by Dulaney, C.
Adams shrugged and said, “Sure they can.”
“Phrasing, Mort,” Brad said. “Adams, can the gabs get over their fences and wall and kill all the people inside?”
Adams’ face fell. “Yeah. They can.”
Jake cussed, Kasey hit the table, and Michael hung his head.
Jonah rubbed his eyes and finally said, “Do we go on, or go back?”
“We should’ve stayed home,” Kasey said quietly. Jake nodded.
“Well, we didn’t. Weren’t no reason to think this wasn’t our best play,” Jonah said.
“Maybe we should’ve stayed,” Brad said. When Mort opened his mouth to argue, Brad cut in, “Not at Kasey’s. I mean at the prison. That place is full of people, half of them wounded. And there’s kids there, Mort. If the gabs stand a chance of bringing it down, we should’ve stayed. Maybe we could’ve hidden them, or led the swarm away, I don’t know. We could’ve done something.”
Mort laid a hand on Brad’s shoulder. “This is the hand we’ve been dealt. That’s all the more reason to get there as fast as we can.” He turned to the rest of the group. “We get to Blueville ahead of that horde and do whatever we can to stop that place from falling. To this swarm or any others that come along.”
Michael looked over to Kasey and Jake and shrugged. “We’re halfway there already.”
Kasey leaned over the table again and stared at the map. After a long moment of silence, she pushed herself up and said, “Alright. Whether it’s this swarm or not, the prison is vulnerable. We might as well try.” She looked next to her at Jake. “You good with that?”
Jake shrugged. “Whatever you say, Boss. I got your back.”
“Alright then.” Kasey nodded. She turned to the others. “Pack it in and get some sleep. We leave at first light.”
✽✽✽
Kasey lay on her belly between two giant oak trees, at the top of a low ridge that overlooked the small valley below. The prison looked almost the same as she remembered it, except now it was on fire. She could see parts of buildings that weren’t there before, and there was a large helicopter pad in the far corner of the grounds where the gardens used to be.
She swept her binoculars back and forth, pausing only now and then on a corpse or blood smear that she could see through gaps in the smoke. Four bodies lay at the front gate of the outer fence. The space between fences was emptied of zombies, no doubt because the entire southwest corner of the fencing was down. Dead snipers were strewn along the tops of the buildings. A helicopter was parked on the pad, just sitting there, and a few more bodies, and pieces of bodies, were scattered about not far from it.
She couldn’t tell how many of the corpses belonged to terminators and how many were the people that had lived there, but judging by the damage and sheer number of dead, the folks here had put up one hell of a fight.
A sudden presence on her right caused her guts to clench. Her hand shot to her sidearm.
“Whoa, now.” Jonah clamped his hand around her wrist and eased down on his belly beside her.
“What the hell? You trying to get shot?”
Jonah kept his eyes on Blueville Correctional. “Not like I could warn ya I was comin’.”
She wiped her eyes and turned the binoculars back to the prison. “How’d you even find me?” she whispered.
“You’re easy to follow.”
“No, I’m not.”
“No, you’re not. But I can always see your tracks.”
Kasey snorted and handed him the binoculars. Jonah swept them slowly back and forth, then dropped them from his eyes and hung his head. Neither said anything for a long time. The wind picked up now and then and carried smoke in their direction. The combined smell of burnt electrical, wood smoke, and a thick, coppery tang made Kasey cough.
She drew a wet breath and said, “Where’s Gus?”
“Jake’s got him,” Jonah said. “They’re all still waitin’ at the bottom of the hill for us.”
Kasey stared at what was left of Blueville. She didn’t bother wiping her eyes again; her hands were dirty and smeared. “Waiting for me to tell them what we’re going to do next.”
Jonah grunted. “Probably.”
“This was a waste of time,” she whispered.
“We didn’t know it. And we had to try.”
Kasey blew out a breath. “Yeah.” She brought the binoculars up to her eyes and checked one more time for the terminator swarm. Or for the dozens of deadheads that had been sandwiched between the fences. There wasn’t any sign of either. She jerked her chin in that direction and said, “You see any sign of the dead or the swarm?”
Jonah took the binoculars and looked again. He’d already looked for sign the first time, but he swept the area again slowly, more for her peace of mind than anything else. Finally, he lowered them and shook his head. “No, nothin’. Looks clear.”
Propped up on her elbows, Kasey lowered her head onto her forearms. “What do we do now?” she mumbled.
“Well, there’s always the Winchester. It’s probably still there.”
Kasey snorted out a laugh. “Yeah, but I seriously doubt Jake will want to go back there,” she said, suggesting that Jake wouldn’t want to go back and live where his grandma had been slaughtered. “And I won’t make him, either.”
Jonah thought about this a moment. “We can go home.”
Kasey rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Back and forth, back and forth.” She shook her head. “We got the supplies for a return trip?”
“Michael was checkin’ that when I left to find ya.” Jonah watched her face and her eyes. “I know what—I know what this feels like, girl. But it ain’t all hopeless.”
Kasey turned her head slowly and peered at him from the corner of her eye. “Yeah, it is. The dead didn’t kill us, not all of us, but they sure as shit thinned our numbers. We got that under control. Then the terminators showed up,” she swept out a hand in the direction of the prison, “and we thought, ‘oh good, the cavalry.’ And then they tried to kill us all. And for all we know, they have.” She turned her face back toward Blueville and wiped a hand across her cheek. “Might be a few of us here and there, but across the entire country? Nationwide? We might as well all be dead.”
“We ain’t dead yet.”
“We will be.”
Jonah grimaced but said nothing. He reached over, laid a hand on her back, and gave her time.
“We’ll go home, but that’s it. End of the road. We got a line on some supplies. What’s left in Gibson. Riverton is full, remember?” She spoke now like she talked to herself but glanced at Jonah now and then. “We empty those towns, maybe scavenge out further. Build some defenses, break ground for some gardens in the spring if we’re still alive by then.”
Jonan nodded. “And just live for as long as we got.”
“Yeah,” Kasey said. She pushed up onto her knees and stood, sticking out a hand to help Jonah to his feet. She dusted herself off and looked down one last time at Blueville Correctional. “Let’s go home.”
About the Author
C. Dulaney is the author of the Roads Less Traveled series: The Plan, Murphy’s Law, Shades of Gray, Phoenix, and End of the Road.
When she isn’t writing, she splits her time between hunting, watching football, and preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse. You can follow updates on the series and other works, or simply stop by and say hello, at her website (CDulaney.com), or on Facebook (facebook.com/RoadsLessTraveledThePlan).
