CHAPTER 21

Reggie led Kyra out into the hall, then held her shoulders as he guided her around the corpses on the floor.

She stepped on the side of what felt like the heel of a man’s boot and stumbled.

Reggie caught her, steadied her. “You okay?” he asked.

The carpet felt wet, squishy beneath Kyra’s sneakers.

“Who were they?”

“That’s Jake back there. And there’s the Kirby kids up here. I forget their names.”

“Ruth and Max,” she said.

He grunted and continued to guide her through the living room. She could feel his fingers trembling on her shoulders.

“Misty Mae said Jake was sick last night.”

Another grunt.

She said, “Did you see Misty Mae?”

“Yeah. She’s outside with the baby.”

Kyra brightened. “She’s okay?”

He didn’t answer right away, and the silence was chilling.

“No,” he said. “She was changed. I couldn’t even tell at first—you know how you can tell with most of them? She didn’t have no bite marks or blood on her or nothing. It was like there was nothing wrong with her. Not till she turned around on me and I saw those eyes. They’d gone all milky, like a dead person’s eyes.”

“Did you…”

They were going down the steps now, out into the yard. It was still bright enough out for the light to show up on her eyes, and she squeezed them shut against it.

“Uncle Reggie?”

“She’s dead, Kyra.”

“And the baby?”

“You don’t want to know about that,” he said. “I had to…”

But he didn’t offer anything else, just trailed off into silence.

Their shoes clattered on the pavement. They slowed, and Uncle Reggie kept a hand on her as he pushed the gate open. The creaking of its hinges seemed deafening.

“Where are we going?” she said.

“Away from here, baby. Things are bad.”

“Tell me, Reggie.”

He opened the door to his truck and helped her inside. “I want you to stay here,” he said. “You hear me? Don’t move. This’ll just take a second.”

“What are—”

But he had closed the door in her face. She leaned back against the cracked vinyl seats, listening to the wind blowing dust against the cab of the truck and the faint grating of the sand against the glass.

She thought back on the night before, listening in her bed to the alley-cat sounds of Jake and Misty Mae having sex in the trailer next door. Misty Mae had said Jake was sick when he came home from Odessa. Had he been infected then? That seemed likely to Kyra. And that made her wonder just how Misty Mae had gotten her infection. Uncle Reggie had mentioned that Misty Mae didn’t have any wounds, like you’d get if you were attacked. Had she gotten hers in the bedroom? Were the little swimmers in his baby batter a bunch of zombies, changing her from the inside out?

The thought made her shudder. God, what a way to go, she thought.

And then a shotgun blast silenced that line of thinking. She sat bolt upright in the seat, waiting.

A moment later, Uncle Reggie was climbing into the driver’s seat. He was out of breath and he had to fight with his keys to get them into the ignition. He tossed the shotgun up against Kyra’s left leg. She put her hand around it—the barrel was hot—and waited to see what was going to happen.

“Hold on,” he told her.

The transmission made a grinding noise, and he cussed under his breath. Kyra felt a renewed wave of uneasiness wash over her. She’d lived with the man nearly all her life and she had never heard him say a cross word. He must be scared, she thought.

They tore away from the curb with a stuttering bark from the tires. Kyra grabbed hold of the door and tried to brace herself.

“Uncle Reggie,” she said. “Slow down, please. Uncle Reggie.”

“They’re everywhere, Kyra,” he said.

A car skidded by them, tires shrieking. A horn blared, and kept on blaring as it receded into the distance behind them.

“Uncle Reggie, please. Please stop.”

They went around another corner. She heard the engine’s exhaust note drop an octave, and soon they were coasting at normal speed.

“What’s happening?” she said.

“The whole place, Kyra. Jesus, there’s bodies everywhere. And the town’s on fire. The propane yard…my God, there’s so much smoke.”

She could smell it. Had smelled it, in fact.

“Where are we?”

“Up near the freeway,” he said. “I don’t know. Over near Wayne Blessing’s place, I think.”

West end of town, she thought. A whole lot of empty nothingness stretching out before them, desert all the way to the horizon, and beyond.

“What about Billy Ledlow?” she asked, referring to the town’s one and only peace officer, a part-timer who also worked the day shift at the Village Pantry grocery store on Wilma Street.

“Baby, there’s nothing. My God. They’re all killing each other. I saw ole Ms. Wendy Gruber eatin’ on somebody in the alleyway behind her shop. I threw up all over myself.”

Maybe that was what she smelled, she thought. They had cleared the smoke now, she guessed, and the air inside the truck was thick with the smell of rot. It was like a package of chicken that had been left out back in the garbage for a few days.

She said, “Uncle Reggie, what are we gonna do?”

“I don’t know, baby. I gotta get you outta here. It…it ain’t safe here.”

A silence settled over them, and it stretched on and on.

