Moments like this, Hendricks wished he was back on the Marne. Or maybe at Catigny. Hell, anywhere on the Western Front, anywhere with a trench you could hide in. At least back then, the shamblers couldn’t spot you so easily. Nor were there so damn many of them everywhere.

     Right now, there was a whole pack of them – at least twenty stinking, rotting, ravenous once-men – at the top of the western hill, blocking his path back to the boat, back to his lifeline, his escape.

     “They can’t smell us, can they?”

     “No, Smitty,” said Hendricks, “but their hearing’s as good as the living’s, so just you hush.”

     Hendricks, Smitty, and Carl were huddled in the riparian zone just downhill from the shambler pack. They’d come ashore at dawn, one of a dozen small foraging parties, to hunt deer and scrounge up any supplies they might stumble across in the abandoned towns along the coast.

     “Necropoli,” he’d heard them called by some of Wrigley’s egg-heads back on Catalina Island.  Cities of the dead. The ruins of Man’s work, populated now only by legions of walking corpses. Very hungry walking corpses.

     “We gotta get past’em somehow,” whispered Carl. “No need to go straight over this hill. The creek’ll take us to shore eventually.”

     Hendricks shook his head. That could take hours. They’d risk exposing themselves to an even bigger pack. Better to wait them out. Again, he found himself longing for a muddy trench flanked with barbed wire. Much better cover there, with lots more protection between you and the enemy than just a bunch of trees and bramble.

     But at least this enemy wasn’t lobbing mustard gas and tank shells at him. He figured that evened the score a bit.

     “I think they’re up to something,” said Smitty, making no effort to keep his voice down. Stupid kid.

     Hendricks glared at him. “Shh!”

     “Sorry, sir.” Whispering now. “But look. They’re all looking out to sea.”

     It was true.  The shamblers had all turned their attention shoreward, back the way Hendricks and company needed to go.  What could command their attention like that, so suddenly? Another foraging party from the island, maybe?

     “You hear that?” Carl asked.

     At first, all Hendricks heard was the wind, and the crash of waves, and the moans of the horde on the hill. But underneath all that, behind it and getting louder, was a distant, mechanical buzzing. Coming in off the sea.

     Hendricks hadn’t heard that sound since the war.

     “It can’t be.”

     “What else makes that sound?” Carl asked. He was a veteran, too. And what’s more, a pilot. He knew the score. “It has to be.”

     “It can’t be,” said Hendricks again. “Who’d still be using them? It’s a huge waste of resources…”

     The argument was settled suddenly, as the bi-plane came up over the hill and the noise of its propeller engine rained down into the valley.  Eyes both living and dead followed the plane’s course, as it swooped low over the next hill and started a turn back towards the way it had just come.

     “You catch its markings, Carl?”

     “No. But looks like they’re coming back our way.”

     Smitty, rapt, without thinking, stood up from cover behind his bush to watch the flying machine. He’d heard Carl’s stories, even been shown a few drawings, but had never seen a real live, honest to God aeroplane before.

     Hendricks yanked the kid back to the ground. Startled, his reverie interrupted, Smitty looked back at Hendricks as though he were lurching up out of a shallow grave to take a bite out of someone’s leg.

     “Good way to get your head blown off, kid.”

     “Why… why would they shoot us, Mr. Hendricks? We ain’t shamblers.”

     “Just stay down.”

     They all huddled more deeply into the shade, hoping their earth-toned clothing would be enough to keep them out of sight amongst the oak canopy.

     The bi-plane had completed its turn by now, and was whining in even lower than last time. Carl watched it intently, trying to spot the plane’s markings, as it flew overhead once more and…

     RATTA-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT! – opened fire with mounted machine guns on the shambler pack, then disappeared behind the hill to the west. They saw some of the walking dead thrash about as the bullets riddled them, and a few even went down, having lost the use of their legs.

     It wouldn’t be enough – they’d keep crawling and hungering unless someone put one in their brain – but it would slow the cursed corpses down.

     “Carl?”

     “Looks like a British design; an Airco or an Alcott fighter, maybe. But the marking was a red circle on a white field,” Carl said.

     “Japanese?” Hendricks asked. Carl shrugged.

     That made no sense. This was California, and the whole world was dead and up walking, except for a few pockets here and there.  How the hell could there be a Japanese pilot this far from home?

     “He’s coming back,” Carl said, tilting his head and perking up his ears, dog-like.

