Two more days passed.

Marcus pulled the machete blade from the skull of the final zombie. Well, he hoped it was the final zombie. And pulled wasn't quite the right word, pried was more like it. Somewhere behind him, Logan was moving around.

"That's it," he said. Marcus glanced over his shoulder. Logan was closing the door they'd come in through. "There's no more."

Marcus nodded, crouched and wiped the blood off of the blade onto the shirt of one of the zombies. Then he sheathed the machete and looked around. He and Logan were checking out an industrial supply warehouse. It was the fourth, (and final), one on their side of the river. At least as far as Marcus could tell. The one behind the truck stop hadn't panned out. It'd been basically empty. The other two after that had yielded some results, but not much. This one, on the other hand, looked like it had actual stuff in it.

Stuff they could use.

Silently, he and Logan began picking through the supplies, making sure it was actually worth a run. They wouldn't be the ones hauling it back to the home site. They were just scouts for today. Well, for a little bit longer. They had to haul from their final location, which came after this one. Marcus took everything in. There was a ton of stuff simply along the wall he found himself looking at right now: a big red toolbox on wheels, a construction sign, some tall thin tanks of something, another two signs, one that read one lane road ahead and another that read pipe laying in progress. There were also a couple johnny-on-the-spots, one of which had toppled over, and a few pallets of generic construction supplies that would be useful.

"This looks great," Logan said.

Marcus turned and looked. The man was standing over a collection of more pallets, all loaded down with all kinds of supplies. This would help them a lot.

"Yeah, a good haul," Marcus agreed. He moved over to the window and looked out it. As he scanned for zombies, he thought back over the past forty eight hours. It had bee a busy, hectic two days. It hadn't really felt like days, honestly. More like hour after hour of hard work. Most of it spent clearing out the buildings around the truck stop, killing any zombies that showed up and inventorying their supplies.

Marcus felt reasonably sure that the area was safe. He pulled out his radio. "Okay, Marcus here. The site is secure. Send some runners for pick up."

"They're on their way, Marcus," Lily replied.

"Come on, we should go. I want to get home," Marcus said.

Logan nodded. The pair of them headed back outside and got into the red jeep they'd taken for today's activity. There was just one more place they had to go after this, then they could go home. There was a gun shop nearby that was a 'must check out'.

"So what did you do before all...this?" Logan asked suddenly.

Marcus glanced over at one of their latest additions. Logan and Daisy had sort of just fallen in with the group after they'd given up their home in the mini-mart in Spencer's Mill. Marcus had initially been worried about their hostility, particularly Logan's, because he'd been harsh and closed off during their infrequent visits back when everyone had still lived in the church. But they both seemed to have integrated into the group nicely.

"I was just an office drone. Boring shit behind a desk all day," Marcus replied. "What about you?"

"Oh, a little of this, a little of that...I was trying to be a boxer again. I had something good over in Danforth just out of high school. I was a boxer, and I was good at it. Lived the life for about three years and then...I dunno, something just kind of fell away. I lost the spark, you know? I kept losing, no one wanted me around anymore. I moved out here. Before the boxing, I was going to be a plumber. I was good at it, actually. My dad was one, and my uncle, and they were both trying to get me into the 'family business'. They both lived out here, which was why I moved back. So that's what I've been doing. Just last year, I started getting in shape again, heading out to Danforth every now and then to train, maybe try and scare up a match. And now all this happens..."

"Man, that's crazy. I've never known anyone who boxed before. That must've been tough," Marcus replied.

"Yeah. Definitely tough. Lots of training, lots of practice, lots of workouts and lots of getting your ass beat. But it was worth it. Lots of fun, too. Great people, usually. They know how to party. Always got the money," Logan said.

They pulled into the front parking lot of the gun shop. "You ready?" Marcus asked, killing the engine and pocketing the keys.

"Yep," Logan replied.

They stepped out of the jeep and made their way to the front entrance. The plate glass front window had been broken out, but Marcus couldn't see anything moving around inside. He carefully pushed the front door open, which had obviously been kicked in at some point. The place was smashed up and wreathed in shadows. As Marcus took a step inside, something growled. Something dangerous. Something not normal.

"Oh shit-" he began.

A feral suddenly launched itself up and over the counter. It pounced onto him and they both went flying back out the way he'd come in through, crashing to the gravel parking in an explosion of pain. Marcus fought viciously to get the thing off of him. He could hear Logan shouting but everything else except for this monstrous freak atop him had sort of faded away for the moment. The thing's ugly, yellow-green face was in his, jaw snapping, teeth clicking together as it tried to bite his fucking face off.

In a burst of strength, he managed to shove the thing up and get his feet up and planted firmly against its malformed chest. He shoved as hard as he could, throwing the thing bodily off him. Sucking in a lungful of air, he shouted, "Shoot it!"

Several gunshots filled the air as Marcus scrambled to his feet, driven by adrenaline. He was going for his own gun, but he saw that the thing was dead, Logan standing over it, smoking pistol in hand. Shaking, the man turned to look at him.

