We made it a few miles down the road before encountering any more signs of life. Someone had turned the shopping mall into a veritable fortress. There was not a single pane of glass left whole in the windows. The openings were now covered by boards or miscellaneous furniture. Some sections were empty inside, all furnishings scoured by survivors. One coffeeshop still had the tables bolted to the ground inside, but the chairs were missing.

It was the large sign hung above the mall’s main entrance that convinced us to leave the road. The blue painted letters spelled out “safety” where the letters of the mall had so clearly been taken down. We made our way toward the front entrance, keeping our eyes peeled.

Pale bodies lined the pavement, even in death, their hands seemed to stretch out toward the large, blue sign.

“You think anyone is alive after this?” Carter asked with a hushed voice.

“As long as they didn’t run out of ammo,” Andy said. “Looks like they used a lot of bullets, though.”

“Only one way to find out,” I said and began picking my way past the bodies. I kept my head on a swivel, and my eyes snapped to every bit of movement, even as the soft breeze stirred the clothes on the corpses. Double doors remained open, not that closing them would have done much good against the onslaught.

Directly in the middle of the killing field, the pale bodies were stacked four high, and I was forced to climb over the mound of rotting flesh. When I reached the top, I finally found the first body that wasn’t a pale corruption of its former self.

“Oh, God.” Carter had joined me at the peak, and she promptly bent double and vomited.

Whatever safety had been here before, it was gone now.

“We stay together,” I said and began climbing gingerly down the pile of corpses. My eyes scanned the area, stopping on the group of children in the back. Most of the bodies were covered with blood, but one form had long, golden hair. For a moment, I thought the body was my daughter’s, until I saw the face. The cheeks were too slender, and the staring eyes were blue, not green. The hair, too, was flat across the top, not matching my wife’s widow’s peak.

My hand shook on the hilt of my sword. It had nothing to do with reason. There could be nothing reasonable about the entire goddamn situation. But even as I told myself that the body on the ground didn’t belong to my daughter, a part of me was terrified to go home and find out what had happened. And terrified of what I would do if something had happened. Dammit, I didn’t know any of these people. Tears made no sense in the situation. That didn’t stop them from falling.

I looked away from the grisly scene and blinked my vision clear. I bent down to lift the hunting rifle from the teenager at my feet. It was a bolt-action Remington model 700. A good hunting rifle, but mostly useless in closer quarters like this. The bolt handle was up and pulled back, ready for another round. When I pulled the magazine free, however, there were no rounds left to feed the weapon.

I dropped the gun to the ground, the metal barrel letting out a hollow crack as it fell to the concrete. I checked the rest of the bodies.

“They’re just boys,” Carter said as she tried to close the eyes of one of the dead. Even as she lifted her hand away, the eyes opened back up.

“No,” I said. “Not boys. Men.”

“And women,” Andy said. He knelt next to a form in a dress.

“This one is a kid,” Carter said, even as she tried to close his eyes again.

“It’s not the years,” Andy said. “It’s the mileage. They stood to protect others like brave men and women. That makes them men and women too.”

“What do we do?” Chavez chimed in. “We can’t bury all of them.”

“Leave them,” I said.

“Let the dead bury the dead,” Andy said. I looked over at the ex-Catholic, questioningly. He just shrugged back at me.

“Let’s go,” I said. “There’s nobody here.”

*****

After the mall, we encountered several groups of mana-corrupted humans and animals. As crazy as it seemed to be, killing squirrels and some oversized cats, the humans were the worst. You could see it in their eyes — the kindness and intelligence was simply gone. Our pace was slow, but steady. The real problem was the obvious one — we were running out of ammunition.

“Sporting goods on the left,” I said when I saw it. My sharp eyes picked out the sign in the distance. “About a mile up the road.”

“Probably already been ransacked,” Chavez said, glumly. “I’m almost out.”

“Me too,” Carter said as well.

I looked over at a silent Andy, and he nodded silently in agreement.

“Ammo is our priority. We can’t pass by just because we’re afraid it’s been used. We still have to check.” I thought for a moment. “After that, we look for other weapons and survival tools. Sleeping bags and camping gear.”

“Yeah, maybe somethin’ that ain’t a gym bag for carryin’ stuff too,” Chavez added as he adjusted the strap of the overfilled gym bag on his back.