     This time, the plane came in from the southeast, perpendicular to the hilltop, giving it a much better shot at its targets.

     RATTA-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!

     And this time, almost none of the shamblers were left standing. The plane arced off to the northwest and back out to sea, leaving a pile of quivering corpse-flesh on the top of the hill.

     “Let’s move,” Hendricks said, hoisting his satchel and rifle. 

Carl and Smitty followed suit. They were only slightly surprised when Hendricks headed straight up the hill, as if the shamblers weren’t there.

“Hendricks,” said Carl. “You sure about this?”

“May as well finish them off.  We’ll thank the pilot later, if we ever see him.”

The flesh-eaters had started shifting and tumbling towards them, but that bi-plane had done a good job of evening the score.  Hendricks and his men took out their pistols and were able to brain-shot the whole pack without even getting touched.

At the top of the hill, all three of them looked out to sea, possessed by a curious dread. Where had that pilot come from?

The plane was high up in the sky, the sound of its propeller engine barely discernible through the winds whipping about the shore.  It was headed west, out to sea.

And towards Santa Catalina Island, their refuge.

Hendricks pulled a set of field glasses from his satchel, trying to pierce the mist and pull the horizon closer.  He could barely make out the outline of the island, but nothing more.

“It has to have come from a ship.”

“Maybe one o’them flat-tops the Brits had in the war,” Carl suggested. “That weren’t no sea plane. He’d need somewhere to land.”

“But you said he was Japanese,” Smitty chimed in. “Did they have them kind of boats, too?”

Carl shrugged, and instinctively looked to Hendricks for orders.

“We need to get back to Avalon. If there’s a ship out there, they’d’ve had a better chance of seeing it.”

Their motorboat was still secure on the beach.  There were fresh footprints around it, probably from the shamblers they and the mystery pilot had dispatched. Good thing the dead couldn’t remember how to use complex tools, or they might have set the thing afloat, stranding their prey.

Smitty worked on getting the engine started while Hendricks and Carl loaded up their supplies. They’d foraged a lot of small game, but hadn’t seen any deer, and hadn’t risked going into town.  The shamblers had been unusually active there today. Maybe they knew something was up.

“Japan’s an island,” Carl said. “Like Catalina, only bigger. Or a more than one island, don’t rightly recall. I do remember hearing rumors on the radio back in ’19, ‘bout how they was shuttin’ down their whole country. Biggest quarantine in history, they said. Maybe it saved’em.”

“They wouldn’t be able to hold out forever,” Hendricks said over the motorboat’s engine as they finally got under way. “Nobody would.”

“If it did save them,” Smitty said. “Maybe they’re sending help. Like that pilot.”

“Maybe,” Hendricks said, sharing a look with Carl.  The two veterans hoped the kid was right.

*******

Half way home, their hopes were dashed.

Santa Catalina Island was clearly visible by then, still just a shape on the horizon.  But with field glasses, Hendricks could easily make out the harbor at Avalon.  And the troop transport berthed there.

A troop transport with Japanese markings.

The flat-top carrier became visible, too, which had apparently dropped anchor farther north near Willow Cove. There were several bi-planes on her deck, but Hendricks couldn’t tell exactly how many from this distance.

“Guess you were right, Carl. The quarantine saved the Japs.”

“Why don’t that make me feel better?”

Smitty, the poor kid, was starting to look scared.  The wary reactions of the two older, seasoned men made him more worried about their colony’s visitors than he’d ever been about shamblers.

As if in answer to Carl, the buzzing sound of distant propeller engines came in off the wind.  All three men looked northeast towards the aeroplane carrier.

Another bi-plane, or maybe the same one from earlier, had just taken off. Followed by another. And a third.  All of them headed out towards the mainland. Headed for the three men’s little motorboat.

Then came the sound of guns. Not, thankfully, the large caliber cannons that would be on the troop transport, but the staccato cracks and pops of distant small-arms fire. Machine guns. Pistols. Rifles.  That had to be coming from Avalon.

Hendricks knew right away what it meant. He didn’t have to tell Carl.

“What’s happening, Mr. Hendricks?”

“Raiders.”

“Cut the engine, kid,” said Carl.  “Get your rifle ready. One o’them planes is coming our way.”

“But I thought the Japanese were Entente, like us. I heard about it in school.”

