Prologue

Savannah, Georgia: October 22, 2009

The smell of burning city filled the air.

There were screams; the screams of timber falling, buildings crumbling, of metal twisting from the heat, bent into forms it was never intended to take.

And there were screams of... other things, cries that drifted from the city and mixed with the smoke.

Certainly no humans, the soldier reflected, from his safe spot off the shore. They'd all been evac'd out, right?

Only things on fire in there were buildings and monsters, he thought, their wailing rising to the sky with the ashes.

Burn em' all and scrub the world clean, he figured, do them and us both a favor.

"They're bombing the place after they torch it, you know," said the soldier's companion, gazing over the flickering, orange-tinted sea. The first soldier shrugged.

"Let 'em."

"Pity about the mall," sighed the second soldier. "Heard Jimmy Gibbs Jr. was doing an appearance before the 'flu hit."

The first soldier shook his head. "Damn shame. You think he got out alright?"

"Eh, celebrities are always the first ones out," the second man said, waving it away. "Heh. Probably hightailed out in that racecar of his."

"Yeah."

There was silence between them, and the sounds of fire, screams, and water hitting the sides of the boat filled the gap, for a time being.

Then:

"Y'know..."

"Yeah?"

"You think there might be..somebody in there? Still in Savannah, alive?"

There was a pregnant pause.

"Nothin' worth saving, Al.

Nothin' worth saving."

? ? ? ? ? ?, Ohio

"Russ?"

"What is it, Skip?"

"Maybe we can take a shortcut."

" What?"

"Y'know, off the beaten path."

"No."

"Look, I know it's crazy, but… hear me out. It's hitting dark. And the last thing we need is to trip over a Savage or something because we can't damn well see what's in front of us."

"I know, but…"

'C'mon, bro! We need to get to the safehouse. It's just an alley."

"Don't bro me. I know perfectly goddamn well we need to get to a safehouse. It's just-"

"What?"

"Something about it… something in my gut tells me it's not a good idea. We should stick to the plan."

"Plan, schpam. We don't have any time. And your gut? Really? What now, old man, are you getting holy revelations in that bean-stuffed stomach of yours?"

"Ok, old man is going a little far, it's only 5 years between us!"

"Whatever, oldster. Let's just take it as it comes. It'll cut it in half,and Eve n' Trav can't go for much longer. We've kicked zombie ass before. It should be a no-brainer."

"… Fine."

"I knew you'd come to your senses!"

"...That back-slap wasn't necessary."

"Totally was. And you know what? If something jumps us, we'll just fill it with lead. Watch out for eachother, deal with whatever they throw at us…"

'We just need to be careful, Skip."

"Russ, it's an alley, ferChrissakes. We'll be out and in the saferoom before ya know it!"

"If you say so..."

"It'll be fine, What's the worst that could happen?"

? ? ? ? ?, ? ? ? ? ? ?, ? ? ?

There was nothing but pain.

Blinding, burning, twisting, and even flowering, almost, if the thing feeling it could think poetically. But it was always there.

It wasn't sure where it was. Sometimes voices spoke over it, far-off, and sometimes to it, but it could only scream in response.

It only huddled in the corner of the white room, while the voices spoke.

Sometimes they could come, with biting little sticks, putting things in its arms that only made it burn even more, holding square things and wearing white coats and always, always watching.

Some dim little part of its mind would spark, occasionally, somehow fighting back. and it would say, quietly, over the pain,

I didn't sign up for this.

Why?

Chapter 1

There are some weird stories out there, and there are weird stories out there.

Not not weird ain't bad. Frankly, I prefer weird to the other paths of life.

Take my dad, fr'instance.

Most dads can be boring at best, embarrassing at worst. I think dad basically went the whole way and turned up all the knobs to 11. I dunno which knobs it was he turned up, whether they were labeled crazy, irrational, loving, maybe even embarrassing, but, whatever they were, by God, he turned them up, all the way, until they snapped off and got stuck to the setting they were on, which was the Max.

Not that I minded. Like I said, I prefer weird to anything else. Building a nuclear fallout shelter in the middle of the Northern Maine woods, for the sake of building a fallout shelter in the middle of the Northern Maine woods, certainly doesn't fit within the parameters of normal, but who am I to complain? It ended up saving my life, more than once. (It wasn't due to nuclear fallout, I'll tell you that much.)

And then there's Denver, for that matter.

It's not like his weirdness is defined by his name. Sure, Denver is a pretty damn odd thing to name a kid, but I'd like to think that whoever his parents were named him something more everyday and sensible, and less taken-from-the-torn-and-bloody-sweatshirt-he-was-wearing-at-the-time. Nope, the name Denver was fairly normal compared to the rest of it.

His tendency to chase ground squirrels (or anything small, squeaky, and susceptible to running in terror) was less weird and more unnerving. Mostly this was because he would actually catch them.

Oh, sure, he'd be stealthy about it, and he didn't scream when he pounced anymore (which does the nerves a favor) so he'd would get them nearly every time, and he could usually get at them quickly if they ran, even when they went down burrows.

He'd let them go afterwards, too, 'cos he said that they left a bad taste in his mouth. He'd only really do it to burn excess energy, in any case, or else he bounced off the walls and drove me nuts. Really, though it was pretty odd to see him going after 'em, I preferred him chasing squirrels, and not people.

He'd still get nightmares from that, poor bastard. Sometimes he'd grow in his sleep, and I'd get a chill down my back and watch him, carefully, and wish fervently that the sunnuvabitches in the CEDA hadn't taken my gun.

But then he'd wake up, and while he'd be terrified out of his mind, he'd still be sane, and not woken up as the monster he used to be.

I highly doubt either one of us would like to repeat the time he woke up (sort of) and wasn't sane, but the past is the past, I suppose. He's alright now, which I reckon is what counts.

Well, as sane as a former zombie could get. Chasing squirrels is just the tip of the iceberg.

His claws, for another thing.

Gatling called them 'keratin-enforced ossified fibrous appendages' (whatever the hell that meant) but no matter what he called them, they weren't going anywhere. Den would sharpen them against trees, but they kept regenerating. Whatever the the hell Green Flu did to his system messed it up in ways only God knows.

Like how he could jump to the roof of a building, in one go, or how he could smell me opening an MRE from across the building, or the way he could make his way across a pitch-dark room without a flashlight.

Or the fact that he tried to kill me.

Twice.

Granted, he'd been under the influence of a raging virus that that not only badly mutated his eyes and and legs and hands and nose, but his mind as well. And, also granted, I'd been trying to kill him at the same time. (Mostly because he was trying to kill me, but what's a girl gonna do?) Three times. I'm one over him on that, though the fact that I nearly succeeded the third time makes it all the more unsettling, to both me and him, but mostly me.

That fact that he nearly succeeded unnerves him (more than me, I think) as well.

We both avoid the topic as much as possible. Imminent death at eachother's hands doesn't make for fantastic small talk, or any sort of talk for that matter. We've settled it, and we really prefer not to dig up any skeletons that probably need to stay buried.

Call him a monster, if you want. I certainly would have, had you told me about him, just two months ago. Then I would've sent you to a mental hospital, because only a complete nut could make up a story like that.

And yet here we are.

Is he a monster? By traditional conventions, certainly. Personally, I think that he's a whole lot less monstrous than most men I've met, though sometimes I get the nagging doubts in my head.

Is he my friend, despite this?

Hell's Bells, yes.

You could ask me why on earth I could be friends with someone who nearly tore my internal organs out, or that I nearly shot in the head because of the aforementioned internal-organ tearing, or who I had to teach to tie his shoes because of a virus that ate his brain. (And half of the country, for that matter.)

And yet I am.

You could also wonder why he'd still stick around with me, someone who taught him to drink from a cup , and who was the (technically indirect) reason for him getting his leg caught in a bear-trap.

(Long story.)

And yet he does.

Maybe ours is the weirdest story of them all.

But, again, it's not like I have anything against weird.

Despite all the weirdness. the past month'd been oddly...normal.

Filled with burning resentment, yes, and revenge-plotting, and some more resentment, and soul-crushing boredom when the resentment ran out, but filled with normality.

As normal as being a guinea pig/blood bank/backup/research subject for the government can be.

We spent most of our time reading whatever they throw at us (mostly army propaganda, but I'd take anything at this point) and spying on the whitecoats. They'd pretty much put us in entire barracks of an off-use military base (Now being repurposed as a research facility/prison/what was probably closest to home sweet home in a 50 mile radius)

The resentment part comes mostly from the guinea pig part, since the only reason they're keeping me around at this point is because of some antibody related crap that's currently running through my veins. Why the hell they haven't found another person in the goddamn country that's immune to the

'flu at this point is beyond me, but apparently carriers aren't good for anything but spreading the disease around, so the whole reason the world hasn't gone to hell (yet) is because of my life juices.

Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.

And of course, they can't have me going around and spilling/misplacing/generally not being there to donate said life juices, so, here I am, in Middle of Nowhere, Arizona, transferred from Middle of Nowhere, Canada, after being transported from Bear Cave, Middle of Nowhere, Maine.

(Long story. Go read it.)

At this point, nowhere sounds like a place to go.

I suppose I should be thankful for the security, being in a nice facility with (fairly) livable cots and running water and slightly fresher MRE's than I'm used to, as opposed to being torn apart by zombies. (Or pummeled, or strangled, or burned in acid… did I mentioned how fucked up the Green flu is?) ' May you have interesting times' is a curse, after all.

Still, it'd be nicer to have normality on my own accounts.

Though it wasn't that much of a change of state. Just a month ago, I was counting MRE's and assuming anarchy was ruling the country. Now, it's more or less the same thing, but with them drawing blood from me at regular intervals (Again: Whoop-dee-fucking-doo) and less MRE'S.

Anyways, here we are now, sitting in what was formerly a common room in the barracks, on a couch that isn't so much Hideous or Floral, and more a Nauseating Army Green. Denver is napping in his own, weird way (which is to say, curled up like a dog. Don't ask. I don't know why, and neither does

he.) and I'm re-reading the Green Beret Survival Manual for the umpteenth time. I've practically memorized the entire thing since I first read it at the age of 7, but, hey, gotta go back to old favorites.

right? I'd tried to read it to Denver, but he rather felt more like a power nap at the time.

Apparently his ridiculous metabolism ( 4,000 calories a day, or something stupid) was because he: a) Could heal a broken leg in a couple of weeks (apparently because of 'accelerated cellular replication, enhanced telomere length' blah, blah, science makes my head hurt) b) Could leap a building in a single bound (Well, if it was a short building. And if he wasn't too tired.) c) Kept a temperature of about 103°F and a pulse of 120 (Which gave the doctors a damn good scare the first time they took his readings)

d) Ate like and slept like a bear, if that bear was also Olympic swimmer on Lunesta.

Which is to say, maybe times were interesting enough with him around.

Now he was waking up (surprising, I know) and stretching, like a cat (Again, don't ask. Even Gatling's baffled, and Gatling is seldom baffled).

He still kept his hood up, which he claimed was because it kept the sun out of his eyes, but I think he did it out of habit, and keep people from staring. Who can blame him? Every sonuvabitch whitecoat that sees him, first thing they gawk at are his eye scars. They are pretty damn impressive, but you'd think that someone'd get tired of people asking. ('Specially considering he'd made the scars himself.

Like I said, long story. Read it.)

Anyways, he was up and at it, blinking muzzily and glancing around the room, I suppose to make sure it was still the same room as when he went to sleep. (Which, again, you can't blame him for.

Let's just say waking up in the same room as we went to sleep in is a pleasant surprise nowadays.)

"Mornin', lazy bones," I said, while I halfheartedly skimmed the section on smoke signals. "You've been out a good two hours."

He shook his head. "Only two? Wish it was longer."

I glanced up. "Bored?"

"Just hate this place," He said, flopping back on the couch. "Maybe if I sleep more-"

"We're here shorter?" I finished for him. He nodded.

I grimaced. "Hate to pick apart your logic, but I'm having my doubts on whether they're ever gonna let us go."

He heaved a sigh. "I'm just sick of it. Sitting around, chasing squirrels, waiting for something to happen-"

I shrugged, trying to hide the same resentment I held. "You did that at The Cabin, too."

"Yeah, but at least I was there because I wanted to." He paused.

"And because there wasn't anywhere else to go." He added, quietly.

"Not like there's anywhere else for us to go around here, either." I said, gesturing around the room.

"Nothin' but desert around us, and unless we manage to hijack a chopper, burn the place down, and fly our asses out of here, it looks like we're stayin'."

He seemed to ponder this for a moment.

"Well, maybe if we-"

I shook my head. "Prospect's tempting, I know, but security's too tight around 'em. I wouldn't risk it."

He sighed again. "We can't fly one, anyway."

I smirked. " You can't. I can."

"Really?"

"Yeah." I paused, thoughtfully. "Dad believed in a... well rounded education."

"Well rounded?"

"Covering all aspects." I defined for him. Den's vocab had increased exponentially over the past several weeks, though he still had a few fuzzy spots here and there.

"Well rounded as I am though, ain't gonna do us much good," I sighed. "It's not like we have anywhere else to go, even if we got past the desert."

"Back to the Cabin? He asked, hopefully.

I shook my head again. "No can do. It's under custody, remember?"

"Oh. Yeah." He looked crestfallen then, which depressed me even more.

"Suppose this ain't too terrible," I reflected. "They leave us alone, and it's either this or zombie territory."

"Zombie territory can't be that bad."

"Considering the state you were in when I found you? I doubt it."

"We could survive."

"We could." I said mulling it over. "Question is, what's worse? Zombies, or whitecoats?"

"Well, they get mad when I attack the whitecoats."

I snorted. "True. That, and zombies don't go on rants about government funding."

He shrugged. "Maybe we can try and go Westside-"

"I doubt it." I cut in. "Even if we manage to escape, they've got CEDA posts all over the borders, now that they've managed to get their act together. Even if we stay out of their sight, we can't mingle with society, not with those on your hands." I said, gesturing to his claws.

He gaze darkened, and he looked down. A pang of guilt stabbed at my chest.

"Look-" I said, biting my lip as I tried to phrase it.

"We can't go and live with normal people, not until we've built up some sort of trust. You're as human as they come, trust me, but…" I paused again.

"People won't stop and think that. If they find out what you are, exactly, well, the reception ain't gonna be real friendly. Old hate dies hard, and fear runs deep. They won't stop and think. They'll just act. That's what I did, and I can't blame 'em for doing the same." I swallowed.

"But if anything happened to you, I'd never be able to forgive myself."

He seemed to mull over it for a moment. "Yeah." He said, finally. His voice was heavy, almost resigned. "You think we'll ever get out of here?"

I stared past him, at the wall, not willing to speculate the possibilities.

"I don't know."

Denver

I scare myself.

Sometimes I'm running. Chasing something small and squeaky, because my legs itch and it only goes away when I chase. Sometimes I'm sleeping, or Mar is reading something to be, and then the noises in my head come back.

The smell of blood. Screaming, Yelling. Falling. Hurt. Burning.

Then I wake up feeling hot and smelling salty, and I don't know here I am or who I am or what I am, and I have to think to know that I am Dever, I am here, and not there, where I was, and I will never hurt anyone again.

And my head hurts and sometimes my hands hurt, and my eyes sting, and I wait for it to go away, and go back to sleep or chasing things or listening to Marcy, until the noises come back again.

Sometimes it isn't yelling or screaming, but nice noises, noises that I know but I don't really.

Den, I'm home.

And even though they're nice noises, they make me even more sad. But I don't hear them very much. Just every now and then.

And sometimes my head will be quiet, and I like that the most, because then it doesn't hurt, and I know I am me, and nothing else tells me that I'm not. And that's all I want to be.

Me.

Chapter 2

Jump.

Roll.

Jump again.

Good place here. For seeing and smelling. Lots of smells. Smoke, blood, sick…

High up. High up is good.

Smelly sick ones are wandering around. Down low. Very stupid. Run at prey. Get killed by prey.

Killed with smoke-things.

Wait. Wait up high. Smell prey. Watch prey. Wait. For when prey isn't looking. Don't get killed by prey.

I kill the prey.

Some coming now. 3 of them. Smelly-stupids run and yell at them. Prey hits them with the smoke things.

One is away from the others. Being pulled by rope-thing from Sick-Smoke one. Other prey is being run at by Stupid-Smelly-Ones. Can't help the other one.

Growl.

Now.

Jump.

Scream.

Air making rush-noise when I pounce. Makes my face cold. Claws out.

Land.

Cracking sound when I hit prey. Rope-thing isn't dragging anymore.

Mine.

Rip.

Tear.

Claw.

Bite.

Oh God! Getitoffgetitoffgetitoff

KILL

I wake up.

All of me feels cold. Sweating, but I'm not hot. I shake.

I can still hear the screams.

I can still remember the smells…

Breathe. Hard. My chest goes thunk-thunk-thunk, like it does when I run or jump for a long time, but I wasn't running or jumping.

Well, I don't think I was.

I roll off the bed.

It's dark, but I can see. Marcy is sleeping, and I don't want to wake her up.

I go outside. The air is cold, and dark. Veryverydark. Lots of little dots stars in the sky. Marcy says it's because there isn't any light to block them out. There were lots of them at The Cabin, too, but they looked different.

Jump. The I'm on the roof.

Noises. Little noises. The ones that are always in my head. Too quiet for me to hear. Some of them are louder than others, and they are the ones that make me sick.

Breathe deep again. Lay back. The roof feels cold. Stop the noises. Make my chest quiet down, make the sick go away.

I watch the stars, and sometimes I think I see them move, very, very slowly.

I hear the door slam open and shut. Then a tk-tk-tk-tk on the wall, since Marcy needs a ladder, and she sits down next to me.

"You really need to quit havin' the midnight terrors, man. It ain't healthy for a body to be up this damn early."

She says it like she's mad, but she isn't. I know she's worried. I can hear it and smell it a little, too, under the sleepiness.

"What was it this time?"

I shrug. "Same things. Screams. All the smells. Stuff I don't want to remember."

"Your head doesn't seem to be getting the memo."

"Hm."

"Anything... useful?"

I shake my head. "No. "

"Damn." she says, quietly. She turns over and looks at me. "Ya wanna talk it out, or anythin' ?"

I shrug. "Nah."

I know I'm lying, because after we sit and look at the stars and all the desert and the base for a while, I start to ask what I've been thinking for a long time.

"Am I-"

"No."

I turn back to her. "You really think?"

She sighs. "I can see it in your face. You're not a monster, if you want full reassurances."

"Really?"

She looks at me, a little annoyed. "Would I lie to you about this sorta shit?"

I think for a little. "Maybe."

She punches me in the arm, hard, and it makes my breath go oof, but she doesn't smell mad.

"Wrong in one."

"Why?" I ask, my head and my arm burning together, now.

"Why what?"

" I've killed people, Marcy. " I say, looking straight at her. Her face doesn't change, but I can smell the sad off of her. "I know I did. You said I had blood on me when you found me. I don't think it was all mine. I remember…" Ripping, screaming, taste of blood, the hunt… "I remember it. And I almost..."

I almost killed you.

She nods. "I'm well aware."

"But doesn't it mean that-"

"What did I tell you earlier?"

Her voice is hard, and so are her eyes. "I don't particularly like to repeat myself."

The she sighs, and some of the hardness goes away. "Look, angstin' over it ain't gonna change what happened. You can only change what you do in the future."

"Yeah?"

"Yep."

"Right." I say. "I'm never killing, ever again." I won't make the same mistakes, cause the same pain-

"Bad idea."

"Huh?"

She shakes her head, and smells a little confused. "What's the quote Whit told me- 'Only the devil deals in absolutes.' Yeah, somethin' like that. Point is, going hard the other way ain't gonna fix anythin', either. You never know what's gonna happen, who you'll have to defend… sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do."

I stay quiet, thinking. Like the bear, but what if I lose control? What if I do something stupid?

She glances over to me. "Y'know, I killed a guy before I met ya?"

"Yeah?"

She sighs. "Just an infected. Came stumblin' at me, arm just bit, turned not three minutes later." She looks off at the sky, and I don't know what she's thinking.

"His name was Max."

Then she turns back to me. "I was thinking bright n' clear, Denver. I did what I had to do. He could've been an asshole, he could've had a family. I don't know.." She shrugs. "I bet his corpse is rotting away in the gas station I shot him in. People shouldn't have to die that way," she says, shaking her head. "Shot through the head in a goddamn gas station…

"But it's what happened. I couldn't have prevented it, not without killin' someone else, me included. It is how it is, and I don't let it keep me up at night." She smirks. "Well, unless there's someone else doing the favor."

"Sorry."

" 's OK." She says. "You've been through some shit. I reckon you get a free pass."

"Yeah..." I clench my teeth. "But you don't think it makes me... dangerous? Uncontrollable?"

"A man is defined by his own decisions. " she says. "Your intentions don't mean shit, it all boils down to what you do of your own volition. Er, free will." She says when she sees my face.

"What I mean to say is, you're only a monster if you decide to be one. The Green Flu… it took that out of your hands. You weren't thinking straight, and it isn't your fault that you got infected. All you can do now is move forward."

"And not kill people?"

"Just…" she stops and thinks. "Use your common sense. I know you have some bangin' around in your head somewhere."

"You think?"

"Yeah." she says, nodding. "I do,"

I unclench my jaw. The noises are screaming at me, still, but they're a little quieter.

"Thanks."

"No problem." she says, swinging her feet off the roof.

"Just try and get some damn sleep, hey?"

Marcy

The whitecoats seemed… agitated the next day.

They were always around the base during the day, it being a research lab, but they didn't really interact with Denver or me that much. Most of the time, their attitude seemed to veer from general disinterest to fascinated terror, like we were some sort of horribly deadly, incredibly rare, recently-discovered species of pit scorpion.

