1. Prologue

**I wrote this a while ago, and typed it up for my "Zombie Vegas" ebook. It's going to be relevant in the storyline I have planned, so I decided to use it to open this fic.**

Week 16

As the Caddy barreled down the freeway, Little Rock stretched out on the back seat, channel-surfing and trying to ignore the muffled sounds still coming from the rear. She raised her head a little, and flipped back a channel. "Columbus! Wichita! Tal! You have to see this!"

Tal parked on the shoulder, and they all watched the TV. "... da governor of California, and da acting president of da United States. And we are all in some seriously * up *."

"Yeah," said Wichita, who watched with her chin resting on the top of the seat, "starting with you being in charge."

"Hey!" said Little Rock. "Be nice to the Governator."

"And people made a big deal out of where Obama was born," Columbus mused.

"I am holding dis position only in a _de facto_ capacity, until an eligible American-born citizen is found or appointed. At dis time, da president, vice president, attorney general and secretaries of State, Defense, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Health, Transportation, Education and Veterans' Affairs are confirmed dead. All oders in da line of succession are missing or incommunicado. Da remnants of da military and government need a civilian leader. For now, I'm it. I'm no happier about dis dan any of you."

"That's unlikely," muttered Wichita.

"You will have heard stories of places unaffected by the HPNE virus. Whatever da specifics, dere is no trood to it. It is absolutely confirmed dat every region, every state, every major city in da United States, Mexico and Canada has been reached by da virus. Do not attempt to relocate based on a rumor.

"Do not attempt to seek long-term shelter in a private residence, no matter how safe it appears. If you stay in one place long enough, da infected will find you, and you can't fight off dem all. If you are alone or in a small group, your best option is to stay on da move. Arm and equip yourselves, but stick wid what you know you can use. On da run isn't da time to try out bigger and better. And remember, better cars and bigger guns are no substitute for a good plan."

"Or a plot," Wichita said.

"Do not attempt to reach refugee camps. All of dem have been evacuated and shut down, where dey were not already overrun. Do not seek shelter in military facilities, even where it is confirmed dey are functional. All military personnel are under standing orders not to assist individual civilians. But, dey are still working for you, by protecting and maintaining core assets: power plants, water plants, oil wells and refineries, fields and factories. Dey can't help you, but dey are giving you da best chance you have to help yourselves.

"And help each oder, too! No matter your location and situation, you are not alone. Dere are communities of hundreds, dousands, still functioning, supporting themselves and fighting off da infected. Find dem! Be careful, do not make yourself too vulnerable without establishing intentions. But if you see oders who can help you, or who you can help, don't be afraid to reach out to dem.

Wherever dere are people helping each oder, dere is America!

"It may seem da virus has won. But da infected won't live forever, dey are already dying. Don't listen to da voices of despair and selfishness. It's time to show da world- we will be back!"

Little Rock cheered, and Columbus gave her a high-five. Tal wiped tears from his eyes.

	2. Cabazon

**This is a real landmark, which I've reidden past quite a few times. It was my first idea for Cass's "temple" in _The Rookie_.**

"Columbus should see this," said Little Rock. Both she and Tal frowned.

They were in Cabazon, California, home of one of the United States' most notorious roadside attractions. Innocent passerbys going through Palm Springs found themselves confronted by Dinny, a 150-foot-long concrete brontosaurus, and Mr. Rex, a 100-ton, 65-foot-tall tyrannosaurus. If they were unwary, they might end up in the belly of the brontosaurus- with nothing but dated paleo art and cheesy souvenirs to show for it.

Tal held up a plastic dinosaur with a young-Earth creationist slogan. "Maybe not..." He peered out a porthole. "No zombies."

"That's not the only thing we have to worry about," Little Rock said. "Maybe not even the worst..."

Tal nodded. It was 24 hours since they left the company of a man named Branson Missouri. Little Rock and her sister had first met Branson in southeast Oklahoma, as a fleeing middle manager whom they relieved of his car and his gun. After pairing with Tal and Columbus, they met Branson again, as the leader of a biker band that tried to take them captive in a Nevada strip mall. At their next meeting, they had come to Branson's headquarters, only to be attacked by three of his men with a score to settle. Branson had intervened on their side, executing one of his own men and leaving another to die in the process. Afterward, they stayed and fought alongside Branson's men, to defend an abandoned bombing range from 10,000 zombies. But they departed in fear, after Little Rock read Branson's mad plans to wipe out the vestiges of civilization. Tallahassee was sure they were being followed.

"Listen," Tal said, "I heard you can climb up in Mr. Rex's mouth. Let's go check it out. It will give us a better view, too."

The open mouth of the tyrannosaur proved to be a good vantage point indeed. Tal could see around the town, and sketched a little map of what roads were clear. "Oh, no," Little Rock said. She pointed mutely. In the distance, an Aztec step pyramid reared out of the top of a larger building, as if to trump the cheesy charm of Dinny and Rex with an architectural _trompe l'oeil_ that was garish, tasteless and probably politically incorrect to boot.

The building at the base of the pyramid was a mall.

Even as Tal watched, three zombies emerged from the mall. For some reason, zombies concentrated in malls more densely that any other structure. There were bound to be more already on the way, and still more already coming. There was an insidiousness to the zombies' diffuse, semi-random movements: You would see one, no problem; then a few, still nothing you can't handle; and then before you knew it, you were surrounded by scores or hundreds. This wasn't that bad, but it would be soon enough. "Little Rock," he said, "run for the Caddy. I can cover you."

By the time he had unlimbered his weapon, there were already two packs of zombies approaching Mr. Rex. He had with him an LSW, a modified M16 with a folding bipod and a 100-round drum. Propping up the gun rather awkwardly on the dinosaur's teeth, he shot a zombie that was approaching Little Rock. The others mostly looked in her direction, but she went into a credible imitation of the zombies' jerky gait. It could work well enough to reach safety before zombies got close, but that wouldn't get her to the Caddy: Six zombies already had the vehicle surrounded. He started shooting more zombies, always away from the Caddy. It gave the girl just enough time to power-lurch for the relative safety of Dinny. One zombie's eyes locked on her, but Tal shot it before it could call to the rest. But she all but blew her chance by going into a final sprint. Five zombies went straight for her, and a spray of cyclic fire wasn't enough to stop them all. She reached the brontosaurus, barely, but had to use a pistol to stop a zombie that tried to go in after her.

By now, there were well over 50 zombies, and more were still coming. He fired three more short bursts, then reached into his vest. He took out first a tube, then a pistol grip, and put them together to assemble a grenade launcher. He fired at five zombies feeding on one of their dead; a concussion grenade left them stunned or injured, and set other zombies keening and even staggering at the loud noise and bright flash of detonation. He reloaded and fired in the direction of the Caddy, scattering the zombies around it with a cloud of tear gas.

While zombies reeled at the sounds and smells, a short, palid figure lurched through their midst, right up to the Caddy. Little Rock pulled a kerchief over her face while she unlocked the door. A stumbling zombie bumped into the open door, and screeched. She slammed the door just in time. Tal smiled, then frowned. "No! Not for me!"

Little Rock backed over the better part of a pack. She was unfazed, until a zombie began pounding on the window beside her. The window was mostly protected by reinforced mesh, but the upper left quarter of the covering was cut away. The attacker stayed with her even as others fell behind or went under. She realized it was the same zombie that had almost caught her, with its hand caught in the door. The hand struck glass wrist-first through the opening in the mesh, and the "shatter-proof" glass cracked. She shrieked, and reflexively opened the door to send the zombie sprawling, fortunately into two more that tried to reach inside. In the seconds of distraction, she backed onto Mr. Rex's foot.

"Tal!" she shouted through the open sunroof, "come down!" He shook his head. Behind him, he could hear zombies snarling and jostling with each other on their way up. After two false starts, she rolled forward- and stopped. Tal grinned. It was well over fifty feet to the ground, but there was a chance...

The grenade launcher fired, blasting away some of the teeth in the upper jaw. A zombie was flung out, and another slammed face-first onto a broken tooth. Then Tal swung out of the open mouth, and scrabbled down what handholds could be found on Mr. Rex's cheek and neck, to catch hold finally of the little protuberance of an arm. From there, he made his leap, landed on a fabric cargo shell on the roof of the Caddy and tumbled and rolled into the sunroof. He rose with both weapons raised, and fired the grenade launcher, cutting a swath through the oncoming zombies with a flechette canister. Little Rock drove the other way, jumping curbs and medians, while Tal stood tall in the shotgun seat, laughing as he emptied the LSW at the pursuing swarm.

	3. Wheels Up

The most direct route from Palm Springs to Vegas went straight through the tiny town of Baker. That was why Tal was especially wary driving through Baker. "Do you still think somebody's following us?" Little Rock asked.

"I don't know," he said. "I thought we lost them when we went through that swarm. Maybe we did. But I've seen the same car twice- There! Brown, butt ugly brick, parked in that driveway. It's called a VW Thing, and it will stick out like a sore thumb anywhere."

"But it's not moving..."

"Yeah, so we don't notice. All they have to do is park, watch us go by and figure out where we're going to be next. They won't be alone."

"What can we do?"

"We could go up there and see who's in the car. That would be risky. The other way is to go a different direction, one they wouldn't be expecting. I know exactly where..."

As they drove a winding path north, Little Rock looked back with a pair of binoculars. "Tal?... The Thing is gone." Tal accelerated with a chuckle. "I think I see another one... There!" Tal looked, and frowned. He saw no vehicle, but something was kicking up a column of dust. "What are you doing?" Little Rock said, almost whining. "You're slowing down! They'll catch up!"

"No they won't," he said. "They aren't trying to catch us, they're trying to scare us into a trap. But we can't go back. And what the hell is that-" He swerved, just as a blue sports car lunged out from the midst of the wrecks. It struck a glancing impact to the driver's side, with more force than a car its size should have been able to muster. It had been modified, with a bolted-on heavy bumper and larger wheels, but it had been a formidable machine to begin with. Tal knew it for a Subaru XT- probably the only sports car ever built with four-wheel drive.

The Thing pulled onto the road through a gap left by the XT. Tal got back up to speed, maneuvering through a cluster of wrecks. The XT followed, pushing aside a car. Someone in the thing fired an assault rifle. Looking to one side, Tal saw the column of dust still trailing them. What was it? The XT pulled back, while the Thing moved in. Two bursts of assault rifle fire took out a tail light. So that was their game: aiming for the tires. He swerved left, holding his speed steady at 40 mph. The Thing's rag top peeled back, and the rifleman stood up. Little Rock shrieked as rounds pelted her door. No more pissing around, apparently. Tal sped up to forty-five, and the Thing accelerated in turn.

The rifleman sneered as the SUV pulled to the right, and took aim at the rear window. Before he could fire, Tal dropped his speed to thirty in a squeal of brakes. The driver braked and swerved just in time to avoid a rear end collision. The rifleman was nearly flung out of the vehicle, and the rifle flew from his hands and went under the wheels. Fortunately, he toppled into the back seat just before the Thing crashed.

Little Rock joined Tal in a whoop, but their cry was cut short as the XT roared in. A brutal "PIT" attack to their right rear sent the larger vehicle careening. Tal swerved to scrape by a wrecked bus, and overcorrected to avoid crashing into a pileup on the shoulder. The XT closed in again, expecting to deliver a coup de grace with another PIT. But just before it could strike the left side of the rear bumper, Tal accelerated, passing fifty and soaring toward sixty. The XT missed, fishtailed, and crashed in a shower of debris.

"Now, we're home fr-" The words died on Tal's lips. The dust column was still trailing them, and as he watched, a squat crimson shape burst through the piled wrecks. "What the-?"

It looked like a motorcycle crossed with a tank, and connoisseurs would have known it for a _kettenkrad_- World War 2's smallest and fastest artillery tractor, and would have either wept or drooled at major modifications. Its tub-like hull was only four feet high, and with the one rider all but reclining in a definitely non-standard seat that leaned back over the engine housing, it had been easy to stay out of sight. Now, it reared up in a wheelie as it passed the wrecks, and easily gained on the Caddy. A twist of the lengthened handle bars fired a submachine gun mounted over the wheel.

"I don't know what the hell that is," Tal said, "but I don't want to mess with it now! Get Old Smokie ready!" Little Rock was already pulling a remote control out of the glove compartment. Tal tried to gain on the freakish vehicle, but it easily matched his speed. With a hairpin turn, the kettenkrad rammed the Caddy, backed by enormous torque and traction and a full ton of mass. Only the brevity of the contact prevented the stout tractor from driving the truck off the road. As it was, Tal struggled at the wheel, watching in dread as the crazy machine closed in again. Then, from boxes above the rear wheel wells, impenetrable clouds of smoke erupted. He saw nothing, but heard a terrific crash.

"Now what?" said Little Rock.

"We go straight ahead," Tal said, "to somewhere nobody will be waiting for us: Death Valley!"

	4. Emergency

**This is only a segue, but I had some fun. I always have a good time with Branson; along with Jack Ketch, he's probably my favorite character in this series to write for.**

Branson Missouri's office was known to his men as "the Book Mobile". The large, early 1980s-vintage fifth-wheel trailer was hitched to his D200 pickup. He kept a sizable collection of books, of many sorts. Currently, he was reading_ Achtung- Panzer!_ "...Tanks would never be able to produce their full effect until weapons on whose support they must inevitably rely were brought up to their standard of speed and of cross-country performance..."

The knock at the door had a decidedly urgent tone. "Come in," he said.

Enid Oklahoma entered. "Missouri... There's a problem with Tallahassee and the girl."

"I gave strict orders that they were to be left strictly alone," Branson said suspiciously. "Was there a problem?"

"It appears that an unaligned operation tried to attack them around Baker."

Branson scowled for a moment, then chuckled. "Were any of them hurt?"

"I gather they totalled a car."

"That will be punishment enough. So, where is the problem?"

"It appears that the Panhandler was... spooked. He changed his route."

Branson leaned forward. "North." Enid nodded. "Damn it. I didn't want to have to act against him. Or _them_, either. But we can't have Circus Circus getting word about Death Valley." Branson sighed. Enid remained standing, silent.

"Sir," the lieutenant said, "are you giving the order...?"

"Yes! Yes, that's my order. Execute the plans I have prepared. Get the tanks ready, and the Thing. We're going to take Death Valley!"

Little Rock drove as the Caddy cruised through the desolate yet spectacular landscape of Death Valley. "Stay to the dirt road," Tal warned. "It may not look much better than the desert, but there's mud pits that can trap a Humvee in Death Valley."

"It's a beautiful place," Little Rock said. "I'm glad we went this way. You said the main road will get us most of the way to Vegas?"