“That was a long time ago, kid,” Hendricks said.  “The whole world is No Man’s Land now.”

Hendricks laid a hand on the kid’s shaking shoulder.  “I’m sorry.  I hoped you young folk would never have to go through this.”

The plane zoomed past them, about two hundred meters off the starboard bow.  It began to circle back around, a four-winged bird of prey that had sighted its kill for the day.

“He spotted us!” yelled Carl, raising his bolt-action rifle, a refurbished Winchester M-1892, and taking aim.  He managed get one shot off before the Japanese pilot opened fire.

Suddenly, Hendricks was back in the trenches again, before the shambler plague started, when it was just the Kaiser’s boys you had to watch out for.  On instinct, he dove for cover, taking Smitty with him.

They went right over the side of the motorboat and into the cold waters of the Pacific, machine gun fire raining down all around them.  Hendricks heard the plane’s bullets th-wunking rapidly into the wooden frame of their motorboat, and saw Carl’s torso erupt with little clouds of blood, just before going under the waves.

Hendricks fought the urge to immediately surface for air.  He hadn’t taken in enough before diving, but he knew showing his head now would mean certain death.  So, he tried his damndest to stay under.

But Smitty wouldn’t let him.  The kid was struggling against his grip, fighting to get to the top and suck in some air.  Hendricks fought to hold him under, but Smitty was lost in panic, his instinctive fear of drowning overwhelming his common sense.

Hendricks couldn’t hold onto him.  Or to the burning air in his own lungs.  He let Smitty go, and scrambled for the surface.

They both erupted from the frigid waves at the same time, sucking in air like men awakening from a fever dream full of shamblers clawing at their throats.

“Carl!”  Smitty saw his mentor’s body dangling from the side of the motorboat, head and one arm submerged, blood flowing from the back and chest.  The kid scrambled to swim over and help his older friend.

“Stay down, kid!”  Hendricks could already see the biplane circling back to finish what it had started.  “He’s gone. Get away from the boat.  You’ll be harder to see.”

No use.  All Smitty could hear was the panic in his head, concern for a friend he couldn’t yet believe was dead. 

Hendricks, cursing himself, swam over to try and stop Smitty… making himself into an easier target, too.

“Leave him be! He’s gone!”

He grabbed Smitty just as they both reached the boat.

“No! Carl!” Smitty clawed at Hendricks, fighting to get free, threatening to drag them both under. “He ain’t dead! I heard him moaning!”

The biplane’s whining dive had started now.  There were only seconds to spare.

“We gotta dive, kid! Get under the water!”

Hendricks wanted to help.  He’d seen too many boys die in the trenches.  But his instincts took over, and he sucked in a deep breath and went under just in time.

Bullets rained down on them again.  Hendricks made it deep enough to avoid getting shot, but he couldn’t tell whether Smitty had made it.  The water was too cloudy and dark, thicker than the morning fogs that used to settle along the Western Front. There was no sign of the kid down here, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything.  There was still hope for the boy.

Hendricks stayed submerged until it felt like a Hun’s flamethrower had ignited in his lungs.  This time, he made sure to break the surface with as little fuss as possible, hoping to avoid the pilot’s lethal attention.

Smitty was floating nearby, his blood clouding the sea around him. And Carl hadn’t moved, either.  Both gone, soon to be among the walking dead if not properly disposed of.

Hendricks cursed himself for not saving the kid. He should have shoved the fool under the water against his will, instead of saving his own skin.  He’d sworn to God, back when he still believed, that he’d never let a kid die on his watch ever again.  The oath still mattered to him, even if its recipient was a fairy tale.

But this wasn’t the time for mourning. Hendricks had to make sure he survived, so he could get back to Avalon. They were going to need his help.

He scanned the sky.  The biplane was circling back from the east, coming in for another run.  Hendricks wasn’t about to risk being seen.  He sucked in a breath and flipped over on his belly, playing dead.  The pilot might still open fire, but Hendricks figured the man had already seen three targets on the boat. If one of them was missing, he’d keep searching.  If all three of them were floating lifelessly, their assaulter might believe his eyes and fly away, mission accomplished.

Hendricks felt rather than heard the plane pass over them once more, and braced himself for any incoming fire. He found himself tempted to start praying again.