This was fairly close to the truth, so this suited me just fine. Any day when the whitecoats leave us be is a good day in my book.

They were pretty damn annoying, I'll tell ya, never answering any questions. On any other given day they'd either give some science-shit explanation that I couldn't follow, or just drop a dismissive comment. Today, however, they seemed to be deliberately avoiding us, which was a fairly nice break from them taking blood samples all the time, if a little disconcerting.

And suspicious.

"There's somethin' going on." I muttered, watching them skitter around from our spot on the roof.

Besides being a good place for angst-pep-talk time, it made a convenient vantage spot for watching people.

Denver shrugged. "They keep whispering at each other. I can't get close enough to hear, but they smell… scared. Confused."

"That ain't good." I said, mostly to myself. "I'm in good mind to throw a tomato at 'em."

"I could jump one of them." Denver offered, grinning evilly. I smirked.

"Temping, but you know what happened last time you did that."

"It was fun to hear them scream."

"Y'know, for all the regret n' crap you claim to have, I could swear you still a streak of zombie in ya."

"Whitecoats don't count. You said it yourself. They don't treat us like people, anyways."

"True." I said. "They don't." I sighed. "Save it for Gatling, in any case."

"He hasn't been around for awhile," Den said, eyeing the scientists warily.

"Which is what worries me." I said, following his gaze.

"I thought you didn't like him."

"Still don't." I said. "But at least he was a constant, when he was still around. Something's going on if the leader of the joint just vanishes into thin air. 'Sides," I glanced over, "I thought you were the one that said he 'smelled trustworthy.'" I teased.

"He didn't kill me. And the nose doesn't lie." Denver replied, simply.

"He didn't kill you because you were an 'object of scientific interest'. Besides, who am I to trust the olfactory senses of someone who's medically brain-damaged?"

"Hey!"

"I'm kidding." I laughed. Denver hmphed and crossed his arms, grumpily.

"Nose or not, I still don't trust him." I said, tone serious again. "Like Uncle Whit used to say, somethin' here is going catawampus."

"You keep talking about your Uncle Whit." Denver said, cutting off my train of thought. "What happened to him? Were you close?"

I sucked at my teeth, trying to word the answer. "Fairly." I said, to start. "He was my dad's older brother, really the only other relative I knew. Grew up and lived in Georgia, the both of them, and me, till Dad moved up North to live closer to the cabin. Even after we moved, they were still pretty close. We used to go to Savannah every Thanksgiving, talk about weaponry and all that. He'd let me handle the guns from his store, even shoot some of 'em." I smiled at the memory; my first sniper rifle, learning how to mount a laser sight, packing magazines on an M16 Carbine automatic...ah, good times. "I fired my first gun ever on his range. It was a .22 Browning A-Bolt. Manual. I managed to jam it the first time, but good ol' Whit helped me fix it."

"What happened?" Denver asked, breaking my train of thought. "You said you used to go to Savannah."

I sighed. "It was when I was, I dunno, 12." I shook my head, sadly. "Dad and Whitaker... got into an argument. Dad said lighting out to the North was a better idea during the nuclear apocalypse, but Whit said that stayin' home and holing up was the way to go. Told Dad that his obsession with the Cabin was 'unhealthy'… they were rantin' for hours." I shuddered at the memory, me waiting on the stairs next to the kitchen, while the two of them shouted…

"Long story short, Dad broke off all ties, and never spoke to Whit again. After he died, I didn't really keep up contact, so who knows? I know the flu's hit Georgia, but Whit's tough enough, he mighta survived…"

"Wait, wait." Denver cut in. "Your dad refused to talk your uncle for years over an argument on survival strategy?"

I nodded. "Yep. Big issue for them. Really, Dad thought Whit was crazy for wanting to stay and wait it out. I dunno how he's doing after the Green Flu." I glanced out over the horizon, to the east. I almost fancied I heard a rocket launcher.

"Good ol' Whit." I said. "I hope he's doin' OK."

Later on, it was just us in our cots in the old barracks, and all the whitecoats had shut up and gone home for the day.

"I hope Gatling gets back soon." I said, idly looking up at the ceiling, as I tried to fall asleep. "Longer he's gone, the longer we're here."

"Do you think we'll be here forever?" I heard, from the next cot over.

I shrugged. "Who knows? We stay here as long as Gatling wants us to." Which may damn well be forever, I added, if only in my head.

"Maybe we should burn the place down, like you said." Denver mused. I let out a short laugh.

"Maybe. I'm not sure if the place is flammable enough, in any case. I'd need an incendiary grenade, or a flamethrower and a hella lotta gas. In any case, they haven't dissected you or anything, so I suppose we can count our blessings."

"Yeah, but they keep poking you with needles."

"Needles ain't the worst of it. The fact they run you down with 'strength tests' or whatever the hell they call legal torture nowadays makes my blood boil"

"It isn't needles."

"It isn't right, either." I snapped, stopping short of shouting. "Let's let it rest, for now. We'll discuss escape plans tomorrow."

"Alright. Good night."

"G'nite." I said, flicking off the light.

And that was the last night either of us slept peacefully for a very long time.

Chapter 3

"TAAAAAAAAANK!"

Prey is making loud noises. Big-thing hunting them. Throwing things at prey.

Watch. From high-up. Don't hunt now. Wait. Don't get killed by big-thing.

Big-things bad. Veryvery bad.

"Shitbucket! get the molotov!"

Big-thing smells different now. Like smoke. Burn. Making big noises. Chasing prey.

Prey is shooting with fire-things…

KILL IT

There's a different smell in my nose.

It's familiar…

Are you awake?

Like the hospital...

Light. Cold feeling on my face. I'm not dreaming anymore.

I feel… fuzzy. Tired. There's black in my head, and these little white things flying around in my eyes…

Noises. There's noises going on. Why can't I see? It's too loud to be the barracks, the smells are all wrong…

"D'ya think it was enough knock-out stuff we used?"

"We gave it the normal amount. It's fuckin' horse tranquilizer, and it's been asleep the entire time."

There's a chak-chak-chak-chak-chak noises, too. I've heard it before. At the base, but far away, and…

This is Chopper 13-E, reporting from - - - - - -, heading to North Base CE-104

"Good thing we knocked it out easy, right?"

"Caldwell said to get 'em while they're sleeping. No fight, no mess, no clean up. Easy done."

I can see a little bit more.

It's a metal place. I've been here before. Or somewhere like it.

I can't feel my arms. There's something holding them down...black things.

I can see two shapes, all blurry and green-brown looking, close by, but I can't smell them, and I don't think they know I'm awake.

Where's Marcy?

I can't smell her, or hear her. I don't think she's close.

I have to get out.

There's more things on my chest. Straps. Holding me down.

They're near my teeth.

BITE

Marcy

You know what sucks ass? Waking up and not knowing where the hell you are.

Usually, you get there after you're drunk, (so I'm told) after moving to a new place, or just plain after a deep sleep.

Though sometimes, it's because the government's kidnapped and transported you to a research facility in Canada. (Long story. If you ain't read it by now, shame on you.) So, needless to say, when I woke up in a white room with pointedly non-celestial lights shining down on me, (again) I was pretty damn pissed. This shit was getting old, real fast.

I was awake in seconds, taking in my surroundings. First thing that hit me: It definitely wasn't a hospital. It was bright, glaringly white, and sterile-smelling, but it had no furnishings other than the cot I was lying on, and (weirdly enough) a large mirror taking up the entirety of one wall.

There wasn't anyone else there, either, but I spoke what was on my mind, anyways.

"Cut the shit, Gatling," I said, calling out to the emptiness. "Where the fuck d'ja stick us this time?

Does my snot actually cure cancer? Or is it my earwax? Quit hidin', I know you're behind a corner somewhere, and any minutes you're gonna come out and dump some scientific explanation or whatever on me. I get it. So stop the mysterious crap and get your ass out here."

"Your vulgarity is commendable, Miss Walker," a voice that was most certainly not Gatling's said, coming from nowhere and echoing around the room, "However, it is not within your ability, or position, to make such a request."

It sounded like something Gatling would say, sure (which is to say, smug and instantly infuriating) but it was a more Midwestern accent than Californian. And...steelier, somehow. Calmer. Colder.

I tried hefting myself off the cot, and nearly regretted it. My legs crumpled underneath me, and -too late- I realized that my lagging sense of tiredness was not from fatigue, but from knockout drugs.

Shit.

I turned, silently cursing, and directed my attention to the mirror.

Mirrors are seldom there for no reason, and I had a feeling that I wasn't in an evil beauty salon.

"Right, then, Mr. Whoever-The-Fuck-You-Are." I said, venomously. "Do me a favor and show me your pretty, pretty face. I know it's a one-way glass, so quit dicking around."

My head was buzzing, though it didn't know if it was from the anger, or the drugs, or from the quickly-rising fear in my chest that I was trying to hide.

The speaker didn't say anything, but I heard a faint click, and I could see through the glass of the mirror like a window.

There was a man standing there, but it sure as hell wasn't Gatling. This one was wearing a full-out military uniform- a General's (Dad made me memorize 'em all) and his graying hair set in a buzzcut.

He looked down at me, crumpled on the floor, his eyes steely.

"I am General Trafford Caldwell, Miss Walker, and I have been placed in charge of this research facility, and of the CEDA's vaccine project." His tone was icy, like he was releasing this information reluctantly.

"Fine." I said, "How do you do. Now where the fuck am I, and where the hell is Gatling?"

My cussing, sadly, didn't faze him, though I doubted it would do much in the first place. He merely raised an eyebrow.

"Director Gatling is currently standing trial for wartime crimes, perpetrated by his incompetence in managing the CEDA, and in mishandling of the Green Flu Outbreak. I am taking over operations of this facility, and the organization, on behalf of the military."

Ah, fuck. Wasn't this turning out to be a pretty little shitstorm?

I hated Gatling, If he were on fire and all I had was a jar of piss on me, hell, I'd drink it. But if there's one thing I could be reassured about while he was around, it's that there wasn't anyone worse to take his place. True, he was an ass, but not this level of ass as this looked like it was turning out to be.

"Right." I said, carefully, my increasing panic becoming harder and harder not to show.

"So if Gatling's gone, where am I? What do you want from me?"

"I won't divulge our exact location, Miss Walker." Caldwell replied, icily, "As I have mentioned before, you are in a military-sanctioned facility, for the purpose of your protection and aiding the war effort with your biological, ah, assets."

Damnit, Not this shit again.

"So you want me for my blood. Again." I said. This elicited no response.

Then a thought struck me, and made the my panic levels rise even higher.

"Where's Denver?" I asked, quietly, and dreading the answer.

" Subject 1-CB" he said, insistently, "Is not your concern."

I won't list the string of insults, curses, and general blasphemies that flew through my mind right then, 'cos I'd fill a book that would probably start a religious war in 8 different countries. I tried standing, then, managing to stay up and walk over (albeit, in a wobbly fashion) to the glass. Even then, I had to lean against the wall for support.

I looked into those stupid, steely, smug eyes of his, and gave him a red-eyed glare that told him to go to hell.

"You tell me," I said, barely keeping my anger from boiling over, "where Denver is, you son of a bitch, or I will personally smash this window, shoot you through the eyes, and burn this fucking place down."

He simply sighed, his concrete expression never changing.

"Fine. If you insist, Miss Walker, Subject 1-C is being transported to a separate research facility."

That cut it.

"You let me out of this shit-hole this instant." I said ignoring the burning, drugged feeling in my legs, and the fact that what I was doing was probably useless. "Or the walls are gonna be painted with blood."

"The barrier is enforced plexiglass, Miss Walker." he replied, tapping it with his fist. "I highly doubt you could breach it, let alone harm me. And, as much as you want to, I cannot, and will not, let you leave, for both your safety and mine. You are, in fact, of too much value to the military to allow for harm, or escape; what more would it take than a bomb on an unprotected base, or mutinous ideas allowed to form? Though the former Director may have been more...lax in his protocol, as long as I am in charge of this operation, I cannot allow for it to happen."

He stared back at me, furious red-eyed glare meeting his concrete gaze, and then he turned, heading left to God-knows where.

"Progress is progress, Miss Walker."

And then he was gone.

Denver

The straps taste horrible. Bitter, chemical, and a little bit like sick and blood.

I still bite. Tear through it with my teeth, it makes little zzzp-zzp-zzp noises when I bite it through, and still biting when my teeth and jaw and neck hurt,

I'm almost free. The top strap feels looser every time I pull...

Snap.

I arms are out. I can sit up a little, but my legs and hands are still trapped. But if I pull them free…

"Hey!"

One of the shapes is coming closer. I can see a little more now. It's a solider, like the ones near the base.

This one doesn't look happy.

He's holding a gun, and it's pointed at me.

"Don't move." he says. I want to growl, and scare him, but I don't. Scared men shoot.

"Everything alright back there, Mike?" say another voice, far away, in front of me.

"It's under control, Benny." I hear another voice say.

"Good." says the faraway voice. "We're gonna hit some turbulence ahead, so brace yourselves."

"Shit." says the soldier with the gun. "Jim, strap it down again. I'll watch it."

"I'm not taking a fucking step near that thing if it's awake." says Jim. I can smell a little more, now, and I know Jim is scared. "I've seen people ripped apart in front of my eyes by things like… that."

"I gave you a fucking order, Jim." says Mike, who smells angry, but scared, too, under the angry.

Jim doesn't say anything.

"Look, it's under control." Mike says says, and he hits my head with the gun, to I see little things flying around in front of my eyes, and it burns where he hit me. "Do your damn job."

"Yessir." says Jim, and he starts doing something with the straps.

I lie still. The gun is veryvery close.

Then, the metal place starts shaking,

"Shit!" yells Mike, and he falls down. Jim is still up, but he's stopped doing the strap thing, and is holding on to the thing I'm lying on.

Move.

I pull my hands free. The straps on my legs are still there, but I cut them with my claws. The shaking scares me, but I have to keep going.

Run.

"Mike! Mike, IT GOT OUT-"

He smells ververyscared now.

Growl.

Time to go.

Chapter 4

The metal place shakes again.

I can see even better, now I'm out. There's a hole in the wall, and wind blowing through. There's sky outside,

I'm up in the air. I think, and my chest feels funny. I'm panicking.

Mike is getting up. Jim fell over, because of the shaking, and Mike has his gun up at me again.

"Move, and die, zombie."

I want to pounce; part of me wants to tear and bite and attack, because he is the enemy and I must, but I know the gun is there, and it will kill me first.

I don't move.

The thing starts shaking again. Benny yells Sunnavabitch! from the front, and Mike is down. He's not holding the gun anymore.

Bunch up my legs, push off, arms out…

I pounce.

No voices yelling at me, except one, that says I must live I must live I must live and if I want to live I must attack.

There's a krak sound when I hit him, and then he falls down and won't move. I smell a little blood, but he doesn't smell dead. He doesn't get up.

I hear something behind me. I turn.

Jim is trying to get up. He smells even more scared than before. He's trying to get the gun and saying shitshitshitshitshit.

He's far away, but close enough for me to pounce, I don't hit him as hard, but he screams and waves around his hands…

GetitoffgetitoffgetitoffGETITOFFOFME

Benny is yelling, too. "This is Chopper 0NT-V03R, mayday, making an emergency land on Red territory, coordinates 3-8 point 8-8-1-9 degrees north, 8-0 point-"

I don't hear the rest. I'm looking at the man I've pounced on, yelling, smelling the fear and pain and confusion and more fear…

Then it feels like we're falling, going down, and I'm falling off the ground, going up when we're going down, and I'm hitting things, so I close my eyes and curl up and wait for it to be over.

The sounds stop, after awhile. I think I blacked out. I was up in the air, and now I'm lying down.

I think.

Yeah. I decide. Air doesn't hurt this much.

I can smell the place around me. Smoke and fire and blood, my blood and other blood; it burns my nose and I feel my eyes getting all full of water. Yuck.

I hear things, too. A crackling, like the fire in the woodstove, bigger and far off, and and screechy-metal sounds from all around me.

There's a groan. I think that's me, too.

No, it's near me. I get up, even though the rest of me says owowowowowowow and crk and krnk.

The smoke is all front of me; lal I see is gray, gray, gray, and stinging in my eyes. There's some blobby things- trees- all around, but that's all.

It's cold. As cold as The Cabin, or even more. I'm somewhere else. I think, and it makes my head hurt even more.

There's another groan.

My head is doing the screaming thing again. Many voices, and they're all loud. But I hear one, very quiet, and I know it's mine.

Where's Mar?

She's not here. I can't smell her, and I didn't smell her in the metal place.

Chest is thumping faster. Thmp thmp thmp and my throat is tight and there's little spots flying around in my eyes and everything is screaming again….,

I have to run.

Get up high.

I need to see. Get somewhere safe. In the other place city there was always places where I could see. Tall buildings. I was safe up there.

The smoke is going away a little. I can see the trees better. There's lots of metal pieces and little fires around me, but I run past them and climb up the tree, quick-quick, and I dig my claws into the bark so i can go faster.

I get on a big branch. There's not very many leaves, but I can see, and they cover me so nothing can find me.

There's the metal-thing on the ground, all broken and crumpled. It's a helicopter.

I was in there. They were taking me somewhere.

I don't know where, but it was away from the base. I don't think that's good.

I hear something- the man from the helicopter. Mike.

He's leaning on a tree and I can smell a little blood on the wind. He's talking into a little black box.

"-Ackerman from over borderlands, do you copy? Charlie Whiskey Delta is out, bird is a smoking hole. Pilot down, Rollison is Tango Uniform, requesting backup, coordinates are 3-8 point-8"

I don't listen. I'm thinking.

He's the one who took me.

They took her, too.

He knows where Marcy is.

I pounce.

Pouncing off the tree is hard. I bunch up my legs, all tight (even though they hurt alot still) and I pull back a little, then then I push, really hard, with my feet and sometimes with my hands, and then it's like flying, like planes and those funny squwaky things Marcy says are birds.

The wind pushes on my faces and makes my eyes get all watery. My claws are out, but I don't scream like I did in the city. I stay quiet, and he doesn't hear me coming.

I hit, hard, and I hear something go crk like in the helicopter. He screams and screams and the little black thing goes out of his hands and flies off far away.

I'm not hurt. Just angry.

I put my hand over his mouth so he stops screaming, and my knee on his chest.

"Where's Marcy?" I ask.

She once told me that the jugular vein is located on the left side of the neck underneath the mandible, and that it takes less than 30 seconds to render an average human male unconscious if punctured or severed.

I forget where left is, but I put my claws on his throat anyways and uncover his mouth.

He takes a deep breath, and I can smell the fear and angry in air around him. His eyes are wide, and his face is pale. He tries kicking and hitting me, but he can't move much under my weight.

"Get the fuck off of me!" he screams. I don't.

"I can kill you in a minute." I growl, but he doesn't stop.

"Look, you fucking piece of undead shit, I have a unit coming right now tracking the crash, and when they get here, your ass is gra-"

He doesn't finish talking, because I squeeze his throat tighter.

"Where is she?"

I let go again. His face is a little more blue.

"I have no idea who this fucking Mary pers-"

"The other one. The one with me in the base." I say. It's getting hard for me not to claw at his face.

"Charlie Beta Omega?" he says, and he sounds confused. "It's somewhere in Texas, you pathetic piece of scum. The only reason I'm telling you is so I can st-"

Texas?

It's one of the west states. Near where we were.

It's all I need to know.

Mike is cursing again. I don't think he'll tell me anything else, so I curl up my hand and make it into a fist.

WHACK.

I don't think I killed him. But I don't think he can run away anymore. There's a big bruise on his head now, anyways.

I pick up the black box. It isn't making any noises, but I smash it against a tree, just to be safe.

Then I run.

I don't know where. Just away. Away from the trees and the smell of smoke and blood and anger and fear, jumping and running and looking back sometimes in case there's anything behind me.

I run even when my legs burn and hurt, just so I can be far away from the helicopter as I can.

I don't stop for a long time.

Chapter 5

When my legs won't run anymore, I slow down.

I don't know where I am. It looks like the woods near The Cabin, but it doesn't smell right. I can't smell the smoke anymore, either.

The running hurt my legs, even more. I don't stand up. I sit down, because it hurts my chest and throat when I breathe, and my head hurts, too, now that I'm not thinking runrunrunrunrunrun.

She's gone.

It hits me in the head without hurting, but I can feel it in my chest anyways. There's one part of me that isn't screaming, and it says to me, You are all alone in a place you don't know, and she is gone and she can't help you.

Then the other part of my head that isn't screaming anymore stops and tells me, Sleep.

It's dark, my head and my legs and my chest hurts, and I am tired.

The air is colder, too. I pull my hood up, but it still leaves my hands cold. I'm too cold to smell, but I think I'm alone.

So I find a tree, and climb it. It takes a long time, because my legs yell at me when I climb, and my hands can't hold to branches very much, but I get up there.

There's still screaming in my head. I'm too tired to listen. I just dig my claws into the bark and curl up, and sleep.

Marcy

They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting to get different results each time, despite what the circumstances may tell you.

Frankly, I think that's BS.

I mean, suppose your day is the same, in and out. You wake up the same time, eat your breakfast, take the same route to work, say the same thing to the secretary as you walk, eat the same lunch at the same place, all that crap…

And you expect your life to be fairly chaos-free. Pay your dues, get a shitty retirement plan at age 65, watch reruns of Badland Brawlers until ya die...

But then the apocalypse comes and fucks up your pretty little routine, so you're either clubbing zombies to death in an office bathroom with a toilet dispenser (if you're lucky), or ending up being the one clubbed to death (not so much.)

What I'm trying to say, is: Never place too many expectations on similar outcomes. Stay on your feet, know what the hell is going on, and be ready to run.

I suppose I could be wrong. I never majored in psychology, though I can rightfully say that whoever made up that quote I mentioned above has never, ever felt what it's like to go insane.