Tal nodded. "We'll come out a little to the west. On the way, we can make a stop at Furnace Creek. It's a little town with facilities for tourists. I hear they even have a golf course. I might stop for nine holes..."

"Wait... You mean somebody went to the bottom of Death Valley... looked around... and decided it needed a golf course?"

"I guess so." He looked out the window, and froze.

To the east, trailing the Caddy, was a low-flying attack helicopter.

	5. Oasis

**Just a short to keep things moving...**

The helicopter swooped over the Caddy, low enough to rock the vehicle. A humvee was closing behind them. From overhead, a command blared: "PULL OVER!"

"What do we do?" Little Rock said.

"The only thing we can," said Tallahassee. He pulled off the trail and stopped.

The men who came out of the Humvee wore US Army fatigues, and looked like they could have earned them. Tal raised his hands. "We're just passing through," he said. "We don't want any trouble!"

"Where are you from?" a soldier asked.

Tal was defiantly silent, but Little Rock blurted out, "Vegas!"

"In that case," the soldier continued, "there's someone who wants to see you."

One of the soldiers, introduced as Dakota, drove the Caddy, talking to Little Rock, and soon enough Tal eased up enough to talk to him. "So, you're based in Furnace Creek?" he said.

"Yeah," Dakota answered. "You can see it straight ahead." There it was, sure enough, a miraculous patch of green amidst the bare landscape of Death Valley. "Furnace Creek is built over an aquifer, that turns out more water than the few people there had any use for. Now, we're using it to grow crops. It's as safe as a place can be from the infected, though a couple times a swarm has actually gotten far enough for us to have to deal with them. With the helicopters, we can send out the food to wherever it's needed."

They were now passing through the Furnace Creek golf course, now converted to a farm. Tal became moderately excited. "There's a whole bread basket here! Look! There's squash, beans, peas..."

He fell awkwardly silent. "What?" said Little Rock. "It's not like I've never seen pot before."

"It's mostly plants right now," Dakota said, "but the farmers are also raising chickens and a few turkeys, and even a few cows."

"Listen," said Tal, "do you happen to know if... there's any Twinkies in storage somewhere?"

"Storage?" Dakota said with a frown. "We _make_ Twinkies!"

"Tal?" Little Rock said. "C'mon, a joke's a joke..." Tal remained slumped in the seat, seemingly swooning and certainly drooling.

	6. Host

"So," Tal said as they drove into town, "do you hear much out here?"

"We get constant reports," Dakota said. "There are troops in every major city that's still standing. But what they tell us isn't much help for putting a bigger picture together. They have specific missions, mostly about preserving utilities, and to do their job they avoid travelling. Aerial intel is supposed to be doing a lot more good, but whatever they turn up goes straight to the top. But what really keeps us going-" he got a gleam in his eye. "-Is stories."

He chuckled. "We still have enough contact with civilians that we hear whatever they hear. We know 99.9% of it is bunk, but at least it's what the rest of the world is really talking about. There's a few of what you could call folk heroes. There's the Panhandler, a drifter they say can kill a zombie with anything, and really wants to find a Twinkie." He matched Tal's smirk with a knowing glance. "But the one we hear about most is the Samaritan." Tal frowned.

"They say he isn't much more than a boy, and the one thing they say about what he looks like is that he has curly hair," Dakota continued, increasingly inattentive to Tal's reactions. As it happened, he looked jealous, but curious, and a little suspicious. "He only carries a 12-gauge double, and doesn't even use it that often. The story goes that he made his first kill with the top of a toilet tank. " Tal raised an eyebrow, then shook his head. "And they say he's fast, cunning, and he can see in the dark as well as the zombies. There's a crazy story that he outmaneuvered and killed a pack of zombies in an office with the lights out, and survived an attack by a swarm in a mall." Little Rock studiously stared at the ceiling. "Then there's one we heard just recently... It goes that Branson Missouri captured the Panhandler, and the Samaritan had to rescue him."

"That's a lie!" shouted Tallahassee, then fell silent, his face flushed.

"There's one more thing they say about this guy... It's that he's only afraid of one thing... clowns." Little Rock burst out laughing.

"This is the man who wants to see you," Dakota said as they pulled up to one of the largest and most lavish of the guest lodges. Parked out front was a Humvee limousine, heavily armed and armored. Tal and Little Rock were silent and nervous as they entered the cabin.

"Hello," a deep voice announced. "We have been waiting for you." Both stared, but it was the girl who squealed: "President Arnold!"

	7. Q&A

**OK, this is just a reply to a review, but I hope it will shed some new light on my ideas for these stories.**

_I'm dying to know how they will get out the million + heading to Vegas. _

I came up with more like 100K for the size of the horde... In any event, I'm working on ideas.

_The 'leper' concept is fascinating. _

The lepers were a late idea in the evolution of the story arc, but they have made it especially rewarding to write. The different characters have all resonated with me personally. I love writing dialogue for Jack Ketch. I found the Pariahs to be particularly unnerving villains, more so than some of the non-human characters I've come up with. And, I think the Sybil has a lot in common with a real person who was there for me.

_What is up with Christa's pregnancy?_

Not sure what's meant here... I don't mean for there to be any major surprises or mysteries. One thing I am still thinking over is how far along she actually is. So far, I've tried to leave it ambiguous, which is a useful device for handling major foulups and flipflops.

_Are she and Columbus sharing the same dreams? _

Not what I was thinking of, but an interesting interpretation. The dreams are intended to represent the anxieties they both feel.

_Why are there any survivors in Vegas if the virus is airborne? _

My idea, which I meant to be reasonably explicit, is that one strain of the virus is airborne. I modeled it after the pneumonic version of "Black Plague", which isn't particularly "efficient". The back story is that, while "Strain 2" is deadlier and theoretically more contagious, the strain that spreads by bites infects far more people.

_Will you continue this story line?_

Definitely. I have been doing some other things- "Jacob and 2 Women", just finished, and a couple "Exotroopers" stories still in progress. But, I have always intended to finish the "Vegas saga" arc.

	8. Chiefs

From the mountains to the northeast of Death Valley, Branson looked the other way, toward the distant lights of Las Vegas. "Karakorum," he muttered.

"Whuh?" grunted Enid.

"It was the capitol of the Mongol empire," Branson said. "When they conquered, they took all the plunder and slaves they could carry and use, and destroyed the rest. The best of the best went back to Karakorum. To build the palaces of the khans, they laid the cities of half the world to waste. They were the worst of both worlds: They destroyed like barbarians, and exploited like `civilized' men. That's what Vegas is and always was. Just look at the casinos. The men who built them couldn't create without plundering what others created- and they didn't do it by conquest, but by imitation. Caesar's Palace. New York, New York. Luxor. Paris, for cryin' out loud! What others took centuries to build, for better or worse, they copied in a matter of months, for nothing better than a receptacle for false hopes. If men like that are the ones who try to rebuild America, then America is going to die!"

"Holy *, boss," said Enid, "are we going to loot the place, or preach fire and brimstone at 'em?"

"I don't know what to do about Vegas," Branson said. "There's too much we still have to learn. I know what I would like to do about Furnace Creek. That's why I left them alone this long. It's going to be a bad business, but it has to be done."

"We might have had a chance, if not for da emergency meetings," Acting President Schwarzenegger said. "People start turning to zombies, and what's da first ding people do? Da leaders of da city go to city hall. City hall send people to da county seat. Da county sends people to da state capitol. Da state sends people to Washington. And dey don't just send deir leaders, dey send deir leaders' advisors, and guards, and speech writers, and secretaries... Who could screen dem all? Who would try, when da zombies are already on da loose? Den when da people saw deir leaders killed by da zombies dey were supposed to stop, dey figured, noding will do any good.

"I made different choices. My first action was to restrict road travel. I vetoed plans for evacuation and refugee camps. I didn't even declare martial law. It actually looked like dings would work. But Los Angeles was already being overrun. People who were safe panicked and ran. Da Army started pulling out troops. Others deserted, or mutinied. Den an outbreak started in San Francisco. I still had National Guard troops, and some Army and Air Force people. I did the only ding I could: I ordered dem to fall back.

"Da president ding- it wasn't anybody's idea. I was in command of operational Army forces. Dey reported to me da way dey would to a commander-in-chief, and after a while, dey started calling me dat. Den, when Washington fell, some of da officers suggested making it a formal title. After a while, I took dem up on it."

"Are you sure there's no one else left?" Little Rock said.

Arnold frowned. "I dink so, but it's not just a question of who is still alive. We know of dree oder governors, two senators, five representatives... but none of dem are helping to rebuild. Some can't, some won't. Even in da line of presidential succession, dere's six with a question mark. Some, we're pretty sure of: Da secretary of the treasury was on a plane dat went down. We have an unconfirmed visual sighting of da Pres Pro Tem, infected. Da secretaries of Health and Housing were last seen investigating complaints about a refugee camp in Missouri. Bad idea. But we have no information on da Speaker of da House; as of five weeks ago, the Secretary of Energy was alive in Canada; and we have an authenticated report dat da Secretary of Homeland Security boarded an Air Force jet headed for Nevada." Tallahassee and Little Rock glanced at each other.

"So... What do you do?" Little Rock said.

"I command da National Guard of California, and attached units of da US Army and Air Force," he said. "I oversee da development of agriculture in Furnace Creek. I give approval to new research on the virus. But mostly, I give people hope." With that, he sighed.

	9. Home Front

**Another segue chapter... not sure where this arc is going to go.**

"Come here," Wichita called to Columbus. He walked into the dining room of their house, looking almost but not quite reluctant. As her belly swelled, his wife had been increasingly demanding: For help, for conversation, for lovemaking, and even the last was beginning to feel more like a chore.

She took his hands and guided them to her midriff. "What is it?" he said nervously.

"Wait... There! Did you feel that?" He nodded cautiously. He had felt something, but he thought it was more likely to be her own muscles spasming than the baby stirring. She clasped her hands to her belly. "I've been feeling things happen, but I could never feel it from outside before. Oh, god, this is so exciting!" He reached out and took her hands, tentatively. That morning, she had spent an hour crying because she was too big for yet another pair of pants. She grinned and blushed self-consciously. "Wow, hormones. Still, isn't this exciting?" He leaned in for a kiss, angling so her hip brushed between his legs. "Oh my god, are you turned on?"

"Um... Are you?"

"No!" she shoved him back and turned away. He used the opportunity to sigh in relief. She turned back and said slyly, "But I can take care of you if you need it."

"No... No, I'm okay." Having managed to reverse his sigh, he finished breathing out.

She returned to him, slipping an arm around his waist. "Any news on Tal and Little Rock?

He sighed again. "We have confirmation they went into California. We found out about a pitched battle around the Chocolate Mountains involving the bikers; the story is multiple swarms, or even a horde. Then there's a fresh mass kill site outside Palm Springs that could have Tal's name on it: A swarm, taken with grenades and a large volume of .22 NATO fire, plus the ones that were run over."

Wichita nodded. "Yeah, that sounds like them." She placed a hand on his shoulder. "I know they're out there. I know he's with her. But I don't worry about that. I worry about where she is. For all the places we were, and all the things we did- I took care of her. I kept her out of the worst places, out of the things that would get her hurt. I don't know if Tal can do that. I know he would try, but I don't know if it would work." She shook her head, and then seemed abruptly to snap out of it. "What's happening in the city?"

"They say we're close to securing the strip, except for the lots around the ruins of Caesar's Palace," Columbus said. "Treasure Island announced securing the Imperial yesterday. There's a report that they got Mr. Magoo... and somebody saw Andy Capp, leaving."

Now Wichita sighed. "Did he still have my gun?"

"They didn't say," Columbus answered. She had dropped a Skorpion machine pistol during an expedition to Sunrise Hospital, now reduced to rubble by a chain of accidents triggered by an insane leper and an MRI machine, and the city's most notorious zombie had picked it up. "It's not quite official, but they're talking about a combined operation to clear the last few casinos. I'll probably go with them."

She guided his head toward her. "What else is the matter?" she said.

"We... we finished the study of the Las Vegas food supply," he said. "By our best predictions- I mean, absolute best case scenario, all the way- we starve within 6 months." He looked her squarely in the eyes. "We have to leave Vegas." She returned his gaze, sad but not surprised.

He hugged her. "Sorry for the gloom. I'm sure we'll do okay. Why don't you go to the casino, and meet with Chief Sahara? I can catch up."

As his wife walked out, he gave a last wave, shut the door and walked back to the laundry room. The figure seemed to precipitate out of the shadows. It was a big man, grotesquely lesioned, wearing a shirt with the Union Jack. "You could have knocked," he said coolly.

Jack Ketch shrugged. "Hey, I'm on the Ten Most Wanted Zombies list. It don't exactly pay to advertise."

"Why are you here?" Columbus said.

"I need your help," Ketch said. "Now."

	10. Trail of Anarchy

**Okay, finally back to the front of the "Vegas Saga" arc. This chapter is more of a "recap" with some new backstory. I may be adding a scene for earlier in the storyline next. And, shameless plug, a revised ebook version of "Fear and loafing in Las Vegas" is now on sale for Kindle!**

**Trail of anarchy**

"Now," the acting president said grimly, "what do you know about Branson Missouri?"

Little Rock spoke first. "We were just at his camp," she said. "He invited us, and let us leave. Then in Baker somebody tried to kill us."

"We know," Arnold said. "But dere's more to it, isn't dere? People come to his base by invitation only, and dat takes a lot."

"We met him once before," Tal said, "in some strip mall on the way to Vegas. There were only four people with him then. He tried to take us hostage, but we fought our way free, just as more of his gang were arriving. He called them off. Then two months later, we went back to get our SUV, and we found a message inviting us to meet with him."

"Dat's his style," Ahnold said. "Da people who put up a good fight against him are da ones he offers da best terms as allies." His eyes met Little Rock, and she abruptly burst into tears.

After a couple of fits and starts, she described her and her sister's very first encounter with Branson. "He never said what he did before, but we could tell he had been in business. We both knew the type," she said. "He said, after we took his car, that he met a biker named Enid- Oklahoma, I mean. I guess that's how he got started."

"We know about him, too," Ahnold said kindly. "We can't conclusively identify him, but he was part of an escape from a state prison in Oklahoma. It was a hardened facility, for violent repeat offenders wid hard time. Odder prisons like it were relatively safe: Lots of outbreaks started in jails, but incarcerated offenders and deir guards were insulated from da initial outbreak. But dere, an outbreak started among da prisoners, not starting from one, but wid multiple prisoners in separate blocks going prodromal at once. Nobody knows how; dere's a deory dat da prison cafeteria received a batch of da contaminated meat. Da guards tried to retreat to da administrative centers, and seal da prisoners in. But some of da prisoners already had guns and explosives, probably for an escape attempt dat was already in da works. Dey gaddered odder prisoners and even some of da surviving guards into an organized resistance. Da last reports say dat dey had seized overrun guard stations as deir own command centers, and were setting explosives to power and communication lines.

