In his hands he held his father’s Tango-51 sniper ri?e. He wondered if there was extra ammunition for it in the closet but he couldn’t bring himself to open that door again. Once was enough. He’d keep the memories trapped there. They were of no use to him now.
There was a thud. Something large was moving down the hallway toward the bedroom.
He leaned the ri?e against the bed near the grocery sack and slid the Glock from its holster.
A lone zombie, its face ruined by disease, saw him and lurched toward him. It moaned hungrily.
Jubal shot it in the head.
A gray-green goo streamed against the hallway wall as the thing fell to the?oor.
Jubal listened for more intruders but didn’t hear anything except for the ones outside, voicing their strange mewlings and groans.
He went to the bedroom’s front window.
Zombies wandered the property, blocking his path to the cruiser. One was sitting in the dirt of the front yard, staring into the face of a severed head, mumbling to it. The head didn’t belong to the teenage girl that had been attacked in the street. It was someone else’s.
“Fucking horror movie,” Jubal muttered as he slid the window open.
He poked the Glock out, aiming at the seated zombie. He pulled the trigger and made a hole in its forehead. Toppling over, the zombie lay still as the severed head rolled back and forth in the dirt.
The other zombies looked around, wondering where the shot had come from.
Jubal pulled back into the room so they wouldn’t see him.
After a moment, he glanced out and saw the zombies standing around the one he’d just killed, staring. One of them kicked the severed head into the street.
Jubal shot them in quick succession, with ammunition to spare. Grabbing the sack, and quickly glancing around the room to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything, he exited the house through the open window.
With three guns strapped to his back, the Glock and grocery sack in his hands, Jubal squatted down and moved quickly towards the cruiser. He unlocked the car using the keyless entry. As he swung the door wide, several of the zombies moaned loudly, having?nally taken notice of him.
Jubal shot at the nearest one, but missed. He shoved his equipment and supplies into the passenger seat and slid behind the wheel, slamming the door closed behind him. He turned the car on and it roared to life.
The gas gauge read half. That would get him well out of town and hopefully to a station along the highway.
Something slammed against the driver’s side window. Jubal turned to see Doc Mitchell with his dead face pressed against the glass. Slime oozed from his lips.
Jubal showed the doctor his middle?nger, then stepped on the gas.
Doc Mitchell spun around and fell on his ass in the street as Jubal sped away.
“That’s what you get for being such a lousy fucking doctor.”
The zombies wandering the streets of Serenity proved a worthy obstacle course. When Jubal couldn’t maneuver around them or nudge them aside with the car, he drove straight over them with a satisfying bump. He had to use that tactic sparingly, as long as he needed the car.
As he rounded a corner, he slammed on the brakes.
Previous to this moment, every zombie Jubal had ever seen had either wandered aimlessly or attacked like a rabid animal.
The cruiser faced east. Spanning the road ahead of it was a line of zombies standing at attention. Behind this row was another. And another.
Jubal put the car in reverse as other zombies joined the formation, and as, all at once, they began to move.
Like a dead army.
Jubal turned the car around and sped back down the road, knocking aside any stray zombies in his path.
They were bad enough as feral beasts of the dead, but this new thing seemed even more unnerving. Organized zombies.
It struck him that he was leaving town for good, a town he had loved and hated (but not really). Serenity was his home and he was going to miss it. And he was going to miss all the people who had made it a home. Who had made his life worth living. Ma, Damon, Fiona, Pops Perez and the rest. All gone now. All dead.
Was his life worth living anymore? Was he alone in a world of zombies, or were things okay in Texas or up north? Out east? He wouldn’t know unless he found out for himself. Who was responsible for all this? There were so many questions. And Jubal wanted concrete answers. Not rumors, theories and half-remembered snatches of dreams.
He took a side road west, which led to Highway 285. He knew he couldn’t go north. That way was blockaded, unless the zombie army had gotten to the soldiers. Maybe he could go south.
But Jubal didn’t reach the highway.
Ahead of him stretched regiments of zombies, all facing west, all in?le. They trudged along, keeping in perfect step with each other. They must have come from other small towns in the area.
There were thousands of them.
Something glinted in the bright blue sky.
Jubal stopped the car and looked up through his windshield.
Some sort of silver vehicle, like an airborne jet-ski, buzzed over the army of zombies. At one point it hovered in place. Then it buzzed around again, herding the undead towards the west-towards Nevada. It was too far away and Jubal wished he had remembered binoculars so he could have a better look. But it was close enough to see the color of the rider’s clothing.
Red.
For a brief moment he thought it might be some new military craft. Then he recalled the dream, the half-remembered details suddenly and sharply in focus.
The?gure in crimson strode across a sea of dead bodies, waving a silver staff, urging the corpses to rise and obey him. As the cadavers struggled to obey, the man in the robes turned to look at Jubal. It wasn’t human. The head was too tall and very thin, as if a giant had squeezed it between its?ngers. The eyes were black, deep set between the angular cheekbones. There was no nose to speak of and the mouth was nothing more than a cruel gash. Behind the creature, yellow mist billowed and rose like stage fog in a magician’s show. Jubal knew it to be poison, a foggy messenger carrying the plague of the dead army.
He snapped to full alertness. He wasn’t sure how much of the memory had actually been in his dreams, or if his subconscious had embellished the scenario. He quickly decided it didn’t matter. The dream-the memory — had the feeling, the texture of truth.
And if it were true, the implication was monstrous. It meant this wasn’t an accident. It meant there was a design here, a hand responsible for the death of all he had ever known and everyone he loved.
And if it wasn’t true, Jubal decided he didn’t care. He had endured more than any person could rightfully expect in a lifetime. It was time for a little payback.
He stepped out of the car, leaving the engine running.
He estimated the dead army was less than two hundred yards away. The odd?ying machine that carried the red-robed?gure darted over the lurching creatures, looking as harmless as a?re?y from this distance. There seemed to be no reaction to Jubal’s presence. They either didn’t know he was there or they didn’t care.
That was about to change.
Jubal calmly removed the sniper ri?e from the cruiser. His father had purchased the Tango-51 though the sheriff’s of?ce, so he could get the professional discount. He had called it the?nest ri?e ever made. Jubal ran a hand over the green and black?nish. His father had taught Jubal to always care for his weapons so he would be able to rely on them. Jubal had followed that advice. It was close to two years since the gun had been?red and Jubal had cleaned it afterward, as he always did. He knew it would?re accurately. He slid back the big bolt action and made sure it was loaded. He didn’t think he would need more than one round.