Who knew?

Who cared?

Lance raised the AR-10 and pressed it into his shoulder. As he zeroed in, A-Rab shot off a chirping whistle so that the rest of the team would know they'd found movement. Lance pulled the weapon tighter into his shoulder and prepared to fire.

From the same place behind the house, another one of the undead shuffled out behind the first. This one wore a business suit and his chest was caved in. The wound looked semi-circular in shape like it had been made by a car's steering wheel.

A-Rab saw the second zombie and b.u.mped his elbow into Lance's side.

"Do it, Lance," he whispered. "I got ten bucks says you can't do that s.h.i.t a second time."

"Ten bucks, eh?" Lance considered the proposition from behind the sights of his weapon. "You're on."

Lance pulled the rifle slightly tighter and did his best to keep it still. He took in a deep breath and held it, waiting. He slid his fingertips over the knurling on the thin, curling bit of metal and gently caressed the trigger.

His patience was soon rewarded as the second zombie stepped up just behind the first. Lance let out his breath in a soft sigh and gently squeezed.

The first of the .300 Remington Short Ultra Magnum rounds screamed out from the barrel of the AR-10. It was immediately followed by three more in a staccato burst. The bullets tore through the atmosphere, cutting a swath through humid air and shimmering sunlight. For a microsecond, all sound ceased: the wind halted, the trees went motionless, even the birds stopped their song. As the reports from the gun echoed off into the distance, a heavy and completed silence took its place.

It was in that quiet moment that Lance's initial bullet hit the first zombie just to the left of its nose. As the bone and muscle were torn away, the second and third bullets slapped into the hamburger that had, seconds earlier, been the thing's face and blew it out the back. Now, with a workable pathway made through the zombie's head, the fourth bullet flew through the carnage and struck the second zombie square in the forehead.

Both of the reanimated dead teetered and then fell like trees; one to the left, one to the right.

"Sonuvab.i.t.c.h!" A-Rab sighed.

"That'll be ten bucks, Caliph," Lance said with a wink.

At the sound of the gunshots, Masterson and Bruce stood up and headed 'round the back of the house at a quick clip. They figured that the sound would lure any remaining dead who were behind the house toward the left. It was their plan to come about from the right and flank them.

Ray Dog and Slider took the shots as a sign that it was Go Time and walked toward the front door with a deadly purpose. Slider took up a position to the side of the door and Ray Dog stopped once he got to the door mat.

"Should we knock?" The Dog said with an easy, wide grin.

Slider shook his head and laughed.

Ray Dog raised one of his size fifteen boots and kicked the door off of its hinges.

"Knock, knock!"

Just inside, coming out of the family room and into the foyer, was a reanimated woman. She looked roughly forty or so, hair tied tight at the back of her head in a haphazard bun. The front of her dress was torn and b.l.o.o.d.y. A large gash extended from her throat and angled down into her dress. From beneath the hem of her dress, an oily loop of intestine dragged forgotten behind her, leaving a deep crimson snail trail in its wake.

Suddenly, from behind the house, another series of gunshots were heard. By the sound of it, it was Masterson's Bushmaster. The short staccato sound of pops was heard and then the echo trailed off across the valley. The dead woman turned, distracted by the sound.

The Dog gave a sharp whistle, dragging back the attention of the thing before him. For a second, they stood staring at one another and then the woman opened her mouth and bared her teeth. He fired a quick burst with the M-60 and obliterated both the dead woman and most of the hallway. Splinters of wood, stucco, and body parts were thrown violently into the air. When the smoke cleared, the place looked as if The Wild Bunch had been there.

"Clear!" Ray Dog shouted.

"Ya think?!?" Slider said still laughing.

From behind the house came the other's responses.

"Clear!" shouted Masterson.

"Clear!" yelled A-Rab.

Slider entered the front door and ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Ray Dog watched as he disappeared at the top of the staircase. Soon enough, a shotgun blast echoed through the building.

"Clear!" came Slider's shout from upstairs.

Minutes later, the squad regrouped on the porch outside the shattered front door.

"Ok," Masterson said, running his hand over his sweaty scalp. "no one get comfortable. We have one more structure to check."

They all looked further up the small hill, which angled up twenty or so yards to the right and back of the house. It was there that the barn stood waiting.

"We do this just like we always do, Gentlemen" he said. "Secure the perimeter, and then we compromise the front door. Anything Dead moves, if it even so much as wiggles, cap it."

The men nodded and shouldered their weapons. As a group, they headed up toward the barn at a trot. The road was more dirt driveway than real road with deep furrows from a tractor's tires cut into the hard ground. Years of repeated travel back and forth from the barn to the field had left some deep scars on the earth.

Several hundred yards away from the barn, Bruce detected more movement.

"I got a coupla more meatheads over here," he said. "One by the double doors at the front. One on the left."

Masterson raised a scarred pair of binoculars and aimed them toward the barn. In the lenses, he could see that the building was fairly large and painted in a stereotypical red with a set of double doors in the front. Above them was another set of doors with a winch suspended over it by a post. No doubt it was where they loaded hay and feed once upon a time. The building looked exactly like what it was: a barn. Even from this distance, the smell of straw was sweet and overpowering.