"Dirty to fifty finally blew deir way out. A lot of dem died before dey got far, but den dey seemed to get better organized. Dey started systematically searching towns, not just blowing dru and grabbing whatever loot dey ran across. Dey traded for information an services. And dey started making alliances. Da most significant was wid a corps of da Texas national guard dat mutinied during da retreat from Dallas. After dat, dey had access to automatic weapons. Artillery. Anti-vehicle weapons. And above all, people who knew how to use dem. After dat, dey easily outmatched any dreat dey encountered: Zombie swarms, odder outlaws, even units of da US and Mexican militaries. But dey didn't become a consolidated power until they reached southern California."

"That sounds like Branson," Little Rock said. "We left him in the right place..."

"It's too late for pointing fingers," Arnold said. "What can you tell us about his camp?"

"From what we saw, he has at least five hundred men," Tal said. Arnold nodded. "It looked like a mixed bag, but a lot of them definitely know what they're doing.- Do you know about the tanks?" Arnold nodded. "Well, he's got one they called the Thing. It's like a zombie-killing super weapon..." He described the vehicle, and its role in stopping 10,000 zombies. Arnold grew concerned.

"Da vehicle you are describing was fielded in the 1960s, and considered a failure," he said. "It was dought dat da only ones dat weren't scrapped were in museums."

"Well, maybe he found it in a museum," Tal said. "Wherever he got it, it can take on just about anything."

"Actually, its main armament is long obsolete as anti-armory weaponry," Arnold said. "We know of infantry anti-tank missiles in Branson's arsenal dat pose a greater dreat to a modern armored fighting vehicle. But it wouldn't be Branson's style to engage that kind of target. If anding is doctrine to him, it's striking an enemy's weakest point. For us, here, dat will be our fields and our irrigation systems. If he destroys dem, dere will be nodding left word fighting for."

"What can you do to stop him?" Tal asked.

Arnold answered almost flatly, "We can't."

	11. Congress of the Lepers

**This chapter references "Shoe Shopping", my favorite but least trafficed installment in the "Vegas Saga".**

It was, perhaps, a kind of poetic justice that the developers who built Vegas on the proceeds of gamblers' shattered dreams liberally sprinkled the city with their own failed ambitions. None of the defunct projects had been as spectacular as the Fountainebleau Tower. The second tallest building in Vegas, it had been built to its full height, but never completed, with construction stopped indefinitely well before the Pandemic brought down civilization. It stood within a few hundred feet of Circus Circus, ignored in the general offensive, standing forlorn over the post-apocalyptic cityscape.

Columbus switched an eye patch from one side to another as he stepped inside the tower. There was enough light inside that it still took a moment for his sight to adjust. "Come on," Ketch hissed. He had trouble making out the leper's form in the dark. He followed uncertainly, into an open space littered with scaffolding and tarps. As his sight improved, he almost jumped: Beneath the lumpy, semi-shapeless wrappings of canvas and plastic were an unguessable number of huddled shapes. He was in the midst of a gathering of the lepers.

"You... you were all here, the whole time?" he said.

A heap of rags rose into a human shape, and strode ponderously toward him. "No," said the shape, in a soft but unquestionably masculine voice. "We have come from far and wide, to see if what was told is true: that our brother had found the Samaritan."

Columbus's gaze darted about. He was still unable to say how many there were, but there could not be less than twenty. Then he looked to Ketch. There had been a certain tone in the other leper's voice... "They didn't come for you," he said. "They don't even like you."

Ketch shrugged. "I never said I was popular."

"Our brother is _respected_," said the other leper. "He has done no wrong by our laws, and his wisdom and talents are questioned by none. But, he is reckoned... indiscreet. He comes too close to the _gente_, and he draws too much attention to himself. Many of us are as wary of him as we are of your kind. But for you, we have come."

"Wait... look... I don't think you understand-"

"Please, hold your tongue," said the other leper. "First, we must decide if you are the one of which we were told."

From one of the less conspicuous lumps, a voice spoke: "I saw the Samaritan flee a dorm in College Station, armed with only the lid of a toilet tank."

Another: "I saw him enter a dark building in Abilene, pursued by seven zombies. Only one followed him out."

"I saw him act as live bait for the Panhandler in a store in Linden."

"I saw him kill a giant _peyoso_ with only a hammer."

On and on came the testimony, until finally a feminine voice came from the darkest recess: "I, the Sybill, saw him face two armed men to save me."

"Oh, god," Austin said, as the final speaker came forward.

"So," said the first leper, "is this man the Samaritan?"

"I thought he would have more of a tan."

"I could swear he had more muscles."

"I'm sure he was thinner."

"He has shed a brother's blood!"

The Sybill cleared her throat, and the male waved for silence. "This is not the man who saved me," she said, and the other lepers hissed, until the moderator waved for silence. "This one is bolder. Perhaps wiser." She sniffed. "He has known a woman- my word, and sired a son. And I smell on him the blood of a fallen brother- and before that, my mother!"

"I can explain..."

"We need no explanations," Sybill said caustically. "No, this is not the one who saved me- for that was hardly a man, but only a boy. This is the boy, grown into a man- and he is better for it."

Columbus fell to his knees and wept.

	12. Rescue

Columbus raised his head. "You... you really understand. And you still respect me... care about me."

"Yes, Samaritan," said the Sybil. "And now you can begin to understand, that those who knew you always have."

He shook his head. "I... I don't know. And- I'm not ready to talk about it. Maybe it doesn't really matter. I think the last thing the first Sybil tried to teach me was not to keep thinking about the past. Just tell me- why have you brought me here now?"

"There is great danger coming," said the male "disciple". "We cannot yet tell you all that we know, and there is much which we ourselves still do not know. There are danger still far away. There are dangers within your very domains. But the greatest danger of all is neither near nor far, but just beyond the bounds of what you know."

"The air force base," Columbus said. As the casinos pushed outward, the new frontier had become an intersection of the Las Vegas freeway, running roughly parallel to the Boulevard, and the winding Veterans' Memorial Highway. While outlying colonies and outposts extended further north, settlement and exploration dropped off sharply beyond Washington Street, and the metropolitan area beyond central North Las Vegas was virtually terra incognita. All that was known was that Nellis Air Force Base had stood on the northeastern edge of the Vegas metro area.

"You understand, then," the Sybil said. "But others are not ready."

He nodded sadly in agreement. "Lots of people are sure they've seen military aircraft flying over. But a lot of the people in charge think it's wishful thinking, and a lot of it _is_ wishful thinking: Too many people assume that, if planes are coming out of the base, then it's the military coming to save us. So... what do you know?"

"Little more than you," said the disciple. "In any event, the base itself does not concern us most. You know that, to the south, there was an airport. Parts of it still work..."

"We suspected as much," Columbus said with a nod. "Someone has kept the Luxor light working, and we found a remote observation post in Trump tower, hooked up to a system that turned a light on and off. It drew a lot of attention, and it just happened to distract people from looking further south."

"Good. But what you do not know, what none but the Brethren could have discovered, is that a research station has been set up there, one where captives are taken. Zombies... and our brothers and sisters."

Columbus gaped. "You mean there are more of you? Already here?"

"I told you there used to be more of us," Ketch said. "You know that some of us went bad, like Alice and the Tweedles. Your hunting parties took quite a few: Usually, they were so heavy-handed we got away before they came with a block of us, but sometimes one of us would get unlucky, and it added up. We lost more to starvation and disease. But we kept track of those things, and all of them put together couldn't account for what's happened to us. It happened one by one, so we didn't notice at first. But it started happening faster, brothers and sisters vanishing within hours, even minutes of each other. We still don't know how, but we do finally know where they're being taken..."

"The airport?" Columbus said, puzzled.

"No," said the Sybil, "Luxor."

"Do you know what they're doing?" Columbus asked.

"Nothing good. We can smell their feelings... fear, and mistrust, and oppression, right through the glass of the pyramid."

"Hey, wait, let's think about it... I mean, yes, they shouldn't treat you like that... but the simplest explanation is that they're just trying to study what makes you immune, something that could help other people." He thought he saw a dark look cross Jack Ketch's face. "Maybe cure you."

A chorus of hisses and even shrieks came from the dark. "Speak no more of that," Sybil said. "Enough to say this: Even if they mean to do good, their means are evil, and in the end whatever they do will be twisted into greater evil. And we suspect that even their goals are already turning... You fought the Tweedles. As best we can tell, they started out as a pair of small-time hash pushers. Imagine, then, if they had been trained soldiers. Do you think your people haven't? Do you think they would not think of trying to produce such a thing?" Columbus nodded, making a note to tell the hunting parties to search the territory captured from clan Tweedle _very_ carefully.

"We're moving on to the south," he said with care. "In the next few days, we move into the Planet Hollywood complex. In a week, we start scouting around the airport. I'm going to be responsible for a lot of the effort. I can request... lattittude in planning our approach."

"Good," said the Disciple. "But it must be soon. Foul work is being done, and other threats are coming."

Columbus gave another nod. "I can ask to go ahead, then, on my own if it comes to that. But right now, I have to go. There are..." He faltered at the new reality that had pushed into his life. "...People who need me."

Sybill nodded, and he was sure he saw a smile. "Then go to them, Samaritan. Especially to her. Brother Ketch, go with him."

As Columbus and the leper walked furtively back toward the Circus perimeter, the young man spoke: "I know why you came to me. I don't think you told her, but I'm sure she knows."

"Of course," Ketch said. "Do you need to say it?"

"No," Columbus said, as he thought it: _The only thing that could take a leper by surprise was another leper._

	13. King Ahnold

**Another chapter that should give everybody reason to be pissed off. It may seem like a complete cop-out, but I planned this out back in Spring; I just decided to shorten things to get back up to speed.**

"We can't stay here," Tal said. "We should never have come. Even if Branson didn't want us dead before, he won't want Vegas to know about this place."

"We knew da risks," Arnold said. "We are already planning a way out." He opened a laptop. "Da best route to Vegas is to go north to da Veteran's Memorial Highway. Dat's no good. Branson is even stronger in da nort than he is to da sout. Da 190 is better, but he will be ready for dat. Your best bet is one of da `ghost town' routes- especially dis one here, Greenwater Canyon. It's named for a ghost town dat was abandoned by 1910. Dere was never a paved road, but a good four-wheel drive trail was put in. Da park service closed it four years ago, because dey feared traffic would damage petroglyphs in the canyon, but da trail appears to be well preserved, even wid no maintenance. It ends at a paved road into a town called Shoshone. From dere, you can try to get onto da 160, or go furder sout and double back on I15."

"That will do it," Tal said. "Sorry we couldn't stay sooner." As he spoke, a phone started to ring, again and again and again.

"Are you going to answer that?" Little Rock said.

"Not until you go," Arnold said.

Tallahassee shook his hand. "I just want to say... I would have voted for you."

As the Caddy started, a shell whistled in the distance. As they turned onto the road for the canyon, there was a sound of rotors. In the rear view mirror, Tal saw the attack helicopter rise into the air, followed by an Osprey tiltrotor. It rose in a rolling takeoff, then pivoted dramatically northward before dropping its rotors to horizontal. Shooting in only a moment from hover to full throttle, it seemed virtually to vanish in a streak of silver.

Scotty's Castle stood miles to the north of Furnace Creek. A freakish product of the Prohibition era, the mansion had attempted to imitate both a Spanish mission and a Medieval castle. It had made a serviceable fortification for a loyal squad of US Marines, but the defenders had been in no position to offer even short-lived resistance when ranged by a 15cm howitzer on the far side of a mountain overlooking the structure. Now, the Marines were retreating, while a score of bikers moved in. Already, Branson mounted a miniature parapet, from which he saw the Osprey depart.

"Uh... Did we just win?" Enid said.

The chief lowered his binoculars and scowled. "It doesn't matter. It never did. What matters is exegesis."

"Huh?"

Branson sighed. "I'll put it this way. 1500 years ago, according to later oral tradition, a chief in the furthest outpost of a disintegrating empire declared himself king, with the blessing of a tribal warlock and a dozen barons. His kingdom must have been small, and his control over the barons was so weak he had to bargain with them just to keep the peace in his own court from turning on each other. His reign ended with his overthrow by his own illegitimate son, after which his kingdom disintegrated so quickly and completely that even direct evidence of his existence was lost- if, of course, he did exist. And there's no particular reason why anyone should care if he did, apart from the story he inspired- of King Arthur, lord of Camelot."

Enid stared, with the vaguely suspicious look of someone trying to identify leftovers from the deeper recesses of a fridge. "So... what... the Pres could come back to turn things around at the last minute, like King Arthur was supposed to?"

Branson sighed. "No! Arnold doesn't matter, and he never will- not to us. He's nothing but a figurehead set up to preserve morale. He all but admitted it himself. When push came to shove, he made more of a difference by running than he ever could have fighting. But when you're a figurehead, it doesn't have to matter what you _do_. What's important is what you can bring people to _believe_ in. King Arthur made the English believe in Camelot, when they didn't even have an England, and the odds aren't bad that President Arnold can make people believe in the USA, even while they scrabble for their lives in its carcass. He's already written the perfect story for the new dark age: the humble beginning, the paradise carved from the wastelands, the heroic last stand, the sacrifice for the greater good- and he didn't even have to die at the end. Meanwhile, we've type-cast ourselves, not even as Mordred and Morgana, but only the barbarians stuck outside Camelot's gates."

Enid answered rather too politely: "So... what do we do?"

"We rewrite this story," Branson said. "If they want King Arthur, we give them Don Qixote. If they want barbarians that can be banished safely out of sight, we become the Knight of the Mirror to show them reality: What's gone is gone, and it was never worth what it cost."

Enid rolled his eyes. "Go ahead and roll your eyes!" Branson said, giving his second-in-command a start. "But take a moment and listen! You can hear it even from here!"

Enid turned an ear reluctantly. He could have dismissed it as blowing wind, but once he listened, there was no way to deny what it was, and even if he could there was no denying what he could see: People, scores and hundreds, lined up along the road to Furnace Creek, cheering the retreating Marines like conquering heroes.

"What do we do?" Enid said, still calm but no longer condescending.

"First and foremost," Branson said coldly, "we make sure whatever story gets told comes from us first. Find Tal and the girl, and stop them by any means necessary."

	14. Air Strike

As the Caddy roared toward the canyon, a barricade came into view. "They never reopened the road!" Little Rock said in alarm.

"Well, my daddy used to say," Tal said as he accelerated, "anything you can drive over is optional." The barricade went under with a slight bump.