Oh, I started simple enough. Pissed as I was, and as much as I would've loved to coat those pretty white walls with Caldwell's blood and otherwise, I vowed not to go around the bend. That was my plan- from Day One, at least.

I'd keep myself busy, doing pushups and leg lifts and squats and every other damn exercise I would think of, partly to keep from my body from going to hell, and partly from keeping me from thinking about it too much.

The rest of my time? Plotting my revenge. Well, and figuring out how the fuck I'm going to get out of here.

But mostly revenge.

The prospects for both, unfortunately, were looking pretty damn piss-poor. The only pieces of furniture in the place was a sleeping cot, which was bolted to the floor, ruling it out as a ram-rod. The mirrors weren't particularly shatter-happy, either (As one kick and a sore foot later proved). The bathroom off to the side offered no loose objects- no removeable toilets lids, weaponizable plungers, nothin'- other than a weird finger-toothbrush thing they gave me, presumably so that I couldn't use a plastic handle as a shiv. The only vents in the place were about the size of a postcards and were blocked with fans. And, sadly, there didn't seem to be any guards for me to seduce (Which ain't my style, but, hey, ya take what you can get.)

So I was pretty much screwed over.

Nobody ever came inside- not while I was awake, in any case. The morning (Well, presumably morning. Fluorescent lights fuck with your REM cycle like no tomorrow) after I ended up in that hell hole, I woke up with the wonderful, groggy feeling of being drugged off my ass, and a port in my arm.

I assume the assholes were too cowardly to step in without me being asleep, so I had no chance to strangle them with my bare hands.

It was on that particular day that, as I lay back in my cot, my mind went blank. No new ideas emerged. My anger, though still roiling, went stagnant. My ears buzzed with a sound that wasn't there, and my eyes went a little blurry, partly from the drugs, and partly from something else.

And despite the ache in my arm from the bruises and plastic they'd stuck in there, it was nothing like the ache in my head that came from looking up at the stupid goddamn white ceiling, and realizing, for the first time in my life that I, Marzia Adelaide Walker, survivalist, planner of escape, and prepper for the worst, had no fucking idea what to do.

Chapter 6

I don't know what to do.

There's walking. I've lost count of all the tree I pass; it's all woods, like back at The Cabin. I walk and walk and walk and don't hear anything but the trees, and sometimes squirrels, but I don't feel like chasing them.

My stomach growls; I have to get food. There's nothing here. Find prey find something to eat.

Something that doesn't scream. My head is too full of screaming anyways.

I still walk. I need to find out where I am.

Where I need to go.

I walk for a long time, even when it's dark and it gets cold, cold enough to see the white smoke-stuff when I breathe. My hood is up, but my hands and face and the hurt parts of my leg are cold, the burning kind of cold that stings my eyes.

The smells start to change, after awhile. Not so much dirt and leaf and tree; more gas and oil and car and…

Sick.

It's faint, and not fresh. After I walk a little more, there's blood, but mostly the smell of dead.

I don't feel so hungry anymore.

It gets stronger, the more I walk. It's even darker, but I can still see fine. There's less trees, and the ground is hard under my feet. Pavement

After while I see houses. No more woods; they're behind me. They're shaped like the cabin, but bigger- really bigger. There's lots of them, all smushed together.

I've seen something like this before…

I'm biking to Seb's house, mom, I'll be back before five…

Wind in my face, the sun above me, and I'm going fast on the road…

Then it's dark, and cold, and the smell of sick and blood is in my nose again.

I shake my head, which is hurting again. What was that? I didn't smell it, but I still saw it and heard it…

There's a growl behind me.

I turn. Pay attention! I think, and then I see a woman.

She smells Sick. Very Sick.

She has blood on her face. On her hands, on her everything… and she's growling at me.

Infected.

Enemy

I don't think. My hands and my legs do it for me. I get in my jumping crouch, and growl back.

Challenge.

She screams. I hear it everywhere, all echoey around the houses, and she runs at me, hands up, and coming at me, ready to claw…

I push on my legs and launch.

I don't mean to scream, but my head does that anyways- it's a hunting scream, the kind that scared away rivals and made the Infected run…

My claws are out, and swipe and her face. Then I land- crrnch- and

tear and rip and attack and-

It stops screaming.

Her eyes are still open, and bleeding a little. There's blood on my claws, and my sweater…

I smell sick.

My stomach makes a little grgl noise, and I don't think I'm hungry at all.

I leave the body behind. I watch and smell and listen for other ones, but I don't think there are any more. There's bodies on the ground, but they're mostly long-dead. They still smell sick.

Everything smells sick.

I don't like being down low anymore, So I high jump onto one of the houses. I see the woods on one side of me, and more houses on the other side.

I still don't know where I am.

I need sleep. Somewhere safe. One of the windows to the houses is open, and if I aim-Ooof.

Ow.

I think I hit a wall. I'm inside, though.

There's not as much of a sick smell in here. There are new smells, but I don't know how to name them, and they're all old and dusty.

Snff. Stupid dust.

It's darker inside, and it takes me a little while to see better.

It's a big room, with a couch, but it doesn't smell nice like in The Cabin. There's a black-box thing on the wall, but I'm not sure what it is…

L, lemmee change the channel, pleeeeease? David Belle is doing an interview on Channel 8, you can watch Elmo later…

It's a... TV. I think. I used to fight about it, but I don't know why.

Someone named L...

When I try and think about harder, my head hurts even more, so I leave the room so it stops.

The next room I go into is the kitchen. It's bigger and shinier than the one in the cabin, and when I look in the cupboards there's not any MRE's, just canned stuff. I'm hungry, so I don't care. It takes awhile with my claws, but I get one open and eat the stuff inside. I don't know what it is, but it tastes like MRE09 Menu 03. I start feeling better after I eat a few more cans of the stuff, and my head doesn't hurt any more.

I go back to the couch room, but I don't hear any more new noises. Then because I'm tired, and I don't know where I am, and I still don't know what to do or go or anything, I curl up on the couch and sleep.

Chapter 7

2 weeks later

It was too cold for this BS.

Heck, it as too cold for anything, really, and Trevor didn't want to be out here, in any case. But, he reflected, it was probably better than being one of the numerous frozen corpses he kept having to step over.

"Hey, Eve." He said, glancing at his companion, and cradling his semiautomatic in case of any unexpected surprises, "Next time, do you think we can get Russ to break his arm somewhere warmer?"

Eve snorted, continuing to crunch down the road and as she watched for Infected. "I thought you were from Indiana." she said, brushing aside a strand of black hair, and shooting Trevor an amused look. "Don't you get a truckload of snow every year?"

Trevor jogged to catch up with her, his snow boots crunching the ice coating the street. "We do." he wheezed, slightly out of breath from the sudden exertion. "But this old man's used to sitting in front of a nice, warm fire, not fighting zombies and scratching for food in some forsaken town in-"

He paused. "Where are we now?"

"I think it's Ohio." Eve mused. "I'll check the map again. And it's not that cold."

Trevor looked at her strangely. "Aren't you from Puerto Rico?" he asked.

Eve smirked under her scarf. "My parents are. I'm not. I'm Illinois born and raised, and this here isn't anything more than a little nose-nipper." she paused. "And this cold means that we haven't had to deal with anything since we got here."

"True."

There was a weighted silence.

"Smells better, too."

"I'll grant you that."

Then they said nothing, and only the sounds of ice (and otherwise) crunching underneath their boots filled the air. Eventually, they reached a nondescript brick building, and Eve stopped, eying it carefully.

"I don't think we've raided this one yet."

"I hope it's not another office building." griped Tarvis. "All they have are K-Cups and instant oatmeal packets."

"Looks promising enough." she replied. "It's worth a try."

With that, she kicked the door in.

The inside was dusty, but, mercifully, it was the only smell that pervaded the place. The halls were darkened, and fallen ceiling panels snapped ominously underfoot. Electric wiring hung like overgrown vines, and despite the fact it couldn't possibly be live after that long, Eve and Trevor were careful to skirt around them.

"This had better be the last building we have to raid in the ridiculous little town." hissed Trevor. "How long is it to Charleston, again?"

Eve sighed. "I have no idea, Trav. I'd say 4 weeks, if he'd stop adding so many damn detours…"

"That long?"

"Well, you know how he is about shortcuts."

"It's starting to get on my nerves."

"You'd prefer the border?"

Trevor didn't reply, and Eve had the general feeling that he was sulking. Big baby, she thought. The again, at this rate, they'd only hit the Carolinas by the time the snow had melted. Ay por dios.

Trying to take her mind off of such things, she opened a door at random, giving the inside a cursory glance before turning to Trevor again. "We'll make it there eventually," she said, trying to be bright, but Trevor didn't respond. She shot a looked at him, and then again back through the door. "It's just a janitor's closet, I don't think there's anyth -"

"In the corner." he hissed, through clenched teeth, his gun up. She trailed his gaze.

Past the dim outlines of old forgotten brooms and mops, and the sharp tang of chemical cleaner, there was a bundle of clothes next to one of the shelves. At closer inspection, Eve realized that it was a pair bloodstained, torn jeans, very dingy looking Nikes, and a ratty-looking parka, which was steadily rising and falling with the occupant's breathing.

"What the…?"

Before the either of them could properly react, the pile shifted, muzzily lifting its head (or what looked like it) up, looking straight at the two. As soon as it spotted her, the bundle gasped, bolting upright to its knees and throwing both of its gloved hands in the air with a wild shout.

"Don'tshootdon'tshootI'mhumanPLEASEdon'tshoot!" It screeched, terror in its voice. Eve lowered her gun.

"It's just a kid, Trav." she said, relieved. The initial yelling had been been a bit of a fright, true, but at least it hadn't tried to attack them outright. The bundle- person, whatever, kept its hands raised, stiff and scared.

"We're not gonna hurt ya." Trevor said. He offered the boy a hand. "Ya with anyone?"

The kid shook his head. "It's just me." He took the proffered hand and lifted himself up, revealing a surprisingly short stature, and a pale face half-covered by a hood. He straightened his jacket, and pulled his gloves a little tighter over his hands. The survivors watched in silence.

"So you're alone?" said Eve, a dubious tone lining her voice. The kid nodded.

"How on God's green Earth did you manage to survive out here?"

He shrugged, a little red rising to his pallid cheeks. "Running, mostly."

"You ran," Eve echoed, flatly.

He gave a nervous grin. "I don't like fighting much…"

Trevor shook his head. "Must be a darn fast runner, then." Eve raised her eyebrow.

You don't just go solo out here without becoming zombie chow. She thought to herself, but she didn't it for the time being. He didn't look all that malicious; scrawny, yeah, pale looking, true, but he looked more like a lost kid at a department store than a grizzled survivor.

"The name's Eve." she said. sticking out her hand, and nodding in the other man's direction. "He's Trevor."

The kid looked her outstretched arm blankly, as if he'd never encountered such a thing before. This struck Eve as odd; As ill-mannered as modern youth were, they usually knew how to shake hands.

Suddenly, revelation seemed to dawn in his eyes, and he took her hand and shook it. His hold was surprisingly light, like he was afraid to break something with his grip, and the nervous smile he gave did nothing to alleviate her suspicions.

"I'm Denver." he said, his voice and hand still shaking. Eve had to pull her hand away with force to get him to stop. She shot a look to Trevor.

Sounds as fake as it comes, she thought, and the look on her partner's face confirmed that he agreed with her. "Where are you headed?"

"Savannah." He replied, maybe a little quickly. "I'm… looking for someone."

"In this mess?" Trevor mused. Denver avoided his gaze.

"Yeah." His expression was unreadable- the jacket hood hid his face well- but the hunched shoulders, low voice, and general apathy when he said this made the air of defeat around him unmistakable.

Eve softened her expression a little. "What kind of weapons are you carrying?" she said, though not unkindly.

He shrugged again. "Um. Not really anything. Uh. I don't like fighting that much…"

She shot another look at Trevor, and his expression was equally as incredulous. She jabbed a thumb at the door. Outside. Now. Trevor nodded.

"We… need to talk." she told the kid, trying to hide her urgency, "Wait here."

Denver nodded. " 'K." He made no movement, but stood awkwardly in the same spot as they turned away.

It was only when the door thudded shut behind them Trevor spoke.

"I don't trust him."

Eve nodded in agreement. "Not by a mile and a half."

He ran a hand through his balding, salt and pepper hair, shaking his head all the way. "How in the Lord's name could he have done it? He didn't even have a crowbar on him!"

"Which makes him either harmless, or it mean's he's hiding something…"

"You don't think he's with a group?"

Eve shook her head. "We've been here too long. We'd notice. And I sure as hell didn't see any footprints going in."

Trevor grunted, in a non conditional kind of way. "I still can't believe he can't come up with a better name than Denver."

She snorted. "At least it isn't Hartford. Or Columbus."

"I think if he was stupid enough to name himself Columbus, he wouldn't even be alive," he chortled.

He stopped, and his smile faded. "Assuming he's telling the truth."

Eve glanced at the door, warily. "Assuming that."

There was a weighted silence, broken only by a sigh.

"How long has it been?" she said, quietly. "Since we've seen another living thing?"

"Five weeks." Trevor replied. "Unless you count that one guy who tried to throw a dried-ice bomb at us from the top of that hotel in Springfield."

"He was a cerrero. No better than the infected."

"So this one's an improvement."

"I suppose." She glanced at the door again. "And three is no way to run a group."

"We're taking him on, then?"

"What else can we do? You're old. Russ' arm still isn't healed. And you know I'm an awful shot. We need every bit of firepower we can get. What if one of us gets hurt again? We'd need one to carry the other, maybe two, and at least one person to cover. If we get into another… incident, we're in for a hunk of arroz con cuolo."

"Which is…?"

"Rice with ass."

"...Ah."

"Though I suppose we're scraping the bottom of the barrel here."

"Do you think he'll be useful?"

She shrugged. "If he can make it out here without a gun, he could be Superman for all I care."

"Some of those things are fast- he couldn't have run from all of them." Trevor hmphed. "We'll watch him?"

"Of course. If he tries anything…"

"We'll take care of it?" finished Trevor.

"Yep." She nodded, and gripped the shotgun a little tighter.

Eve banged on the door, making the above ceiling shudder and shed down a fine cloud of dust.

"Kid, are you still in there?"

"Yeah." Came the muffled reply.

She wrenched the door open. The boy was still standing there, in the same spot, waiting, an innocent expression on what parts of his face the two could see.

Eve narrowed her eyes. "Listen, Dallas…"

"Denver."

"Whatever. Here's the deal: we're headed the same way as you are. Frankly, you're the only living thing we've seen in weeks. You tag with us, and we'll take you as far as Charleston."

"Really?" The kid's face seemed to brighten. Trevor nodded.

"Just be sure to pull your weight. We don't know what's out there, and Russ won't be happy if he finds out we've taken on a slacker."

"Russ?"

"He's back in the safe room. He's a little…" Trevor searched for words for a moment- "Uh, rough, when you first meet him, but I'm sure he'll warm up to you just fine." he added, hastily. Eve nodded, still a little apprehensive.. "So, are you in?"

The kid looked taken aback for a moment. "I-Yeah. Yes. Please. Charleston. It isn't far from Savannah, is it?"

She appeared to think for a moment. "It's the same direction. I'd say about a week, week and a half's walk there from the city. Give or take."

This seemed to satisfy Denver, and he cracked a smile. "Then I'm in."

"One more thing." Trevor added. "The hood needs to go." he gestured to the ratty parka. Eve nodded in agreement. "He's right. The last thing we need is for us to think you're one of the jumper dudes. That, and it cuts off your peripheral vision."

"Jumper dudes?" He asked. His face, against all odds, turned a little more pale.

"You know? Those horrible ones that jump out of nowhere and start tearing out your-" Trevor stopped. "Kid? Are you OK?"

He seemed to snap out of it. "Sorry." he said, shaking his head, his voice sounding tired all of a sudden. "I'll take it off."

Eve shrugged, and gave a sympathetic smile. "I know, it's kind of a hassle, but I don't want anything to hap- EL DIABLO!"

Trevor gaped. "Lord…"

"Huh? I-" The kid stared at the two in confusion.

Eve swallowed, pointing. "Your… eyes. What happened to them?"

"Oh." He touched the sides of his face, where the crisscrossed, painful-looking scar tissue was.

"These."

"They're, um. Healed. It was an accident." He paused. "From a while ago."

"An accident?" Trevor whispered. Denver winced.

"Yeah. Uh. I don't like to talk about it." He avoided their gaze.

Trevor and Eve shared a look of bewilderment. "Eeeh- Sorry." Trevor winced. "I didn't mean to-"

"It's fine." Denver cut in, his voice pained. "I'm past it."

There was a moment of awkward silence. "It's getting dark." Eve said, finally, glancing out the window. "We need to get back."

"Right." Said the other two. She turned to the kid. "Anything you need to take?"

He scanned the room in a half-hearted sort of way, and gave a shrug. "No."

"Then we're off." She said with a nod, and, with the other following her, turned out the door.

Chapter 8

My jacket still smells like cleaner.

I wish I could still have my hood up. The cold keeps hurting my ears. But I think it's better than being shot.

They don't know.

I can't let them know.

Maybe I shouldn't have said yes.

But I still don't know the way to Savannah.

The darker-looking one- Eve- is ahead of us. She's more awake looking. Always watching. Trevor is all pale and big and tired, and he smells like gas, and sort of like the rubbing alcohol Marcy used to keep in the cabin. He isn't looking as much,. Neither of them smell like they want to hurt me, but they're a little scared.

But they don't know.

They think I'm human.

You are human, I tell myself. Just not the kind of human they are.

Kinda.

"Can you shoot at all, kid?" Trevor asks, from behind me. I shake my head. Even when Marcy tried to teach me, the sound would hurt my ears too much, and she gave up after awhile.

He made the hmph sound. "You're gonna want to learn, if you're gonna keep up."

Eve looks back. "Do we even have any spares to give him?"

Trevor shrugs. I'm sure we can scrounge something."

"It's not going to be of much use if he can't use it."

"I suppose he could learn…."

Eve makes a snorting noise, through her nose, but she doesn't say anything. We keep walking. The ground goes crnh crnch under our feet. It gets darker the more we walk.

"So…" Eve says, after awhile. "Who are you looking for?"

I think a bit. I don't want to say too much. "Just... someone. Who might be able to help me."

"That's a stretch. Do you have a name?"

I think again. "Whitaker. Whitaker Walker is his name, I think."

Both Eve and Trevor stop, suddenly, and I almost walk into Eve. "You mean Sodapop Whitaker?"

Trevor asks, his voice all high and quiet. "Gun shop? Obsessed with cola?"

I'm not sure what cola is, but I remember the gun store. I nod.

" Acho men." Eve says. I'm not sure what an echo is, but I think that's a bad thing. "What on earth do you want to do with him?"

My stomach does a little churning thing, which doesn't feel very good. "I think he can help me."

"Him? Loco Whitaker? A man willing to let a survivor group get ripped to shreds because they got him the wrong kind of pop? I think you're flagging down the wrong light, kid." She shakes her head.

"He'll just as soon leave you to the dogs. Whatever you're looking for from him…"

"I need to find someone." I say, quickly. "How do you know about him?"

Eve looks at Trevor from the side of her eye. "Mostly radio talk." she says. "People tend to exaggerate, but there are some real crazies out there. It's probably better to stay clear of them."

I shake my head. "It's all that I know about. I think he's the only person I can trust. Um. About the person I'm looking for. He knows h- the person. Which I'm looking for."

She doesn't say anything. She just stares at me. Trevor puts a hand on my shoulder.

"Listen, Denver. We'll continue this conversation later, but…"

"Stay away from Whitaker." Eve says. "He's nothing but trouble."

We walk a little more.

When it starts getting dark, they walk faster. It's not hard to keep up, but I wish I can go on the rooftops like I'm used to. We keep having to go around cars and gates and things blocking the way.

After while, they stop in that place in between two buildings, and they get to a red door.

I've seen them before. Sometimes there's food in there, or a good place to sleep. This one is closed, but Eve doesn't open it. She bangs on it with her fist.

"Russ, open up." She sounds annoyed. "It's us. We found another guy out there."

"Did you loot the body?" I hear from inside. The voice is low, and a little angry sounding, but also tired at the same time. Eve sighs.

"He's alive, Russ. We're pretty sure he's harmless. Could you open up already?"

"Fine."

I hear a thunk from the door, and it shakes and rattles, and it sounds like someone is scraping along it. Trevor sighs. He seems to like sighing a lot.

"I don't see the point of all the darn locks, we're the only ones here." he says, all low, so that only Eve and me can hear. Eve goes shhhhh.

"You know how fussy he gets. It's his way of venting."

"He could do something that takes less time…"

"Oh, hush."

The door opens.

Russ… seems angry. He looks mad. He smells mad. But not like Big Angry mad. More like… quiet mad. Like the kind Marcy is whenever she talks to Gatling. She never yells (well, not all the time) or fights him, but it's always there, like she wants to jump him and tear his face off.

He has a beard, a big bushy one that covers his face, so I can't see what he looks like underneath.

One of his arms is in a sling, and then he smells tired, along with the mad.

He looks at me first. "Awfully damn scrawny for a live one, Eve. Are you sure you didn't just pick up some bunker lurker that crawled to the surface by accident?"

Eve shrugs. "We'll take what we can get. If he doesn't hold his own, then we don't have to take him on."

Russ nods, and he steps to the side so we can go in.

The room is… heavy smelling. It's sort of big, but with only one door, and no windows (which I don't like.)

There's not much room to jump or pounce, but I know not to say anything.

"It isn't exactly the, uh, homiest of safe rooms." Trevor says, behind me, "But it's warm. Mind Betsy over there, will ya?"

