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“Powder burns,” Riot said. “She was firing a gun. Look at all the shell casings around her. She died hard.”
They moved among the dead, seeing more evidence of the fight and what had killed each of these people. Head or spine trauma in every case. Any who’d died in other ways would have turned to zoms long before now. But there was something strange about some of the corpses.
“Hey,” said Morgie, pointing to the face of a short, heavy Asian man. “Look at his face.”
/> “It’s a burn,” said Riot. “So what? Could have been from that rain.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “We both got soaked. It hurt and all, but it didn’t do this to us.” He pointed to a white woman wearing camo pants and a T-shirt with similar burns on her face, neck, and upper arms. “See? And that woman over there? Same burns. And this big guy right here.”
“Yeah, I see.”
“You know what I’m not seeing? Burns like that on any of the zoms. Not the ones that look like they zommed out a long time ago.”
“You’re right,” said Riot. “It’s only on people who look like they died in this fight.”
They moved through the battlefield again, this time looking for the same kinds of burns, and finding them on nearly every person. Some extensive, and others only a little.
“Doesn’t look like the burns happened during the fight, though,” said Morgie. “Nobody’s clothes are singed.”
“Whatever it is,” said Riot, backing away, “I don’t like it. Let’s get the heck out of here.”
33
THEY REACHED THE TOWN OF Schulenburg that night and slept safely but uneasily in the storeroom of the Potter Country Store. They’d hoped to find some old, packaged food that hadn’t been looted, but the store looked to have been stripped down to bare shelves and floorboards. They pushed empty refrigerated-food cases in front of the doors, ate a meal of cold rabbit Riot had killed and smoked days before, and sat up late, both of them unable to sleep.
Morgie didn’t start any conversation but willed Riot to say something. After two hours of silence, she said, “Ain’t a soul in this town. Not one.”
“I know.”
“You got any theories on that?”
Morgie shrugged, then realized she couldn’t see that in the utter darkness of the locked office. “They didn’t all wander off,” he said. “Sign outside town said the population before the plague was over twenty-eight hundred. Some of them would have been living people who got out. Some would have zommed out and gone wandering off. But there should still be a bunch here, roaming around town or just standing and waiting. You thinking ravagers, maybe?”
Riot frowned. “Maybe. Or disease. Or it could have been reapers. We—I mean, they had strike teams this far east.”
Something occurred to Morgie. “You know, these ravager guys seem to be doing just about the same thing the reapers did. You think there’s some kind of connection?”
Riot thought about it. “I… don’t really know. Saint John and my mom had a lot of plots going on. They had scouts everywhere. Who knows what they were cooking up?”
“Yeah,” said Morgie, “but Night Army and Night Church… ? Two big armies using zoms as shock troops? Come on…”
Riot stared at him for a while, then shivered and looked away.
Eventually they fell asleep. In Morgie’s dreams the zoms had somehow shrunk down to the size of ants, and in the middle of the night they crept in through his ears and nostrils and open mouth. Once there, they began eating him from the inside out. He could feel the thousands of tiny mouths biting him, tearing at his veins and muscle tissue and tendons. And he could feel the infection of their bites flooding through his blood, polluting him, killing him without the mercy of permanent death.
He woke in absolute darkness, slapping at his skin with furious hands, gasping and on the very edge of screaming. Then he realized it was a dream and shoved a fist into his mouth to stifle the shriek.
Morgie sat there, quivering, sweating, telling himself that it was only a dream. Even though it felt like something far more real.
34
“LET’S GET OUT OF HERE,” muttered Riot as they finished packing the next morning. “This whole place gives me the heebie-jeebies. I’d be right happy to lose this town in my rearview.”
“Yeah,” Morgie agreed as he bent to pick up his gear. He suddenly turned aside as a massive belch erupted from his stomach. It seemed to come out of nowhere, and was so big it actually hurt. “Oh jeez… I’m so sorry…”
Riot laughed. “Wow. They could probably hear that all the way back home.”
Morgie mumbled more apologies as his face flushed with embarrassment.
