As the heavy garbage truck crested the hill, Duane shifted gears.  The transmission gave a tired rattle and the truck slowed. Duane brought the truck to a shuddering stop on the gravel shoulder.  Down the highway, a farmyard waited off the edge of the road. 

            “Well,” Duane said, engaging the emergency brake.  “What do you think?”

            In the passenger seat, Ben said, “Let me look.”

            He fished a pair of binoculars out of the glove compartment and lifted them to his eyes.  As he did so, Duane turned off the truck.  The rumbling vibration of the old behemoth ceased and everything became almost preternaturally silent.

            Ben adjusted the binoculars and stared through the eyepieces.

            “Well?”

            “I can’t see much,” Ben admitted.  “I’m telling you, my eyes are going.”

            Duane snatched the binoculars from Ben’s hands.  “Your eyes are fine.”

            He looked through the binoculars, scanning the farmyard. He could see a farmhouse, a large red barn and a few scattered outbuildings.

            “Looks like there might be a truck around back,” Duane said.

            “That doesn’t mean anything.”

            Duane set the binoculars aside.  “It might.  Come on.”

            Duane opened the driver’s door and hopped out of the cab.  Ben climbed down more carefully, aware of his bad hip and knee.  He’d been hurt a few weeks before and still bore the reminders.

            Ben limped to the back of the truck.  Duane had raised the door on the garbage compartment and was fishing out a few pieces of clothing.  He gave Ben a long jacket and chose a short leather one for himself.  The back of the truck still held the lingering aroma of trash and rot; the stench inside the cab, however, was far worse.  Neither Ben nor Duane was bothered; they barely noticed the smell.

            “Here,” Duane said, handing Ben a shotgun.  Duane had a revolver tucked into his waistband.

            “Couldn’t we drive a little closer?” Ben asked.  “That’s a long walk and with my rotten hip—”

            “We can’t,” Duane said. “If they hear us, we’ll lose the element of surprise and end up dead.  You want that?”

            Ben’s expression made it clear that he most certainly didn’t want that.

            Duane locked the rear door with a heavy padlock.  Then, making sure he had the truck keys in his pocket and the binoculars around his neck, he closed and locked the cab.

            “Betsy’ll be all right here?” Ben asked.

            Duane nodded.  “There’s nothing around for miles.”

            Betsy was their only means of safe transportation.  They’d stolen the truck just a few days after they met.  It was big, heavy, and made of iron.  The trash compartment smelled but it worked fine for hauling supplies from place to place.  And with the cab set up as high as it was, they felt safe.  Only a few days before they had been driving straight down some small town’s main street when they’d been ambushed.  The attackers had smashed at the truck, but Betsy got them through the mess unscathed.

            Giving Betsy a final, longing glance, Ben began limping down the road next to Duane, gravel crunching underfoot.

#

            Duane and Ben had met in the hospital, in the early days of the plague.  That’s when scientists, and doctors were calling it Post-Mortem Reanimation, or PMR.  They made it sound like a disease that could be treated with bed rest and a few injections.  To the people on the streets, civilians who dealt with things first-hand, carriers of the plague were zombies, plain and simple.  There was no use in dressing up the living dead with a good acronym.

            Duane and Ben had been in a quarantined ward.  They’d been exposed to the disease but the plague was in its infancy and no one knew what to expect.  What scientists did know was pretty simple: the dead didn’t stay dead.  It wasn’t quite as bad as some Saturday night shocker on TV, though.  The only people to experience PMR were those who had just died.  Anyone dead and buried before the plague’s arrival stayed that way.

            Duane and Ben had lain side by side in a ward with barred windows and doors, listening to the world coming down around them.  They heard rumours that the bigger cities had fallen.  That the plague was spreading like wildfire and taking most of the normal human population with it.  It was hard to imagine such scenes of destruction and chaos while lying in a hospital bed.  But it wasn’t so hard to imagine when the screaming started in the hospital and, one by one, victims in the quarantine ward died and came back to life.  Each time they were quickly removed, carried out thrashing and fighting.

            Duane and Ben waited to die.

