Cowboy Zombie — The Battlefield Z series

A good leader rows the hoes, she scribbled on the lined pages of a fresh new notebook. She had found it on a shelf, the paper fresh and untouched, took it because it would make a good fire starter.

Then she thought to record their journey and began making notes instead. A place to store her thoughts. A record of what they hoped to do.

She didn’t know why, she snickered as she stared at the words on the page, crisp clean lines from her hand. Hoes the rows. Her father had never been a farmer, had never grown anything in his life except for the enmity of men who hated him.

But he liked to use old sayings and short quotes sometimes, and how the row was one of them. She knew what it meant. Line things up and knock them down. Do the project in order. A building assembled on a poor foundation would rot and fall. Hoe the row.

She supposed row the hoe would work too. Not literally, but line up the people and get them to pull together toward a common goal. Their own safety.

The door behind her opened and Jacob stepped through. She caught a look from him and had a moment to wonder what it meant as he crossed the town hall floor and settled on the bench beside her.

“They’re starting to get restless again,” he said.