But the pilot buzzed a few more circles around them and, satisfied he’d eliminated his targets, flew off towards the mainland again.  And none too soon, either, as Hendricks’ lungs had started to scream for the third time.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

He gulped up lungfuls air, one of the dying, and began treading water.  His two murdered friends floated nearby. Before long, they’d be animate again, but Hendricks decided to leave them be rather than risk dragging them back to shore for a proper cremation.  Far as he knew, shamblers couldn’t swim.

He’d never been much of a swimmer himself, but now seemed as good a time as any to learn. If he didn’t make it… well, he’d always heard drowning was a peaceful way to go. And at least he’d be at the bottom, where he couldn’t hurt anyone when his turn as a shambler came ‘round.

#####

Wrigley’s plump, WASPy face was hovering over him when he woke up. “Gave us a real scare, Hendricks. You were touch-and-go for while there.”

Hendricks couldn’t remember making it to shore.  He only recalled feeling as if all his muscles had been flayed from the hard swim, and lungs on fire, and slipping beneath the waves maddeningly near to Catalina.  He’d come so far, made it so close to shore, past the Japanese, without being seen, only to have his body betray him with deliverance on dry land so close he’d tried to reach out and touch it.  Then, he’d slipped under the waves, idly wondering whether he’d made it close enough for his corpse to finish the trip on its own.

“Current must’ve carried you a bit,” Wrigley said. “A wonder you didn’t drown.”

“I’m back in Avalon.”

“That you are, my boy,” said Wrigley. “And a blessing it is, too.  We thought we’d lost all of your landing party.”

Hendricks tried to sit up too quickly, but the all-over pain slapped him back down in the hospital bead. He was in the hospital.

“How’d I get here?”

“Somers and the boys found you on the beach, after the Japs left.”

That reminded Hendricks of Carl and Smitty. Poor, young, naïve Smitty, who’d had so much life ahead of him.

“That was a couple of days ago,” Wrigley continued.  “You’ve been delirious since then. Wicked fever.”

“What’d they want?”

The governor of Avalon couldn’t help the sardonic smile that crept onto his face.  “Taxes, of course.”

“Come again, sir?”

“Well, more like tribute,” Wrigley said.  “Seems we’ve been declared subjects of the Japanese New Pacific Mandate.  Mostly, they came ashore with armed thugs and politely requested all the food, fuel, and medicine we had on hand.  Naturally, we politely declined.”

That would explain the gunfire Hendricks had heard. Maybe they’d started out with good intentions, but so far from home, in a world so spare on commerce, the Japanese crews had been reduced to little more than pirates.

“So much for the Entente,” Hendricks said.

Wrigley chuckled, a nasally, unpleasant sound that bordered on a wheeze, with just a touch of a snort.  “Oh, I doubt they’ll be back. We really gave them what for.”

Hendricks wished he could agree with that assessment, but he knew imperial militaries all too well. 

“We even took one of them prisoner.”

That made Hendricks sit up, albeit slower than his reactions wanted him to.

“They left a man behind?”

“You could say that, I suppose. He’s the one who shot first, killed Fred White, maybe some others during the ruckus.  Some of our constabulary forces managed to capture him during the raiders’ retreat. His sentence will be carried out tomorrow, so your recovery was fortuitous.”

“His sentence?”

“Why, execution, of course. For war crimes. Justice must be swift in these trying times.”

Wrigley had turned out to be a real tyrant, Hendricks thought. But then, that’s the kind of leader people needed in this day and age.  The early years of the shambler plague had taught them that; without strict discipline, most people, with civilization collapsing all around them, panicked until they died.  The rest became the ones who killed them and took what they pleased.  Wrigley had made this island into his personal fiefdom, and it had saved lives.  Not for nothing had Hendricks fled here after he’d lost purpose himself.

“He speak English?,” Hendricks asked. “I want to face him. I owe Smitty and Carl that much.”

“I think that can be arranged,” Wrigley said. “I’ll send a man around for you after the doctor gives you a clean bill of health.”

“Thank you, sir. I’ll want to meet with Smitty’s older sister, as well.”

“Of course.”  Wrigley shook Hendricks’ hand, patted him on the shoulder, and perambulated out of the room like a happy Hapsburg.

It’s good to be the Kaiser, Hendricks thought.

###

     Hendricks stood outside the bars of one of Avalon’s small handful of jail cells, looking upon the vicious murderer who’d instigated the Battle of Catalina, the Yellow Menace made flesh.

     “He’s just kid.”