Greenwater Canyon was rather bland compared to other sites of the southwest. The sides of the canyon were shallowly sloped, and the rocks were drab shades of gray and brown, with few features beyond the occasional cave. The only striking features were jagged lines of dark rock on the crests of the hills. "I think we just passed a petroglyph," Little Rock said.

"That's nice, but we don't have time to look at pictures," Tal said. Abruptly, he turned off the road, braked and turned off the engine.

"What are you doing?" Little Rock exclaimed. "You just said we don't have time to stop!"

"Hush," Tal hissed. "Listen." They heard the sound of motorcycles- coming from the other direction.

It took two tries to get the engine started. Tallahassee accelerated to highway speed, heedless of the pummeling to the vehicle's tough suspension. Then he veered off the road again, following a foot trail around a hill. He stopped again, this time leaving the engine running, and scrambled up the hill. From behind the scrub on a crest of the dark rock, he saw eight bikers on four-wheeled ATVs and two armed dune buggies drive by, kicking up a veritable dust storm. He chuckled as he withdrew. "They aren't looking for us, just heading for Furnace Creek," he said. "They probably won't know we were here until they see the knocked-over barricade. There's a side-loop a mile or two ahead that will get us to the other end of the track. By the time they turn around and look for us, we can be on the road to Shoshone."

"Ookaay," Little Rock said dubiously.

The side loop proved to be a narrower side canyon, with sides steep enough to really look like a canyon. Tal slowed to 25. They passed a mural of petroglyphs, white squiggles of animals, stick men and less decipherable shapes. Tal had to swerve and impulsively beeped a horn when a bighorn sheep took its time bounding out of the way. Little Rock stood up in her seat to look around through the sunroof. She relaxed, but then dropped down in sudden panic. "Tal! Tal! There's a Red Baron plane out there!"

"Huh?" he said.

"You know, the red plane with three wings! I just saw one fly over the canyon!"

"It's called a Dreidecker," Tal said patiently, "and there's no way Branson ha... ha..." In the distance, a red triplane was cruising through the sky. Tal put his foot to the gas pedal. The plane was turning and speeding up, already growing larger. He realized there was something cockeyed about how quickly it seemed to be closing in. Little Rock shrieked as the craft dropped below the level of the hills. The swooping plane filled the windshield, twin guns blazed, and he cried out at a sudden pain in his shoulder. Then, in the rear view mirror, he saw the plane, already growing smaller, waggle its wings before disappearing around a corner a hundred feet back. The pilot's head turned as if looking back.

Tal slowed almost to walking pace, as he examined a flesh wound from a BB pellet. "Little Rock, get the shotgun!" he said.

"I'm on it!" she said, pumping an Ithaca stockless 20-gauge.

The triplane shot back into view over the ridge. A miniature only in relative proportions, it had a wingspan of at least eight feet. A blast of the shotgun came too late. Little Rock took a breath and fired again. The plane rolled effortlessly out of the way, then rose steeply. As it went up, something came dropping down. Tal swerved, and the vehicle was jolted by a small but perfectly functional bomb. "Close the sunroof!" Tal shouted.

"No! Leave it open!" Little Rock answered. She fired two blasts in succession. The plane nimbly dodged the first, but the second blew away half of its top wing. The unbalanced plane made a banking turn, dropping a second bomb that bounced off the hood. She tracked ahead of it and fired her last shell. The blast tore away the undercarriage, and left blue sky showing through the bottom of the fuselage. It spiraled downward for an emergency landing, but the strain of a tight turn broke the damaged fuselage in two.

"Way to go, girl!" Tal said, taking a hand off the wheel for a high five. Then the vehicle rocked at the detonation of the bomb somewhere under the car, followed immediately by a second, greater jolt as a tire ruptured. Tal and Little Rock both screamed as the vehicle fishtailed. Tal managed to regain control in time to make a tight turn. But there was nothing he could do about an antiquated shack that appeared unexpectedly in their path.

	15. Broken trail

**Sorry for the very long wait. I'm hoping to get things to a higher pace, and maybe wrap up the saga in the next month or two. Thanks to everyone who has been following!**

Branson had found his truck and fifth-wheel trailer together in northern Texas, at the scene of an escape that ended in the original owner's driveway. The truck was a 1963 Dodge D200 crewcab. The trailer was a 1950s Spartan, modifier into a split-level fifth-wheel design. Branson did much of his reading and planning in the raised front of the trailer, where elevation, wrap-around windows and a swiveling stool provided a perfect place to survey his domain. Whether or not he actually cared to watch his encamped underlings, his presence kept them alert and well-motivated.

The arrangement also ensured that anyone entering unexpectedly had to clamber up the stairs to reach him. Thus, he was already turned around and collected when Enid Oklahoma arrived. "What news?" he said.

"The Baron spotted and engaged Tallahassee's SUV five minutes ago," Enid said, "It was shot down, but appears to have inflicted significant damage. We sent in Snoop for another pass, and observed a thick column of smoke consistent with a vehicle fire. It would be dangerous to approach, and respectfully, I don't believe it's worth it."

"Order the search to continue. Dead or alive, I want them found," Branson said. "But I agree, there's no point in approaching the blaze. If they are alive, they will be getting away from there as quickly as they can. In fact, they could have set the fire as a diversion..." He frowned. "Yes, I think that's a strong possibility. Cars don't catch fire that easily, you know. Tell the search party to fan out, form a perimeter around the crash site. Oh, and send a group to set up camp in Shoshone. That's their most likely objective, but I expect they sill have a contingency." Then, turning to look directly at Enid, he finished gravely, "And unhitch the trailer. I want the truck ready for pursuit."

ATVs and dune buggies fanned out, and then began to circle. "I have a fresh track," a searcher radioed. "It looks like the girl."

Branson himself radioed the reply: "We're sending backup. Don't go after her alone."

The rider, a revolving-door convict who answered to the name of Smokie, shook his head. Then, he heard a voice. "Hey. Mister." He turned his head. Shallow rock walls with a little vegetation rose on either side of them. She was crouching behind an outcropping. "Please don't call in. I can make it worth your while."

"Really," he said. "What do you have in mind?"

"What comes to your mind?"

"How about," he said, "some good hash?"

"Sorry, my sister says I'm not old enough."

"Then how about..." He heard a rustle in the brush behind him. His gun was drawn in a moment. As he drew a bead on a waving bush, the girl's pistol prodded into his lower back.

"How about," she said, "you give me a ride?"

"Think about this as a risk assessment. If you shoot with that, it probably won't go through my vest," Smokie said calmly. "If Branson found out I helped you, even at gun point, he would kill me."

"If I got away, he'd probably kill you even if you did your best to stop me," she countered.

"He might. But it doesn't really matter, because there's backup on the way."

"I know. We were counting on it." He pivoted, starting into a kick. She kicked first, hitting him in the back of the knee he was standing on. He toppled face-first, slamming his helmet against a rock. "Thanks," she said as she picked up his dropped submachine gun. "I was out of ammo. You should have a little time to decide how to explain _this_ to Branson." Then she went roaring off on his own four-wheeler.

She had scarcely gone forty feet before she saw more riders in pursuit. She yelped and went faster, but still well short of the unfamiliar vehicle's top speed, struggling to keep from being thrown off as it bounced over the landscape. However, her unpredictable course made it difficult for the bikers to stay on her tail. Finally, a dune buggy drove across her path, firing a warning volley with a machine gun. She turned yet again, but her new course ended at a cliff. She braked and jumped down. "Okay! I give up!" she said, raising her hands and setting down her weapon. Four bikers dismounted and closed in, while the dune buggy pulled up to cover them.

"Where's the Panhandler?" a biker said gruffly.

She hesitated, then said tearfully. "He's... he's... he's in the car." Two bikers looked at each other in confusion and growing suspicion. That was when the Caddy suddenly peeled out from a cave in the cliff. The ATVs were knocked aside like so many traffic cones, and the Caddy swerved to deliver a glancing impact that flipped the dune buggy.

Two of the bikers were injured by a tumbling ATV, and another dropped his weapon diving out of the way of the Caddy. Little Rock snatched up her weapon and ran for the SUV, but a fourth biker stepped into her path with gun drawn. "You aren't going anywhere," he said. "Panhandler! Get out of the vehicle, or I shoot."

Tallahassee's mare's leg clicked. "Drop the gun, or _I_ shoot."

"I got kevlar, Mac," said the biker, without turning. "Besides, I heard about your little secret. The word's all over the camp. When it comes to zombies, you're as deadly as they come, but against people, even people like us, you can't even pull the-" A shot rang out and the biker fell to hands and knees.

"He may not, but I can," Little Rock said. There was awkward silence as they drove away.

Within an hour, Enid delivered the verdict: "We lost them. The girl drew the search party after her intentionally. That gave the Panhandler time to repair the vehicle, and made a hole in the perimeter. I suppose punishments are in order...?"

Branson smiled grimly. "By all rights, yes, but I suspect that being beaten by a thirteen-year-old girl and a man who can't fire at a live human is punishment enough."

"They were definitely headed south, like you thought," Enid said. "If we regroup and give chase, we can still catch them."

"No need," Branson said. Enid looked surprised. "If they are headed south, we can let them go. If they go back north, we can be waiting for them." His second-in-command scowled.

"Something else, sir," Enid said. "We found the scene of the blaze. It was deliberately set, like you thought. They set a tire on fire with gasoline. It looks like they broke a water bottle on it, to make more smoke. We found this at the scene."

He held up an unopened box of twinkies.

	16. Lepers' Crusade

**Here goes with a subplot I have put a lot of thought into how (or even if) to tell. I settled on a form of a mystery story, which isn't really my style, and on further consideration have decided on a direction that fits with the simply-plotted, character-driven kind of story that I like and do best. This chapter is simply introducing the characters.**

"Bruce is already mad at you for not helping enough at Paris," Wichita warned Columbus. "He'll bonk you over the head if he hears about this."

"That's why we're waiting to tell him till after," Columbus said. He gave her a goodbye kiss as he stepped out of the Tremors truck.

"Austin," she said, "you haven't told me what you're doing either."

He nodded. "I want to. This will have to do. Come out, brethren." Suddenly, the detritus lining the alley in which the truck was parked sprouted into a dozen rag-clad forms. _"Ola, senora,"_ said the tallest of the lesioned figures.

Wichita sized him up respectfully, then snarled at a man she recognized: "Jack Ketch."

"Hey, I saved your life, and his, and _his_ too," he said, pointing last at her belly. "It's not my fault I had to cut a few corners."

"You left me in the dark, unarmed, against a trio of cannibals," she said.

"Hey, you had a chance to take down two out of three, and you weren't unarmed then."

"Enough." A female figure stepped forward, the Sybil. She looked over Wichita. "So, this is la Peliroja- the other half of the legend."

"Legend?" said Wichita, glancing to Columbus and Ketch. "So it- it's really true? I mean, you- you lead the lepers? And you saved my husband?"

"Listen better, child," said the Sybil. "It was he who saved me."

"I- I'm sorry," she said. Waving to Columbus, she said, "He- he hardly ever talks about you, you know. I heard more from Ketch than I ever have from him. It's... hard to sort out." She looked around her. "Well, if you know who I am, and my baby's father is going with you, then tell me- who are you?"

"We don't have time," said a muscular leper with blonde hair, better dressed and with a subtly different bearing than the others.

"For her, we make time," said Sybil. "Eleven brothers and sisters go with me upon the quest. Ketch you know." She then pointed to the tall leper, who grinned to reveal a mouth full of fillings. "This is Boca. These are Jaime and Juan, witnesses for my Mother." She indicated two masked men standing close to her, and then an older leper close by. "This is Qijano, a brother as infamous as Ketch for his bravery."

She then pointed to two adolescent girls, one older than the other, crouching close together. "These are Luna and Estrella, sisters from before the change. They have seen you before, without being seen, and a few times gave help, before you ever knew of your need. Such is the way of the Brothers and Sisters." She pointed to two even younger lepers skulking by the alley walls. "These young ones are Conejo, the swift, and Lagertijo, the climber." She waved at a fat leper who seemed to sprawl even while standing up, and said somewhat disdainfully, "That is Tuerto. He may appear ineffectual, but he is good at finding things out."

Finally, she looked to the blonde man. "And this, this is Tigre Blanco. He was a warrior, before, and is an even deadlier one now. He knows the ways of _soldados_. Only with his help may we prevail."

Wichita surveyed the gathered lepers. "Thank you," she said. "I know words aren't enough, but with all my heart, thank you. I hope you all come home safe. And please, whatever else happens, keep my man safe." Columbus turned and kissed her goodbye, once on the lips and once on her belly. Tears welled in her eyes. He walked away, without looking back, not because he was aloof, as he might once have been, but because if he looked back, he would turn back.

As she started Tremors, Sybil called out to her: "Peace, Peliroja. Your man will return, and the son within you will have many brothers and sisters."

As Tremors rolled away, Columbus stared at Sybil, almost livid. "How could you do that?" he said. "Just promise her I'll be back safe and sound, give her a certainty when she should be preparing for the worst? If I don't make it, what do you think that will do to her? To the baby? And don't give me your psychic games. Even if you believe it, * it, even if there's _something_ to it, you know you can't foresee everything! So how do you get away with telling her that?"

"_Samaritan,"_ Sybil said, with the casual force of a drill sergeant. Jaime and Juan drew closer. "Know this, Samaritan: You _will_ return alive to your bride. Whether it is in victory or in shame, whether you return with us or as lone survivor, whether you and she live to celebrate the day or rue it, all that may be uncertain, but you _will __**without a doubt**_return. And even if you believe my prophecy might fail, consider what it means for you: You carried her heart, and then her child's future, and now you carry your hope as well, and if you fall, you smash them all. So perhaps, rather than chastising me for giving her hope, you should be more vigilant not to fail her yourself, and perhaps then, my prophecy will bring its own fulfillment." She let a moment of silence pass, then turned. "Come, we must go quickly, lest all be lost."

As Columbus followed, a leper fell in step beside him. It was Tigre Blanco- the White Tiger. "I like you," he said. "I like you just the way you are. Keep your head down, don't get cocky, and you will get through fine prophecy or no." Then the Tiger moved to the lead, and behind him Columbus involuntarily shuddered.