Standing in front of the doors were two more zombies: a man and a young girl. The guy was in his mid-fifties with gray hair and a severe beer belly. He was missing his left hand and forearm and there were huge, raking tears down his back. The girl was barely out of high school with short brown hair cut in a bob. She had no visible causes of death. Under the hot sun their skin appeared to be discolored with large blackened patches of flesh that looked bruised and rotting.

There was a slight family resemblance between the two. So much so that Lance thought maybe they'd once been Father and Daughter. Maybe not. It didn't matter. Now, they were hungry, disease-ridden predators and they were about to have their heads aggressively ventilated.

That's just the way things were.

The team headed up the roadway with eyes continuing to scour the landscape and their guns held up and at the ready. It wouldn't do anybody any good if they became too focused on what lay in front of them and forgot all about what might be hidden in the brush to their left or right.

Once they'd gotten to within a dozen or so yards from the barn, the two zombies caught the squad's scent on the wind. The man whirled around and snarled. He headed toward them at a speed that was faster than any of them thought possible. He had his weight and the fact that he was heading downhill on his side. No matter... one thing was clear.

The fat boy could run.

The girl stumbled along behind him like a r.e.t.a.r.ded puppy. Her arms swayed back and forth like pendulums as she ran. From the look of things, she'd already followed him to the Gates of h.e.l.l and beyond. Following along behind him to go after a bit of food now was a given.

Bruce stepped forward and, without prompting, cut them down with the MP5. They both did a sort of herky-jerky dance as the spray of bullets tore through them and splintered the barn behind. Finally, several slugs slapped into the meat of their faces, blowing the tops and sides of their heads into the air like divots.

"Area clear, Sir!" Bruce said with a smirk as he dutifully stepped back in line.

"Good work, Son," Masterson said, patting the young man on the back. "We'll need to recon the interior and get our a.s.ses on to the next homestead down the road."

The group walked over to the double barn doors together, stepping over the now still bodies of the fat guy and the girl, and noticed the padlock that had been put in place on the door just as it had been on the shed. Slider picked up the lock and jerked on it.

"f.u.c.k," Slider exclaimed, letting it fall back in place with a sharp banging sound. "The place is locked up tight. Somebody had enough time to secure the joint before they took off."

"Or got themselves ate up," The Dog said under his breath.

"Maybe that was them up at the house," Lance suggested.

They all looked back at the farmhouse they'd just secured. From this distance, they could make out the shattered front door hanging from its hinges. A sudden breeze whistled through the eaves.

"Ah, who gives a f.u.c.k?" A-Rab said, sounding disgusted. He stepped forward and unceremoniously shot the lock off.

"What?" he said wryly and shrugged his shoulders. "None of yaz ever hear of the Gordian Knot?"

The pair of doors was thrown open and the group stepped back to give themselves some fighting room should anything be waiting just inside. Oddly, no livestock came running out. It appeared as if the barn were empty; inside lay nothing but the inky darkness. On both sides, stalls that looked as if they'd once housed horses or sheep or some other kind of livestock were lined up. The place smelled like sweet hay mixed with the rich odor of manure.

The men fanned out and secured each of the stalls one by one.

"Looks empty, Sarge," Lance said.

"Well, those dumbf.u.c.ks outside were after something," Masterson said. "Slider, why don't you take the Mossberg and check out the loft upstairs? The rest of you, check your magazines and reload."

"I'm on it," Slider said and he disappeared like a wraith into the shadows.

The squad pulled off their packs with a collective groan and set to swapping out their old magazines for fresh ones. No one had to tell them what it meant to be caught by The Dead with only a half-full weapon. Once the hardware was reloaded, they refilled their spent magazines from the ammo in their packs.

Soon, a shout from over their heads echoed through the empty barn.

"Nothing up here, Sarge. I did find somebody's stash of old Playboys though." There was a long pause and then, "h.e.l.looooooo, Miss October."

"Ok, fine. Leave the stroke books and get back down here. We'll take fifteen to rest and finish reloading before we head off for the next farm."

Slider rejoined the men after a couple of minutes and the group soon fell into a congenial conversation.

"Look," Ray Dog said to Slider. "I ain't sayin' s.h.i.t 'bout the effectiveness of your G.o.dd.a.m.n shotgun, you simple Jersey f.u.c.k. I'm only sayin' you shouldn't be steppin' up and standin' in front of my '60."

"Will youse all listen to this f.u.c.kin' mulignane?"

"Careful with that mulignane s.h.i.t, Cuz, or I'm gonna have to hang my size fifteens in your lily white a.s.s."

The team laughed, having been longtime by-standers to this ongoing debate. Ray Dog was always complaining about having to check his fire because Slider would step into his firing line time and time again. He said Slider did it to take credit for his kills. Slider's position was that The Dog thought of his weapon in the same way that he thought of his d.i.c.k-big, black and mighty deadly. He felt he needed to show a little of what a white boy could do to help him out.

