And she was no longer there.

When Wesley and I showed ourselves, those eyes locked on us.

But that wasn't what made Wesley and I freeze briefly in sheer terror.

It was the sight of the desiccated thing that stood behind Lori, one bony claw-like hand gripping her shoulder.

At first I didn't recognize what it could be. First thing I thought was it had to be the most f.u.c.ked-up looking primitive I've ever seen. Its skin tone was greenish, actually tan-looking in some areas. Its limbs were withered sticks; its torso and hips looking even more skeletal save for the stomach bloat that pushed the tattered T-shirt it wore to the breaking point. I quickly surmised that at one point this primitive had to have been a punker-its hair appeared spiky, with a long blonde Mohawk running along the center. I was just recognizing this fact and noticing the multiple piercings it had on its ears, when Wesley whispered, "Heather."

My body went numb.

Now the gunshot wound to the head was clear. Left temple, big giant exit wound. Right temple, little-bitty hole, from where Wesley had shot her that night a month back, when we were in California. It was Heather all right. Dead and reanimated by the G.o.d of the New World.

She chuckled.

The other primitives turned to us and I quickly saw that they were dead, too. Some were in various states of decay; some had a stench that clung to them like a foul miasma. They didn't charge us. They stood grouped around Heather as Lori was propped up between them like a large mannequin.

"I got the n.i.g.g.e.r," Heather said...only it wasn't Heather. It was the G.o.d of the New World speaking through her. Its voice was rough, ageless, s.e.xless, and cunningly evil. "I got her, and now I'm going to kill that mongoloid half-breed baby of yours...David!"

"And I'm going to eat that b.i.t.c.h you call a wife," Lori said. Again, it wasn't Lori speaking. The voice coming from Lori's vocal chords was the G.o.d of the New World.

That broke my paralysis.

I screamed at the top of my lungs.

And opened fire.

Thirty rounds slammed into them at close range-ten feet. That kind of firepower from that close can do a lot of damage to living flesh. With the reanimated primitives, it blew them apart. Steaming corpse chunks rained down, spraying wet chunks of gunk everywhere. Wesley joined in and within seconds all of them were reduced to pieces. Heather's upper half was completely separated from her waist, her left arm blown completely off. Somehow, amid all the gunfire, she took another headshot.

If Lori wasn't dead in the brief moment I temporarily lost my mind and opened fire, she was surely killed in the first second. I only hope that if she was, she was killed instantly and didn't suffer any pain.

When my magazine ran out I ejected it and immediately slapped in a fresh one. My rifle was so hot in my hands it burned. I didn't care. I was going to kill every last one of these motherf.u.c.kers.

"Oh s.h.i.t, I don't believe it," Martin yelled. He was still at his position, on the west side of the property. I heard him fire a couple shots. "They're coming back!"

The moment he yelled that I sensed a stirring nearby. I whirled around and my heart leaped into my chest.

The dead primitives that now littered the perimeter of the house were beginning to rise.

"Oh s.h.i.t," I said. I threw the now burning rifle on the ground, drew the .45 and stormed back onto the porch, making a beeline to the house. I had to get another rifle.

From the house, Tracy was screaming. There was a burst of gunfire from inside. In front of me, a newly risen primitive dropped to the ground.

"Tracy!" I yelled.

"They're coming back!" Tracy yelled back. "What the h.e.l.l?"

In the yard and the field in front of the house, the dead primitives were coming back to life. They seemed to be possessed, as if powered by something else entirely. They pulled their mangled bodies together, shuffling forward. Some were so badly torn apart that they pulled themselves along with one arm, or with large chunks blown away.

I took one down with a clean headshot from ten yards away. From the corner of my eye I could see Tracy cowering in fear, rifle clutched in her hands, behind the threshold of the front door. The other primitives were lethargic, as if they were slowly awakening from a deep sleep. I dashed in the house and past Tracy, heading toward the gun cabinet.

