Free Savannah's Only Zombie (Book 2): A New Darkness by Josh Vasquez

difficult for the slower zombies to climb over. The only thing Josh
worried about was if it were a large group of undead, the sheer weight of
bodies would push through the wooden structure in time. And of course, the
fence wouldn’t do much against runners. But if either of those two outcomes
happened, the plan was still the same: run.
    Tori almost laughed to herself as she thought
about a pregnant woman trying to escape from the zombies. It was just
ridiculous. She understood there was nothing that could be done about the baby;
it just worried her because it was one more thing to slow them down. If it came
to having to escape, which sometimes meant having to worry about yourself, how
much could a pregnant woman do?
    She thought about the Lumberjack. After she
repeatedly wanted to leave him behind, the group always decided to take him one
step further.
    “We won’t leave him here.”
    “No, we won’t leave him here either.”
    “No, we’ll wait until he dies.”
    Ben… If you had just let him die, maybe you’d
still be with us right now. And maybe we wouldn’t be here. Maybe we’d be at
your parent’s house right now.
    Tori felt her eyes begin to moisten.
    C’mon girl! Get yourself together!
    She quickly rubbed away the forming tears and
took a deep breath. She slammed the hammer again, taking out her frustration on
the next nail. The nail bent from her unfocused hit. She used the hammer’s claw
to pull it out, and began to try and straighten it out on top of the fence
post. Once it was as straight as she could get it, she tried again to nail it
into the wood. This time, it went in without problem.
    “Yeah, I did some time in the Army.”
    Tori felt herself tighten again. The words
echoed in her head as if they were shouted into a cavernous ravine. Over and
over, she heard them. It was the voice that struck a nerve. It wasn’t Chris’s,
who Josh had explained earlier once served as an Army Ranger.
    Meh, she had thought at the time. Being raised by a
Marine Drill Instructor may have left her slightly biased, but Tori’s dislike
of the Army Branch was no more different from a Georgia Bulldogs fan’s hatred
of the University of Florida. It was just a deep seated rivalry that she loved
to get vocal about, especially after she had a few beers in her. Marines and
Army: same team, different styles.
    But the voice she heard wasn’t from Chris.
    It was Lexx.
    Her mouth fell open as she listened to the man
she… she…
    Liked? She thought. Slept with? Loved?
    All the words seemed t0 collide together and the
last word ran smack dab into another nerve.
    “Yeah, college wasn’t for me and the Army seemed
like a good idea at the time. Stable pay, good benefits, plus the Cold War just
ended, so we weren’t really fighting anyone. Then that dick Saddam decided to
roll into Kuwait. Anyways, I was on the ground not soon long after the start. I
don’t have to tell you what it’s like, you were over there. You know,” Lexx
said.
    Chris nodded. His eyes glazed over quickly as he
went to a distant place and then returned.
    “Anyways,” Lexx continued. “Turns out I’m not
too good at taking orders. Well, bullshit orders. I was the lead driver in a
Humvee convoy and I had strict orders to take us through this sketchy little
town. I don’t know if it was my gut, or maybe the looks on every civilian’s
face we passed, but something told me to take a different route. I know y’all
are all religious and whatnot, maybe it was divine intervention, who knows. I
led us around the town on an alternate route and we reached our destination
safely in one piece. Despite this, my SO was pissed. He charged me for
disobeying a direct order and that there wasn’t enough intel on the path I
took. Ha. Intel? Well, intel later showed that we were headed into an ambush.”
    Lexx sighed.
    “I was still discharged though, but they gave me
a honorable discharge, just because my “mistake” saved everyone in the convoy’s
lives.”
    He