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The night before, he’d parted company with the Undisclosed zombie militia and made the nervous trek on foot from Dave’s house up to the burrito stand, only to find the Caddie was not in fact where they’d left it At that point his only possible hope of finding it again was if it had gotten toay, back at a stage of the apocalypse when a car partially blocking the street was still considered a priority on so co to be decapitated by a ood neas that he wasn’t The further good neas that the Caddie was in fact there and that the tall fence had been cut open by soo The bad neas that the Caddie was apparently the last seized vehicle before toas shut down--it was still on the back of the tow truck The truck was the flatbed type, where the whole bed tilted down to fory that probably came about because the old hook style yanked off toocars out of handicapped parking spaces

John had jumped up onto the truck’s bed and opened the Caddie’s trunk, expecting to find that everything had been stolen But apparently even the looters who ransacked the i piece of shit and deduced that there could be nothing in the trunk worth the effort of prying it open That was probably a good thing for both the citizens and law enforcement of Undisclosed Inside they’d have found the aforeun (a custom-made triple-barrel sawed-off), two hundred shells, Dave’s blood-splattered chainsaw, the greenof Dave’s clothes, a bottle of Grey Goose, a bad black velvet painting of Jesus and a fucking flamethrower

The keys had still been in the tow truck (in fact, the driver’s-side door was standing open fro fro his way) John spent twentydown the ramp and never could It was either take the tow truck itself, or walk So, for the third time in ten days, he co himself he would return it when it was over He was one for two so far

That is how John wound up spending the night tooling around town in the tow truck with the Caddie piggybacking One thing he had noticed when he was out: people Lots of people Since REPER had retreated and stopped enforcing the curfew, every street corner had grown cluuns and revolvers and machetes John was comforted by that for about five seconds, then he saw the looks in the eyes of these harried, tired, cold, frustrated people and realized they would butcher his ass if he even so much as let out a yawn that sounded too much like a moan

Just before dawn, John had passed the quarantine, which looked even hts and ar slow to avoid the ar across the streets, John had made his way up to the asylum A croas busy up there Dozens ofan RV parked in the yard The pickup with the wood chipper was parked next to a long ditch that had been dug in the yard, and the chipper was running

John had edged closer, as close as he could without exiting the tow truck (which he was not going to fucking do) and saw bodies Thethe the the the ditch with red slush

Oh holy mother of--

John had heard a screa ofinsults at his captors, insisting on his innocence, and his huhtpants Cowboy, as in charge of the zombie disposal operation apparently The tattooed man’s trial lasted forty-five seconds, then Cowboy vaporized the un shells Into the chipper he went

John got the fuck out of there

He had headed as far outside of town as he could get without running into the REPER barricades So, John had parked the tow truck, with the Caddie piggybacking, in a cornfield a mile or so from the water tower construction site, the REPER barricade now standing between there and where he’d spoken to Dave for the last tiotten drowsy, then clie point would give hie if he was aht and worked his stiff joints He threw the shotgun into the passenger seat where it clinked off the eun was a custoun shows he frequented It wasn’t pretty, but it worked--firing all three barrels would chop down a sht buck loaded into the two side barrels, and a slug in the et a nice variety of projectiles to think about

He needed to get into quarantine And not as a patient, either He needed to get in there with the implements of destruction in the Caddie’s trunk John pictured hi toward the fence in the tow truck, but remembered the concrete barricadeshere was acco John jumped down, pissed for several minutes, then threw himself into the tow truck

2 Hours, 45 Minutes Until the Aerial Bo of Undisclosed

Marconi led me up to the second floor, with Owen in tow He made Owen stay outside of thehi the nasty stomach flu to the rest of the quarantine

Once on the other side of a door, Marconi ht"

"What? Before Owen shoots me?"

"No Believe it or not, that’s actually not ourproblem"

He led me to aand said, "Look Beyond the fence"