100-Days-in-Deadland(35)

“We should use treadmills,” Jase said.

“What?” Clutch and I asked at the same time.

Jase gave us a wide grin. “Treadmills. We should surround the house with them. Any zed who comes up to the house will step onto a treadmill and will just keep walking and walking. Then we don’t have to stand guard at all.”

“Exactly how are you going to power a hundred treadmills?” Clutch asked.

Jase shrugged. “Solar power, maybe.”

“Oh, solar power. Of course. I’ll pick some up on my next grocery trip,” I said drily.

Jase flipped me the bird. “Jeez, can’t you guys take a joke?”

I smiled, though Jase had a point. It was too hard to find humor in a world that had given up.

Clutch sighed. “C’mon. Let’s hit the road.”

Jase’s smile dropped. “I’ll grab my stuff.”

As we headed out to repair the gate, the weather reflected Jase’s mood. The sun refused to shine, giving reign to a gray mist instead. I felt sorry for the kid. Going into Fox Hills would bring back a lifetime of memories for him. Where he went to school, where his mom picked up groceries—everything we’d drive by would be a stark reminder of what he’d lost.

With the gate back in place and operational, Jase sulked in the backseat while Clutch drove down the gravel road. Jase feigned nonchalance, but in the side mirror I noticed that he stiffened as we drove by the empty ranch house he grew up in. It looked deceptively welcoming, the scene of death hidden within its red brick walls. My overactive imagination feared that Jase’s parents somehow had come back again and dug out of their graves. Fortunately, the house disappeared behind us with no sign of zeds, those related to Jase or otherwise.

Another mile down the road, Jase and I got out to move a small tree that had fallen across the gravel. Broken branches littered the gravel, and one low part over a culvert showed signs that the road had been underwater a few hours earlier.

A bloated zed lay floundering under the shallow rapids of a rushing creek beyond the culvert. Trapped under a log, its arms flapped clumsily at the water.

“I don’t get it,” Jase said from the backseat. “That thing’s probably been underwater all night. How can it still be alive?”

“They’re not alive, they’re just…echoes of life,” I answered honestly. It’s what I told myself every day so that I no longer thought of them as people. When the time came to kill—not in self-defense like when Melanie had attacked me—if I believed that they still felt or thought, I wasn’t quite sure I could go through with it.

When we reached Fox Hills, we had to lay down plywood in the muddy ditch to get around the roadblock. From there, Clutch drove down Main Street, straight through the center of town. The store we needed was on the opposite side of town, and rather than burn precious gas, he’d made the call to risk driving through the more populated areas of town. It also gave us a chance to see how many zeds we’d have to deal with if we were to start looting houses.

Last night’s storm had wreaked havoc on Fox Hills. Plastic trash bins that had lined driveways the day of the outbreak were now strewn about. Garbage was scattered everywhere. Diapers, magazines, and milk cartons littered every open space, looking like the aftermath of a wild party. Every now and then we saw a zed with its head shoved in a garbage bag, going after an easy meal.

“They’ll eat anything,” Jase said.

“Yeah,” I replied, though we all already knew their favorite meal.

Clutch drove around trees that had been ripped from the ground, and their branches crunched under the truck’s tires along with garbage. A tree had smashed a convertible. A Honda and a Chevy were slammed together like bumper cars. Every now and then, we saw a zed lying motionless on the ground, which meant they must’ve taken serious blows to the head during the storm. But the storm hadn’t taken out nearly enough. More zeds than I’d seen last time wandered aimlessly outside, open doors and broken windows the only hints as to where they’d come from, though I suspected most of the zeds still lumbered around inside their homes.

I held the pistol on my lap. I had the tanto, but it was still in its sheath. My real confidence builder was the crowbar I’d found in one of Clutch’s sheds. Whenever we left the farm, I carried the crowbar since the knife was short and required me to get awfully close and personal to do any damage. The crowbar, on the other hand, was a power driver of cold iron.