Uncle Reggie had his window down. She could feel the wind blowing from that direction, and with it came that smell again, that stink of something rotting in the sun.

She said, “Uncle Reggie,” and waited.

“Yeah, baby?”

“I don’t want you to lie to me,” she said.

“I won’t ever lie to you, Kyra, you know that.”

She waited.

He was silent.

Finally, she said, “Uncle Reggie, tell me the truth. Did you get bit? Is that what I smell?”

He took a long time to answer, but at last he said, “Yeah. On my left shoulder.”

“Is it bad?”

“Bad enough. It hurts.”

“Did you…do anything for it?”

“Like what?” he said. “Can’t do nothing for it, you know that. They ain’t got no cure.”

She nodded, and they were both silent again.

“Damn it,” he muttered, a little while later.

“What is it?”

“Kyra, I’m sorry. It’s hard for me to focus. This town ain’t got more than twenty streets and I keep getting lost. I can’t find the fuckin’ highway. My head is swimming. I can’t stop sweatin’. It’s like I got the flu or something. I keep blackin’ out.”

He coughed, hard, and it sounded like he was bringing something up.

She reached out a hand to touch his shoulder.

“No, don’t,” he said, and flinched away from her when her fingertips touched his shirtsleeve.

“Reggie?”

“I can’t,” he began, then broke off into a coughing fit. The coughing went on and on. Then, when it stopped, he said, “I want to find someplace safe for you, Kyra. If I can leave you with somebody we trust, somebody who’ll take care of you, that’d be…”

“Reggie, please. Pull over. Let me help you.”

“I can’t pull over, Kyra. They’re everywhere. And besides, you can’t do nothin’ for me. Just sit still a bit and—Holy shit!”

There was a loud crash against Reggie’s side of the truck and the vehicle swerved to the right, out of control. They hit a parked car on Kyra’s side of the road and she was thrown forward against the dashboard.

“What is it?” she screamed. “What’s going on?”

“Fucking zombie,” Reggie muttered. “Came out of nowhere. The damn idiot ran right into the truck. Didn’t even see him.”

Kyra listened as he worked the gearshift between them, grinding the transmission as he tried to get the truck back into gear. She could hear him pumping his foot on the clutch.

“What’s wrong?”

“Can’t get it in gear. I think it’s the clutch or something. It’s slipped.”

From behind them, Kyra could hear shouts and the sounds of glass breaking. Off in the distance, she heard shots, but just a few. Over all the rest of the rioting, she could hear the moans of the infected, getting closer.

“Reggie.”

More grinding gears, more clutch pumping.

“Reggie.”

“It’s not working,” he said.

He threw open his door.

“What are you doing? Where are you going?”

“Give me the gun,” he shouted at her.

She fumbled with the shotgun, pushing it awkwardly in his direction. He yanked it out of her hand. She heard his footsteps going away, toward the back of the truck, and then two blasts from the shotgun.

The next moment, he was back at the truck. She listened as he dumped a box of shells onto the seat beside her and worked them into the Mossberg’s magazine.

“Reggie, what’s going on?”

“We’re gonna have to make it on foot,” he said. “Can you come on out?”

She scrambled over the seats and he helped her down to the pavement. Kyra heard the moans of the infected all around her.

Reggie put one of her hands on the side of the truck and told her to stand still. He took a few steps from her and fired. He racked the shotgun and fired again. She could smell the gun smoke in the air mixed with the greasy, black smoke of a propane fire nearby.

Something thudded against the driver’s-side door and she screamed.

“Motherfucker,” Reggie hissed. There was a dull slap, like a hammer hitting a steak, and then the sound of a body falling to the pavement.

A hand gripped her around the bicep.

“Come on,” Reggie said.

He pulled her into the street, turned her ninety degrees, and gave her a push.

“Go,” he shouted.

She fell forward, but kept her feet.

She turned back, confused. “What? Reggie?”

Once again, he grabbed her by the arm, turned her around, and shoved. “Go,” he yelled. “Hurry. I can’t hold them off for long.”

And then it dawned on her what he expected her to do. “No,” she said. “Uncle Reggie, no. I can’t. Please. Come with me.”

“Go,” he said. “Get out of here.”

He fired three more times. She could hear him struggling, grunting as he wrestled with one of the infected.

“Go, Kyra. Hurry.”

She took three steps, then stopped. She couldn’t. Not alone.

Reggie was still fighting. She heard his boots scuffing on the pavement. He grunted as he fought hand to hand with the zombies, pushing them back, buying time for her.

“Kyra!” he shouted. “Go, hurry. Please. Go.”

It was the last sound she heard from him. Crying, shaking so badly she thought she might rattle herself to bits, she turned and walked into the desert with only the padded thud of her shoes on the pavement to tell her she was still on the road.