I’d been expecting the question and didn’t hesitate. “He decided to stay behind.”

Faces lit up. Except for Manny, whose smile had been replaced by a dubious squint of his eyes. I tried not to make contact as I followed Clutch to the food line. Jase had somehow found his way to the front of the line. A woman hustled to me and held a picture in front of my face. “Did you see my husband?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t see him.” I picked up a tray and grabbed some leftover potatoes, nuts, and berries.

Manny’s people quickly surrounded us.

“Are they okay?”

“Did you talk to Lyle?”

“What did you see?”

“Did you give them our letters?”

“Please tell us more!”

The woman who’d showed me the picture of her husband grabbed my arm. “Please take me north like you did Bill. We don’t have to land, just look for Mike. I know he’s out there. Please help me.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you,” I said, not wanting to be the one responsible for crushing their precious hope. “The chance of seeing anyone from the air is so miniscule that—”

“You took Bill there. I need to get back to my husband!”

Clutch wheeled between us, forcing the woman to loosen her grip. “Cash can’t help you. None of us can,” he said.

Even though he had to look up at her, he still radiated strength. The woman’s lips pursed in anger. She spun on her heel and left us, mumbling, “Assholes.”

“Will you go back tomorrow?” someone else asked.

“No,” Clutch and I said at the same time.

“There’s no place to go back to,” Tyler said from behind us.

His words smothered the room. Even the sounds of silverware on plates silenced. In a rush, Clutch and I grabbed the rest of our food and headed to a picnic table in the corner.

The man who’d asked the last question followed. “What do you mean, ‘there’s no place to go back to’?”

I glanced down at Clutch, and then took a deep breath. “It’s not safe there.”

“What do you mean? Why won’t you tell us? What happened? If it’s not safe, why did you leave our people behind? Those are our families back there!”

I ignored him, eating with one hand while holding my Glock on my lap with the other.

“Because there was no one left to get out!” Tyler bellowed out as he sat down.

Manny clenched his eyes shut for a moment before opening them again and speaking. “We were too late.”

I pursed my lips before I finally spoke. “Some had to make it out. If they made it to cars and stayed ahead of the herds, they could’ve made it.” I wasn’t lying; I believed my words. After all, someone had to have locked the infected in the theater from the outside. Whether they got away in time…chances were no one would ever know.

“I thought they’d be safe,” one of the newcomers muttered without any inflection. “I thought the herds were following us.”

“God,” someone else said. “So many kids…lost.”

“We should’ve gone back for them.”

“My Ginny,” a man said, pulling at his hair.

“Maybe they got out in time.”

“We have to try to find any survivors,” the woman who’d first showed me a picture said, though the picture was now crumpled in her grip. “Manny, we need to go back.”

“We have to go back and find anyone we can.”

The man who’d been pulling at his hair screamed, “Stop it! Stop it! You all know they didn’t get out. They’re dead! We left them there to die! They’re all dead or they’re zeds!”

Manny held up his hands. “Whoa. Enough. We don’t know that for sure. Some might have gotten out. Even if they did, there are all the herds between us and them. We can’t search for them if we’re dead. We have to look out for ourselves first. Once the herds pass through, then we can go back.”

“How will we survive the herds? If Marshall couldn’t survive, we have no chance here!” a woman cried out.

Tyler stood up. “I have an idea, but it’s a long shot.”

Chapter VI

The following morning’s flight was a bumpy one, and I had to keep both hands on the yoke. The weather was unseasonably warm, and the heat caused thermals to pop up in the air. Tyler was strapped in next to me in the Cessna 172. Sitting behind us, Jase scanned the countryside for anything useful while Griz slept soundly, his snores coming over the intercom every once in a while.

Clutch, as Tyler’s second-in-command, was in charge of the park whenever Tyler was offsite for longer than a few hours. When Camp Fox had relocated to the park, the pair had reached an agreement to never ride in the same vehicle because the park couldn’t risk losing both of our seasoned military officers. Even though their knowledge and leadership had saved our collective ass many times over, I suspected the other reason they didn’t ride together was because they pissed each other off as much as they needed each other.

Clutch couldn’t come along today for three reasons. First, the air was too turbulent for his back. Second, Tyler was the only person who’d spoken with the guy we were meeting today. Third and most important, Clutch was shit as a diplomat. He was great at getting people in line—and was likely running all the residents through the training wringer right now—but when it came to begging for help, Tyler’s smooth personality was needed.

Tyler currently had his head propped against the glass, looking outside, his hand tapping to the beat of the music piping through our headsets. He had his iPhone plugged into the plane’s audio system, and the connector charged the device while it played. Right now, music from the Nadas filled my headset.

“The zeds around here aren’t showing any signs of migrating yet. I wonder if they do leave, how far south they’ll go,” he said without looking up, the music volume auto-muting while he spoke.

“Who cares as long as it’s a long ways from us,” Jase replied from the backseat.

“I don’t get it,” Tyler said. “The zeds are rotting away. Why would they migrate when they’re probably going to be dead within a year, anyway?”

The zeds still owned the area, but their bodies had slowed down as the plague ate away at their flesh and muscle. With how decayed many were, that they hadn’t died off already made no sense. Then again, that anyone could have their throat ripped out and yet return as a zed made no sense either. The virus, in its cruel effectiveness, was terrifying.

Still, on this trip, our greater risk was survivors, not zeds. Most zeds remained near towns, with only herds roaming the countryside. If only I’d flown over these roads before and mapped out any roadblocks or signs of raiders, we could’ve driven today. This was the first time Tyler was meeting with this radio contact. I would’ve preferred to drive so that we could have taken more reinforcements.

Tyler’s contact, a riverboat captain named Sorenson, had a community roughly the size of Camp Fox on a riverboat casino. He’d told Tyler he was confident his people would make it through the migration unscathed, and Tyler had believed him. The question was, would Sorenson take Camp Fox under his protection as well? That he had offered to meet with Tyler gave us all hope.

Right now, everyone at Camp Fox was busy packing up their belongings and pulling together all the food, livestock, supplies, and weapons for winter under the assumptions that Tyler’s diplomacy would succeed and we could temporarily relocate to Sorenson’s riverboat. If Tyler failed in gaining Sorenson’s help today, our only option was to run. I hoped to God Tyler wouldn’t fail.

On the ground, a few zeds dotted the landscape. Nothing like the herds Clutch, Jase, and I had seen north of us. Every hour I hoped the herds would stop their migration or at least pass through without coming near Camp Fox, but I knew better. I’d seen the herds and the paths they’d trampled. They moved like locusts intent on a mission. “Maybe the zeds in Chow Town will head out with them,” I said, thinking of the only possible benefit of the migration.