Zomb-Pocalypse 2
Author: Megan Berry
Date: 2016-04-12 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Zombies; Horror; Young Adult
Description: Book 2 In the wake of Camp Freedom being overrun, Jane, Silas, and Ryan set out for Abby's cabin in the woods of Illinois. They don't know what happened to the rest of their group, but Jane can't continue to function unless she finds out. Life on the road only gets harder as the undead claim more and more of what's left of humanity. The roads are barely passable with wrecked cars, and carnage. Worst of all, the threats aren't just what's trying to eat them anymore. It's a lot for anyone to take on, especially a sixteen year old, but Jane is determined to find out what’s happened to her friends

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter One

I stare out at the water as it beads and runs down my window. Rain is pouring from the sky, and the gray depresses my mood even more.

“How much farther?” I ask from the backseat, and Ryan and Silas send me twin looks of annoyance.

“Ten minutes different than the last time you asked,” Silas complains, and I frown at him. I’m a little resentful that he’s finding my personal tragedy so inconvenient.

“Jane, it’s only been one day. I told you it will take three to get us to the cabin,” Ryan rephrases what Silas said, a little bit nicer, and I sigh. All this driving is making me anxious. There’s nothing to pass the time. Silas and Ryan aren’t the best conversationalists, so there’s nothing to keep my mind from dwelling on Abby.

I refuse to give up on her, out of all the people I’ve lost—Abby cannot be another name on that long list.

The rain increases, pounding harder against the truck like a hundred zombie fists, and Ryan starts to slow down. He’s leaning forward and squinting ahead. The wind is buffeting the truck, and the result is a lot like I’d imagine driving in a hurricane might be like— a small hurricane.

“I can’t see a thing,” he admits after five minutes. The truck is practically crawling now. “We’re gonna have to stop.”

I sit upright in the seat. “No,” I blurt out, causing Silas and Ryan to give me a look.

“I know what you’re going through, Jane. I want to find out if Megan and Abby are okay too, but it won’t help anything to kill ourselves getting there. If she’s there, she will still be there…” He trails off and doesn’t say the rest. If she isn’t there, she’s dead and we left her back at the camp.

“What’s that up ahead?” Silas asks, pointing to the outline of a large building on the side of the road.

Ryan shakes his head. “I can’t tell… we’ll have to get a little closer.” I bite back my sigh as we pull into the parking lot.

Ryan rolls down his window and rain drops pound in and hit my cheek. I lean forward anyway to read the signs.

“It’s a mini mall,” Ryan says in surprise as he looks around.

“Why’s it in the middle of nowhere?” I ask, and the boys shake their heads.

“Maybe there’s a town somewhere around here?” Silas suggests as he pulls out the map.

Ryan rolls the window back up and sits for a minute with the truck in park, idling.

“It could be risky,” he says at last, causing Silas to nod his head.

“Yep.”

“We could just wait in the truck for the rain to stop and then keep going,” I suggest, but both the guys shake their heads at me again.

For two people that don’t get along, they sure seem to agree on a lot lately, I can’t help thinking spitefully.

I know I’m being awful. I’m not myself; I haven’t been since I found out that my parents weren’t on Liberty Island. I knew it was a long shot going in, but it was one of those things where it’s so crazy you expect it to work.

“We should check it out,” Silas says in his deep, southern drawl.

Ryan turns to me. “You can stay here, Jane. We’ll go scope it out,” he offers, making me frown.

I’ve practically been a zombie these last few days. I’ve been nitpicking the guys, complaining, whining, bitching—you name it. I’m ashamed of myself. These two are with me for no other reason than to help me out, and I’ve been treating them like crap.

I know they’ve lost things too, during this zombie outbreak, but I’ve been making everything about me.

“Actually, I’ll come with you,” I tell them as I pick my pack off the floor, where it sits at my feet. Both the guys turn to me with surprised expressions on their faces. “…if you want me?” I amend, suddenly not sure of my welcome. Their reactions alone are more than enough proof that I’ve been a jerk these last few days.

“Hell yeah we want you,” Silas says with a devilish grin, breaking the silence, and I’m grateful to him.

Visibility is bad as the three of us ease out of the truck, being careful not to slam our doors. The rain is icy cold and beats relentlessly against my skin. I’m instantly soaking wet and shivering. I bring my gun up from the holster at my waist and squint through the rain.

There are a few vehicles in the parking lot, so it would be foolish to assume that this place is clear simply because it’s isolated.

Silas lifts his gun and fires. The pistol has a silencer, but I can still hear it from such a close proximity. A huge zombie keels over at our feet.

“Thanks man, I didn’t even see that one,” Ryan says, and I nod. I hadn’t seen it either.

We get our backs up against the brick building and creep along. Ryan is in the lead, I’m in the middle, and Silas covers us from the rear. Ryan peeks his head out around the corner when we get to the end of the building and then quickly pulls it back in.

“What?” I whisper, but he shakes his head, motioning for us to go back the way we came. The way he is acting, we don’t need to be told twice. Silas breaks into a fast jog. I suck in mouthfuls of rain as I try to keep pace with him.

Ryan keeps looking behind us like he expects a hoard to be on our tail, and I know it’s a very good possibility.

We run the full length of the mall again until we hit the other corner. We parked in what was probably the staff parking lot at the back of the mall, so there aren’t any store front windows for us to break into from this side. Silas stops and peeks around the corner and, same as Ryan, he jumps back quickly and motions for us to head back.

The three of us stare at each other for a minute, and then the boys nod back toward the truck. We begin to head that way as the rain starts to come down even harder. It’s pounding and bouncing off the pavement, and I feel like the cold and wet is being drilled into my bones.

Something catches our eyes through the rain, and we stop short. A crowd of zombies has just come around the side of the mall where Ryan had looked the first time. My stomach feels like it’s going to drop out of my jeans, as we flatten ourselves back against the building. I’m not sure if they can even see us in this weather, but it’s not a chance I really want to be taking.

I can hear their moans even above the pounding of the rain. I begin to breathe harder, though I try to only take short, shallow breaths so I won’t make noise and give us away.

I hear Ryan let out a grunt, and I swing around to find him grappling with a zombie that’s managed to walk right up to us while we stood gaping at the crowd. The rain masked the shuffle of its footsteps and the usual smell of decay.

More zombies are right in line behind him. I grip my gun, but I’m too afraid I’ll hit Ryan with a stray bullet. I hold my fire, my hand going to my waist for the knife that I keep strapped there. The carved wooden handle feels slippery from the water, and I say a quick prayer that this isn’t where everything is going to end.

