red hill - jamie mcguire

look that close. A few corpses were ambling around, but nothing like I’d expected to see in a town
overrun. Maybe they had gotten out.
The Toyota ahead of me slowed to a stop. I wasn’t sure what to do. In the rearview mirror, the
pickup stopped, too, maybe a hundred yards back. I waited for a moment, and then glanced around,
hoping for an answer.
I had several all in one second.
The church on the corner was surrounded by reanimated corpses. Women, men . . . and children.
Some with torn, bloody clothes, some I couldn’t tell had been wounded at all, but I could see from the
road that they all shared the same milky-white eyes. I shuttered at the sight, feeling more desperate to
get going.
The dead were banging on the boarded windows and the doors. They moved sluggishly and
clumsily, but fervently. They were hungry. A vertical trail of bright-red blood was on the west wall.
Someone wounded had crawled to the upper level. The mob seemed to be drawn to it.
I understood then why the Toyota had stopped. There were people inside. They’d holed up in the
church, and probably had nowhere to go.
“Don’t be stupid,” I said quietly. “Not with that baby in the car.”
The Toyota horn beeped once, and then again, getting the attention of a few of the bloody corpses
pounding on the front doors of the church. The horn beeped a couple more times, and then the driver’s
side door popped open, and a man stepped out, waving his arms.
“Hey!” he yelled to the corpses. “This way! Come over here!”
A few more turned in his direction, and then immediately stopped their plight to make a lumbering,
slow journey to the road. Their shuffling caught the attention of more, and then a whole section of
them broke away from the church to trudge in our direction.
“Shit,” I said, my eyes darting between the corpses and the Toyota. I honked several times, too.
“Get in the car. Get in the car!” I yelled the last words, banging my palms against the steering wheel.
The man jumped up and down a few more times.
“Get in, John! Get in!” his wife screamed, leaning over the console and grabbing for him.
John jumped back in, and pulled away quickly. I followed close behind, my heart thumping in my
chest as I passed the approaching corpses safely.
A dozen or more appeared in my rearview mirror, and then I saw several people—alive people—
dart across the street. The green pickup was still a block away from the church, waiting for
something.
My heart never settled down after we left Fairview. I was just that much closer to my children, and
closer to the obstacles I would likely face to get to them, closer to knowing if they were alive.
Tears streamed down my face as we approached the overpass that would bring us into the edge of
my hometown. At first, it didn’t faze me that there were army reserve vehicles of every shape and size
parked at the mouth of the overpass. I was too distracted by the mess of vehicles on the interstate
below.
“Jesus,” I breathed.
It was as I had feared. Multiple-car pileups and stalled vehicles. Some people were standing