He points to a little box thing on the ground, that smells like gas. The air around it is wavy, and it feels hot near my leg. The gas smell makes my eyes water, and I cough a little. Trevor smiles.

"You'll get used to it, don't you worry." He says. "It's either this, or freeze to death."

I nod. I don't say anything, because I don't want to taste gas in my mouth.

There's not much space in the room, but there's some tables with maps and cans on them. In the corner, there's a bunch of blankets and sleeping bags on the ground.

Trevor starts to do something with Betsy. Russ is just watching me. He doesn't any anything, but I can almost feel his eyes on me. Eve puts her gun down on the table.

"You can take the gloves off now, kid. I know it's chilly, but there's no point in keeping them on near the heater."

Gloves…

Crap.

"Uh…" I say. Thinkthinkthinkthink….

"Um. They, er, get cold. Really easy. I, uh, like to keep them on. When I'm inside. Uh. Yeah."

She looks suspicious, and I almost hide my hands behind my back. Please don't ask please don't ask…

Then she shrugs. "Whatever works for you." Then she turns and starts talking to Russ.

None of them see me sighing. It feels like a big heavy thing in my chest just left me.

I'm safe.

For now.

Chapter 9

When he was alive, my father, in all of his wisdom, would give me little pieces of life advice that would seem somewhat non-sequitur at worst and anecdotal at best, but were usually relevant in some way. Some of them include:

1. Know your exit routes.

2. Finger on the trigger only when you're ready to fire.

3. Never cross a mercenary.

4. Don't fry bacon shirtless.

5. Have a plan to kill everyone you meet.

Sadly, few of of these seemed to apply. The only exit routes in this hell-hole were blocked and guarded. They took my gun (which pissed me off) and didn't bother to give me any bacon (which REALLY pissed me off.) There was also a distinct lack of mercenaries to anger, so I had to settle for Caldwell.

It seemed to be working. This is where rule #5 comes in.

Well, it had come in for about 10 minutes, up until they'd caught me making a break for it down the hall after I'd stolen a key-card from the guard's body, but, hey, progress is progress.

I spat. It was tinged a dark pink, but I'd do anything to get the taste out of my mouth right now.

"Was tearing out the man's jugular really necessary, Ms Walker?" Caldwell asked, dryly. Mind you, he was standing safely behind three inches of plexiglass. It was a little hard to see him behind all the blood smears. I shrugged.

"Dunno if I hit the vein. Shame, really, I was aiming for it." I started to clean some bodily parts from under my nails. "I definitely didn't hit his windpipe, he was screamin' like a stuck pig the whole time.

He'll live."

Caldwell's eyes took on a hard look.

"That man was one of the leading scientists in the Green Flu research division." he said, simply.

"Your actions may have set us behind by weeks, if not months."

I shrugged. "Fuckin' stupid, that's what he was." I spat again. Copper, salt, yech… "Coming into a room unarmed? Really?"

Caldwell sighed, in an angry sort of way. "The fact you're making this more difficult, Miss Walker, isn't going to aid you. This is one of the best guarded facilities in the country. If you keep going on like this, all you're going to do is-"

"What? Make things harder for me?" I cut in . "My goodness dearie me. What'll happen? You'll take away my dessert privileges? Or even," I clutched my chest in mock distress- "You'll ground me?

Lord, bless my soul…"

Caldwell glowered. "I don't know why you're acting this way, Miss Walker. We've given you every commodity possible-"

" You locked me in a fucking cage. " I was up, standing in front of the blood-spattered glass, eye to eye with an asshole. "You disarmed me, stuck me in a little room with no windows, you've probably killed the only goddamn person I've trusted in forever by cutting him into little bits-"

"And for what?" Caldwell cut me off. "You're safe. Nothing can ever hurt you. You certainly have a better outlook on life than most people on the Eastern Seaboard, or anywhere else in this country.

Frankly, the only reason you aren't sedated is because the researchers are concerned it may have detrimental effects on your samples. But isn't that what you wanted?"

I glared at him, anger seething in my insides. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Wasn't that the point of your initial outpost? Complete isolation? Safety from the turmoils of the country?"

" This isn't the fucking same." I growled. "I had freedom-"

"And you had safety." He nodded. "Isn't that your goal? The military, the CEDA… they only want you to be safe.

Marzia."

That was it, That little, dental-floss, no, hairline thread that I'd been hanging on snapped. I didn't care about the blood. I didn't care about the glass. I didn't care about shit.

I slammed my fist against the wall, making the entire thing vibrate. It hurt, but what did I care?

"Do not." I hissed. Fuck you, fuck you all to the hell you were spawned from…

"Call me Marzia." The only person who can call me that is dead.

Caldwell didn't even flinch. With a soft click, the lights on his side when out, and I was left staring at my own reflection in the glass.

The blood didn't make me look any less savage.

At all.

Chapter 10

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

Maybe I shouldn't be here.

Maybe they'll find out.

I can't sleep. They gave me a mattress, which smells kind of like gas, and and an old blanket, which is better than I'm used to, but I still can't let my head shut up enough for me to calm down.

Russ said we're moving out tomorrow, since his arm is feeling better and 'We apparently have a fuckin' copotent human being this time around.' He sounded mad when he said that. I'm still not sure why.

It's too loud, too. Trevor is making noise while he's sleeping- like a kind of a growl, but it's with every breath as he sleeps, like grrrn-hck, and it puts me on edge. The heater (Bessie? Why would he name something that isn't alive?) is rattling, and the wind shakes the boards in the windows.

When it was just me, I would sleep in the little spaces. Closets, cupboards, places that smelled all like chemicals and made me sneeze but kept all the rivals out of my way. The stupider ones- the infected- would sometimes try and get close, and I would run and hide, or fight and claw and bite.

Then the taste would be in my mouth for a looooooong time.

I hope I find Savannah soon.

Russ and Eve are standing on watch. (Which I think means looking for infected. They're not actually standing on anything.) They talk to each other, quietly so that they don't think I can hear it, but I can a little anyways through all the other noise.

"- can't see why you picked up a scrawny little brat like him, Eve, and I know we need backup, but did you really have to go with the first non-infected thing you saw running around this dump?"

"It's better than nothing, Russ." she replies. "There's not much hope for evac in any case."

"You know how I feel about the borders."

"I was there when we saw it, and I know just as well as you that it isn't safe."

"Damn straight."

"It's not like hiking all the way to South Carolina is gonna give us more of a chance."

"Whatever." Russ says. "We're getting off-topic. What do we do about the kid?"

I hear Eve shrug, because the coat she's wearing makes a ssshk noise when she moves her shoulders. "We haven't run into any survivors for weeks, carriers or no, and anything that moves out there, as far I can tell, is a zombie." She stops. "I do have my doubts, though," she says, quieter,

"Yeah?"

"It's like he has brain damage. The way he stops after each word… like he has to think, just to talk."

"Or he has something to hide." Russ adds.

Eve is quiet for a moment.

"I suppose we all have something to hide."

Russ sniffs. "Yeah, well, secrets isn't gonna get him far here."

"What could it be? Raiders? Robbers? We don't have much they could want. We're scraping by as it is."

"They'll take anything," he says. "Guns, clothes, wom-"

"I get the picture."

"But I don't think it's raiders. Something worse, maybe."

"How can you tell? And what could be worse?"

Russ shrugs, too, but it isn't as rustley. "Call it a gut feeling. There's something about him that puts me on edge."

When he says that, I feel all prickly, like I should get up and run.

Eve sighs. "I know you're being paranoid, but then again, I know your gut's never wrong."

"It wasn't that one time."

They're quiet again, and they don't talk for awhile. All I can hear is Trevor growling and the heater grumbling.

I wait.

"Just go with the gut feeling, Russell," Eve says, finally. "We'll watch him."

"Yeah, and when we go out there, we'll take down anything in our way," he growls. "The commons, the chargers, the Sirens, the stupid hoodie fuc-"

"Wait." Eve stops him. "Did you hear that?" They both turn to where I'm sleeping.

I didn't feel it until now, but I was squeezing my hand so much the sleeping bag tore, the fabric shredding under my fingers.

I tighten my whole body.

Trevor goes grrn-hck.

Then, after a long time, they turn back to the door. I relax.

"Probably the wind," Eve says, but she sounds worried. "But let's keep low for now."

Russ nods, and they don't talk anymore.

Trevor still growls. The heater thing is still going. But it feels like there's not enough going on. My head is buzzing with questions.

I wish it wasn't so quiet.

Trevor and I take watch awhile later. I didn't get much sleep, but I don't say anything about it.

He doesn't talk as much as Russ did, but he does ask me one question, once the others are asleep.

"Where did you come from?"

I don't know what to say. Something that he can't ask me too much about.

"North. Uh, from Maine."

I wait for him to ask more questions, but he hmphs and turns away. "Trees and cold. That's all there is to it," he says.

"Um." I say. "Yeah."

Then we don't say anything for the rest of the night.

Russ wakes up first, when all the parts outside are getting lighter and it's coming in through the boards on the windows.

"About damn time." Trevor says, looking over, and Eve is up next. She goes to one of the cupboards and starts doing something with some water and brown powder.

Soon, she hands me a cup of dark stuff that smells really strong.

"I'm afraid you'll have to take it black." she says. "We're all out of powdered creamer. Are you ok with that?"

I sniff it. It doesn't smell poisonous, but I haven't seen anything like it before.

I take a sip.

UGH! HORRIBLE! It burns my tongue and my mouth and even when I spit it out, the awful bitter taste is still there.

"I'll take that as a no," says Eve, and she looks a little mad at me. Trevor is laughing in the corner, quietly so she can't hear.

Russ takes a cup (Why? I don't know) and is looking at a map on the table. There's a bunch of red lines on it.

"We're moving out as soon as we're done here," says Eve, who's drinking the dark stuff, too. "Russ's arm isn't fully healed yet, but if we stay here any longer, he'll either go crazy or we'll starve to death."

"How did he hurt it?" I ask. She seems to think a bit.

"An incident. Charg-uh, one of those big arm things threw him at a wall. Man, it was huge," she says, shaking her head. "Took a full M16 to take it down. Russ is probably lucky to get off with a broken radius."

Ow. I think. Maybe that's why he's so grumpy all the time.

Trevor, Eve and Russ all finish drinking the horrible black stuff and start putting on jackets, and loading their guns. Eve starts putting away cans into a bag, and Trevor rolls up the map.

I don't have anything with me, so I wait.

Russ looks over at me watching them.

"Do you know how to shoot, kid?"

I shake my head..

" Goddamn." he says, quietly, shaking his head. "How you managed to survive out there is beyond me."

He turns around and grabs something from off the table.

"We don't have much to spare, anyways, so you'll have to make do with this."

He hands me what Marcy once told me was a Tactical Collapsible Entrenching Tool. She kept one in the cabin- it folded up and had a different, shorter name, I think. A-

"A shovel." Trevor says, looking at me holding it. "We're about to go into zombie-infested territory, where we have no idea what we might run into, and you give the kid a darn blunt shovel?"

Russ shrugs. "If he managed to live out there without even a pair of brass knuckles, then a shovel's an improvement. Besides, if you're so worried, why don't you lend him something? I'm sure you have a carbine to spare."

Trevor makes an angry noise. "There's no point in being so hard on him," He mutters, but he still holds on to his gun.

"Anything else?" Russ calls, looking around. I hold on to the shovel. Eve puts on her bag and nods.

Trevor grunts.

He has the thing- Betsy, that's what he named it- strapped to his back, which makes him smell even more like gas.

The room seems emptier now.

Russ looks one more time, and he nods.

"Right then. Get your shit packed. Let's roll."

Chapter 11

It's bright and cold out, and when we step outside I sneeze from the cold and the light. I want to pull up my hood because my eyes hurt, but I remember what Trevor told me yesterday and I keep it down.

Everyone has their guns up, looking around quickly and listening, but I don't hear or smell anything coming.

"We're hitting southeast from here," Russ says, more quiet than he is inside. He's holding his hurt arm carefully. Eve took it out of the sling but it's still wrapped up, and I can still smell the pain on him when he uses it.

"I want to get out this godforsaken city before anything else. There should be a safe house ahead, about 10 miles from here. It's not too far, but we can't count on the roads, and keep an eye out for any… issues."

"Right," Eve says. Trevor and I nod; I forget how much 10 miles is, but I can walk far.

The other two start to walk ahead, but Russ stops me with his hand before I can go.

"Wait."

Then, with his arm that isn't hurt, he shoves me- hard - against the wall, and he smells like the hunt, like he's going for the kill, and his eyes are dark and shiny and looking at me.

His gun is next to my head. I think like I've felt this before.

I stay still, and I can feel the thd thd thd thd in my chest,

"Put on all the act you want you want, pipsqueak," he growls, and I have to make myself not growl back.

"The other two might have fell for your little sob story, but I sure as hell didn't. And if I had it my way, you'd be dead. But with the way that the dice are rolling, you're apparently more use to use to us alive, so you stay. For now." He presses the gun a little harder to my head, so much that it hurts.

"I know you're hiding something, and I know you aren't gonna squeal about it. Right?"

I can't do anything but gulp, and stare into those scary eyes. He squints.

"Here's the deal: you stay where I can see you. Got it?"

I nod, carefully.

"And if you even try to pull any shit on us, or you don't pull your weight, or if I see any funny business, I will find some way to separate your head from your body in the quickest and most painful way I can think of, because I'd hate to waste any ammo on a little fucker like you. Understand?"

Nodnodnodnod. My chest thumps so loud that it hurts.

Thddathdaathdathdda….

"Good."

He lets go of me, and pulls the gun away from my head. I lean against the wall, all shaky,my chest still thudding. Russ snorts. "Catch up with the others. And you're ahead of me. No trailing behind"

I nod, again, and run over to Eve and Trevor around the corner. I don't think they heard anything, but I still keep away from them and Russ a little more now.

I think today is going to be a long day.

I walk next to Trevor.

Russ is in the back, watching, while I hold on tight to the shovel. I don't know what to do with it if something happens, but I know I can't claw or bite.

The cold stings my nose and my face, but I don't say anything. No one says anything, and we just walk on the frozen hard stuff ice. Looking, listening. Listening so hard that my ears almost hurt.

Everyone smells nervous.

We walk. We walk and walk and walk, sometimes we stop if we see something move far away or if there's a sound, but it's a bird or some snow falling off a roof, or Russ pointing where to go.

There's lots of dead on the ground. Sometimes it's just one or some, but other times it's a big pile with brown on the snow around them, I can't smell them now, but I remember, on the warm days when it was just me, there was stink everywhere. Even in the closets, when it smelled like chemicals and dust, I could still smell them. Everywhere.

I'm glad it's cold today.

We walk some more. Eve and Trevor step over the bodies, but sometimes there's too many and nowhere to walk and I'll step on an arm, and it'll go crrrnch.

I wish I could be on the roofs, right now.

After we walk for a long time there's less buildings, and more trees and houses and less bodies.

There's less nervous smell, and I let go of the shovel a tiny little bit. I was holding it really tight.

It's quiet.

Then I hear something.

It's a little noise, and it's far away, but it doesn't sound like wind or snow or birds. It's scraping, heavy on the ice, and it stops sometimes, with a little growl.

Not a rival growl, but I've heard it before.

An infected growl. The stupid kind.

I smell it, too. The wind is coming at me and there's sick, pain, dying, angry in it.

I can't see it, but it's getting close.

I stop.

The others keep walking, but they stop too when they see me.

"Something wrong?" Eve asks, very quiet.

Trevor hmphs. "We can take a break later, kid." he says.

Russ doesn't say anything. He just watches me.

No funny business...

"Uh. Guys." I say. "There's something. Up ahead. I think."

My voice hurts, maybe because I haven't said anything in a long time, or maybe because it's cold.

Eve shakes her head. "Denver, I don't see or hear anything. We should keep mo-"

" Listen. Please. I really think something is coming."

They all stop, and try to hear. I wait.

The shuffling is getting closer, but I don't think they hear it.

I wait more. After awhile, Trevor sights.

"Kid, I think you might've mishe-"

Then there's a growl.

The infected comes around the corner. It's gray and thin, and the stench of sick and rot and dead is everywhere.

Its face has many spots of black on it, like a dead black. There's a hole kind of thing where the nose is, and some of its fingers are gone- just stumps of black.

Marcy told me about this. It's frostbite, when it's so cold that you freeze and the flesh is dead and falls off. It's been outside for a long time, I think.

Then it sees us, and it runs.

I can't remember thinking, or being scared or anything. Just the smell, and the eyes and the hands and everything else that's black and dead.

Then Russ holds up the gun and shoots.

It's three times, bangbangbang in the chest, all red and black before it falls down dead. I have to make myself stand and not hold my hands over my ears, which are going eeeeeeeeee and hurt, alot, from the sound.

"Nice shot." says Eve. She sounds all echoey and far away even though she's right next to me.

"Least it was only one," says Trevor, but Russ shakes his head.

"There's gonna be more coming this way. We'd better move."

Then I hear a scream, and it's everywhere.

"Ah, sugar."

"Fuck in a can!"

" ¡Me cago en ná!

"Uh…"

They come, running, screaming aoooooooooo and climbing over walls, falling from roofs, out windows and doors and hidden places. Some of them slip on the ice and the others run over it but they get back up again, still screaming and growling and coming at us.

Trevor hits the first one. It's pale and doesn't have as many black parts but I can still smell the dead on it, and goes straight at him until he hits it, bang in the head and it falls.

The rest run right after, and Eve and Russ shoot. The sounds of the guns make my chest thud and my head rings, and I almost miss the one running right at me.

I swing the shovel.

It hits it right in the head, and it explodes, pink and grey spraying everywhere and landing on me, and now all I can smell is blood.

"Nice thwack, kid," says Trevor, and he shoves an infected towards me. "Reloading!" he calls out.

I hit that one with the shovel too, and even though it doesn't explode it hit the ground with a crnch.

They keep coming, and I don't even stop to think anymore. All I can hear are the screams and the shots, or the others yelling out 'Reloading!"

And when my shovel hits something.

Everything becomes a thing I do. Swing, hit, kick, smell of blood, punch….

It's all red, and the guns rattle, bangabangbangabang like my chest, like my head.

Then it's over. The last one Russ shoots and it falls, on a pile all around us with the rest, and the silence after is so loud my ears ring.

Eve wipes her forehead. "Damn, I thought we weren't going to make it through that one. They all came out of nowhere!" She turns to me and smiles.

"Nice fighting there, kid . "

"Thanks." I say. My head is hurting, and I can't think past the buzzing in my ears and the smell of blood.

Trevor hits me on the back. "I knew you'd make a good addition!" he says. "You're a real credit to the team! Right, Russ?"

Russ is watching me closely. He narrows his eyes.

"How were you able to hear that first one?"

"Eh?" I say. The first one?

"You know. The first infected. The one none of us was able see, or hear."

Lie, I think, but I can't think of a good reason.

"Uh. It heard it screaming. Uh. Far away."

Russ doesn't believe me. I can smell it on him, but before he does anything Eve steps in front.

"We can discuss this at the safe house," she says, and Trevor nods with her. "Let's keep moving so this-" she points to the bodies- "Doesn't happen again."

Russ grunts, but he doesn't look like he's going to argue. "Right."

He still sounds mad.

Eve and Trevor start walking, and I run to catch up with them. I know Russ is behind me, but I don't look back to see.

I hope the rest of the day is quiet.

Russell watched as the other two of the team walked ahead, the newcomer trailing behind them in earnest.

He said nothing, simply observing as his breath hung in the cold air.

He contemplated, in silence, how scrawny the kid looked; certainly not enough to put up a good fight, at first glance.

Hell, give him a Beretta, he thought to himself, and the kickback alone would probably knock the punk over.

He looked down at the bodies, splayed in various awkward positions, riddled with bulletholes and frostbite marks. Nowadays, they looked more like the zombies in the movies than actual living things. Not that they were really living when we shot them, he reflected.

One body was different. It had fallen back, spreadeagled, as though knocked down by some massive force.

He crouched down to inspect the damage. The face was caved in, enough to make a sizeable dent, though the hole wasn't in the flat shape of a shovel. It was more rounded. Deeper.

Like a fist.

A single punch that killed it.

Russ said nothing. He only took in the scene around him. Thinking.

Always thinking. And watching.

Then he rose, turned, and followed the others.

Chapter 12

The group was silent was they made their way across the roads, past houses collapsed under snow and streets left unplowed, the ice building up under the onslaught of drifts and left slick by the weak sun.

Even when they stopped in an old gas station for a break and MRE's (which made the kid stare at the wall, for some reason) they said nothing. They were quiet, save an occasional grunt or muttered command, as they picked their way over a highway filled with cars going to nowhere, their occupants strapped and frozen to the sears, or the windows stained and encrusted with old blood.

They were quiet as the city turned into suburbs, and as the cars became less and less frequent on the roads.

And they were especially quiet as they heard a weeping wail in a rainwater ditch beside the parkway, the inhuman cries echoing down the way and carrying on the wind long after they passed the source.

When they eventually reached the safehouse, however, everyone stumbling into a small office room located in god-knew-where, Ohio, it was Trevor that broke the silence.

"Lord in Heaven, finally."

A collective sigh of relief of breathed (Even by Russ) and the setup of camp commenced.

Trevor hauled Betsy off his back and fiddled with it, filling the room with the smell of gas (which made Denver sputter) and, after awhile, a tentative kind of heat. Eve retrieved various medical supplies from her pack, and Russ rolled out his maps.

Denver was tasked with scrounging for food, and an expedition through the cupboards revealed were some candles, rock hard and sooty, and a couple of dented, frozen cans of beans.

"A deadly combination," joked Eve when she saw the pile, but the comment seemed to fly over the kid's head, and she called it a loss, going back to her task of unpacking.