Silas raises his gun, having no compunction about shooting so close to Ryan. He takes four of the creatures out. I run over to Ryan, who is still grappling with the zombie…my knife isn’t the only thing that’s gotten more slippery in the rain…

The zombie’s fetid skin slips around and falls off in Ryan’s hands as he tries to keep his body parts away from the zombie’s snapping jaws.

I walk up with my knife and act on instinct. I aim quickly, but carefully, at the base of the distracted zombie’s skull and jab as hard as I dare. The knife slices in like butter until I encounter the base of its spine, and even then it doesn’t slow my thrust very much.

I feel my knife lodge into the bone, and the zombie goes stiff and falls to the ground, pulling my knife from my grasp as it goes. Ryan manages to step back from the zombie in time, and he bends down to retrieve my knife. The zombie isn’t moving, but it’s still alive and its teeth clack open and shut, so Ryan jams the knife into the zomb’s temple once before handing it back.

“Thanks,” I mutter as I take the knife, being careful to avoid the infected blood that’s splattered the handle. Through the rain I can see that we have attracted the attention of the other zombies.

They are slow, but there are a lot of them and we have our backs against a brick wall. “What are we gonna do?” I scream. There doesn’t really seem to be a lot of reason to keep quiet now.

Silas looks around and points to the row of dumpsters. They are sitting tucked up against the back of the building. We’d detoured around the stinking things when we’d crept along the wall.

“Over there,” he tells us, not stopping to see if we follow as he takes off at a dead run. I make sure Ryan is still behind me, and then I take off running too. Silas has already managed to scale his way up onto the lid before I even get there.

The dumpster looms when I get closer, and I’m not sure how I’m going to get up there. It feels a bit like the fence back at the town where I met Silas.

“Grab my hand,” Silas shouts as he kneels down to try and grab me. I clutch at his hand, as he begins to pull me up. Ryan bumps to a stop right behind me, crowding me as the group of zombies are starting to crowd him.

“Come on,” Ryan yells, and I can hear the panic in his voice. His arms go around my waist, and then he’s practically throwing me up onto the lid. Silas catches me before I go spinning off the side. Then he gives Ryan a hand and starts to pull him up. Ryan is much more athletic than me. With Silas’ help he’s almost to the top when the zombies bump into the dumpster. I flail a bit and then decide to crouch down so I’m not standing like an idiot about to fall into the zombies.

Ryan lets out a hoarse cry and my attention is riveted to him as time stands still. He is nearly up on the dumpster, but the lead zombie has grabbed him by the foot. Ryan is kicking like crazy, trying to free his leg, and the zombie is biting furiously down on his boot.

“Oh my God!” I cry out. Silas’s face is breaking out in sweat as he plays a horrible game of tug of war with Ryan’s life. I reach for my gun and try to get in the mix. I can usually depend on Silas to save us, but he’s already struggling just to keep Ryan from being pulled down into the hungry crowd.

I try to aim the gun, but I can’t get a clear shot with Ryan shaking back and forth. More hungry arms reach up to claw and scratch at him, and I start to scream.

The axe strapped to Silas’ waist suddenly catches my attention, and I grab it without asking, or thinking. I lean dangerously over the side, elbowing rotten fingers out of my way, and crack down on the zombie’s skull with everything I have.

The zombie’s eyes roll back in its skull, but it doesn’t go down. The zombies behind it are crowding him too much for him to fall. Silas pitches backwards from the momentum of suddenly having Ryan freed, and Ryan falls on top of him.

I pull my arm away from the axe handle just as a huge, ugly zombie tries to take a bite out of my arm. The zombie I just put down finally falls to the ground with Silas’s axe still stuck in its head like a flag pole.

“That was my best axe,” Silas complains in true Silas fashion, and I roll my eyes at him. We are trapped on the lid of this dumpster; we have more important things to think about.

“Sorry about that. I’ll buy you a new one.” I retort making Silas frown.

I look down at Ryan and his shoe is missing. Seeing his exposed sock fills me with fear.

“Are you get bit?” I ask, falling to my knees beside him, but he shakes his head.

“No, I was so lucky. When I pulled away the zombie kept my shoe,” he sends me a small smile, but it’s weak and shaky.

“What are we going to do?” I ask, backing up as far as I can from the reaching hands. Our dumpster is surrounded by zombies on all three sides, the only safe place is right up against the brick wall.

The dumpster shakes and wobbles as the crowd keeps getting bigger. The zombies are probably eight deep all around. I stare at the closest zombies, and my stomach turns sour to see them getting crushed up against the sides. I don’t feel bad for them, but one has a bulging eyeball that is giving me the creeps really bad.

Silas moves to sit beside me, and he slips a little on the wet metal surface of the lid. “Can our luck get any worse?” He curses as he plops down, and Ryan and I look at each other. The jinx.

Right on cue, the sky opens up and starts dumping even more rain down on top of us. I’m grossed out to discover that the smell of wet zombie is about ten times worse than a dry one.

I stare out at the undead crowd and try to unfocus my eyes so I can’t see their actual features. They don’t seem able to get us up here, but that doesn’t save us. They will never get tired, and they will never get bored and wander away, especially with us right in view like this.

We are probably going to die up here. Not of thirst, I can’t help thinking ironically as I spit cold rain water out of my mouth, but of starvation or exposure. I wrap my arms around myself, but it does nothing to keep me warm.

Ryan sits down and wraps his arms around me, generating a tiny bit of warmth, but it’s not nearly enough.

“We need to figure out a way to stay dry,” Silas says, looking around and taking stock of what we have available.

“What’s the point?” I say glumly, earning myself a frown. Silas stands up and looks over at the dumpster beside us. It is only a couple feet away, but at least five zombies have managed to squeeze themselves into the space between the dumpsters.

“Hold on,” Silas says as he goes running towards the edge. The zombies let out a hopeful moan, raising their hands as though they’ll catch him.

My heart drops into my stomach, and I have to stifle my scream. I don’t want to make Silas mess this up. The dumpster is tall, but the zombies reaching hands still must have tickled his knee caps on his way over, Silas lands on the other dumpster with a loud thud. He slides a little in the water, down towards the zombies’ eager hands, before he catches his balance.

“Are you crazy?” I yell over at him, but he ignores me. He’s busy prying up the lid. Silas pulls the huge lid up on one side of the dumpster and shines his flashlight inside, checking it out before he jumps inside and out of sight.