	17. Tiger

**For the time being, I'm planning to keep the focus on Columbus's part of the story. Could the first person to read this new chapter please review, just to let me know there was some traffic? For some reason, the traffic counters have been showing nothing for the better part of a week, and I'm almost certain it's a technical glitch. Incidentally, I've decided on a perfect person to play Jack Ketch: Michael Massee, who has come to my attention playing Kubrick on Supernatural. And for Tigre, my best idea is... Hillary Swank? Hey, I'd be scared. Also, I have "Wheel in the Sky" stuck in my head from watching Supernatural season 2, so if anyone wants to imagine a background song, that will do as well as anything. Whew, on to the actual chapter...**

Columbus shifted from one position to another in the lepers' ragged column. The only ones among them who was friendly, by any conventional definition, were Tuerto, whose name meant One-Eye, and Qijano, probably named for Don Quixote. Tuerto spoke little English, and his delivery in Spanish was fast and of indifferent grammar. Quijano seemed reasonably fluent in English, but when he tried to speak at any length, he easily became overexcited, and was liable to start dropping Spanish words, phrases and whole sentences into the mix.

The others were uniformly a bust. Ketch was clamming up in the presence of the other lepers. Sybil, Jaime and Juan spoke mostly to each other. Boca (literally "the Mouth", and almost certainly named for the Bond villain Jaws) showed no speech of any kind. Conejo and Lagertijo were scarcely less taciturn. The sisters Luna and Estrella, eerily like his wife and sister-in-law, spoke to each other in short bursts of Spanish or English, but showed no interest in speaking to him. That left Tigre Blanco, the White Tiger.

After addressing Columbus briefly as they started out, Tigre was all but silent. When he spoke at all, it was in whispers to the Sybil. He quickly concluded that Tigre was trying to hide how much he rather than Sybil was making the decisions. After several fruitless attempts to speak to Tigre, he casually came up alongside Jack Ketch. "Talk about something else, or keep walking," Ketch said.

"Huh?- I mean, what do you mean?"

"I know you have questions. But some things, Brothers don't ask, and Brothers don't tell. So don't ask." Columbus started to formulate a protest, but soon let it slide, dropping back.

Their journey was already well beyond the frontiers of the casinos, much further than it was necessary to go to reach Luxor. Their course was south and west, into Spring Valley, and at the rate they were going it would take them into Enterprise. He scowled again.

"And they say you're a jumpy one," came a voice in his ear. He started, stifling a shout and almost bringing his .22/.410 to bear. El Tigre was alongside him, he could not guess for how long, and he felt nearly equal parts terror and disgust.

"Hey. Nothing personal," Tigre said, waving a hand in a vague conciliatory gesture. "If it helps, in your place I'd be suspicious about me too. So, let's lay everything down. Any questions you have, you can ask me, and I'll make you a promise: If I don't tell you the whole truth, I won't tell you any lies, either... Hold on." He flitted to Sybil, and within moments, their course had changed. Columbus was looking back suspiciously when Tigre spoke in his ear again: "Pick up the pace. We have a prying eye overhead." He looked back again, still suspicious, and was almost rear-ended by Tuerto, who muttered unintelligibly as he went by.

"Now. Where were we?" Tigre said. "Right, I gave you a deal, ask any question, and I either give you the true answer, or no answer. Look me in the eye and see if I'm lying." Columbus looked carefully at Tigre. Behind the lesions and more than one scar was a face that was incredibly young, certainly younger than himself, maybe too young to drink. But behind the face was the gaze of a mind in a shadow. He had seen it before, on the face of his sister-in-law the only time she had caught herself talking about her biological sister, on Tal when he talked about his son, sometimes on his wife's face when he saw her gazing at him. But this shadow was longer and deeper than he could have imagined. He did not let himself be lulled into trusting Tigre, but he could tell that he was not just putting on a friendly face, and that the answers to any questions he might ask would likely be trivial compared to the dark depths of secrets behind those eyes.

"Okay," he said. "Where are we going?"

"A safe spot, in the right place," Tigre said. "From there, we can make our way where we're going as safely as it's possible to do it."

"Where are you from?" Columbus asked.

"I was born on American dirt, but the dirt was in West Germany," Tigre said. "No, I'm not quite as young as I look. So, now it's 20 questions; I can roll with that."

"How did you get infected?" Columbus asked. There was a hiss of breath, then a low chuckle.

"That's one of those questions Jack was trying to warn you about," Tigre said. "But you didn't know, and I said you could ask, so no harm, no foul. As it happens, I didn't get bit, I got a shot: I volunteered to test a vaccine."

Columbus almost stopped in his tracks. "There's a vaccine?"

A nudge of Tigre's elbow kept him moving. "There was, at least. It worked, too, except, of course, not all the time..."

"_When?_"

"Oh, I got it in week 5, after I heard about it at the end of week 3. Lot of people tried to talk me out of it. Some of them would have liked to flat-out stop me, but all those rules about not forcing or fooling people into `volunteering', well, they can be swung both ways... But I expect you mean when they had it, and I wasn't anywhere near that pay grade. Still, reading 'tween the lines, I think they put the pieces together on Strain 0, maybe a few months before Tulsa."

Columbus shook his head, almost dizzy at the flurry of thoughts. "Then why didn't they mass produce it? Or warn the police and the hospitals? Or why not just tighten inspections of meat and livestock on the border? Any of those things could have stopped the Pandemic, and there's no excuse that they didn't! They knew it all, and they didn't do anything!"

Tigre shook his head. "People always say that, after. Barbarossa, Pearl Harbor, 9/11... They go nuts, blaming, suspecting, even rewriting history. They never understand how it really was for the people who were really there. Talk about `fog of war', I've seen it, and I've seen enough to know, it's not half as bad as the fog of politics. People making deals, keeping secrets, telling lies, planning for next year but not for next week, saving pennies and wasting pounds, straining gnats and swallowing camels, seein' leaves but not a * forest. And then the * hits the windshield, and everybody starts saying, how could anybody be that stupid, when they should be amazed they didn't * up even worse than they did. I'm not on the Sybil's vibe a lot of the time, but I'm with her on this one. You just gotta have peace."

Columbus nodded, but still was breathing heavily. "I think maybe that's enough for now," Tigre said. "But if you have a question, I'll be there for you to ask."

"Wait," Columbus said. "You were a soldier. You must have been with other soldiers. What happened to them?"

"That one," Tigre said after a long pause, "I think I need to take a rain check on."

"Do any of them know the answer?" Columbus said, waving his arm to indicate the rest of the lepers. "Or _any_ answer?"

Tigre shook his head. "Again, it's like Ketch said: Brothers don't ask, and Brothers don't tell." Under Columbus's hard stare, he added, "Not that we need to, always. Sybil, I'm pretty sure she knows, most of it. Ketch, I wouldn't put it past him to make a few good guesses. And Tuerto, there's no tellin' what he knows."

"So tell me if I have this right: One leper could know something terrible about another, and the other could know he knew... and you wouldn't even talk about it?"

Now Tigre halted. The darkness behind his gaze could have made two black search lamps of anti-light to cast utter darkness wherever they fell. "Why don't you return a favor, Samaritan, and answer me a question." He leaned nearer. "When you wake up screaming in your beautiful Peliroja's arms... does she ever say if you were screaming _words_?" He drew back in satisfaction. "Then maybe we aren't so different after all."

	18. Guardian angels

As unnerved as Columbus was by Tigre, the soldier did not bother him as much as the sister's Luna and Estrella. He supposed that it was as much as anything that they reminded him so readily of his wife and weeks-absent sister-in-law. But, there were many less benign sources of discomfort. They did not try to talk to him, and if he approached them, they would more often than not actively withdraw. Yet, they seemed fascinated by him, especially Estrella. Often, he heard the younger sister coming close behind, which, given the lepers' stealth, he believed meant she wanted him to know he was there. Not that he was likely to see her if he turned around. She did it again as they passed into Enterprise, winding through a residential street. He turned around to catch a glimpse of a child's shadow, and an all-too-close look at Tuerto as he came plodding up from behind. He also saw Jack Ketch, grinning, and went for him.

"What's going on with those two?" he hissed.

"Why are you asking me?" Ketch said in bemusement. "You think we read minds?"

"Isn't that what _you_ want people to think?"

"Now where'd you get that idea?"

"When I met the first Sybil, she told me my name."

"So you think she had to read your mind to know that?"

"No, but she said it like it was supposed to be some big mystery, and she wanted me to think it was psychic or something?"

"So, what, if a Brother happens to know something, and one of the Gente jumps to a completely silly conclusion about how he knew it, then we're responsible for him being silly? And I thought you were one of the better ones..."

Columbus sighed. "Never mind that. I just want to know, why does Estrella keep following me?"

"Why do you think she's following you?" Columbus heard a scampering sound behind him, but didn't bother to turn.

"I can hear her, but she's never there when I look."

"So... you think she's following you because you can't see her following you? Amazing what forensic science can do these days." There was an audible giggle.

"Don't tell me you didn't hear that."

"Okay, I won't." Then, with a sly glance, he added, "Though, if she is following you, it might just be that she's following up on her investment." Then he sped forward.

"Samaritan." It was Estrella, close enough to whisper and still be heard, and this time, there had been no sounds to advertise her presence.

"What?" he said, and when she did not speak, repeated irritably, _"What?"_

"What the Sybill said about Peliroja, it is true, Samaritan," she said. "We followed her, a long, long way, since before she met you."

"How? In your own car?" She stifled a giggle. Lepers were rarely seen with any kind of technology, and it was absolutely unknown for them to travel in vehicles. "Impossible. They would have covered more distance in an hour than you could in a day."

"Are you sure? Even with stops, breakdowns, detours?"

"I don't have to be sure of anything," he said. "Even if you could have, why should I believe you did?"

"We saw them, when they took the SUV, and the Hummer," she said. "We were watching them when they turned back." He froze. When Wichita and Little Rock robbed him and Tallahassee the second time, they had driven off, only to return. He had been grateful enough to stay with Wichita, but he had never asked her what had really happened.

"What are you saying?" he said. "That you know why they turned around?"

"I know what you want to know," she said, enunciating so carefully as to be stilted.

"So?" he said. "You aren't know as much you want people to think, and I don't believe you even know as much as _you_ think. I don't need to ask you, and I don't have to believe you if you tell me." He walked faster, but she darted into his path, forcing him to slow but not stop as she spoke.

"Truth, Samaritan. Not you have to ask, because _you know_. You know, she knows you know, and it takes you both to pieces."

"Yeah? And how's that any of your business?"

"Sybil said, Ketsh said, we care for them, and now you are with her."

"They didn't ask you to follow them," he said. "They didn't even know you existed. And why you and them, anyway?"

"Each of _los Hermanos_ may choose _una Gente_, to be as- guardian angel," she said, fumbling for English. "Not any nobody, _misma alma gemela..._ soulmate, yes? _La Peliroja_ is of Luna, and I am of _la Nina_, but I not gone with her."

He nodded, but frowned. "Why not? For that matter, if you're their guardian angel, why didn't you help them more, like in the Playland?"

"_Mandatos_," she said. "_Nunca revelao su mismo. Da que necesitado, no que deseado._"

"So, what, not being seen was more important than keeping him from getting eaten?"

She shook her head. "What they needed, we did already give."

"What? What's that supposed to mean?" he said. She smiled and started to turn. He grabbed her shoulder, heedless of a wordless but obviously disapproving cry from Boca. "Me? Are you saying you set us up? Maybe like sabotaging the SUV while we were in the store?" She met his eyes, and he immediately let go.

"No matter what we did. No matter, even, what they did," she said. "What matters, Samaritan, is, either speak to her, or forgive in your heart and let go." She turned and resumed a normal walking pace, stepping out onto a freeway. Then, suddenly, she stumbled and fell. Columbus's immediate response was to step forward to help her up, but Tigre, another presence he hadn't been aware of, caught him by the arm. He was about to protest, when he saw the blood pooling beneath Estrella's head.

	19. Nightfall

Wichita spent the afternoon in the camper shell of the Tremors Truck, in the parking lot of Terrible's, the southernmost functional settlement on or (technically) near the Vegas Strip. Built at the intersection of Flamingo and Paradise, and vaguely resembling an adobe mission, it was in an area that had suffered not only the heaviest zombie infestations, but the worst of the fires, plane crashes and military "interventions" that accompanied the outbreak. Incredibly, more than 300 people had held out with no outside support whatsoever, until the general offensive was pushed blocks sout of any other objective just to reach them. The rescuers had been nonplussed when the famed 300 met them with indifference.

Fortunately, the people of Terrible's were far more welcoming to individual travelers, and for once Wichita was grateful as yet another passer-by stopped to offer her a gift. "From the management," he said, offering her a gift basket of soaps, lotions and shampoo. "And if you ask around, I'm sure you can find a place to use them."

She smiled and thanked him, then cried out in surprise and delight as two more visitors approached: "Chacha! Bell!"

"Cheetah!" a five-year-old shrieked as she ran up to hug Wichita. Her mother followed close behind. It had been only a month since the young woman had stepped off a militarized bus at Circus Circus, but they already considered each other good friends. Chacha reached Wichita and embraced her, while the little girl turned around and hugged her mother.

"So, I heard the settlement board offered you a place to the south," Wichita said.

"They talked about it, but they haven't given me anything solid yet," Chacha said. "Right now, I'm just doing piecework on the delivery circuit. I heard you were in the neighborhood..."

Wichita escorted Chacha and Bell into the decidedly cozy camper, which consisted of a kitchen/corridor and a dining area whose two seats doubled as beds. Her guests went first, to sit down while she set about fixing early dinner on the Liliputian stove. "Ramen okay?" she said as she filled a pan with water. Bell cheered, and Chacha smiled. Wichita turned to shut the lower half of the camper door. That was when she heard the sound: A thin but piercing cry, more like a whistle than a scream, carried on the rising evening wind, with the depthless grief and hollow foreboding of a banshee's wail.

What was eerie at several miles' range was agony at the scene in northern Enterprise, where Luna was on her knees, screaming over her sister's body. Columbus huddled against a wall, jamming his fists into his ears. He could not guess how the slight young woman could make such a sound for so long. He was beginning to wonder what it even meant, whether she cried out in grief, or warning to others, or to frighten away the unseen slayer. And still it went on, rising and falling like a siren but never cutting off. Finally, it was too much. He stepped toward the surviving sister, reached out and touched her shoulder. He cringed and stifled his own cry as she pivoted, suddenly silent, crouching like a panther about to spring. "I'm sorry!" he blurted.

_"Por que?"_ Luna hissed.

Only in the sudden silence did Columbus again become aware of the rest of the lepers, to a man (and woman) crouching, still but stiffly alert, their ragged, dirty clothes and grimy faces blending unnervingly with their surroundings. He found the Sybill, and all but whimpered, "Please. It... it wasn't my fault."

"Who said it was?" Tigre said. He had missed one leper, and the one was close enough to whisper in his ear. The rest of the lepers stepped forward, their faces solemn but otherwise almost emotionless.

