Billy Sunday stood guard while the two natives made sure everything was okay with the picket line. The plants still focused on him. He represented an unknown threat to their creators.

He had pegged them as smart as a dog. Even dogs snapped at people who stood too close to their loved ones. He didn't want this whole line to start spraying him with whatever they used for bullets. He didn't need any more holes in his head.

“I think that Dave is going to want to meet you, Mister Sunday,” said the woman. She made sure everything was packed on the cart. “There's probably going to be talk about how you got here. There hasn't been strangers arriving in the settlement in years.”

“Decades,” said the man who had come with the cart. “The last was before I was born according to the records.”

“I don't how I can help you,” said Billy. “We wound up here because of a fluke. As far as I know, it was one way.”

“I feel like Dave is going to at least try to look at where you started,” said the woman. “It's possible that we will die out under the constant attacks by the husks.”

“This used to be a thriving forest,” explained the other settler. “Slowly everything died off around us while we worked on making our plants into our loyal shields. There's talk of other places that survived the Drought. Dave might want to launch an expedition to such an area.”

Billy frowned at the information. He didn't want to tell them that his team had come through a door that closed behind them, but he also didn't want to get their hopes up. How long would the people last in the desert with the zombies trying to kill them every night?

What about their plants? He didn't expect them to keep any of the people alive against a sustained rush attack.

His team had run through half their bullets just dealing with one night of problems.

“Let's get you back to town,” said the woman. “Your friends probably think we killed you and buried you out here in the desert.”

“Where we came from,” said Billy. “I don't think there's any way to get back there from here. The only reason we stumbled on your river was because we had nothing to lose by crossing the desert.”

“Dave will probably still want to know everything you saw getting here,” said the woman. “He'll want to assess the risks.”

“The captain will probably be able to give a better report than I can,” said Sunday. “There was a set of columns surrounded by the same plants you have here. As soon as the husks showed up to attack us, the plants fended them off. We set a few of the zombies on fire. They didn't seem to like that.”

“Only a few of our plants can throw fire at the enemy,” said the woman. “The husks charge our line even when they are on fire.”

“Especially when they are on fire,” said the man. He shuddered. “They go right for whomever set them alight.”

“They should run away, or in circles, but they just attack all the harder,” said the woman. “Freezing them seems to slow them down for regular seeds to work.”

The three of them walked along the river bank. The cart followed behind them, four legs carrying it along at their back.

Billy kept an eye on the desert on the other side of the plants. He didn't see anything moving. He was sure he could find the columns if the settlers wanted him to do that. He had taken a reading by the sun.

He doubted he could get a group there before the husks met them out there on the sand. He didn't have enough bullets, or grenades, to protect a large group if all they had were the plants as weapons.

On the other hand, a man in good condition might be able to kill a few of the things with a spear and knife.

“You said these columns had the same type plants as ours?,” asked the man.

“They had grown wild around the stone,” said Billy. “Maybe the wind carried seed out that way. They knew enough to target us when we got too close, and then the husks when they showed up.”

“I always wondered if we could spread the plants everywhere to form islands in the desert,” said the man.

“I don't where they were getting their water,” said Billy. “I didn't see any.”

“They might have grown to maximize whatever they could forage,” said the man. “And they might have been able to push their roots down to a water supply under the ground.”

Billy thought about the assessment. Both of those things were possible. The only way to know for sure was to dig the plants up. He didn't see that being a good idea in the light of the way they shot at you as soon as you were close enough.

“There's the town up ahead,” said the woman. “Welcome to Garden.”

Billy nodded. He made notes of the direction of travel as they led him up out of the river bed to a walled enclosure. Four rows of plants swayed at the bottom of the wall. Breaking out would require either traveling down the river, or getting through the plants and heading cross country.

Spotter towers stood at the corners of the wall. People scanned the desert for anything new. They had probably seen the team coming down from the river source before the mercenaries spotted the dock heading into the water.

Billy wondered where they had acquired the wood for their wall. He didn't ask any questions. They had probably grown it in the desert somehow.

“How long have you had a zombie problem?,” asked Billy.

“The last few seasons,” said the man. “They seem to concentrate during our growing season to keep our plant numbers down.”

“But they don't seem smart enough to concentrate on a time,” said Billy. The two nodded the expected confirmation.

He didn't like that. It could mean that the attacks were cyclical in nature, and happened at the same time because it was the right time. It could mean that someone knew when the harvest time was and had decided to send some of his friends to mess things up for the settlers.

He liked the first option over the second because you could get ready and line up a defense against something that you knew was happening. Florida knew that Summer/Fall was hurricane season, so people secured supplies to lock their homes down. The zombies showed up at the same time, so you lined up your defenses to repel them that time of the year while trying to harvest what you needed to get by.