I stand up and try to get a better look at what he’s doing. Ryan stands with me, keeping a steadying hand on my arm. I’m sure he has visions of me tumbling off the dumpster and into the zombies—so do I.

It feels like time slows down while I wait for Silas to pop his stubborn head back up. I’m getting anxious that there might have been a zombie in the garbage and it got him, until I see the top of his head. He throws a ratty looking blue thing out and then follows it up.

I watch him roll it up carefully and tuck it under his arm, and then Silas is taking another run at the space between his dumpster and ours.

My heart stops when he sails through the air, and then I feel the thud of him landing as it reverberates through the metal. He walks over and sits down beside us, and I give him a hard punch in the arm.

“You scared me half to death,” I accuse him, but he only grins. He pulls the ratty thing out from the crook of his arm, and I get my first good look at it. It’s a piece of torn blue tarp, the type of thing you would use to cover a load of furniture in the back of your truck.

I look over at Ryan and he doesn’t seem overly impressed with it either, so I don’t feel too bad that I have no idea what Silas is thinking.

Silas sits down beside me so that I’m in the middle with Ryan on my other side. It’s so cold and wet that I don’t feel any heat radiate off either one of them. Silas shakes the dirty tarp out and shows us how to hold it over our heads like an umbrella.

We sit for a moment in silence, well…not real silence. All I can hear is the pounding of rain on the tarp and the groans and growls of the undead. I tuck my legs up to my chest a little tighter, trying to keep them out of the rain.

“This is pointless,” I mutter, and Silas looks over at me.

“It’s better than nothing,” he argues, but I’m too cold to fight with him.

Silas digs in his backpack and pulls out a crushed Twinkie, still in the plastic wrapper. I watch with wide eyes as he opens it and wolfs it down in two large bites.

“How can you even eat right now?” I ask him. The stench of the zombies is enough to have a normal person vomiting, never mind the sight of the ugly bastards.

“More calories will help me stay warm. You should eat too.” I shake my head. I can’t.

I lean my head down on Ryan’s shoulder and stare out at the sea of death before us.

“How are we going to get out of here?” I ask, and I feel Ryan shrug helplessly. He doesn’t know either.

I look over at Silas, who is staring out at the crowd with narrowed eyes. He feels my gaze and shrugs too.

“I dunno,” he says, and it’s worse than Ryan’s answer because I’ve come to rely on Silas to be the crazy redneck with the fix-it ideas for any situation. “We can’t get ‘em with the knives because they’ll start to pile up and be like stairs for the rest.” I shiver worse at the thought and press my face back into Ryan’s shoulder. He reaches out and grabs my hand, and his fingers are like blocks of ice.

Silas sits up suddenly and looks like he’s focussing really hard on something.

“Did you get an idea?” I press, and he shakes his head.

“Nah, I thought I heard something,” he admits, and I shake my head. I don’t know how he could hear anything with all this racket.

Then it’s my turn to pause. I could swear I heard the faintest whisper of a voice on the wind.

Silas is watching me. “You heard it too,” he says, and it’s not really a question. Silas stands up, shedding the blue tarp, and I follow him on shaky legs. He’s scanning the horizon, out past the zombies for any sign of human life, any chance we could be rescued.

I look too, but I don’t see anything.

“Hey!” The voice is female, and it’s much louder this time. We spin in all directions, but again we see nothing.

“Up here.”

I feel foolish, but I look up, squinting against the icy rain that’s practically blinding me.

“Silas,” I whisper and prod him with my elbow. Both of the guys look up, and we all stand there in shock.

“I’ll be damned,” Silas murmurs, and I agree. That about sums up what I’m thinking too as I look at the faces of the five people who are hanging over the ledge of the roof to stare down at us.

“Hang on,” they tell us, before disappearing back over the edge.

Chapter Two

Somehow sensing more warm, fleshly bodies in the area, the moans of the dead grow even louder as they surge up against the dumpster, making it rock like crazy.

Above us, the people on the roof are struggling to lower a long aluminum ladder. Silas reaches up when the ladder gets close enough to grab, and he guides it down so that the legs rest on the dumpster lid. The ladder isn’t quite tall enough to reach the top.

“Jane, you go first!” Ryan yells to be heard over the moans and growls. My stomach clenches; I am not a fan of heights. It isn’t that I’m necessarily afraid of them, but this ladder doesn’t seem the least bit safe and I’m terrified of nosediving fifteen feet down into a crowd of hungry zombies.

“Not so fast,” Silas says, putting his hand up to block my shaky steps towards the ladder.

“What are you doing?” Ryan demands with an angry look on his face.

“Have you even thought about this?” Silas challenges. “We don’t know who these people are. We can’t just send Jane up the ladder first. How do we know they won’t throw the ladder off the roof and keep her for God knows what?”

Ryan’s face falls. “I didn’t think of that,” he says quietly, so quietly I can’t even hear him, but I know what he said from reading his lips.

“I’ll go first,” Ryan volunteers, his face firming with his resolve. Silas stares at him for a moment and then finally nods.

The people on the roof are waving like crazy for us to hurry, and Ryan’s first step up the ladder makes my heart dip in fear. Silas grasps the bottom of the ladder to keep it steady. Up on the roof, people lean dangerously over the edge to keep hold of the top of the ladder.

The zombies, oblivious to it all, or perhaps on purpose, press against the dumpster and howl harder, making the ladder jostle from side to side.

“Holy shit,” I murmur, stuffing my fist against my mouth to keep from screaming as I watch Ryan get half way up the ladder before it shifts suddenly. Ryan’s footing slips, but he manages to clutch a rung for dear life.

“Go faster!” Silas shouts up at him, and even through the rain I see Ryan nod. He’s heard him.

Ryan picks up his pace and quickly reaches the top of the ladder. I hold my breath. This is the most dangerous part. Two bigger men reach over the edge, grasp Ryan by his wrists, and begin to pull him up.

The dumpster rocks wildly, and I’m forced to kneel down to keep from getting pitched off. I don’t know how Silas stays upright. The metal creaks, protesting the force of so many bodies pressing in, and I accidentally gulp down rain water as my mouth gapes open.

Silas and I wait, holding our collective breath until we see Ryan poke his head over the top and he gives us the thumbs up. He joins the two men in leaning dangerously over the edge to hold the ladder in place.

“You’re up,” Silas says to me, and with fear shaking me to my very core, I grip the cold ladder in my hands and start to climb. It’s crazy how much a couple weeks can change you. Before the zombies, I would have laughed in anyone’s face who even suggested I do such a dangerous thing. No one is laughing now though. It’s climb this ladder or die.

