I tossed another limp zombie into the back of a truck while the driver and another local stood nearby. The large section of chain-link fencing lining the truck box creaked as more weight was added.
"That's the last one," I told the driver.
"Okay, thanks!" He hopped inside and drove away with his friend in the passenger seat. In the back, two dozen zombies were piled like firewood.
I wiped down my arrows one by one as the truck drove to the canal and backed up to the edge. The truck's passenger crossed the bridge while the driver tossed a length of chain across. Once he tied it around a large boulder, the driver dropped the tailgate and drove the truck ahead slowly. The chain went tight until the chain-link liner and all the zombies on top of it tumbled into the canal.
The chain and fencing were left dangling beside the one they'd used previously. The truck drove upstream, presumably to wash out the back in case any blood had contaminated the metal surface. I'd been the only one to touch the zombies, so as long as they washed it thoroughly and let it dry in the sun, any blood or saliva would cease to be infectious. If some of the onlookers' expressions were anything to go by, the truck would be sitting in the field for a week.
Another truck pulled up beside me, and Nicky hopped out. "I don't think we're going to see those two for a while."
"Oh?" I walked beside her as another local promptly came to collect the truck Nicky had commandeered without permission.
"Definitely part Nightstalker with the way he holed up inside that trailer. Wren went to check the traps after I dropped a few pointed hints about the therapeutic uses of blood. I'm not sure if they'll figure it out or not."
"Most do. Daniel was a rarity," I replied with a shrug.
Inside the fence, Nicky's potato cannon was leaning against the guard tower, and she picked it up. "As fun as it was, this thing is just too slow," she said sadly. "I'll have to put it in our truck when Daniel returns in case we end up in another car chase."
"There better not be another car chase," I muttered.
"Well, Regan showed up yesterday and feels like helping us. Doesn't history repeat itself?"
"The only history I want to see being repeated is you guarding Nina and nothing happening." I pointed imperiously to the beanbag chair outside the lab.
Nicky tilted her head. "Now that I think of it, nothing bad has ever happened while I was on guard duty. Maybe I'll take a nap and test out that theory!"
She skipped over to the beanbag chair and jumped into it, practically sinking out of sight in the poofy material as the air cannon clattered to the ground at her feet. True to her word, her eyes closed as if testing fate.
A quick check of the air confirmed that Nina and Logan were inside, likely checking all the new samples they had. I jumped on top of the lab roof and sat cross-legged. It wasn't much of a height advantage, but it let me see more than I would have on the ground.
A few zombies were straggling in from several directions, but they acted like regular zombies. Several rather lathered horses were finally returning, so it wouldn't be long before the other riders got their mounts under control and returned. Dozens of locals were rounding up the escaped livestock. Most of the sheep hadn't been able to get through their pasture fence, but the goats and horses must have been more motivated.
I'd have to check the area tonight and see if any had gotten lost in the forest. I could even ask to borrow the dune buggy and search the town for more live traps, especially since Jax had some hare-brained notion that I would starve to death if I helped them hunt.
But those plans would have to wait. I wasn't leaving this place until Daniel returned, especially not with Nicky snoring faintly below.
~
A truck with blue and purple swirls emerged from the forest just before dinner. I remained on the roof as he parked nearby and got out with a bewildered expression.
"What happened?"
"Zombie horde," I replied succinctly.
"At least fifty had to have been bleeding. Was that Jax's blood I smelled?"
"Sixty-eight, and yes, an arrow went astray. Injured his pride more than his leg, but both will take a few days to recover."
Nina must have heard us since she opened the door. "Welcome back, Daniel."
"I wish I brought good news with me, but I don't. There are dozens of unranked along the roads leading east, and more when I checked farther south. At least four of them were screamers, although two seemed different than the others."
"We encountered two today as well," I added, still sitting on the roof. "One similar to the screamer that could direct zombies to a particular target, and one that somehow made them group together."
Daniel shook his head at that news. "We might end up helping this Stronghold relocate."
"That isn't an easy task," I reminded him. "And this place only has four trucks, a couple of vans, and four tractors. That's not enough to move several hundred people."
He shrugged. "It's not something I want to do. Our saving grace is that most of the unranked were similar to Runners and didn't seem to have any special abilities."
"This is sounding worse and worse," Nicky muttered from her bean bag cocoon.
"It's beginning to sound like our only option is finding the group responsible," I muttered, casting a sour look at the distant trees as if wishing the renegade scientists would just waltz out of the leaves and save me the trouble of tracking them down.
"I tried," Daniel said, shrugging his shoulders, "but I didn't see anyone. There weren't any Strongholds in the areas I checked, so I couldn't even ask around."
Nicky sat up in the bean bag chair. "With all this gloom and doom, I think we should get some dinner. The cooks were making cinnamon buns for dessert."