     “That kid,” said the guard, “shot first. Set the rest of them off. Twelve people are dead because of him.”

     The boy couldn’t have been more than fourteen years old.  Crouched on his bunk with his knees drawn up to his chin, trying his damndest to hide his face in fear and shame, ill-fitting uniform hanging on his small frame, the boy wasn’t the frothing menace Hendricks had expected.  The Japanese must not have been doing as well as Carl had surmised, if they were taking kids this young into their ranks.

     “You speak English, boy?” Hendricks barked at him.  “What’s your name?”

     When the prisoner looked up at him, Hendricks didn’t see a killer.  He saw brown eyes wide with dread, crusted over from dried but poorly-hidden tears.  He saw an upper lip crusty with phlegm from crying.  He saw cherubic lips still quivering.  A too-young face full of terror compounded by lack of understanding.  The boy had no one to speak his language, no one to plead his case to, no one to commiserate with.

     “He’s just a kid,” Hendricks said again, as the Japanese boy buried his face once more in folded arms and upturned knees.

     Hendricks surmised right away what must have happened.  The boy had been terrified from the moment he’d set foot on the island, perhaps from the moment he’d set foot on his ship.  He was green, and thus a bucket of coiled but fragile nerves.  And here on this island full of ogres, accompanied by older, harder comrades he desperately wanted to impress, something had spooked him. Maybe he shot at it directly, or maybe his gun had gone off unintentionally, or maybe some Avalon resident had deliberately provoked him (Fred White was a well-known son of a bitch, after all).  However it had happened, the boy hadn’t intended to hurt anyone at all. He’d just wanted it to be over.  But that fateful shot had struck true, and then fear and suspicion on both sides had escalated to battle.

     Hendricks thought of Smitty.  He hadn’t been much older than this Japanese boy when bullets from the sky had cut him down, drifting now without dignity on cold currents, a smorgasboard for ocean scavengers. His corpse would be animate by now.  Hendricks pictured it bobbing in sea, mindless and confused and endlessly pecked at by hungry fish. A lingering second death by a million nibbles, inflicted on a simpleton mind that probably squirmed from deep-seated instinctual fear of the deep. No one deserved to end up like that, least of all a kid like Smitty.

     For the first time, Hendricks wondered if shamblers felt pain.  If any shred of their former minds lingered behind those empty eyes.  Were they, in some way, aware of their fate?

     That sounded like a living hell, worse to his mind than winter on the Western Front.

     “He’s just a kid.”

     “It’s a damn shame, Hendricks,” said the guard. “But he did kill Fred White for sure, and caused the rest of that mess, too.  You know Wrigley’s penalty for murder.  We all agreed to it when we came here.”

     Hendricks looked the man in the eye.  His words had been mere platitudes. He had no sympathy for this scared little kid.  All the man had was anger, and all he wanted was revenge.  He’d been close friends with Fred White.

     “You’re right,” Hendricks said.  “It is a damn shame.”

     ###

     Exile.

     Wrigley had “commuted” the boy’s sentence at the last minute.  Apparently, even he hadn’t the stomach to execute a child.  Not that it mattered to the poor kid.  Exile on the mainland, full as it was of the ravenous once-human hordes, was effectively a death sentence anyway.  But at least it left no visible blood on the hand of anyone back in Avalon.

     Hendricks volunteered to be part of the kid’s escort.  He figured he owed Carl and Smitty that much. Especially after spending the better part of the previous evening consoling Smitty’s sister.  It was his duty to see justice done.

     The guard who’d been watching over the kid when Hendricks visited the jail – his name was Stanton, Hendricks now remembered – dragged the boy out of his cell in the wee hours and prodded him out onto the street, where Hendricks and another man, Dulcett, waited for them in the waxing dawn.  No one else was on the street, though a few may have been watching from shadowed corners or shaded windows.

     Everyone felt ashamed, but it had to be done.  The less said about it, and the less seen, the better.

     The Japanese boy did his best to take it all on with some dignity.  He straightened his too-large uniform, marched in the direction he was told with near-perfect precision, and kept a stiff upper lip all the way to the motorboat.  But Hendricks could tell the poor kid was scared to death.

     “Did either of you bring a gun along for him, or a pack of rations?” Hendricks asked.

     “I’ve got a gun for him right here,” Stanton said through beady eyes and stubble gone nearly all grey, indicating the pistol Avalon had issued him as a duly-deputized officer of justice.