I try to ignore everything, like the fact that there’s a hungry hoard of zombies below me like a rolling sea of restless, rotting flesh. I ignore the fact that I’m climbing a good twenty feet up into the air. The rain beats me in the face as I go, also making the ladder slippery. The ladder itself sways and creaks every time the dumpster gets rocked, but I try to block it all out and focus on putting each foot and hand in front of the other.

I run out of ladder, but I’m still several feet from the actual top. This gap looked a lot smaller from down below. Up close it’s like the yawning mouth of the Grand Canyon.

I’m staring at a wall of rough brick, not sure what to do next, when Ryan grabs hold of me. He wraps his hand around my wrist, and I instinctively grip the ladder tighter. I’m still trying to convince myself to let go and trust him when someone I don’t know grabs my other wrist and peels my hand roughly off the ladder. They start to haul me up, my wrists uncomfortably forced to take the weight of my entire body. I feel them pop and creak. For a moment, the crazy idea that the bones might actually snap and send me falling flashes through my mind. When I get a little closer, a third guy grabs me around the waist and helps them pull me over the edge. I only let myself draw a breath as I’m deposited, on my knees, on the sodden roof of the mall.

I look up and see four people huddled together under an umbrella, staring at me with wide eyes. I ignore them and stand up on shaky legs. I might be safe for the moment, but Silas isn’t. I have to see if Ryan needs my help.

Ryan is back to being half-twisted over the edge with the other two men, all of them completely focused on Silas down below. I stand far enough away that I won’t be in their way, but I can still see what’s happening. Silas starts his climb, but there’s no one left at the bottom to hold the ladder, and with the zombies jostling, it’s bad.

Acid rises up in my throat, and my heart hammers like crazy. “It’s too dangerous!” I shout to be heard over the rain and the zombies. As though to prove me right, the ladder jerks violently to one side. All three of the guys at the top have to use everything they have to keep it from falling.

When the ladder is finally steadied, Silas is six feet up, less than half way, and each step forward makes the ladder even more unstable. I look down at the determined look on Silas’ face and know that he’s feeling reckless.

“Get some rope!” one of the guys leaning over the edge yells out. He sounds winded as he struggles to hold the ladder in such an uncomfortable position. I look over my shoulder and see two people run and start digging through a pile of supplies that they’d brought with them. The rope is covered, so I turn my attention back to Ryan and our other two saviors.

All three of them have bright red faces from exertion. Even though it’s raining, I can tell they’re sweating. Not only is this a dangerous situation, but now I’m terrified these guys won’t be able to hold on for much longer.

A much smaller man, who’d been huddled in with the women under the umbrella, runs forward and hands the big guy the rope. The small guy takes his place holding the swaying ladder, and I don’t trust him as far as I could throw him…which might actually be a little ways, considering how small he actually is. I run over and push in beside Ryan to help take up the slack.

I’m stunned by the weight of the ladder, even with three other people holding it. I instantly feel strain on my lower back, and I have to struggle to fight off the dangerous pull towards the edge. Ryan gives me a grateful smile of encouragement that helps to strengthen my resolve, and then all of our attention is back on Silas. Silas climbs another rung, and I actually grunt at the pressure. The big guy quickly knots the rope and then presses it into my arms. At the same time, he pushes me and Shrimpy out of the way and takes his place back.

“Throw it down to him,” the big guy instructs me, and I carefully lower the rope down to Silas, who catches it and loops it around his head and shoulders until it’s tied securely under his arm pits. “Tie the other end of the rope to some of that piping over there,” the guy shouts again when he’s satisfied that Silas has secured his end. I spring into a run, with the rope in hand, my eyes on the cold metal pipe sticking up out of the roof like it’s a lifeline—because, for Silas, it literally is.

I’m so close that my fingers actually brush the pipe when a burning pain blossoms across my palm. The burn is so intense that it’s a full second before I realize the rope has been yanked out of my hand.

“No!” The scream is ripped from me as I lunge for it, landing hard against the cement on my belly, but it’s too late. I watch as the end of the rope whips towards the group gathered at the edge of the roof and disappears between their legs.

I get up and stand rooted to the spot, shaking. I’ve killed him. The rope wouldn’t have pulled like that unless Silas fell. I burst into tears and sink back down to my knees. I cover my face with my hands and sob. I’ve lost a lot of people since this whole asshole mess started, but Silas is the first one that I’ve actually killed. I think about all the zombies at the bottom and pray that he somehow died on impact and didn’t have to feel all those tearing bites rip him apart.

I feel a gentle hand on my shoulder and shrug it off. I don’t deserve Ryan’s pity, or his kind words. I deserve to follow Silas over the edge of this building.

“Jane.” He has to call out several times before I’m able to absorb what I’m actually hearing. I look up through eyes that blur from tears and see Silas standing over me. “I didn’t know you cared so much,” he says with a small, crooked grin. He’s grinning, but I can tell he’s actually trying to cover up his embarrassment at my reaction.

He pulls me to my feet and frowns when he runs his thumb over my cheek and it comes away red with blood. “What happened?” he asks, and I’m still so stunned that he’s alive that I can only shrug. I have no idea where the blood came from.

Silas gently grabs my hand and holds it palm up; his face twists with anger. I look down to see what he’s looking at.

“Jane…” Ryan says, coming up beside us, but he doesn’t finish his sentence when his gaze lands on my hand. He swallows visibly.

“I let go of the rope,” I whisper, feeling nothing when I look at my torn, bloodied palm.

“It’s okay,” Ryan tries to reassure me. “I caught it when I noticed it snaking around my feet. I got my foot on the rope and someone else managed to get a hold of it.”

I nod at his explanation but still don’t say anything.

“You folks sure like your excitement,” a booming voice says behind us, and as one, we turn to see the big guy who pretty much single-handedly saved us all.

“That was a little too much excitement for me,” Silas admits, giving us all a weary smile.

“We should get out of the rain before we catch our deaths,” one of the women says, interrupting. The big guy looks at us with an assessing gaze, sizing us up, debating if we’re dangerous, before he nods towards the rooftop door.

“After you guys.” It makes me nervous when he follows behind us, and I know that Silas doesn’t like it either. We still have our guns and knives though, and besides a knife strapped to the one guy’s waist, I don’t see any of them with a visible weapon. If this does go bad, hopefully we’ll have the advantage.