I remained on the roof while Daniel brought a picnic table over and went with Logan to bring the food back. It was tempting to wander through the forest now that Daniel had returned, but there were quite a few people combing the fields and forest in search of missing livestock.
As my companions ate, I kept scanning the tree line in case more zombies appeared. With the unranked ferals appearing more and more frequently, Nicky's gloom and doom statement fit far too perfectly. It was only a matter of time until more arrived, and at least a few were bound to be the more dangerous ones.
My eyes lingered on movement near the trees, and I stood up. "Daniel, you might want to see this."
He immediately left his half-eaten dinner and jumped onto the roof. The dirt bike zipped back into the forest once Regan confirmed there were no zombies near the group of people stumbling out of the trees. A couple of horseback riders blew their horns to alert the Stronghold and cautiously trotted over to investigate.
At first, it was just a handful, then it grew to twenty, forty, and by the time sixty were visible, the guards began blowing something that sounded like a mustering call. Some of the people carried children, and at least two elderly individuals were using walkers.
Regan emerged from the forest again, this time on the other side, having circled behind the group. No more people came out of the trees.
"Was there a Stronghold to the south?" I quietly asked Daniel as I jumped off the roof and began jogging toward the nearest gate. Unless I was sorely mistaken, the eighty-some people were survivors of an overrun Stronghold.
Daniel followed my lead. "Not that I was aware of, or I would have checked on them."
Several trucks and two tractors were already heading toward the group. I wouldn't be much help with the survivors, but I could keep ferals away, and there was a good chance Regan would give us an update.
As Bryer Stronghold's horseback riders got closer to the group, Regan left them and drove toward Daniel and me, leaving the survivors in the hands of the locals. He stopped ten feet away, which was probably a comfortable distance for him.
"The unranked are definitely originating from the towns to the south," Regan said, getting straight to the point. "There are hundreds, if not thousands, in the cities along the Yakima River. Kennewick seems to be the epicenter, and that place also had hundreds of rotting zombie corpses in the streets and inside the buildings."
"Nina figured some zombies would have died if too many triggers were activated by the chemicals, so that might be where the main event happened," Daniel said. "The unranked traveling with us came from a different location, so there could be other sources as well."
"Inside the buildings?" I asked as I narrowed my eyes. "Those old towns have been abandoned for years. Any zombies trapped inside those rooms would have been there since the outbreak. If the doors were closed, it couldn't have spread through contact, and no human in their right mind would have entered a zombie-ridden town. That leaves two options, and I'm not liking either of them."
Regan inclined his head in my direction. "Precisely my thoughts. After a bit of searching, I determined that every dead zombie inside had access to a broken window or some other large opening to the outside world. Some were on the second or third floors."
"It was airborne," I said flatly, easily connecting the details he was laying out. "That would also explain how thousands were affected in such a short time. Even if the group responsible had been sane zombies, they couldn't have manually dosed that many ferals. Did you find any trace of the group?"
"None, but the survivors," he glanced briefly at the exhausted people, "had a group stay at their Stronghold. There wasn't much time to talk on the way here, but they said one of the trailers had containers with biohazard symbols, and the group talked nonstop about zombies."
Daniel and I exchanged a sharp look before turning to watch the people climbing into the back of the trucks.
"Where did you find them?" Daniel asked.
"Farther south. They lost more than half of their people by the time I found them. I figured this was the closest place to take them."
"They walked all this way on foot?" Daniel asked dubiously.
Regan shook his head. "Two trucks were pulling several flatbed trailers each. They were overloaded with that many people, and the last one gave out just down the road. They've walked about three miles."
"I'll talk to them once they rest a bit," Daniel murmured. "Thank you for helping them."
Regan shrugged slightly. Now that he had stopped moving for a few minutes, he wasn't as alert or showing as much energy as he had earlier. A few other telltale signs of tiredness were appearing.
If trouble walked out of the trees this minute, I didn't doubt that he would be one of the first to fight, but several days of no rest were wearing on him, especially if he'd been guarding a group of humans against every zombie on the road.
"There's a small cave about a mile in that direction if you prefer small spaces," I told him, pointing. "I only found two cabins in the forest. One along the dirt track, and another about two miles that way. Feel free to claim any of them or any other abandoned building you find. Do you mind meeting us back here around dawn to discuss our next steps? That'll give Daniel time to talk with the group."
Regan gave me a long look, eventually nodding. "That will work."
With the barest rev of the engine, the dirt bike disappeared into the forest like some sort of guardian spirit. I regarded the unmoving branches. Regan had definitely changed since our first meeting, but he was still an enigma who didn't act like any other Nightstalker I'd ever encountered.
I shook my head and began jogging to intercept some feral zombies while Daniel went to check on the survivors and ask about their previous visitors. It was about time we finally had a solid lead.
If we were lucky, the survivors would even know where the group went.