With one final grunt, Mason pushed the dead men off to the side and took a quick look around. Other than himself and Bowie, the RV was empty. He touched his cheek. It was sore and already starting to swell. His neck felt even worse, but when he rotated his head, everything seemed to work. He carefully lifted his foot from the cabinet and stood upright.
“That could have gone better,” he mumbled.
Bowie looked up at him, blood dripping from his mouth.
“Anyone ever tell you that you’re downright scary sometimes?”
Bowie turned away and began bumping cabinets open with his nose in search of food.
Even though the motorhome was in a complete shambles, it was easy to see that it was a high-end model. Some of the many features included a granite kitchen counter, four-burner gas stove, bathroom with shower stall, and even a queen-sized bed. The fresh spatter of blood, brains, and bone, however, did absolutely nothing to improve the upscale ambiance.
“Well, they’re obviously not here,” Mason said, thinking aloud as he reloaded his Supergrade. “I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.”
Bowie had found a box of Vanilla Wafers and looked up with a couple of cookies poking from his mouth.
“When you’re done with your snack, meet me outside.”
Mason stepped back up on the microwave and poked his head out through the door like a tank commander surveying the battlefield. Fortunately, no one had been drawn to the brief firefight. He hauled himself up and out, retrieved his M4, and stood on top of the overturned RV, studying his surroundings.
His first thought was that John and Jules might have retreated to the drug store, but he quickly discounted the idea. They had surely been in enough scrapes to know that the large store would be impossible for two people to defend.
On the other side of the street was a historic church. Bodies lay out front, and the building itself looked completely gutted, its doors ripped off and windows smashed. Perhaps God’s followers had grown impatient waiting for their salvation, or more likely, the infected had simply overrun the town’s survivors in a conflict not so different than the one Mason had faced in Boone. And while Jules and John might have been tempted to seek shelter in a house of the Lord, he doubted they would have been comfortable hiding in a building that was nearly falling in on itself.
A couple of hundred feet down the road was a sanitation company. Directly across from it was an antique gas station that now sold homemade jewelry, decorative tractor parts, and other small-town memorabilia. A little further up was an auto salvage yard and, across from it, a mobile home sales and service center. In the opposite direction were a U-HAUL store and a large roadside motel. There were other businesses past those, but with at least one of them injured, Mason doubted that John and Jules would have ventured much further. He glanced over his shoulder at the sun. He had half an hour to find them and get out of town—not nearly enough time to search all the possibilities.
He climbed down and did a quick walk around the RV. Bowie had crawled back out the window and was busy sniffing a puddle of something that looked like a mix of motor oil and blood. That gave Mason an idea. He hurried back around to the cab, carefully leaned in through the broken windshield, and pulled out the bloody jacket. Based on the size, it had to be John’s.
“Bowie!” he called.
Bowie hurried toward him, his claws skittering across the pavement as he rounded the corner. He stared at Mason with a confused look and then sat back on his haunches, waiting.
The idea was a long shot to be sure. Mason had no reason to believe that Bowie could track a person by their scent. Then again, he had no reason to believe that he couldn’t. Given Bowie’s level of understanding of human speech, he had obviously received professional training, likely in either the military or law enforcement. It was definitely worth a try.
Mason bent over and held the jacket up to Bowie’s nose.
“Go find John,” he said, standing up and waving the jacket around.
Bowie looked at him and yawned.
Mason squatted down and got nose to nose with the big dog. He held the jacket up between them and sniffed it a few times.
“Let’s go get him!”
Bowie’s eyes came alive with fresh excitement. He jumped to his feet and began circling the motorhome, his nose glued to the asphalt. Mason slung John’s jacket over his shoulder and hurried after the dog.
The hunt was on.
If it hadn’t been for the occasional drop of blood on the pavement, Mason might have discounted Bowie’s almost supernatural ability to follow the invisible trail left behind by John and Jules. The dog was certainly not above leading them to a discarded rotisserie chicken if his stomach told him it was time to eat.
Bowie led them north, away from the drug store and past the gas station. He turned in at the auto salvage yard, a huge outdoor facility filled with thousands of wrecked cars and trucks. The left side of the yard contained vehicles deemed worthy of parts and looked very much like a low-budget used car lot. The right half was a graveyard filled with towering piles of crushed cars, stacked twenty feet high in tight rows.
Bowie paused for a moment and then turned right into the giant stacks of crumpled metal and broken glass. Mason hurried after him, wondering how the dog could track such a faint odor when surrounded by the pungent smell of oil, paint, and steel. After another few hundred feet, Bowie stopped and began barking at the back of a faded blue Chevrolet Impala that rested beneath five other vehicles. He hopped up and began scratching at its trunk, which was tied shut from the outside with a length of electrical wire.
