They retreated into the lobby, and nearly ran over Pete.
“What’s going on out there? Is the Luftwaffe bombing?”
“What?” Ed asked.
“The sirens.”
“You wouldn’t believe us,” Annie said.
“Oh yeah?”
Pete opened the door, looked outside for a half second, and closed it again.
“Okay, I don’t believe you,” she said.
“We never said anything.”
“I don’t believe myself, then. What do we do?”
“You need to stay here,” Ed said. “Lock the doors, keep them out.”
“I don’t think that’s a good long-term solution.”
“It doesn’t have to be. As soon as Annie and I get to the car, nobody out there is going to be interested in coming in.”
“Why’s that?”
“They’re looking for me,” Annie said. “We’re pretty sure.”
“Now hang on, I can’t—”
“Pete,” Ed interrupted, “we really don’t have the time to argue. Hold the doors, keep everyone in here safe, and try not to shoot any of the zombies.”
Ed grabbed Annie’s arm and the two of them sprinted away from a dumbfounded sheriff, past Beth’s room, and down the hall. As she hoped, the doors in the back led to the ambulance bay, and from there the back parking lot.
It was empty. The zombies weren’t smart enough to surround the building.
Ed was unlocking the car when they heard the amplified voice of one of the soldiers at the checkpoint.
“PLEASE RETURN TO YOUR HOMES. MARTIAL LAW IS IN EFFECT.”
“Yeah, that’s not gonna help,” Ed said.
There was a loud pop Annie was pretty sure was a gunshot. She climbed into the car.
“This is going to go badly, isn’t it?” she asked.
“I think probably. If it’s like this down here I can’t imagine what the base is like.”
He pulled out of the space and turned the corner, which was when it became clear the only way out of the lot was to run people over.
“I hate to say this, but can we just go through them?” Annie asked.
“I’m nearly positive these people aren’t actually dead and I don’t think this car can take more than a couple of direct impacts. Town cars aren’t really designed to plow into traffic and keep going.”
“What is?”
“The army has a few war zone vehicles that would do it. Or one of those black SUV’s you talked me out of using.”
“That was solid advice at the time.”
She looked through the rear window and thought about where they were.
“How do you feel about driving through yards?”
“Surprisingly good.”
“Excellent. Turn us around.”
Ed backed up and performed a hairpin in reverse that was actually a little cool. For a half second Annie felt like she was in an action movie.
She pointed to a spot between two trees.
“If you can get through there I think it’s pretty flat right to Mrs. Evanov’s yard. She used to have a wood fence but it’s mostly fallen apart so hopefully we’ll be okay. On the other side is Yucca.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. Oh, but you’ll have to gun it. There’s a lip along the edge of the lot.”
What happened next was somewhat less than Hollywood awesome. Ed gunned the engine and aimed for the spot, but the lip of which Annie spoke was eight inches and squared off, so there was no ramping up and over it. There was only a hard bump, which raised the car and its occupants into the air and down again, inelegantly, and awkwardly off-course. Ed was able to wrestle the vehicle sufficiently to maneuver it between the target trees rather than into one of them, but lost enough speed that the wood fence Annie insisted was barely there became a significant obstacle.
The horizontal support post ended up across the hood. Ed had to stop the car and remove fence parts before continuing through Mrs. Evanov’s yard.
“The road’s just there,” Annie said, pointing ahead. Ed steered through the yard.
Halfway around the side of the house, a figure lurched in front of them. Ed swerved, but a soft-but-distinctive thud indicated he failed miss completely.
“Oh God, what was that?” Annie asked.
“Just a guess, but that was probably Mrs. Evanov.”
Past the side of the house, he skidded onto Yucca Way. It wasn’t entirely zombie-free, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as Main.
“Okay, now what?” he asked.
“Depends. Where are we going? If you want to head for the ship you’re facing the wrong way.”
“I want to hook up with the end of Main, then the bridge.”
“That’s not near anything.”
“That’s the point. I’m getting you out of town before I do anything else.”
“Ed…”
“This isn’t open to debate. I promised to look after you, and the best way I know to do that is to get you as far away from here as possible. Now get me to the bridge.”
“SOMEONE SAID that to me before,” Dobbs said.
Dobbs, Sam thought. No wonder I couldn’t get it right, what kind of name is that?
“Who?” Laura asked.
The three of them were still down in the main cabin of the trailer, while the fourth occupant—someone named Oona—marched around on the roof with what looked like a high-powered sniper rifle. The rifle was probably meant for him or someone like him.
She was pacing up there, not using the gun. Sam took this to mean the mob resumed their slow stagger down the hill and was leaving them alone. He would have used a side window to verify this, but their windows were all shuttered with steel panels.
“I don’t know who. He came up to me in the woods.”
“You were on your poop run?”
“How did you know about that?”
Laura laughed.
“Everyone knows about it, Dobbs. We were all wondering why you stopped.”
Sam thought Laura had a really pleasant laugh and a nice demeanor, and she looked really cute. He wasn’t sure if he felt that way about her specifically because she and her friend up top just saved his life or not. Then he decided there was no point speculating, because given the trappings of the room, this woman and the other one were romantically engaged.
Laura was wearing shorts and a basic blue T-shirt, which made her look far more normal than she appeared to actually be, based on what was hanging on the walls. It looked like they owned a small collection of leather armor. They also made their own bullets and rolled their own cigarettes, and collected Penthouse calendars. It looked like they were also keeping urine in jars in the back of the trailer, but he couldn’t be positive.
“Some creeper walked up and asked me, he was like, ‘are you’, and I got the hell out of there rather than figure out what the answer was. I figured it was just some weird guy.”
“How long ago was that?” Sam asked.
“Two, three weeks, probably. Hey, thanks for the save.”
“No problem. I’m supposed to… I just realized I’ve abandoned my post. I should get back outside.”
“Your post?” Laura said. “Your position was overrun, you can’t go back out there.”
“It didn’t look like they were interested in anybody here. They were heading toward Main before he interrupted one of them.”
“That was Art Shoeman,” Dobbs said. “Not just one of them.”
“Yeah, well it looks like my entire team is out there with him. More reason to get back, the fence is unguarded.”
“I think the ship can take care of itself, soldier,” Laura said.
“It’s Sam. And I have orders.”
“Well, they’re stupid orders given the current situation, Sam. You don’t want to end up being a zombie like your buddies.”
“I think I need to fall asleep for that to happen.”