The Zed Files: The Hanging Tree Part 9

Eddie doesn't say anything. The redhead disappears from the opening above. I grab my stuff and walk away, leaving Karen to collect herself, down there in the dark.

I catch up to Eddie who is milling around outside the bath house. "Get your gun," I tell him and put my stuff back inside. I open the pack and root through the pockets to find all the ammunition and magazines I can find for the little Ruger.

"My gun?" he asks without moving. I point at the little .22. "That's not my gun."

"Is now," I tell him and hand him a big box of little bullets. "How old are you, 12? 13?"

"Twelve."

"I was about your age when I got my first rifle. And in this world, you're way overdue." He looks back to the rifle and puts his hand back on the barrel. "I'll show you how to use it. How to take care of it. We're gonna need someone we can rely on up there on the catwalk when the s.h.i.+t hits the fan."

Eddie takes the bullets and the magazines and holds them all wadded up in his arms as best he can. I grab the Ruger and we walk towards the bowling scaffolding to do a little target practice. Eddie walks fast to keep up with me and I look up onto the catwalk to where the best place would be. I see a dark haired woman dancing there and flipping the bird to the people below. My father sits on the tractor parked by the wall. Archie's footprints are still visible in the mud of the courtyard. And the Zed scream and roar and moan and bang on the metal gate out front.

The ghouls keep us inside but the ghosts live inside us.

Chapter 17: Damming It All Too h.e.l.l.

"Put the stock on your shoulder, not over it." The little .22 is short but still a little long for Eddie. The b.u.t.t of the gun is on top of his shoulder and the scope is jammed up against his eyeball. He adjusts the rifle out to hold it correctly but his arms are completely straight. He looks more like a crossing gate than a marksman. "Now leave the b.u.t.t against your shoulder and bend your arms. Just hold the rifle further back. You can hold the stock with your left arm right in front of the trigger guard if you need to."

He scoots his arm back. We work on where to put his eye, how to squeeze the trigger. Kids his age learn things like this faster than adults. But give him a couple of years and he'll be dumber than he ever was. All full of hormones and p.u.b.erty. Everyone over twelve and under twenty-two is mentally r.e.t.a.r.ded. "Line up the crosshairs, squeeze the trigger."

I'm 27. I must only be mildly r.e.t.a.r.ded. Or maybe it's gone into remission.

Eddie squeezes the trigger and an Asian looking guy drops. The zombie crowd is looking more diverse today. They must have walked here from much further away. This part of the world is usually more monochromatic.

"Pick one further out," I tell him and look over his shoulder. "See the old lady with no lower jaw? Yeah. Send her out." The rifle barks a little and the little old lady pitches straight forward and onto her face. She's about 75 yards away.

"Shoot as many as you like at that range, kid. We can start building the wall with the few blockheads we have."

At the other end of the scaffolding, people I don't know are loading boxes of ammo onto the wooden walkway. Guns are evenly placed on the eastern wall. Bows and crossbows, axes and chainsaws; all positioned here and there for quick access. Someone has a golf club sitting at the ready. Over by the jeep, Lou is carrying out boxes of ammo for the big .50. It's a lot of gun for mushroom hunting.

Ray is still wandering around in his karate outfit. He sees me looking at him and heads our way.

"It's jammed,' Eddie says and holds the rifle up to show me. An empty casing sits stuck halfway out the side of the bolt.

"Lean it over, pull the slide back, give it a shake, then drop the bolt." He does what I tell him and the little gun chambers another round. "Keep the sling wrapped around your left arm. If you need to haul a.s.s, you don't want to drop it. And you especially don't want to drop it off the side of the wall." Below us, in the mud and the vines, they stand with necks craned upwards, arms straight down. Eddie slips another round into one on the perimeter of the woods and the empty sh.e.l.l falls into the open mouth of a skinny Zed below us. The Zed doesn't choke but rattles a horrible rasp with every inhale. He won't be sneaking up on anyone. I lean over and shoot him in the face to stop the noise.

"Getting Opie all ready?" Ray asks as he climbs up the ladder. "We can use a good marksman."

Eddie Opie carefully pops the empty magazine from the rifle, puts it in his jacket pocket and pushes a fresh one into the mag well. He hits the mag release b.u.t.ton and takes the fresh clip out and practices putting it in again. He repeats the process and watches the movement of his hand. On the fourth load, he pulls the bolt back and chambers a round.

