The stupid zombie didn’t understand it had been given a gift. It went down face-first and tried to chew the chain.

Lachlan laughed and jumped onto the bus frame. Light blue skin ran from his arms to his fists.

He punched a vent hole into a bigger problem and pulled a man out by his ankle.

The man hit the road and lost interest in holding the rifle steady. Lachlan took his muzzle and used it to tap the man asleep with one controlled strike.

Anselmo’s voice came from inside the shack. "Pull the pins. Now." Calm. No panic. The kind of tone that meant men would do it because life was better when they did.

Zubair cut the distance. The shack door swung and then stopped hard halfway—chain inside had caught on something.

Through the gap he saw darkness, a table, the glint of a coil of chain piled high, and Anselmo’s arm reaching past a crate for a lever on the far wall.

"I wouldn’t," Zubair warned him, his tone quiet.

Anselmo didn’t look back. "You are trespassing," he said, like he was reading a rule out of a manual. The lever came down.

On the far bank, four pins shot up from sockets and the leash poles fell in a rake.

Chains went slack. Twelve stupid zombies lurched forward as one ugly thought. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

The first hit the riverbank and rolled down into the water. The others followed like cattle that had never had their own ideas. Two made it into the current and vanished like they’d been erased; one got stuck on the bank and chewed a mouthful of mud before slipping away.

"Left line," Elias called, already turning.

"I see it," Alexei answered. He threw cold low and thin like wire across the top of the water where the bank dropped. The surface skinned.

The first stupid zombie hit it and skidded sideways into the next. Bodies tangled. Chains fouled together. One went under with a snapping sound as the group’s weight yanked its neck the wrong direction. The next tried to climb and found no purchase.

On the near bank, the cracked pole finally gave up. It tore free and went down. The chain snaked forward across the road with a noise that raised hair. The collar at the end still held.

The stupid zombie at the loop end dragged itself on hands and knees, white eyes bright with the one simple need it had been given. It came straight toward the lead truck.

Zubair stepped in front of the grille, planted his feet, and put up both hands. Heat built fast. The chain reached his boots and he rolled it with his toe so it wouldn’t brand through his laces.

The zombie lunged on the length of metal like a fish against a line. The moment he approached Zubair, it was like he hit a wall. Coming to a stop faster than anyone thought possible, it cocked its head to the side as it stared at him.

For two seconds, it seemed to be frozen. Then it turned and launched itself at the nearest human, ripping out his throat before following the body down to the ground and ripping through it.

"Left cutout sealed," Elias said. "Right cutout—clear."

"Roof—clear," Alexei added.

Lachlan’s laugh rolled bright across the lane. "This is my favorite toll booth."

"Shack," Zubair told them, and stepped through the gap.

Inside, it was a narrow room that pretended to be an office.

A desk built from two doors on barrels. A ledger with tidy figures. A rack of chains and collars—spares, clean and oiled. A radio on a crate.

Anselmo two paces from the back wall, the lever already down, his hand now on the pistol grip low on his thigh.

He drew fast and clean.

Zubair could have cooked the barrel and welded the slide shut. He didn’t. He burned the air an inch in front of the muzzle so the bullet met a hot wall at birth.

It bloomed and slapped back into the ejection port, breaking its own edge. The pistol choked. Anselmo’s eyes ticked down once. He let the gun hang and reached for the radio instead.

"Don’t," Zubair repeated.

Anselmo keyed the mic. "Forty-six. Toll. Breach."

The radio hissed. A far voice answered with distortion and dust. "Say again."

"Breach," Anselmo said. "Bridge. Two trucks. Five fighters. One—" He glanced at the gap, at the woman on the road who smiled like a knife. "One priority target. Send the cousins now."

The shack wood moved behind Zubair. Alexei slid in sideways, shoulders close to the frame, muzzle low. His eyes flicked once over the chains piled on the barrel and he breathed a small, unhappy sound.

"Don’t touch them," he told no one in particular. "They’re clean, but they smell like stupidity."

"Give me the radio," Zubair told Anselmo.

Anselmo smiled small. "If I don’t call, they come anyway. If I do call, they come faster." The smile didn’t reach his eyes. "You came to the river like the river cares."

Zubair stepped closer until the heat around him made the radio’s casing soften. Plastic flexed. The mic’s cord sagged. Anselmo’s fingers didn’t flinch. He watched Zubair watch him and lifted his chin like a man who had decided how he wanted to be seen as he lost.

"Last warning," Zubair advised.

"Last advice," Anselmo returned. "Turn around."

Behind them the fight hadn’t stopped.

A man tried to climb the bus cutout and Elias put him down with two measured shots.

Alexei’s slick at the far bank thickened to hold whatever had made it out of the water.

Lachlan hauled Pablo off the pickup hood by his belt and bounced him against the road hard enough to spit the air out of his lungs.

Sera stepped off the lead truck and walked to the center of the lane like she was going to take a picture for a postcard.

Zubair reached for the radio and took it. It didn’t fight. It stuck to his palm for a second and then let go, wires thinning and breaking when the heat got bored of pretending to be polite.

"Forty-six, report," the radio crackled in a new voice. It was clearly male. And very tense. "Report."

Zubair put the mic near his mouth. "Your toll booth is permanently closed," he said.