"You okay?"

"Uh...yeah, yeah," Marcus replied, patting himself down. Nothing felt broken. Everything ached, and he probably had some cuts on his back from that landing, but he seemed okay. He took a deep breath and let it out. It was all too easy to go from perfectly okay to almost dying out here. He needed to pay more attention.

Working slowly and steadily, they made their way through the two stories of the gun shop. A handful of zombies lingered and were put down with relative ease. Marcus felt a bit dislocated, a bit shell-shocked, but managed to get his job done. They spent half an hour combing over the area, finding scattered shells and bullets and the occasionally magazine, and were almost ready to call it a day when Marcus saw something odd in an upstairs office. A bookshelf had been shoved to the side, partially exposing what looked like a false panel in the wall behind it.

He and Logan moved the bookshelf, pulled away the panel and found a snub-barrel shotgun, three pistols and a duffel bag of ammunition for both. Feeling it at least somewhat vindicated about everything that had happened and their time spent here, the men took the supplies down to the jeep. Marcus checked his watch. He'd found a wind-up watch that still kept the time and although he had no way to tell for sure, it seemed to match up to the position of the sun. Right now, it was a little bit past two in the afternoon.

Just as Marcus was turning the key in the ignition, something rounded the corner of the gun shop, coming towards them.

Something they hadn't seen before.

"What the fuck is that?!" Logan cried.

It was hideous. It walked on legs that were too long with spindly, wasted arms. Its skin was a dull, ugly gray and it had a large, open, gaping mouth. What was most obvious about it was its stomach, which had taken on a bloated, distended appearance. It was coming for them, eyes wide and pitch black and pitiless.

Marcus threw the car into reverse and leaned out the window, pistol in hand. He aimed and fired off several shots. One of them took the thing in its fat stomach. It was like he'd thrown a grenade. The thing detonated and sprayed the front of the jeep with decayed gore and viscera. Immediately a thick miasma began to fill the air, an awful, reeking yellow mist that seemed to cling to the jeep. Marcus and Logan both started hacking and coughing violently. Marcus hit the gas, reversing onto the street, until he slammed on the brakes.

Throwing it into park, both men got out of the car, which seemed to be a new source of the reek, and stumbled away from it. Marcus tried to see through the tears that were being driven from his eyes. It smelled horrible, like a square mile of raw sewage and dead bodies.

"What was that?!" Logan cried, continuing to cough.

"Something new, another mutation," Marcus replied through gasps.

When their breath came back to them, both men looked at the jeep, the front of which was still covered in reeking, rotting flesh.

"I'm not driving anywhere in that," Logan said firmly.

Marcus sighed. The man had a point. He looked around and saw a red SUV nearby. He walked over to it and opened the front door. There was no one inside and the interior looked pretty clear. The keys were even in the ignition. Hoping against hope, he took a seat and started up the car. It kicked to life. The gas tank read almost empty, but it would be more than enough to get them back to the truck stop, where they could put more gas in. Marcus killed the engine, got out and moved over to the jeep. He left the key for it in the ignition, then, with Logan's unhappy help, transferred the supplies from the jeep to the SUV.

Once that was done, they began heading back home.

"What happened to the jeep?"

Marcus glanced over. Maya was standing at the front gate. She pushed it up and stepped out to join them as they unloaded the gear.

"Encountered something new," Marcus replied. "Some...bloated thing. Blew up when I shot it. Got horrible smelling crap all over the jeep."

"Ew. Nice," Maya said.

She helped them get the stuff inside. Once Logan had dropped his portion of the supplies off, he made his way somewhere else in the truck stop, presumably looking for Daisy. As Marcus and Maya began sorting through the supplies, he got updates.

"The third bedroom is done," Maya said. "We set it up in one corner of the main room, hung some sheets, like in a hospital, for privacy. All the extra doors are locked down very firmly. We're about as secure as we're going to get. I've also had a chance to finish up the fence, for the most part. It's in surprisingly good shape and I've made some minor repairs to it. I want to go over it once more but I think it'll hold together just fine."

"That all sounds great. I see there's a bunch of xs over there on the map," Marcus replied, glancing over at the map on the wall.

"Yeah. Not exactly a good thing. I mean, we've been searching houses and stuff like crazy but most of them turn out to be empty. That's why it's going so fast," Maya replied. "And Karen's actually making great progress out in the farmland, but...I'm worried about her. We've hardly seen her at all. She just shows up, unloads the stuff, grabs some bullets and food and water and then heads back out. She doesn't talk to anyone."

"She'll be okay...I think," Marcus replied. "What about supplies? Have you managed to finish up the inventory?"

"Yeah. Based off how much we have and our rate of consumption, we've got about a month's worth of supplies," Maya replied.

"I see," Marcus murmured.

As they finished sorting through the supplies Marcus and Logan had found at the gun store, Lily called out to them.

"It seems we have some company out front. They want to talk to you, Marcus."