"You let him run the mounted gun then?"

"Oh," Ray says with a smile. "It's out of ammo. We just told him to stand up there and look like he meant business."

Opie knows we're talking about him and heads off towards the bath house. "Where'd you find him?"

"Dawn and Donna found him. He was holed up in some house they went into when we were out looking for supplies. They said it looked like he'd had a pretty tough time of it. Like I said, he didn't say much but the speculation is that he had to kill off his family. There was a guy in there with an axe in his head. D & D had to put down a couple more when they came in the house. Opie was barricaded in a bathroom." Ray sighs heavily and crosses his arm. "It's the only problem with this whole scenario, that kind of s.h.i.t. f.u.c.ks people up. You know if it'd just been the rock from outer s.p.a.ce hitting in the ocean and then... you know... well, I guess that would have been bad for the survivors too. But having to kill off your own family. That's gotta be the toughest row to hoe."

As Ray talks, I can't help but look at the tractor. What are the odds of having this conversation with that f.u.c.king thing sitting there? Coincidence is some funny s.h.i.t.

"Looks like he's bunking at my house tonight," I tell Ray. "Gonna go check on him."

"Yeah, sure man. I'm going to see if we can get everybody fed. Lots of stuff in the back of the truck to unload too. We've hit every house we could in the area trying to stock up on stuff. And we've got tons of stuff from that school. Yellow cling peaches. Cheese-food. Beans. We just took everything. Figure we might be in here for a while."

I open the door to the bath house and Opie is sitting at the table by the window. He isn't eating or drinking or going through my stuff. He just sits. And stares.

I lean the AR-15 up against the wall next to the little Ruger .22. I'm soaked to the bone and the rain is still coming down hard. I take off my outer layer of clothing and my wet shoes and socks. "You hungry?"

Opie shakes his head no.

"When's the last time you ate something?"

He shrugs his shoulders.

I pick up my backpack and rifle through the insides. "Let's see... beef stew. That tastes like b.u.t.t. Spaghetti, not much better. I've got some mac'n cheese here. You like mac'n cheese?" He doesn't move. "Well, I guess that's a dumb question, huh? Everybody loves mac'n cheese." I pour some water out of my canteen into a pot on the wood stove. "It'll take a while to get heated up. There's a bathtub in the back room there. I'm gonna go run you a bath. Which sounds a little weird I'm guessing cuz who the h.e.l.l am I and who the h.e.l.l gets to take a bath anymore? But there's a lock on the door. n.o.body will bother you. You can strip down, throw your clothes out here, let them dry a while. We'll get ya cleaned up and fed and you'll feel a little less miserable, I reckon."

Opie continues to look at the window as I move to the back room to pour him a bath. I throw the stopper in the bottom and kick the faucets on. This is what Mom used to do for me. It was the only thing that made me feel better. After Dad's accident on the tractor, I just couldn't get warm again. Not for a long time. But floating in the tub was like crawling back in the womb I guess. Floating warm and safe. At least I could hide from the world after mine blew up. This poor f.u.c.king kid has to live with strangers now and fight for his life every day. There's bad luck, bad decisions and then there's s.h.i.t like this.

The tub is half full but the water is going cold. It's a decent system for what it is but hot water is limited. I figure he'll be gone when I go in the other room anyway.

When I walk out, he's not at the table anymore. He's standing by my .22 running his thumb over the end of the barrel. He takes his hand away when I walk in. "You gotta gun?"

He shakes his head no.

"Know how to shoot?"

Again, no.

"Well, first things first, I guess. Hop in there, take a nice long soak. Supper'll be ready when you get out. Then we can talk about getting you your own gun. Show you how to use it. When to use it. What to use it on."

He looks at me for the first time since I've come in the room. It might be the first time that he's actually looked at me since this morning when he had the big .50 aimed at my head. He doesn't have a clue how much alike we are. "Off ya go," I point at the door. "Toss your jeans and shirt out here and I'll put'em on the wood burner. Being wet all the time like this doesn't help a G.o.dd.a.m.ned thing."