     Dulcett chuckled heartily, sending ripples across his flabby neck and making his generous gut wobble like a ball on the water.  Hendricks wondered how the hell the man could stay so fat in these lean times.

     “Law says a prisoner condemned to exile gets a gun and rations when he’s dropped off.”

     “This one,” Stanton said, jabbing the boy with the nose of his pistol, forcing him into the boat, “will get his when we’re on the beach near Huntington.”

     So, they were going to drop the kid off in shambler territory.  So much for fighting chances.

     Stanton, Dulcett, and the kid were all in the boat now, looking expectantly back at the lone straggler still ankle-deep on the shore. Hendricks sighed, and climbed into the boat, choosing to ignore the hint of bile-taste building in his mouth.  The kid was a prisoner of war, after all, who’d killed at least one citizen of the refuge of Avalon, during an unprovoked attack. That and his uniform made him a legitimate target.  This was better than he deserved.

     They all stayed quiet on the long ride to the mainland, though their journey was anything but relaxing.  Stanton and Dulcett kept a tight watch on their prisoner, who, for his part, sat ramrod straight on the center of his bench, looking towards the rising sun with a face as dead as a shambler.  Hendricks wondered if the boy had any notion of what awaited him onshore.  The Japanese had, apparently, successfully quarantined their nation against the plague.  Had this child ever even seen an actual shambler? Had he any bone-deep conception of the putrid, writhing hell that was the outside world?  Was this bravery, or just a terrified boy clutching to his training like a fetish, as Hendricks himself had done his first night on the Marne?

     Maybe, in the end, there was no difference.

     The tension between them grew thicker as the shore came closer. Shadows of conifer trees and granite hills reached out toward them in the early morning light as they approached near Dana Point.  The old port often served as a debarkment point for scavenging crews from the island, and there were still abandoned ships berthed there, all of them haunted, it was said, by more than just the walking dead.

     Hendricks took out his field glasses and scanned the shore.

     “See any zombies?” Dulcett asked.

     “Zombies?”

     “Word I read in one of the old penny dreadfuls the Chesters brought with them.  It means shambler, more or less. Only, they’re usually controlled by some kind of witch doctor. And they don’t eat the living.”

     “No, then,” Hendricks said. “No zombies that I can see. No witch doctors or shamblers, either.”

     The three men all knew that meant little.  Shamblers weren’t as smart as the living, but they possessed every bit of their animal cunning, and still communicated with each other in some primitive way.  And they seemed to get smarter in groups, like pack hunters. There could be a whole crowd of them holed up in one of the old warehouses, or hiding just around one of the corners, and the men coming ashore would never know it.

     “Let’s get this over with,” Hendricks said.  He looked at the Japanese boy, to see how he was handling things, if he had any notion of what they were about to do.

     The kid was still as stiff-lipped as ever, but Hendricks thought he saw tears forming at the corners of his little brown almond-shaped eyes.

     Hendricks guided the boat to shore just east of one of the abandoned vessels, a spot they’d found to be relatively safe in the past.  There was only one warehouse nearby, and its doors stood fully open, making it difficult for anything to hide within unless it kept to the interior shadows on either side of the door.

     Cutting the engine several yards from the dock, Hendricks looked over his companions.  “I don’t have to tell you boys to stay sharp.  Shamblers… zombies,” – Hendricks found he liked this new word – “are as crafty as wolves and dogs. Don’t be fooled by the silence.”

     “You ain’t the only veteran on board,” Dulcett said, gathering up his pack and tugging at the boy’s tied hands.  Hendricks had forgotten that Dulcett led scavenging squads to the mainland, too.  In fact, he knew this area better than anyone else in their party.

     “You know what to do,” Dulcett said to Stanton.

     “Aye, sir.”

     As the boat drifted quietly to shore, Stanton secured it to the dock while Dulcett checked the prisoner’s bindings and got the boy to his feet.  This left Hendricks with nothing to do but scan the area for zombies.  It never occurred to him there might be more going on between the other two men than he was privy to.

     Stanton got out of the boat first.  “Come on, boy,” he said to the Japanese kid, roughly tugging at his uniform, dragging him forward.  “Let’s make this quick.”

     Dulcett followed hurriedly, checking his pistol.

     That’s when Hendricks noticed neither of the men were taking along a pack for the boy.

     “Hold on,” he said.  “Where are his provisions?”