Though everyone had kept their guns slung to their backs, Denver's shovel lay, forlorn looking, on the table, the blade crusted with blood and god-knew-what. She cringed, inwardly, at the unsanitary practice of leaving it on top of an eating table, and made a mental note to chew him out, and not use that particular spot for preparing food. Yuck.

As she grabbed the spade, and noted, for all the action it had gone through, it didn't look too worse for wear. A few dents here and there, but it was otherwise intact, right down to the finger-ridges on the handle-Wait. Had they always been there?

The handle, sure enough, seemed to be molded to a hand, but she could have sworn that the metal had been smooth and straight befo-

"Hey, Eve, can you look at this?"

Trevor interrupted her thoughts, and she turned away from the table. Russ has taken the sling off, and was moving his wrist around experimentally.

"It feels OK, but I think it might be a little swollen," he said, gruffly, though not unkindly.

Eve sighed. No hay paz para los pecadores. She put down the shovel and turned her mind to other topics; there were more important things to think about, after all.

Trevor and Denver had watch again for the night, first shift. Betsy managed to make the space bearable, if a little gasoline-fumey, the quiet hum filling the room. The night was silent, and Trevor figured there would be little issue from the zombies.

Feeling a need, he pulled a certain metal flask deep from within the recesses of his coat, unscrewing the cap as he glanced, furtively, at the sleeping forms of Eve and Russ, and then back at the kid, who was watching with quiet disinterest, shovel in hand.

"You mind?" he asked, shaking the flask.

The kid sniffed- he'd been doing that all day, perhaps he had a cold- and shrugged, turning to the window.

Trevor took this as a confirmation, and swigged the bottle.

"Thanks." He said, capping the container and stowing it away once again with care.

"Heh. I swore off this stuff when I came clean four years ago, but Lord knows I need some after today."

Denver didn't reply. Though his face was pointed towards the window, his gaze seemed unfocused.

Trevor turned to face him.

"You're not much of a talker, are ya?"

Denver once again shrugged. "Yeah."

"So you like talking?"

He stiffened. "Uh, I mean, what I was saying was-"

"You don't?"

"Y- I mean, I don't like talking. Sorry."

"It's alright."

"...thanks." Despite his sallow skin, there was a faint redness to his face now.

There was a stretch of silence. Then:

"Got something on your mind?"

Denver seemed to hesitate before answering. "I guess."

"The person you're looking for?"

There was no reply. Trevor gave him a knowing look.

"What's she like?"

There was a soft sound of surprise, and Denver turned to Trevor, eyes wide.

"How do you know?"

Trevor chuckled again. "There's signs, if you know what to look for. Miss her?"

He nodded.

"It's been… awhile since I've seen her."

"How'd you get split up?"

He appeared to hesitate, staring at the window again with a look of conflict on his face.

"CEDA." He said, simply. "I don't know where she is right now, but Whitaker-"

"You're still going to try and find him?"

"Yeah."

"You know what we told you about him. They don't call him 'Crazy Whitaker' for nothing."

"I'm still gonna look for him."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"You're nuts." He shook his head in disbelief, and then thought for a moment.

"You must really care about this girl."

The kid exhaled in a gentle, and stared into the distance.

"I do."

"Why?"

Denver, glanced down at his hands, which had remained gloved since Trevor had first seen him, oddly enough.

"I think she would have done the same for me."

"You think so?"

There was a pause, and a look of conflict once again clouded his face.

"When we first met…" he started, seeming to pick his words carefully, "She… helped me out. When she could have let me die. But she saved me. My life. When she didn't have to. So I think it's my turn now. And…"

He paused. "She's all I have. My only family, kinda."

"So you're gonna find her?"

"I have to."

Trevor scoffed, softly. "There's never such a thing as have to, kid. I know she might be all you've got or what have you, but it's a snipe hunt you've got going there. And while I don't think I can pull you away from it, please at least consider hard darn impossible it is."

Denver gripped the shovel, hard, so much that the metal creaked. "I know she's out there. And I know that she's alive, and that if I find Whitaker, then he can help me."

"And if you can't find him? Or he doesn't help you? Or he turns you into a red splat on the ground with a rocket launcher because you're thinking of negotiating with a lunatic?"

He shrugged. "I'm gonna try. It's all I can do."

Trevor raised an eyebrow. "Your funeral." After a moment, he added,

"If you find her, God willing, I hope she's worth it."

"I will." Denver replied, quietly, but his voice edged with steel, almost in a feral growl.

"I'm gonna find her."

Chapter 13

It was an awfully bright morning, and the sunlight hitting over the buildings nearly blinded the figure standing above. He blocked out the offending rays with his arm, and squinted down at the smallish-looking figure of Bass Mouth, who was standing in an alley below, holding an ancient video camera and peering up towards the roof.

" Are you sure about this, Den?" he called from below, his voice echoing up the walls of the gap. "It's a heck of a jump!"

" Positive!" Yells the figure on the roof, holding up an ungloved hand to his mouth as he yells down.

"If Belle can do it, I can!"

He's actually scared, fear pooling in his stomach and chest as he looks at the darkness in between roofs, making him clench his fists in anticipation. It is, however, the good kind of scared. The kind that got your heart beating and the blood pumping and the air filling your lungs.

The kind of fear that made you feel alive.

He took a deep breath, the morning air still cool.

" I'm ready when you are, Seb."

" Cam's running." Bass Mouth replied. "I'm ready when you are. Lett'r rip."

Denver took another deep breath, and carefully backed away from the ledge, the darkness of the gap looming like a void in the blazing white reflection of the rooftops.

He stared at the void.

The void stared back.

Then, he ran, shoes slapping the pavement, and then there was the ledge- a push off, a kick, and he flew.

And then it warped. He was still flying, but there was no roof or camera or sunshine. Only void, and something, someone below him, human shaped and screaming, falling, his hands claws were out and the smell of blood, of sick…

Then it wasn't a person under him- something bigger, hairier, angrier , with foam and teeth and claws even bigger than his, snapping and roaring and tossing…

Bite tear kill swipe

I wake up.

It's been awhile since I remembered something. I try to think about everything that happened, but it feels like it's leaving me…

Bass Mouth...roof..camera...bear... It's all just noise.

Even though my mattress is far away from Betsy, I feel hot. My coat is soaked in sweat, and my hands shake.

It's morning, but the sun isn't out. The sky is just all grey.

"Look who's up."

It's Trevor, and he's sitting at the map table with Russ, who still looks sleepy.

"You were snoring like all heck last night, kid," he says, looking at the maps. "Do you have a cold or something? I coulda thought that there was a bear in the room."

I feel my face getting hot, and I cough a little. "Yeah. It's a cold," I say, turning away from him.

Eve is up, too, and she hands me a can of beans. "We're not heading out straight away," she tells me, while I grab a fork. "The boys are looking for a different route."

"Different route?" I ask. We already went really slow yesterday. When it was just me, I would go wherever I wanted. I didn't plan.

But I also didn't know where I was going. I tell myself.

Eve nods. "They're trying to find the best route to avoid another horde."

"Horde?"

"Big bunch of zombies. The one we hit yesterday was a bit of a surprise, it ate through a good amount of our ammo supply."

"Why was it a surprise?"

She shrugs. "I suppose we were a little spoiled, in the last town. We cleared out most of the area, and hadn't had any runs-ins for awhile."

She pauses. "That, and, well, we thought the rest might have died off."

"Died off?"

"We figured that dehydration would kill them, or, failing that, the cold. I have to say, most of them looked like shit-, though I'm surprised there were so many left kicking."

I finish the beans. It's not much, but I can't ask for more. There aren't very many cans with us.

Maybe we'll find some more in the next safe room, I think. It doesn't change the empty feeling in my stomach.

"We're moving, folks," says Russ. I put the can down and grab my shovel.

"Looks like we might get some weather, so we need to move fast." he adds. The others nod. It takes a little while to pack up, but we're outside soon. I'm glad it's not as bright, but the air smells heavier, like cold and water and a little metal.

"It's a storm for sure," says Trevor, looking up. "The old knees are getting creaky."

"Your knees are right," says Eve, "I don't like the look of those clouds."

"My arm's feeling the same way, too." Russ says. "Let's get going."

He walks, faster than any of us, and I almost run to catch up. It's hard not to slip on the ice. I don't hear anything, so I keep my shovel down.

Eve walks next to me, looking a little annoyed.

"That man," she says to me, looking at Russ. "Is either going to kill himself or us, I don't know which first. He really shouldn't be pushing himself so."

Russ doesn't say anything, but I think he heard, because he slows down a little. Trevor behind us, huffing and breathing hard and going all red in the face.

"How far is the next room from here?" Eve asks.

"15 miles, tops," Trevor pants. "It's shorter, and it's over highway so that it's faster. We don't have any backup if we get caught in a storm, so…"

"I get the idea." Eve replies.

We keep walking.

After a while, white stuff starts falling from the sky. It smells wet and cold, and it makes a tiny fffff noise when it hits the ground. I stop and watch.

"Denver?" Eve calls.

I look away. Better catch up.

Eve laughs when she sees me. "Never seen snow before?" she asks.

I shake my head. Marcy talks about it from her survival books, but she doesn't seem to like it. Mostly it's stuff about hypothermia and impeded movement and constructed insulated dwelling.

I like looking at it fall down. It makes me feel happy. I don't know why.

" ...taking L sledding. Yeah, mom, we'll be back before dark, it's just at deKoevend…"

"Are you sure you've never seen snow before?" Eve says. "You look like the one time my cousin from Ponce visited for Christmas. Eyes as big as soup pans, he thought it was magic."

"Yeah." I say. I'm not really paying attention. I'm too busy thinking.

She keeps talking. "It was so simple back then, not having to worry about- this. All this... coño." she waves her arm at the cars in the street, all the old houses with the windows broken, everything.

We walk walking. She sighs again.

"We've all lost something because of the Flu." she says, quietly.

"Everyone?" I ask.

She nods. "Trevor… he had a daughter and a granddaughter. The town they were in- it was overrun.

He couldn't get to them in time. He never even saw the bodies. Russ, he lost Skip."

"What about you?"

She pauses. "My husband."

She smells sad, and I don't think I should ask any more, but she keeps going.

"I had just come home from work." she says. "When I left, he was so worried about me and the flu, since I worked at the hospital… but I told him it was just a scare, and it would blow over. I kissed him goodbye, and when I came back…"

She pauses again. "He was gone. Infected, fully. Tried attacking me, I locked myself in the basement, got the shotgun, and…"

She stops. I smell a tiny bit of saltwater, and the scent of hurt.

Stupid. I think. I shouldn't have asked...

"I'm sorry." I say. I don't know what else to, but it feels like I need to say it.

She gives me a little smile, though it doesn't look happy. "Thank you." she says. "Though you don't need to apologize. It's not like you infected them, but… thank you."

"Is it..." I start. "Hard? Losing someone?"

"Of course. Why wouldn't it be?"

She pauses. "We all… cope with it differently. It took me awhile to get over Alex, and I still don't think I'm over it, or ever will be. The first weeks were.. .hard." She makes a face like she's in pain. "It was just me, alone, for some time. My town was overrun soon after that, and I tried holding it out in my house. I thought it would be over in a few weeks. But then, they came. The horrible ones."

She waves her hands. "You know. The mutated ones. The ones that spit acid like fire, or the little laughing ones that ride you like a mule. The ones that jump at you, screaming and clawing-"

"Leapers?" I ask. My hands and back feel all prickly, suddenly.

She nods. "We all had our own names for them, when we met, Trevor, Russ, Skip and I. The Savagees, those white crying ones, I called la llorona, after an old child's tale. Trevor would call them Rebeccas, because he said they reminded him of his ex-wife." She snorts.

"Skip, he had lots of names for them… but I won't tell you, because he cursed like a sailor, that boy.

Good old Skip…"

She stops, and thinks some more. "We all started calling them after the names the graffiti said, it was just easier, not as confusing-"

"Graffiti?"

"The writing on the walls of the saferooms."

"Oh."

"Anyways, after they came, staying in one place became impossible. They just kept attacking, attacking… I thought I was going to die, but I managed to escape in the night over the roof, and get to a saferoom. It was too late for an evac, of course," she says, shaking her head. "So I was pretty much screwed , at least until Skip and Russ found me. They nearly shot me, too, because I looked like la llorona, I was so starved. We picked up Trevor a few days later, hiding in his old squad's firehouse in Fort Wayne. The rest is history. We're going to Charleston, by hook or by crook."

I think of something. "Why not go to the borders?" I ask. "There's no flu over the river. They have a vaccine."

Eve shakes her head, laughing softly, but it doesn't sound happy. "It might be zombie free over the Mississippi, kid, but what they have on the West side is much, much worse."

"What do you mean?"

She stop waking, and turns to me. "The military! Are you blind? Have you even read the writing on the wall?" She's shaking, angry smelling- almost yelling. "The bodies? Do you even know what they do to us? Survivors? Carriers?"

"They murder them. Right where they stand."

Chapter 14

"Murder?"

I feel prickly again, not just in my hands, but everywhere- my back, my legs, my head and even my teeth.

Eve is shaking her head again, and starts walking. The ice goes scrnch under our feet, but I don't pay attention.

"You don't know?" she asks, while the snow is falling harder, faster, stronger. "Have you ever even seen an evac station? The military, they lined survivors up against the wall- women, children, old men, everyone- and, bang bang," -she made a gun with her fingers- "shot them through their heads. They weren't sick. Well, not in the sense."

"How?"

"Carriers. They don't want them spreading it."

"But don't they have a vaccine?" I ask. Gatling said that they were able to make one…

Eve laughs again, but it still doesn't sound happy. It's sour, and bitter.

"You've been listening to the radio too much, haven't you? All those lies that the s oplapollas out there, try and get us to the border so they can take care of us, keep the whole mess quiet? They don't want us talking about the chaos they've caused here, about the infected or the murder or the bombs. No, it's easier to dose us with a bullet and call it a day, not raise a fuss out west. We're dead, anyways," she sighs. "No one over the border even thinks, or knows, that we're alive. It's us, alone.

No help. No escape, except for over the sea."

"That's why you're going to Charleston?"

She nods. "Steal a boat, there's probably a harbor full of them, hopefully they haven't all rotted through. Light out for- well, somewhere that isn't here. Just... away from this mess. Russ is a Michigan man, he used to be a Great Lakes boater. We'll be alright with him, I suppose."

"So you're following him?"

She shrugs. "What else can I do? Starve to death in a saferoom? Get tagged by a Trapper in the streets? Going solo… it's suicide. Lone wolves are picked off, easy. Even with just two or three, it's hard. We were struggling after we lost Skip, so when we found you, well…"

"Oh."

"Anyways… it's all we can hope for. Maybe, if we're lucky, we won't die."

"So you trust Russ?"

She pauses, and seems to think a little.

"I think he knows what he's doing."

She pauses again, and adds, quietly:

"Well, most of the time."

We've walked a while, and I didn't say anything after I talked with Eve. I'm thinking too much.

There's more wind, and I have to keep my face down from it. I can't smell much anymore- just cold and ice.

It's so loud that Eve has to yell to Russ. "How much farther?"

Russ doesn't stop, but turns and yells back, "Quarter of a mile. We're gonna hit the city soon."

We walk and walk, and even though it's not long, I feel tired. My stomach is even emptier than before, and I wish I had more than one can of beans to eat.

The snow keeps getting thicker, and I can't see very well. The others are just dark blobs in the white.

"Russ!" Trevor yells, right next to me. "I think we're lost!"

I hear Russ yell back, from far off. "We should be right at the door! The compass doesn't lie!"

"Are you sure? We should have reached it ages ago!"

"Just keep walking. We'll hit it any minu-"

THNK.

It's a big, metal sound, like someone banging on a door, and it's just ahead.

"I think I've found it!"

I hear more banging, and a grrrrrt-SHHHK. The there's a hole of black in the white, which I run towards.

I almost hit a table when I run in, but it's out of the snow, and the other three are behind me. The wind rattles the doors, and Trevor slams it shut as he comes in.

"About damn time," Eve mutters. I let my eyes get used to the dark, and I look around the room.

It's bigger than the last one, but there's no windows except for the one on the door. There's mattresses on the floor, some tables, and…

"Praise be," whispers Trevor. "They left behind a box of K-rations."

Russ sighs, but it sounds more happy than sad. "Luck at last."

I don't listen while they talk and unpack. I just hear the walls creak in the wind, and look through the window at the snow outside. All, white, and all cold.

And familiar.

Russ and me take the second watch.

He doesn't look at me, or talk, for the first hour. Sometimes he'll grunt, but he just stares at the door.

I listen to the wind rattle the door.

Sometimes the snow will fall off the roof and go thfmp on the ground. I'll jump a little, and he'll raise his gun, until we find out it was just some snow.

After awhile he coughs, and looks at me for the first time.

"So you've survived the first couple of days."

I tense, and it feels like my breath is clogging up in my throat.

I nod, because it's all that I can do.

"What are you hiding?"

I swallow, and the lump in my throat gets a little smaller. "What do you mean?"

"How could you survive out there that long? Without a weapon, anything. You can't run forever."

"I didn't."

"Then how?"

"I…"

I think. Just for a moment, but it feels longer. I'm not sure if I can lie…

But I can tell the truth.

Sort of.

"I...hid. There was a bunker, and in the start I stayed there. I didn't know what was going on, but it was just me and Ma- some other woman. I was in there awhile and… the military came. We were in Maine and the military came. I was… on a plane, being evacuated, I think, but something, uh, happened to the pilot and the plane crashed. I don't know where it was, but I hid a lot. Um… there weren't lots of infected. I hid in closets a lot. Then Eve and Trevor found me."

Russ is quiet for some time. "So that's it."

"...Um. Yeah." I can't think of anything else to say that might be a lie.

"And you decided to join us because…?"

I stop. I don't know how to answer, because I really don't know why.

Well, they know how to get to Savannah. That's why. But I think Russ might not believe that one.

"Safety. Until I get to Georgia." That's probably OK to say.

"Then what?"

Find Whitaker, I think. I don't know if he'll react the same as Eve and Trevor did.

"Find help."

"In Georgia?"

"It's the only place I think I can find it."

He just shrugs. "Whatever floats your boat."

I relax a little until he turns to me again. "Don't think you're off the hook. I'm still watching you." He narrows his eyes.

I just stare at the door.

It's a long night.

Chapter 15

It was a long night.

Well, I'll assume it was night. They turned off the fluorescent lights at some designated time so I could get my theoretical beauty/blood replenishment sleep, but, really, when you're wrestling with resentment, generalized despair and utter rage, sleep don't come easy.

And I wasn't alone.

I'd started to see glimpses of him, about a week ago. They were just flashes, mere suggestions of shadow in the corner of my eye that vanished as soon as I'd turned around. Little whispers at the edge of my hearing, little suggestions that crept into my head that I'd think that were mine, but didn't have the same voice as mine.

Within a few days, the flashes stayed longer. Became more solid. Until they somehow became the man sitting on my bed.

Old army jacket, that used to be mine before it was taken away. A flannel shirt and winter hat that was long worn and stained with sweat and probably some sort of animal viscera. Duck boots and camo pants. Salt and pepper brown hair and a bushy ol' beard and mustache. Blue eyes that were looking mournful and stern, all at once. Crossed arms.

I took a breath before speaking.

"Hello, Dad."

His eyes bored into me like a power drill on high. "Sighing ain't the way to respect yer dad."

I tried to think of a comeback, but I couldn't. Somehow, through all my annoyance, I felt like I was once again 12, and any sort of rebuttal I threw would quickly and efficiently seem whiny and meaningless.

Dad did that to people.

Still, I tried.

"Dad," I said, carefully as I could. "You're a manifestation of my current frustrations and grief from being locked in a featureless room for God knows how long. If anything, any disrespect I show you is disrespect that I'm showing myself."

Dad nodded, sagely. "Ya raise a good point there, sweetie."

Inexplicably, I felt a slight glow of pride, until he added,

"But that doesn't mean you can disrespect me."

I conceded defeat. "Yes, sir."

He merely grunted, and looked around the room with quiet disinterest. "Ain't a bad setup."

I gave him a rueful look. "You're saying I should appreciate it?"

He shrugged. "Beats starvin'."

"I'd rather starve in a shack than live out my days locked in a box."

"So what are ya gonna do about it?"

I observed the wall, which remained exactly the same in appearance as it did for the past forever.

"What can I do?"

"I'm askin' ya."

"Well, let's re-iterate." I gestured around the room. "The vents are perfectly usable, if I happened to be the size and dimensions of a sentient credit card. They gas me out whenever someone comes in, so the element of surprise is removed. My nails are oh-so-lovingly clipped and filed whenever I'm knocked out, so I can't even scratch anyone to death. Not to mention, I don't even know the damn layout of the place, or even where I am, so if I do manage to break free, then I could run out the door and fall off a cliff into the ocean for all I know."

"Marzia."

"Yeah?"

" Use your damn head. "

I turned to him, almost in disbelief. "What do you-"

"You know damn well what I mean, kid. Use that big brain of yours and figure it out."

"What? Do I headbutt my way through the wall?" I asked, dubiously. "I mean, I know ya said I've always had a thick skull, but…"

"Quit sassin'."

"Yessir."

He sighed. "Remember when you went to that camp in the wintertime? The one in Montana for disturbed youths or somethin'?"

"Yeah. You said it would 'toughen me up.'"

"And they hit you and forced ya to go on marches and made ya to sleep outside in the elements without your boots so you couldn't run away?"

"They weren't very good about instilling proper camping protocol."

"And the last straw for you was…?"

"When they took my pocketknife and tossed it in the river." I recalled. It wasn't just the act of disarming me that pushed me to the edge. I liked that fucking knife.

"What did you do then?"

"Well, they caught me every time I tried to hightail it, and they nearly handcuffed me to my cot after I-

"

"What did you do that worked?"