He walks slowly to the door and begins unb.u.t.toning his shirt. "Thanks," he says very quietly.

As he shuts the door to the room with the bathtub, the outer door on the shed opens. The two women from Ray's group, Dawn and Donna, walk in looking around the room. "Oh, sorry," says the taller brunette woman. "We're looking for..."

"He's getting in the bathtub. Gonna feed him some supper when he gets out."

The taller woman gives a sigh of relief, "Thank you. He's..."

I wave off the rest of what she wants to tell me. I don't need to know. Don't wanna know. "He'll be alright."

The two women come in and sit down at the table. They're both wearing canvas coveralls and wool hats. The taller one is big boned but pretty. The shorter one has a hooked nose and lighter colored hair. She's not nearly as pretty as the big girl. "I'm Donna," says the big one. "And this is my partner, Dawn."

I shake their hands. "Billy." They look like homeless people. We all look like homeless people. Donna, the big one, carries a pump shotgun and a pistol on her belt. Dawn, the little one, has a high powered rifle with a scope. Armed homeless people. We all look like really well armed homeless people.

"This is where we were staying before we went out to scavenge," Big Donna says. I don't offer to move out or apologize for taking their spot. "I guess we'll all be a little tight for quarters for a while."

I pour myself a little shot of bourbon and glance back at the stove to see if the water has gotten hot yet. "We can all fit out here. At least to sleep anyway. There are cots down in the bunker, we can set up a couple for you two, one for Opie."

"Eddie," Little Dawn says, "his name is Eddie. Ray just can't remember it."

"Eddie," I repeat. "Well, Karen's with me and I'm sure the five of us can camp out here. The rest should fit in the main house." I lean forward in my chair and try to ignore the fact that I just said Karen was with me. I clear my throat and think about how to ask what I want to know. "So," I start and take out a cigarette, "I'm trying to figure out what's going on here. And a lot of it just doesn't add up. So you came here and then everybody left to go look for supplies. That seems kind of dumb."

Big Donna smiles, "Yeah, no kidding. We all thought so too. But n.o.body wanted to stay behind. Didn't trust the others, didn't trust that they'd come back, didn't trust anyone enough to leave them here. Seems like n.o.body is around long enough to get to know."

"And Chuck and Bob... they said something about they were involved with hanging those Zed in the tree down at the end of the road? What the f.u.c.k is all that about?"

Little Dawn shrugs. "Dunno. It was Ray's idea. Some kind of Old Testament sacrifice to G.o.d or something. It didn't make a lot of sense to us. But then again, there was lots of crazy stuff like that in the bible. Mayans did it. I guess if you're grasping at straws, hanging a bunch of zombies in a tree doesn't seem so crazy maybe."

"Tell me about Ray. He alright?" It suddenly seems pointless to be asking people I don't know about someone else I don't know. For all I know, I 'm going to wake up on a spit tomorrow.

"We haven't known any of them very long," Big Donna says and helps herself to a short gla.s.s of my bourbon. "We joined up with them at the church when our car ran out of gas. We thought since they were in a church... you know, they'd be decent people."

Little Dawn chimes in, "I said it was a big gamble. I told Donna that we shouldn't tell them we were a couple right away. Christians are just as liable to murder you because they think G.o.d wants them to as for any other reason. So we played it cool for a while. But n.o.body seems to care. We haven't been bothered."

The water behind me starts to boil so I get up and pour in the macaroni. I knock on the door where Eddie is, "Hey, man, you doing alright in there? You can add some hot water if you want. Should be more warmed up by now."

No answer. But a faucet squeaks and the wall hums with the sound of water moving in pipes. "Soup's on in about 10 minutes I figure. But take your time." I flip his clothes around on the stove to dry the other side.

Karen comes in from outside. She looks slightly surprised to see Big Donna and Little Dawn sitting at the table. She's carrying some rice and stew from the main house. "They're cooking up there so I brought some out. I don't know if I brought enough for everybody."

