A sniper’s bullet kills a man just as dead as a knife. And when you have a suppressor to mask the report of your rifle, avoiding detection becomes a simple matter of careful planning and camouflage.

By the fifth kill, the city was apoplectic. All anyone talked about was the psycho murderer randomly killing people in the refugee districts. Was it a disgruntled soldier? A serial killer? Someone driven mad by the horrors of life after the Outbreak? No one knew.

Except me.

After the last kill, I sat on the roof of my container drinking an insanely valuable bottle of Pappy Van Winkle, the M-4 I did the deeds with scattered in various dumpsters throughout the city. I watched people hurry home, eyes watchful, parents clutching their children protectively.

Worry not, I thought, drunkenly tipping my glass in their direction. The threat has passed.

A few alert police and military patrols rolled past my street, eyes on the rooftops. A soldier on top of an APC spotted me, told the driver to stop, and put a pair of field glasses on me. I pretended I did not see him and poured myself a tall one, singing a slurred, nonsensical song. A few moments passed, and his posture changed. He had dismissed me as just another harmless drunk. God knew there were plenty of them around these days.

Nevertheless, I decided tomorrow would be a good day to get out of town.

SIXTY-THREE

I arrived back at the cabin none too soon. Tyrel was low on food, and had been seriously considering putting a bullet in the head of Clayton Briggs—also known by his alias, Tom Dills—and leaving his body for the infected and heading back to town to look for me.

“You would have done that on foot?” I asked him.

He looked up from the outdoor fire pit where he was boiling water in a kettle and heating potatoes and canned vegetables in a skillet. The horse was picketed a few yards away, snuffling through the snow for bits of dead grass. Brilliant sunlight poured over the white mountain peaks, bathing the pines on the slopes in polished gold.

“Damn right,” Tyrel said. “I’ve hiked farther through harsher territory.”

I sat down next to him and opened a jar of instant coffee. “Well, the deeds are done.”

“You get all of them?”

“Yes.”

“Leave anything behind to tie it back to you?”

“No. I was careful. No witnesses, and the murder weapon is probably scattered all over the landfill by now.”

“What about your knife?”

“Cleaned it and soaked it in bleach. Even a forensics lab couldn’t get anything off of it.”

Tyrel nodded, satisfied. “So what do you do now?”

I thought about the interrogation of Clayton Briggs. How he had remained defiant until the second finger came off and the hot iron touched the stump. Then off came the third finger, and his resolve began to waver. When I severed his thumb, leaving only a pinky finger protruding from the blistered ruin of his right hand, he finally broke.

He told me there had been eleven of them, initially. They had all left together from the San Antonio quarantine in stolen Humvees and decided to hole up in Boise City. They knew it was abandoned, and it seemed like a good place to hide. A logical enough conclusion.

The retreat from San Antonio was so disastrous they did not think the Army would send anyone to look for them. For all the chain of command knew, they had been killed like most of the other soldiers holding the line. The horde that overran their defenses had been enormous. They figured they would not be missed in the confusion.

Things were all right the first few days, but then one of them, Sergeant Falcone, thought they should move on. Find some civilian clothes, grow their hair and beards, and head north. He had two supporters, but the rest disagreed. He said he wanted to take some supplies, weapons, and ammo, and leave the group. A lieutenant by the name of Guernsey, who had been in charge up to that point, said the men were free to leave, but they would not be taking any gear or weapons with them. Or food.

The next day, as they sat in an office building arguing over what they should do, one of them heard the unmistakable drone of Humvees approaching. All conversation stopped. They fell back on their training and took up defensive positions in separate rooms, close to the windows on the upper floors so they would have the high ground.

Then the Humvees came down the street along with a couple of civilian vehicles, all occupied by men in combat fatigues. They stopped and got out, moving like professionals, like Special Forces types. There was a girl with them, probably someone they rescued.

The lieutenant told everyone to stay low and quiet. There was a chance these people did not know about them. It could just be a coincidence. Hold your fire until I say otherwise.

Briggs did not know why the man who shot Blake, a sergeant named Prater, decided to open fire against orders. He had always been trigger happy, and sometimes had trouble keeping his cool in combat. He was his squad’s designated marksman, armed with an M-110, a high-powered semi-automatic sniper rifle.

I put myself in his place, staring through the crosshairs, heart racing, finger taking in the slack on the trigger, and then, out of nowhere, CRACK. A moment of shock, and then the realization that he had squeezed too hard. An accident.

But at that point, there was no turning back. The people in the streets returned fire, so the other deserters opened up on them. From then on, it was all yelling and fire and confusion and explosions. Lieutenant Guernsey had the presence of mind to send three men to take the civilian cars they had hidden in a garage nearby and cut off our escape route to the north. Those would be the cars I fired a grenade at, killing one of the soldiers.

I understood why Guernsey did it. He did not want us revealing their location to anyone if we escaped. Cold, but logical. Thankfully for us, it did not work. We got away, and they were left spitting, cursing, and trying to figure out what to do next.

In the aftermath of the fight, only eight of the original eleven deserters were left. The man who had shot Blake was one of the casualties. I took a small measure of comfort in that. The other two were the man I blasted with a grenade and Lieutenant Guernsey. The lieutenant caught a burst from our SAW that stitched him from neck to abdomen, killing him before he hit the ground. I did not know if it was me or Mike that killed him. Could have been either one of us. It did not matter. He was dead. That was the important thing.

After we escaped, the deserters knew they could not stay in Boise City. Sergeant Falcone took over and they headed north for Colorado Springs. True to his plan, they ditched their uniforms and tactical gear, searched around until they found serviceable civilian weapons, and set about the task of blending in.

“So let’s do the math here,” I said to Tyrel. “We killed three of them in Boise City, leaving eight. I killed five of them in the Springs, and there’s one more in that cabin over there who won’t live to see another day. That makes nine dead. They started out with eleven.”

Tyrel looked at me. “Two left.”

I drew my knife and walked into the cabin.

Briggs looked resigned. He knew he would not leave this room alive.

“There’s something I forgot to ask you about,” I said.

He did not look up. “What?”

“I’ve only accounted for nine of your group. Where are the other two?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know where they are, and that’s the truth. They didn’t like the Springs, didn’t want to take a civilian job, and left a couple of weeks after we got here. I haven’t heard from them since.”

“What if I don’t believe you?”

He turned his face up, eyes tired, empty, and devoid of fear. “You can torture me all you want. I can’t tell you something I don’t know.”