“You can’t leave us like this. You’ve got to help my wife, damn it!” Don cried out.
Clutch ignored Don’s pleas and curses, instead focusing on Maggie. “Tell me about what happened at the Dells.”
She frowned at the change in subject, watched Don and Brenda for another moment, and finally nodded and inhaled deeply. “I don’t understand where they’re coming from, but there’s so many of them, and they seem to be coming from everywhere. We were so well hidden, we were so far from any town, but they still found us. We lost so many.” Her gaze fell and she shook her head slowly from side to side. “Too many.”
Griz came walking over, holding his rifle.
Maggie lifted her head, looked at Griz funny, and then broke out into a wide smile. “My, I haven’t seen a black man in months, and such a fine-looking young man you are.”
Griz raised a brow in amusement.
Clutch spoke first. “How far behind you are the herds, Maggie?”
“Oh,” she stammered and fidgeted. “They’re not far. Not far at all.”
“Exactly how far is that?”
Maggie didn’t answer.
Griz motioned to Clutch. They walked around to my side of the Humvee.
“We don’t have time for this,” Griz said. “Did you find any diesel?”
Clutch shook his head. “Nothing we could get to. You?”
Griz scowled. “It’s going to get hard fast without any power on the boat.”
“You heard the lady,” Clutch said. “We can’t keep looking. The herds are nearly here.”
“I know,” Griz said. “We need to be below decks and silent by the time they show up. It’s getting risky staying out here.”
Clutch frowned. “What do we do about these folks? We have the room, but we don’t have the food. Not since the livestock was destroyed. We can’t leave them here. They’d get slaughtered.”
Griz pointed to the west. “There’s a farm a few miles straight west of here. We found a black SUV in the driveway that runs. You can’t miss it. I can take one of them to go get it. That’ll help them get some distance between them and the herds.”
“Until they run out of gas,” Clutch said. “If we don’t take them in, they’re zed bait.”
Griz gave him a knowing look. “They could distract the herds from us.”
My heart pounded. Even though my brain was telling me the same thing, my gut was screaming at me at how wrong this felt.
Clutch gave me a look and his features softened. “We take them with us. It’s only six—well, five—extra mouths to feed.”
Griz looked relieved but then frowned as he looked at the injured woman. “She bit?”
Clutch gave a slow shake of his head. “Gangrene.”
Griz grimaced. “We came across a vet clinic this morning. We have the supplies on board to give her peace. It’s the only thing we can offer her.”
“I’m not sure her husband and daughter would agree to that,” I chimed in. Without modern medicine, people often died horrible, painful deaths from infections. Euthanasia was one of the few things we could offer the doomed, and vet clinics offered plenty of the drug guaranteed to bring painless death.
“Then we give them the choice. They can either stay here with her or come with us,” Griz said. “Gangrene isn’t contagious, but we can’t risk bringing any new sources of infection onto the Aurora in case she’s got more than a case of gangrene. Not with how many are just recovering now.”
Clutch stiffened and snapped around as Don hurried toward the Humvee.
“Stand back,” he ordered Don.
Don kept walking toward us. “I heard what you said. You can’t leave Brenda behind. You don’t know her. She’s strong. She’ll recover.”
“She has gangrene,” Clutch said simply, as though that answered everything.
“She may also have contracted a secondary infection that could potentially spread. We can’t risk it,” Griz added. “Now, please step back.”
The man’s features morphed from desperation to anger. “So you’re going to leave her here to die all alone in the middle of the road? What kind of sick monsters are you?” His fists clenched and he rushed Griz and Clutch.
Griz hit him in the stomach with the butt of his rifle just as Don reached them. “Get on the ground! Face down and arms stretched out!”
His daughter screamed, and the teenager rushed over and grabbed her to keep her from running to Don.
“Keep her quiet,” Clutch snapped.
“Don’t hurt my little girl!” Don cried out.
“Please,” Maggie limped forward. “Let’s all take a moment and talk. Don’s just worried about Brenda. He doesn’t mean anything by it. We’ve all been through a lot lately.”
“She’s going to be dead soon,” Clutch said. “It sucks, but wishing for something different isn’t going to keep her alive.”
“She’s not coming along,” Griz said. “If you want to stay with her, you can.”
Maggie wagged a finger. “We’re good people. We work hard and wouldn’t wish harm on anything. Please don’t leave us here.”
“The choice is yours,” Griz replied.
Don guffawed. “That’s no choice. I won’t abandon my wife.”
“Uh, guys?” I said, motioning to the tree line. “We need to make a decision and fast.”
Several deer ran out from the trees and across the road. Deer were skittish creatures, tending to hide unless spooked by a predator, and, there was one predator in abundance around here.
Zeds.
Chapter XX
I stepped around the Humvee. Don climbed to his feet. No one spoke while we waited to see how big a herd we had to deal with.
Finally, a single shape emerged. We all let out a collective sigh.
Maggie’s hand fluttered over her heart. “Oh, thank God.”
The huge, mangy wolf—or large dog; it was too hard to tell from this distance—stepped out from the shadows, eyed us as though deciding which would be easier prey, and then slowly turned to follow the deer. The deer had made a large U-turn around us and stopped only a couple hundred meters from where we stood. Wolves had multiplied since the outbreak. Large dogs were now joining their ranks, and these new packs feared neither humans nor zeds. Both became their dinner.
Once the wolf was a safe distance away and no others appeared, I let out the breath I’d been holding.
“Anyone in the mood for some venison for dinner?” Jase said from atop the Humvee.
I glanced at Clutch, and his lips curved upward.
We each raised our rifles. “I’ll take the big one on the left.”
“I’ve got mine,” Clutch said.
“Three,” Jase said quietly. “Two.”
We fired at the exact same instant.
Two deer fell, and I grinned, thinking of the first real meal I’d have since the catfish ordeal.
“Let’s hurry up and grab them in case the noise draws attention,” Griz said.
“They’re all yours,” I said, still smiling. While I enjoyed eating fresh meat, I hated seeing it when it was still literally doe-eyed and bushy-tailed.
Griz smirked. “I’ll haul them back, but I think I’ve got the better end of the deal. You guys will have to haul this group if they’re coming.” He gestured toward the small band of stranded newcomers. Then, his features hardened. “I’m sorry, but we can’t take in a casualty. It’s against protocol. You know that, right?”
I swallowed, glancing back at the woman who was starting to groan again, holding her stomach. The morphine was wearing off too quickly. Don was already growing tense again as he watched us.
“Get us a kit,” Clutch said tightly. “I’ll handle it from here.”
Griz gave the slightest nod before heading around the back of his Humvee.
“What kit are you talking about?” Don asked. “What are you doing?”
Clutch didn’t say anything, and Don turned to me. “What are you talking about doing to my wife?”