Pounding footsteps came from both sides of the house, followed by staccato blasts of gunfire. Wesley and Martin. I grabbed another M4 and headed back toward the front door. "Whatever happens, keep Emily safe," I said. I spared one brief glance at Tracy, then stepped out onto the porch.

I'll admit at this point, time became a blur to me. Looking back, it was as if I'd stepped into a weird kind of alternate universe scripted by George Romero. The dead were coming back to life and my clan bravely fought them. Once again, our weaponry proved to be superior; bullets shattered bone, pulverized flesh, tore through limbs, blew heads off. The main difference in this wave of attacks was the voice of the G.o.d of the New World coming from the throats of all those primitives. And they were all saying the same thing, over and over.

"Going to kill that mongoloid baby of yours..."

"Going to eat that b.i.t.c.h you call a wife..."

"I got the n.i.g.g.e.r and now I'm gonna get that wetback f.a.ggot..."

"...gonna scalp that redskin Indian motherf.u.c.k..."

"...gonna shove Wesley's severed head up his a.s.s..."

And all I could do was yell and shoot, eject spent magazines, slap in fresh ones with one fluid motion and continue the a.s.sault. I think I reached some kind of zone where I became a killing machine.

At one point I heard Tracy yell, "Oh s.h.i.t!", followed by a heavy burst of gunfire toward the south end of the house. A moment later she came back. I could hear her behind me, guarding the interior of the house as she reloaded. "A bunch of them just tried to get in through the side," she said. "I think one of them was Lori."

There was a brief lull in the fighting. I swapped magazines and acknowledged her. "Lori's dead," I said.

Tracy said nothing.

From the west side of the house, more gunfire. "f.u.c.k!" Wesley barked.

I glanced out at the yard in front of the house. Primitives that had been killed twice were rising again for a third go-round. I raised the rifle and took careful aim at one, to see if the myths were right. A headshot took it down and I waited, not expecting much to change. Sure enough, getting shot in the head wasn't much of a deterrent. It was still moving and it began to slowly pick itself up off the ground. "s.h.i.t."

"Shooting them in the head doesn't work!" Wesley yelled. "You've got to totally pick them apart!"

"What?"

"Shoot the f.u.c.k out of 'em! I got one here that ain't got a head and it's running into the wall. Another one doesn't have any legs and it's dragging itself along the ground." There was a series of gunshots. "Now that one's missing a head and it's not going anywhere, but it's still twitching."

I heard Martin join in. It sounded like Martin had joined Wesley on his side of the property now. "It's stopped moving."

That was it. The formula for killing these things once and for all. Total disarticulation. Made sense. Tear a puppet or a doll into several pieces and you make it harder for the puppeteer to manipulate it. Still, would even that be enough? For a brief moment a hideous vision of severed limbs crawling toward the house came to me and I banished it from my mind. We had to do something!

With a new sense of purpose, I stepped forward and continued shooting, blowing further chunks out of them. We were joined by Martin, who concentrated on a ma.s.s of living-dead primitives that were stirring near the west end of the property. Tracy actually stepped outside at one point and mowed down a bunch near the south side of the house as Wesley slipped inside. I ran out of ammo and was slapping a fresh magazine inside when he came back out. With one quick movement, he lit what I now took to be a torch he was holding in his left hand. "Let's see how they like this," he said as he stepped off the porch and headed toward a line of dead and shot up primitives who were still trying to move.

The sight of the blazing torch didn't deter them. Wesley threw the torch into a ma.s.s of primitives. They immediately went up in a blazing inferno.

While our adrenaline and the edge Wesley had given us with his idea to burn the undead primitives made me feel that we might win this latest battle, I couldn't help but feel a twinge that the G.o.d of the New World was gnashing his teeth in anger at this latest turn of events. If his sights had been turned away from us in the past month while we'd been in hiding, they were surely on us now thanks to its possession of the undead primitives. I had the sense that this force, whatever it was, knew our location.

