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cable. He allowed himself only one look back as he dived into the truck. The Dead seemed to forget the woman and her child as they barreled toward him. Slamming the door, Jacob threw the Jeep in reverse and careened back towards the Dead. With one hand on the wheel, Jacob turned his head and measured the rapidly decreasing distance between himself and the Runners through the back window. When they were almost upon him, he cut the wheel and, in a flanking maneuver, circled around them and headed back towards the boulder. Part of the training at the police academy was defensive driving so steering his Jeep full speed in reverse was not a completely unknown skill to him. As he passed the spire, he made another turn of the wheel and headed back towards the Dead. The winch on the front of his jeep, which had been letting out cable at a feverish pace, locked tight as he mashed the stop button on the interior winch controls. The Dead, who had turned back to follow the Jeep, were dragged by the tensioning cable into a tighter pack and flung as one against the spire. They struggled mindlessly against the silver coils that constricted them. As a python strangles its prey, the cable squeezed the pack tighter, against each other and against the tall boulder.
    They groaned and continued to struggle forward, even as the first of them were bisected. A wet sloshing sounded as torsos separated from legs and fell. As they fell, the cable gave slack, but Jacob continued to pull the coil tighter. The Jeep’s engine raced and its tires gnawed and chewed the ground. The vehicle bucked and jumped as it met the new resistance of the confined Dead. A second of slack and another row of the severed Dead fell to the ground in pieces. A few more feet, more dirt and rock churned beneath the Jeep’s all terrain tires, then cable met boulder as the last of the pack toppled at the waist. With no more slack, the Jeep bucked wildly, prevented further backward movement by the cable entwined around only rock.
     

 
    Seven
     
    Beverly saw the Dead coming, but her attention was not on them. She stared in disbelief, and for a moment dared to hope that her husband had somehow made it out of the tunnel and now raced to save them. Her hopes were dashed anew as she watched a lone figure jump from the vehicle and pull cable from a winch mounted on the front. He wrapped the cable around a tall boulder set in the field between her and the advancing pack. She stood transfixed by the scene before her as the Jeep raced away in reverse. The cable snaked around the Dead, then lashed them to the spire. Beverly pulled Tommy closer into her as she watched the Jeep buck and tear at the ground, fighting against the tension in the cable. She felt the bile in her throat as she saw the Dead fall, their gore staining the grass and soil with a reddish black spew. The Jeep stopped and a man got out. He did not signal to them or seem to see them at all. She was about to cry out to him, when she saw him pull a pistol from inside the jeep and screw on what looked like a silencer. The cry caught in her throat and she panicked. Looking to her left, along the ledge of the cliff, Beverly saw a line of trees running back up towards the road. She grabbed her son’s hand and ran towards them.
     
    Jacob knew he did not have much time. He knew he should retrieve his cable and get away from there as fast as he could. This group of Runners was part of the larger horde that was bursting from the tunnel by the hundreds a few short miles from where he now stood. He also knew, because these were part of the horde he tracked, he could not leave until he was sure. He pulled the Mark I from his jeep and screwed on the suppressor, then looked around. The severed lay on the ground before him. Looking into the distance ahead of him, his mind reeled.
    There was no woman, no child.
    A cold sweat broke out on his forehead. He scanned the field to the horizon, left and right. Turning quickly, he looked back