"That's good," Ray says. "It's the ritual, man. It's all about the ritual." Ray looks over at me. "It's control. The ritual gives you control. Or at least the illusion of control. Because there is no control." The big smile. The quack laugh.

I take a cigarette out and light it up. "Rituals, huh?" I watch Eddie line up a shot on a young black Zed stumbling out of the brush. I think he's black anyway. The advanced degree of rot gives all of them a shade of gray. They are all one race now and we are the minority. Equality came in a rock from the sky. Must be really irritating for white supremacist idiots to discern which of the zombies has superior undead genes. The Zed Eddie is aiming at is a hundred yards out. The round takes him in the neck. "Aim a little higher out there. Put the cross hairs right above his head." The Zed drops. I turn back to Ray. "Is that what the Zed in the tree were? Ritual?"

Ray laughs. "Yeah," he says with a snap of his fingers. "I forgot about that. But that... that was the illusion of control at its finest." He leans on the wall and spits a big glob onto the woman below him. "G.o.dd.a.m.ned wretched things. And they're not alive, are they? They aren't human anymore. The soul, the soul's gone. The human part left and the human body part got left behind." Eddie stops shooting and listens with his eye still up to the scope. Ray continues as he folds his hands across his stomach and leans against the rail. "And so the preacher gets bit and the rest of them are chewed on and they're turning into these things and everybody is freaking out and I'd watched this thing on television about the Mayans and n.o.body wanted to shoot a little girl, even if she's not a little girl anymore. But you know, you still have to be some kind of sick freak to shoot a little girl, right?"

I remember the angel at the top of the tree, the dead eyes on a China doll face. Ray straightens the front of his karate outfit. "So we've got to do something with them, right? It's just mean to turn them out into the world to do... this." He sweeps his arms over the crowd below. "So, I don't know. We put them up in the tree as an offering to G.o.d or something. It doesn't make any sense right now. As I say it. Out loud. Of course, it didn't really make any sense right then either." He stops and smiles at me. "I'd eaten a bunch of Xanax and drank some red wine." He leans in and quietly says, "But these people. They'll believe anything when they're scared."

Eddie snaps off a couple of quick shots and two drop at once. He brings the rifle down and his eyes are red like his hair. In a voice I can hardly hear, he looks down at the gun in his hands and asks me, "You really think they aren't human, anymore? When they get like this?"

I put my hand on his shoulder. "They're not human anymore. I don't know what they are, but they're gone. We're just doing them a favor. And trying to survive all at the same time."

"You got that s.h.i.+t right," Ray says. He's oblivious to what Eddie is really asking. Eddie doesn't know how lucky he is to have not had a choice.

Hank drives by and parks the tractor in front of the gates to fortify the flimsy steel panels. He raises the bucket on the front to act as a crow's nest. The tractor is sitting crooked on the hill that slopes away from the gate and the raised bucket makes it look like it is about to fall over.

Lou has the big .50 loaded and all of the ammo for that gun arranged in the back of the jeep. Ray yells down to Lou, "Good. Now move it over to the thing. Like we talked about." Ray points towards the bunker. Lou drives off and parks the jeep facing the eastern wall. Ray turns to me, "Custer's last stand. I figure if something goes wrong and we've got to get underground, we can leave someone on there to mow them down while the rest of us, you know, run like h.e.l.l." Again the laugh. Eddie is practicing putting the clip in the rifle. He takes it out, puts it in his pocket, finds it again and loads. Faster every time. More efficient every time.

Kevin has climbed up onto the walkway from the opposite end and walks up to join us. He looks more stoned than ever. He's got the sniper gun with the night-vision slung onto his shoulder. He carries the rifle he had earlier in the maw of his great, meaty hand. I can see that he has added the words 'Death Eats Death' below the words 'Pig Sticker' on the side of the cardboard scabbard of his machete.

"They's a bunch of them, ain't they?" he asks. Ray nods, but clearly doesn't know what to make of the big man. "Teach'n the boy how ta shoot?"Eddie's eyebrows fold in at the word boy. Kevin puts his hand on Eddie's shoulder. "Don't worry, man. You'll do fine."

The eastern side of the compound is getting crowded and the Zed are starting to file around to the south and north. A few have already gathered along the muddy western side, having waded in from further away.

