I saw the boy give his head a shake. Then his legs twitched, and the tree rustled more strongly. As the others reached the hedge, they each selected a tree, turned slowly, and sat down against it. A horrible suspicion filled my mind. I recalled the body I had had to retrieve from the forest. “No!” I cried as I raced toward them. “Get away from there! Don’t!”

The young trees shivered and trembled as if a strong wind were running through their branches, but the summer night was still and warm around me. The walkers twitched and jerked like puppets. One of the women cried out, a high shriek cut short. I dropped my bucket and torch as I reached her. I reached down and seized her hands. “Come away from there,” I cried, pulling at her hands. She did not resist me, but neither could I budge her. She looked up at me, eyes open, her mouth stretched wide in a silent cry of pain. Her hands closed on mine and gripped tight with the strength of terror. I pulled with all my strength but could not lift her. Her legs kicked wildly against the earth. Not far from us, the boy gasped suddenly and then sagged limply against the tree that gripped him. Then something not his own muscles lifted his head from his chest and pressed it back against the tree. In the light of the torch guttering on the ground behind me, I could see black blood trickling from his nose and mouth. I still held the woman’s hands, and she still gripped back at me. “Please!”

she gasped. I stooped, seized her shoulders, and with all my strength, I tried to pull her free of the tree. She gave a long, agonized caw of pain, and her head suddenly rolled limply forward on her chest. Her hands, which had been gripping my forearms, fell away. “No!” I cried, and again heaved at her inert body. “No way to treat a lady,” a voice rasped hoarsely behind me. “You scoundrel. You raping bastard!” I let go of the woman and turned, smelling earth and rot and quicklime.

Dale Hardy stood, legs spread, at the edge of the torchlight. He held my wooden bucket by the bale. “I warned you!” he shouted as he charged at me. As he came into the light, I could see that the quicklime had eaten half his face away. He could not be alive, I thought wildly, he could not be a walker. I took a stumbling step backward as he swung the heavy wooden bucket in a wide arc. It was coming too fast. I could not avoid it. It hit the side of my head, and I exploded into light.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

ACCUSATIONS

E brooks and Kesey found me a few hours later. When they arrived with the first wagonload of bodies for the day, they were puzzled to see the dead torches and only a single shroud remaining where they had left seven corpses the previous evening. Thinking I had somehow dug a new pit and begun to inter them on my own, they had walked out into the graveyard.