Free Love Starts With Z by Tera Shanley

think?” she asked the Dead to her right. “Which one would you eat first?”
    He was a skinny thing, and his leg had been broken in half at some point in his jaunt around the mountains looking for human snacks. His blue tinted flesh was sunken around the curves of his bones, and shoulders and ribs showed through the tattered mechanic shirt that still clung to his withered body. Bob , the name patch on his stained pocket read. She cocked her head and tried to imagine what he looked like before most of his face had rotted off. Maybe he’d looked like a Bob once.
    He was slow and little danger to the men in front of them at this distance. They’d attracted him around the same time she’d found him, and it had been three hours and counting that they hadn’t noticed they were being hunted. At this point, it was just sad.
    Limping badly, the Dead stayed focused ahead, not even a groan for an answer to her question, and she shrugged. Corpses weren’t the best conversationalists.
    “Are you going to tell me what’s going on with you or is this how it’s going to be all the way to the coast?” Colten asked. “You haven’t said two words since we left. I get it. You’re the stoic type and all. That’s why we work well together. You are the big loner who gets shit handled, and I’m the social one who gets us invited into colonies. This sucks though, man.” Colten stared at him while they walked. “At the very least, you owe me an explanation on why you got us kicked out of Dead Run River over a fucking zombie.”
    “Don’t say that,” Kaegan growled.
    “Fine. A freaking zombie.”
    Warning hummed in the tension of Kaegan’s shoulders.
    “Please don’t tell me you were crushing on her, man. She’d eat you in your sleep and pick her teeth with your bone splinters. We’re better off getting out of there if that’s the case. That place was messed up, wasn’t it? Deads inside the gates. I mean, damn, how stupid could they be? She should’ve been banished or caged, or I don’t know, something.”
    A numb feeling crept over Soren as she listened. This was probably what everyone said about her when she wasn’t around. She didn’t want it said to Kaegan, though. If he hadn’t already thought of all of it, Colten was just going to fill his head with reasons to hate her. Maybe this had been a bad idea.
    Kaegan paused and turned slowly to Colten, saying something much too low for her to hear at this distance.
    “Aw, crap,” she muttered. “Sorry, Bob. I can’t have you gnawing on my team, so this is the end of the line for you, buddy. Sorry,” she whispered as she stood in front of him and slid a battle knife through his temple. Other than the rustle of leaves, he dropped without a sound.
    Staring at his crumpled body, she sighed. He’d been somebody once. The only thing Bob had done to earn an empty life was get himself bitten.
    “We’ll make camp here for the night. The grove behind us will act as a natural barrier,” Kaegan said. “You want to take care of the moaner that’s been following us or you want me to?”
    “I’ll do it. You go take the two coming at us from over there.” He gestured toward an embankment.
    Soren tilted her ear in that direction. Huh. Sure enough, a pair of distant moans sounded over whispering leaves. So they’d known about Bob the entire time; they just didn’t feel threatened enough to pick up the pace or fight him earlier. Maybe they weren’t as incapable as she had begun to think over the past few hours.
    Slipping behind a tree, she held her breath as Colten searched for Bob. He froze, likely listening for the movement typical of Deads, but when only the quiet rustling of branches sounded, he pulled a hatchet from his back. The blade whispered against its sheath, and Colten turned with a suspicious glower. “Where are you?” he muttered.
    The you he spoke of was about fifteen yards to his left, half hidden by trees and leaves, staring vacantly in his direction and