Mason called out, “John! Jules! Where are you?”
Almost immediately, a voice called down from above.
“Marshal, up here!”
He looked up and saw a lean, middle-aged woman standing on top of the pile of cars. It took Mason a moment to realize that it was Jules. The last time he had seen her, she seemed frightened and overwhelmed by the horrific events. But standing there with a pump shotgun in one hand and waving with the other, it was clear that she had made the necessary adjustments to survive.
“Where’s John?” he asked, fearing the worst.
She managed a small grin and pointed down at the Impala.
“I hid him in the trunk.”
“You did what?”
She started to make her way down the mound of wreckage.
“He’s hurt. Darn fool shot himself in the leg.”
Mason stepped up to the Impala, untwisted the wire, and opened the trunk. John lay inside, conscious and alert, a thin smile on his face. He cupped a Colt Commander .45 pistol with both hands.
“Marshal Raines, sir, you are a sight for sore eyes.”
Bowie propped up on the bumper and began sniffing John as if to confirm his find. When he was sure, he looked back at Mason and barked enthusiastically.
Mason leaned over and patted the dog on its side.
“You found him all right.”
Bowie wagged his tail with excitement.
“Anyone ever tell you that you got a good dog there, Marshal?”
“A time or two,” he said, extending his hand.
John stuffed the Commander into his waistband and grabbed Mason’s hand. Jules dropped to the ground a few feet away and rushed over to help. When they finally got John out, Mason took a quick look at his wound. The bullet had passed through the upper thigh. There was still a little blood oozing out, but it hadn’t nicked the femoral artery or splintered any bone—a through and through as people were apt to call it.
“Not my finest moment,” said John.
“It happens. Can you put weight on it?”
He stood up straight, wincing slightly from the pain.
“I won’t win any races, but I can walk.”
Mason did a quick assessment. Night was nearly upon them. The chances that John could hobble his way back to Mason’s truck before the town’s bloodthirsty residents
came calling seemed slim.
“We’re going to have to make a hard choice here.”
Jules stepped over to her husband, and he draped his arm across her shoulders for support.
“We’re not leaving John, even if I have to carry him the whole way,” she said.
“Understood. So, either we all try to make it or Bowie and I run for the truck.” He didn’t have to tell them that neither option was without risk.
John and Jules looked to one another and, without saying a word, seemed to arrive at the same conclusion.
“We’ll only slow you down, Marshal,” she said. “You go, and we’ll hold out here until you get back. We made it last night by hiding John in the car and my going up top. They did their awful best to get to me, but apparently they’re not the best climbers.”
He nodded. “If it worked last night, it should work for at least the next few minutes. Just keep quiet and try not to draw any undue attention.”
“Does that mean I have to get back in the trunk?” John asked, looking at the oil-stained carpet and rusty tools lining the floorboard.
Jules stared up at the tower of crushed cars.
“Are you strong enough to climb?”
He sighed. “No.”
She placed her hand on the lid of the trunk.
“Then you’ve got your answer.”
CHAPTER
5
After driving the flatbed truck a mile down Wilcox Road, Tanner and Samantha came across a small auto service center with two gas pumps out front. The hose and handle from one of the pumps had been torn away and was lying on the asphalt nearby. The other pump, however, looked to be in pretty good shape.
Three red plastic tanks sat to one side of the building, as did a bulldozer, a dump truck, and several huge piles of freshly dug dirt. It appeared as if the service station owners had been in the process of installing new fuel tanks.
“We should check for gas,” he said, easing the truck into the small parking lot.
Samantha looked over her shoulder at the road behind them.
“Okay, but let’s hurry.”
“You still feel like someone’s watching us?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess it’s just been a while since we had to deal with anything awful. It seems like we’re past due.”
“Don’t jinx us,” he said, swinging open the truck’s heavy door. “You coming?”
“Of course,” she said, grabbing her rifle.
In addition to the two pumps, the service station consisted of a repair shop and an attached auto parts store. The sign for the store was lying on the ground, white shards of broken glass all around it. Two cats lay next to the sign, staring up at them as they approached.
“Here, kitty kitty,” Samantha said, holding her hand out like she had a treat.
The smaller of the two cats, an orange tabby, immediately darted around the corner of the building. The other, a big black tomcat, rose up and hissed, refusing to give ground. Tanner stepped forward and flung it away with his boot. It tumbled along the ground, scrambled to its feet, and ran after the first cat.
