Come morning, light creeping through the loose slats of the barn's walls, Henry found Annie already saddling their horses. He couldn't say how long she had been awake, but she had already kicked out the fire and a cooling cup of coffee sat beside him, waiting to tug the gossamer strings of half-sleep from his mind. He appreciated that. As he drank in silence, he watched as Annie checked her extensive arsenal of weapons.

He tossed the last dregs of the coffee onto the remains of the fire and rolled up his bedroll, attaching it to the saddle of his horse, packing the cup into the saddlebag. A cold strip of salted beef was all he had to break fast and Annie led her horse to the closed doors of the barn. A glance through the slats was all she needed to check that they hadn't become overrun by Drifters in the night.

The Sun already blazed down upon soil baked by previous days of unrelenting sunshine and Henry took a hesitant look around the corral. The man had died during the night and now the corpse shifted against the wood pile Annie had tied him to the night before. Fingers of the remaining hand reached out toward them, pale, unnatural eyes fixed upon them as it hissed and moaned, fighting against the bindings that held the former living being to the post.

Henry wished he could put the creature out of its misery, but he doubted Annie would allow it. She, however, did not look toward the man that had, allegedly, killed Annabelle Potter and her family. Her eyes had other things to assess. Things that could prove a potent excuse to stay firmly within the confines of the corral. At least for a little while.

Drifters had congregated during the night. Far more than the few dozen that had infested the corral the day before. The gates at either end of the open space strained as the dead pushed and fell against each other and the fence, the appearance of Henry and Annie only giving them more impetus to reach the inner part of the homestead. Annie patted her horse's neck as she took in the dilemma.

"Take the horses far over yonder." She handed him the reins of her horse and pointed toward a point far from the house and barn. "Keep your revolver handy and be ready to race thataway. You'll know when."

With that, she turned back toward the house that now only held the remains of the twice-dead, pitchfork in hand. Henry did not hesitate. The place where Annie had pointed held far fewer of the dead than at any other point. As though there still remained some modicum of understanding within their rotted brains that ingress occurred best at the gates.

Even so, as he reached that rallying point, far from the house, his skin began to crawl at the sibilant hissing of the creatures beyond the fence. A fence that creaked and groaned as the dead reached toward Henry as he approached. With the pistol in his sweaty hand, he mounted his horse, trying to keep one eye on the nearby Drifters as well as toward the house, wondering what Annie intended to extricate them from this tenuous situation.

But Annie was no longer in the house. Henry's head whipped from side to side, moving from the house, to the gate at the far end of the corral, and back again. There she stood, leaning away from the reaching, clasping fingers of the Drifters as she began unfastening the gate. Henry's heart began to pound at the sight. One mistake and the herd would tear her apart, whether she had immunity to the disease they carried or not.

Then he saw something else, back at the house, and he understood her plan. A plume of smoke began to curl out of the open door. Thick, black and roiling. Twisting as it found release from the confines of the four walls, rising high above the shingles and the stone smokestack that now also had a twin of that plume of smoke burgeoning from its square mouth. That, alone, would not catch the attention of the drifters.

Flames began to erupt upon the roof of the house, spreading with far greater speed than would normally achieve, but Henry suspected Annie had added fuel to the flames. Every home held lanterns and lamps, powered by oil that had become far more precious in these dark times. Hoarded and kept for times of greater need. Times when candles could not suffice and families needed to hold the cold darkness at bay. Annie had found and used that supply and, soon, the house became engulfed in flame.

Such a tactic would have worked far better at night, drawing the attention of the Drifters with far better ease, but it appeared enough for now. Even here, with the dead clawing outstretched hands toward Henry, he saw pallid, lifeless eyes turning toward the flames. Not all eyes, for certain, but enough and enough was always better than none.

As the house became an inferno the noise of the dead began to grow, the chance of finding fresh meat near the flames drawing their eyes toward the fire. As Annie had demonstrated the day before, the dead did not distinguish well between stimuli. Noises distracted them, greater displays of movement, brighter objects, like this fire, turned their eyes. They had no critical thinking remaining, acting only on pure instinct and the need to feed. Nothing human remained in the decaying corpses that would not stay dead.

Annie had opened the gate and now began to run toward Henry, hand holding her hat to her head, the other carrying the pitchfork that thrust and withdrew with every pump of her arm. She had to run. Not all the Drifters had their attention held by the billowing smoke and flames of the farmhouse. Some, not many, but enough, had chosen to follow Annie and that brought them Henry's way.

It never failed to amaze Henry how the Drifters could shamble along one moment, taking dragging, fumbling steps, and then, the very next moment, break into a run that rivalled that of the humans they pursued. Arms outstretched before them, the Drifters that followed Annie snarled as they tried to clutch at her, even though she had a good twenty yards of empty space between them. That space would fill soon enough, though, as Annie reached Henry and clambered into her saddle, drawing her own pistol.