"Wait," he said. "He- they- could still be out there." He looked at Estrella's heart-breakingly intact head. The pool of blood came from her mouth, probably nothing more than a bite to the tongue as she fell or a few teeth knocked out on impact. The mortal wound itself was smaller than a pencil, almost concealed in her hairline, without an exit wound to match. He did the detective work in seconds. A downward angle; small caliber, medium power; range, not great for a rifle, but well over the hundred-meter limit he had personally set for patrols and hunting parties. He muttered through clenched teeth, "Poachers."

Poachers were a problem that had seemed to grow in perverse reaction to Columbus's own efforts. Even before he got things properly organized and systematized (with help from Jack Ketch) , every hunting party and security detail worth the name recognized on some level that, outside of desperate self-defense, fighting zombies required organization and rules. When he first started his campaign for better procedures, there had been widespread skepticism resistance, and even he had at first been willing to deal with violations lightly. He recognized that no amount of rules could displace instinct and emotion. More, in those early days, the cases that did come up seemed like honest shades of gray, like the sentry who shot at a zombie that was 200 meters away, but headed straight for the RV park's improvised playground.

But over time, as even veterans like Tal fell into line, and better methods and just plain fewer zombies made truly desperate situations less frequent, something darker had emerged. At any and every level, there were some hunters that did not want to do things by his or any other rules. Some were outright miscreants, who viewed hunting as a cover for looting, profiteering and even more sordid activities. But they were less troublesome than those who seemed to be in it for enjoyment, addicted to challenges, or danger, or simply to killing. Whatever their motives, as increasingly specific rules and strict discipline cut in on their activities within authorized patrols, these men had become poachers. They hunted secretly; wandered through increasingly remote areas of the city with no attempt at documenting or even properly observing what they saw; engaged zombies at ranges either excessively long or insanely close; and generally willfully disregarding even rules meant for their own good.

"The shooter's up high, back to the north," he said calmly. "Probably alone, and if he isn't, there won't be more than five altogether. He will be counting on the body drawing more zombies, so nobody can touch her. But if we wait long enough, maybe half an hour, he will give up and change position. Then we grab the body."

"What for?" said the Sybil. He stared at her.

"Don't- don't you bury your dead? I mean, you can't just..."

"Burial?" said Ketch. "Eh, not so much..." Now Columbus gaped in disgust.

"Many _Hermanos _have fallen," the Sybil said. "When the Spirit of life is departed, there are no laws what may be done with the flesh. Each may choose his own." He looked to Luna. She was rising back to her feet, her face as stern as the others.

"Then what about the poacher?" he said. "We don't have to hide." He took out a mirror. "Poachers use mirrors like these for signals, mostly to warn each other off. If I go into the house and flash it, he might abandon his position. If one or a few of us double back, we could catch him."

He looked meaningfully at Tigre, who only shrugged and said, "Then what?"

"Well, I could think of something," Ketch said, "but we aren't that hard up for food."

"He killed your sister," Columbus said, looking to Luna. "Given the chance, he would kill all of you. Even if he knew you were lepers, he might do it. And what he did isn't right even against zombies. We have rules..."

"And do you know how many of those `poachers' there are?" the Sybil asked rhetorically. "Do you know how many of them are your own officers and deputies? Do you think they only act when they are off-duty? That there is no one willing to intervene to protect them from punishment? We know better than to expect justice, and we have more important things to do." And with no further comment, she turned and walked to the west.

	20. Darkness

**Now back to Tal and Little Rock, plus a scene I suppose was obligatory...**

"I'm sure Austin's all right," Chacha said. Wichita looked abruptly up from the stove, and then smiled, but not quickly enough to hide a flinch.

"Mama," said Bell, "what was the sound?"

"I don't know, but I'm sure it's nothing to worry about," her mother assured her. "Why, I bet it's blocks away."

"Really?" Chacha nodded, and smiled a little too wide. Krista returned the smile as she brought the first bowl of ramen.

"So," Wichita said as she say down, "if it's not too personal... what happened with her daddy?"

"Who's my Daddy?" Bell said.

"Gone. Gone a long time," Chacha said. "He... In a lot of ways, he was wonderful, but his problems were... _big_ problems. He needed help, and I made sure he got it, but that meant, he never saw me again. Or Bell, ever." Bell gave a puzzled look as her mother's eyes teared up.

"But enough about me," she said, with another smile that was a little too wide. "I know... Why not tell me about your foster sister? Or... Do you have any pictures?"

Wichita smiled. "Funny you should mention it... For a longest time, we only had one picture of each other, that our foster parents took when she was 9 and I was 17. Then- _after-_ we decided to get a digital camera, you know, make a record of history, like anyone gave a- I mean, in case people ever tried to find out what happened. So, we took lots of pictures, only, we couldn't look at them. Then Columbus found us a little printer in one of the stores, and we printed a whole album..." She took out a book, and started to chatter, wrapped up enough that she did not register the subtle shock on Chacha's face.

As dusk became definitive night, the Caddy was winding its way through the mountains east of Death Valley. Though it bore enough lights to illuminate a baseball diamond, none of them broke the darkness. "Seriously," Tallahassee said, "you gotta at least turn the headlights on."

"Columbus says, no light is better than a little light," Little Rock said as she made another graceful turn, moving south to get around a mountain with no way over or through it. "Anyway, I'm fine. I've hunted zombies in less light than this."

"Yeah, but that wasn't going forty."

"I'm going 28, tops. Sheesh, you're starting to sound like Columbus."

"Now that's just being mean," Tal said. After several minutes sulking in silence, he said, "Hey, even if you can drive in this light, what if someone else is on the road with their lights on?"

"Uhhhh..." She screeched and swerved as a lighter shape darted across the road.

"What was that?" Tal said.

"It was a mountain goat," Little Rock said. "I saw two more... running." She slowed to twenty, then to fifteen, then to a stop. "I think we need to turn the brights on. Just a few seconds. I'll cover my eyes... Now."

Even through her hands, the light from the huge lamps on the roof was distressingly bright. Tal swore, and the light went out even before she told him to turn it off. "What? What did you see?"

"Zombies," he said, "to the south."

Spots swam in front of her eyes, but she had no trouble making out a crowd of black shapes moving on the dark mountain side, still a mile or more away. "How many?" she said. She couldn't really see the individual zombies, but the undulating mass could not be less than thirty.

"Hundreds. At least. It must be the horde."

"Can you take over driving?"

"Uh. I don't know how well I can see right now. We need to go faster, though." Little Rock got back up to speed, soon reaching 35 miles per hour. Even that was taxing her skills, as the Caddy almost fishtailed in the northward turn. There was a metallic thump as a zombie bounced off the grill guard. Tallahassee ventured to light a flashlight, letting a slit of a beam through his fingers. More zombies were on the road, but not many, or close together, walking the other way. These were the diffuse leading edge of the swarm whose main mass still lay behind. Little Rock swerved for another zombie, which tried without success to grab hold of the vehicle. Then the windshield went dark as a zombie rolled over the hood and bounced off the bars that protected the glass.

Little Rock screeched, struggling for control as the Caddy bounced over rough ground. There was a clang as the vehicle struck a zombie in mid-air, and a terrible jolt as it landed. She hit the brakes, regaining enough control to get back onto the road, but allowing the zombies to gain on them. She winced at the muzzle flash as Tal fired through a half-open window. Then they were gaining speed as they went down a slope. She screeched again to see an abrupt hairpin turn, and got another jolt as she made the last-second U-turn down the switchback. "We're in the clear!" Tal said. "There's no way they can catch up to us now!" She exhaled, starting to relax. Then bars buckled and glass fractured as a zombie fell on the car from the road above.

"Okay," Tal said a few minutes later, "that was close, but we're still going."

"Um. I noticed a blinky light go on," Little Rock said. "Any idea what it means?"

Tal took a look. "It means, we keep driving till sunup." He managed not to frown.

"Your husband," Chacha said, "he's wonderful, isn't he?"

"Oh, yeah," Wichita said with a sly smile. "You know, I think he and A- I mean, Little Rock hit it off even faster than we did. I mean, there were arguments, pranks, maybe a couple all-out fights, but they always knew they were in it together... He gets nervous around kids- he told me one of his phobias is being alone with a baby- but they love him. I don't think he realizes how much, unless that's what makes him nervous." She rubbed her belly.

Chacha patted her shoulder. "I'm sure he's okay."

Wichita smiled again, a little wistfully, gazing up through the camper window, paying little heed to how Chacha looked at the photo album. "I_ know_ he is. Maybe that's why I worry, because of how good he's gotten at taking care of himself. I love it, I really do, but sometimes I feel a little..."

"Redundant?" Chacha said. "Yeah, I know how it is. You'll know a heck of a lot more when that baby's out of you."

"Anyway," Wichita said, straightening a bit, "if he can't take care of himself, the people he's with sure can."

The man's is unimportant. _He_ is unimportant. That, ultimately, is why he happens to be "poaching" zombies beyond the frontier of inhabited Vegas. And now, he is fearful. He does not know why his latest kill brought a terrible scream with it, and he most assuredly does not want to find out. He wants to be far away, very quickly, but he cannot let his hurry override the instinct of stealth. He knows, as he pedals away on an electric moped, that he has both the zombies, which he can already hear foraging in the dark, and the casino sentries to fear. Unfortunately, he is unaware that much greater dangers are much closer at hand, until a casual swing of a nightstick catches him in the throat.

The voice he hears is deep for a woman's, and soft for a man's: "You picked a bad night to be out, and you made it a lot worse." He starts to rise, gripping his moped for support. Then there is a thunk, a whiz, and a metallic crunch as a small, sharp arrow pins his right wrist to the gear box. He starts to scream, but stifles the cry, biting his lip until it bleeds. "That's being smart. First time today."

There is a rustle as a weapon is folded and stowed. "I'd really just as soon wrap this up quick," the androgynous voice says. Now shuffling feet are drawing closer. "But, it seems to me there's a _point_ that needs to be made. If it helps, you could think of this as fair shake. I mean, you could pull free. Or, if you can get to that pistol in your ankle holster, you can at least do a self-checkout." The departing figure's footsteps are drowned out by the feet that are now close indeed, and running. He reaches for the arrow, but the shaft is too deep to get a grip. Then, as the first of the zombies come in to view, he strains to reach his right calf with his left hand.

Lagetijo cried out to Conejo with obvious joy. The Sibyl had quietly announced that they were drawing near a place that would be their refuge for the evening. Columbus was still in the dark where or what it was, but they were clearly close. Even as the lepers walked faster, he stopped in his tracks, once again almost getting rear-ended by Tuerto. "Did you hear a shot?" he said.

"No," Jack Ketch said. "Now get a move on."

As they drew near a tall, dark building, Columbus took one more suspicious look around. "Where's Tigre?"

"Already here!" the White Tiger called out impatiently.

	21. Morning

**While the "lepers' crusade" adventure is being finished within "The Nevilles", I will be finishing out this story with the rest of Tal and LR's trip. Here's another chapter that's more of a segue, but I think it helps flesh out some ideas. Incidentally, the vehicle introduced here DOES exist (though the backstory is fictional), and it certainly looks like it would be at home on a post-apocalyptic freeway.**

**Dawn**

As the sky began to brighten with the approach of dawn, the Caddy was obviously struggling. Multiple "check engine" lights had been on for hours; ominous noises came from the engine, and now smoke was rising from under the hood. "Okay, okay, time to stop," Tal said. "You did great."

"Did we wreck the Caddy?" Little Rock asked.

"No," Tal said, "but this is as far as she'll go. When we got away from the horde, we must have taken damage to the radiator. Not a lot, but enough to build up. We're almost in sight of I15, though. If we can hail a friendly car, or one of the convoys, we can get help fixing the Caddy, or a ride back to Vegas, or even a tow."

"What if Branson's men are on the road?" Little Rock asked.

"That just means we needed to stop right about here anyway," Tal said. "Branson will have his men looking for the Caddy, but two people on foot won't be as easy to spot, and even if we're seen, they might not recognize us."

"What if nobody comes at all?"

"Then we can try to fix the Caddie ourselves. Just letting the engine cool down will do some good, and if we can patch the radiator, pour some water in, then we can make it back to Vegas. If that doesn't work, we still have the gear, the supplies, our weapons, the Caddy itself... And if the We could go for weeks just off what we have, we can supplement that with game."

"Yeah," she said, smiling, "we can do just fine."

It took almost 30 minutes to reach the road. By then, the sun was just starting to peek over the horizon. The desert was cold in the night, but soon enough it would be approaching 100. Fortunately, there was already a pair of headlights in sight. "What is it?" Little Rock said, squinting at the glare.

"It's a motorhome conversion," Tal said, "looks like a big old car, not a truck or a van. It... It looks kinda like..." He sounded like a man trying to convince himself of what he saw. "I think it... it's... it's an _Edsel_."

"I'm Jackie," said the girl at the wheel. "You say you're headed for Vegas? I'm headed there myself. I heard there's no zombies there." Little Rock was sacked out on a bunk, but Tal sat up awake in a rear seat, listening for trouble from the outlandish conversion of the most notorious American car ever.

An old man riding shotgun laughed. "I'm her Uncle Bill. And _relax_, son! This car may have been a marketing disaster, but it wasn't a deathtrap. Heck, it didn't even sell that badly. The losses were from the development and distribution costs..."

"You an expert on Edsels?" Tal said.

"You could say that. My first job was in an Edsel dealership." Tallahassee looked more leery than before. "I built this thing from one that came in unfinished. We got ones like that all the time. Ford tried to build it without dedicated assembly lines, and a lot were shipped with parts that still needed to be put in, making us do the rest of the work. So, this one came in with the whole back half missing. We didn't know how to do it, we didn't even have the parts to do it, unless they were mixed in with other stuff, and before we could sort things out, our location closed down. So, I said, I got back pay coming anyway; let me take it. So they just let me haul it off, and I combined it with a trailer body to make this one-of-a-kind motorhome."

"So... you're sure your friend can pick up my Caddy okay?" Tal said.

"Don't worry 'bout that, neither," Bill said. "We got tow trucks going all up and down the highway. It's Big Jake as will get yours, prob'ly. He's got a big ol' Dodge work truck, big wheels, big engine, it can pull just about anything. He might make the powwow 'fore we do."

"And how does that work again?"

"Well, it's not an organized thing, really," Jackie said, "and you must have heard about it before, anyway. There's always been people who spend most of their time on the road, from the ones who didn't have homes, or couldn't stay there, to the ones who had to be on the road to do their business, to the ones just out to explore and have fun, and all kinds in between. They formed whole, functioning subcultures, centered on trading goods services and information."

"She was an anthropology major," Bill said in amusement.

