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Flunk out?
I bit my tongue and refused to point out the obvious—if Fes couldn’t make it through more than a year of community college, he probably wouldn’t have lasted a semester at a university.

He slammed his hand on the steering wheel. “I should’ve left, seen some of the world before it fell apart. Instead all I’ve done is work for my dad. Now I’ll never get out of here.”

“
I know the feeling.” Was it worse never to have experienced life outside Durbinville like Fes, or to have escaped only to end up back in the box? “I had a summer internship planned for this year, but my mom got sick with the A7 virus so I came home for the break.”

Stuck here and feeling guilty as hell for resenting it. But what if I’d been apart from my parents when disaster hit? I never would’ve seen them again. Besides, being anywhere near L.A. when it was overrun would’ve been horrific. I should be grateful for the way things turned out, grateful for the relative safety of a quiet place like Durbinville, but instead I felt restless and trapped.

“
Fuck, we’re a pair of whiny bitches,” Fes said. “What we need’s a swim in the reservoir to clear our heads, then go back to town and have a few drinks. We earned ’em today.”

“
Sounds good. Minus the swimming. It’s pretty cold.” The thought of plunging into the dark, seemingly bottomless water of the reservoir was not appealing to me at the best of times. With images in mind of rotting arms grabbing at my kicking legs, there was no way I’d go in.

Fes laughed and punched my shoulder. “It’s good for you. Like those Norwegian dudes who chop holes in the ice. Purifies the system.”

I smiled. Fes could be pretty funny sometimes, but there was still now way he’d get me into the water.

A flash of light in the distance caught my attention. I squinted and shielded my gaze from the sunlight. “You see that?”

“
What?”

I pointed toward the road intersecting Reservoir Road on the far side of the rectangular body of water. Light glinted off metal—moving vehicles—a group of motorcycles.

Fes slowed the truck. “Shit. Looks like trouble.”

“
Maybe you should turn around.” My heart beat faster as the cycles slowed at the crossroads and turned in our direction, swooping as gracefully as a flock of birds. Maybe the people were friendly, but they were strangers and anything new and different could be very dangerous these days.

Fes did a U-turn, spraying dirt and gravel from beneath the tires as they dug into the shoulder. He gunned the motor, heading back toward town. I looked out the rear window and counted over a dozen cycles. The approaching horde appeared ominous looming behind us, but I didn’t know if we should try to outrun them. We could probably make it to the gates first, but was scurrying back to our mouse hole the best way to deal with these strangers? There was no reason they should hurt us. We didn’t have anything of value except for the truck and a couple of weapons.

As the cycles drew closer, Fes pressed his foot on the accelerator. The truck rattled alarmingly as it bumped over desiccated remains on the rough road.

“
Wait. Maybe we should stop and talk to them,” I said.

“
Are you crazy? Take a chance on getting carjacked or killed?”

The truck hit an especially deep pothole and my teeth clicked together. I cursed and grabbed the door handle. “Slow down before
you
get us killed.”

I glanced back. Behind us, the leader raised an arm and gestured us to pull over. He flashed a peace sign, which didn’t signify a lot but made me feel a little better. As I took in the motley collection of bulky Goldwings mingled with sexier Harleys, I became convinced the caravan didn’t pose a threat.

“
Seriously, Fes, pull over. Let’s see what they want.”

“
Fuck that.” He swerved around an abandoned car.

One of the cycles zipped past the other side of the Fiesta and raced alongside us. I looked out the window at the rider. Long brown hair whipped from beneath a helmet as ruby-red and sparkly as Oz slippers. The visor hid the rider’s eyes but her lips as she mouthed
Pull over
were purely feminine. Not that a woman wasn’t just as capable of pulling a gun on us, but my interest was piqued.

Fes swore but eased his foot off the gas. “We’re going to regret this,” he warned while bringing the truck to a stop.

As the motorcycles surrounded us, engines purring like big jungle cats, exhaust fumes clouding the air, I tended to agree with him, but I climbed out of the truck.

The woman on the Harley pulled off her helmet and shook out her hair like an actress in a shampoo commercial. My heart, already racing in overdrive, did a barrel roll when she looked at me with eyes the color of ice chips and stuck out her hand. She wore fingerless leather gloves so her palm was covered, but her fingers wrapped around my hand, skin to skin, and sent a little charge through me.

“
Hi. My name’s Ashleigh.” A smoker’s huskiness clouded her voice.

I froze for a moment, forgetting I needed to respond. “Brian. Pasman.”

“
I’m Mike Fessenden. Can we help you folks?” For a moment he sounded just like his dad used to, a jolly salesman welcoming potential buyers to his car lot.

The man who’d appeared to be the leader of the group swung a leg over his chunky Honda and walked over to us, helmet hanging by a strap from one big brown hand. He held out the other. “Daylon Brice. Where you boys from?”

“
Durbinville.” Fes nodded at the road before us. “Not too far from here. Look, we’d like to help you but the town’s rationing as it is.”

“
Didn’t ask for a handout. But we wouldn’t mind a hot meal and bed for the night then we’ll move on.”

“
Where are you headed?” I divided my attention between Brice and the girl I could hardly stop staring at. She wasn’t exceptionally beautiful, but had a magnetism that made her impossible to ignore.

“
South. We heard things are coming together in Dallas and we don’t want to winter up north.”

