Prologue 2

During the ride back from North Carolina, I was as emotionally high as I could remember being since the zombies had come. What I would feel going forward would always be tempered with the losses we’d suffered along the way. So the baseline would be a lot lower to start with; it was an evil born from the devastation. Still though, to feel elation, love, accomplishment, just the mere fact of being alive, healthy and among friends and family was nearly beyond words. Of course it was short lived and false, but we had it in our grasp, if only for a moment. We did not tempt fate much on that trip. We topped all the vehicles off with gas and filled everything else that even remotely resembled a liquid container so we would not have to stop again. We took shifts driving, and in twenty-four hours, we had gone from our own reunion to pulling into my brother’s long, lonely stretch of dirt roadway for another.

There was a moment when we were coming in that I thought I was hallucinating. My Jeep, my awesomely beautiful fire engine red Jeep, was parked off to the side. But that wasn’t possible. There was no way in hell anyone would risk their lives to go cross-country to retrieve it. As nuts as I sometimes could get, the thought of doing this would never cross my mind. Okay wait, that’s a falsehood. I have thought about it. Although for the sake of fairness, I’ve also thought about riding a whale and eating thirty-six hot dogs, none of which I would actually carry out due to the potential liability. And to be honest, I would be pissed at whoever had done it here. To what fucking point?

“Mike?” Tracy had asked as I walked around the Jeep.

“Yup, it’s mine.”

“You sure?”

“Well there’s still Henry drool down the back windshield, I’m sure I could get that DNA tested. But unless someone is really into master pranks, I’m not sure how they could have known what license plate to put on. I had Marine Corps plates. When the state of Colorado offered them I was like “Hell yeah!” Figured I was even going to get a little discount on them for my time in the service. Gotta admit I was a little let down when they charged ten dollars more for them. I opened up the side door; dog smell came out. Henry barked like mad as BT took him out and placed him on the ground. He rushed over to me and placed his paws on the running board. This was my cue to pick his ass up and place him inside. He started sniffing like someone had rubbed bacon all over the back seat.

His stub of a tail would alternate from swinging back and forth wildly to going stiff as a board when he came to certain scents he wasn’t sure about or did not like.

“Who did this?” BT asked.

“Someone that knew it was at the sheriff’s in Vona.” I looked up to Ron’s house. It was just then I noticed how dark it was, and I also saw no movement. We hadn’t come in beeping horns and playing rock music loudly, but still it was three cars in a world gone silent. We should have been heard for miles. I got a sick feeling in my stomach. Had my Jeep been used as a Trojan horse? But those particular enemies were dead. Weren’t they?