If that was the case we had to get out of our new home and do it fast. That meant killing the rest of the undead primitives by fire as quickly as possible.

"We need more of those torches!" I yelled at Martin and Tracy. Another band of undead primitives was wandering over to me and I shot them, buying another twenty seconds of time. "Let's go, let's go!"

With Wesley's a.s.sistance, Martin and Tracy brought out more torches as I kept things covered. They got the torches lit, then threw them out into the bands of primitives. I followed with volley after volley of gunshots, further scattering their limbs and heads, causing some to flee directly into infernos of their brethren. Working in concert, we managed to beat back this latest wave of primitives by the most primal weapon known to mankind: fire.

My rifle was growing hot in my hands again. The heat from the fires caused by the pyres of undead primitives were creating a susurration of heat and burning flesh. Unlike the movies, these undead did not flail around with burning limbs akimbo; if they had, they would've run into the house and we'd be in danger of losing that, too. Instead, they simply seemed to collapse right there and give up the ghost.

It looked like we were finally getting the upper hand. Those primitives who were killed and had come back were now either so blown apart by gunfire that they were flopping around limbless and/or headless, or they were burning. I felt a sudden burst of hope that the tide had turned despite the presence of the G.o.d of the New World. Perhaps if we eliminated as many of the primitives in our general area in the way we'd just killed all these-by fire-we would temporarily blind its gaze on us, allowing us to escape.

I turned to Martin. "There were a bunch along the side of the house. Make sure you get rid of them the same way. I'm going to check inside."

"Kill Alex while you're at it," Martin said grimly.

"You got it."

I stepped inside the house. Wesley was still on the porch, rifle in hand, surveying the burning landscape in front of us. At this point the fires appeared controllable, but that could change. We had to a.s.sess the rest of the perimeter and make plans to leave in a hurry if we had to.

As I stepped in the house I saw Tracy standing in the living room, looking at the stairway that led to the upper floors. She seemed frozen in fear. At first I couldn't grasp my mind around what she was seeing-a trail of red that ran up the stairs. I barely noticed Alex's continued satanic-sounding groans behind his gag when Tracy suddenly broke out of her paralysis. "Oh my G.o.d, Emily!"

"What?" I asked.

Just then, Emily screamed.

And then I knew.

Heather.

Twenty One My heart was in my throat as Tracy and I ran up the stairs.

Emily was screaming. It was the most awful, most heart-wrenching scream I'd ever heard. It filled me with terror and despair. It drove me to fury.

As we burst into our wing of the house I saw that trail of red slime traverse the sitting room into our bedroom. Emily was screaming at the top of her lungs.

Tracy entered the bedroom first, but I wasn't far behind.

It was at that moment the floodlights outside went out.

I saw Tracy flip the light switch on. The bedroom light failed to go on.

I cursed under my breath.

Emily continued to scream.

"Emily!" I yelled.

If it hadn't been for the moonlight filtering in through the open window, we wouldn't have had any light to see by. As it was, the sight that greeted us was awful and froze my heart in terror.

Heather had dragged herself into the house and up the stairs by pulling herself along the floor with her remaining arm. Her severed torso left trails of gore along the floor. Her head lolled back on a neck that was partly blown-out from a gunshot wound, partly from rot. How she managed to drag herself this far I have no idea, but she was here, and she'd not only managed to pull herself up on the bed, she was grinning at Emily the way a cat will stare down a mouse. Emily was cowering against the head of the bed, totally oblivious that we were even there. With the way she was positioned, neither Tracy nor I had a clear shot.

I took a quick step to my right, then launched myself at Heather just as she growled and, propelling herself forward with her arm, lunged at Emily.