The door leads to a long, dark staircase, and Silas pauses before stepping over the threshold. Ryan and I follow his lead. “Has this place been cleared out?” he asks, and the group nods.

“The mall was closed when the zombies came. We were pretty lucky. It was just us in here.”

“What were you doing here?” Ryan asks, and I’m grateful for his curiosity. I’m wondering the same thing.

“We were the night crew. Some of us were janitorial, others were stocking shelves in some of the stores.” The people in front of us snap on a flashlight and begin walking as they talk.

We don’t have much of a choice except to trust them, so we follow.

“You guys really saved our asses out there. Thank you,” Ryan says as we continue to descend the stairs in silence.

The stairs and surrounding area are all concrete, and our voices and footsteps echo eerily.

“No problem man, we’re just happy we were able to help,” the big guy says as he pads along behind us.

We come to a door, and the people ahead of us push through it, not looking overly concerned that there might be zombies on the other side.

My hand twitches towards the pistol strapped to my waist, but I resist grabbing it. I don’t want to scare these people and cause a fight to break out. I see Silas’s hand get a lot closer to his own holster and feel less like a crazy person to know that he’s bracing for zombies too.

We emerge from the dark, cramped staircase into a wide open mall. I press my back against the wall as I look around. The lights are off, but there’s a huge skylight that lets light in on a bunch of tropical plants positioned at the center of a fountain.

It’s kind of like we just walked into the twilight zone. Most of the storefronts are covered up with huge metal gates, but a couple are open.

The group nods towards a furniture store further down that doesn’t have a gate blocking its access. “We’ve been holed up in the furniture store.” The big guy pauses and looks us over before his eyes settle on Silas. “I’m Jamie by the way,” he says, holding his large, meaty hand out. Silas hesitates for a moment before reaching out and shaking it.

“Silas,” he tells him. He motions to us. “This is Jane and Ryan.” Jamie nods.

“Nice to meet you,” he says, and I have to suppress a crazy urge to giggle. He’s very polite for the end of the world, but then, maybe I’m just too used to Silas’ rough demeanor.

“The others are Chico, Molly, Spence, Ryder, Juanita, and Bailey,” Jamie lists his companions off and each person waves at their name. I remember that the other guy who saved us is named Chico, and the skinny guy is Ryder, but none of the other names stick for now. I’m coming down from a huge adrenaline spike, and I’m really starting to feel the cold. It contrasts sharply with the burning pain in my hand.

We reach the furniture store, and the group shows us the small camp they’ve made by pushing a bunch of mattresses close to one another in a group. They even have bedding from scavenging the home outfitter store next door. I’m amazed by the stockpile of food they have just sitting around, and my stomach growls when I see it. All I want to do is dive in and fill my belly, but I need to get out of these wet clothes first. It feels like my blood is starting to turn to ice.

One of the women hands us each a towel, and I wrap it around my shoulders gratefully. “You’ll have to find a change of clothes in one of the stores. I don’t think I have anything that will fit you,” she says, eying my thin frame with a frown.

I wrap the towel around myself tighter. I’ve always been thin, but these last couple weeks on the road, I’ve probably dropped another ten pounds. I haven’t missed the way my rib cage sticks out now, or the way my pants have gotten looser.

“I’ll take you if you want,” she offers and I nod, jumping at the chance to get into some dry clothes.

“We’ll all go,” Silas says as he and Ryan get up to follow me. Jamie comes along too, probably because he doesn’t trust us either.

After passing a shoe store and a jewellers, we find a store that fits our needs.

The woman, Molly, stays close, chatting away about nothing while the guys spread out to the men’s department. I notice that they both keep me within their line of sight as they move around the store, and it makes me feel safe.

I flip through a couple racks before finding a comfortable pair of jeans, a thermal undershirt, and a warm hoodie.

I grab a new pack of underwear and a pair of thick fuzzy socks as I make my way to the dressing room. It gets darker as I go deeper into the store, and anxiety starts creeping up my spine like a great big spider, making my skin goose pimple. I start to lose my nerve though I sternly remind myself that zombies don’t hide, and these people have been living here for two weeks without incident.

I pull my flashlight out and aim it into the back where the change rooms are located. I take one step and then lose my nerve. I duck behind a rack of clothes instead and quickly strip. I force my ice cold legs through the jeans and struggle to get them up because I’m still wet and clammy.

“Jane?” I hear Ryan’s voice, and it sounds like it’s coming closer. I freeze, crouched down behind the clothes, topless, my heart pounding.

“I…I’m just getting dressed. Stay over there!” I call out, just as I see the beam of his flashlight coming my way. He instantly clicks the light off and turns around, and I have to smile despite my embarrassment.

“Sorry. I was too freaked out to go into the change room.” I admit as I hurriedly finish up. I hear his throat clear uncomfortably, but he doesn’t say anything else. I would never admit my fear to Silas, he would only judge me, but not Ryan. Ryan is the dictionary definition of a nice guy

I almost moan in euphoria when I slip my ice cold toes into the thick pink socks, I only allow myself a second to enjoy it, and then I’m on my feet gathering my stuff up in my arms. I go to slip my toes into my shoes but stop when I realize how wet they are. My new sock gets wet on the bottom, and I curl my lip up in annoyance as I pull my foot out as quickly as possible.

I choose to carry my shoes instead, and I emerge from behind the rack to find Ryan with his back turned towards me. “You can look now,” I say with a laugh, and he turns and blasts me with one of his mega-watt smiles, making me feel all gooey inside.

I sharply remind myself that this is the zombie apocalypse and not my senior prom. “I’m gonna need some new shoes until these ones dry out,” I tell him to distract myself from my emotions, and he holds out a plastic bag for my clothes. “Thanks,” I say, noticing that he’s already in dry clothes too—a pair of jeans and a hoodie with a dark down vest overtop.

He looks like he should be in a catalog modeling these clothes, and I have to force myself to turn my gaze away from him. He holds out his hand to me, and I slip my cold fingers into his warm ones as we walk back to Silas.

Silas has changed too, and everyone is holding a bag full of their sodden stuff. I notice the guys aren’t wearing their boots anymore either.

We walk back, stopping at the shoe store we passed on the way, and Silas insists that I trade in my sneakers for a pair of heavy duty hiking boots. They feel awkward at first, much heavier than my tennis shoes ever were. I give a metal pole an experimental kick and hear the metallic ring of metal on metal. I smile up at Silas. “That didn’t even hurt.”

