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KATE
I don’t stop until we’re a mile out of town.
I pull to a halt beside a green sign with reflective white letters that reads, Mendocino, 10 miles.
I’ve been to this area enough over the years to know that it’s mostly unpopulated. There are miles of open land that snake alongside the ocean. There may be the occasional home or ranch interspersed along the highway, but there will be no more big towns to contend with.
Until we get to Mendocino. The town is a fraction of the size of Braggs, but it’s a tourist destination. There’s no telling how many undead we might encounter within those city limits.
My people stand in a loose circle in the middle of the road, everyone breathing hard from our brush with death. Caleb leans over his thighs, sucking in great gulps of air and wiping sweat from his forehead. Reed crouches on the far side of the road, puking. He’s never had a good stomach for running.
Ben stands off to one side, staring back in the direction of Braggs while he catches his breath. Watching him stirs the kernels of fear I felt earlier when he nearly died on the bridge. But the fear is small compared to everything else I feel for him.
I touch his shoulder. “Hey.” When he turns around, I step into his warmth. His arms come around me.
“I’m sorry.” I knot my hands in the fabric of the sweat jacket he wears and lean my cheek against him.
His arms tighten. He holds onto me like he’ll never let me go. It feels so good.
“I told you I wasn’t dropping this,” he says gruffly into my ear. “A little temper tantrum isn’t going to deter me.”
I laugh silently into his chest. When I look up at him, the skin around his eyes crinkles. I love the way he looks at me.
“Just don’t almost die on me again and we won’t have a problem,” I say.
“Ditto.”
I plant a quick kiss on his lips, trying to shake the fear of losing him. Despite my apology, it still looms large and scary in my mind.
We congregate with the others. They’re smudged with soot and look exhausted.
Reed swishes his mouth out with water and spits it to one side. “Dude. That sucked.”
“Could be worse.” I try to keep my voice light. “I once saw a man at an aid station who’d tripped on a root and snapped a bone in his foot. The bone stuck out of the top of his foot.” The story is meant to make everyone feel better, but I can see by the widening of eyes that it’s having the opposite effect.
“Let me guess,” Ben says. He leans against the road sign, shoulders hunched with fatigue. “The motherfucker still managed to make it to the finish line.”
I shake my head. “No. He had to ride a horse out of the canyon where he fell. We were miles away from a road.”
No one speaks. The distant keen of zombies fills the air. Where are crickets when you need them?
I want to kick myself. I should have lied. I should have told Ben the guy managed to drag his ass to the finish line with a bone sticking out of his foot.
“Mama,” Reed says, “you just ruined our ultrarunner illusion. I thought you guys were supposed to keep going no matter what.”
Maybe that hadn’t been the best story to tell. I try again. “There’s a race through the Colorado mountains called Hardrock. A few years ago, one of the front runners fell and dislocated his shoulder thirteen miles in.” That piece of ultrarunner history that had left me and Frederico awestruck for days. “Not only did the guy finish the race, but he won it.”
“How far is Hardrock?” Caleb asks.
“A hundred miles.”
“Maldita sea,” Ash breathes. “That is some crazy, fucked up shit.”
I rake my gaze over the group. “You guys are all ultrarunners. Every single one of you. You all ran thirty-three miles on the Lost Coast. We just ran another five to get through Braggs. You guys are all badasses.”
“And we’re not even done yet,” Ben mutters.
“And we’re not even done yet,” I agree.
“Does it count since we rode a car from Usal Beach to Braggs?” Caleb asks.
“Hell, yes. It’s called a stage run. It means we’re running in stages. It’s a different kind of ultra.”
They look at one another, exchanging slow, pleased grins. Thank God. So long as I can keep their heads in the game, we can get them to the finish line.
“It’s another ten miles to Mendocino,” I say. “After that, it’s a good seventy-five miles to Fort Ross. None of us are going to survive this trek if we don’t decide, here and now, that we’re going to finish. Understand? It’s mind over matter. Every single one of you has to make the decision that you’re going to finish. That’s all it takes.”
No one answers. Ben looks like I just kicked him in the balls. Even Reed, ever upbeat, looks like I deflated his inner tube.
“Can we go back to that part about there being eighty-five miles between us and Fort Ross?” Caleb asks. “Are we going to run the whole way?”
I shake my head. “There are long stretches of open road. If we can find a car that works, we can drive. Or maybe we can find some bikes. But no, I don’t think we’re going to have to run the whole way.”
“Thank fucking God,” Ben mutters. The rest of the group lets up a collective sigh of relief.
So much for my pep talk. I had meant to inspire them. Instead, all I’d done was scare the hell out of them.
We take a reprieve to eat, drink, and relieve ourselves. We don headlamps and flick them on. Reed finds a stream that runs from the open grassland out to the ocean, which we use to refill our packs. No one asks if the water is safe. There’s no telling if water out of a faucet would be any good, either. All we can do is keep hydrated and hope for the best.
“Um, guys?” Eric pulls off his glasses and cleans them on the hem of his shirt. “Does it look like it’s getting smokier out here?”
Seven heads whip in the direction of Braggs. Eric slips his glasses back on and peers north with the rest of us.
The sun has set. The stars are obscured by the smoke that chugs into the sky.
The fire has grown bigger and more ferocious in the five minutes we’ve rested beside the road sign. In mounting horror, I realize the flames aren’t content to eat the town of Braggs. They’re chewing their way through the grassland flanking the side of the highway.
“But, it’s wet,” Ash says. “The grass shouldn’t burn.”
“The top of the grass is wet,” Caleb says grimly. “The undercarriage must still be dry enough to burn.”
Dammit. Fire isn’t even the worst of our problems.
Stumbling along ahead of the flames are zombies. Hundreds and hundreds of zombies. Where a short while ago they had marched toward the flames, they’ve now reversed direction.
And it’s obvious why. At the forefront of the horde are two alphas, clicking and keening instructions.
The alphas were smart enough to realize the flames are deadly. Now they’re leading a horde away from Braggs at a frightening pace down Highway 1 in a collision course with us.