The dispute had been going on for as long as they'd been on the patrol.

As the two men argued and the rest of the squad listened amusedly, a small almost invisible door moved slightly on its hinges in the shadows at the back of the barn. It wasn't anything anyone would have noticed unless they'd been looking right at it, but it did indeed move.

"Listen, White Bread, all I'm sayin' is that if you ain't careful, you're going to get the smoking end of this b.i.t.c.h straight in the a.s.s."

Again, the door shifted. This time though, it came off the door frame and opened slightly. Over the din of the men's conversation, no one noticed or heard a thing.

Except Masterson.

The squad leader cleared his throat suddenly, and made a circular motion with his finger that told the men to continue talking. The men immediately raised their weapons and looked around in response. Masterson raised a finger and pointed into the shadows at the back of the barn.

"s.h.i.t, man, you know my a.s.s is exit only," said Slider, continuing the ruse, as they all caught on to what was going down.

The small door continued to slowly swing open and deep in the shadows four dirty fingers slowly slid into view. As one, the team snapped their weapons to a firing position and waited for Masterson to give the go-ahead.

An older man slowly stepped out from behind the door. His face was smudged with dirt and sweat, his clothes matted with a dark oily substance. His expression was tired and his skin sallow. His cheekbones jutted out and gave him the appearance of someone who hadn't eaten in days, maybe weeks. He looked like something out of Auschwitz as he raised his eyes to meet Masterson's and slowly opened his mouth, yellow teeth flashing in the half-light.

Just as Masterson gave the signal to fire, Lance saw that the man's pupils were clear and unclouded by Death.

"Dumb f.u.c.ks," shouted Masterson. "Smoke 'em!"

Before Lance could say anything, the other five men opened fire. Bullets tore their way through the old guy and splintered the wood of the wall and door. Huge holes opened up in the wall, which only made the other rounds' pa.s.sage to whatever lay beyond all that much easier. The Mossberg blew pizza pan-sized craters in the wall while the M-60, the SAW, and the smaller rifles threw up a hailstorm of metal. The sound inside the enclosed barn was deafening and as the MP-5 and the Bushmaster all fell on empty, the team heard Lance shouting.

"Wait! Wait! Wait!" he screamed, spittle flying from his lips. "Ohhh, you stupid motherf.u.c.kers! You stupid, stupid motherf.u.c.kers!"

The men all looked around, dumbfounded.

"He wasn't f.u.c.king dead, man!" Lance cried out. "He wasn't f.u.c.king dead!"

With the set of double doors in the front open and the Volkswagen-sized hole now blown in the rear, the wind soon blew the thick gunpowder smoke clear. The men all stood trying to sort out what the f.u.c.k Lance's trip was.

"Say wha...?" Ray Dog questioned now looking small and uncertain somehow.

Lance ran up to the bullet-decimated wall and bent to check the man's already rapidly cooling body. He waved his arm in an attempt to clear a bit more of the choking smoke.

"This guy wasn't one of Them, you f.u.c.king a.s.sholes!" He ran his hand over his face, pulling his features into distortion. His eyes quickly welled up with tears as he cried out, "Oh, f.u.c.k... oh, G.o.d!"

Masterson stepped over to the now dead man and bent to check to see if what Lance was saying was true. They all felt their hearts sink when they saw the look that pa.s.sed over his face.

Lance stood up and continued rubbing his face with his hands.

"Oh, G.o.d..." he cried. "You stupid f.u.c.kin' f.u.c.ks!"

He turned and kicked at the last remaining boards and stepped into the area beyond the shattered door. The place looked like the OK Corral. Bullet holes and splintered wood were everywhere.

Lance knelt down, trying to get beneath the last of the smoke. He coughed and continued to fan his hand back and forth in an effort to try and see more clearly. As the smoke finally dissipated, what he saw behind the obliterated wall was something that would haunt him until the day he died.

Lying on the floor were what was left of the dead man's family: a woman about the same age as he'd been, a girl who looked to be about seventeen, a boy who was twelve if he was a day, and a smaller kid who couldn't have been more than eight. The artillery had torn them into bits. Large, gaping wounds still bled and at even the most cursory of glances, it was evident that they were now just as dead as their patriarch.

Despite his best efforts to control his rising nausea, Lance vomited into the hay.

For a long time, no one spoke. Masterson walked away from the group and sat on some bales of hay, looking pale and fl.u.s.tered. He sat there for a long time and looked deep in thought as he regained control and considered all of the possible ramifications of this little f.u.c.k-up.

Finally, Masterson spoke up as he stood and began gathering his gear, "This place is clear, Gentlemen. We report it as such."

"Sarge," Lance shouted, "we just murdered these people!"

"Casualties of war, Son," Masterson said and the words sounded as if they tasted bitter in his mouth. "You ladies are to finish reloading. We move on to the next ranch in five."

The men all stood around and looked confused and a bit repulsed. Shooting zombies was one thing. This... This was something else entirely.