[The horn made his heart climb up inside his throat and squeeze itself through his teeth. Loud, and the dead, they were real fond of sound and he'd seen exactly how they said hello and Jake didn't stop so much as he slammed on brakes into a long skid, burned tires on dried out asphalt.
Except above loomed the sign for the town and Jake, he wasn't dumb even if he did daydream through every class in school but the one. The horn meant 'attention', and the sign meant 'next town on', and the truck jerked into gear and juddered along close enough and he pulled over in the shadow of another gas station on its outskirts with cars out front, all abandoned.
He sat in his seat, cold sweat drying stickily to him and his shirt cleaving to his skin at the back and the gun tight in his hand and his breathing real fast starting to slow back down. The dead folks, they were probably here too, and Jake shuddered and took a long look in the back, where the weapons sat. Dead was different when it wasn't a person living and then gone, right off. Dead lumbering around like the kind of movies he watched when he was younger, the kind that made him dream different for a week after - that was a new nightmare all its own.
And whether his legs would work right once he opened the door, Jake wasn't real certain on, so he sat a mite longer, waiting out the betrayal of his shaking hands and the progress of the man who wanted to be called father.]