"We'll be fine," I tell her. "I'm cooking down here too."

I toss Eddie's clothes into the bathroom. We all eat dinner. No one talks much; we're all too tired.

"Did you know that girl very well?" Big Donna asks after supper.

Karen and I shake our heads no. "Not really," Karen says. "There's just so much death. It all just seems so sad and so pointless. But I can understand why she did it. I guess if I had the courage to do it..."

"Well, you don't," I interrupt. At least I don't think she does. My shoulder is scabbed over where she shot me. Maybe we're all trying to check out in our own special way. "We don't even know if she meant to do it," I tell them. "For all we know, it was an accident. Too much to drink, too many pills. Death by misadventure is what they call it I think." They all nod in agreement. But I've picked one of my own scabs with the idea that I might be quitting, that I might be selling myself out by staying here, staying with Karen. I can feel it boiling up in me. It almost feels irrational. I look over at Eddie and speak to him mostly, "You never quit. Never give up. You do whatever it takes."

He looks tired and overwhelmed. It's easier when you are older. Life has beaten you up a lot more and you're better able to take it. It's too hard when you're a kid. You don't have the scars to protect you. You just have wounds that haven't healed yet. You're still too honest, still too trusting. Still too hopeful.

"Well, I'm just saying that I think it's terrible to have to come to that place is all," Karen says. She's hurt. I'm not sure I care. The lesbians are staring at me too. What the f.u.c.k am I doing here?

We all retire for the evening on bed rolls, cots, pillows and blankets. Big Donna snores like a Peterbuilt. Eddie is out like he's dead. I'll leave him my Ruger. Karen is curled up on my chest just exactly the way we started the day. I should feel something for her at this point but I don't. I never feel too much of anything anymore. My wiring feels broken like there's a fuse box that shuts down every time you turn something on. I don't know why I've stayed this long.

It'll be tough to sneak out of here in the morning. Forgo the stupid questions and insincere good-byes. But I think I can manage it. I'll just be one box of macaroni and cheese less when I hit the road. I kiss Karen on the forehead and she snuggles into me. Maybe she'll understand. But I doubt it.

I close my eyes and drift off to sleep. I see Bob fall with a bullet in his side. I see Tom's head snap over in a red spray. I see a room with a little boy hiding; a Zed lies on the floor with an axe stuck in his head. I see the look in Archie's eyes just before he died. I see the tractor. I see my father's face. I see the bra.s.s bead on the end of the shotgun barrel. I hear the hammer click. I see the tortured look on Dad's face. I feel the shotgun jerk against my shoulder. I feel the darkness as sleep takes me away.

Chapter 16: But You Can Never Leave.

An owl sits on the corner of the compound as I quietly slip out of the bath house. Pack in hand, new rifle, new supplies. Still packing the .45, the cleaver and the big single shot pistol which hasn't seen any use in a long time. The sun isn't up yet as far as I can tell. The clouds are very heavy and dark and I wonder if the sun will ever shine again.

I walk quietly to the scaffolding to have a look over the top before I head out. The owl watches me, turning only its big head and big eyes. We both turn to look out over the road leading into the compound.

Jesus.

There are about a hundred Zed in front of the gate. I stand and look at them silently and they stare back up at me. They are unusually quiet this morning. They all appear to be more rotten, more decayed. A girl standing below me is missing her arm but at the end of the stump, the now familiar yellowish spongy growth. All of them have similar things sprouting out of wounds and growing out of severed limbs. Whatever it is that has taken over their bodies is becoming less of a parasite and more of a permanent resident of mobile carca.s.ses. I take a cigarette out slowly and put it in my mouth. I give Commando Tom's Zippo a flick and the crowd below me lights up faster than my cigarette. A big tall b.a.s.t.a.r.d with no ears and no shirt opens up with a ferocious scream and the rest join in. The noise is so sudden and loud and shrill in the calm morning air that I d.a.m.n near pitch over backwards.

