Chapter Seventeen: Kicking with All One’s Might

"I wonder if those two assholes will even make it out of Ennis alive after heading back."

Madison muttered, starting the engine of the T-Rex. As the vehicle gradually picked up speed, Gavin pulled out his phone to check the battery—seventy-six percent remaining.

Scrolling through various social media sites without looking up, Gavin spoke. "What, got attached to them after just one meeting?"

"Are you kidding? I just... I just think it feels pretty good to see living people in the apocalypse."

"It is, indeed. I actually hope to run into more people; after all, people in this day and age are temporarily much easier to handle than zombies."

As he replied, Gavin slightly turned up the volume on the video so Madison could hear the audio. It was a chaotic mess of roars, screams, explosions, and the shrill blaring of car horns.

Madison swerved to avoid a headless corpse lying on the road and asked, "Where is this?"

"San Francisco."

"What about Los Angeles? I want to know what happened to Hollywood."

"Let me look." Gavin flipped through for a moment, then landed on a video showing a massive fire. He showed it to Madison. "As you wish. Hollywood Hills—the blaze started from Beverly Hills."

At this, Gavin shook his head with a smile. "If we have nowhere to go in the future, Hollywood might be a decent choice. Who knows, maybe this fire will wipe out every zombie in the area!"

"Ha, I like that joke. Those stars don't even have to break a sweat; they can earn more than we do just by crawling into producers' and directors' beds."

"More than *you*, maybe. They've got a long way to go before they can compare to me."

Gavin tossed the comment out casually and patted Madison's arm. They had already passed the corpse by nearly three kilometers.

"Slow down up ahead. Let me check the situation."

Gavin said this while rolling down the window, raising his 8x scope to peer into the darkness and faint light on the right side of the road.

Seeing this, Madison whispered, "Right, this is also a small town, isn't it? What's it called—Pal-something?"

"Palmer. A tiny little town, quite a ways off the main road. It grew around the Palmer Farm on the edge of the forest."

"I came here with my family to buy a cow when I was six. The Palmer Farm cows won the gold medal at the Houston cow competition that year. But after I grew up, they turned the farm into a resort to rake in the cash."

Finishing his thought, Gavin lowered the scope and pulled out a Dallas map he’d scavenged from a gas station. After a quick glance, he murmured, "Highway 45 splits into two before Ennis. One runs right through the center of town."

"The other stays to the left, passes the Ennis drive-in theater, and skirts the edge of town."

"We..." Gavin paused for a moment. Then, his expression blank, he said, "We’ll wait for a while at the junction before Ennis. There’s something I want to verify."

"Ha, I knew you were a good boss. Cold-blooded killers like Jordan don't hold a candle to the warmth of the King of Cowboys!" Madison laughed, his face jiggling.

"If you ask me, that bastard Eugene will definitely survive a long time in the apocalypse. At least longer than the little cop."

"Besides, who knows how many people are left in the States? What if the four of us are the only ones left in all of Dallas? If those two are around, at least we can make the little cop do our laundry!"

"Who knows?" Gavin narrowed his eyes noncommittally and tapped the town of Ennis on the map. "I just want to see if those two idiots turn Ennis into a total disaster. If there’s a chance, it’d be best to use the zombie activity in Ennis to sum up some experience for dealing with small-town hordes."

With that, Gavin put the map away, leaned back, and lit a cigarette. Madison let out a grunt and continued driving at sixty miles per hour.

After traveling steadily for nearly eight kilometers, a set of headlights suddenly appeared in the distance!

"Woo-hoo!"

The moment he saw the high beams, Madison patted the steering wheel and laughed. "I knew those two assholes would make it out alive. They’re lucky bastards, just like us!"

"Are they?" Gavin quietly sat up, frowned at the lights, and asked Madison, "Look closer. Can that piece-of-shit Ford produce lights that bright?"

"What? You mean that's not them?" Madison was surprised, then squinted into the distance.

One look was all it took.

*Whoosh...*

The headlights in the distance had turned from one set into two, and the second set was flickering left and right, which looked quite eerie.

"There are two cars!" Madison finally got serious, taking his right hand off the steering wheel to grip his lever-action shotgun.

Beside him, Gavin nodded. "Two cars, but the second one’s lights look a lot like the Ford from before."

As he spoke, he raised his 8x scope. Ignoring the blinding glare, Gavin used his exceptional eyesight to discern the details, then wore a wry expression. "That looks like an RV, and the Ford is behind it. Are they actually still alive?"

"Fuck, you can see that clearly?" Madison gaped in surprise, then, seeming to recall something, asked with a strange look on his face, "But why would they be chasing that RV?"

"How should I know? Let's get closer and see."

Gavin gestured forward. Madison immediately accelerated, the T-Rex engine roaring as the speedometer climbed to 150 mph.

In less than half a minute, Madison began to decelerate, and the RV finally intersected with the T-Rex.

"Help! Help me!"

When the two vehicles were just over ten meters apart, a slightly hoarse female voice came from the driver's seat of the RV.

The moment the voice rang out, Madison perked up. "Holy shit, a woman!"

He looked at Gavin, who was frowning. "Forget about the woman! Look at the state of that RV, for fuck's sake!"

"The glass is shattered, the body is covered in blood and scratches, and there's the upper half of a zombie stuck to the front bumper!"

"What?"

By the time Madison realized and tried to look, the two vehicles had already passed each other, and even the old Ford had zoomed by the T-Rex.

From the Ford, a shrill, piercing scream rang out.

And what William was screaming was...

"DADDY!!!"

*Skree!*

Madison drifted sharply, pulling a U-turn on the road, and sped off in pursuit of the Ford.

Both the RV and the Ford were going fast—at least 130 mph, which was over 200 kilometers per hour. But for the modified T-Rex, such speeds were child's play.

In the blink of an eye, the T-Rex overtook them, pulling up alongside the Ford's passenger side.

Madison rolled down his window and shouted to the Ford, "What happened, shorty?"

"Fuck! My little William's shitty dad is stuck to the bumper of that RV!" Eugene gripped the steering wheel and shouted back, then kicked William, who kept trying to stomp on the gas pedal. "Fuck you, William! We can't go any faster! Do you think this is a Koenigsegg? It's just a Ford—a fucking second-hand Ford!"

"Ahhh, that's my dad!!!"

William was completely catatonic. His wailing gave even Madison goosebumps.

Madison turned back to Gavin and muttered sheepishly, "I suddenly don't want to team up with that kid anymore. Not only is he green, he's a bit of a psycho..."

"Don't be a smartass. Go check out that RV. I like RVs; they're perfect for the apocalypse!"

As Gavin instructed, he gestured, and Madison immediately accelerated, pulling ahead of the RV in a flash to position himself by the driver's side.

"Help! I don't know how to drive! Help!!!"

The moment they appeared beside the RV, the woman driving it cried out in panic to Gavin.

Gavin took two looks, and his expression soured.

The person driving wasn't an adult at all—it was a girl, looking no older than thirteen!

Gavin quickly rolled down his window and shouted at the child, "Shut up! Lift your feet!"

"What?"

"Don't move your hands, just lift your feet!"

Gavin didn't ask about the gas or the brakes; he just told the girl to lift her feet.

To be running at that speed, had this kid's foot pushed the accelerator all the way into the fuel tank?