"...So, when people started fleeing the cities, the preexisting `migrant' cultures received them. While most of the newcomers just wanted to find a place to settle down, the migrants saw the Pandemic as a chance to do more within what was already their way of life: transport, trade, exploration, protection. So, they started developing more connections with each other, and made agreements who would do what and where, and on times and places to meet. We've been covering the corridor out of LA, and supplying the people who traffic in and out of Las Vegas. Right now we're on our way to a rendezvous with Il Duce itself."

"So... What have things been like?" Tal said.

Jackie was awkwardly quiet, but Bill spoke, sadly: "Not good, and getting worse. Even the other roamers don't understand what's happening. So Cal is going downhill fast. You can hardly get near LA anymore, San Diego's even worse, and nobody's even thinking about trying to get south of the border. A lot of good people are pulling out, or just vanishing."

"Zombie troubles?"

"No, believe it or not, zombie activity has been way down," Bill said. "It's looking like they finally really are dying off. The biggest problem is the roads. The worst of the logjams from wrecked cars has been cleared out, but the asphalt itself is wearing down. Plus, it's getting harder to find goods, especially food; what hasn't been picked clean is spoiling. Then there's raiders: Not nearly as many, but the ones that are still out there are crazy, the kind who will hit a place even if they know there's nothing worth taking, and keep anyone there around just long enough to have fun." He shook his head.

"What about Branson?" Little Rock said.

Jackie stiffened. Bill only looked sternly said. "You don't," he said, "say nothing about Branson."

	22. Powwow

**While I'm working ahead on the Nevilles/ "Lepers' Crusade" story, I decided it was way overdo to catch up a little with this one, and I decided to go ahead and throw in a couple twists I was saving.**

It was approaching noon when the vehicle dubbed "Winni-Edsel" pulled into the "powwow" site in northern Arizona. Four buses, including the legendary Il Deuce Scenicruiser, were parked in a square, with smaller vehicles parked inside. "See?" said Bill, pointing to a familiar vehicle behind a tow truck. "They got it here first! Heck, might even have it fixed already."

Tal whooped, and bounded out the back door while the Winni-Edsel was still moving, to run to his beloved Caddy. "Fixed? *, they washed and waxed it!"

"Tal!" Little Rock shouted in warning. He followed a pointing finger to one of the other vehicles- a robin's-egg blue Dodge D200.

"I hoped," Branson said as he stepped out of a little crowd by the Scenicruiser, "that we could get things back on the right foot." Tal drew his .45, only to have at least a dozen men draw their weapons. "Please! Gentleman! No need for that! Just a minor misunderstanding."

"Was attacking the President a misunderstanding?" Little Rock shouted. There were murmurs, that indicated confusion more than concern.

"Before anyone says something to regret, let me explain this," Branson said. "These are not my men. I came here alone- well, alone except for Enid." His lieutenant stepped into view. "The road warriors have a system for taking care of travelers. The reason they have it is because I cleared the worst of the scum off the road, and gave the ordinary people enough breathing space to regroup."

"Yeah? And what did you ask for in return?" Little Rock asked rhetorically.

"Not much," Branson said calmly. "Shares of salvaged materiel; better deals on goods and services I purchase from them; occasional assistance, and above all, simple information... not a steep price to pay for survival and prosperity. All of which is simply to say, that they know me for a reasonable and lenient man, and if you start making accusations, some might take it less kindly than I would."

"Accusations? I saw your journal, jerkoff! You're crazy!" Abbs shouted. "You said Vegas marks the rebirth of a system that deserved to be destroyed! You want it wiped out!"

Eyes began turning toward Branson. "I believe the young lady read my private notes, without understanding the context," he said. "I simply observed that resettling in a large city has accelerated the speed with which available resources are being consumed. These people here know it better than anyone. They are the ones who have saved the casinos from starvation month after month- and they know they cannot do it much longer. Vegas, as it exists, _is_ doomed, regardless of what I say or do."

"Maybe- but you aren't planning on half-measures, are you?" Tal said, then addressed the crowd: "Did any of you know there's a whole horde of zombies, marching straight for Vegas? That's right, a horde. Not just thousands, but tens of thousands. He's known about it for months. He's even fought them... not to stop them, but just to keep them from overrunning his headquarters. He didn't tell you, because you would have told the people in Vegas, and he doesn't want any or them to know- not until it's too late."

Curious glances at Branson were giving way to glares, but he looked more annoyed than concerned. "Panhandler... it was _always_ too late," he said wearily. "But I did try to warn Vegas, through you, once the magnitude of the threat became clear. If you hadn't delayed coming to me, and then tried a detour through Death Valley, your friends could have learned of the horde weeks ago."

"Then why'd your people try to kill us in Baker?" Abbie snapped.

"Purely a misunderstanding," Branson said. "You went through the territory of an independent group, whom I specifically advised to let you pass freely. My instructions were, apparently, disregarded. So, perhaps, we can finally settle this, before you make yourself look foolish." There was a brief hint of a sly smile as he looked down the barrel of Tallahassee's .45. Tal wavered, but Abbs looked about, and locked her gaze on a strange object on a trailer behind an '80s GMC, half-covered by a tarp.

"If those weren't your men... and you're here alone," she said, marching to the trailer and pulling back the tarp, "then why is one of the vehicles that attacked us here?" The thing on the trailer was a kettenkrad.

Branson looked at the object, briefly. "Enid," he said, almost deadpan, "do you by any chance know what Nails' _kettenkrad_ is doing here?"

His lieutenant's answer was a shotgun blast.

	23. Fracture

**Finally, after a ludicrous amount of time to write this bit, the setup for what I wanted to do all along, with a twist or two I settled on along the way. Apologies in advance to my fellow kettenkrad fans. I'm introducing a new vehicle in the mix, and I settled on a 1957 Chevrolet 1800. 'Cause the Dodge D200 has a certain sinister quality, but for big, old and ugly, I knew I couldn't do "better" than a 1950s Chevy pickup.**

It was a testament to Branson's hard-won reflexes that he dodged the brunt of the blast of a concealed, sawed-off 12-gauge. What hit, however, was enough to knock him off his feet, and he would surely have been killed if not for his flak vest. The dozen who had been covering Tal turned their guns toward Enid. "Sorry, just a bit of a personal disagreement," he said. "Now let's get down to business." Abbs shrieked as a pistol pressed into the back of her head.

"Do you remember me now, girlie?" Nails said.

"Now, I know you don't appreciate gunplay while you are trying to do business," Enid said, "and none of us would want to see a little girl get hurt..."

"I'm 13, A-hole!" Abbie shouted.

"All I want is safe passage, and a head start..."

"Enid." Branson sat up, with a long, wheezing breath. "You... are officially... relieved."

"Yeah? And who's going to take my place?" Enid countered. "Here's a counter-offer. We both stay in the gang. Only, I get to be Number 1, and you go down to Number 2."

"I'd sooner take my chances back on the road alone," Branson said. "You don't have the business sense to last a month."

"And you don't have the common sense to last a week on your own," Enid said.

"Then I guess we both just take our chances," Branson said.

"Fair enough," said Enid. He had already backed to the tow truck, and Nails followed with Abbie. He only laughed when he backed into Tal's 1911 gun.

"Oh, big man got a big gun!" he said with a sneer. "Please! This little * has more _cojones _than you!"

Tal tilted his head. "Let her go."

"Nails! C'mon!" Enid said.

"Oh, I'm comin'," Nails said. "I was just thinkin', I could use a little company. Maybe she could show me some of those tricks she picked up. An' I can teach her some of the ones I know... What do ya say to that, ya bald ol' fag?" Tal's finger twitched on the trigger, and a solitary tear ran down his cheek.

"Tal!" Abbie said. "It... it's all right. You're you, and you're wonderful. Don't let him turn you into anything else."

"If you hurt her," Tal said through gritted teeth, "I won't kill you... but you will wish I had."

Nails seemed to pause for thought, and looked all the more thoughtful when he felt a shotgun muzzle in the nape of his neck. "If Enid Oklahoma wants to give himself a promotion, that's no particular concern of ours," Bill said, "though I'd bet not many of us would take him over Branson. But hurting a little girl, that's a whole other ball game."

"Even if you pull that trigger," Nails sneered, "I can cut her throat before I hit the ground."

"Nails!" Abbie said. His grip tightened at the reminder of his humiliation. "How'd you like a new name? Like- Leadfoot!" At that, she pushed her hand the last fraction of an inch into a concealed holster and pulled the trigger, sending a .22 round into his foot. He lurched back instinctively. The knive grazed Abbie's throat, but no more deeply then a paper cut. Then the girl was darting away, and every gun was pointing at him. Nails swung back, catching Bill in the face as he shifted position, and then shoved the older man at the other armed nomads. He would probably still have been taken from behind, if Enid hadn't chosen that moment to start the tow truck and loose the Caddy. Nomads scattered, in front and behind. The Caddy crushed the front of the GMC van, and whether by accident or design, the tow truck rammed Branson's Dodge. The D200 had been a sturdy work horse, but the even older, uglier and absolutely enormous Chevy tow truck plowed it aside with only a moment's effort.

Tal grabbed Abbie and ran for the Caddy. He hesitated a moment as Branson shouted, "Hey!" He pointed at the D200. Its improvised wooden bumper and pieces of the grill had been knocked right off; the windshield was spider-webbed; the hood and one side of the cab were badly crumpled; and one of the front tires had ruptured. "I think I need a ride."

Tal briefly surveyed the nomads, and saw nothing but emphatic indifference. "Get in," he said, heedless of a cry of surprise and disgust from Abbie.

"What- the-?" Tal cut Abbie's rhetorical question short.

"Enid wouldn't've done what he just did without preparing for it," Tal said. "That means, he's been looking for people in the gang who would back him in a takeover. If he can join with them before Branson gets back, they could pull it off before the rest even know what's going on."

"Exactly," Branson said emphatically. "You have to take me back to Death Valley. Or would you really take him over me?" Abbie's only response was a shudder.

"No," Tal said. "For one thing, Enid would expect it, and he would try to stop us. For another, we have to warn Vegas about the horde. And I am getting her back to her sister. Then we can work something out." Abbie gave him an odd look, vaguely uneasy at the way he had said "have to".

"There!" she shouted, pointing. "There's the tow truck! But- that's not the direction of Death Valley, is it?"

"No," Branson said, then to Tal, "Good idea, but he was a step ahead. He turned the truck around and went north- to intercept us."

Back at the powwow, the nomads were still regathering their wits, but half a dozen had already regrouped to check for Nails. They relaxed when they saw that the van presumably belonging to him had been damaged too badly to drive. Then one pointed and shouted, too late. The tarp over the kettenkrad flew the rest of the way off, as the little tractor's powerful engine roared to life. Nails backed it right over the trailer's tail gate, and drove screeching out of the powwow- and north.

	24. Duel

**Now tying back into the Leper's Crusade/ Nevilles arc...**

Wherever two roads merged, wrecked and abandoned cars were always piled up especially thick. Tal swore as the Caddy scraped metal as it plowed through a bottle neck at an on ramp. "Go faster!" Branson said urgently.

"You don't have to tell me!" Tal hit the gas and watched the speedometer needle top 80. Not that it was going to do much good. With the state of the roads, the best one could really do, as a sustained average, was about fifty miles per hour. He would have to brake very shortly. But within a moment, he was glad to have accelerated when he did, as a tow truck came smashing off the on-ramp.

He couldn't place the exact make and model of the truck, but a glance in the rear-view mirror confirmed the details that mattered. Make: Chevrolet six axle medium duty, late 1950s. Weight: 6,500 pounds _minimum_. Modifications: Lifted suspension, off-road tires, bumper-mounted plow, diesel engine. Prognosis: Outrun it, or get munched. And with that thought, he slowed and swerved around a minivan.

The changes in speed and direction were enough to through off a ramming maneuver that spun the minivan out of the way. Branson drew a Glock and unbuckled his seatbelt. "Put that * thing away!" Tal shouted. "I've got trouble enough without live fire in the cab! You aren't getting anywhere with that dinky 9 mil anyway."

"How about the Stakeout?" Abbie said, holding up the stockless shotgun.

"That would do it," said Branson appreciatively. "Even if I didn't hit a thing, it would take out the windshield."

"Yeah, and what happens if he loses control 10 yards from our bumper? That's the kind of thing nobody wins!" Tal snapped. "If you get a shot at the tires, take it. Otherwise, leave it alone!"

"Hey, the Luxor light's on," Abbie said.

"It's not even sunset yet," Tal said, keeping his eyes on the road. "And if it was on, you couldn't see it in daylight at this range."

Branson whipped out a little pair of binoculars, to look at the cityscape still more than 20 miles distant. "No, she's right," he said. "Something's on in there. Wonder if it means something..."

He was pitched to the floor as the Chevy scored a glancing blow to the Caddy's tail gate. Tal sped up, even as he struggled to keep control. He gained distance, but only because Enid had backed off to see if he could stay on the road. "I think we've got more trouble," Abbie said. In the rear view mirror, briefly no longer full of the Chevy's grill, Tal saw a little vehicle weaving through the wrecks.

"Nails," Branson said. "If he was driving the truck, we would be dead already."

The Chevy sped up and moved to one side. "He's coming alongside us!" Branson exclaimed. "Give me the gun!"

"Uh-uh," said Abbs, "you got your own gun." She rolled down the window and slid the gun under the bars, angling it downward. The Chevy's wheel well was around the level of her door, and it would be no trouble to hit the front tire as Enid tried to pass... Well, if she didn't there were still the back tires...

She fired twice. Buckshot ricocheted off the Chevy and back off the Caddy with a terrible din. Then Chevy slammed into the door with a grazing impact that buckled metal and popped off the window bars before the vehicles went careening apart. Of course, she dropped the gun. Branson shot off a full clip, to no perceptible effect. It was Tal who made good, pulling ahead and around a tanker trailer, while Enid had no choice but to brake desperately. Abbs and Tal both cheered. "One more ramp ahead, and we're free and clear!" Tal said enthusiastically.

"Maybe not," Branson said. Even as he spoke, the kettenkrad came shooting forward from _under _the tanker trailer. Tal only had time to swear and swerve before the freakish vehicle rear-ended the Caddy. The SUV went fishtailing wildly, and he glimpsed the kettenkrad doing much the same. But the kettenkrad's traction and density promised a faster recovery. Meanwhile the Chevy was past the tanker trailer and gaining speed, while Tal had to brake not just to keep the Caddy from going off the road, but to navigate the jetsam of another on-ramp.