            Just when the pain and the suffering seemed at a peak, something happened. Some said that the government had been shipping the living dead off to camps to be examined and that the survivors on the outside caught wind of it.  Some said that the PMR victims in the hospital had escaped.  Regardless, late one night Duane and Ben had their suffering interrupted when the security door in their ward came crashing in, bringing with it thrashing hell.

            There had been plague victims, doctors, civilians and men in military fatigues.  There had been gunfire, screams, and raw, animal murder.  Duane and Ben had escaped the ward, though just barely.  They had run into the darkness with gunfire at their heels and bright, blossoming firelight behind them.  By morning, the fire had consumed the hospital and everyone—living or dead—was gone.

            In the days that followed, Duane and Ben had banded together.  It had been out of safety and convenience more than friendship—after what happened at the hospital, neither of them was capable of emotional trust.  They’d stolen Betsy from a city storage depot and started across the country, searching for shelter, and most importantly, survivors.

            They avoided the cities, knowing that with the heavy military presence and high number of living dead, they would be killed within hours.  It was safer to travel small highways to the out-of-the-way places.  Chances of attack were slim.  And if they found food or shelter, they didn’t have to worry about sharing.

            But sometimes Duane wondered.  Had the survivors gained the upper hand? Or had PMR victims overrun everything? Some nights Duane wondered if perhaps he and Ben were the last of their kind.

#

            They stopped near the farm and knelt in a copse of trees.  Ben was dragging his right leg, using the shotgun as a makeshift crutch.  Duane thought about warning him against it.  Then again, if Ben accidentally blew his arm off, that was his own fault.

            Duane raised the binoculars and examined the farm.  He could see details.  Curtains in the windows.  Closed doors.  A pick-up park half-out-of-sight behind some outbuildings.  Definite signs of habitation.

            “I think we’ve got survivors,” Duane said.

            “Really?” Ben asked.  “How many?”

            “I can’t see them, but the place looks lived in.”

            The idea of survivors awakened something primal in Ben.  It had been weeks since they’d seen a living person.  Just the thought of stepping into a house where people lived—the safety, food and security—was almost too much to bear.

            “Anyone else?” Ben asked.

            Ben was asking about zombies.  PMR victims often gravitated to places of habitation, trying to gain access.  Duane raised the binoculars and looked through them again.

            “Nothing I can see.”

            “All right,” Ben said.  “Let’s go.”          

            “Slow down,” Duane said.  “If there are survivors, they aren’t going anywhere.  We have to make sure we don’t walk into an ambush.  They might have seen us already.  Or smelled you.”  Duane wrinkled his nose.

            “Hey,” Ben said.  “We’re riding around in a garbage truck.”

            Ben refused to practice any sort of hygiene and suffered because of it.  Though Duane didn’t see the point either, he thought it best to keep clean, change clothes regularly and cover all open sores and wounds.

            “Just follow me,” Duane said, “and stay downwind.  You’re ripe.”

            Ben frowned.  “You’re no peach yourself.”

            Pulling the revolver from his waistband, Duane moved through the trees, heading toward the farmyard.  Ben followed.

#

            They skirted the front drive, moving through a narrow band of denuded poplar trees that grew along a rutted field.  The ground was rough and uneven.  As they arrived at a rundown shed near the edge of the property, Ben fell down.

            Hunkered behind the shed, Duane looked back to where Ben lay, writhing on the ground.

            “What are you doing?”

            “My hip,” Ben said.  “Damn thing gave out on me.”

            Duane returned to Ben’s side. Putting a hand on Ben’s hip, he gave it an exploratory push.  Something grated together.  Ben tried to kick his leg, but it wouldn’t move.

            “If I help you up, can you keep moving?”

            “Sure.  Just… help me up,” Ben grunted.

            Duane got Ben to his feet. Ben swayed uncertainly, leaning on the shotgun, gritting his teeth.

            “Try to stay low,” Duane said.

            Duane led them toward a pile of rusted farm equipment.  Ben struggled to keep up.  Duane crouched behind a rusted set of harrows.  Ben almost collapsed beside him.