“What about a place to sleep that has an actual bed?” Carter asked. “Shower tile isn’t exactly comfortable.”

“I brought in a cot, but everyone else fell asleep before they could use it!” I protested with a laugh.

“A bed does sound nice, though,” Chavez agreed.

“Ammo first, then a place to sleep,” Andy agreed.

The place was ransacked, just as Chavez predicted. Ammunition was always tight anyway, as the gun lovers always bought as many “freedom seeds” as they could. Now, even the most staunch anti-violence person would probably reconsider their view. It was either that or get your chest ripped open by your neighbor. Really put a damper on the golden rule. Do unto others before they do unto you?

Much of the camping gear had been removed as well. There were no sleeping bags left and no tents, not even the small, single-person tents. Every knife and hatchet were missing from the shelves, and the only sign left of fire starters was the label on the rack.

“Bear,” Andy called out from the back of the store. I went over to see what had caught his attention, and my eyes landed on a metal door, quite solid, with a keypad, it into the wall next to it. “What do you think?”

“Door to the back inventory?”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

“Might have already been ransacked.”

“Electric lock,” Andy said. I was still considering the door when Chavez and Carter joined us, followed by Bragg, who still mostly stared off into space. “The pad has failed close. We would have to blow the door or cut through it.”

“Stand back,” I said and drew the sword from my back. The hinges were on the outside. The sword cut through the metal without much resistance. Once the hinges were free, I cut through the other side as well. I checked that everyone was back by this point before I pulled hard on the metal door. The metal monstrosity toppled with a shriek ending in a crash, leaving us gazing into the dark.

“Damn, I’m out of chems,” Andy said behind me. “Not exactly enough light to see clearly in there.”

“I got it,” I said, and strolled through the doorway, returning the sword to my back.

“How can you see anything in there?” Carter asked.

“My eyes are pretty good,” I said to the group still in the main section of the store. In fact, my eyes used to be pretty good. Now they were freaking fantastic. There was enough light coming in through the open door and from the smashed-in front windows of the store to give plenty of light for me to see, except in the deepest recesses of the building.

The smallest items were closest to the doors, but I immediately spotted my target — the large, locked cage against the back wall. The back room of the store was not massive. I’d worked at a Walmart before I’d decided the Army would be better for me, and the back room of that place had been huge, almost half the store. This “back room” was more like a bedroom, and the cage was the size of a walk-in closet. The haul, though, would be more than enough for us.

There were a few boxes of ammunition, but only one that would help us at the moment — a single box of .45. Andy would be overjoyed. I grabbed a shotgun and the three boxes of 12-gauge to match. Seventy-five rounds. I sighed and turned to the other weapons in the cage.

I picked up the two hatchets, their heads still covered by plastic, and the large Buck knives. That’s when I spotted the two large box lying on the ground under the cage. There was a large, red piece of paper sitting on top of the two boxes, and in the darkness I could barely make out the word “HOLD” printed in capital letters.

I lifted the sign off the top box. I couldn’t help but smile when I saw the image on the top box and knew what would be in the box beneath it.

“Whatcha got there?” Chavez asked when I carried out everything.

“I got you a present, mate.” The knives and hatchets I spilled onto the ground, but the box I lowered gingerly. I handed the shotgun to Carter, who began checking it over. The two boxes I handed to the big Mexican.

“You think you can work this?”

“It would be my genuine pleasure,” he said with a grin.

I made several trips into the back room, stealing larger backpacks, three sleeping bags, and a box of five LifeStraws. By the time I was done, anything considered remotely useful had been loaded into the new, hiking backpacks we’d acquired.

Chavez had finished assembling his new toy, the crossbow already fitted with a bolt. The gym bag that had once been full of non-essential, but useful items, was now occupied by the bolts from the first box.

“Let’s go,” Chavez said, with a wolfish grin. “I’ve always wanted to hunt zombies with a crossbow.”

“Yeah, that checks out,” Andy said.

Carter handed her M4 to Bragg. The man didn’t drop it to the ground immediately. He simply looked at the weapon, as if seeing the gun for the first time. His hands trembled on the stock and grip. His gaze hardened even as he looked down at the gun, and he nodded as if responding to an unspoken question.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said and checked the sword over my shoulder, ensuring it was loose in its sheath.