New! | Zombie Retreats

“You folks got a name?” he asked.

But for the first time in three years, Elena smiled.

Day ten. They crested a ridge of dead pines and saw it: a narrow-gauge rail line, surprisingly clean of debris, running along the base of a valley. And on the tracks, a single locomotive—a vintage diesel-electric, its yellow paint faded but intact. Black smoke chugged from its stack. Figures moved around it. Living figures. zombie retreats

They approached with their hands visible, their weapons lowered. The man with the beard saw them first. He raised a hunting rifle, then lowered it when he saw Leo’s hollow cheeks and Elena’s raw, chapped hands.

Anya shoved a hand over Leo’s mouth, and they stood frozen, chest-deep in the murk, as a dozen dead faces scanned the river. After an eternity, the heads turned away. “You folks got a name

“Then we die here, on the asphalt,” she said, folding the map. “Or we die walking. At least walking is a verb.”

She didn’t argue. Arguing took energy, and energy was calories she couldn’t spare. The last can of beans had been emptied two days ago. The only thing left in their camp—a half-collapsed gas station—was the faint, chemical smell of old fuel and the distant, wet groaning from the treeline. They crested a ridge of dead pines and

“We go through,” Elena replied. She pointed to a sandbar fifty yards downstream, littered with debris. “The current keeps them pinned. We wade the shallows.”