The seal looked normal, so I began easing the door open a centimeter at a time, hands sensitive to any resistance. Feeling none, I opened it wide enough to poke my head inside.

“Holy hell.”

“What?” Rojas asked.

Grinning, I opened the door the rest of the way. “Take a look.”

He grabbed the light and shined it into the room. “Holy hell.”

Beyond the threshold was what I could only describe as a survival bunker. The steel door I opened was one of two doors, the second looking like something taken from a bank vault. It was open, telling me whoever built this place was not expecting trouble when they left, however long ago that was. Which meant they had not been here since the Outbreak, or any time reasonably close to it.

The room was roughly thirty feet square, had shelves lining the walls all the way to the ceiling, a table, two chairs, a recliner, and a single bed. The furniture was arranged in the center, the shelves laden with boxes, crates, bottles, buckets, and every container in between. White stenciling on a green metal cabinet at the far end of the room read: ARMORY. Rojas and I looked at each other.

He said, “I’ll radio LaGrange.”

*****

“So here’s how we do it,” Rojas said. “You probably figured out by now the walkers hunt by sound. Right?”

I nodded.

“Right. So the way we get them out of here is to make them chase something, wait until they’re out of sight, and then we clean up. Simple enough?”

“In theory, yeah. I’m guessing the practical application is more complicated.”

He smiled in approval. “Yes, it is.”

I shifted, resettling my rifle in an effort to get comfortable, boots digging against asphalt shingles for purchase. After radioing LaGrange we had broken the lock from the gun cabinet, taken what we wanted, and stashed the weapons, ammo, and pilfered toilet paper in the attic. That done, we used Rojas’ sword to bust out a window and climb onto the roof.

“How are you going to draw them away?” I asked.

“Remember that Escalade in the garage?”

I turned my head and looked him in the eye. “You better make sure you have plenty of running room.”

“Don’t worry, new guy. This ain’t my first rodeo. Now here’s your part, man. If I run into any trouble I can’t get out of, I’ll fire three shots in the air. You hear that, you come running. Try to draw off the infected. That’s your job. Got it?”

“If I hear three shots, come running. Got it.”

“If you have trouble finding me, fire a shot in the air. Just one. I’ll fire again to lead you in. All right?”

“One shot. Understood.”

He climbed back through the broken window. A minute or two passed before I heard the Escalade roar to life and the sound of the garage door going up.

“Here we go,” I muttered.

The key now was to stay calm and be patient. I put my cheek against the M-4’s stock, dominant eye two inches from the scope’s rear aperture, finger off the trigger. The lines of the reticle were comfortably familiar as I scanned right to left, doing a mental count of the infected. There were dozens lurching toward us, drawn by the noise we had made climbing onto the roof and the sound of the Escalade idling in the garage.

“Go time, Rojas.”

The undead coalesced into a loose congregation, the least injured leading the way. Those with disabled legs moved slower, some crawling on hands and knees and some slithering on their bellies. Rojas backed the Escalade out to the street, cut the wheel, and began rolling slowly toward the undead. The sound of the engine was enough to keep their attention, but just for good measure, he laid on the horn. I wasn’t expecting it and jumped, nearly dropping my rifle.

The air filled with moans and screeches as the living dead emerged from yards, open doors, broken windows, and the hills surrounding the development. A few of them got close enough to slap at the Escalade’s windows, not a danger really, but worrisome enough Rojas increased his speed. When he reached the end of the street he cut through two front yards to get around the biggest knot of infected, then headed toward the street connecting the four quadrants of the neighborhood.

Twenty minutes later, he had made a full circuit of the development, visiting every street and laying on the horn to draw out the dead. I had to admire his work; he managed to congregate the infected in the central plaza without cutting off his own escape route. And he was patient about it, not hurrying or rushing, but taking his time and doing the job properly.

When it was clear he’d drawn out as many infected as were capable of following him, he angled toward the main road leading out of the neighborhood. I lost sight of him after that. My guess was he would take them back to the same stretch of highway our platoon had followed to get here, then double back. My intuition turned out to be correct when, an hour later, the Escalade sped back into the neighborhood. Only now, instead of just Rojas on board, it was filled with the men of first squad. I climbed down and went out the front door to the yard.

There was a crawler with one leg torn in half and the other totally missing dragging itself toward me across the street. It was an older white man, dressed only in a shredded black terry-cloth robe. The torn remnants of his thighs fluttered behind him, writhing like snakes in the long grass. He arched up and reached a clawed hand in my direction, gnashing his teeth and snarling. The milky eyes were red-rimmed, the face twisted with hunger and blind, unreasoning rage. I held out my carbine one-handed, put the barrel a few inches from his forehead, and pulled the trigger. A red mist erupted across his back. He gave a shudder and collapsed.

“Rest easy.”

Behind me, I heard LaGrange say, “If only they were all so easy to kill.”

I turned and began walking toward him. His men were already out of the Cadillac, two of them with ratchets and heavy-duty bolt cutters hard at work removing the seats.

“Nice work, new guy.”

I shrugged. “I didn’t do much. Just killed a few walkers. Rojas did the hard work.”

“He told me you’re pretty handy with a lock pick.”

“Product of a misspent youth.”

He grinned. “Tyrel said you’d be useful. Looks like he was right.”

A croak split the air to my left. I leaned around the SUV and spotted a walker with a broken leg rounding the corner, maybe sixty yards away. Casually, I raised my rifle and cracked off a single shot. The walker dropped.

“Tyrel also said you could shoot at least as well as him. I didn’t believe it. Looks like I was wrong.”

“So did I pass the interview?”

The smile widened. “Consider it a probationary offer. Don’t fuck up too bad for the next thirty days, and I’ll sign you on as a full member.”

I held out a hand. “Good enough for me.”

We shook on it.

FIFTY-THREE

Tyrel was right. Sophia got over it.

Which is not to say she was happy with the situation—she was not. But when I showed up from my first salvage run with a trash bag full of toilet paper, a few guns and some ammo to sell, and a voucher for my share of the profits, her disapproval cooled.

Our new prosperity made the hardships of pregnancy, always difficult for a woman even under the best of circumstances, easier to bear. She still suffered from morning sickness, strange cravings, fatigue, tenderness and swelling in the breasts, and the burden of a next-to-clueless significant other, but at least she did so with comfortable furniture.

I did as much of the housework as she would let me and strictly forbade her from heavy lifting, but other than that, I was at a loss. The fact she was carrying my baby made me treat her like she was made out of porcelain, much to her irritation. Consequently, she spent a good deal of those months barking at me for fussing over her and insisting she did not need me following her around with a pillow and a worried face. It didn’t do her any good.