"The letter." I said. We'd wrote home once a week, so I suppose the little camper brats' parents didn't worry too much. Of course, the counselors read them over and tossed them if the contents were too incriminating for their liking.

I, however, had a workaround in mind.

"I wrote a coded message under the stamp," I said."And told you in the letter to peel it away for my collection."

It was an old trick that I'd read once in some POW history book, and it had stuck with me. The counselors, for their part, didn't seem to like Axis-internment camp stories nearly as much as I did, and never suspected a thing before Dad bailed me out a week later.

I remembered this fondly, mostly because I got out of that clusterfuck and left none the wiser. Now, on the other hand-

"You're dead." I pointed out. "They don't let me send mail, anyways. I don't think you can get me out of this one."

"That wasn't the point."

"What was the point, then?"

He sighed, and gave me a cold look, his eyes narrowed. "You take chances where you get them."

I let the silence sink in for a moment..

"That's it?" I asked, staring past him at the wall. "I take the chances I can get?"

"Did I stutter?"

"Y- No, look." I started, and then focused on him and not the wall. On him, or the spectre of him that my stir-crazy mind had conjured up. "There aren't any chances left, Dad. I used them all. I'm stuck here. De- he's dead. I got myself into this mess, and I doubt I can get myself out of it." My voice almost quavered, but I was nearly too angry to let it. "I'll be in here until all the Green Flu ends, or maybe I'll be here until I die, but they'll clone me or something, or maybe bring me back as a zombie so I can cure the zombies."

I choked back the urge to scream as a clenched my teeth. "That's what I'll be," I muttered. "Queen of the fucking zombies."

His expression didn't change, save for a small softening in his eyes. I could have imagined it.

"Know this, Marzia." he said, almost sadly, "Opportunity knocks."

And then he was gone.

I stared in the hole of space where he used to be. Or not be, I suppose. You can't really tell with hallucinations.

"Opportunity knocks." I echoed, muttering to myself. "What kind of navel-gazing self motivational kind of bullshit is tha-"

Knock. Knock.

I froze. The silence was deafening, and I could hear my ears ringing.

Knock. Knock.

"What the ever-loving fuck?"

It seemed to be coming from just outside. I couldn't see through the two-way mirror, but I could hear the the sound of something hard- wooden, maybe- hitting the walls. It was, oddly enough persistent.

Almost rhythmic.

Knock. Knock. CLUNK.

All of a sudden, the mirror disappeared, replaced with a view of the hall outside.

Usually Caldwell would be standing there, being all smug and shit and just out of my reach, but this time around there was no-one. Just an empty hall.

And a middle-aged dude in a janitor's uniform. He was wielding a mop and…

Dancing? I'm not sure. It looked a little too coordinated to be an epileptic seizure. Whatever it was, he was really into it.

With the lights in the hallway, came the sound as well. It was a radio crackle, the same thing I heard when I was being spoken to from the outside. Instead of military bullshit, however…

"Won't you, please let, meeeeeeeee, back in your heart!" the janitor sang. As he swished around, the mop handle hit the walls. Suddenly, the handle hit the panel on the side- and I saw the mirror again. The audio, however, was still turned on., and I could hear the broom handle hitting the walls again. Knock knock.

I wondered, briefly, if I was hallucinating again. The guy kept singing.

"I want you back! Yeah, I do now."

I also wondered why a top-secret military operation would have a bozo like this guy mopping their halls.

"Ooo, ooo, baby!"

Additionally, I wondered how he had accessed the panel presumably controlling the lights, and accidentally turned on the audio as well.

"Yeah yeah yeah yeah!"

(How the hell didn't he notice me, in any case?)

"Na na na na!"

I considered these many things, as the man sang on through his favorite Jackson 5 song.

I didn't know what I could do with this information. But for now, I had full sight of a hallway that had previously been unknown to me, which was better than nothing.

"I want you back!"

Maybe I actually had a chance.

"And let me live again!"

Opportunity knocks, after all.

Chapter 16

I didn't sleep.

Not for a moment.

I want to. My eyes feel heavy and blurry. I don't even feel like turning over. I need sleep.

But I'm too tired. And too worried.

Trevor is taking watch so I don't hear him going grrrn-hck. Him and Eve are quiet tonight, too.

Russ makes sounds, though. He's asleep, I can hear him breathing slowly and he doesn't smell awake, but sometimes I hear him saying words.

"Skip… don't go…"

He sounds sad. Like he's calling someone.

"I'm sorry."

I hear Eve and Trevor turn around. Eve shakes her head.

"Poor man."

Trevor grunts. "He was getting better for awhile."

"Maybe it was all the stress from today…"

I'm tired of being awake. I sit up.

Trevor turns to me. "Can't sleep?"

I shake my head. "No."

"Sit watch with us a little, then. You'll be bored enough to knock off soon enough."

I roll off the mattress and walk over. Eve shoves a chair towards me. "Did Russ scare you tonight?"

I think about my answer for a second. "No. Not really."

"No fibbing?"

"Uhhh." I try and remember what fibbing is. "No."

She's worried, but she just shrugs. "I'll take your word for it."

We sit for a little. It's quiet.

Then I turn to Trevor.

"Who's Skip?"

He gets a painful look on his face, and I smell unsure in the air.

"Skip was…"

"Spencer," Eve cuts in. "His name was Spencer, but everyone called him Skip."

Trevor nods. "He is - was - Russ' baby brother. Just by a few years, but he was always a kid to us."

"They were a real team, those two." Eve says. "Always scheming. Always planning. Just when we thought we were cornered, they'd come up with something and we'd escape"

"It was him who came up with the idea to get to Charleston." Trevor says. "They were Michiganders, those two. Owned a boating business before the state was half-way overrun."

"They saved our lives," says Eve. "They got me out of the house I was cornered in, they helped Trevor escape from the fire station just when it was being swarmed- it was so much. They gave us an option when both sides of the border meant death for us."

"They stuck together like glue," says Trevor. "Always taking the same watch shifts. They'd be up the earliest, radio on, mapping every darn safe house all the way to Charleston, planning it out. Skip…

he was a little reckless, a little goofy... but it balanced them. Russ would calm him down, and Skip would lighten his brother up.

"It was a month ago," says Trevor. "We were in Ohio. Full day walking, and still a couple of miles to the saferoom. We were all ready to drop."

"Skip…" Eve starts. "He suggested a shortcut."

"It was through an alleyway," she said. "It looked harmless enough, but-"

"Russ didn't want to." Trevor says. "He had a bad feeling about it. They argued, but eventually we went with Skip's plan."

"We…" Eve cuts in. "There was one of those fat ones in there. A Siren. It ambushed them, and barfed on Russ."

"It went downhill really fast," says Trevor. "Next thing we know, the horde's swarming us. Eve n' me are 30 zombies deep, all sides, you can't see or move a foot either way. Just when we got to grips with it, outta nowhere-"

"A Charger," says Eve, "It ran right through us. I dodged it, but it pushed down Trevor, and whacked Russ to the side."

"But the one it pinned," says Trevor. "Was Skip."

"Russ was knocked out against the wall," says Eve. "It felt like forever before we were able to fight off the horde. By the time we could throw a Molotov at the Charger and shoot it to death…" she seems to choke a little. Trevor pats her on the back.

"It was too late," he says, quietly. He shakes his head.

"Poor little kid, laying there, covered in blood. Every single bone in body was broke. He couldn't even take a breath to say his last words."

Eve sighs. "Russ regained consciousness right afterwards. We couldn't stop and wait- all we could do was confirm that Skip had died, and then get Russ to the safehouse. He in shock, that man.

Babbling like like a cuckoo, I don't think that he even knew where he was, or what was going on."

"When he finally woke up all the way," says Trevor, "He didn't believe it. Thought it was one of Skip's stupid pranks. He kept calling out for his brother, and when it finally sunk in, he couldn't talk. He just stared at the wall, didn't say anything, nothing. He barely ate or drank for days. His arm was broken, but it didn't register to him. We couldn't get through to him for weeks."

"We had to stay in the area," says Eve. "Just so we could scavenge for everything. We couldn't move as a group, not with an injured man. So we had to manage."

Trevor nods. "God was watching us, 'cos the military didn't bomb the place, and we were able to find what we needed."

"But Russ…" Eve says. "He was out of his mind. Gone loco with grief."

"How?" I ask.

Eve shakes her head. "Loss… everyone acts differently. For him, he just shut down. Even after he managed to started to eat again, he looked like a zombie himself for awhile. It was like... a thousand mile stare. Like those soldiers who get PTSD. He was a different man entirely- he didn't smile, he didn't laugh, he didn't even cry. It's like something in him died."

"Something in him did die," says Trevor. "And I don't think that part of him is ever going to heal. It'll take a long time, at least."

"How long?" I ask. Trevor shrugs.

"Longer than you'd think. It's not anytime soon, that's sure."

"Is that why…?"

"He's so coarse?" Eve says. "I suppose. We did think that he… went a little bit around the bend. Off the edge."

"Off the edge?"

"He became paranoid. When he was able to move around on his own, he barred the doors like a madman, you saw how it was when you first met him. Then there was that one day…"

"We had been out scavenging," Eve says. "Russ took his first real watch in awhile. We thought that most of the infected had been cleared out, but…"

"There was one that found the saferoom," says Trevor. "Unfortunately, it found Russ in there."

"What happened?" I ask.

"We don't know for sure. All we found was its body…"

"...riddled with bullets," says Eve. "Far more than it would have taken to kill it. It was like he just shot it, over and over, even after it died…"

"That's how he dealt with it," says Trevor. "It was like he found an enemy to hate. Them."

"The infected," says Eve. "They took everything from him. His life in Michigan, his brother, his future…" she shakes her head. "If every zombie were to drop dead right now, he wouldn't shed a tear, cure or no."

She looks over at me. "Why do you look so pale? Are you sick, acho?"

I breathe in. "No. Just…"

I look for words. "I'm surprised."

"About Russ?"

I nod. "I guess… I know why he does what he does."

"It's not justification for him acting like an ass, though," Eve says.

"I guess."

Trevor shrugs. "At least he didn't go completely cuckoo."

"Cuckoo?" I ask. It sounds familiar. I think it has something to do with a bird. Or a clock. I don't know.

"Nutso. We've seen some real scaries out there in the badlands."

"Like what?"

"I guess the apocalypse brings out the worst in people," Eve says. "It just… breaks you. Always watching your back. Every silhouette you see in the distance looks human, but it's not. When you're out there you're looking for someone else, someone alive, uninfected… but all you get are enemies.

You always listen, you're always on the alert, never resting, knowing you can never go back to the way it was before…"

Trevor nods. "One guy kept blasting rap music whenever we got near the hotel he was in," He says.

"That was Ohio. He called over a horde and tried to get us killed. Then there was that girl in Indiana, I think."

"She was crazy, that one," Eve says. "Her boyfriend became infected, but she refused to believe it.

She kept him strapped to a table, tried spoonfeeding him, wouldn't let us put the poor bastard out his misery…"

She stops and stares at me. "Denver? She clicks her fingers. "Denver?"

I shake my head.

"Sorry.

"Just thinking."

Chapter 17

"General?"

"Yes, doctor?"

"...they're dying."

"You're going to tell me why, I assume? How many?"

"A large percentage, sir. We think... They're too weak. Their bodies can't handle it."

"And you've been giving them the treatment?"

"In increasing increments, sir. No change."

"How do you plan to fix this?"

"The ones that survive… they have certain characteristics. Sir."

"Such as…?"

"Well, most notably, well, our boys, sir. And the convicts. They've had more desirable outcomes than the civilians…"

"Summarize."

"Athletic. More muscle mass. The... stronger ones."

"Then it isn't an issue."

"How so? Sir."

"I have resources at my disposal, doctor. Resources that we need."

"You mean…?"

"We're fighting a war, doctor, and we'll fight more in the future. This will allow us to win them quicker."

"But-"

"Is it your job to give me questions, doctor, or is it to give me answers?"

"...Understood. Sir."

"Good. We're moving forward, then."

"Yessir."

Chapter 18

Snow fell.

It descended softly, kissing the black lamp posts that were half-buried in the unshoveled drifts, the flakes softly adding themselves to the already-copious banks that blanketed the ground.

There was a hissing sound, almost faint, as the snow landed. It continued, undisturbed, for while.

Then it was broken by a footfall.

Several, in fact. They all felt heavily, tiredly.

The snow squeaked as four different pairs of feet landed, in a haphazard march with no beat.

With it, came a muttering from one of the steppers. It turned out to be cursing.

Watered down cursing.

"Dang slippin' fang darn flippy ships…"

"Trevor?"

"Yes?"

"I know you hate swearing."

"I do."

"This is worse. Please shut up."

"Sorry, Eve."

"Thank you."

The footsteps paused.

Snow fell. It landed on the heads of the watchers.

It melted a little faster as it landed on one of them. The others did not appear to notice.

He tenses. Then, he turns, watching the snow-covered rooftops.

Something flickers across his vision, too subtle for the average eye to catch. He squints. Then he turns to the others. "We should go."

The figure called Trevor nods. "See something?"

The watcher grunts. "Yeah. It might be nothing." His expression says otherwise.

He turns. "You guys go ahead," he says. "I need to check on something."

Eve steps towards the speaker. "Stick with the group, Denver. It's dangerous out there."

"I'll be fine," he says. "It's just for a sec."

Trevor shakes his head. "We're not leaving you behind."

The last figure finally moves. He puts his hand on Trevor' shoulder and nods.

"Let him stay behind," he says. "If he gets killed, then it's his own damn fault. It's not worth an argument."

Denver narrows his eyes, but otherwise declines to comment. He turns to Eve and Trevor.

"It'll just be a moment. I'll come back, I promise."

With that said, the others begin to walk (Two of them glancing back on occasion) leaving him to himself.

He watches until they're out of sight, and then turns, sprinting a little faster than should be possible for someone so encumbered by cold and exhaustion. He reaches an alleyway, darkened and foreboding, and slips into the shadows without a pause.

There's a sound of a zipper creaking, and polyester slithering.

A jacket flies from the alleyway's entrance, followed by a scarf and, finally, a torn-looking pair of gloves. A shadow, silent, seems to fly to the rooftop from a bare wall, and flit away from the passage, leaving snow to fall on the forgotten pile of winter clothes.

The shadow moves onward above.

It was swift and certain, honing onto a certain target. Sometimes it would stop and listen, or sniff, its hunched outline a silhouette against the gray winter sky. With almost effortless ease it bounds, sometimes rolling in the snow to prevent a hard landing.

Suddenly he stops and stands, unmoving. Then he growls.

It's aggressive, and laced with warning. Back off.

Silence echoes. Then, a reply. It wasn't so much a message as a declaration of mixed feelings. Anger. Aggression. Pain. Even a small lick of Fear. It was fierce and feral in the dark of the night. And, it alerted him to the source.

He crouches. He listens once more. Then, he pounces.

Two figures, both hooded, both snarling, impact in mid-air. There's a scuffle and snarl that tears through the silence of the night, like cardboard being ripped in two. Then they land, heavily, on the snow-covered roof.

Denver slashes. He bites and claws and snarls and tumbles, trying to grapple the attacker in the snowdrifts. Powder snow billows around them. Screeches rise to the air. Fabric rips. Then, scarlet blood splashes, sinking into the snow and billowing with steam.

Then, a final, guttural scream.

A figure rises from in between the drifts. He stands, breathing heavily, over the body of his vanquished foe, blood dripping from his claws.

He exhales, his breath a fog in the frozen air.

"Stay away from them," he growls to the whimpering figure below. He spits, his saliva tinged with pink, and the spittle freezing almost instantly in the snow.

Then he turns, flakes melting rapidly as they land on him, and he bounds away over the rooftops.

Six weeks.

Six weeks, by estimation, that I've been stuck in this white hell. Six weeks that have oozed by like molasses in February. Six weeks, and I haven't found a way out.

Six weeks, and I know this: It's beautiful to hear someone curse in German.

Especially when the source of said cursing is you.

"Was zur Hölle!" I heard it echo down the halls, audio courtesy of Jimmy the Dancing Janitor. I grinned.

"Zis is even vurse zan ze Gravel Wars!" The doctor threw up his red-gloved hands as he paced outside the room. It amazed me that there could be a man somewhere out there with an accent as outrageous as his. Caldwell, who was trailing behind him like some sort of obedient pitbull, raised an eyebrow.

"Gravel Wars, doctor?"

The whitecoat waved it away. "Zat doesn't matter. My point is zat I haff, in mein long and varied career, seldom seen a case as brutal as zis." He gestured towards my window. I flipped him the bird.

Unfortunately he didn't seem to notice.

"Zere haz been no development in zee last six veeks!"

"If it's been due to issue with extraction, doctor, it can be remedied-"

"Ze extraction iz not ze issue, General." The doctor paused. "It iz more ze... Fundamentals of ze treatment."

"Can you elaborate, doctor?"

He began to pace again, marching down the hall. "I von't go into detail, but most of ze medical breakthroughs I haff vorked vith in ze past few decades haff been more or less achievable with brute force. Now, ze viral particles of Rhabdovirus retrogradum are far more complex zan I vould haff conceived, even myself, considering ze telomere modifications…" his voice died away as he walked further down the hall, Caldwell following him, and leaving me alone. I didn't care to listen. My thoughts were too loud.

I didn't even bother to turn around. I knew he was there before he even was.

"It's been six weeks," Dad said. "What have you learned?"

"Let's see." I counted off on my fingers.

1. "The janitor has a weird affinity for 70's music.

2. They probably still don't know that the audio thing is fucked up and I can hear them.

3. The only way through the door is by key card access.

4. All authorized personnel have these cards with them.

5. The side exit is two halls down and a right.

6. I'm getting sick and tired of this waiting shit.

7. I still have no idea where I am.

"Satisfied?" I asked. His mustache bristled. I wasn't sure if it was a bristle of approval or not.

"Your attitude ain't changed," he said, simply. "What are ya gonna do now?"

I shrugged. "They aren't sending in any more guards after the last thing I did to them."

"If you'd been faster-"

"If," I said, bitterly. "Fuckin' annoying little word right there." He didn't reply.

I continued. "I don't dwell on the past. There's no point in it."

"Then why not change the future?"

I stared at the wall. That same, stupid white wall that hadn't changed in six goddamn weeks.

"How?"

He shrugged, in turn. "You tell me."

"Great answer," I replied. "Real analytical and insightful into the current situation. Another great revelation from Commander Sun Tzu."

He scowled. "Don't you be insultin' the general, Marzia. He invented the zoo, ya know"

"I know."

" 'S the only thing you seem to."

I felt my face flush. "Are my own thoughts mocking me now?"

"Yes."

"Wonderful. Just what I need."

"It's for a reason."

"The reason being that I like to ludicrously deprecate myself on a regular basis?"

"I'm trying to make you listen."

"To what?"

"What was the whitecoat talkin' about before he left?"

"Somethin' somethin' German cursing?"

"Further."

I racked my brain.

"Testin', extraction…" I paused. Something struck me. "Telomeres?" He mentioned it somewhere before. Wait, no. That was Gatling. Way back…

Enhanced telomere length… accelerated cell replication…

"That doesn't sound like vaccine stuff," I said, quietly. "It sounds like mutating shit." And mutating shit is never a good sign, I thought.

I looked out the window again. The hallway was empty, save for the occasional whitecoat passing through. All I heard were distant footsteps and the hum of the lights.

"Caldwell, what are you planning?

Chapter 19

Ice is worse than snow.

It bites. It's easier to slip on and harder to see, and worst of all, it doesn't smell like anything. Rain smells like water and sweetness and acid. Snow smells like metal. Ice… smells like ice. Ice smells like nothing.

And it's everywhere. Where the snow is melted on the pavement it's all dark ice. It's hard to see, and sometimes I almost slip on it. There's more of it now, and less snowdrifts.

We can see more bodies, too. All frozen, stuck to the ground and covered in ice. They look blobby and strange, not even human. I step over them.

Russ lets me wear my hood. It's not very cold, but the wind bites my face. I'm glad it's cold enough to freeze things. One night, it melted, and I couldn't smell anything but sick and death.

Now all I smell is ice, and the others. Gas, alcohol (that's the stuff Trevor drinks, I found out), gunpowder and that oily stuff Eve rubs on her cheeks to keep them from getting dry. I don't smell any rivals, and I don't hear anything, so I'm calm.

It's almost… normal.

It's been a lot of days, I think. We're never in the same place, but the days all feel the same.

Walking, walking, walking, cold and walking. All the saferooms look the same on the inside. Small and dark and square.

Sometimes there's sleeping bags and blankets. Sometimes there's food. Most of the time, there isn't.

I don't get used to the empty feeling in my stomach. It gets harder and harder to wake up every morning, because when I'm asleep I'm not hungry. I don't dream much about screaming things, or even from before- I just dream of food. Mostly MRE's.

There are squirrels, sometimes. I try not to get blood on my jacket, and they're almost too thin to be worth hunting, but they fill the emptiness with something. There aren't any birds- the bodies are too frozen for crows to eat.

There's writing on the walls of the rooms, too. Pictures. Messages. Sometimes the old ones are covered by new ones, so I can't read them. Some of them I can't read anyways, because the writing is bad, or I don't know the words. There were lots of them in the last safe room.

Thomas, I'm ok. I'm t- - - - g to make it to Ind-n-, stay - you are. I love you. ML.

They r everywhr, they ate Eds arm and his leg

WE ARE ALL SO SCREWED. DAVE YOU FUCKHEAD TRY AND GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE

BEFORE ITS GAME OVER. -CG

S-n and River, meet up with -e and -y-e by the gas station. W-h down stay safe. -Mal Shaun, if you can read this go to the W-nche-r, we can wait for this to all blow over.

