"I wonder if those two bastards will even make it out of Ennis alive."
Madison muttered as he started the Tyrannosaurus's engine.
As the car picked up speed, Gavin pulled out his phone and checked the battery. It was at seventy-six percent.
Scrolling through various social media sites, Gavin spoke without looking up.
"What, you got attached to them after meeting them just once?"
"Are you kidding? I just... I just think it's nice to see living people in the middle of the apocalypse."
"It is nice. I just wish we ran into people more often. At this point, people are a lot easier to deal with than zombies."
As he answered, Gavin turned up the volume on the video a little so Madison could hear it too.
Roars, screams, explosions, and sharp car horns—all of it blended into a chaotic mess.
Madison swerved around a headless corpse lying in the road and casually asked Gavin,
"Where's this one?"
"San Francisco."
"What about Los Angeles? I want to know what happened to Hollywood."
"Let me look."
Gavin searched for a moment, then found a video of a place engulfed in flames and showed it to Madison.
"As you wish. Hollywood Hills. The fire started in Beverly Hills."
Saying this, Gavin smiled and shook his head.
"If we have nowhere to go in the future, Hollywood might be a decent choice. Who knows, maybe this fire will take out all the local zombies!"
"Ha, I like that joke. Those celebrities don't even have to break a sweat. They just have to crawl into a producer's or director's bed, and they make more than we do."
"More than you, maybe. They'd have a long way to go to compete with me."
Gavin replied offhandedly, then patted Madison's arm.
They were already nearly three kilometers past the corpse.
"Slow down up ahead. Let me take a look."
Gavin lowered the window and peered through his eight-power binoculars into the darkness and faint light on the right side of the road.
Seeing this, Madison asked quietly,
"Oh, right. This is a little town too, isn't it? What was it called again? Palmer-something?"
"Palmer. It's a very small town, a fair way off the highway. It gradually sprang up around Palmer Farm, on the edge of the forest."
"When I was six, my family came here to buy dairy cows. Palmer Farm's cows won the gold medal at the Houston cattle show that year. But after I grew up, they turned the farm into a resort and made a fortune."
After speaking, Gavin lowered the binoculars and took out the map of Dallas they'd found at the gas station.
After glancing at it, Gavin said quietly,
"Highway 45 splits into two roads before Ennis Town. One goes straight through the center of Ennis Town."
"The other branches off to the left, passes Ennis Town's drive-in theater, and skirts the edge of town."
"We..."
Gavin fell silent for a moment.
Then, expressionless, he said,
"We'll wait at the fork before Ennis. There's something I want to check."
"Ha, I knew you were a good leader. Cold-blooded killers like Jordan are nowhere near as warm as the King of Cowboys, who's as bright as the sun!"
Madison burst out laughing, shaking his massive features as he said,
"I bet that bastard Eugene will survive the apocalypse for a long time. At the very least, he'll outlast the little cop."
"Besides, who knows how many living people are left in America? What if we're the only four survivors in all of Dallas? With those two around, at least the little cop can do our laundry!"
"Who knows?"
Gavin narrowed his eyes, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, and tapped Ennis Town on the map.
"I just want to see whether those two bastards will turn Ennis into a complete mess. If we get the chance, it'll be good to learn something from the zombie activity there—how to deal with a horde of zombies in a small town."
After speaking, Gavin set the map down, leaned back, and lit a cigarette.
Madison gave a couple of noncommittal grunts and kept driving at sixty miles per hour.
They continued steadily down the road for nearly eight kilometers.
Then, a pair of headlights suddenly appeared in the distance!
"Whoo!"
The instant he saw the high beams, Madison slapped the steering wheel and laughed.
"I knew those two bastards would make it out alive. They're lucky like us, after all!"
"Are they?"
Gavin quietly sat up straighter and frowned at the lights.
"Take a closer look. Do you think that old Ford could have lights that bright?"
"What? You mean that's not them?"
Madison looked surprised, then squinted at the road ahead.
A moment later—
The distant headlights split from one pair into two, and the second set swerved erratically from side to side. It looked downright eerie.
"There are two cars!"
Madison finally grew serious. His right hand left the steering wheel and gripped the pump-action shotgun.
Beside him, Gavin nodded.
"Two cars, yes. But the second one's lights look a lot like the Ford's."
He picked up the binoculars and took a look.
Shielding his eyes from the glare, Gavin studied the vehicles with his exceptional eyesight. Then he made a helpless, amused face.
"That looks like an RV, with the Ford right behind it. Could those two really still be alive?"
"Fuck, you can see that from here?"
Madison's mouth fell open in surprise. Then he seemed to remember something and asked, his expression turning odd,
"But why are they chasing the RV?"
"How should I know? Let's get closer and see."
Gavin waved them forward. Madison immediately sped up, the Tyrannosaurus's engine roaring as their speed shot up to 150 miles per hour.
In less than half a minute, Madison began to slow down. The RV finally passed the Tyrannosaurus.
"Help! Help!"
When the cars were about ten meters apart, a slightly hoarse female voice came from the RV's driver's seat.
The instant Madison heard it, he perked up.
"Holy shit, a woman!"
He hurriedly looked at Gavin, who frowned and replied,
"Don't get distracted by some woman. Take a good look at that RV!"
"The windows are cracked, there's blood and scratches on the body, and there's even the upper half of a zombie stuck on the RV's bumper!"
"What?"
By the time Madison heard him and tried to look, the two cars had already passed each other. Even the old Ford had gone by the Tyrannosaurus.
William's piercing scream rang out from the Ford in the distance.
He was yelling...
"Dad!!!"
Screech!
Madison suddenly drifted around, made a U-turn in the road, and sped after the Ford.
The RV and the Ford were both moving fast, at least 130 miles per hour—more than 200 kilometers per hour.
But that kind of speed was child's play for the modified Tyrannosaurus.
In the blink of an eye, the Tyrannosaurus caught up with the Ford and pulled alongside it on the passenger side.
Madison rolled down the window and shouted at the Ford,
"What happened, shorty?"
"Fuck, my little William's piece-of-shit dad is stuck on the RV's bumper!"
Eugene gripped the steering wheel and yelled back. Then he kicked William, who kept trying to hit the gas.
"Fuck you, William! We can't go any faster! What do you think this is, a Koenigsegg? It's just a Ford, and not even a new one—it's a fucking used Ford!"
"Aaaaah! That's my dad!!!"
William was completely stunned. His agonized scream even gave Madison goosebumps.
Madison turned back and said awkwardly to Gavin,
"I suddenly don't want to team up with that kid anymore. He's not just green—he's kind of nuts..."
"Quit messing around. Go see what's going on with that RV. I like RVs. They're perfect for the apocalypse!"
As Gavin gave the order, he waved his hand. Madison immediately accelerated and soon pulled ahead of the RV.
Seeing that there was no one in the RV's passenger seat, Madison sped up again, cut in front of it, and shifted over to the driver's side.
"Help! I don't know how to drive! Help!!!"
As soon as the two appeared beside the RV, the woman driving it shouted frantically at Gavin.
Gavin took one look and his expression darkened.
The driver wasn't an adult at all. She was a girl who looked no older than twelve!
Gavin quickly rolled down the window and shouted at the child behind the wheel,
"Shut up and lift your foot!"
"What?"
"Keep your hands where they are. Lift your foot!"
Gavin didn't say anything about the gas or the brakes. He just told the girl to lift her foot.
How could the RV be going this fast? Was this kid pressing the gas pedal all the way into the gas tank?
Before you continue