I was worried about winter too. Could we stick it out in Durbinville if the government never came to our rescue? Scenarios in which we got snowed in and ended up no better than zombies, cannibalizing our dead, had occasionally flitted through my mind.

With the bikers’ faces unhidden by visors or sunglasses, they ranged widely in age and appearance. None of them excerpt maybe Brice appeared remotely dangerous. I couldn’t imagine them riding in and taking over our town.

“
We’ll take you to Durbinville but the town council will decide whether you can stay. I imagine they’ll let you inside the wall for a night or two.”

I glanced at Ashleigh. If any of them needed a host, there was plenty of room in my house. I wouldn’t mind sharing.

* * * * *

Chapter Two

The tall, gangly guy with the dark hair was the leader but didn’t seem to know it. His straw-haired, baby-faced friend looked to him to decide what to do with us, and he agreed to take us home to meet the folks. It was interesting how the big dude, Mike, seemed to think he was in charge, but it was the other one, Brian, who really called the shots when it came down to it. Like my mom used to say “the neck turns the head where it wants.” I could appreciate that since I’d kinda lived my life as the neck.

As the townie boys got back in their car, I turned to Daylon. “Whaddya think? Is it cool?”

He shot me a look. “They’re not gonna kill us and take our stuff or go Deliverance on our asses, if that’s what you mean. Yeah, Ashleigh, I think it’s cool.”

I bit back my annoyance. Daylon was a sarcastic son of a bitch most of the time. I was used to it. But I shared an eye roll with Maureen who straddled a cycle behind her boyfriend, Jake. The alpha male thing got old after a while and I’d spent way too many years putting up with that mocking tone from one guy or another. I was so over being treated like a dumb bimbo.

We revved our motorcycles and followed the locals. Soon some buildings popped up on the horizon. I wasn’t a big fan of these prairie states, but at least a person could see what was coming in such wide open spaces. In the city I never knew what would jump out at me from dark shadows…and that was
before
the zombies.

A fence had been erected around the town—or part of it anyway. There were abandoned houses outside the fence and rubble where others had been torn down. A section of chain link fence gave way to a stretch of wooden stockade. There was also cobbled-together plywood and planks, probably the remnants of one of the razed houses. The fence was topped by a line of barbed wire. The road went through a gate guarded by people in a tower erected on one side. A man trained a shotgun on us as we approached, which didn’t give me a comforting feeling.

We rolled to a stop in front of the gate and the town boys got out of their truck to talk to one of the guards. I braced my boot heels on the pavement and balanced the heavy cycle, enjoying the weight of the machine between my legs. Not too long ago I’d been like Maureen, riding in the bitch seat. Now I rode my own Harley and it felt good.

Jake and Maureen pulled up beside me. “Damn, these people are serious about safety,” Jake said.

Maureen leaned against his back. “They’re not going to let us in. Why would they? But maybe there’s an empty house near here where we can camp and scavenge supplies.”

The prospect was better than tents but not as good as a town that probably had generators. The idea of electricity, running water and refrigeration was heavenly and I was desperate to get inside and join the saints.

After talking to a guard, Brian walked over to us and spoke to Daylon. “Janice Myers and the council will meet with you before making a decision about whether the group can stay. If you want to ride in the truck, I’ll take you to them.”

Daylon didn’t argue but looked pissed as he got off his cycle and hung his helmet. I could imagine how well he’d deal with some small town dictator grilling him. Diplomacy wasn’t our valiant leader’s strong suit.

“
I’ll go with you.” I quickly dismounted and headed for the truck before anyone could tell me no. Charm
was
my strong suit. Too bad the council leader wasn’t a man. That would give me an even better hand to play.

Brian got behind the wheel. I slid to the middle and Daylon rode shotgun. Mike Fessenden looked pissed at being relegated to riding in the truck bed along with one of the guards. A couple of people rolled open the gate—a slab of corrugated metal on wheels, and we drove into Durbinville.

The streets, storefronts and houses looked like other Midwestern towns I’d seen, tidy and a little smug. The grass in most of the yards was mowed which surprised me. Who’d waste time, energy and resources on lawn maintenance under the circumstances?

I glanced at Brian’s profile as he watched the road ahead of him. He looked like a serious type, although it was hard to say since everybody was pretty grim these days. But a crease between his brows suggested he’d already frowned his way through enough years to leave a mark and he wasn’t that old.

“
How’d it happen here?” I asked the number one question of strangers meeting on the road. These days we were defined by that period of transition between the old life and the new. As different as the survivors’ stories were, they all contained their share of running and gore and death.

Brian glanced at me before returning his attention to the road. I noted a flicker of interest which might prove useful so I moved my leg until our thighs bumped together.

“
We heard about the attacks on TV first and, after the networks went off air, on the radio. It seemed unreal. Nothing was happening here so we thought we might be safe.” Brian paused and his jaw tightened. “But some people who’d gone to the hospital in Topeka and received the A7 treatment relapsed and died. Then they rose. There were attacks. More people got infected. Things spun out of control fast. After exterminating the zombies, we built the fence around some of the town.” He gave a dry chuckle. “Now we live in an official zombie-free zone.”

“
Somebody’s Aunt Edna came back from the hospital infected. Doesn’t take much to get an epidemic started,” Daylon said.

Brian remained quiet and a glance at his face told me he’d lost someone close to him Probably more than one. Probably family.