Chapter 1

Joel heard the moans just before the wind wafted the familiar smell of death through the trees. He froze, listening for the shuffling footsteps he dreaded, then, hearing nothing, moved uphill, off the road. He waited, concealed under the hanging branches of a pine, watching.

Nothing moved on the road below him, but he could still hear the faint moaning. It came from the direction he was headed. He had to check it out, but he knew what lay behind him at the off-ramp. He hadn't really believed it when he'd first heard the rumors a few days ago, The dead coming back to life ... who would? He'd figured it must be some exaggeration, just part of the mass hysteria over the latest flu.

Until he'd seen it for himself...

He cut off that line of thought. He might just be able to slip past the ones up ahead. The trees grew fairly close together on the hill above the road. If they retained the same instincts as most live people, they wouldn't look up. Hand tightening on the crowbar, Joel moved silently to the next tree. This one stood a little higher on the mountainside. He repeated this action for the next ten minutes, with a pause between each quiet movement to listen. They were making plenty of noise, along with the moans, there was a muffled pounding. During one of the pauses, a flash of sunlight off metal caught his eye. A red SUV was upside-down, wrapped around a tree on the far side of the road. The impact had sprung the doors open, and blood trails led up the slope to the blacktop.

That accounted for their presence, but why the moans and thumping? He looked for the next tree, but to get to it he would have to cross a near vertical ridge of outcropping granite. It climbed the mountain as far as he could make out, but seemed lower, and less shear farther downhill. Joel stayed low, keeping a clump of bushes between himself and the road while he moved, then hunkered down behind the ridge. The moans and pounding seemed to come from just the other side of the outcropping rocks.

Joel dug into his 72-hour kit, pulled out a mirror, and taped it to his crowbar. He crept noiselessly until he caught another flash of metal on the far side of the road. He lifted the mirror until he could see the guardrail, then twisted it back and forth, scanning the road. An open topped jeep lay crumpled on the far side. A long smear of paint on the guardrail and skid marks on the road showed its path to where it stood, silent. A body lay in the road, head smashed, probably by the SUV.

The dead gathered around a sedan that had smashed into the cliff almost directly under Joel's vantage point. It was a good twenty feet below him, nearly straight down. They banged on the windows, moaning. They wanted in, and paid no attention to their surroundings. There must be someone inside, or they'd be wandering around. He might just be able to help whoever was trapped. With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Joel hefted a lump of granite and stood, preparing to throw it across the road. He knew how big a risk he was taking, and hesitated. There were nine of them below, but they were slow, some of them crippled by broken bones.

One of them, dressed in jeans and a faded BDU jacket forced another out of his way and pounded on the rear driver's side window in frustration. Bloodstains on the tattered jacket showed where he'd been bitten. Joel, stopped himself in mid-throw, as a new sound came to him. A baby, crying, scared.

That changed everything.

He crouched down and studied the car closer. The windshield was cracked, nearly shattered. Blood stained the inside. He could just make out long blonde hair on the driver. She, he assumed it was a she, didn't move. Probably there was enough damage that the driver wouldn't rise. He hoped that was the case. Quietly he stripped the mirror off his crowbar and stuffed it back in his bag. Carefully judging the distance, he hurled the rock down at the head of the zombie that had been pushed farthest from the car. With luck the others wouldn't notice it fall.

He ducked back before the sound came to him, and scooped up another piece of granite. The moans were unchanged, so he took the risk, looking over the edge. The creature, a slightly built woman in jeans, was down, unmoving. He selected a man in a ball cap and threw, ducking again. He knew without looking that he'd missed this time, but the persistent moans and pounding made him hope he could pull it off.

Using a two hand grip he lifted a large chunk of granite and hurled it. He momentarily lost his balance and teetered while the rock smashed his target's head. Emboldened by his success, he took out two more before it happened.

While moving into a new vantage point, his foot slipped on the lichen covered surface and a trickle of gravel rattled down the mountainside. One of the five remaining zombies followed the trickle with its blank eyes and moaned excitedly when it saw him. Abandoning its efforts to break into the sedan, instead it started crawling up the slope towards him. The others noticed, and except for the one wearing the BDU jacket, followed its example.

They weren't very good climbers, but by the time he had a rock ready, he could see they probably would make it eventually, despite their slipping and sliding down the slope, there were plenty of handholds on the moss covered mountainside. Fortunately, eventually was longer than he needed. He dispatched the last of the four long before it reached the halfway point.

The fifth, the one that had been on the other side of the car was gone. A chill rand down his back, and he whirled, snatching up his crowbar. Its moans came to him from downhill. It forced its way through the brush that lined the edge of the road, and practically shrieked when it saw him. Joel ran uphill, scooping up his bag and heading for a clump of young pines. He'd seen them try to do things they'd done in life, but nothing that looked like real thinking. Could it have flanked him on instinct? Some remnant of military training that lived on in its dead brain?

Joel scrambled under the pines, ran uphill a bit more, then cut left jumping into a draw that he'd passed only minutes before. He crouched in the shadow of a pine and tried to control his breathing. He heard it thrashing in the pine branches, then only silence. When he couldn't hear it anymore, he used the mirror to watch it make its way uphill, moving in the same direction he'd been headed when it last saw him.

He waited until it was out of sight, moved up into a crouch, and crept downhill as silently as he could. Nothing moved on the road. Encouraged, he walked as quick as he could, minimizing the sound of his well broken in combat boots on the road, until he had the wrecks in sight.

Nothing moved.

The jeep was obviously empty, and while he couldn't see anyone in the SUV, he would hear if anything tried to climb up through the crushed vegetation to reach the road. The sedan was another matter. The trunk had popped open, and blocked his view to the interior.

He figured the accident was caused by the SUV trying to pass the Jeep. Car dodges the SUV, hits the cliff, and the SUV slams the Jeep into the guardrail, then ... A muffled sob from the sedan interrupted his thoughts.

Giving each of the bodies an extra whack in the head, he made his way to the drivers' side. The windows were smeared with mud, blood and an unrecognizable slime, but he could make out a small blond boy in a car seat who reached for the driver and cried. The driver was either dead or unconscious; her head had hit the windshield when she crashed, leaving a bloodstained star of broken glass. There was a bigger boy in the front with her, held upright by the seatbelt, head dangling.

Cautiously, he tried the back door, and on finding it locked, the front as well. There was still no movement on the road, and no sound but the crying of the baby and the wind in the pines. The noise he made shattering the glass was drowned out by a cry of terror from the baby.

Joel set the crowbar on the roof of the sedan, and checked the blonde woman for a pulse. She was dead, and had been long enough to grow cold. The older boy looked to be six or even eight, and when his head moved, Joel thought he might be alive, but the lifeless eyes and snapping jaw told him otherwise. The poor kid's neck must have snapped when they hit. But the baby was definitely alive. Also squirmy, soaking wet and stinking.

He freed the kid from the restraints, and pulled him, No her, from the car. It was the earrings that gave it away. She quieted some after he picked her up, and clung as he tried to comfort her. "Hey lil' one, I bet you're thirsty." She snatched at his water bottle when she saw it, and a partial set of teeth showed when she opened her mouth to drink. While she guzzled the last of his water, he spotted a diaper bag between the front seats. Inside, he found the essentials and a faded blue onesy.