He hadn't had the radio on at all, nothing but sound and silence and the thick, wet smell of dirt drying out in the heat and the little book with its pages full of people. If he'd lost his mind some, it was maybe driving too long in that truck without stopping much on eating and sleeping, and the way the blade in the back was all wrapped up with a handkerchief gone rust-brown. The first one had come on up, lurching and shuffling like someone who'd done themselves a harm and he'd leaned out the roll-down window and hollered, polite, to ask the way to the nearest town.
Then he'd seen the face of that dead man and whatever haint hung about from thirteen years gone by, it was wiped out with a new one that made his stomach back itself unpleasantly right up in his throat. He leaned on out the roll-up and he shot - no hesitation, just bang, right off and the dead thing went down with a wet sound, like paint. And then the rest of them shuffled on in.
The truck now was surrounded, two-men deep. They were clawing at the lip of the roll-down windows and Jake, he was crammed far back in his seat as it would go, with the gun tilted toward the window, his breath held like burning in his chest and his face messy-damp. He figured he was good and gone, dead, except dead here was up and walking and that didn't tally any with the God his grandma had put into his head with church and praying and singing. God wasn't here, and he'd frozen on the words to praying, and he had his finger locked against the trigger and his eyes half-closed and he figured dead was better than letting them get at him.]