It was one of these latter dreams that Rae woke him from one night nearly a month after the events in Winnebago. One moment he was with Liddie, hugging her and wishing things had turned out differently while she assured him everything would be all right in the end. The next Rae was shaking him awake. The sun had just started to rise, but all the others were asleep yet accept for Jojo, who was on guard duty for the horde. All the time they’d spent with Edward had calmed the zombies’ disposition and they could often be allowed out of his presence for hours at a time without starting to look at the rest of the group as a snack, but it still paid to have someone watching and making sure.
“Edward,” Rae said as he sat up from the bedroll he’d laid on the open ground. “I think this is it. I think we’ve found the perfect place.”
Edward followed her without saying anything. He trusted her judgment completely, but he was still surprised when they came over a hill and looked down to where she was talking about. “Well?” she asked. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Edward said. “When we said we were going to find a place for a new lab and possible colony to turn zombies to Z7s, I was kind of thinking…”
“Yes, I’m sure I can guess what you were thinking. But what I’m thinking is that there would be no place more fitting that this. Come on. Tell me I’m not right.”
He couldn’t tell her that. Further in the distance he could see the ruins of yet another town, abandoned to time just like so many other places they had passed, but this was farther away from still occupied towns and cities. There would probably be plenty of supplies and building materials to find there. But the town was not what Rae meant. She meant the huge block of a building immediately at the bottom of the hill. It was the empty remains of an old Walmart.
“It would provide plenty of shelter,” Rae said. “Plenty of space to keep the zombies, and parts of it could be built up into better living areas once there are more Z7s. This could be it. This could be your new zombie colony. What do you say?”
He nodded. All his facial muscles worked into a smile, and for the first time in far too long Edward Schuett laughed.
If You Enjoyed…
Copyright
Published by Permuted Press at Smashwords.
Copyright 2012 Derek J. Goodman
Cover art by Christian Dovel