Watch out 4 big onez they r hard 2 kill

Ellis, im going north try n find me n dave. Ke-t-

Sometimes Eve adds something in Puerto Rican, but the others mostly leave it alone. Russ doesn't look at. Trevor just shakes his head and says something about 'kids these days.' I mostly read them for practice.

Sometimes I look for something Marcy wrote, but I never find anything.

Sometimes the saferooms have nothing in them but blood. Sometimes we find a body, or an infected, weak, but still fighting.

We don't stay in those. We keep walking, until we find something else. Then we don't talk or eat much.

Now we walk, slow, so we don't fall on the ice. I listen, holding my shovel tight. I still don't have a gun, because Russ can't find one. I like the shovel, so I don't say anything.

Trevor stops in front of us, all of a sudden. Russ and Eve almost bump into him, but he stands still.

"What's the holdup?" Russ asks. His voice is low and quiet.

I think I'm going to smell fear, fear from Trevor on the wind, but it's just Russ and Eve. Trevor smells confused. And a little bit happy. Strange.

He points his finger at something ahead. "Look. The water tower. It…"

I look where he's pointing.

There's a big Thug thing on thin long stick legs, high above the ground. I've seen them before.

Sometimes we get fresh water from them, by shooting a hole in the side and taking the water that comes out.

Now there's a big crack in the bottom. Ice is sticking out, like it's water falling but it stopped and never fell all the way, and right below it-

"Holy shit," I hear Russ whisper.

There's infected. They're frozen, covered in ice like the ones on the ground, but they're standing up, and their faces are looking up at the water tower with their mouths open. The ice just coats them, like they're stuck underwater and it froze.

"They're like flippin' statues," Trevor says. "Frozen in their last moments. Lord…"

Eve just shakes her head. "They must have been looking for water."

We're all quiet. We just stare at them for a long time. The sun lights them and makes the ice sparkle, and I can see some little parts. The heads. The fingers of their hands. The little dips where their eyes

are. I wonder how long they had to stand there to get like that. If they froze and died and the water ran over them, or the water killed them by freezing them. I don't know.

We keep staring at them. Then:

"If they were looking for a drink," Eve says, slowly, "They sure as hell got one."

Russ coughs, but it might have been a laugh. I hear Trevor go snrk.

"Yeah, what if they got frozen doing something embarrassing, like picking their nose…"

"Mid-sneeze," Eve says.

"Scratching their ass," Russ says. We turn to him, eyes wide. He shrugs.

"What? It's funny."

There's silence.

Then, it's like something in me melts. Like a big lump of ice behind my eyes and in my chest warms up and flows out. I smile.

I'm thinking of an infected frozen, scratching its butt, looking like that forever, and it's funny.

I'm laughing, because it's been nothing but fear and worry and hurt for the past long time, and it's stupid. It's stupid and funny.

I hear Eve start to laugh, and Trevor too. Even Russ is snorting through his nose- it's quiet and there's ice everywhere, and there's bodies and we just can't stop laughing.

Then, after awhile, we run out of laugh. My chest hurts, but it's a good kind of hurt. It's like I'm not heavy anymore. Like if I could jump, it would be even higher than I could before.

"That," says Eve, wiping her eyes, "Felt good. I can't remember the last time I had a laugh like that."

"Before this whole circus went down, that's for sure," says Trevor.

Russ doesn't say anything. He just looks at the water tower and the ice, and he smiles. His eyes aren't as sad anymore, and his whole body is… relaxed. Not all clenched up. If he didn't smell the same, I would think he's a different person.

I like him better that way.

We don't say anything the rest of the way, but sometimes I'll hear snrk from the back, or a cough that doesn't sound like a cough.

When it's Russ and me on watch later that night, I see him look out the window of the safe room and smile a little.

And he says, really quietly, so I can't hear (But I can, and pretend I don't)

"Fuckin' zombiesicles. What are ya gonna think of next, Skip?"

Chapter 20

"It's 50 miles to Charleston, folks. The home stretch."

I look up. The sky is clear today, and I can see the sun shining in the window. Russ seems cheerful.

The room is warm, but it doesn't smell like gas. It's nice.

I think today is going to be a good day.

But I might be wrong.

Trevor is grumbling. Like he always does.

"It's not natural for it to be this darn warm in the middle of the winter," he says, looking out the window. "Where's the drafts? The snow? The morning frost?"

"Didn't you grumble about the cold?" Eve asks.

"I was used to it, at least," Trevor says. "None of this April in January business…"

Eve just sighs. "You're just mad we had to leave Betsy behind last week, aren't you?"

"That little heater was more faithful to me than my own wife," he says, shaking his head.

Eve laughs. "Some wife."

"Yeah," he says. "I suppose it's too much to hope she got eaten by a zombie. She wouldn't have enough brains."

Even Russ snorts at that. I don't know why. I don't think infected eat brains. Heads are hard to break through.

Russ glances at the door. "You all ready to face the day?"

We nod.

"Right. Let's roll."

It's warm outside today. While I'm wearing my sweater - I never take it off - I left behind my jacket in a saferoom long ago. There's no more snow. It just… slowed down, until there was less and less. I never saw it melt. I miss it a little.

No snow means more infected. Hordes used to be rare, but now we see them a lot.

There's more of my kind, too. Leapers and Sirens, Trappers, Riders - that's what the group calls them.

We ran into a Spitter in an alleyway a while ago. It barfed green, burning-smelling stuff on the ground, and it melted my shoes and my jacket. Eve got a burn on her arm, but even though it got on my legs, the stuff didn't hurt me. I don't know why.

I don't think anyone noticed. I just have to keep being careful for another week, and I'll survive.

It looks clear for now. I still look and listen. There's nothing in the distance so far.

Wait. I hear…

Something. Something in the distance. A screaming rumble. The sound of many feet.

A horde.

Crap.

I lift my shovel, and try not to show my teeth. "Heads up." The others look to where I'm watching.

"Company?" Russ asks. I nod.

Nobody says anything. They just raise their guns, and we brace for impact.

It comes, screaming around the corner - many feet, many arms, trying to beat and tear. Many mouths, screaming.

The next bunch of minutes are all fire and smoke. I swing and swing and swing, making hit after hit.

Blood sprays. Heads roll. Bodies hit the ground. But they just keep coming.

After awhile, it slows down. Eve shoots the last one stumbling at us, and it's quiet all of a sudden.

Trevor leans over, his hand resting on his knee. "I'm getting too old for this BS," he pants.

Russ raises an eyebrow. "Age has nothing to do it. I'm 30 something years younger than you, and I'm sure as hell too old for this BS."

We all laugh at that one. Everything seems funnier when we've just killed something.

Eve looks over the bodies. "I think we're getting better. This lot only took us a few minutes."

Trevor nods. "Well, you're no shy shot. Russ's arm is better, and the Sundance Kid over here-" he jabs his thumb at me - "make a darn good spotter."

My cheeks feel hot. "Thanks," I manage to say.

Russ looks out over the city. "Let's not linger. It might be warmer, but we're still running on short daylight."

I'm about to start walking again when I feel it. I little shake in my feet. A distant sound, soft and loud…

Shit.

"Guys," I say, but they've stopped too. Eve's eyes widen, and Trevor' jaw is tight. Russ squeezes his eyes shut.

"Fuck," he says, quietly. "Fuck."

The hairs stand up on the back of my neck. It's getting loud, and the little rocks on the ground are shaking…

Thug.

I see the others hold up their weapons.

"We can fight it," Eve says, but Trevor is shaking his head. "We're gonna have to run."

"Can we? Those things are like freight trains," she replies. Her voice sounds faint and light, but she's holding her gun so tight her hands are white.

The rumbling gets louder.

Suddenly I see Russ move.

He bolts. He runs towards the rumbling, off to the crumbling city. Trevor tries to grab him, but Russ is too fast.

"GET THE HECK BACK HERE, YOU, YOU-" Trevor screams, but Russ only looks back.

"Run!" He screams. "Run, ya sons of bitches! I'll head the fucker off!"

Trevor tries to run after him, but Eve grabs his arm. " Anciano, no. We have to go. Now."

Trevor looks on, but Eve tugs him away, and they both start running opposite of Russ.

I stay. The rumbling gets louder, but I can hear Russ yelling, too, and gunshots in the distance.

"Dude , c'mon!" I hear Eve yell. I don't.

You can save him.

Like you couldn't save her.

Like you're gonna save her.

"I'm not going," I say. They both stop.

"Kid," Trevor says, but Eve stops him. She's watching me. "You're going after him," she says. "Aren't you?"

I don't say anything. She doesn't say anything, either, she starts taking her shotgun off her back. I shake my head.

"You need it," I say. "And it'll slow me down."

She stops, and she grabs the pistol from her belt. She presses it into my hands, and I can feel her stare in my eyes.

"Promise me," she says. "Promise me you'll come back safe."

I say nothing. Trevor is yelling in the background.

"Promise me you'll get him back safe," she says.

"Ok." I feel a heavy hand on my shoulder.

Trevor shoves a something else in my hand. I look down.

Nuka Finest: Cola Syrup, it says.

"Found it in a pharmacy," Trevor says. "Kid, if you don't catch up to us… find him. Find your girl. But, for the love of the Lord, please stay in one piece."

I swallow. My eyes are burning, and I shove the bottle on my pocket. "I…"

"Go," Eve says. "And come back."

I swallow again. "Thanks."

"For everything."

And then I run.

When they're far behind me, I really run. I don't have time to take off my gloves, I just focus on my legs and I make them go.

I pass by a few sick ones. Some of them try and swipe at me, and others just lie there and don't notice.

The rumbling gets louder. So do the gunshots, RATATATATATA

That's when I see it - and smell it.

It's big. Its beck is to me, but the smell of Death and Rot hit me like a punch. Its skin is spotty, with bits on it that are black and hole-y, like it died.

It roars, and I cover my ears. It's trying to get in an alley that it's too big for, for some reason, and banging against the walls. I hear the brick cracking - and something else.

"Come and get me, you stupid sonuvabitch!"

RATATATATATATATA More gunfire. I cover my ears again, but I know I've found him.

Quick. Runrunrunrunrun to the side where the Thug can't see me, and get up the side of the building, on the roof, look over the side-Russ is down in the alley, all the way in the back against the wall. He's yelling angry words and shooting at the Thug.

"Fucker! If you're gonna take me down, you're going with me!"

The building I'm on shakes again. The Thug is going to break through, and soon.

RATATATATATAclickclicklick

Russ is out of ammo. He curses and throws the gun down.

Promise.

I look across the alley. There's a bunch of metal red stairs on the side of the other building, going up.

They're too high for Russ to reach, but if I….

I don't think. I just jump.

BANG. I hit my shin against the rail as I grab the rails, and I almost curse. Instead I claw up and look down.

The Thug is trying to carve out a hole in the walls, and it's getting bigger.

"Russ!"

He looks up, confused. I hold out my hand to him. He's just close enough….

"What the fuck, kid?" he says, but I shake my head.

"C'mon, it'll smash you if you don't get up!"

He grabs my hand, and I heft him up just as the Thug smashes through the wall. It roars and screams, but it can't reach the rails.

Russ shakes his middle finger at him. I don't know what that will do. He turns back to me.

"You've got a strong grip," he said. " How the hell did you get up here, kid? The main entrance to the place is locked plexiglass, I tried it."

My face burns. "I-"

BAM. A chunk of brick explodes by my head. I look down. The Thug is taking parts of the wall and throwing them at us.

"No time," I say, and I grab Russ and drag him of the stairs. He shoves my hand away and climbs up with me.

There's a window at the top. Russ curses.

"Goddamnit, I shouldn't have left my gun down there-"

I don't say anything. I just punch the glass. It shatters under my hand and falls out.

Russ is saying something, but I don't listen. I just crawl in. He follows.

It's a room. The roof is all fallen in, and it smells of wet and damp and rot. There's a glass door in the other end. It leads out to a platform sticking out of the side - a balcony.

Russ leans against the wall, panting. I can hear his heart beat from across the room.

"Fuck, I need a cig," he says. "Are Eve and Trav safe?"

I nod. "They ran off away from me. I think they made it to the next saferoom."

He nods. "Good."

Then he hits me. It stings.

"Ow," I say. He snorts.

"Thanks for saving my sorry ass back there," he says. "You're a fucking idiot."

I don't know if I should say sorry or you're welcome, so I just rub my head. "Should we start heading back?"

"Yeah. That stupid meathead'll probably be yelling at the wall for hours. By the time it gets out of the alleyway, we'll be long go-"

BAM.

The building shakes, and I hear the Thug roar. We look out the window.

The Thug is hanging on the rails, swinging with one hand. It looks angry.

It uses its other hand to grab on, and it starts pulling itself up.

And it's getting closer.

"Fuck," Russ says. "FUCK."

I run to one of the doors and try to open it. It opens a little, but there's a bunch of crumbled roof keeping it closed.

Russ is trying the other doors. "Fuck, this one's a pantry," he says. "The only other one is a broom closet."

"Can we hide?" I ask. My chest is beating, and I feel my hands itch. The Thug is getting louder and louder.

"It'll tear the room apart when it gets up here," Russ says. "We hide, and we'll have enough time to pray. Maybe."

I look around the room. There's a ladle in the sink, which won't work - not even my shovel could get a Thug. The pistol in my pocket would make it angrier. There's nowhere else to run.

Wait…

The Thug is nearly at the top. I can hear it roaring and the floor shaking. Dust from the ceiling is raining down.

I run to the balcony door and punch the glass away.

The ground is a long way down. I could make the fall, but Russ…

No. There's another balcony down there. It's close…

"Russ!" I yell. I can see the Thug in the window; now it's starting to punch down the wall. "Russ, get over here!"

He sprint overs. The wall is crumbling. I point to the balcony.

"Listen, when I say jump, you jump," I tell him. He looks back and forth between me and the balcony.

"We'll never make it," he says, but I shake my head. "Listen."

"Just trust me."

BAM.

I gulp. "I'll be fine."

The Thug busts through the wall. It stomps around, angrily, before it sees us. It roars.

I grab Russ's arm. "On my count."

"Now?" he asks. First the first time, I smell it on him: Fear. I've only smelled Anger and Sad, but now? Now he's scared.

The Thug paws the ground. "No."

It bellows. "Now?

"No."

It starts charging. The ground shakes.

"Now?

It's getting closer. Closer. I can see its face. Its tongue is hanging out because half its face is gone.

It's covered in old sores and bullet wounds, and it's leaking black and red blood. I can smell it - I almost gag.

One more second.

"NOW!"

I jump. Russ jumps. My feet are aimed at the balcony.

I don't think. I just fly.

BAM. We hit the ground, and I roll. My feet hit glass and I kick- the balcony door shatters, and I drag myself and Russ through.

I hear the Thug roar above us, and then another BAM. Rock and balcony are falling down.

So is the Thug.

It screams, as it falls over the balcony and down the down the side. I heard a THUNK as it hits the balcony we were just on, and then bounces off to the wall across. Then: CRNCH.

I step out onto the balcony. It shifts a little, but it stays. I look down.

The Thug is laying at the bottom of the building. There's bits of rock and dust on it from the balcony.

It's not moving.

I breathe in. I breath out. Then I go back inside.

Russ is sitting on the floor, groaning. His hands and his face are cut up from the glass, but he looks ok. He sees me.

"Problem solved?"

I nod. He sighs.

"Fuckit, kid. That was one of the most hairbrained schemes I've seen in my entire life, and I was around for the dotcom bust."

I don't say anything. I just give him my hand. He takes it, and hefts himself up.

"Thanks," he says. "For that. And, uh, for saving my ass. Again."

"No problem."

He smells… different. Not angry anymore. Tired, yeah. The Fear smell is fading away. But not mad like he always used to around me."

He sighs, and he smiles a little. "Guess I had you pinned all wrong, huh?"

I look down. "I, uh…"

He slaps my back. "Don't sweat it, kid. Let's get back to the others, huh?"

I grin. "Yeah. Let's roll."

He chuckles, and we start walking.

That's when I hear the sobbing.

Chapter 21

It didn't like talking. Its mouth hurt. Everything hurt, really, but Its mouth especially. The air tasted like blood. Or maybe that was just Its mouth. It felt like there were little daggers in it, digging into Its gums and tongue and cheeks. Digging out. Trying to get free.

It was wearing green things. They itched and burned, and when It scratched at them they got all wet and stuck on even more with sticky red stuff, and the more It scratched the stickier and itchier and redder it got.

It wanted something. Something to bite. Something to hit. Something to eat.

Food would come. It was in red cubes flung through the wall. They didn't move, and It liked the taste but the food didn't move enough to satisfy It. It wanted something that would run. Something that would scream.

Sometimes It screamed, but nothing would happen, and nothing would come.

Other times, They came. They would grab It, pin It down like It wanted to pin Them, put things on It and poke those little sticks in Its arms, fill It with red. Those times were the worst, not because It was being held down, or the sticks or even Them. No, it was the red. The red in the little bags did something. The red made Its arms burn and itch, Its whole body, Its brain itched and burned- the pain burned, and burned something else away, until It became I, and I became Me, and the not-It would think: Where am I? What is happening to me? Why am I here? What have I become? And, then, most wonderful of them all:

Am I going to die?

And then They would stop the red, and Me became I became It, and everything else became something else foggier and, once again, forgotten.

Except one thing; that one thing that was so sweet, so alluring, so longed-for that It held onto it the longest, as much as It could until the thing, the word, faded away like everything else.

Before that happened, though, It would sigh, in some semblance of happiness. Because It had that word, that beautiful word, and It knew that It would end one day, and maybe soon.

And so, joyfully, with this word close to heart, It would curl up on the floor and wait to Die.

Chapter 22

I freeze. Every muscle in my body is tense. There's dust in the air, and it's hard to see and to smell don'tsneezedon'tsneezedon'tsneeze….

But I can hear her. It's behind one of the doors off to the right. It's closed, but I know what's behind it.

Sniff, sob, sniff, sniff, sob…

I look around the room, quickly. One of the other doors is open, it's another closet… the other one one isn't there. It's just a pile of rubble, blocking off the path…

I hear Russ breathe in quick. He jerks his head over to the balcony. I nod.

Careful, step careful...

There's broken glass on the floor, and bits of rubble, which I step around. My heart is like a gun in my chest. Easy…

Crnch.

My heart stops. My breath stops. Russ is pale, and I look down at his feet- there's a broken piece of plaster under one of his shoes.

Grrrrrwwwww….

We don't move. Stay still, stay still…

" Savage, huh?" Trevor takes a swig from the bottle. Even and Russ are asleep, and it's just us and the smell of Betsy. I don't say anything. "Like my ex-wife, Rebecca. Did I ever tell you about her?"

He has, but I listen, even when he tells me about how she keyed his car. I don't know what it means.

" And this thing is," he said, "She always kept her nails long, right? Glued fake ones on top, and always painted them bright red. Sometimes I'd see her with her nails like that, and they'd be like talons. Like claws, all covered in her latest kill. She could probably tear you to ribbons with 'em if she wasn't so worried about messing up the paint. Creepy, man. I'd never trust anyone with nails like that."

I still don't say anything. But my fingers burn.

It feels like forever. My muscles start burning from staying in one place. My head is foggy from trying not to breathe, my nose burns from all the dust…

And my arms itches. I want to scratch it. Shit.

The Savage calms down, and I can hear the growl fade away. Phew.

Russ glances at me. He's covered in sweat but he grins. Just a little. I smile back.

Grnbl.

I hear it. It's from the balcony. Falling rocks.

Grkl.

No, no, stop,

KRK.

My heart stops. I feel it in my legs.

KRAK

Dust is falling from the ceiling, and the floor shaking. The balcony above us…

It couldn't have taken a Thug's weight, could it?

BAM.

The balcony outside is hit a big thing. It's the other balcony.

It crashes into it and is trumbles down, down, and it roars in my ears and sends dust up. I want to sneeze and my eyes burn, but that's not the problem. It's the Savage growling behind the door.

She sounds mad. Really mad.

BAM.

She hits the door with full force. I can hear the screaming, but it's not nearly as loud as the screaming in my head. Russ isn't screaming. He's yelling- lots of angry words. I can't hear them.

Exits. Side door? Blocked. Balcony? Too high. Run? Too slow.

?

No.

!

NO.

.

I can't, I tell myself.

You promised.

I did.

Then do it.

I…

No option.

I…

BAM.

Shit.

No time.

BAM.

No time.

I stop thinking.

Russ is still yelling. He's trying to shove his way out the side door, and he was dragging me along while he did it. I shove him away. I tries to grab me again.

"C'mon, you fuckin' dumbass!" he yells, but I slap his hand away.

BAM

I reach into my hoodie pocket and I pull out the gun. Too heavy.

"Hold this."

I put the hood up. Too bright.

BAM. I can hear the splinters starting to crack.

Russ gives me a funny look, like he can't even hear the Savage any more. "What in the ever-loving fu…?"

I breathe in. I breathe out.

I take off my gloves.

Free.

"Hold these."

I turn to the door. I can see it mostly now. The pale thing behind the door. She has her arm through the hole she made and she's pulling it off the hinges. One moment, and she'll be out.

And I'll be here, I think.

I crouch down just as the door shatters.

And I…

Chapter 23

Blood.

Blood in my teeth. Blood on my hands. Blood… everywhere. It's bitter and it's sweet in my nose, and it's everywhere.

I'm just… instinct. That's the word. It's that thing I do when I bite and tear and slash and I don't think, I just do. Instinct.

I feel the Savage grabbing at me. Her eyes are read and her teeth are black, and she screams. It's all muffled, because I'm thinking of only one thing:

Kill.

Flesh rips under my claws. I don't bite. Don't bite. Don't bite. I feel it kicking and struggling and I keep tearing and clawing and punching and…

It stops. The body is limp under me, and I start to see and feel again.

The Savage is a white and black and red thing under me, and my hands are red and sticky. So are my sides, and I feel the pain start to burn where it clawed me.

