The Return Man: Civilisation’s Gone. He’s Stayed to Bury the Dead. by V. M. Zito

did not matter. Now that he’d at last located the American team after weeks of hard tracking–during which he’d half starved for lack of proper supplies, burrowing and sleeping in holes under boulders like a mangy desert fox–Wu was more than ready to complete this first stage of the mission.
    Exterminate the Americans. Then move on to his next target.
    Doctor Henry Marco.
    ‘Hey,’ Wu said to the nearest corpse. ‘
Gen wo zou
.’
    Come with me.
4.2
    The dead male’s eyes widened, pink and veiny. From twenty paces away it staggered towards Wu, one skeletal hand outstretched–or not quite a hand. A thumb and four mangled nubs where the fingers had been bitten off. Wu turned, satisfied the corpse would follow, and jogged ten steps towards the entrance of the mountain trail. He paused at the trailhead, beside a brown wooden sign etched with faded yellow letters:
LOST DUTCHMAN STATE PARK
TRAIL 53, SIPHON DRAW 1.6 MILE
FLATIRON 2.4 MILE
STAY ON TRAIL, STAY SAFE
    Wise advice
, Wu thought.
    He waved encouragingly to the pack of corpses creeping up behind him.
    ‘
Guhn whu zoe
. Follow me!’
    And they did, farther and farther up the trail. All he had to do was keep a safe distance, stop every dozen metres to let them
almost
catch up, keep them interested. Each time he allowed them close enough so that he could see their shrivelled faces hungering for him–black tongues hanging from black mouths like dogs–and then he sped up again, trotting out of reach as behind him the corpses barked grunts of frustration. He’d led them almost two miles now. Once again he found himself admiring the dead. They were persistent. Refusing to accept defeat.
    The trail wove upward around a series of switchbacks, cutting between yellow carpets of desert marigolds and the rough ashen stubble of unflowered brittlebrush. A spiny-feathered bird, a roadrunner, dashed across the path into the scrub to the west. Gradually the crags in the surrounding cliff seemed to separate, and a massive peak angled into view, still far above.
    ‘Flatiron’, the peak was called, where the Americans had established their lookout onto the valley. Down where Wu stood, the trail dipped into a smooth rock basin, worn by the elements; on the opposite side, the rock sloped upwards again, leading to the base of a long natural staircase–steep, staggered plateaus of stone ascending another few thousand feet to the summit.
    Long way to go. Longer than he’d remembered. He drewa sustained breath and cursed. No lonely workout on the StairMaster in Boston could have prepared him for this.
    He heard a pebble kick past his feet and realised he’d lost focus while bemoaning the climb ahead. The corpses had gained ground. With a scowl he resumed his climb, jogging forwards just as the slavering pack staggered into the basin behind him.
    Anxious for the first time, he hurried to the start of the Flatiron staircase and skipped up the bottom step. For a hundred metres, all seemed well. The corpses were easy to outpace on the uneven stones, tripping over loose rubble and roots. The naked male flailed its arms and sprawled flat across the path, face first and hard; with an audible pop, its bloated stomach burst against the jutting rock, spraying a gassy jet of blood and slime onto the dirt. But the corpse rose quickly, teeth gnashing, stubborn and starving, its abdomen gaping open like a window into its gut. The other corpses, too–stumbling, rising, rejoining the chase without pause.
    Midway up the steps, Wu began to worry. The dead hikers were tireless, moving as well now as they had half an hour ago. Perhaps they were even faster, as if spurred by frustration. He didn’t know whether they experienced pain–whether the dead’s physiology subjected them to the same fire of lactic acid that consumed living athletes–but, if so, they ignored it.
    His own legs, however, burned like torches. He was aware of moving slower, no longer outrunning the corpses. They trailed closer