Free Season of Rot by Eric S. Brown, John Grover

gritted his teeth, steeling himself for
what he was about to say. “Look. We’re gay, okay? We just want to
be by ourselves for an hour to breed in our own way. Just this one
time,” he added hastily.
    Hole in His Neck smiled. A sick wet sound
came from his exposed windpipe as he tried to laugh. He shook his
head and shoved Scott towards the gate.
    “Wait!” Scott urged. “You haven’t even heard
what I’m offering in return.”
    Hole in His Neck paused. It was not permitted
to feed on the prisoners unless they broke the rules or offered
non-vital pieces of their meat freely. Scott had been anything but
a normal prisoner, and Hole in His Neck admitted to himself that he
enjoyed the way Scott was begging for such an unnatural and
shameful act.
    “You could send one of your people with us,
to make sure we don’t escape. I’m only asking for an hour.”
    Using gestures, the dead man asked what he
would get in return and indicated that it had better be worth such
an affront to the rules.
    “My legs,” Scott said firmly. “Both of them,
all yours. I don’t need them to breed, and if I die from you taking
them, you can stick me out here so you’ll have a permanent watchdog
over the others until I rot away to nothing from the heat.”
    Hole in His Neck held up his fingers, saying
two guards would go with them, not one. Then he added that this
would be the only time, one way or another.
    Scott breathed a sigh of relief as the
commander of the watch went to fetch David and the guards who would
take them to the woods. Maybe, just maybe, this was going to work
after all.
    8
    Bullets sparked and pinged off the asphalt as
Riley ran for cover. He half fell, half rolled behind the carcass
of an abandoned truck. The spray of bullets followed him, thudding
into the truck’s frame.
    Hannah and Brandon were nowhere to be seen.
Riley had been cut off from them when the jeep full of dead
soldiers appeared out of nowhere.
    Riley cursed himself for leading his family
here. There shouldn’t have been a road at all, not this far out in
the country, much less a major one littered with the ruins of cars
and trucks. The only things that should have been up there were
trees and dirt trails. Riley didn’t have the faintest idea where
the road led, but it had seemed safe. Figuring they didn’t have
time to follow it in the woods until they could cut around, he
chose to walk it. Now he was paying the price.
    He heard the crack of Hannah’s .30-.06
somewhere in the distance. Damn the woman! he thought. If
she and Brandon had reached the trees, they should’ve just kept
going; they shouldn’t have stopped to save him.
    Left without an alternative, he leaned around
the end of the truck to see what was happening on the road. One of
the dead stood several yards away, focusing its AK-47 on the tree
line. Riley’s military training took over, and he seized the
chance. His M-16 opened up, sending a stream of rounds into the
dead thing’s chest and up its torso until, with a wet popping
sound, the corpse’s rotting head burst like a melon, spewing brain
matter onto the road below its feet. Its body spun, headless, and
dropped. Riley was on his feet and running for a better vantage
point before the body hit the ground. He’d only seen three of the
things, and he figured he could handle them as long as he knew
Hannah and Brandon were safe. But that was the problem, wasn’t
it?
    Riley felt fire tear into his shoulder, and
the impact knocked him down. His rifle went skidding away from him.
Out of the corner of his vision, he saw the dead man who’d shot
him. The thing charged forward and lowered its rifle, to which was
attached some kind of blade.
    Riley didn’t move, waited to the last
possible second and grabbed for the weapon as the thing tried to
spear him with it.
    Close combat with the dead was extremely
dangerous. A bite, or sometimes just a scratch from their nails,
was enough to infect a person with the lethal virus, or evil
spirit,