Silas nods. “Steel toed boots are the way to go with zombies, trust me.” The smile melts off my face a bit as a lump forms in my throat, and I realize that I do. I trust Silas and Ryan with my life.

We get back to the furniture store, and they feed us better than we’ve eaten in a week. They have frozen dinners and a microwave, and I gorge myself until I feel a bit sick.

“How do you guys have all this stuff?” I ask after swallowing a mouthful of mashed potatoes. All this stuff should have been rotten a week ago.

“The mall has backup generators. Chico was able to figure out how to turn the breakers off to all the stores we didn’t need, so we were able to conserve fuel,” Jamie answers for the group. He seems to be their leader.

“We plugged in a few fridges and freezers, and stocked up on all the perishables we could fit from the grocery store,” Molly jumps in proudly, and I have to admit that it’s a great idea.

This place seems like the ideal spot to ride out the apocalypse. I would almost be tempted to stay here if we weren’t searching for Abby and Megan.

“That’s smart,” Ryan compliments them, and Molly blushes.

“We can dry your clothes for you too,” Molly says, blushing again. She points over to the appliance section of the store, and I see a row of dryers. All they have to do is plug one in.

“That would be great,” I say gratefully. In this new world where almost all of my clothes have gotten wrecked from infected blood and guts, the idea of being able to salvage a few is appealing.

“Just leave them with Molly and she will do it up for you,” Jamie offers, and we gratefully pass our bags over.

“So where are you folks headed?” Jamie asks us, and the three of us glance at each other, not sure how much we should trust them.

“Illinois,” Ryan says finally, keeping it vague. “What about you guys?”

Jamie nods like he’s thinking about our answer, “We haven’t left this mall yet, but we are running low on fuel for the generators. We’ve talked about going to Florida though, maybe find an island tucked away from the dead.”

No one talks for a bit, we are all thinking about their idea. It seems like a solid plan, if they could get there, but the idea of driving through most of the United States to reach the farthest State is just too terrifying for me to fathom.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Silas acknowledges at last, and we are all silent for a while as we think our own thoughts.

“Do you want me to set you up with some beds?” Molly asks when she comes back from the dryer, but Silas shakes his head.

“It’s not that we don’t appreciate the hospitality,” he says, and I can’t help noticing that his drawl has gotten thicker, “but the fact is, we don’t know you folks from Adam, and we would feel more comfortable finding somewhere else to sleep.” Silas says it pleasantly enough, but he’s still saying he doesn’t trust these people—which is a bit of an insult. I give them a small smile, hoping it will help to cushion the blow of Silas’ words.

Jamie stares at us with no expression on his face. Just when I’m beginning to get twitchy, he bursts out laughing. “We understand. I’m just messing with you… How about we meet back here in the morning?”

He’s really congenial about it, but there’s something shifty about him, all of a sudden, that I don’t like.

“Sounds good,” Silas says, standing up casually, but again I see his hand twitch towards his hip. We walk out of the furniture store, and Silas doesn’t turn his back on them until we get out of range.

“That was kind of weird,” Ryan says, saying what we have all been thinking.

We walk further through the mall, passing several stores until Silas finds one that makes us all start to grin. A camping store.

They didn’t give us a key to open the gates, but Silas pulls his lock picking set out of his pocket and sets to work. It takes him longer than a regular door, but finally the lock clicks and he grins at us.

Nothing comes up to investigate when we rattle the gate, but we still pull our guns out as we move through the store, to be sure it’s really as empty as it seems.

There is so much stuff that our flashlights land on as we do our sweep, that I begin to feel excited about all these supplies being at our fingertips. I want to dig through everything now, but Silas convinces me to wait until morning when we’ll have some light.

The camping store has the mall entrance we came in at, but it also has large glass doors that lead out to the parking lot. There are bars on the windows and doors, but we don’t want to risk any of the zombies seeing our lights and coming to investigate.

We find a large tent that was set up as a display in the middle of the store, and decide it’s as good a place as any. There are already sleeping bags inside too, and Silas says it’s because it’d been staged to show campers how spacious the tent could be, even with all your gear inside.

Silas slips away for a minute to pull the gate back across the entrance to the mall and lock it. We’ll hear if anyone rattles it in the night. I curl up in my sleeping bag and then worm my way a little closer to Ryan.

Ryan automatically wraps his arms around me, and I can barely keep my eyes open.

It’s nice to finally have enough food in our bellies and a feeling of relative safety, surrounded by metal bars. I wish this feeling could last forever.

I’m awakened the next morning by a rough shake. “Silas,” I mutter, reaching out a sleepy hand to swat at him, but he doesn’t go away.

I open my eyes blearily to tell him to piss off, but it isn’t Silas. Ryan is the one shaking me, and his eyes look a bit wild.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, sitting up, instantly on alert. “Are the zombies here?”

“Do you have the keys?” he asks, ignoring my questions, and I frown.

“What keys?” I ask, my brain still half asleep.

“For the truck!” Ryan practically yells at me. I see him take a deep breath as he struggles to calm down.

“No.” Why would I? After my incident back at Camp Freedom, I haven’t been allowed back behind the wheel. “What’s wrong?” I repeat, and Ryan shrugs his shoulders helplessly.

“Silas went up to the roof to check, but I think those people stole our truck!”

Chapter Three

“You aren’t going to God damned believe it,” I hear Silas say angrily as he comes slamming through the security gate, pushing it aside with a grating rattle that makes me jump. My heart sinks, and I have a very bad feeling that I can believe it—we’re screwed.

“They took the truck,” Ryan guesses, and Silas nods grimly.

I rub a bit of sleep from my eyes, my mind reeling as I try to catch up with this latest development.

“Tell me what happened?” I say, looking from Silas to Ryan before finally settling my gaze on Ryan. Ryan runs an agitated hand through his hair and starts pacing.

“Those people seemed so nice, but they tricked us,” he spits out, and I nod impatiently. That has already been established, but I bite my tongue. Ryan is mad enough. “I went to see them this morning to grab our clothes and see what they were up to, and the furniture store people were gone. I looked all over for them—nothing.”

“How did they get out of the mall?” I ask, as it’s unlikely that the huge group of zombies just decided to leave their post.

Ryan shrugs, and it’s Silas who answers. “The zeds are all hanging out at the back of the mall still, where we disappeared, they probably walked right out the front door.”

I feel like someone punched me in the guts. Just when we start to get a little bit ahead in this shitty world, we get our legs kicked out from under us. We need that truck to find Abby and Megan!