Kevin pops a thirty round clip into the Mini-14 and slides the bolt home. "Reckon we oughta pile a few of them critters up out there. Gonna take a buncha rounds to stack'em up. Don't know if we got that much ammo."

"Well," Ray says with a big pull of misty morning air through his nose, "even a little hill will slow them down, push them around."

Kevin laughs. "Ain't never built a d.a.m.n before, have ya?" Ray shrugs. "Problem with not building the wall high enough is that you just end up letting the water pour in. It gets trapped there. Be like building them a ladder if we f.u.c.k it up."

Eddie is listening pretty intently. I've given him two boxes of ammo, 1100 rounds. Kevin looks down at Eddie and lays a hand on the barrel. "Watch your barrel, man. If it gets hot, take a break. Don't let it get too warm." Eddie nods and pulls a loaded clip out of his pocket and loads it into the rifle without looking. Kids pick up things so fast.

Kevin wedges a piece of toilet paper into one ear and offers a torn piece to the rest of us. "This b.i.t.c.h is loud." We all plug up as he leans the barrel over the top log. I watch behind us as he lets the first round loose. The people in the courtyard all jump as the .223 erupts with a flash of flame. Two Zeds lose their heads and two more behind them spin and stumble from the round. A fifth one falls on a busted leg but continues to crawl.

"Holy s.h.i.+t," Kevin says with a smile. "Them things is so rotten you can kill about fourteen with one shot."

A boom thunders from the opposite end of the wall and three Zed crumble face down. The wooden floor beneath us shakes as more people are climbing up to start the shooting match. It will take some time.

I'm watching Eddie shoot and looking for Karen all at the same time. I've not seen her since the bunker. I do finally see Tyler, strolling across the courtyard. He's still carrying the MP5. And now he has an axe. He's headed towards the bunker. His shoulders are slumped and he walks with a sense of purpose and defeat. I guess he'll sit this one out.

Something heavy and metal clicks together near my ear. I turn around to see Ray holding the two hand grenades by their pins. "And if everything fails. Catastrophic. Epic. Fail. Well... we can take the A-train to h.e.l.l."

"That's about all they're good for," I tell him. He makes me nervous with those things.

Eddie is laying down some steady fire and reloading smoothly. Kevin is pounding away and I suppose I should spend a few rounds myself. I lean over the wall and pull the T-handle of the AR's bolt back and slide a round in.

The entire forest to the east seems to be alive with giant, rotting, people-sized, man-eating ants. I see a tall sapling bend as it is crushed to the ground. The absurdity of the scene hits me and I smile as I begin to sing softly to myself. "Just what makes that silly old ant, think he can move that rubber tree plant." The rifle rocks against my shoulder. A tall one drops, a short one dies, a fat one tips, a skinny one breaks. "Everyone knows an ant, can't, move a rubber tree plant." A black one, a white one, a man, a woman. "He's got high hopes, he's got high hopes." Three teen Zeds fall in three shots. "High apple pie in the sky hopes," I sing to myself.

I look over at Eddie and smile. I can tell from his expression that he's scared. Maybe he's smarter than anyone here. We should all be scared. We are wading slowly into deep water.

I slam a fresh magazine into the rifle and rack the bolt. I continue to sing but there's a lump of fear rising from deep down in my throat. "Once there was a silly old ram, thought he'd punch a hole in the dam." An old man Zed with a long white beard takes one through the teeth. The bullet punches through and hits the farmer behind him through the eye. Below me the beasts howl and crush against the logs. The platform under me rocks softly and I cannot tell if it is just the platform or the entire log wall.

"No one could make that ram, scram... he kept b.u.t.t'n that d.a.m.n." A redheaded man with a beard loses half of his face as does the bald man behind him. The wall is definitely moving. Out beyond the compound wall, the fence we are building from rotting flesh and fragile bone is growing, but it is too wide and too short.

"Tell everyone to shoot the ones at the top of the hill. And only at the top of the hill," I yell to Ray. "And tell people to conserve ammo. We need a backup plan if this all goes to h.e.l.l."

Ray nods and begins picking his way down the catwalk talking to each person. I reach down and put my hand on Eddie's barrel. It's red hot. "Take a break," I tell him. He stops and slumps into a pile against me. I can't hear him crying over the roar of the monsters below and the gunfire, but I can feel the wracking sobs against my leg.

There is nothing I can do for him. Nothing I can say. No one I can be. No place to go. No lie to tell. No hope to offer. No end in sight.

