Sighing, I went to collect a gun and some ammo. I told her what had happened in the wood, and she agreed that we should sweep the immediate area. I took one of the handguns, a .40-caliber pistol, and checked the load. The magazine was full, so I tucked it into my belt and loaded my shotgun with as many shells as I could shove in there. Then I tucked a few into my pockets.
She took a 9 mm to cover me, slinging the hunting rifle over her shoulder. I wished we had another shotgun, for up-close work if we needed to fight. The spread would be devastating with both of us shooting. She held the pistol at her side as we left the cabin. I wished I could lock it, but we had never found a key. It was silly. The thing that had attacked me in the woods was surely a lone incident, a lone man—zombie—lost in the woods, and I just happened to stumble upon him. Maybe he had lived somewhere nearby, another cabin or lodge, perhaps. Maybe he had some vague recollection of the area and was just lost. He was probably the same shape I had seen the night before.
We walked outside the cabin, establishing a perimeter a hundred feet in every direction. The day was cool, which suited me just fine. I was too amped up to deal with heat today.
We found—nothing, and I was more than a bit relieved. We went back to the cabin, both exhausted after stomping over the vegetation, through bushes, over piles of needles, around large copses. She kept a compass out and was good with the device, keeping us on the perimeter at all times. She would point back in the direction of the cabin with a grin every time I looked worried about how far we had gone.
We passed the car, looked it over, and then walked to the road as the last part of our reconnoiter. I hugged the bushes while Katherine stood back and covered me. Unmoving, I kept an eye on the entry for a few minutes. My focus roving around, I listened and watched, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. With a heavy sigh, I turned and smiled at her, so she joined me at the gate.
“I hope he was the only one.”
“Me too. I don’t want to go through that again.”
“You’ve killed them before. What’s the big deal?” Her voice was as dead as the thing in the woods I had smashed into the dirt. I regretted the killing, but she seemed blasé, as if taking a human life was the norm.
“I did, but that doesn’t mean I liked it.”
“You get used to it.”
She spun on her heel and walked up the road toward the cabin.
That night was much as the last, except we talked about where we should go next. They had put some gas in the Honda at the fort, but it wouldn’t last long enough to get us around the mountain from this side. We would probably have to head back to Vesper Lake and try to get through the city. I was hoping that if we could keep up enough speed, we would be able to just zip through the tiny town, and then get on the freeway and follow the caravan before a horde figured out where we were going. They should be in Portland now, enjoying the good life. I bet it was all smiles, flowing beer, and plates of hot food. Or at least something to eat, I thought as I chewed on a hunk of dried deer meat that had a strong smoke flavor and nothing else.
We lay in bed, side by side, my head near her ear. Her hair frizzed out, probably from not having any sort of conditioner. I tried to imagine what she had been like before the event, but I had trouble picturing her as a classic soccer mom with a minivan and kids in the back.
“When we reach a place with people, I’ll understand if you want to leave me and find someone else.” She spoke softly into her pillow, barely above a whisper.
“I don’t want to be with anyone else,” I assured her, tugging her naked body closer to me under the sheets. She was so soft and warm under the blanket that I wanted to stay this way for a week.
“I can’t have children,” she reminded me after a long, quiet moment.
“I don’t care. I don’t have any, and never put much thought into the idea of having them anyway.”
“But it would be irresponsible, Erik. How many people are dead out there? We need everyone to help repopulate the world. I don’t have a place in that world. I can’t contribute a child.”
“Katherine, you aren’t a breeding machine. No one is. Life will return no matter what and no matter who I want to be with. I don’t want to run around and bang rows of girls in the hopes of making one pregnant. There will be plenty of horn dogs up for that job.” I tried to make a joke of it, but she didn’t laugh.
“It’s not funny. All the children are dead, so many are just … gone. We need to have more, and I can’t help. I had cervical cancer, but Frank didn’t care. He and I had two already, and we were happy.” She sobbed into the pillow, and I held her close. It was the first time she had mentioned the name of one of her family.
I didn’t know what to say. I was going to tell her I loved her, and I think I did. I certainly had strong feelings for her, but was it enough to overcome this ... this insecurity? Her body shook, and she pressed her head deeper into the down pillow and tried to stifle the sobs. I wanted to tell her everything would be okay, but there was no way to know that with certainty.
“Kat, I …”
A pair of green eyes stared into the window from less than twenty feet away.
“Oh fuck!” I stifled the exclamation at the last second. I was out of bed in another second, and into my pants before the glow disappeared. Snatching up the shotgun from where it rested near the bed, I checked the load while I was getting into my boots.
Katherine came to her feet, and the blankets piled around the middle of the bed, while she stared at me like I had seen a ghost. I had seen a ghost, or a ghoul, to be precise. And the son of a bitch was right outside the cabin.
“Ghoul,” I whispered, and she dropped down to find her clothes. I tossed the gun on the bed, shrugged into a shirt, and buttoned up the top. I glanced outside as I moved, watching for the green thing in the bushes, but it was gone.
I went to the front of the cabin with Katherine close behind. She didn’t even question; she just grabbed the handgun, popped the magazine and double-checked the load, slammed it into the piece, and then slid the top back to load a round. She followed as she performed the movements, all smooth, all by the book. I was impressed once again with the way she went about this. She was a seasoned pro, and I, the former military guy, was left looking a little frazzled.
I checked the windows, ducking low as I did so, but I sucked in a breath and stood up. Those things didn’t use guns; they attacked en masse and didn’t care for the consequences or losses. They were one step above mindless zombies—the monsters that had started the whole event. I hoped it was just one of the damn ghouls. I didn’t know how we would defend against a hundred of them. It had to be one, just like the zombie I killed in the woods earlier. It had to be a single ghoul, lost and alone in the woods.
Maybe I was just seeing things, just imagining the man with green eyes, the shape in the woods, and the impression of someone watching me with Katherine in bed. Fury filled me, and I gripped the shotgun tightly. I strode to the front door and opened it, letting it swing back wildly to bang against the wall. How dare one of those things invade my privacy. Was there no place free of them?
I had the irrational dread that they would overrun us, take us, eat our flesh, or change us into them. The details on the ghouls had been scarce, but Thomas had told me enough to scare me. He told me about how the things had become smarter, how they had seemed to be making plans and following through with them. How they drove the first zombies before them like an army. An army of the dead.