Gray stood, his knees popping loudly. He smiled forlornly. "I told you I'd be honest." He turned away from her. "I'll let the others know the fire's ready."

Harper drew the short straw for watch. No one wanted the last shift, because the last three hour shift took you to dawn, and there was no sleep after that. If Harper wanted to be a d.i.c.k about it, he could have removed himself from the watch rotation-the man in charge needs his rest and all that-but he had never seriously entertained the idea.

Four o'clock in the morning found him standing atop the LMTV, hunched against a sharply cold night, and thinking about, of all things, a Bavarian creme donut. He thought about the way the chocolate icing on top would dry, so it would have a layer of crisp, and then soft chocolate underneath. The way the glaze would flake off on his fingers when he grabbed it. And of course, he couldn't avoid thinking about the fact that they were made and sold fresh. Which meant he would never have one again. At least not until someone opened a donut shop, and he didn't think that was in the plans just yet.

He sighed, attempted to turn his mind from useless things. He looked skyward, stared at the moon, its haunted face in full, stark view, staring down at the world with an undeniable expression of sadness. It always struck him that the face in the moon seemed to be partially turned away, as though for the last few thousand years, it had slowly, and with monumental effort, been trying to turn its back on humanity.

He faced the other way.

Don't want to think about food. Don't want to stare at the moon.

His breath fogged the air as he sighed.

Don't want to think about Annette.

Don't want to think about anything sad.

But there wasn't much else.

With his back to the cab of the lead LMTV, he looked down the column of vehicles parked in the middle of the highway, edged onto the right shoulder of the northbound lanes of Highway 421, heading into Greensboro. Progress had been especially slow that day. They'd had to clear almost a dozen wrecks and seemed to be interrupted every half-hour by infected in the woodline that probed and howled and made them abandon their work, but never left the safety of the forest and attacked them.

"Packs during the day?" Julia had mused.

Harper didn't want to say it, but did anyway: "Could be the hunters."

They were now just a few miles from the I-85 spur that Harper intended to use to circ.u.mvent Greensboro. The overall plan was to thread the needle, so to speak, between Greensboro and Durham, carving out their supply and escape route so that it sat between the two major population centers, and hopefully avoided both.

Or became smashed between them.

He grew bored of his view, staring at the tops of the trucks, and he turned to face northward again, where the road sloped down. Long and straight, and then back up again on the other side. In the depression, a cl.u.s.ter of cars had gathered like water pooling at a low point. Their windshields glowed brightly with the reflection of the moonlight. They appeared to twinkle.

At first, he didn't think much of it. Kept looking around, bored out of his mind. But then, the third or fourth time he scanned over those cars, the twinkling windshields struck him as odd. He leaned forward as far as he could over the cab of the LMTV, his eyebrows cinching. All through the center of the crowd of vehicles, windshields winked at him, the moonlit reflection being blotted out by something for such a brief moment that it was almost unnoticeable, but it just kept on happening, like the same object was pa.s.sing in front of the windshield, repeatedly.

He brought the rifle up. It was not his usual M4-that leaned on the cab of the LMTV at his feet-but a scoped hunter's rifle that stayed with whoever was on watch. He settled himself against the cab, feeling the cold roof through his jacket. He pulled the rifle in, sighted through the scope, the telescopic image swishing and swashing back and forth until he found what he was looking for.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h..." Harper slapped the top of the LMTV. "Wake up! Everybody wake up!" He ran to the back of the cargo bed and shouted at the vehicle directly behind him. "Hey! Wake the f.u.c.k up! Get everyone up!"

Flashlights started blazing, filling the cabs of the vehicles with startled and confused faces.

Harper turned to the front again, found Mike and Torri Reagan stumbling out of the LMTV, their rifles in hand, their shoulder bags dangling.

"What?" Mike said blearily. "What's going on?"

"Mike, fire the truck up." Harper looked at the woman who held her rifle between her knees and used both hands to pull her brown hair out of her face and into a rubber band. "Torri, get on the radio and let 'em know we got incoming. Keep your door open so I can feed you information as I get it." The previous day they had come to the same conclusion as LaRouche and had switched their radios to a subchannel. "Make sure you're on the right channel."

She nodded. "I got it."

Harper raised his rifle again. "Everyone sits tight," he said to Torri. "No one starts bugging until I say so."

Torri clambered back into the LMTV just as it rumbled to life, shuddering beneath Harper's feet. He huddled over the rifle and scope again and tried to get a better picture of what was going on in the depression a mile ahead of them.