I see Karen walking towards the catwalk and motion her to come up. I give Eddie a shake to bring him around. I shake him a little too hard but it snaps him out of crying. I lean down into his ear and try to talk without yelling, "Go get something to eat. Let your gun cool down. And take care of Karen for me. Alright?"

He nods and wipes his nose. He grabs his rifle and scrambles down the ladder away from the noise and the death and the undead. I watch Karen put an arm around him and lead him away towards the bath house. She doesn't look back at me as she leaves.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n, man. Look at this s.h.i.+t," Kevin yells.

The noise from below is deafening as the Zed begin to pour over our hill of bodies like it isn't there. I look straight down to the bottom of the compound wall and see a short soccer mom stumble and disappear. The crowd closes in and she is gone. They b.u.mp against each other and shriek and moan and tear at the logs. Spit and black blood and fury spray into the air. I keep watching as they crush each other against the wall. For a split second, a hole opens up where the soccer mom was and I see her face looking up as another Zed steps on her windpipe trying to get closer, get in, get us. Another surge in the crowd and several in the middle fall. The cycle repeats with the ones underneath becoming the new floor. The crowd is growing taller by a head with every collapse.

Kevin is shaking his head. "This ain't gonna work, man. We ain't got enough ammo er people er noth'n."

I nod in agreement. Ray is coming back along the catwalk. He looks excited and happy. I motion him over. "Tell everybody to quit shooting. Cease fire. We're just making a mess out of this."

"What?' he asks me. "Whadya mean? We're doing great."

"No. We're not. We're making a mess out of it. Just let them go around."

Ray pats the air in front of him. "I got this. I can fix this." He walks down to the corner of the compound and pulls something out of his pocket. I see him pull the pin on one of the grenades and throw it as hard as he can. The little metal ball hits a young sapling tree squarely and bounces backwards. An explosion rocks the front gates as metal shrapnel flies into the compound. The big tractor rocks up on one side and falls with a heavy thud. Arms and legs and heads poke through the holes and tear at the damaged metal.

"What in the h.e.l.l..." Kevin yells at me.

"We're f.u.c.ked," I yell back. Kevin and I start climbing down the ladder, bringing everything we can carry. Others panic and jump off. Lou is in the back of the jeep pointing the big .50 at the front gate. As I make for the bath house, the rain begins to fall again in a slow steady drizzle that promises to last the night. It might be the only thing that does.

Chapter 18: You Bunker, You Brought'er.

I see Hank when I hit the bottom of the ladder. He's not trapped under the tractor like dad. But he does have a big piece of the gate sticking out of his shoulder. He's walking slowly away from the tractor, in shock and bleeding. I pull my rifle up and put the front sight on his chest. He falls into a heap before I can pull the trigger. Relief fills me.

"Come on, man. What are you wait'n for?" For a big guy, Kevin is hauling a.s.s. He's headed to the bunker like most everyone else. A few people remain on the catwalk, frozen in fear, anch.o.r.ed in their inability to comprehend. I head for the bath house. Over at the front gate, the first of a hundred million zombies works his way into the compound. I duck when the .50 fires a single round into him, tearing him in half. A big piece of the post holding what's left of the gate goes with it. Too much gun. The rest start to spill into the compound like sand out of a boot.

Karen pops out of the bath house just as I get there. I wave her on towards the bunker. She's got Eddie by the arm, dragging him with her. He has his rifle in one hand and a bag in the other. His eyes are wide and his mouth hangs open. I fly into the bath house, grab my pack, and back out. But the Zed are covering ground quick. Lou opens up with the .50 in full auto and starts plowing the ground beside me. He's not even aiming. The guy running next to me explodes in a red mist, his leg gone from the knee down. I hear screaming behind but I don't look back.

Something pulls at my pack. I keep trying to run but there are three of them on me. They look fresh and move faster than the rotten ones. Probably around eighteen years old. Which makes them over twelve and under twenty. r.e.t.a.r.ded zombies. One with a festering bite wound on his shoulder sets his feet and pulls on me hard. I feel something move by my face like a deer fly or a hummingbird. The one pulling lets go with a neat little hole under his eye. I turn around to see Eddie has stopped and is emptying round after round past my head. One little, two little, three little and they are down.

I take off again and try to run straight to keep from getting shot. I see Eddie reload and resume firing. As I get closer, I wave him on. "Go, go, go, go..." He turns and sprints.

