He takes a step forward just as the top of Tyler’s head disappears in a spray of blood.
A second later, he hears the rolling rifle shot.
Anne
You screwed that up, Anne tells herself.
Ray took a step to her right, forcing a last-second correction. Then one of the Infected stepped to the left to get out of Ray’s way, putting his head squarely in her shot as the rifle boomed in her hands.
The bullet left the muzzle at a velocity of more than half a mile per second, shattering the Infected’s skull as if it were a melon.
She relaxes for her next shot, searching for Ray through the objective lens of her scope. The M21 is a semiautomatic rifle with a twenty-round box magazine, giving her nineteen more shots at him before she has to reload.
The Infected scream and wave their arms over their heads. Shoot me, they seem to be saying. Shoot me instead of him.
Ray is still there, staring up at the hills in terror. The likelihood of him seeing her is virtually nil. She is too far away to detect with the naked eye where she is standing against the treeline, and her rifle is fitted with a suppressor that reduces visible muzzle flash.
Inhale, hold the exhale, shoot.
She fires again, and another Infected falls. They crowd around him now, swarming on top of each other. Her body shudders with disgust.
This is getting weird.
She fires again and again, dropping bodies until Ray’s pale face comes into view. He gapes at the hill where she is positioned, his mouth open in a large O.
Got you, you little shit.
More Infected lunge in front of him, absorbing her bullet and falling into a pile of writhing bodies at his feet.
Shit, shit, shit.
The rifle bangs, recoiling against her shoulder. Her view shakes. She inhales, holds the exhale and fires again. The roar of the rifle shot rolls across the valley. Her left arm trembles with the effort of keeping the weapon still.
I let you go once.
Another body drops, revealing a glimpse of Ray screaming with fear.
Not again.
The rifle dry fires with an empty click.
“Mother,” Anne hisses, releasing the empty magazine and slamming a fresh one into the magazine well. She resumes her firing stance, but lowers the rifle, blinking in disbelief.
The Infected have stopped shrieking and waving their arms. Working in eerie silence, they are building a living wall in front of the farmhouse. Thousands of people scramble with unnatural speed and precision on top of each other, creating a series of swaying human pyramids.
Anne fires at the Infected at the bottom of one of the pyramids and it collapses, spilling bodies into a massive, squirming pile.
“God damn it,” she says between gritted teeth.
She fires into the mass, draining the second magazine. When the rifle dry fires again, she flings it onto the grass with a long, bloodcurdling howl of rage.
Ray
“I never hurt anyone,” Ray shouts at Lola as the truck rockets down the country road. “Sure, I beat on a few guys back in the day, but I never shot at nobody. I never killed a man.”
Lola sits next to him in the front seat like a blow up doll, staring straight ahead with her hands in her lap, wind ruffling her hair. Behind him, in the truck bed, his cops hang on as the vehicle roars around a bend, tires squealing.
“But someone sure as shit is trying to kill me!”
Ray swerves hard to narrowly miss slamming into an abandoned utility truck blocking the right lane. The road is filled with wrecks. I’m going to end up wrapped around a telephone pole if I keep this up. A glance in his rearview reveals nothing but his own dust.
Slow down. Think. Think it through, Ray.
No way that was a random thing. No single shooter shows up to take on a freaking Mongol horde of zombies. It was an assassination attempt, plain and simple.
Whoever it was, he was trying to kill me.
He finds this a truly terrifying idea.
Someone wants to kill me.
Nobody else in the whole world. Just me.
The question is why but the answer is not too hard to puzzle out.
Someone knows what you did to Camp Defiance. It’s called karma, bro.
“I ain’t a bad guy,” Ray growls, and spits out the open window. “It wasn’t my fault.”
Slowing the truck a little more, Ray lights a Winston with his steel lighter and blows a stream of smoke against the dirty windshield.
Was his attacker military? He kind of doubts it. He has a hard time believing the military decided to chopper in a single sniper to kill him.
If they really wanted me that bad, they would drop a cruise missile on my head.
No, he decides. Not military. The sniper was probably some vigilante. Whoever it was, however, he is still good. Not Ray’s idea of Tom Clancy good, but good nonetheless. And there is a good chance the shooter is still hunting him.
Then he laughs out loud. Next to him, Lola blinks rapidly.
“Maybe I’m not the one who should be scared.”
Ray remembers he has thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of people who would give their lives to save his without a second thought.
It was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen. As he ran from the farmhouse to the truck hidden under the tarp in the front yard, thousands of the crazies were clambering on top of each other like some kind of massive Guinness World Records stunt. Tallest human pyramid. Great Wall of China, made from human beings.
All to put themselves between him and the sniper’s next bullet. It was kind of humbling.
They pass a state police cruiser abandoned on the shoulder of the road. It gives him an idea.
“Whoever it is, if he keeps screwing with me, he’s going to get a bad guy. Am I right or am I right?”
Lola nods almost imperceptibly.
He slows the truck to a halt and shouts through the open window, “Leon, Foley, get out.”
Two of the cops vault over the side of the truck, landing hard on their boots. They approach the driver’s side window and regard Ray with open mouths, breathing like hyenas.
After he gives them their orders, he pulls back onto the road with a laugh.
Whoever you are, you made a serious mistake to fuck with me.
A roadside sign tells him he is approaching Sugar Creek. He slows the truck to a crawl, navigating a six-car pileup splashed across the road. Then he is on the main drag, driving past an ice cream shop and convenience store.
A man stares at him as he passes, too far away for Ray to tell if he is infected. More people are on his left. One of them waves. Ray waves back.
“Stay cool back there, guys. We’re going to bluff this out.”
He tries not to think of the spores floating out the window to be sucked into the truck’s back draft, maybe infecting these people.
Ahead, more people leave their homes and businesses to watch him approach, some of them waving. Again, he waves back.
“These people are a little nuts,” he tells Lola, who surprises him by laughing out loud.
Something is definitely wrong with these folks.
Then it hits him. They’re infected.
Infected teachers and waiters and cashiers and housewives pour onto the sidewalks, all waving at him like he is some kind of celebrity. Ray knows it’s fake. Either the bug is manipulating him or he is subconsciously controlling the crazies, but ultimately it doesn’t matter.