     No answer.  Dulcett and Stanton led the kid down the small pier by gunpoint, to a spot roughly ten feet from the shore.  Hendricks hurried behind them, that bile taste welling up again from his guts.

     “I said hold on. Kid needs a pack, a gun.”

     “No he don’t,” said Stanton.  “His kind don’t deserve even a slim chance out here.”

     “What do you think?” Dulcett chimed in. “Leg shot, or gut shot?”

     Stanton appraised the situation with the gravitas of a Greek thinker.  “Leg shot.  He’ll be more mobile, but his fear will last longer that way, too.”

     Hendricks’ bile feeling turned to anger and horror.  He thought of Smitty, of his vow (to the God he no longer trusted) to make sure no other kids ever died on his watch.

     “This ain’t happening,” he said.

     “I know it’s not strictly according to Hoyle,” Stanton said, “but the kid’s dead anyway.”

     “Exile means he gets a chance,” Hendricks said.

     The Japanese boy sensed the heightened tension.  He looked nervously between the three men, uncertain what any of it meant, but knowing it meant only ill for him.  Hendricks saw the boy’s hands clench involuntarily into little white-knuckled fists.

     “He didn’t give Fred White a chance, did he?” Dulcett replied.  “Just up and shot him out of nowhere. That’s murder, Hendricks. And an act of war.”

“He’s just scared kid,” Hendricks said. “And what would you know about war, you fat bastard? We all know you faked bad knees to get a deferment.”

Dulcett’s faced darkened.  Suddenly, there was murder in his eyes.

Stanton pulled his pistol, aimed it at the boy’s right leg.  “Hendricks, stay out of this.  You can file a formal complaint with Wrigley when we get back.”

“He’s just a scared kid,” Hendricks repeated, instinctively stepping forward and drawing his own pistol.

Slowly, the kid moved to get behind Hendricks.  Hendricks didn’t stop him, instead raising his pistol at Stanton.

“Give me your pack, Stanton.”

“You’re picking him over your own kind?” Dulcett asked, incredulous.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand, fat man. Stanton, give me your pack.”

Dulcett, coward that he was, backed off behind Stanton.

Stanton, however, stood his ground, showing Hendricks the steel in his eyes. He now pointed his pistol at Hendricks’ leg. “Maybe you want some of this to, traitor?”

“He’s just a kid,” Hendricks said one last time.

Dulcett and the boy shared nervous looks with each other, from behind their respective champions.  It was an odd, incongruous moment of connection that made Dulcett shiver.

That’s when the wind shifted, and Hendricks noticed a subtle, putrid scent blended into the sea air.  A scent they’d all have been wise enough to notice earlier, if they’d not gotten so lost in their little drama.

The Japanese boy spoke at last, grabbing Hendricks’s leg as he might have his own father’s.

“Shuten-doji.”

Hendricks didn’t understand the words, but their meaning was clear enough in Dulcett’s widened eyes.

“Ah, hell,” Dulcett gulped.

Hendricks was the first to shift his eyes, briefly, from his new enemy towards the shoreline, then back to Stanton.  It was all the time he needed. There were at least a dozen of them coming out of the water.

They’d learned to hide under the water.

“Zombies,” Dulcett said.

Hendricks watched Stanton’s eyes, waiting for the inevitable quick shift of vision.

There it was.  Stanton glanced quickly towards the shambling pack, and Hendricks took his shot.

BLAM! – Stanton went down, a bullet through the forehead, instantly dead.  Hendricks considered it a mercy.

“In God’s name!” Dulcett shouted.

Hendricks grabbed the kid and backed away from both Dulcett and the shamblers as quickly as alert wariness would allow.  He knew Dulcett was still a threat, and couldn’t afford to turn his back on the fat man.

The kid, smart one he was, caught on quick, and didn’t resist Hendricks leading him away. In fact, he started pulling Hendricks toward the open warehouse door.

The saturated shamblers, smelling fresh blood, became more agitated and picked up their pace.  The noise from their soaked lungs came out as gurgles, a cacophony of watery moans.  They wouldn’t go straight for Stanton.  They preferred live prey.

Dulcett knew he had mere seconds to make a decision.  “You son of a bitch!” he yelled, waddling as quickly as he could towards Hendricks.  “I’ll you kill you and feed you to them!”

He fired two shots intended for Hendricks, but they flew wild from his panicked, shaking hands.

