Two- Day 33 *

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There were three zombies ahead, tied to metal stakes by heavy chains that rattled and dragged along the ground. They had been strategically positioned. Anyone trying to follow the narrow road into town would have to deal with them first. They weren't a foolproof plan to keep others out of the town, but they were definitely enough to slow us down.

Our progress stalled out in the middle of the road.

"What's the point of that? We can just walk around them." Alex voiced what we all had to be thinking. While the road was effectively blocked to anyone wanting to simply walk right on in without finding any trouble, straying thirty feet off to the side would put us well out of reach of the zombies. Besides, chained as they were, and in their current state of decay, they weren't moving very fast. We could have easily killed them.

"They're not a very effective deterrent," Colton squinted against the sun as he looked at the zombies and then beyond them, searching for any signs of life.

"I don't know," Bill replied slowly. "There has to be a reason someone risked catching them to put there. No one would do that without a good reason."

Raising a hand to shadow my eyes, I scanned the grassy fields leading to the edge of the town. They had been growing wild for long enough that a few small trees and thorn bushes had sprung up here and there. Honestly, with my dislike of forests and any other places where danger could easily sneak up on you,  it looked like the perfect place for something dangerous to lurk to me. "A lot of things could be hiding in there. You'd never know until you were right on top of it," I let my hand drop.

"I think the two of you are probably right," Maggie nodded slowly as she scanned the area too. "We'll have to be careful if we go into the grass."

"We could just kill the zombies and take the road," Charlie rasped. "That would solve the problem of what may or may not be hiding out there. Stay on the road where we can see our own feet."

Maggie shook her head. "No. If the people who put them there are still around, they might not like it if we killed them. They put them there for a reason. The last thing we need is to make more enemies."

Maggie was right, but that wasn't a comforting thought. Whoever had chained the zombies up either had a death wish or was crazy, because you wouldn't catch me getting that close to one of them without killing it. But then again, the zombies were slowing our group down, so maybe they did serve some sort of purpose. Either way, we had already learned the hard way that not all of the people left alive could be trusted. Going into an area that possibly had other survivors needed to be done carefully.

The apocalypse hadn't really changed the world so much after all.

After another minute of debating, it was decided that we didn't have much choice other than to go forward. We needed to find water and there had to be water in that town somewhere.

I swatted at a fat fly that was buzzing around my face and watched Shawn take the lead into the grass. I wasn't exactly thrilled that he was going first into that sea of green, but kept my mouth shut. He wouldn't have listened to me if I had asked him to let someone else go first. And what would I have said, anyhow. I didn't want to see anyone in our group hurt.

We filed into the path of bent grass that he left behind him, going single file. I frowned, the grass was going to reach past my waist, not that that was saying much. Being a short girl had it's disadvantages. I could practically already feel the scrape of thorns and itch from the weeds, just thinking about going in there.

Luna had been silent through the entire short debate. She stood next to Rex, one hand hanging on to a tuft of fur. I eyed the girl. If the grass was going to be uncomfortably high for me, it would be even worse for her. I bent down to offer her a piggyback ride which she took without hesitation. A phantom tug in the vicinity of my heart told me that the little girl was quickly becoming an important member of our little family, too. She trusted me, and that meant a lot.

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