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“Boxes of food. Bottles of water. Medical stuff. All kinds of shit.”
“How much?”
“More than we could use in, like, six months. A fuck lot more than we have,” said Neeko. “That’s why we followed him. Smelled cooking and there he is with a campfire and like six rabbits on a gas grill. Some potatoes and corn, too. God, the smells were driving me crazy.”
“Yeah? So what did you do?”
Neeko’s eyes slid away for a moment. “Two of us, and we had the edge. We both had our hatchets and all.”
Trash gave him a skeptical look. “Why didn’t you just kill the old fucker and take all that shit, man? What the actual fuck?”
“I, um,” began Neeko, licking his lips. “I wanted to scare him. Maybe rough him up some and take most of his stuff. Take the mobile home, too. Wanted to roll up here behind the wheel of that sweet ride. Guess I wanted to see the look on everyone’s faces.”
Trash laughed. “But you came limping your ass in here like a pussy. Both of you.”
“You weren’t there, man. You didn’t see what happened.”
“So . . . stop dicking around. What did happen?”
Neeko cleared his throat. “We were coming up on him from behind, each of us with our choppers out, ready for anything, and then without moving his hat or moving a muscle, he said, ‘You’re doing this wrong.’”
“What?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Fucker told you you’re doing it wrong?” Trash laughed a big donkey bray, his blond dreads dancing as his big shoulders shook. “What else he say?”
“He pointed to a stack of cans and bottles over by a tree and said we could take that and go. His gift. That’s what he called it. He said to take it and go. But if we tried anything we wouldn’t be allowed to take anything.”
“What . . . ?”
“Hand to god.”
“What’d you do?”
Neeko looked down at his bandaged hands. “Andy rushed him,” he said, referring to the other scout. “I guess I did, too, because Andy did.”
“And . . . ?”
“And I don’t know. It was all so fast. The old guy was out of the chair and was hitting us and then he took our hatchets and . . . and . . . ” He stopped and shook his head. “It was too fast, man. Before I knew what was going on we were in the woods, in a little creek. Both of us pretty banged up. The old guy was standing on the edge of the bank with our hatchets and I thought that was it, I thought we were dead as shit, but then he knelt down and chunked the blades into the mud and walked away.”
“He just up and left? Didn’t say shit?”
“Well . . . ” said Neeko, “he said something weird. He said something about we got one pass because we’re kids. Then he said that if we come back, we need to do it with manners. We need to ask nicely and shit. He said that we had to act like people and not animals or we’re not worth saving. Something like that. I don’t remember the actual words.”
Trash stood up. At seventeen he was the third oldest, but easily the biggest, with massive shoulders and arms packed with ropey muscles. His skin had a permanent peeling sunburn that never seemed able to become a tan even after all these months running through the woods and farmlands to escape the biters. Like all the fighters in the pack, he wore jeans with a flexible weave, a camo tank top and a vest with lots of pockets, as well as a belt from which hung a holstered Glock and a big hunting knife. When the pack had raided a Wal-Mart, their leader, Dahlia, had decided that everyone needed a uniform. That rig for the fighters, full camo for the scouts, all black for the security, and jeans and T-shirts for everyone else. Dahlia liked order, and Trash was cool with that.
He towered over Neeko, who was fourteen, scrawny. “Listen, fuckface,” he said, “you’re going to tell all this shit to Dahlia and then you’re going to take us all to this old asshole’s camp. I’m going to personally shove your hatchet up his ass and break off the handle.”
Neeko nodded quickly, forcing a smile, but Trash saw a look in his eyes. Equal parts fear and doubt. That bothered Trash, but it also made him really fucking mad.
— 4 —
THE SOLDIER AND THE DOG
Baskerville and I hunted the woods and streets and fields of a dying world. He was bigger now, more muscular, because I’d spent some days making armor for him. Dogs couldn’t become zombies, as far as I knew, but they could be killed. So I made him a suit of leather armor fitted out with studs and spikes and blades. He didn’t have the full rig on all the time, but enough of it so that he added extra mass to support it. He even had a helmet.
At first I thought I was going to have to muzzle him so that he didn’t bite any of the dead. If he did that then his mouth would be a danger for me to be anywhere near. But Baskerville had some kind of instinctual abhorrence to dead flesh. He wouldn’t bite any of it, and I later found out that if we came upon someone who’d been bitten but wasn’t presenting with symptoms, the dog knew it. He’d growl and stay at a distance. That saved my ass a lot of times.
