red hill - jamie mcguire

A woman was running down the street barefoot, carrying a little girl in one arm, and pulling along
a boy, maybe nine or ten, with the other. She wore a red dress with white polka dots, and her hair had
mostly fallen from her low, dark ponytail.
“Bryce,” I said.
“I see them.”
The woman stopped at the corner church, and helped the boy climb up on top of the airconditioning
unit, bravely passing a large group of infected. She heaved the boy onto her shoulders,
and then pushed him up, allowing him to climb onto the roof, and then held up the little girl. He pulled
her up safely, but she was reaching for the woman, crying and drawing the attention of the mob of
bloody horrors pounding against the front of the church. Several of the dead ones broke away and
ambled in the woman’s direction. She was struggling to climb, but the boy waited, bent over and
holding his knees, encouraging her.
It was then that I saw a trail of blood running up the side of the white wood of the church. Someone
else had already gone in that way. Someone that was probably infected.
“We’ve got to help them,” I said, determined this time.
“Look,” Cooper said, his hand stretching between my and Bryce’s seats. He pointed to the church.
“The windows are boarded! There’s people in there!”
Bryce looked to me. “It seems like a good place to wait out the night.”
I watched as the woman barely made it to the roof before the dead reached the unit she’d been
standing on.
I let out the breath I’d unconsciously been holding. “Okay, but how do we get in How do we get
them to let us in”
“They’re not very fast,” Cooper said, gesturing to the woman on the roof. “She ran right past
them.”
“I’m not going out there with those things walking around!” Ashley wailed. “No way!”
I looked around the Bug, making sure we’d have no surprises, and then noted the position of the
sun. “We can’t make it to the ranch before dark. There are already people inside there. They probably
have guns, and water—”
“And a bathroom,” Cooper muttered.
Bryce nodded. “We have none of those. We’re going in there. We just have to find a way to
distract them long enough to get inside.”
“You guys get out here. I’ll drive past them and lure them away, ditch the Bug, hide, and then
double back.”
Bryce shook his head. “I’ll do it.”
“Look!” Ashley said.
The woman was trying to open the window, but was having trouble. Suddenly it opened, and she
held back her children, shielding them for a moment until she recognized whoever was standing on the
other side. A tall, scruffy man ducked through the window, and helped the mother and children inside.
He walked over to the edge and took a look at the frantic pack below. They were clamoring over each
other, trying to get at the people on the roof.