Lou is overrun on the jeep. He's climbing up on the gun now instead of shooting it. There's no way out for him. I pull the big single shot and pause just long enough to put the cross hairs on his chest. The hammer comes back and then I touch the trigger. The gun roars and a fireball erupts from the end. Lou drops in a slump. The Zed running towards me is knocked down by the blast. I step on his face as I take off again. You're welcome, Lou.

A white karate suit and a gray head of hair fly by me, knees and elbows pumping way too high as the adrenaline in Ray's body winds him beyond his capabilities. He looks like an Albert Einstein superhero action figure. I can hear him yelling as he runs, "What the f.u.c.k! What the f.u.c.k! What the f.u.c.k did you do, Ray? What the f.u.c.k?" He pa.s.ses me like I'm going the other direction. "What the f.u.c.k did you do, Ray?"

Good question.

Karen grabs Eddie at the entrance and down they go. Tyler is manning the MP5 and trying to maintain a perimeter. Kevin is beside him firing and screaming at the top of his lungs, "Betty! Betty!" He screams and looks and shoots and looks and screams and screams and screams.

I see Dawn and Donna make a break for the bunker from the side of the main house. Little Dawn doesn't see one of the Zed coming in behind her at an angle. I can't get a shot at him over her shoulder. He catches her arm and sinks his rotten Zed teeth into the back of her hand. He chews and tears and holds onto her arm while Big Donna drags both of them to the entrance.

Dawn's eyes are wild and she can't break free of the f.u.c.ker. They're up to the door when I pull my cleaver out and bring it down through her wrist, severing the infected hand. The Zed with the hand sandwich falls backwards into the mud. I bring the AR around and walk a line of rounds up from his d.i.c.k to his forehead. I'm still pulling the trigger, even after the click of the empty chamber.

I look back towards the gate, towards the east wall, back to the jeep and then the house. I hear a chainsaw running in the distance. I hear frantic fire coming from the center of the crowd. Two shots sound at almost the same instant then they are quiet. The saw switches to idle, somewhere out in there in the mud.

"Get in, shut the door!" Ray is screaming below us.

Tyler is out of ammo in the little sub gun and drops it down into the hole. He pulls out one of his pistols and starts trying to shoot the closest ones but there are too many. Kevin is swinging his machete and the b.u.t.t of his rifle. I take out my last loaded magazine and slam it home. "Get in now," I yell at them.

Tyler ducks in and I grab Kevin by the back of his s.h.i.+rt. "No, G.o.dd.a.m.n it. I need to find..." but he is cut off when a huge, naked Zed woman slams into him on the run. His machete clatters down the steps in front of him as he takes every step the hard way. She falls in the hole after him and I hear a shot ring out below me.

It's over. If you're not in, you're out. I grab the open cellar door and swing it shut behind me.

The giant, naked Zed woman is sprawled out at the bottom of the steps face down. Her mottled eyeball is lying about six inches from her head which is blocking the door to the metal container. Ray shoves on the door and tries to push it past her but she has to go a good four hundred pounds. "Mother of Christ," Ray says with a laugh. "It's a good thing that uh... well, it's a good thing you got a round into her," he tells Karen. Karen is still shaking and holding her Winchester. Her chest heaves looking for oxygen and stability. Her eyes are gla.s.s and her leg spasms in small ripples. Ray wipes the sweat from his forehead with the back of his white karate sleeve. A yellow stain runs down the left side of his white pants. "If you hadn't shot her, she'd of swallowed us whole." Quack. Sigh. No takers.

We all stand motionless and speechless. The howling and banging from the outside fills the small room at the bottom of the steps. Little Dawn's sobs cause us all to look towards the door of the metal containers. Slowly, Tyler picks up the axe he was carrying and straddles one of the dead Zed's legs. He swings down hard into her leg and buries the blade into her hip socket. The next shot sends a chunk of rotten bone and grey flesh towards Ray who ducks. "Hold it, hold it," he says and moves out of the corner. "What the h.e.l.l are you doing? We don't need her for food or...lamp oil for f.u.c.k's sake."

Tyler stops and readies the axe again. "How long are we going to be down here?" It's more than I've heard him say since Daisy departed. Ray shrugs an 'I don't know.' "Do you really want to be down here in a confined s.p.a.ce with a giant, rotting corpse? We don't know the pathology of these things. It could infect us all if we leave it. And we can't carry it out. Not in one piece, anyway." He swings the axe again and the leg moves away from the body. One hunk of flesh on the inner thigh holds the leg to the body.