I taste blood. I didn't bite. But the smell is around me, and I can almost feel it in my mouth.

I take a deep breath. It's over.

*Click.*

I don't move, but I can smell the gunpowder.

And Russ.

"All this time?" He says. His voice is heavy. Mean. Like a growl.

I don't say anything.

"All this time?" he says, a little louder. "You were one of those… things? Those monsters? Those crazies that jumped around and fucking ate people? The shitheads that broke my little brother so hard he couldn't even fucking breathe?"

I still don't say anything. My throat is tight and there's blood in my mouth and I want to vomit.

"You thought you could hide, huh? With us? Wait for the right moment to strike? Or did you get attached?"

His arm is shaking. I can hear it rattle the gun, very, very little. I keep looking down.

There's blood on my hands, and my sides still burn.

"Maybe you felt sorry?" His voice is louder now. He's almost yelling. "Maybe you thought you could make up for it, by joining the little human group? Maybe you thought you could throw away what you've done?"

He pushes the gun closer.

"How many people have you killed?" he whispers. I don't answer. My hands are shaking, and they're full of blood.

Russ presses the run against my head. "Answer me! How many people have you fucking killed?"

"I don't know!" My throat is tight, and my voice sounds strange, like someone is choking me. "I don't know. I never wanted to hurt you." My eyes burn, and I try to swallow the lump in my throat. "Please.

I just wanted to get to Savannah."

The gun is pressed hard against my head.

"Please." I say again. "I'll leave you. I'll leave Eve and Trevor alone."

I can see them now. They're probably in the safe room, watching the door. Eve is worried, but she won't show it because she never does and she's probably thinking about if Russ hurt his arm again, and Trevor is probably talking about how Russ is right around the corner, yeah, of course he will, he's a tough old fart, not like old Trevor, who's got an achy back and smells like gas and alcohol…

Waiting.

I'm waiting. I don't know for what. Just waiting.

"Don't shoot. Just… let me go."

Russ sniffs. I can hear every sound of the gun against my head- and I can hear the trigger creak…

I'm sorry.

BAM.

The gun whacks my on the head, and black dots are dancing in front of me.

I look up. Russ is still pointing the gun at me. His eyes are cold.

"Get the fuck out of my sight," he says. "I wouldn't waste a bullet on scum like you."

Breathe.

"If you don't get your ass out of here in the next 30 seconds, I might change my mind."

I scrabble on the floor before I get up. He keeps the gun on me, and I walk, slowly, to the window.

My hands are up.

His eyes are still cold, and they narrow.

"Savannah is 100 miles southwest from here. Week's walk," he says. "Now fuck off. We don't need monsters like you."

I turn away. I don't want to look at him any more. Even then, when I reach the balcony I glance back.

The gun is still on me, and I feel my eyes burn.

Then I turn to look at the sky, and not where I'm supposed to land, and I jump.

Chapter 24

My body felt weighty against the cot. Gravity was always more demanding when I was waking up from the drugs. The fact that I, no doubt, had a lot less blood volume at the end of the whole ordeal probably didn't help things, adding a lightheadedness to my heaviness.

I was about to open my eyes, heavy as my lids were, when I heard muttering in the background.

" She's getting more resistant," one says. It's female. I keep my eyes shut, and I will myself not to move. It's not hard.

" To the drugs, or to us?" I hear a man's voice reply. " She's been quiet for a month, ever since she tried to tear off Dansen's di-"

" I don't know," the other voice cuts in. " She talks to herself. And I swear to God, whenever anyone walks by she watches them like some sort of fucking animal in a zoo. Even after they found that audio problem and fixed it, it's like she's listening."

Despite the drugs, my heart was beating a little faster than usual. My right arm was itching like all hell, but I ignored it.

" Whatever," the man replied. " She practically is an animal at this point. She doesn't touch the TV, or read anything. She just stares. And argues with the wall."

" Yeah, well, if she gets tSavagey, up the dosage, alright?"

" You know I have to go through clearance for that," the woman replies. I heard the door swish open, and the two started walking out. " Dr. Mossman can be such an outright bitch, you know that one time she..."

I waited for another ten minutes or so, letting myself slowly wake up (or, at least, pretending I was) before sitting upright on the edge of the cot.

The TV, I suppose, was a nice touch. It was mounted into the wall, with no chance of me prying it out (I tried) and stocked with all manner of historically inaccurate war movies, as well as a couple of sappy romantic comedies and daytime TV from before the 'flu. Or after. Hell if I know.

I could only watch about ten minutes of The Perspective and Make a Sale before I wanted to barf. The Snipers of Mesa Valley lasted a bit longer, but when one of the privates started arguing with the general about taking a battleship through the Gulf of Persia to carpet-bomb the coast, I had to turn it off in inaccuracy-induced disgust.

(I will admit Insect Film wasn't bad. Who would have thought that a praying mantis voiced by Tom Jones would be funny?)

I wish they'd given me something to write with. A novelist I'm not, but I ached to, of all things, log my days. Maybe it was a habit from the Cabin, but there were moments where I dreamed of writing down Day 58, Stared at wall and did 50 pushups.

The books were OK. There weren't any survival manuals or handy books about escaping from impenetrable fortresses, sadly. I refused to touch the romance novels or the Wanda magazines.

There was one book about a flat world on the back of a hippo riding on a giant salamander, which was funnier than than I expected, but didn't sate my need to brush up on snow survival tips, or learn how to saw your own arm off when trapped under a boulder.

I didn't care, though. All the survival manuals in the world wouldn't have prepared me for this.

And not one survival manual would have been as helpful as the little tidbit my two new friends had just given me when they thought I was asleep. This, in fact, was the first time I had woken up early enough to hear whoever was dropping me off in the room. The drugs were wearing off; and, with each dosage they gave me, I'd build up even more resistance.

Yeah. I grinned. I may not have managed to kill that first guy, or the guys after that, but next time around, I wouldn't miss the jugular.

I think I might have figured out what the hell to do.

Chapter 25

"Just what the hell are you doing?"

I woke up. Whatever I'm lying on, it's soft. The ceiling above me is brown and wooden, and I smell it

- smoky and dusty and oily, all at once.

I look down. The thing I'm resting on is covered in a flower pattern.

The couch.

The Cabin.

Home.

I sit up with a jerk. Marcy is standing by the doorway, shotgun over her shoulder.

"I'm going to check the traps," she says. "Are you gonna sleep in all day, or what? I can't wait forever."

I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. Before I can yell she's out the door, and I jump up, run after her, grab the door before it shuts all the way….

But when I open it, I don't see the woods. I see bricks, far ahead of me, and an alley, far below me.

A broken balcony. Dust. Rock is crumbling, and if I take another step, I'll fall, and I can't see the bottom.

I turn around. I'll go back inside, where it's safe and warm, where I know I am…

A gun. Pointed at me, between my eyes. I can't see who's holding it; just their eyes, made of fire.

I step back, not thinking. I hear the gun fire, but it sounds far away and echoey, and I'm falling back, falling down….

BAM. I feel something hit my back, but I'm standing up. It's dark, and it's crowded. There are people around me, but I can't see them. Lights are flash. Blue, red, purple, green… something is thumping in the background. Wub wub wub wub wub wub wub… like some big heart. Everything around me is touching me, bumping into me, and I was to run. Them a huge voice coming from everywhere booms.

"Let's hear it for The Place!" it says. I don't know where it's coming from.

Someone screams behind me. I turn around, ready to fight, to punch, but something clamps onto my shoulder. It burns, and I yell out. Everything is going to black…

You'll be back, right, Den?" I hear a voice say. It's not Trevor, or Eve, or even Marcy. It's someone else, someone I know, but I don't….

" You promise?"

I wake up. The noise and the lights and the smells and the voice are all gone. Instead, it smells like cleaner. And i can hear the door- Bang. Bang. Bang. My body tightens.

I sniff. Sickness oozes from under the door, like rot. Whoever is knocking isn't alive.

Not in the way I'm looking for, anyways.

I rub my eyes, getting all the gunk out of them. They itch.

I haven't had a dream like that in a while, not since I was with Russ and Eve and Trav. I think it's only been a week since the Thug and the Savage, but it feels a lot longer.

I keep hoping I'll see them. I watch from the tops of buildings, listening, hearing, smelling. But they're probably far away now. I'm faster than they can go- I take more shortcuts over buildings, and I stop only when I'm tired. Dark doesn't slow me, because it's warm enough for me to go at night, and I can see better than they did.

Food is a little easier. I find things in houses and in cupboards. It's still not enough, and I don't slow down to look longer.

I don't have to hear Trevor going grrrrr-hck or hide my hands. I can keep my hood up and not worry about pissing off Russ. I can jump and run instead of walking, slowly, slowly.

But I don't feel any happier.

Actually, I feel the opposite. I miss the noises and the smell of Betsy and Eve making that gross brown stuff in the morning, or the sound of Russ and Trevor arguing over the map.

I don't know why.

The banging keeps going. I can hear the door crack under whatever is hitting it.

I get up from the pile of rags I've been sleeping on. I hate the smell of cleaning closets, but they're small and warm and quiet, and they mask my smell from others.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

Well, most others.

I grab the shovel. I only realized I still had it after I ran. I don't think Russ would want it back.

I open the door.

WHACK.

The infected goes down hard, and it doesn't get up again. It's dressed in army clothes, that blocky green-grey-brown pattern. I don't know how long it's been around, but it smells fresh.

The hairs on my neck raise. It's warm, but I shiver. This is bad.

I don't see or smell any more as I go to the roof. The buildings around me are all crumbly. Some of them have little plants growing around them, or big holes in them, like something fell on them. I don't know what did, though.

There's something far off, sparkling in the distance. It's flat, and when the wind from it blows towards me I can smell it- salt, with a little touch of fire.

The sea. Marcy told me about it, and how dangerous it is. But Savannah is near the sea - that's what it said on the maps, and if all the road signs I'm following are right, then I'm getting close.

I jump off the roof, rolling when I land. It's lonely, but it feels good to jump and run over buildings instead of walking all the time. I missed feeling the wind on me.

The buildings go on awhile before I have to get to the road. It's filled with cars, and the smell of rot hits me as I land on the pavement.

My stomach turns, and I pull my sweater over my nose. It still smells like cleaner, which is better than corpses and gas.

I do a not-run not-walk thing that I don't have a name for, over and past the cars. I don't see or hear anything. I think most of the infected around here are dead.

I try not to think about anything- about the others, or that dream, or Marcy. I just think about running. Step, step, step, avoid that hole, step…

When the sun is starting to get lower, the smell of the salt gets closer. So does the smell of smoke, and the fire.

Weird. Does the ocean smell like that all the time? I wonder.

I turn the corner. The smell of smoke and fire is even stronger now, and it's burning my nose and my eyes. Then I see it: The big green sign on the side.

Welcome to Savannah.

Except, someone's crossed out 'Savannah' on the sign and wrote 'Hell' under it. I don't know what Hell is, but I've heard Marcy tell Gatling to go to it, and Russ uses it a lot, so it's probably a bad place.

I look past the sign.

Savannah looks like a bad place.

It's flat. There's nothing. No buildings, or cars, or anything. It's black and crumbled, and there are a few things sticking up, old crumbled walls here and there, but nothing anyone could hide in.

My stomach turns. The wind makes a high-pitched noise over the buildings. I can't smell anything but fire and dust everywhere, and my mind feels like it's burning.

No.

My eyes can't focus, and I just start walking, slowly, towards the ruins.

There's rock and broken burned wood and ashes everywhere. I don't even smell or see any infected; no bodies, no bones, nothing. The ground crunches under my feet, and I almost step on sharp metal bars a few times. I'm not really paying attention.

There are some walls still standing, like big boxes coming out of the ground, but there's nothing in them but more burned wood and metal and broken rock.

Nothing, I think. Nothing left standing.

I look. Even when a rock pokes a hole in my shoe and makes my foot bleed, even when it starts getting dark, even when my eyes are watery from the smell of burning all the time, I keep looking.

The sun is about to go down when I find another sign. It's covered in dust and it's buried by the rock, but I can see part of the words:

" Whit

Gun'

There's barbed wire (I feel my back shake) under the rock, too, and I can see part of a wall standing up behind the sign.

Dig up the sign, my head tells me. Maybe it's the wrong place. But another part of my head tells me that it's the right place, and it's too late.

"Well," I say. "Fuck."

Chapter 26

I keep looking for a while. It's really dark now, and I can see the stars over me. We didn't travel at night when I was with the others, and I didn't look up when I was traveling alone. I do now.

Marcy said that in cities, there used to be too many lights to see the stars at night because they would be blocked out. There's no city now, so there are the stars. They're far away, but they're so thick and close together I feel like I can move them with my fingers.

Or rip them, I think. If you were closer you could rip a hole in the sky.

They're different than they were by the Cabin, and by the military camp. But they also feel the same.

Then I feel the tiredness in my legs, and the sting where I hurt my foot, and my eyes with a heartbeat in them. Rest. I need rest.

There aren't any closets around. Not even buildings with roofs to sleep under. I find one with some floor in it. There's a big hole in it, and I can see the stars through it when I lie down, like someone ripped through it.

The rocks aren't a very good bed, but they don't smell like cleaner. And I'm too tired to care.

I try not to think about tomorrow, and where to go, and what will happen. I don't know, except that my foot will probably hurt a lot.

Maybe tomorrow will be better, Is what I do think. And then I sleep.

It smells of, not dust after rain but something else: Snowmelt. It's earthy and almost sweet in the back of his throat, as cleansing steam rises from the disappearing drifts around him. The icy water flattens the grass around him and soaks his freezing sneakers, but he doesn't care.

The water flows downhill, filling the lake at the bottom. The water is black, reflecting what lies below: Ash, or perhaps dark sand. Its surface is punctured by buildings, broken and crumbled. Overhead are stars, spackled across the scene's ceiling like the work of a careless painter. Their reflection drips onto the lake's surface, and the effect is one of endless space.

A woman also stands in the water, ripping a hole in the celestial blanket with her silhouette. The snowmelt is up to her knees and rising, but she does not move. Her back is to him, but he can recognize her by her hair, and the tattered jacket she wears.

He tries to speak, but his voice dies in his throat. He tries to move, but his legs are bound by an unseen weight. He can do nothing but reach, and she is too far. There is only silence, and water, and ash and sand and stars.

"A sheep eats anything in its reach," she says. Her voice is wrong- far away and faded, and it is not a voice he knows, and not one that belongs to her. It is lighter, rolling, almost, and it is strange and achingly familiar. His voice bids him in a certain reply.

"Even flowers that have thorns?" He queries. His voice is strange, too; high-pitched and boyish, but it is his, he knows this.

"Even flowers that have thorns," she replies. She still does not move. His legs find movement, and he begins to dash towards the lake, even as the hillside rolls longer before him.

"Then the thorns," he gasps, as he trips down the slope. "What use are they?"

He is nearly there. The lake is halfway up her arms now, growing closer to her shoulders. Now she turns and he cannot see her face, for she is a black hole against the lights behind her, and her movement sends the universe in the water rippling.

"The thorns ," he asks again. " What use are they?"

The lake roars, and he can't see her. Light is everywhere, and it blinds him. Water surrounds him, and he drowns. And then, an answer:

"Spite."

Then the lake crashes around him, and he knew no more.

I wake up.

It's light. Light is coming through the hole in the ceiling and hitting my eyes. I hear birds chirping. The air is still cold from last night, and a little fresher.

There's a man in front of me. He has a gun. It's pointed at my face.

Oh. My brain is still tired, and I'm still trying to understand what it means.

This again.

"Giddup."

His voice is gruff. It sounds a little familiar, like the drawl that Marcy has, but it's… more. I can't see his face- he's wearing goggles and a bunch of cloth covering up everything, but I can smell him: Dust. MRE's.

Gunpowder.

"Whitaker?" I say. He snorts.

"Ain't heard that name in a long time, boy. Now get the fuck up."

I get up. The gun follows me.

"Now tell me, boy," he says. "What's a lurker like you doin' snooping around a ruined city, hmm?

Figured you could raid ol' Whitaker's stash, hmm? Pick the place clean after the old coot kicked it?"

"I…" I started, but he cut me off.

"Don't waste yer breath, boy. I've seen it all. I've lived through the walkers. I've lived through the rioters. I've lived through the looters. I've lived through every single goddamn bomb they dropped on the place. Fuck, I've even lived through the Red Scare. I've got a body count as high as my mama's old house. A little runt like you, hell, I ain't got time for."

I swallowed. "I have something you want."

The wind whistled in the buildings. Rain was coming; I could smell it in the air, and my eye scars ached.

"And what," Whitaker said, "Would that be?"

"My pocket," I said. My mouth felt like it was full of sand. "Check it."

He looked down at my hoodie pocket, then up to my face. "Hands where I can see them," he said.

"You try any tricks, and you'll find your head about five pounds lighter."

I nod. I put my hands up. I wish I'd put my gloves on when I was asleep. Don't look up, don't look up, don't look up...

Whitaker reaches over. His hand reaches into my pocket, and I feel it close around the small bottle.

He pulls it out.

He looks at it. He looks at me. He looks at it again. He rubs over the little label, even though the Nuka Finest is starting to peel.

He looks up.

"Alright," he says. "I can chat."

We walk. Whitaker still doesn't take the mask off - or put the gun away - but it's not pointed at me anymore. I don't know where we're going, but he seems to.

"I ain't got much, to be honest," he says. "Grenade launcher ran out awhile ago. I've got bullets.

S'mostly odds and ends, though. Ain't much left to shoot out here, anyway."

He looks over the ruins. The clouds are getting darker over us, and I can smell the rain even stronger now. Here, it's salty, and the air feels even wetter.

"I've got MRE's, too," he says. "They're a coupla months after expiration, but they taste about the same fresh."

"I'm looking for your niece," I said. "Marcy. She's in trouble."

Before I can blink, the gun is up again. This time, under the gunpowder and dust, I can smell it: Anger.

"Don't you try that shit on me, kid," he growls. "'Cos I ain't falling for it. Fuck the cola. The deal's off."

My hands are up again. I've got to learn to keep my mouth shut.

"Really," I say. "She needs help. I… I came looking for you. You're the only one I could turn to.

Please… she's my friend…"

"Really?" he says. "What's her full name?"

"Marzia. Marzia Adelaide Walker."

He snorts. "What's the first gun she ever fired?"

I clench my fists. Think think think…

"A .22," I say. "A… bolt. A-Bolt. Browning. Manual. She jammed it the first time, but you helped her fix it…"

"And her father?" he says, interrupting. "How's ol' Justin doing?"

I take a breath. "His name isn't Justin," I say. "It's Mason. And… he's dead."

"What?"

"I'm…" I pause. The hand holding the gun is shaking - I can hear it rattle- and he slowly lowers it.

"No," he whispers. "Mason…" he look up to me.

"Don't tell me the walkers… They never could have. He's too strong for that, but…"

"No," I said. "It was a while ago. Something with a blood clot in his head, Marcy said."

Whitaker shakes his head, His hands are clenched, and his whole body is trembling.

"Goddamnit," he says. "God fuckin' damnit." He holds a hand to his face. "I ain't talked to that son of a bitch in 13 goddamn years, and…"

He looks down at the gun. "I'm a fucking idiot."

I don't say anything. Whitaker doesn't say anything for awhile.

I hear a distant rumble of thunder far off. The storm will be here soon.

"Marcy," Whitaker finally says, looking up. "You said she's in trouble?"

I nod. He grunts.

"Couldn't be from zombies, if she's the same kid that she was." I shake my head.

"No, it's the mil-"

Suddenly Whitaker grabs my arm. He looks back and forth, like he's trying to spot something.

"How 'bout we take this inside?" he says, barely whispering. "Hills have eye, y'know."

I look around. "No, they don'-" I don't finish what I'm saying, because he's dragging me.

"Where are you going?" I ask. Maybe he has a house, or somewhere hidden in one of the buildings…

"Gun shop," he says. I snort.

"But it's broken down," I say. "Isn't it?"

He stops. I can see the sign still sticking out of the gravel.

"What kind of shitty-ass survivalist would I be, he says, reaching around the sign, "If I didn't have a goddamn backup bunker?"

He pulls something, and I hear metal creak. The rock in front of us shifts, and a metal square opens up in the ground. It's dark, but I can see a ladder going down.

He starts climbing down. "Ya coming?"

I smell the air. It smells like dust, and sweat, and gunpowder and…

MRE09 Menu 03. It is a little old. But I'm also hungry. My mouth waters.

"Ok," I say.

I get inside just as the rain starts.

It's dark down there. The walls are made of hard rock, and they're lined with shelves. Some of them have ammo. Others have cans. I see one with old cartons and a lot of empty bottles.

There's also a cot, and a desk with a bunch of wires and stuff, and a picture frame of some people I don't know.

And there's a couch. It's very dirty, but I can see the flowers on it.

"Home sweet home," Whitaker says, taking off his mask. His face is covered in grey hair and I can see his eyes all squinty under his bushy eyebrows. "MRE?"

I take it, and I don't even think before I bite into the packaging. I spit out the eww foil part before I devour the rest of it. I don't even know what it is; I'm just eating it as fast as I can.

I'm trying to get the last of the crumbs when I realize Whitaker is watching me. I put the packet down.

My face burns.

"Sorry," I mutter. Whitaker shrugs and goes back to putting away his guns. "Nothin' to be ashamed of," he said. "Apocalypse brings out the beast in all of us."

I don't say anything. I don't ask for another MRE, even though I want one, but he gives me one anyway. I eat this one more slowly this time, and I try not to rip it with my teeth.

"So," he says, sitting down. He gives me a long, hard stare, and it feels like he's looking over every bit of me - not just my outsides, but trying to see into my head, too.

"Just how the hell did you get into all this bullshit?"