A brain meant someone had declared war on the Garden and hadn't told anyone. He could keep sending his troublemakers until they broke into the walled town and started attacking the people.

The plants were probably so effective at killing the zombies, it didn't look like a real threat to the walled town. How many zombies would it take to break through?

Did his supposed mastermind have enough zombies to keep trying until he succeeded? Where was he getting the bodies?

Billy doubted the town allowed their dead to remain whole in the face of the threat they were under. So where would a mastermind get enough bodies to make zombies in waves in the middle of the desert?

“Do you bury your bodies?,” asked Billy. He knew he shouldn't ask a question like that, but the idea of the zombie maker just raiding graveyards didn't seem right.

“We burn our dead and use them to grow the plants,” said the woman. “Why?”

“We saw at least a hundred of the husks rushing at us,” said Billy. “I thought for a second that someone could make them out of people but would he have enough to do that. The numbers bothered me.”

“They could be plants, Mister Sunday,” said the man. “If they were, you could grow them under specific conditions to meet whatever standard you have. The problem is they are mobile. We've never been able to do that ourselves.”

“So they could be plants that look like people,” said Billy. “We didn't let them get close enough to see what made them tick.”

“That was a good decision,” said the man. “We don't have an explanation of what they do, why they do it, or why they don't hunt somewhere else. We do know they will kill anyone they can run down.”

“We have found people over the plant line with their brains missing,” said the woman. “It's always the young.”

Billy nodded. That made sense. Kids never took warnings seriously until something bad happened to them. The missing brains were a new wrinkle that he didn't like at all.

Did the monsters eat the brains, or take them back home?

The gate swung open to let them in. The woman waved at the tower guards to let them know everything was okay.

“I'm going to take the cart back to the supply center, Alfree,” said the man. He tapped the cart to follow him as he separated from the group. “This has been the most excitement the town has had in a bit.”

“Thanks for your help, Herb,” said Alfree. “I'll come by to help with the new plantings tomorrow.”

“I think we might be gearing up to go to war, Alfree,” said Herb. “I don't know if there will be new plantings.”

“There will be new plantings,” said Alfree. “We can't go to war without them.”

“We'll see,” said Herb. “It was nice to meet you, Mister Sunday.”

He led the cart away toward what looked like a greenhouse pressed up against the wall. People and carts milled around as they tried to return supplies to storage.

“Dave will probably be talking to your friends in the town hall,” said Alfree. “let's try there first. Then we can ask around for where Sheeva took them.”

Billy mapped the area as they walked through it. The biggest impediments were the guard towers, but they weren't ready for people breaking out. They were set for things trying to get in, and dumb things at that. If his friends were allowed to keep their weapons, they would go for the weakest area and make their own exit.

Would Spinnelli want to stay here? It was safe, there were supplies, and the people seemed nonthreatening. They would place a burden on the settlers, but they could pull their own weight with the skills they had.

And how hard could farming be when you had everything in front of you?

And they were used to hard work under hot suns with little pay. That was some of the reasons they had been fighting in the jungle in the first place.

Billy examined the town hall as they walked toward it. It was a small central fort inside of the enclosure. He noted that the greenhouse sat behind it, butting on the wall.

He imagined if the rows of plants failed outside the wall, and the husks got inside, the town could retreat to a building next to where their supply of untested weapons were stockpiled. Then numbers would decide who won.

If the husks got that close, he didn't see things going well for the town.

He wondered how many knew how to use a spear, or knife. He doubted that the whole town depended on their watchdogs to carry the line. Some of them had to know how to fight even if it was just on a basic level.

Cap could probably sell them on some basic hand to hand, some weapons training of some kind, maybe setting up some kind of early watch to let the town know about the next invasion.

He wondered how much the town knew about fighting. They seemed to have defenses down all right, but they needed some kind of offense if they wanted to wipe out the source of zombies roaming the land.

Billy ignored the plants looking at him. He was on their turf. He didn't have anything to worry about unless he did something threatening.

Alfree took him inside the town hall, past a central space he supposed was for community get-togethers, and to an office on the second floor of the place. You couldn't quite see over the wall, but he supposed that was what the third floor and the tower were for.

He noted the array of plants around the windows. Maybe the zombies would have a tougher time getting into this building than he thought.

The rest of his team sat outside in the hall. They held their weapons close, but they should know the odds as well as he did. If they caused any sort of ruckus, the plants on either end of the hall would light them up. If they got out of the enclosed space, they would have to cross an open area full of the things.

They wouldn't make it.

It was better to talk than fight in this situation.