“I came and got Silas and we searched through the mall again, but they were gone,” Ryan continues.

“They left our clothes, dried and folded neatly though,” Silas interrupts with a snort, and I stare at him wide eyed.

“Seriously?” I ask, and Ryan nods.

“Yep.”

“At least they didn’t leave the front doors wide open,” Silas says darkly, and the thought that we could have woken up to a mall filled with zombies, on top of our truck being stolen, makes things seem only slightly better.

“We would have been safe in here behind the gate,” Silas reminds us, but Ryan shakes his head.

“We would’ve been trapped,” he argues, and Silas gives a curt nod.

“Never said we wouldn’t.” I stare between the two of them, ready to grab them each by the back of the neck and knock their heads together.

“So now what are we going to do?” I ask, hating to be the girl who turns to them for everything, but they really do have better ideas than me.

“We look around, gather supplies, and make a plan,” Silas says, not giving Ryan a chance to answer.

I look over at Ryan, and he nods in agreement.

“Why don’t you come with me, Blondie, and we’ll go find something to eat?” Silas says, being uncharacteristically nice as he reaches out and starts to propel me along by my arm.

I dig my heels in and look over at Ryan. “What are you doing to do?” I ask, making him pause for a moment to think about it.

“Try and figure something out,” he says before giving me a half-assed attempt at a smile.

“It wasn’t your fault you know,” I tell him, but he just shakes his head like he doesn’t believe it.

“They took the keys out of the pocket of my jeans when I gave them to Molly to dry,” he admits.

“Still…” I say, hoping that conveys how much I don’t blame him for this.

I take a deep breath and release a sigh as I walk away with Silas. I know that Ryan feels guilty for the keys getting taken on his watch, but really, it could have happened to any one of us, maybe not Silas…but definitely to me.

‘I can’t believe this happened,” I tell Silas as we walk. Silas grunts. I turn to him and look at his face. “You aren’t surprised?” I ask, not sure if I believe him. Silas shrugs, not looking at me.

“People suck. You should never trust them, you’ll live longer,” he says, and his words echo in my chest and make it ache. That’s a sad way to live, but obviously, he’s right because those people stole our stuff. My heart sinks when I remember Abby’s parent’s wedding rings that I’d threaded through her Grandmother’s necklace and left in my suitcase. Anger rushes through me. I’d risked all our lives to return that to Abby, and now it was all for nothing.

“How about the grocery store?” Silas asks, pausing outside a food store that’s radiating a stink that could rival any zombie.

I wrinkle my nose up at it and shake my head. “I’m not really hungry yet, and I definitely won’t be if we go in there.”

Silas grabs my arm and pulls me in anyway. The smell of rotting vegetables and rancid meat makes me cover my mouth and nose with my sleeve. “Then this is the best time to do it—if you’re not hungry anyway, it won’t ruin your appetite.”

I’m a bit annoyed, but I let Silas press a grocery cart into my hands and watch as he grabs one too.

“Go crazy,” he tells me, and it makes me shiver as I remember the last time Silas and I went into a grocery store together. He’d cleared it, but someone had broken the back door down and it’d been crawling with zombies. That was the first place I’d ever shot a zombie.

We walk up and down the aisles shoving food into the cart. I’m not sure where we’re going to put it all, since we no longer have a truck, but I think it makes us both feel better to stockpile.

Silas loads up on bags of chips and I snort. “Really?” I ask, and he nods at me.

“I love chips,” he says, giving me a rare Silas smile.

I’m tempted to lecture him about apocalyptic priorities, but I keep my mouth shut. I try to be a little more prudent with my own cart selections. I fill mine with canned meat, veggies, fruit, and granola bars.

I crack a warm orange soda as we pass the pop, and shake my head when I see Silas throw a couple cases of pop on the bottom of his cart. He looks at me challengingly, but I don’t rise to his bait.

I chug another sip of the overly sweet drink as we round the corner. A shadow moves, and I drop my drink—soda spraying all over the floor and my jeans as a girly scream pushes from my throat. My cart crashes into the lone figure standing in front of us.

I fumble for my gun, and Silas already has his out and pointed. The zombie moans and clutches his shin. “Don’t shoot me,” the zombie cries, and I lower my gun in confusion.

“Ryder?” I exclaim in surprise, and the skinny guy nods.

“Yeah, it’s me.” He affirms and I lower my gun and clip it back into my holster, but Silas doesn’t.

“Silas,” I say wearily, not really sure what to expect.

“Where’s our truck?” Silas asks, and the anger in his voice sends chills racing down my spine. If I was Ryder, I would be pretty scared right now. I look over at him and see that he’s shaking like a leaf.

“I promise you, I had nothing to do with that. I didn’t steal your truck!” Ryder holds his hands up as though they’ll be able to stop the bullet that Silas intends to pop through his skull.

I sigh and flip my hair back out of my eyes. “You’d better start talking,” I warn him, moving over a bit so I’m not standing in the middle of my orange pop puddle anymore. My boots make a sticky sound against the floor as I walk.

“That was all Jamie’s idea. They wanted to leave, and he didn’t think you guys would give them a ride.”

“To Florida?” Silas snorts, and Ryder nods. “Yeah, not bloody likely,” Silas confirms.

“They’ve been trapped in this mall since the outbreak, they didn’t know if their families were okay or not…” Ryder tries to explain, but I can tell that Silas isn’t softening at all.

“Why didn’t they leave before now?” I ask, interrupting, and Ryder turns and looks at me, probably because I’m less terrifying than Silas.

“They were scared. The zombies have been at the front doors since the beginning and every time they tried to find another way out, the zombies would follow. Yesterday was the first time they’ve left the doors…”

“Why are you still here then?” Silas asks, still holding his weapon trained on Ryder’s chest.

“I’m not going out there!” Ryder yelps. “I have no family to go look for, and it’s safe in here. There’s enough food to last me a long time…” He trails off when he sees the look on Silas’ face. Silas thinks he’s a coward, but I can see the appeal. If I didn’t have anyone out in the world that I cared about, I would consider this for myself.

“Put the gun down Silas,” I sigh, and Ryder looks relieved. A few seconds tick by before Silas complies, but thankfully he does.

“Do we have anything to worry about from you?” I ask, and Ryder vehemently shakes his head.

“God no! I don’t even carry a gun,” he says, motioning to his waist, bare of any weapons.

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Silas tells him, causing Ryder to look down at his feet in shame. “You know there are zombies outside right?” Silas demands, unable to understand how Ryder has survived this long.

