and losing hope. If she lost hope, then she’d probably end up getting killed in some stupid way.

  “Hey, I’ve been thinking about what we could take with us from here,” Shawn said when he saw her.

  “Okay, what’ve you got?”

  “Well, we can’t take these, because they’re too noisy,” he said as he held up a handful of personal-sized chip bags before tossing them on the counter and opening one of the foil-lined containers. “But, we could take all the apples that haven’t gone bad yet and we can take the hard salami in the back. I think everything else is either spoiled or too noisy, like the chips.” He crammed a handful of the triangle-shaped cheesy snacks into his mouth.

  “Well, we need to find a grocery store to hole up in tomorrow during the day,” she replied. “I’ve got a shopping list of things that we need.”

  “Oh, yeah? Like what?” he asked.

  “Like, well…” Ah, the hell with it, she thought. He’s gonna see the evidence in the bathroom anyways. “I need tampons, Shawn. I started my period just now.”

  He held up his hands and answered, “Okay, never mind! I don’t want to know the rest of your shopping list!”

  “Well, we need to go. What if… What if those things can smell blood or something?”

  Maria could see his face pale several shades in the dim interior of the deli. “I hadn’t thought of that. Do you think they can?”

  “How the hell should I know? Four weeks ago, I honestly didn’t even believe that the zombies really existed in DC. We know for sure that they can see and hear. What if they’ve retained all of their senses?”

  Shawn’s face got the pensive look that it sometimes did when he really thought about a problem. After a few seconds, he said, “I don’t think they can. Remember all those fights we were in on the east side of town?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “Well, when people got injured, the zombies didn’t swarm to them for the blood or something, they just kept on coming like they were only concerned with what they could see.”

  It was a thin hope at best, but it was something. “I hope so, otherwise we’re done for. I’ve got a pretty heavy flow.”

  He threw the bag of chips on the counter. “Okay, that’s it. I’m done.”

  “Don’t be childish, Shawn. It happens to women; I can’t do anything about it. We need to be serious about this.”

  “Yeah, sorry,” he replied, properly rebuked.

  “Okay, let’s pack up then. I’m ready to try and make it back to our guys and then over the mountains.”

  They spent the next few minutes packing the food and bottles of water into a few bags. Shawn fit what he could into the backpack and then they made a makeshift knapsack from a few of the deli’s aprons using the neck loops for shoulder straps for Maria. She made one more stop in the bathroom to change the toilet paper that she’d layered in her underwear and grabbed two more of the rolls to put into her sack.

  Two knives from the deli completed their ensemble. As soon as he picked them up, Shawn told her that they’d need to find real knives with sheaths instead of these. She nodded noncommittally. If they happened upon a hunting store or something, then so be it, but she wasn’t willing to alter their westbound course too much just to find some weapons. In fact, if the zombies continued to act in their current manner, then she’d just prefer to hide and avoid them entirely. However, that was one of the problems with these damn things; they didn’t have any idea what was normal for them.

  They peeked out the blinds a few more times to ensure things were safe. Once they confirmed that there wasn’t anything outside the deli, they moved the table that they’d shoved in front of the door and Shawn led the way with his knife held out in front of him like it was a crucifix to ward off vampires. The thought made Maria grin in spite of their dire situation.