DEAD: Confrontation by TW Brown Page A

five zombies feasting on it. This had been recent. The only reason I could make that guess was because steam was wafting from the body that was keeping the small group of zombies busy.
    I hunched down to try and make as little of a presence as possible. I was only slightly less concerned about the zombies as I was the possibility of encountering a raider.
    Being under this canopy of trees, there was still plenty of snow—a few feet—and we had only cleared a pair of trails to get to the stream that cut through the campgrounds . That meant that, from where I’d come in and crossed the stream, I would have to wade through the thigh-deep snow until I found one of those trails. From there, I would see about making it to the cabin.
    As I reached the edge of the picnic grounds the snow began to get deeper. I was beginning to see just how woefully unpr epared we were for this sort of thing. All of our preparations were about how to deal with all the worse-case scenarios when it came to zombies. How, in all of our meetings and preparations had we glossed over the possibility that living humans would be the greatest threat?
    Of course we had always at least brought it up, but it seems that we really never laid out a plan for this sort of event. That was when it struck me…
    Arrogance.
    At some point, we had decided that we were a potent enough force that we were safe. Add in the inclement weather and we’d done a fantastic job of painting ourselves as the kings and queens of the mountain. After all, we had Jon, Jake, and J esus. We numbered close to twenty which made us a force to reckon with. It was becoming very clear that perhaps I was not the man for the job of leader.
    As it was, I had deferred to Jon the moment things got ser ious. There was no pretense about who was in charge right now. Jon had assigned each of us a task and set us to it. The little bit of the battle I could observe gave me the distinct impression that we were, at the least, holding our own. At best, maybe we were repelling the raisers.
    Dr. Zahn’s words sprung out at me. “From what I’ve heard and the very little that I’ve seen, it is a possibility that this is the same group that wiped out Serenity Base. No disrespect to you, sergeant, but Serenity had better firepower and equally competent soldiers.”
    Thoughts of ‘Who do we think we are!’ bounced around in my head as I reached the edge of the picnic ground and peeked out from the gloom of the tall pines. I knew that the access road was not far in any case. So even if I did have to try and slog through the snow that was now just above eye level, it would not be very far. We had shoveled out the access road that ran parallel to our trench all the way around the hill that the place we called home sat perched upon.
    I kept hearing brief exchanges of gunfire, but it had died down considerably in the past few minutes. I wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or a bad one. Were my cohorts overwhelmed and taken out? I already knew that at least one of “my” people was dead. What was worse, I didn’t even have a moment to spare to mourn her loss. And if I didn’t get back into the fray, I might never have a chance to do much of anything besides freeze.
    I quickly realized that, without a shovel, I was not going to make much progress. And no…there were no shovels just mag ically sitting nearby for me to grab. I had to basically clear stuff out of my way by hand, tossing it behind me as I went. It was like digging in the sand as the tide was coming in.
    Like an idiot, I thought I could just push my way through. Snow has this ability to condense so that, after a while, it is like concrete. Who knew? (Probably people who lived around lots of snow all their lives.)
    I heard a baby cry that sounded way too close and stopped everything to look around. The zombies that had been chowing on the raider that murdered Fiona now appeared interested in fresh prey…namely me.
    I quickly discovered that I was