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And Tiffany was missing.
Heather, the fifth and youngest girl in the hunting party, was the only one with a working pair of binoculars. While the others talked, she sat in silence and studied the dead through the high-powered lenses. When she finally spoke, her voice was filled with doubt and fear. “They look the same as always.”
“What did you expect?” asked Laura sharply. “Little monkeys sitting on their backs, steering them?”
“No, stupid . . . but if they’re the same, then why are they moving differently?”
None of the girls had an answer to that. When it came to the dead, their security, their hunting patterns, their lives depended on a total lack of change. So many other things in their world changed all the time—friends and adults dying, exotic and dangerous animals coming through, drought ravaging the crops, bad storms. Those things pushed them to their limits. If the dead somehow changed, then that could push them over the edge.
And they all knew it.
Michelle touched Heather’s arm and in a small and fragile voice asked, “Do you see . . . ?”
She didn’t finish the question. There was no point. They all knew what she was asking.
Did Heather see Tiffany out there?
Among the dead.
Heather was a long time answering. Not because she was afraid to answer the question, but because she was being sure, making certain. She moved the glasses from face to face, lingering long enough to study the features. Most of the dead were ravaged by old wounds—the injuries, bites, or bullets that had killed them—or pocked by the diseases that had swept through the fleeing human populations after the dead rose. The flesh of any zombie older than a week would be withered to a leathery mask of wrinkles. Once, when doing this kind of meticulous search among a cluster of zombies, Heather saw a torn and twisted figure whose body lacked arms and had much exposed bone showing through the remaining flesh. She could not be sure—and she didn’t want to make sure—but in her heart she believed that it was Dolan. Or what had been left of him after the panther had done its awful work.
She let out a slow sigh.
“No,” she said with real relief, “she’s not down there.”
As relief went, it was as thin and capricious as a brief waft of cool air. It did not mean that Tiffany was still alive. All it meant was that she was not part of this group of the dead.
Suddenly all the dead turned at the same time, twisting around to the east, raising their heads as if listening to a sound; however, none of the girls could hear or see anything. The dead seemed to tremble with indecision for a moment, their fingers twitching, mouths opening and closing, and then as one they began moving toward the tree line on the east part of the valley.
“What’s going on?” gasped Michelle.
Samantha narrowed her eyes as she watched the dead move toward some very specific part of the forest. “I don’t know. They must have heard something.”
“Might be a deer,” suggested Michelle, but Samantha shook her head.
“No, they heard something, and deer don’t make enough noise to cause them all to react like that.”
The other girls nodded.
Small, strong hands gripped the tree limbs and tightened around the handles of weapons.
Then a yell split the air.
A high, piercing scream of total terror.
A millisecond later Tiffany burst from between two shaggy shrubs and came running full tilt into the field the zombies had recently vacated. Her clothes were torn and streaked with blood; she held a broken spear in one hand, and her dark hair snapped in the wind as she ran.
Michelle opened her mouth to yell out, to let Tiffany know that her friends were close by, but Samantha silenced her with a sharp gesture. Laura leaned forward and pointed.
“Oh my God . . . look!”
The darkness under the trees roiled and twisted, and then the zombies staggered out into the sunlight. All the ones who had followed whatever lure had drawn them to the east . . . and many, many more.
At least a hundred of the tattered gray figures lurched after their fleeing prey, and as if in chorus they opened their mouths to utter a moan of unbearable hunger. It filled the sky and tore another scream from Tiffany.
“We have to do something,” pleaded Michelle.
“If she makes it to the creek, she’ll be okay,” said Laura. A small ribbon of blue meandered through the valley floor. It was waist deep in places and the current, though not brisk, would nonetheless confuse the awkward feet of the mindless dead. They watched as Tiffany spotted the stream and cut right toward it, angling in the direction of the deepest section.
