Katie slammed the driver's door shut as Jenni and Bill squeezed in beside her. Bill yanked the door shut as Jenni scrambled into the back with the two girls.
“Are either of you bit?” she asked, and felt like a bitch doing it.
“No! No!”
One girl was blond with huge blue eyes. The younger one was Hispanic with the darkest eyes Jenni had ever seen.
The zombies were closer now. Their mutilated forms were slow, but relentless as they stumbled down the country road.
“What drew them here?” Bill wondered. “Couldn't be the gunfire this fast. ”
“Don't know. Don't care,” Katie answered, and shifted the truck into reverse. Looking over her shoulder, she began to drive backwards toward the church parking lot. The other two vehicles waited for them.
Suddenly, a man ran into the glare of the headlights. Waving his arms, he was covered in sweat and breathing hard.
“I have a feeling we now know what is drawing them here,” Jenni said. “I think they're chasing him!”
One of the girls peeked around Bill's chair. “That's the bad man!
That's the one that opened up the door and took us away!”
“A bandit!” Katie slammed on the brakes.
“No, leave him. Fuck him!” Jenni said.
“We can't leave him,” Bill protested.
Katie looked at Bill. “He did this! He did this!”
Bill looked torn for a second, then said, “We can't risk it. Leave him. ”
Katie looked like she wanted to run him over, but instead hit the accelerator and the truck roared backwards. The man screamed in anguish as the truck roared away, leaving him to the zombies.
Once Katie cleared the other vehicles, she turned the truck around, switched gears, and headed back down the road.
Jenni looked at the two girls huddled beside her. They were both trembling and staring at her with wide eyes.
“Tell me what happened,” she said in a gentle voice.
3. The Devils in the Darkness
“So then the fuckers show up saying they're there to rescue the people, that they were there to evacuate them to a safe place,” Jenni explained to the group gathered in the city council room in city hall.
It was all the usual suspects; Nerit, Juan, Travis, Manny, Peggy, Katie, Bill, and Curtis.
“How many were there?” Travis asked.
“Four,” Nerit responded. “They cleared out some of the zombies when they arrived, then forced their way inside. They used a crowbar to get the doors open. ”
“The bandits didn't even wait for the people inside to let them in.
They just immediately broke in,” Katie added. “Said they were on a tight schedule or some horseshit like that. ”
“When Esmerelda, the woman that was in charge, said she would call Peggy at the fort for confirmation, they shot her,” Jenni continued.
“They grabbed some of the girls and held them hostage while they ransacked the place. Every time a zombie wandered in, the guys would shoot the zombie. But it was getting crazier. They loaded the young women and girls into their vehicles and left the older women, elderly and the boys. The vehicle we found went off the road when one of the remaining survivors opened fire on it. A tire was blown out and it went into the ditch. The bandits took off on foot, but left the girls behind for the zombies. ”
Nerit shook her head and lit another cigarette. “Animals. ”