"Has all that book learning soiled your brain?" She waved the revolver toward the open gate, where the last stragglers of the Drifter herd stumbled their way into the corral. "I said race thataway! Soon as you saw the damned signal!" God damn ..."

She paused in her berating of Henry to thrust her pitchfork into the skull of a Drifter that had arrived before the others. Henry covered his mouth at the sickening sucking sound as she pulled the pitchfork's tines out of the Drifter's head and it collapsed to the ground. That still left another three that had found Annie a far more interesting prospect than the house fire.

"I'm sorry ... I ..." He could tell nothing he said could excuse his tardiness. Annie had already whipped the head of her horse around. "Look out!"

He tried to cock the pistol, the hammer slipping from under his thumb, so slick with sweat his hand had become. He didn't know if Annie had survived her other bites by sheer luck, or whether she did hold some form of immunity, but he didn't want to take that chance. Yet, as the Drifter launched itself toward Annie's leg, Henry could not find the strength to set his weapon ready to fire.

He had no need to. Annie kicked out at the Drifter, but it only sent it stumbling back a foot or so. The dead felt no pain, did not let anything stop them from reaching their meal, if they had a chance to feed on the bodies they once called kin, they would. It recovered its balance and rushed forward once more. This time, Annie was ready for it.

With her pitchfork on the wrong side, that left only Annie's pistol left to defend herself and Henry saw the grimace upon her face as the black powder thunder cracked across the corral. The Drifter's head snapped backward, black, fetid liquid oozing from the bullet hole and down its back, where the crater that was once the back of its head spread out in a spray behind it. That one, life-saving gunshot had consequences.

The fascination of the flames were not near as fascinating to the dead as sounds that only the living could make. Almost as one, the herd of Drifters that had congregated around the inferno of the farmhouse now turned toward the sound of the gunshot. Wracked, broken bodies began to turn. Rotted skin upon decaying flesh flapped as the dead began to move, at a pace, toward that sound.

"God damn it!" Annie loosed another two rounds, the need for silent kills long since passed, and the remaining Drifters that had followed her dropped to the dusty, packed soil. "Ride!"

Henry needed no more encouragement. As Annie spurred her horse to an immediate gallop, he followed suit, hunkering down over the neck of his horse, his spectacles bouncing upon his nose. He gripped his derby hat to his head as they both raced toward the open gate. The ear-smashing sounds of her pistol firing causing Henry to jump in the saddle every time.

He felt the horse bump into something and saw a Drifter, bereft of both arms, spiral away from colliding with the horse. With a glance, Henry saw Annie reach the gate and then jump from her horse before she even came to a stop.

"What are you doing?" He looked over his shoulder to see a veritable horde of Drifters heading their way. "We can outrun them!"

"They got our scent now. They'll follow all the way to Hell itself if'n we don't keep 'em bottled up til they lose interest." She kicked a Drifter out of the way as she dragged the gate back toward its post. "Nothin' worse'n a herd of Drifters following you everywhere. Never get nothin' done."

Another shot rang out, this time one from Henry's pistol, the deafening sound, in itself, enough to cause shakes throughout Henry's body, but also the kick of the gun sending ripples up his arm, rattling his brain. This Colt was far removed from Henry's Deringer two-shot pistol and he feared he had torn a muscle through its use.

He had fired true, however, whether through judgement or luck, he could not say. The Drifter that had almost placed filthy, clawed fingers upon Annie, fell to the ground. Henry had almost missed, the shot passing through only one side of the creature's skull, but it was enough to give Annie time to close the gate, fastening it tight as the majority of the herd reached it.

"Thank you kindly." She jumped back into her saddle, the horse stomping its feet as it turned in a circle and Annie looked to Henry from beneath the curled brim of her hat. "But if'n you don't do as I say next time, you'll have more'n the dead to worry about. Understand?"

"Yes, ma'am." That look brooked no arguments.

As she turned her horse to head away up the dirt road, Henry looked back to the corral. The house continued to burn, smoke creating a pillar of black that stretched into the sky before higher winds caught it, sending it drifting away. The herd of Drifters fought against the gate that barred their way from their meal and Henry couldn't see it standing up to them for long. Hopefully long enough.

And there, in the centre of the corral, the man that Annie had tied to a post still sat there, arm and stump flailing, only one hand scratching at the air. It's head flopped this way and that and Henry recalled that the man had sought forgiveness in his final moments. Forgiveness that Annie refused to give and Henry not the authority. The dead took the living in this world, that man now numbered among them and they would not forgive him, either.