Undead Ultra (A Zombie Novel) by Camille Picott

for their annual fundraiser.”
    “They made quite a few kegs together, if I remember correctly.”
    “Three. And he never let Carter drink any of it. ‘Not until you’re twenty-one,’ he’d say. There’s one keg left in our garage. After Kyle died, Carter couldn’t part with it.”
    Frederico halts. He stoops, bending down to stick his hand into a patch of weeds. When he straightens, there’s a railroad spike in his hand.
    He holds it out to me. “Take it.”
    I obey, hefting the chunk of rusted metal in my hand.
    “I was with Kyle the night he had to come to grips with the fact that his son wanted to make alcohol. I’m going to tell you what I told him that night: you go the extra mile for your kids. You dig deep, get over yourself, and do whatever you have to do to support them. For Kyle, that meant helping Carter make beer. For you, that means sucking it up and learning how to bash the brains out of undead fuckers.
    “Remember when you ran the Western States One Hundred and your shoe came off at the Rucky Chucky river crossing? It got swept downstream and we discovered you had accidentally left your spare shoes at home.”
    I nod. Forgetting my second pair of shoes had been a complete rookie move.
    “You ran fifteen miles to the Highway Forty-Nine aid station with only one shoe,” Frederico says. “Kyle spent that time bartering with the other crews to get you a replacement. Your foot looked like hell when you arrived. When I asked you how you ran all that way without a shoe, you told me that you just put your head down and focused on your goal. Remember that?”
    “Yes,” I whisper. Kyle had cracked jokes about me losing pieces of my mind on all the training runs I had done. Meanwhile, he had lovingly cleaned my foot and doused the cuts and abrasions with peroxide.
    I recall the extreme focus and determination I’d summoned on that race. I’d wanted so badly to finish under twenty-four hours. The shoe fiasco had set me back, and the one-hundred-mile course ended up taking me twenty-seven hours to complete. But I had finished. I hadn’t quit. I hadn’t let the setback or the pain stop me.
    “That’s all you need to do here,” Frederico says. “Put your head down and focus on your goal. Bashing in some zombie skulls should be a walk in the park for a woman who can trail run with only one shoe.”
    Again, I nod. I’ve done a lot of crazy things on races, but running fifteen miles without a shoe was definitely at the front of the nut job train.
    “You’ve got the mettle for a post-apocalyptic world,” Frederico says. “Stop thinking you’re a helpless first-world woman who can’t survive more than twelve seconds without her smartphone. Be the tough runner who endures utter hell to get a job done. That’s who you need to be.”
    Frederico’s words are like a slap of water in my face. They snap me out of my self-pity, reminding me that I’m capable and tough. My grip tightens on the railroad spike.
    Maybe he’s right. Maybe I am cut out for this world.
    “Do you understand what I’m saying?” he asks.
    “Yeah.” I slide the spike into the front strap on my running pack. It fits snugly and is easy to pull out in a pinch. “Carter needs me. I have to put on my big-girl pants and get this done. No matter what.”
    I can feel my mental space shifting. I find the place that exists deep inside me—that place of impenetrable toughness that helps me endure long runs and prolonged physical pain.
    Frederico, who’s watching my face, sees the shift. “That’s my girl.” He pats my shoulder. “Kyle would be proud.”
    “He’d tell us we’re batshit crazy,” I reply, lips quirking. “Do you remember when he showed up at the American River Fifty dressed in that gorilla suit?”
    Frederico laughs. “The Cal Trans orange gorilla suit? Yeah, that was grand. He thought a good laugh would get you to the end of that race.”
    “I got a PR in that race. Never ran a fifty miler in under ten