"Fine." Bill agreed.
The three headed away from the body towards the tree line where Stewart had pointed. When they got to the edge of the woods they found a well beaten path leading down through the trees. Stewart squatted and looked at it.
"Boot prints, probably from this morning. Looks like they came up and back this way. See how the prints overlap each other?"
"Yeah, I got it." Bill said, knowing he could have seen the same thing as Stewart, had he looked.
"I'll keep my eyes on the trail, you two watch, in case they left someone for us."
"Why would they do that?" asked Javier.
"She means, 'In case they left someone to ambush us.'" Bill clarified.
"Oh. Got it." Javier glanced about warily.
"I doubt they would have sat here waiting for us for three hours."
Stewart laughed, "Why not? They are dead, they have all the time in the world. Still, I bet you are right Bill. Let's go."
Stewart took off at a brisk pace down the path. After only a few minutes it ended on the banks of a creek. She bent down and looked on the muddy banks. As she rose she shook her head.
"Nothing, they must have gone off the trail somewhere and I didn't notice. Let's go back and see if we can pick them up. Everyone keep their eyes open for anything, bent twigs, foot prints, that sort of thing. I will watch the path and see if I can figure out where they left it." Stewart said.
They proceeded up the path more slowly and close to halfway up Stewart halted and pointed at the path, "Here. This is where they got on the path this morning, but I don't see any return tracks, so they went off somewhere between here and the park."
"This is slower than I was hoping for." Bill said, eyeing the woods around them.
"What can we do? Unless you have some sort of 'Max radar', we are stuck doing this the slow way."
The three followed a scared trail through the woods until the sun was high overhead. Stewart stopped them as they trudged along another deer path. Her sudden stop caused the men behind her to come up short, but not quite bump into her.
"What is it?" Bill asked.
"Look up there." Stewart said, pointed to their left.
"Yeah? It looks like a clearing."
Stewart trudged up the steep hillside, when she got there she turned back around and said, "Shit."
"What?" asked Javier and Bill at the same time.
"Come on up, see for yourselves."
The two men carefully climbed the slope and saw that they were actually on the edge of a paved roadway.
"A road? So? We know we're…" Bill stopped when Stewart raised her hand and pointed behind him along the roadway.
Bill turned around and softly swore under his breath. Stewart was pointing at a sign that said, "RVs, Cabins, Camping!" and had a huge red arrow underneath it. The same sign that they had followed the night before to drive into the campground.
"We've hiked all morning and the campground is right there?" asked Javier with disbelief.
"Let's go back." Stewart said, heading off down the road.
"We can't leave him!"
"Bill, we can't find him either. We've hiked around for two hours and we're five minutes away from the truck. They led us in a circle."
Grumbling, Bill fell into line behind her, Javier took up the rear. The young man kept glancing back behind them, as if still disbelieving that they had come such a short distance.
The trio walked into the campground and saw the two trucks parked where they had left them. Ruben was not in the cab, when Stewart saw this she sped up into a jog that left the others behind. Her gun came up and she started eyeing the area around the trucks.
Stewart pulled to a stop when she saw Ruben at the back of the diesel; he was looking at the bomb. For a moment Stewart thought he was talking to it, but he waved and smiled at her.
"What's up Ruben. You gave me a scare when I didn't see you in the truck."
"I had to water the horses. I decided to check on the bomb when I got back, because, like a darned fool, I left it there instead of taking it with me or locking it in the cab."
"Oh."
"So…no Max?"
"We walked in circles. I'm not a good bloodhound."
"I am sorry to hear that. What are we going to do now?"
Bill and Javier walked up and both grabbed fresh water bottles out of the cooler in the pickup bed. The cooler didn't have any ice in, so the water was warm, but fresh.
"I don't know what to do. I thought, maybe when we were gone, someone would come along and drop Max off. Or at least contact us to tell us what they wanted. This feels more like a kidnapping than a bunch of zombies out for a snack." Bill said.
"You were hoping they would contact us, you mean." Ruben said, "Look I'm just going to throw this out there, so don't be mad. What if he's dead?"
"No!" Stewart and Bill said simultaneously.
Raising his hands before him, Ruben said, "It has to be said. How long are we going to sit here before we move on? Another few hours? A few days? Another week? A month? C'mon Bill, how long will it be?"
"I don't know…I can't…"
"Well, they pinned the bars on you, so you have to decide, even if you listen to us first. If I am going to die fighting zombies, I'd rather do it in Iowa defending my town, not where ever the hell we are now."
"So we give up the mission entirely?" Stewart asked.
"Max was the mission. Without our hunting dog we can't find the animal, can we?" Ruben countered.
No one said anything to that right away.
Finally Bill shrugged his shoulders and turned away. He brushed his arm across his face and then spoke without looking at the others. "I'm still going to Florida. Max knew he was in Florida. How hard can it be to find him? He's their leader."
Stewart said, "I'm with you."
"Well I think that's horseshit and you two know it. No Max, no leader, this bomb is big, but it's not like we can plant it in the middle of the state and it'll wipe all the bad guys out. I think the military could use it in some other manner, to help shore up the state's defenses." As he spoke Ruben's old, weathered hand stroked the backpack containing the bomb.
"You said it Ruben, I've got the bars. I'm going. You and Javier can take the other truck and head north if you want to. I'll head south and try and find this guy. If you cut the head of the snake off, the body dies. I think we'll do more good taking this leader out than killing a few thousand zombies near Iowa."
"What about your family?" Ruben countered.
"This is for my family." Bill said firmly, "So they have a better chance. I knew this was probably a one way trip. I would've thought you had figured that out too."
"But it doesn't have to be." Persisted Ruben, "We can turn now and head for home. We don't have to throw our lives away like…."
"Max?" suggested Stewart.
Ruben's response was a slight nod.
"First, we don't know that he is dead. Second, if he is, he died trying to do the right thing. Third, we were air lifted halfway across the country, do you really think the four of us have such a good chance to make it back to Iowa anyway?" Ruben conceded the point by shaking his head slightly, "We're closer to our original goal than home now, even if we don't have much of a chance."
Bill looked at Javier, "What do you want to do?"
The young man smiled, "I'm with you Bill. You and Ruben."
"That doesn't help much." Bill said wryly, "But is it good to know you like us both."
"You think the old man would leave you?" Javier shook his head, "He'll go with you, he's just trying to make you decide and do it. Don't you get it?"
In a flash Bill did understand that. They had already spent more time than they would have if, say, Ruben had been taken. So now it was time to shit or get off the pot. "I guess it's shitting time then." He said softly.