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The man on the ground drew his fingers away from the pistol.
“Good choice,” said Rachael.
— 10 —
THE SOLDIER AND THE DOG
Baskerville and I went looking for Old Man Church.
Hope is such a fragile and dangerous thing, and I almost did not want to have it rekindled in my chest. I’d hoped to find Junie and Ethan at the farm. Top and Bunny had hoped to find their families, too. I don’t know if they ever did, or if they ever made it to the base in Neva
da. If so, they probably thought I was dead after all these months. They’d have given up hope on me.
Now there was the chance, however slim or unlikely, that Mr. Church was alive and somewhere near here. Alive and doing what he did, which was to impose order on chaos.
Once upon a time Church had been a field operator like me. Well, if any of the many tall tales about him were true, then not really like me. He was stranger, smarter, more dangerous—and more capable. He had been the adult in any room, the alpha of any gathering, even when he was among a few dozen SpecOps jocks. You couldn’t really imagine him as a child any more than you could imagine him dead. He was more like a force of nature than a person.
Am I exaggerating? No, I really don’t think so. The phrase “larger than life” kind of defines him. Christ knows how many times I’d wondered what he’d been doing when Lucifer 113 got loose. If he hadn’t been infected, then it was no surprise at all that he was still working to save the world. Or at least as much of it as he could. Who knows, maybe he’s the one who decided that Asheville was the rally point. That wouldn’t surprise me even a little bit.
The thing is, he actually was old. He was sixty-something when I met him, and I was in my early thirties at the time. Now he had to be pushing eighty. How much fight could there be left in him?
I had to find out.
So, with my dog running beside me, we followed trail after trail, mostly following the path Abdul’s team had taken. It was clear enough because of the tread-marks from their shoes. Abdul’s Doc Marten’s, and a mix of combat soles and Timberlands worn by his guys. Easy.
By noon the next day I found a small pack of travelers walking down the center of a blacktop that was cracked and choked with weeds. Eleven of them, ranging from a woman of seventy down to a toddler in a stroller. They saw me coming and one of them pulled out a hunting bow and goddamn near killed me, but I stopped and put my hands up.
“Not looking for trouble,” I called. “Captain Ledger, U.S. army. Looking for my unit.” Again, a useful lie.
“Lose the hardware,” called the old lady.
“Not a chance,” I said, “but we can talk from here if you like.” We were about seventy feet apart.
“What do you want?” she demanded. “We got no rations to share.”
“Don’t need any,” I said, “but tell you what—how ’bout I go into those woods and come back with dinner? Then maybe we can we have a conversation that doesn’t involve yelling or gratuitious violence?”
They cut looks at the surrounding woods. The old lady nodded. “Roger here is a darn fine shot. You try anything and he will put you and your dog down.”
The guy with the bow stood rock steady and the arrow was aimed at my chest. I did not doubt what the old lady said. So, I walked backward a dozen paces, then turned my back to them and angled toward the woods. Baskerville lingered for a moment, maybe daring the archer to shoot. Have to admit I was sweating it a bit because getting an arrow in the back is a lot less fun than it sounds.
The area I’d come through was farmland and there were plenty of animals out there. I’d seen sheep grazing on wildflowers and clover about a mile to the east, and I went that way. These animals were born and bred on these farms and even though they were destined for somebody’s plate before the dead rose, they weren’t able to grasp the concept of freedom. Half the milk cows out here had already died because they’d been bred to be totally dependent on humans to feed and tend them. Sure, some of the bulls had taken down a fair number of zombies, but they’d fallen, too.
Not that sheep were smarter, but they didn’t need to be milked. They simply grazed, pooped, fucked, slept, and did the same day after day. They weren’t hard to find. I picked one that was about a hundred and fifty pounds and literally walked right up to it and killed the animal with my sword. It barely even noticed me. Made me wonder how they had not been eaten already by the dead, but maybe they—like Baskerville—could smell them and move away. Not sure; didn’t care.
I popped my knife, bled it to reduce the weight, and then hoisted it across my shoulders and humped it back. That wasn’t easy and I could feel every one of my years and every inch of scar tissue by the time I found the road. The small caravan had moved on, but I figured they would and picked a spot ahead of where they might be. Picked well, too, because I stepped out of the woods less than a quarter mile ahead of them on a straight patch of road.
They stopped and gaped at me. I grinned back, and Baskerville gave a snooty little whuff. No one shot me with an arrow.
— 11 —
DAHLIA AND THE PACK
Dahlia lowered her gun.
The old man gave a single nod of approval. He walked over to her and held out his hand, and Dahlia gave him the gun. He removed the magazine, ejected the shell, caught it, returned it to the mag, replaced the magazine itself, and put the pistol in his pocket. She watched with a strange fascination.
Around them, the strike team groaned their way back to awareness. The old man moved through the small clearing where the fight took place. He gathered up weapons, patted everyone down, placed the weapons out of sight behind a fallen log, and then did a second check on each. He helped them sit up, felt pulses and looked into eyes. He flicked a knife out of somewhere—Dahlia never saw where—and cut a strip from Slow Dog’s sleeve, folded it into a compress, and showed the big young man how to hold it to stanch the bleeding. Then he went to Trash, who was blinking in stupid uncertainty as to what had happened, pulled him to his feet and probed the fighter’s skull.
