The Living Dead 2 (The Living Dead, #2)(187)

Three blows, and the corpse went down, its head a lumpish black sack. Wayne walked to the van and opened the door. A dry yelp escaped the dead kid’s drawn lips. He placed the blunt end of the bat to the side of the child’s head and pushed. It didn’t take long.

There was a Batman action figure on the floor of the vehicle. He picked it up and placed it in the child’s lap. Saying nothing felt wrong, but nothing he could think of sounded appropriate. As he shut the door, he noticed two cases of water in the back of the van along with several unmarked boxes. He went around back and checked them. Each contained various canned goods, as well as several packs of pasta and ramen. Whoever had left the kid had been in a hurry.

He looked around. No walking corpses, no sign of Zach or Ted. They’d moved on, taking the dolly with them.

Wayne removed the face-shield and wiped sweat from his brow. He plucked a bottle of water from the van and, pulling the dust mask beneath his chin, downed it. His heart raced, and just like that, the silence and the heat were almost too much. He felt alone and small, and he wanted to be with Zach and Ted, even if they were maybe going to try and kill him today.

Wayne tucked three bottles of water under his arm and walked until he saw Zach and Ted. They were standing at the rear of an unmarked truck that had stalled in the wildly overgrown grass beside the freeway.

Ted looked back and smiled. “You’re not going to believe this,” he said.

Wayne handed them each a bottle of water and let what he was seeing sink in: pallet upon pallet of military rations, the kind he and his family had lived off of in the weeks following Katrina.

Wayne said, “Damn.”

“Yeah,” Zach said. “Damn.”

There were hundreds of boxes, each containing sixteen complete meals. From what he could see, several pallets toward the back were piled with cases of bottled water. The same stuff as in the van.

“See that,” Ted said. “FEMA is good for something after all.”

“Okay,” Zach said, all business. He hopped into the truck, ripped away the thick plastic wrap securing the boxes to the pallets, and began tossing boxes down to Ted and Wayne.

The dolly held five boxes. Wayne pushed it back to the Jeep, walking behind Ted and Zach, who each carried one box.

The first trip was without incident.

On their second run, Ted got a chance to use his bat. The thing that clambered like a lizard out of the forest was naked, creeping around on the ragged stumps of its arms and legs. No ears, lidless eyes, lipless mouth. Ted enjoyed putting it down.

“Damn,” Ted said on their third trip to the truck. He knocked back a water bottle and belched. “Can we start the truck? Maybe move it or something?”

Zach stared at him for a moment, blinking, his face glistening with sweat. Dark stains seemed to emanate from the guns beneath his armpits. “Yeah, Ted,” he said, half-grinning and nodding. “Sure. But first we have to clear out all these pine trees, maybe cut a path all the way to 190.”

“I don’t know,” Ted said, shrugging. “I was just saying.”

“Yeah, yeah. Okay. Moving on. We need to load up what we can for now and come back tomorrow with the truck. We’ll get Seth to—”

Somewhere nearby, a dead thing howled, long and mournful.

“Aw, crap.” Ted said. “Where the hell is that coming from?”

“There,” Wayne said. Not far from where he’d encountered the first corpse of the day, another form stood. It howled again, louder and longer. There was urgency in the thing’s voice.

“Oh, shit,” Zach said. Here and there, the creature’s call was answered. “Not good. Run.”

They ran, their bats raised and ready. On either side of the interstate, the walking dead emerged from within the cool confines of the forest. Soon there was a chorus.

They overtook the howler. Not slowing, Ted took a swing at it. He missed, staggered, and almost fell, dropping the bat, and then the Jeep was in sight. Zach leaned against a tree, winded. Ted bent over, his hands on his knees, panting.

“You not going back for your bat?” Wayne asked, his back to the Jeep.

“Why the f*ck would I do that? There’s like six more in the back of the Jeep,” Ted said, and Wayne shot him in the face, blowing away most of his jaw. Ted dropped, mewling and clutching at where his chin used to be. Blood poured between his fingers.

He should have shot Zach first—Zach was always more on the ball and now he was just gone, dropped from sight. “Shit,” Wayne said, and Zach appeared from behind a tree and started firing the Tauruses.

Wayne got the Jeep between himself and Zach. From all sides, the dead closed in.





You knew it was a real shit day when killing the class cat was the high point.

That was the first thing Sue did in the morning, and her mood had not improved. Mr. Stripestuff had been pretty sickly for a while, was probably fifteen years old and going blind, and there was no way anybody in the warehouse would take adequate care of him after she left. She hoped they’d have a little more compassion for the kids she’d be leaving behind, but deep down she doubted it.

She let him lick the scraps from a can of tuna mixed with a packet of old government-issue powdered creamer and a couple of crushed Tylenol PMs. Then she laid him in her lap and petted his head for a while, then she put a towel over his face, and a plastic bag over that. She thought not about how she should just set him free, but how slim his odds were out there. She was doing him a favor, but it wasn’t easy for either of them. She was gentle, gentle as she could be while getting the job done, and she laid him in his bed for the class to find.