Kevin stands up and continues to touch his hand to the gash on his head and then look at the blood on his fingers. "f.u.c.king b.i.t.c.h," is all I hear him mutter before picking up his machete and removing the rest of the leg.

Ray starts to dry heave as the two of them work to remove her other leg. Next comes her head and her left arm. Kevin points at the dismembered corpse and tells Tyler, "Leave t'other arm on her. We'll need some way of dragging the b.i.t.c.h out of here."

Overhead, at the top of the stairs, the metal doors shake and clang and rattle as the Zed outside try to get in. I check the magazine in my rifle. I've still got about twenty rounds left. I reload and step back away from the door. "Watch your ears. I'm gonna open this thing." I watch the metal door and listen for the next thud of a rotten fist or a damaged head. A big thump lands in the middle of the left hand door and I put a round where the thump landed. A small ray of daylight pokes down into the dark from the hole. The hole goes dark again and I put one right beside it. A few shots high, a couple low. The heavy sounds of bodies collapsing against the metal cellar doors fill the small room. The first hole is showing daylight again and stays clear.

I put the rifle down and rummage through my pack for more .45 ammo. I find a ten round mag in the side pouch and slide it home. "Ready?" I ask behind me. Ray is holding the head of the Zed woman by the hair. He looks like some kind of demented trick-or-treater in his karate outfit and Medusa-head treat bucket. Tyler and Kevin have a leg each. I ease open the door and kick at the bodies blocking the way. The head of a spine shot Zed snaps at me near my boot and I punt him hard in the face. Instead of hitting something hard, his face disappears in a smear across the bottom of my boot. The skeleton head snaps and bites some more. I put a .45 slug through his ear and kick him again. "Alright," I tell them.

Ray chucks the head out and walks quickly away trying to shake the yuck off of his hand. Kevin and Tyler throw the legs out and I shut the door. Ray returns with the arm. It takes all three of them to pull her up and push her away. Each time Kevin gets near the door, he looks around for as long as he can to see if Betty is anywhere.

She isn't.

Inside the containers, Little Dawn is crying hysterically as Big Donna tries to wrap up her b.l.o.o.d.y stump of an arm. A sink with a working faucet sits just outside the container and we all wash as much of the death and rot off of us as we can. Eddie and Karen sit stunned on the doorstep into the container staring blankly at the huge stain on the floor.

I dry off and remove my filthy outer garments. And that's when I see it. The cut on my thigh. It hasn't bled much but it is a bright red stripe across my right leg. I look carefully around the wound. Black blood is splattered all around it but I can't see any on it. A horrible idea blossoms at the bottom of my skull. I feel like sitting down and throwing up. What if I'm infected? I know the bites spread the infection. Would Zed blood in an open wound do the same thing?

It almost looks like a bullet wound, a small caliber bullet that might have grazed my leg while I was running. A .22 bullet maybe. But I wouldn't even be down here if it wasn't for the kid. I walk over to Eddie and stick out my hand. "Thanks," I tell him. He looks up at me and takes my hand. I'm probably thanking him for killing me. "You saved my a.s.s out there. I'd be toast if you hadn't been there." For just a second, I see something close to a smile cross his face. It's the first time I've seen him look anything other than miserable.

Karen doesn't look so good. I help her up and walk her inside. The second container is set up like a dorm with bunk beds and a table at one end. It's tight in here but there's nowhere I'd rather be right at this moment, even with the screaming and crying coming from little Dawn. A couple of the wind-up flashlights lay here and there providing eerie, yellow illumination in the dark metal coffin. The sound coming from the metal outer doors of the bunker fades as we move further inside. I put Karen into a bunk and take off her boots. She stares straight ahead as I help her. "I never wanted to be here for any of this. I don't want to live like this." She doesn't really look like she's all that here for the any of this so maybe she's finding another path to what she wants.

"What are we going to do?" Big Donna asks me. She's crying now but trying to hold a towel around little Dawn's stump.

"I don't want to die. I don't want to turn into one of them," little Dawn is saying in great teary gasps and slurred, consonant-less words leaking from a jaw wedged open by pain and terror. We might both be infected. We might change in the dark and kill everyone in here.