            “I don’t know—”

            “Quiet,” Duane hissed.  He peered across the farmyard.  “Look.”

            Ben saw the girl almost immediately.  She was standing just inside the shadow of the barn, staring at the sky.  She wore a long white dress, probably two sizes too large.  Its hem dragged in the dust.  Her hair was dirty and her eyes were glassy.  Ben felt a hint of revulsion in his stomach.  She was just a little girl, but she looked so different… so wrong.

            “I thought you didn’t see anyone,” Ben said.

            Duane pulled his revolver.  “I missed her.  No big deal.  She hasn’t seen us.”

            “She reminds me of my little sister, a long time ago,” Ben admitted.

            “Is that going to make a difference?”

            “No,” Ben said.  “Why would it? She’s just another one of them… she’s not my sister.”

            “Glad you’re onboard,” Duane said.  He lifted the binoculars and panned the farmyard.  He could see nothing else besides the little girl.  She was still staring at the sky, absently chewing on something.

            Duane set the binoculars aside.  No sense in having something that could get in the way during a fight.

            “Ready?”

            Ben gripped his shotgun.  “Ready.”

            They began up the drive.  Ben was hobbling, his bad leg dragging a furrow in the dirt.  They were less than twenty feet from the little girl when she turned her head and looked at them.  Realization dawned in her eyes and she opened her mouth.

            “Okay,” Duane said, raising his revolver and sighting down the barrel.  “Now it’s time for—”

            The flat echo of a rifle report cut Duane off in mid-sentence.  A high calibre round struck him in the top left corner of the skull, shearing away almost a third of his head.  Clumps of mottled brain tissue and scalp splattered the ground behind him.  Duane had time to utter a surprised grunt, then his legs folded and he crashed to the ground. 

            Ben shambled to an abrupt halt.  “Duane? You okay?”

            Thick, viscous blood pumped out of the top of Duane’s head.

            The little girl was screaming.

            Ben turned quickly, dropping the shotgun.  This was an ambush.  He had to get back to Betsy.  If he could make it back to Betsy, he would be fine.  Everything would be—

            Something struck Ben in the small of the back and knocked him down.  As he fell he heard a rifle shot.  He landed, sprawled in the dust, as the report echoed across the still prairie.

            Get moving, Ben thought.

            He was numb from the waist down.  Hooking his fingers into claws, he dragged himself toward the road.

            Two more shots struck him in the middle of his back, slamming him against the ground.

            He lay there for a few minutes, dirt in his eyes.  When he heard the sound of approaching footsteps, he rolled onto his back.  He found himself staring up at the dark muzzle of a rifle.  Behind it was a man’s tired, gaunt face.

            “You shouldn’t have come here,” the man said.

            As the man squeezed the trigger, Ben realized he would never make it to Betsy.  It doesn’t matter, he thought.  Duane still has the keys, anyhow.

#

            Lucas slung the rifle over his shoulder and pulled his eyes away from the grisly sight at his feet.  Amanda was standing in front of the barn, cradling little Missy as she continued to sob.

            “Did you get him?” Amanda asked.

            “Yeah,” Lucas said.  “I got him.”

            He walked to the barn where is wife and daughter waited.  Missy’s sobs had wound down to quiet, hitching breaths.  Lucas knelt in front of her and took her hand.

            “It’s okay, baby,” he said.

            “I hate using her like that,” Amanda said.

            Lucas stood up.  “What choice do we have? If you or I had been out there, they wouldn’t have walked up like that.  They would have shot us down first.”

            “They had guns?”

            “Yeah,” Lucas said.  “Both of them.”

            Amanda drew a shuddering breath. “Are they really getting that much smarter?” she asked.

            Lucas looked across the yard where the two zombies lay, bleeding into the dirt.  “Yes,” he said.  “It looks like it.”

            After a few moments of silence, Lucas touched Amanda on the arm.  “Take Missy inside.”

            She kissed him, then carefully picked up her daughter and headed for the house.  After they were safely inside, Lucas reached into his back pocket and removed a pair of heavy work gloves.  He dragged Duane out behind the barn, then Ben.

            He burned them.