Rather than try to ram again, Nails opened fire. Tal winced at the patter of bullets on the tailgate, all the while threading a path through the wrecks. With an especially hair-raising maneuver, he put two wrecks between the Caddy and the kettenkrad, smiling in satisfaction as he pushed for the edge of the field of wreckage. Then his face fell as the kettenkrad's incomparably compact shape went right between the wrecks. The rear view mirror clearly showed Nails' sneering face as he opened fire, but his attention was diverted by another freakish shape pulling through the field of wreckage. Nails gaped, and then swerved so violently the kettenkrad went plowing into the roadside wreckage, which was probably preferrable to the alternative. The world's smallest, fastest artillery tractor might have enough torque to run an SUV three times its size off the road, but it was not likely to fare well in a rear-end collision with the world's one and only WinnebEdsel. Bill and Jackie smiled and waved, and Abbie leaned out the window to wave back, but Tal squinted, then stared in horror at the rear view mirror. Over the WinnebEdsel's camper shell, he could clearly see the Chevy

Bill could have pulled out of the way. Instead, with a hard, unflinching face he rode the center line, leaving Enid no way to get to the caddy except through his very one-of-a-kind motorhome. One almost lazy charge was enough to cave in the back and crumple the sides of the shell. Incredibly, the motorhome held its ground on the center line. Another hit, and the whole left side cave in. A third strike, and the WinnebEdsel finally spun out. But, in the process, it shed the entire camper shell, which smashed over the hood of the Chevy. The truck fishtailed wildly, smashing into several wrecks. But all too soon, it shed the remnants of the camper shell and closed in faster than before. Abbie stifled a shriek, then she gasped. Another vehicle was coming from behind, towering even over the monstrous Chevy. It was Il Deuce, the Scenicruiser. Tal braked, forcing Enid to choose between another ramming attack or getting out of the path of the bus. At the last second, he did the latter, plowing through the biggest available gap in the roadside wreckage.

"Looks like the Road Warriors reconsidered `non-intervention'," Branson said, a little hoarsely.

"Yup. Think that will put you out of a job?" Abbs said.

Branson gave a philosophical smile. "Just another reason to diversify."

"We're five miles out of Enterprise," Tal said. "Time to make any decisions."

"If Enid is out of commission, then there will be time for me to arrange transportation with the Road Warriors," Branson said. "They won't help me fight, but they should provide transportation for a fair price- as long as I can convince them I can pay. My biggest problem will be replacing my lieutenant."

There was a long silence, broken only when Abbs made a nearly random remark. "You know, it's kinda sad. Bill had the world's only WinnebEdsel. He built it, he kept it running all those years... and now it's gone."

"Probably aren't many Edsels left, either," Branson said, sounding almost distracted as he squinted at the road ahead.

"Hey, look!" Tal said. "I guess the WinnebEdsel isn't a loss yet." Pulling ahead of the bus came the almost skeletal cab and frame of Bill's Edsel. Abbs cheered. Branson looked intently ahead, now with binoculars, and swore.

From the foot of Luxor casino, hundreds of zombies were pouring onto the Vegas strip.

And to one side, unnoticed puffs of dust marked the trail of the kettenkrad.

	25. Home Stretch

**Now bring this story and "Nevilles" right together...**

Only a single van and a motor scooter accompanied Krista as she pulled up in front of Luxor Casino. A forlorn gaze became alarm when the apex of the pyramid lit up. "Dear God," she murmured, "if Austin or the lepers are up there, they'll all be blind."

"Nothing we can do about it," said Sydney.

Q pulled up beside them on the scooter. "Get me a high enough vantage point, and I could," he said, fingering the grip of his enormous .50 BMG revolver. Krista shook her head and reached for the ignition.

"Don't do that," Sydney said. He half-opened the truck's passenger-side door and leaned out, listening. "Oh *! Drive!"

It was close enough to sunset for headlights to be turning on. Through Branson's binoculars, Abbie locked on one set moving ahead of the zombie swarm. "I think I see the Tremors Truck!" she exclaimed. A comparatively dim, cyclopean light turned, and was augmented by the double flash of an enormous gun. "And that would be Q's scooter..."

Behind them, Il Deuce turned west onto a side street, though the now-skeletal WinnebEdsel stayed with them. "Perhaps we should turn back," said Branson.

"No!" Abbie screeched. "We have to help Krista!"

"And how would we do that?" A volley of assault rifle fire erupted from the Tremors Truck, and more poured out in all directions from the van. "It looks like they are better defended than we would be." Tal's expression grew pensive enough to hint at hesitation.

Branson pressed the issue. "The sensible thing to do is to turn around and return to my camp. The longer we are occupied here, the more time Enid will have to assemble his favorites for a takeover."

"No," Abbie said curtly. "I'm going back to my sister. You can make your own way home."

"Abbs... Of course, we'll go back to Krista," Tal said. "But this isn't a cut-and-dry thing."

Abbie frowned- indeed, glowered was not too strong a word. She looked ready to protest, argue or flat-out insult. But then she saw a single headlight in the rear view mirror. "Oh no."

"Holy *, he just doesn't quit," Branson muttered.

The kettenkrad was coming fast, well over sixty, perhaps topping seventy, and it was too close for more than a split second to react, which was just enough time for Tal to know that there was nothing he could do. But Bill was a little faster. He steered the WinnebEdsel into the kettenkrad's path, and when the very high-speed tractor moved in for a lazy ramming, he turned slightly and hit the brakes. The result was the virtually complete destruction of what remained of the WinnebEdsel's rear end as the kettenkrad ran over it, followed a moment later by the kettenkrad flying through the air. The tractor shed its tracks and all but destroyed its suspension as it came down roughly alongside the Caddy, but kept going. Abbie's last glimpse was of the little vehicle came as it skidded off the road, into a ditch. She thought it rolled over, and was not ashamed to be pleased.

Then she gave a shriek as Tal swerved and braked, narrowly avoiding a side impact on the Tremors Truck as it drove west, leading at least a hundred zombies. "That's Krista! Follow her! Honk!" Tal complied grimly, while she cheerfully waved. Behind them, Q's scooter went weaving through the ragged leading edge of the swarm. The gunsmith thinned the zombies' ranks first with both barrels of a 4-gauge shotgun as he crossed the street and then with a full clip from an Uzi held sideways as he rode back the other way. His course brought him to a skidding halt that ended in a relatively gentle impact against a wrecked delivery van, drawing a line of zombies after him. Dismounting, he drew the .50 revolver, looking- very justifiably- more afraid of it than the zombies. He delayed firing while he crouched, unfolded a bipod and rested it on the back of the scooter, then grimaced as he pulled the trigger. The recoil of the first shot knocked him down, while the tracer round felled three of his immediate pursuers before sailing its deadly way into the swarm.

"You had an LMG! Where is it?" Branson demanded as he leaned over the back of the seat.

"It's in its original carrying case, and if you're climbing around while I'm trying to drive, the zombies may not have to catch up with us!"

"Krista's waving for us to slow down," Abbie said.

Tal squinted at the hand sticking out of the driver's side window. "Nah, she wants us to go aroun-!" As he spoke, Il Deuce whipped by in the other lane. "Okay," he said over the sounds of carnage as the bus plowed into the swarm, "she wants us to slow down."

Q sat up, and ducked down again to avoid a wild volley of gunfire from the bus. "Well," he said, massaging his wrist and surveying the crushed, mangled and/or shot bodies in Il Deuce's wake, "that wasn't exactly sporting." He started to lift his scooter by the handlebars, stopping when he found that a close approach by the bus had left little except the handlebars. He gingerly picked up the gun instead, lying prone to rest the bipod on the edge of the asphalt.

It was easy enough to pick out zombies by the light from the pyramid. There were a fair number of them, but he couldn't find two or more lined up with each other, so he held his fire. Then he saw a figure with an inordinate amount of exposed flesh and a small but prominent amount of glittery clothing. "Floozie Q," he said with a smile, "I always wanted to bag a stripper, but I wish it didn't have to be like this..."

He twitched at the hint of a disturbance in the air, then a vibration in the ground. A certain instinct kicked in and he dropped lower in time to avoid a spray of whizzing bullets from a suppressed weapon. He looked up just in time to glimpse a figure with a lumpy cap strolling out of sight. "Andy Capp, you SOB!"

The Caddy had not stopped moving before Abbie was out of the car and running to her sister. By the light of the Luxor apex, they embraced in tears. "I'm sorry!" Abbie said.

"It's all right." Krista kissed her sister's head, while raising her eyes to look at Tal. "I love you, Abbs."

"I love you too." Abbie squeezed her sister a little tighter, then said, "Where's Austin?" Krista opened her mouth for an awkward explanation, glancing toward the pyramid.

The top of which, at that very moment, exploded.

	26. Parting

**And here's a scene I've planned for a LONG time, and I always knew somehow, I needed to set things up to give Jack Ketch the last word.**

The lights were out in the apex of the Luxor pyramid, but merrily burning electrical fires were quite sufficient to light its environs. The light revealed swarm upon swarm of zombies pouring from the rear. Il Deuce had parked in the middle of the intersection with the boulevard, but scores still found ways around it, and hundreds moved in other directions entirely.

Branson mowed down an approaching pack with a SAW. "C'mon!" he shouted to Tal. "Wherever we're going, we gotta go now!"

Sydney called firmly to Krista, "This is as close as we're getting to an easy way out!" Then he swore and raised a carbine at a small but oddly tightknit group approaching through the midst of a diffuse mob.

"Wait!" Krista shouted.

"What?" Branson snarled.

"One of them has a croquet mallet," Abbie said.

Then the little group burst through the mob, and one of them stepped to the front; indeed, the others seemed to withdraw from him en masse. "Jack Ketch," Krista said, then almost snarled, "Where's Austin?"

"T'ank 'ee kind'ee, ma'am," a leper said.

Krista's gaze became a focused glare on Ketch's rather too pleasant expression. "What happened?"

"Nay worries, nay worries," Ketch said, "yer man's comin', by 'is own way. Best you don't stand around 'ere, tho'."

"What the *'s wrong with you?" Abbs said succinctly.

"I... 'ave several 'ypotheses," he said.

Already, the other lepers were receding back into the mob. The one who had spoken waited long enough to say, "Br'er Ketch, well, 'e broke a few mo' rules than usual, an' we don' rightly know what's gonna come o'it. Right now, 'e's on- you could call it probation. Sibyl's orders."

"Or quarantine," Ketch said. "'Ey, I'm okay w'it."

"_You_ put _him_ in quarantine?" Krista exclaimed. "Hey, you can't just pass him off on us!"

"I think they just did," Abbs said. The last of the other lepers was gone before they knew it.

"No worries, I'll be fine," Ketch said. "Rig' now, I th'nk I needda siddown. So, who do I ride with?"

"Take my seat," Krista said, stepping almost protectively toward the camper door. She guided her sister by the hand, but Abbs pulled free and ran to the Caddy. Tal opened the door and almost leaped out to embrace her.

Tears in his eyes, Tal kissed her on the forehead. "I love you... I love you like my own," he said. But even as he spoke, he drew back. Abbs could only stare, too choked with grief to protest.

"Come on," Branson said once more, leaning out the door.

"Well," a voice cut in, "ain't partin' such sweet sorrow?" From a forsaken side street, a form as grizzly and shambling as any zombie emerged- Nails. "You li'l skank, I'll cut you up if it's the last thing I do. An' you, you jus' step aside."

Krista pumped her shotgun and shouted an inarticulate warning, but Tal and Abbs were in the field of fire. Tal lunged back to the girl. "You don't get to her without coming through me," he said.

Nails drew a little pistol to go with his large knife. "Okee-dokee." Tal's hand tightened on the grip of his .45.

"FOR *SAKE, DO SOMETHING!" Krista shrieked. Abbie herself tried to grab Tal's sidearm, to no conceivable avail. Nails only grinned. He was still grinning as a slender, pallid, silent figure leaped, and Floozie Q's teeth sank into his neck.

Without a word, Tal shoved Abilene at her sister and darted back into the cab. Krista had to drag Abbs into the camper. Both vehicles peeled away, the Tremors truck jumping a curb to reach the boulevard and the SUV driving south. And Jack Ketch sill stood on the street, still looking cheerful, his eyes lighting on the spectacle of Floozie Q feeding.

Except, events were taking a rather unexpected turn. With her legs nearly encircling the biker's enormous rib cage, one arm around his neck and the other snaked under his gun arm, the zombied stripper had a formidable hold despite the vast gap in size and strength, and her teeth tore into him again and again, wounding even through his denim jacket. But then Nails dropped his gun, grabbed the hand that clutched his chest and raised it just enough to meet his lowered jaws. Floozie Q shrieked, and when she pulled her hand free she was short the better part of two fingers. She screamed louder still as he grabbed her by the hair and turned his head to tear at her neck. Then Nails dropped the knife and pulled with both hands, hauling her over his shoulders to bite at her bare midriff. "Now that," Jack Ketch said, "even I think is disgusting." Floozy Q fell to the asphalt, writhing and shrieking as her prey pounced on her. Jack Ketch had already turned, humming a few nearly unrecogniseable bars of _Rule Britainia _as he strolled after the Tremors Truck.

	27. Vegas Sunset

**Okay, finally the last chapter of this thing. Thanks to everyone who's followed this far. I hope the next/last Saga episode will make it worth your while.**

"Well," Branson said as they passed the Enterprise city limits, "you're well out of that."

Tal braked, swinging his fist sideways for a glancing blow to the chieftain's job. Branson rolled nonchalantly with the punch, but began to look concerned when Tal whipped out the .45. "You listen to me. I think you're scum.The only reason I ever had to do a thing for you was because Enid's even worse. But I didn't think even you were low enough to let him get to her. And that's what you did, didn't you? Of all of us, you had a weapon loaded and ready, and a perfect shot to boot. Why didn't ya? Just tell me, why didn't ya?"

"Well, I must say, it wouldn't look very good for you if you killed me for not doing what you wouldn't at the powwow," Branson said coolly.

Tal fired out the window. "This ain't about me! Now tell me!"

"Well... I could say I saw Floozie Q coming. I could say I wasn't familiar with the weapon. I could say it wouldn't have been that easy shooting around everyone and everything even from above. I could say any of those things, and not be lying. But that wouldn't be getting to the heart of it. Frankly, Nails always caused me more trouble than I could be convinced he was worth. All things considered, leaving him alive might do more harm to Enid than killing him. And that girl, well, she's a charmer, but she doesn't have what it takes to do what we will have to. You do, and if I had to choose, I'd make the same choice every time."

Tal's finger quivered on the trigger. "God help you, you sick *."

"If He was going to, I think I would know about it by now," Branson said calmly. Tal gave one last searing glare. Then he holstered the gun and restarted the car.

By the last residue of the sun's light, hints of movement could be seen in the mountains ahead.

The outliers of the horde were within sight of Vegas.

End file.

Death Valley Drag by David N. Brown