Not one object pa.s.sing over the windshields repeatedly, but a line of bodies moving in single file. He sniffed the air, couldn't yet smell the stench of the infected. Through the scope he could see the individual bodies, but not faces or other descriptive factors. Just their silhouettes against the moon-reflection of the windshields.

Someone climbed into the truck bed behind him.

He took his eyes off and found Julia joining him.

"What's happening?" She asked, picking crust from the corners of her eyes. "Infected?"

Harper refocused and made a noncommittal noise. "They're not running, but they're certainly not taking their time either. Hard to tell in the dark but...I'd say...twenty or so?"

The click-snick sound of Julia checking the chamber of her rifle. "That's a large pack...or maybe a really small horde out past their bedtime."

"I'd have to go with a pack. Still..." he sniffed and wiped his nose. "Odd to see 'em walking down a road like that. More horde behavior than pack behavior."

"They never cease to surprise."

Harper bit his lip. "You think they might pa.s.s us by?"

"We're in the middle of the road."

"Yeah."

"They're gonna follow the path of least resistance."

"Right to us."

Julia pointed down the hill. "Let 'em clear that snarl of vehicles and get about halfway up the hill. Then light 'em up with the fifty and we'll clean up the rest."

Harper looked at her. "Sounds good to me. You're okay with it?"

She seemed unwilling to look at him. "Yeah, well..." She shook her head and turned away. "I'm not gonna put others in danger to save my own conscience."

"We can give them a warning shot."

She stopped at the tailgate, appeared to consider it.

Harper pressed. "It won't make any difference. Let the fifty fire a burst over their heads. If they charge, we'll take 'em out as planned."

She nodded, then hopped down to deliver the message.

Behind him the convoy grumbled to life. A few quiet voices could be heard over the engines, people asking where items were that they had somehow lost while they slept, and now urgently needed. In antic.i.p.ation of having to move quickly, several of the men stood on the overgrown gra.s.sy shoulder, great gouts of steam pouring from the ground as they all p.i.s.sed and looked around with wide eyes as though afraid of getting caught.

All the flashlights had since been extinguished. None of the vehicles turned on their headlights. They were still just under a mile away, and the sound of the engines could probably not be heard from that distance. Even if it were to be heard, Harper didn't think the noise alone would cause the infected to start making that horrible screech and sprinting for them. It might make them curious, though.

He scoped them again.

They were like coal black smudges, the distinction between their head and their bodies coming from the moonlight on their pale faces.

All fully clothed?

From behind him and to his right, one of the Humvees with the M2 mounted on top rolled up to their position and stopped adjacent to Harper's LMTV. Julia stood up out of the driver's seat. Gray poked his head up through the turret, rubbing the sleep out of his face.

Julia waved for Harper's attention. "Where are they now?"

Harper looked through the scope again. "About to start comin' up the hill." He paused for a long moment, emitting a long, uncertain noise. "Ummmmm...Hold off for a minute."

"What's wrong?" Julia's voice strained as she stretched to see down the road. "What're you seeing? Talk to me, Harper."

"Eh..." Harper looked out over the scope, then at Gray, then at Julia. "I don't know if they're infected."

"What makes you think that?" Julia asked.

Harper's eyes went back down the road. "Well, I think they spotted you moving up. Now they're just standing there. Watching us."

Julia followed his gaze back down the road as though she might make eye contact with one of them and know for sure.

Harper was already moving. He laid the scoped rifle down and picked up his old M4, a little scratched, the matte finish worn down in a few places. He slung it on his shoulder, then jogged to the back of the LMTV and swung down out of the cargo bed.

He rounded the Humvee. "Get in," he motioned Julia into the truck.

Torri kicked the LMTV door open and looked down at Harper with her hands raised in question. "Where you going?"

"Tell everyone to sit tight." He jammed himself into the tight seating, Julia just now sitting down in the driver's seat and closing her door. Harper leaned back, directing his voice towards the turret. "Gray!"

"Yup?" the man's voice was soft, like everything was normal.

Like everything was just fine.

"If those...people, or infected, or whatever...if they start moving towards us, you light 'em the f.u.c.k up and don't stop until every last one of 'em's dead."

"Okay."

Harper shifted in his seat, trying to work around his bulky gear and uncomfortable straps. "Julia, ease us down this hill. Go slow." He put a hand out as though to stay her from stomping the gas. "Go real slow."