I knocked Heather off the bed, landing on top of her. I felt a fury of blind rage and hate envelop me as we crashed to the floor. Heather growled, her voice gravelly and evil, and shoved me off. Despite being a rotting corpse, she was strong-obviously the power of the G.o.d of the New World was running strong in her. She grabbed the mattress and began pulling herself up on the bed as I saw Tracy rush over and scoop Emily up in her arms.

"Aaaarrrrrrhhhh!" Heather growled as she clambered lizard-like up the bed.

Tracy had a firm grasp on Emily, who was still screaming and trying to escape now. She was in a fight-or-flight mode and was so worked up she didn't know who Tracy was. Tracy hauled her off the bed and crept along the outer wall of the house by the window, circling the bed, trying to stay as far away from Heather as possible. Heather tracked them with her ravaged face and prepared to launch herself at them again.

I heaved myself up and with one swift motion brought the barrel of the M4 down on her back and fired. A volley of shots tore through her. Empty casings pinged off the floor, raining around the room. Tracy dropped her rifle and shielded Emily by covering her head and face with her arms.

And still, Heather kept moving. I circled the bed, getting a better aim at her head, my backstop clear and free now. I shot her again, blowing her head apart. It looked like a bomb blowing up inside a carved out pumpkin. Heather dropped to the bed and I felt the rage of that demon, the G.o.d of the New World, swirl around me in its white-hot hate.

Stumbling footsteps pounded up the stairs and a moment later Martin and Wesley were in the room. I raised my hand up to them; I didn't need them shooting into the room indiscriminately. "We're covered."

"Oh my G.o.d," Wesley said as he saw the twitching remains of Heather on the bed.

Martin went ashen.

Emily was still screaming. She was crying now, too. She hid her face from us, burying it in the hollow of Tracy's throat. "Is it dead?" Tracy asked.

I took a step forward. What remained of Heather finally stopped moving.

"It is now," I said.

"It'll come back, though," Wesley said. "We need to destroy it for good."

"How are we going to do that?" I asked.

"Give me a hand. We'll throw it outside and into one of those fires."

I was apprehensive, but did it. I don't know how I made it through without throwing up. Touching what was left of Heather was too terrible, so traumatic, that I was on the verge of panic as I helped Wesley carry her remains through the house then into one of four fires that were burning outside.

As we threw Heather's corpse into the flames I was struck by the fact that even though we'd won this battle, the overall fight was not over. There were literally billions of these things left, scattered all over the world. Were some of them even now heading our way in a concerted effort, guided by the G.o.d of the New World, set to destroy us?

"We're going to have to get out of here," I said.

"I know," Wesley answered.

There was another volley of gunshots from inside and my heart leaped in my chest again. I started toward the house and then Martin called out from inside. "It's okay. Just taking care of Alex."

Still, the very idea that we were in imminent danger was distressing to me. I entered the house and helped Martin carry Alex's now mutilated remains outside quickly-he'd been decapitated by gunfire and I simply grabbed his head by the hair and carried that part of him out (that wasn't so bad, actually).

"Are there any more out there that aren't burning?" I asked Wesley.

"I don't know," Wesley admitted. "Most of them eventually gathered here in the front, but there are those at the side unaccounted for."

"I'll stand watch while you get some more torches," I said. I reloaded my rifle as I talked. "You and Martin take care of them. I need to check on my family."

Wesley nodded and headed inside for more torches. Martin joined me and I explained to him what was going on. We stood guard on the porch until Wesley came back out bearing two torches. He got one lit, handed the other to Martin, who quickly got his ablaze. Then, they set off.

I did a quick sweep of the ground floor of the house and then darted upstairs.

Tracy had taken Emily to the opposite wing of the house, where Wesley had slept. She sat on Wesley's bed and cradled our daughter in her arms, doing her best to soothe her. Emily was sobbing hoa.r.s.ely now and she was coughing. Her hair was sweaty, hanging in her eyes in wet tangles. I sat down next to them and felt helpless. "Everything's okay now, honey."

Emily could only cry uncontrollably.