"Wow," a voice yells from behind and below. "What the h.e.l.l did you do?" The question ends in a short quack of a laugh. I climb down and walk over to Ray. He's dressed in a white karate outfit. "You, uh, leaving?" he asks and tugs on the green karate belt around his middle. His big revolver looks out of place against the gi.

I slide the pack off and put it on the ground in front of me. "Well, I was considering it. But it looks like a bad morning for a walk." I take another look at his morning attire but decide not to ask.

He pulls the ends of the belt out away from him. "Found it. I always wanted to learn Tai Chi. Found this, I don't know, some kind of karate outfit. Found a book... seems like a good time to do things I always wanted to do." He almost has to shout to be heard over the racket out front. "But I guess it isn't the most relaxing and peaceful morning to get started on it." He winces and runs a finger into his ear. "We found coffee. You want some coffee?"

I follow him into the main house. All of his people are up. Kevin, Tyler and Betty must still be crashed out. Ray hands me a cup of coffee and I sit down at the table.

"Holy smokes," Ray says and takes a sip of coffee. "Those things and the constant screaming and moaning and noise. Enough to make you want to put a bullet in your head." A half woven candy bar bracelet sits on the table with a lone pill under it. "So you were leaving this morning?"

The others in the room all look up at me from the table. "Yeah. Thought about it."

"Why? You don't like the accommodations?" Ray laughs. No one else laughs. "Seriously, though. You'd have to be about half nuts to go out there by yourself. I mean if, uh, what's-his-nuts was right about the big horde of... things. Coming."

The man who had been driving the jeep leans forward and clears his throat. "What are we going to do?"

Ray shrugs. "Ride it out. We're set here in Wayne's World." He leans in a little. "Wayne was the guy who, uh..."

"I heard the story," I tell Ray. "Dumb Chuck."

"Oh yeah," Ray says his eyes dropping down into mock seriousness. "And what did Dumb Chuck tell you? Wait. Never mind. It doesn't matter. That f.u.c.king guy... but, what were we talking about? Yeah, right," he snaps his fingers. "The wave, the locusts, the zombie tsunami."

Kevin appears on the stairway and sits down at the table next to me. He looks terrible. He fires up a bowl of weed without saying a word. After a long inhale, he lets it out of his lungs and into the room. "That's better. Morning."

"Morning," I tell him. "We're just discussing what to do if there's really a wave of undead Zed's headed this way."

Kevin's head shakes up and down. He pauses for a minute and then hits the pipe again. "Do we need to do something?"

"That's what I was saying," Ray chimes in. "It's not like they're airborne or can crawl over the walls or tunnel in. What are you worried about, Lou?"

The Jeep driver sets his coffee cup down on the table and fiddles with the handle before talking. "My dad was in Nam. He didn't talk about it much unless he was drinking so he talked about it a lot, if you know what I mean." He pushes his coffee cup forward and leans back in his chair. "He told me a story one time that I remember really well. There was a bunch of them, dug in, waiting. Out there in the jungle. I don't remember how many but a few. So they're waiting for the Viet Cong to attack but they're not really sure of the numbers. They just know there's going to be a bunch. So it gets dark, and there was this, just... rush. All these f.u.c.king guys just running straight at them. So they all open up and start dropping these guys one after the other. Rifles, machine guns, pistols up close, grenades. Just let them have everything they had. So the bodies, the bodies start stacking up. The guys behind are running up on top of the dead ones and basically, Dad said, they just sat there and kept shooting them as they came in over the top of the pile. And they were coming in from all directions. He said there was like this wall of bodies around them and the other guys just kept pouring in."

"So they shoot and shoot and shoot. And finally one of the VC manages to lob a grenade into the middle and that's all Dad remembers until he woke up in a hospital. He was the only one who survived. But they told him he was buried under a mound of bodies. They almost didn't even find him."

"So you're saying," Ray says and leans in. "What are you saying?" He laughs again. "I mean, I get the story, lots of bodies piling up but... what?"

