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road bubbled as the thickened pyrotechnic agent burned. The stink of it was noxious, poisonous.
     
    Many of the buildings in the town evidenced structural damage, having fallen into decay given time and disrepair. Some were boarded up. Bear had torched an entire block. Stores and buildings were charred and gutted.
     
    Eventually she met Bear in the street and he nodded his splatter-masked head to her. She wondered how many zombies had perished in the burnt down block of buildings and stores. She passed him a Commando and shouldered her own. They stood back to back and fired out bandoliers of ammunition until the zombies had dwindled. Human survivors from the town joined them on the street.
     
    The rag-clad man from the roofs reached them first. He ran down the road to where Bear and Nadjia stood, passing a few undead stragglers late to the slaughter. He gripped a gore-spattered club. Zombies reached for him and groaned but he avoided their arms and came to an abrupt halt before Bear, his club held loosely.
     
    Nadjia had a 9mm by her side.
     
    The man stared at Bear in awe, as if in recognition of something beyond words. Bear looked at him, past the rags clinging to his wasted frame, beyond the mane of dirty white hair, into the eyes burning with lunacy and revelation that signaled a deeper verisimilitude only hinted at. Some measure of clarity in their derangement. He recognized something within those eyes, and went back to thumbing shells into magazines.
     
    There was a scream from up the street. A group of survivors, little more than skeletons themselves, had emerged from a building and fought three zombies with hammers and screwdrivers. One of them, a man, had been bitten on the shoulder and lay in the street.
     
    Nadjia and Bear, trailed by the wild man, walked to them, skirting around and over corpses. The wounded man lay bleeding out atop zombie bodies. There was no clear part of the street to rest him on. The others stood around him with no clue what to do. They were panting and one looked semi-catonic. Nadjia eyed these newcomers warily. Bear stood over the wounded man as he removed his splatter mask, looking down on him as the guy gurgled and died.
     
    Before he could turn into a zombie, Bear fired a single round from the Commando through his brain.
     
    Nadjia stared at the survivors and they at her. Everyone was quiet for some time. Soon thereafter, Bear stepped over and through the dead with the enfolded child clutched to his chest, the mace in his right hand dripping blood, saddle bags slung over his broad shoulders. He wound his way through the carnage as survivors in the town came in their twos and threes. Nadjia waited for them on the road.
     
    He worked his way down to the stream and set the saddle bags by the water and gently lay his precious bundle upon them. He set the mace head-up in the mud next to him and placed one of the two Glocks within easy reach of the saddle bags, next to the swaddled form.
     
    Pulling the coif from his heads and neck revealed his bare scalp. He removed the ear buds. After unlacing his gauntlets, he removed the protective wear and lay them next to him with the coif. The chain mail was taken off next, exposing a dark t-shirt soaked through black with sweat, clinging to the muscles of his chest and shoulders. He took off the t-shirt and soaked it in the stream, wringing the sweat and stink from it several times. He immersed the t-shirt again and wringed it out over his head, rivulets of fresh water running down his bald dome and hirsute, tattooed back. He pressed the t-shirt to his forehead and breathed deeply, sighing, closing his eyes.
     
    His reverie was broken by a low groan nearby. A horrendous apparition staggered his way from downriver, flesh rotted from its torso, the bone of one leg showing through. It moved slowly with steady determination, reaching out to him with one grime encrusted hand. The other arm bent backwards, broken at the elbow.
     
    Bear retrieved