He Left Me to Die. Now I'll Survive Without Him! novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Convoy

It was a yellow school bus with half its windows boarded over.

It stopped thirty yards from the gate with its engine ticking, and nobody got out.

Eli and I stood behind the plow with the rifle and the shotgun.

Hank lifted the dozer blade a few inches, and the whole ridge went quiet.

A man in a county jacket opened the bus door and held up both hands.

"We're not armed!" he called. "We saw your fire! There's nineteen of us, and four are kids!"

"Bites?" I called.

"We don't know! We got no medic!"

"I'm a medic."

That quieted him.

"Then you're the first good news we've had all day," he said.

I looked at Eli.

He looked at the boy in the farmhouse window, and at the bus, and back at me.

"Your gate," he said. "Your call."

I nodded.

"Here's how it works," I called to the bus. "One at a time. Every person gets out, strips to the waist, and I check them. Anyone bitten or scratched stays outside. I won't argue, and I won't bargain."

"And if somebody's lying?"

"Then they're dead by morning, and I'll be the one who shoots them."

A murmur went through the bus.

Nobody left.

Then a woman with a baby on her hip stepped down.

"Me first," she said. "He hasn't got a mark on him. Check him."

I checked her baby, and then the woman, and then the next.

I went down the line in the cold with a flashlight in my teeth, looking at ribs, wrists, ankles, and the backs of necks.

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