Lou turns his hands up and out, "I'm saying that if there's millions of these things all coming in a wave, they might stack up outside a place like this. You know, barns, houses, stores, whatever, they can get around those, there's s.p.a.ce. But out there is all vines and weeds and s.h.i.t and if they start getting stuck, they pile up next to the wall. You get enough of them, you got a ramp leading right up, in and over."

"Cofferdam," Kevin says through held breath, a fresh hit of pot percolating in his lungs.

"What's that? What did you say?" Ray asks.

"Cofferdam," Kevin repeats and exhales. Hank is nodding his head. Kevin points at Hank. "He knows what I'm talking about. We need a break out there in the woods to funnel them around us. They're coming in from the east. We just need to make a cofferdam out of someth'n."

A man in the back leans forward and offers up an idea. "We could start shooting them out away from the walls, let them pile up like Lou was talking about. Except keep them out at about a hundred yards or whatever. Don't shoot the ones up close; just shoot the ones out further."

"That's a good idea, Jerry," Ray says. "I like that. We'll stack some ammunition up around on the catwalk thing and then just have a duck shoot. First one to get over a hundred wins a stuffed animal." He laughs again. But again, no one else laughs.

Betty comes down the stairs followed by Tyler. They both look terrible. Betty grabs a spot on the couch and Tyler sits next to her. Kevin shakes his head and says nothing.

Ray clears his throat and coughs into his hand. "I want to uh, offer my condolences on your friend. I obviously didn't get to meet her but she looked like a beautiful girl. Really sad." Betty and Tyler remain motionless, staring into the patterns of the linoleum floor. Ray isn't smart enough to leave it alone. "You know, I guess the nice thing is, she's in a better place now. I mean, it's so f.u.c.ked up down here. I'm sure she was a good person and I'm sure she's..."

Betty's voice is soft but crisp and cuts Ray off cleanly. "Say one more G.o.dd.a.m.n word about her and I'll cut your f.u.c.king throat." She doesn't look up. She doesn't look mad. But the viciousness, hurt and despair is leaking out of every pore and every syllable.

Ray looks around the room to see how he should react. He lets it go without saying another word.

I push away from the table and gather my stuff. Before leaving, we all agree to meet by the bunker in a little while to start moving ammo and people.

Halfway across the compound, Karen meets me. Her eyes are puffy and red. Everybody looks like s.h.i.t this morning. "I thought you left. I thought you left me."

I let out a heavy sigh and take her by the arm and walk her back towards the bathhouse. The Zed are making so much f.u.c.king racket that you can't really talk over them. I don't want to have this conversation shouting. But then I remember the house isn't empty. It suddenly strikes me how rich we were before everyone else came. Privacy has always been the yardstick of poverty. I turn her towards the bunker. We can talk down there.

"You were going to leave me. Just up and go?" she asks me when we get down the first flight of steps.

I chew the inside of my cheek a little and think. What to say? "Yes."

"I don't understand." She's starting to cry again.

"It's getting messy here," I tell her. I put my pack back down and lean the rifle in a corner. "We all get close, start caring, start depending on each other. Then bad s.h.i.t happens. Always does. Out there," I motion towards the outside world, "out there by myself, bad s.h.i.t happens and that's it. No mess."

"I need you," she says.

I feel like I want to throw up. But then it pa.s.ses. It always does. The little switch inside flips and all of the heavy feelings, all the misery, drains away into nothing. Same thing when I start to feel too happy or good. The drain in the back of my head collects everything that runs over a certain frequency.

I don't answer. I just nod my head. I don't really want to hurt her. I don't want to not hurt her either. She needs. And I just don't want.

She throws her arms around me suddenly and d.a.m.n near knocks me down. She cries into my shoulder and kisses my neck. I leave my arms hanging where they are. I leave my body with her and go far away.

I look over her shoulder and see a small redhead looking down the open door to the bunker. I push Karen off me and try to think of what other people would say right now. "We'll be alright. I'm not leaving."

She kisses me and I push her back again. I motion towards the open door with a nod of my head. "Good morning," she says with a big sniff of snot and tears.