“That wasn’t nice,” she said, leaning around the corner to see where they had gone.
“It was time he learned a lesson.”
“What?” she snorted. “That convicts are mean?”
“That he needs to choose his fights more carefully.”
Tanner gave the front door a tug. It rattled but didn’t open. He peeked in through the glass but could only make out a counter and a few items lying on the floor.
“I see a couple of gas cans in there. Even if they’re empty, they could come in handy.”
Samantha slung her rifle over her shoulder and wandered over to the shop’s rollup door. She reached down and pulled up on the small handle. To her surprise, the door slid up a few inches.
“Here,” she said.
Tanner hurried over with his shotgun at the ready. He motioned for her to take a step back, and then shoved the door all the way up. Inside the shop was a large pneumatic lift surrounded by tool chests and rolling carts. Beneath the lift was a rectangular pit used by service technicians to drain oil and other fluids. Dozens of tires, most of them with stickers still on their treads, were stacked along the far wall. A quart of fresh oil lay spilled on the concrete floor from where someone had driven over it.
He led them through the shop and into the small parts store. A waist-high counter was stacked full of boxes with names like Bosch, Holly, and Champion. Behind the counter were six tall shelves, most of them empty except for a few gray plastic bins. He poked around a bit, finding an assortment of car parts… spark plugs, hoses, brake pads. Great for a hobbyist wanting to build a homemade dune buggy but not much use for a post-apocalyptic traveler who hopped from car to car.
Just inside the door sat the two small gas cans he had seen from the window. He checked them. Empty. He was about to toss one to Samantha when he caught movement coming up from behind her.
“Down!” he shouted, swinging his shotgun in her direction.
Samantha dropped to her knees, fumbling to get the rifle off her shoulder.
A dark-haired woman in her early twenties hurried in through the door. She wore blue jeans and a skin tight white t-shirt with the words “Got Milk” screen printed on the front. The shirt was so thin that Tanner had trouble pulling his eyes away from the enormous nipples protruding beneath. From the worried look on the woman’s face, she was in some kind of trouble.
Tanner lowered his shotgun as Samantha scrambled over to him.
“Help me,” the woman gasped, rushing toward them.
“Easy there,” he said, holding his hand out to act as a barrier. “What’s going on?”
She never slowed her advance, and Tanner was unsure of exactly what to do. Before he knew it, she was at him, hands and breasts pressing firmly against his chest.
“Please,” she begged, “help me.”
“Help you what?”
“Help me,” Nipples repeated, pulling at his shirt. Her eyes were wide with panic, but there was an odd smile tickling the corners of her mouth.
“Lady, I don’t know what kind of crazy you’re selling, but we’re not buying.” He turned to Samantha. “Grab one of those gas cans, and let’s get out of here.”
She did as instructed, never taking her eyes or her rifle off the strange woman.
Tanner heard the quick patter of footsteps coming from outside the building. He stepped over to the window and saw two men darting away.
“You’ve got to save me,” Nipples said, pulling at his arm. “They’re after me.”
Tanner tightened his grip on the shotgun. Something didn’t feel right.
“Step the hell away from me,” he said, stiff-arming her back a few steps.
“Fine,” she spat, “be like that.” Without another word, she whirled around and marched out of the building, like she had just caught her husband in bed with their babysitter.
“What was that all about?” asked Samantha.
He shook his head. “I’m not sure yet. Sit tight while I check it out.”
As Tanner stepped out of the small repair shop, he saw Nipples hurrying toward an old yellow taxi cab that had pulled up alongside the store. The same two men he had seen running away were sitting in the front seat. He glanced over at the flatbed truck. His and Samantha’s packs were both missing.
“Hold it!” he shouted, bringing the shotgun up to his shoulder.
Nipples glanced back but continued running.
He squeezed the trigger, sending a load of buckshot over her head.
“Next one will be in your butt!”
She stopped, looking back and forth between him and the men in the taxi. Before she could make up her mind, the car sped away, heading south on Wilcox Road.
Tanner heard Samantha coming up from behind him.
“What’s going on?”
“Damn thieves sto
le our packs.”
Samantha looked over at the truck and then back at the woman who stood in the parking lot with her arms crossed.
“They’re just backpacks,” she said, putting a calming hand on Tanner’s arm.
“No,” he said, “they were more than that. They were everything we had in this godforsaken world.” He walked toward the woman, letting the shotgun slowly lower. “Darlin’, you got some explaining to do.”
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