There were more shamblers coming from the alleys now, but none, thankfully from the warehouse. But they were too close for Hendricks and the kid to get out of harm’s way in time.  Unless…

He’d already sealed his fate with Avalon by killing Stanton.  Survival was all that mattered now, and shamblers prefer easy prey as well as live prey.

“I’m sorry,” Hendricks called out.  “I don’t have another choice.”

He shot Dulcett in the leg, and the large man went down, screaming in pain and terror.

It was enough.  Both crowds of hungry corpses stopped to watch him, assessing the ease of the kill, just long enough for Hendricks and the kid to reach the warehouse.

“No! Please, Jesus, no!”

Dulcett’s agonizing plea became a muffled cry, the illusion of distance, as Hendricks slammed the warehouse doors shut. Some of the shamblers began pulling it open, but Hendricks was good enough to put bullets in their brains with one hand while he slammed the door shut again with the other.

It wouldn’t slow them down long.

“Look around! Find something to bolt this door!”

There was light coming from the opposite end of the warehouse, another open door, enough for Hendricks to see the kids face.  The boy understood his meaning if not his words.

The Japanese child rooted around quickly, the skills of a street rat rather than an aristocrat.  He was obviously a draftee, not an officer.

A spare length of rope was the best he could come up with, pulled from behind an old unopened crate.

“It’ll have to do,” Hendricks said.  He indicated the door with a nod of his head.  “Tie it off!”

The boy was brave, Hendricks gave him that.  The door was rattling now as zombies scratched against it, tugging it at, the moans of their unending hunger reverberating through the cracks of the door and echoing through the cavernous warehouse.  But the kid was undeterred.  While Hendricks used all his strength to hold the doors closed – hurry kid, hurry! – the boy tied the handles shut with the fastest clove hitch knot Hendricks had ever seen.

And all while maneuvering between and around Hendricks’ hands.  One of the Boy Scouts Wrigley insisted on training back at Avalon couldn’t have done any better.

“Good job, kid. Come on, move!”

They ran to the opposite end of the long warehouse, faster than any shambler moving parallel to them outside could have gone.  Shamblers were relentless to be sure, and even had some gumption in them when pursuing prey, but for the most part they were slower than molasses compared to a healthy man.

They stopped to peak around the corners, making sure no more hordes waited for them outside.  Hungry moans echoed down the adjacent alleys, sounding louder than they probably were, but there were no shamblers in direct line of sight.

The coast was clear. For now.

“Let’s go.”  Hendricks tapped the kid on the back, and they both ran in a full sprint down the alley across from them, and then made several twisting turns through the labyrinth of old crates and abandoned sheds, keeping the sun ahead of them as much as they could.

After a few moments they had to stop for breath, or at least Hendricks did.  He wasn’t getting any younger, but the kid, barely winded, looked like he could keep this up all day.  The young still had a lot going for them, even with hell come to Earth.

Hendricks, judging them safe for now, held out his hand to the boy.  “Name’s Hendricks,” he said.

The boy didn’t know what to make of this gesture.  He looked up at Hendricks, confused, for the first time not understanding the man’s meaning.  Maybe they didn’t shake hands in Japan.

Hendricks pointed at himself.  “Hendricks.”  He pointed at the boy.  “What’s your name?”

“Mahito,” the boy said, bowing deeply. “Domo arigato, Hendricks-san!”

“Not Hendrickson.  Just Hendricks.”

Mahito paused for a moment, then bowed again. “Hai! Hendricks-san.”

It didn’t matter.  They were stuck with each other now; Hendricks couldn’t go back to Avalon with the kid and without the others, and he wasn’t about to leave Mahito out here to die.  The kid would get his name right eventually.

“Well, Mahito, looks like we’re partners now.”

They’d need supplies.  They could circle back and collect Stanton’s pack after the shamblers – the zombies, Hendricks still liking that new word – had moved on in search of other prey.  For the moment, he and the kid would have to make due.

“I don’t suppose,” he asked Mahito, not really expecting an answer, not yet, “that you know your own way home?”

Mahito only looked at him quizzically.

“No, of course you don’t.  Well, that gives us something to work on.  Come on, let’s find a place to hole up until those things go on about their business.”

He led Mahito farther east, in the direction of the shelter and relative safety of the hills, where shamblers were sparse.

Together, they walked warily towards the light of the rising sun.