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The old GMC was parked sideways in the middle of the overgrown field near Stabler's Pond.  The radiator was busted and a thick white steam was hissing up from under the hood.  The front end was bowed in by a fence post long hidden in the waist deep weeds and the doors had been left open, barely hanging on their hinges.  Blood was oozing from the driver's seat and out along the running board.  There were no signs of anyone, living or otherwise.  There was a weed infested gravel road nearby leading up to an old plantation house slowly sagging into extinction.  Acres on acres of death were ahead of me and I was about to dive headlong into it.

"Looks like we missed the party," Pete said with a soft chuckle.  It wasn't that he found anything particularly funny to him, just a coping mechanism that had kept him mostly sane over the years.  He pushed back the brim of his cowboy hat with two chubby fingers then dropped his hand to the .22 magnum on his hip.  "Think they even had a chance?"

I shrugged, lighting up a cigarette as I passed him the binoculars.  The perimeter fence ran just behind the old plantation house and was all that separated civilization from the fetid wilderness beyond.  Unfortunately, the fence was almost as old as the land it was built on and, thanks to a storm three weeks ago had collapsed.  This had left Pete, myself and volunteers from the sheriff's department hunting down and trying to contain the mass exodus of cadavers that had flooded the town since the storm.  We'd been running almost non-stop ever since.  There had been a few close calls in the last day or so, carelessness brought on by fatigue and we'd all nearly bought the farm when we stumbled on a dry creek bed stacked high with reanimants.  Even so, we'd made it out alive and mostly unscathed until today.  The GMC smoking in the field belonged to a group of deputies scouting the area.  It didn't look good.

"Suppose they might have made it... maybe."  It wasn't the affirmative answer either of us had wanted but it was the best I could offer.  "Driver's definitely dead but the passengers could have made it.  I mean, if they kept their wits long enough to bail out and run.  Tell me, if you were them and had any sense at all, what would you do?"

"You mean beside stick to the road and not wander into the brush?"  A grin curled his lip and made his brushy mustache writhe.  It looked like a caterpillar crawling across his pudgy olive face.  "I reckon I'd head back up the road and find the rest of the gang.  Lookin' at how they parked it, I'm guessing they were a little panicked."

"Probably." I agreed.

"So, big spooky house?"

I smiled.  "Big spooky house."

I talk a big game when it comes to safety and being responsible but, truth is, Pete and I both enjoy a good brush with the undead.  The uncertainty, the merry-go-round hunt of undertakers and zombies looking for one another, the constant surge of adrenaline pumping through the veins that heightens the senses and keeps the mind focused on the job at hand; I live for it.  Still, we didn't want to take too many chances.  We grabbed our shotguns out of the back seat, made sure our asps and machetes were secured with our side arms on our belts and cautiously waded through the grass and out onto the road.  Before the plague this had been a historical site, a working replica of an old southern plantation.  The field was littered with antebellum and pre-plague relics hidden under the rolling green-brown waves.  All of it was garbage now, rotting slowly into nothing like so much of the world.  The house itself had been painted white with a large chandelier hanging from the front porch.  The paint had long since peeled and was lying in piles of ashy snow around the foundation.  The columns were warped, slowly leaning in on themselves and their counterparts. The roof was sagging with them, bent into a warped grin.  The foundation itself was sinking towards the back, straining desperately to hold the old house up.

"Shit."  I spun around hearing the thud as Pete rolled into the gravel.  "Damned pot holes."

I stared, trying to contain my laughter as he dusted himself off and staggered to his feet.  He was standing in a hole about the size of both his feet and about two feet deeper than the other boot prints leading up to the house.  It was right around this time that I noticed the foot prints.  There were two sets similar to mine and Pete's and a third set about the size of the hole Pete was standing in.  There was a thin, spotting trail of blood mixed in with the marks.

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