She nodded and popped the emergency brake. The Humvee shuddered, then began to roll slowly down the hill. As they started downward, and the hood of the Humvee dipped, the strange image came into view. The road stretched out before them, the blacktop seeming to soak up what little light there was to see with. The waist-high gra.s.s on either side of the road undulating like a sea of silver. At the bottom of the hill was the mish-mash of abandoned vehicles. And halfway up the hill stood the twenty or so figures, jumbled together in a tight group like their single-file line had collapsed in on itself.

Julia let the vehicle roll a few more yards, then the brakes squealed and it halted. "You want me to keep going?"

Rather than respond, Harper pulled the little black handle that let the driver's side window drop. "Gray, you keep 'em covered, you hear?" He hollered back as he pulled himself partly through the window. "Just sit here for a minute, Julia. Let's see what they do."

Reason would suggest that if they were infected, they would have already attacked. But being on the road, Harper had learned that this was not always the case, particularly when they were inside their vehicles. Different infected reacted differently to the vehicles. Some charged, the mere presence of something that moved and made noises enough to send them into a frenzy. Others Harper had observed staring at the vehicles with what looked like confusion, first jogging towards them, then backing up, as though they were not sure whether it could be attacked or not. Still others stood by placidly at the edge of the woods while they drove pa.s.sed, not looking at the vehicles themselves, but the people inside, and they appeared to understand that while they were in the vehicle, they could not be easily attacked.

With his upper torso shoved through the narrow opening of the window, he took a deep breath of the icy air, then waved his arms twice over his head and hollered out in a loud voice. "Hey! We're friendly! Don't shoot! Say something so we know you're sane!"

One of the figures lurched forward like they'd been hit with a cattle prod. Harper's throat tightened and he reached inside the vehicle, his fingertips touching his rifle.

Then the figure raised its arms above his head, and Harper heard a voice: "Don't shoot! We're not crazy! We're not crazy!"

A shuddering breath issued out from between Harper's clenched teeth. His fingers closed around the barrel of his rifle, more to steady himself than anything. When he had regained some control of his heart and lungs, he waved the man towards him.

"Walk towards me!" he shouted.

The man looked back behind him, as though conferring with the others about whether this was a wise choice. Harper pulled back into the Humvee and kicked the door open. He looked to his left, made eye-contact with Julia as he slid out of his seat and his boots. .h.i.t the blacktop.

She nodded. "We got you."

He took the rifle, holding it with only one hand so that the muzzle pointed at the ground. His left hand he raised to show that he didn't mean to use it, and he began walking slowly towards the other man. The stranger seemed to accept Harper's gesture as a sign that there would not be a shootout, and began walking down the white hash marks of the line dividers towards Harper.

The walk seemed to last forever, stretching well into awkwardness, and Harper wished he had driven a little bit closer. But within the span of a couple minutes, the two men were face-to-face, stopping about a yard or two from each other, neither quite comfortable getting within arm's reach. Caution still took precedent. No one in this world ran to each other with hugs.

Harper sized the other man up, as he was sure the other man was doing to him. The stranger was tall and broadly built, perhaps thirty years old or more. Wiry black hair on top, graying at the temples. Thick eyebrows that hovered over darkly inquisitive eyes. Not particularly tough or dangerous looking, but no pushover either.

"Mack," the man said.

"Harper," came the response. "These your folks?"

Mack glanced behind him. "No. Just a group I'm traveling with."

"Why you movin' at night?"

"Haven't stopped for the last twenty four hours, 'cept for water or food...when we can find it."

Harper quirked an eyebrow. "Seems like you're in a rush."

Mack pulled his coat around him. Harper could see the bulge of something on his right hip. "Any way we can pa.s.s through here?"

Harper nodded. "We're not thieves, Mr. Mack. You're free to leave if you'd like. We won't stop you. But I'd hope we could help each other out."

Mack looked at the ground. "We don't have anything to give you."

"You're coming from where we're going." Harper motioned up the road. "You have information for us. Like what's keeping you marching for twenty-four hours."

Mack's right hand hovered loosely around his hip. "Okay. What do you have to offer?"

"What do you need?"

"We need water. Food. A few of our group are sick-not infected, though," he added quickly.

Harper let his hand rest on his rifle. "You seem like a stand-up guy, Mack. But let me say something just to make myself feel better..."

"If we cross you, you'll kill all of us?" Mack asked with a note of sarcasm.

Harper smiled. "Something like that."

"Don't worry. We're not going to cause trouble."