“We’ll just be on our way then,” I say, hinting at both guys to move on. Ryder doesn’t have to be told twice, he ducks around the corner and runs off down the aisle, disappearing somewhere into the mall.

“I don’t like him,” Silas says shaking his head, and I chuckle.

“Not everyone can be as macho as you,” I tell him and then realize my mistake as I watch his chest swell.

“You really think I’m macho?” Silas asks, and I roll my eyes.

“Come on, let’s get out of this place before the smell sinks into my pores,” I tell him to avoid answering because the truth is, Silas is a bad ass.

Silas lights up a cigarette when we finally emerge from the grocery store. Usually I would cast him a look that left no doubt how I feel about smoking, but today I don’t mind it. The sweet tobacco smell helps cover up the smell of the grocery store.

I noisily make my way over to the fountain, my boots sticking with every step, and rinse the bottom of my soles off in the murky water. I don’t want to be sticking and making a bunch of noise when I’m trying to outrun the zombies.

Silas and I head back to the camping store, pushing the carts.

“What now?” I ask when we push the carts inside the camp store and Silas shrugs.

“I saw a guns and ammo section at the back of the store last night,” he says, and my ears perk up.

“Lead on.” I motion for him to go ahead, secretly wishing that I could actually just take a nap.

Silas leads us back to the far corner, and my eyes go wide at all the stuff in the display case and behind it inside a metal lock box.

Silas uses the handle of his pistol to smash out the top of the glass display and picks up a knife to examine it.

I move in beside him and spy an enormous hunting knife with a wicked curve in the blade. It’s set in a thick black rubber handle that looks like it will supply a good grip, even if I get it covered in zombie crud. I pick it up, pushing the broken glass out of the way, liking the weight in my hand.

I look over at Silas’ noticeably smaller knife and grin. “That’s not a knife…THAT’S a knife,” I say in my best Australian accent. Silas actually smirks at my badly done Crocodile Dundee impression.

“Never a dull moment,” he says, and I grin back.

“I’m keeping this thing,” I tell Silas, trying to fit it in somewhere on my belt, but only succeeding in poking myself.

Silas actually laughs out loud as he picks through an assortment of leather sheaths and hands me one that will fit my new skewer. I undo my belt and slide the loop along the leather.

“It looks very natural,” Silas remarks, unable to keep a straight face as he stares at the sheath, which is almost as large as my thigh.

“That’s what I thought too,” I say, giving in to the urge to be silly for a moment.

“Holy Mother of God!” Silas exclaims, the smile melting off his face as he turns and spies a large, black metal display case filled with guns. He’s frozen in awe, staring at the mother lode.

I know these guns are exactly what we need, and I’m excited to further our chances at survival, but Silas’ reaction is over the top. I catch him stroking the case like it’s his girlfriend.

“Really?” I ask, interrupting Silas and his creepy gun crush.

“Jane, you have no idea what these guns are do you?” Silas asks, and I shake my head.

“I know they will kill zombies, and that’s all I care about,” I tell him, and he takes a deep breath like I’m trying the patience of a saint–hardly. Silas rattles the heavy metal door that’s keeping him from his dream come true and frowns.

“Locked,” he mutters.

“Should we shoot the lock off?” I ask hopefully, having seen it done a lot in movies.

Silas turns on me with a scandalized look. “And risk shooting the guns? I don’t think so, Blondie!” I’m a little annoyed, but I ignore him—reminding myself that’s just how Silas is.

“What about the key?” I suggest, though I’m about done trying to come up with solutions.

Silas shakes his head again. “That idea is better, but a place like this wouldn’t just leave the keys sitting out. They’re either at home with the owner, or locked up in a safe we can’t open.”

I blow out a breath. “What’s your idea then?” I ask, sure that he has one.

“Bolt cutters,” he instantly replies.

“Do you have some?” I ask, sure he’s gonna pull a pair out of his backpack, but he surprises me by shaking his head.

“I don’t, but the hardware store should.” He looks at me like he’s debating asking me to go and get him some, but then he changes his mind and gives his head a small shake. “I’ll go and grab them and be right back,” he says, not even pausing to see if I object.

I nod even though he’s already disappeared. He probably thinks I don’t know what a pair of bolt cutters look like—I don’t—but he doesn’t have to know that.

I stare blankly at the guns. There are all sorts of different sizes and one in particular that looks like some sort of military assault rifle. For the first time in a couple days, I miss my phone. I would have loved to be able to google a couple of these guns and impress Silas with a bit of random knowledge.

Silas returns at a run with a pair of heavy red bolt cutters in his hand. I watch his chest rising up and down rapidly, and I know he ran the whole way. He’s as excited as a kid at Christmas.

“Is that an AK-47?” I ask when he pulls an enormous looking machine gun from the locker, ignoring all the other guns.

Silas shakes his head. “It’s better. This is an AR-15.” He runs his hand along the smooth, black barrel as he talks, and I roll my eyes.

“Do you want me to leave you two alone?” I ask, only half joking.

Silas grunts in true Silas fashion and sets the gun down on the countertop that he didn’t smash. Then he goes back and digs a few more things out of the case.

“So,” I say, making Silas look up at me. “Why is this gun better than an AK-47?”

Silas looks impressed that I want to learn. “AK-47’s are a thing of the past, the AR is the future. These are the guns that our military uses—which should make it easier to find ammo.”

I don’t correct Silas that our military is a thing of the past too thanks to the flesh eating monsters moaning outside the mall.

“The AR can fire six hundred yards, which is two hundred more yards than the AK. It’s lighter, and it can fire way more rounds per minute.”

I raise my eyebrow. I’m impressed that Silas knows so much about these things.

“Do you want to know my favorite thing about it though?” he asks, and I nod. I’m actually curious to see what makes Silas tick.

“The price,” he says, and I blink.

“What?”

“This is a thirteen hundred and fifty dollar rifle,” he says, pointing out the expensive price tag. “I could never have afforded it before.” He opens a box, removes a silencer, and screws it on the muzzle, making the already impressive-looking gun look longer and meaner. “This place has all the stuff to trick it out,” he says, and I’m not sure if he’s talking to me or mumbling to himself. “Let’s go and test it out,” he says finally as he turns to me, his eyes glittering in excitement.

“Okay,” I shrug, and he hands me several boxes of ammo and some spare magazine clips to carry. The boxes aren’t that big, but they’re heavier than I expect.

Silas fills the pockets of his coat with a few more boxes and then grabs both the AR-15 and a camo-green tri-pod with three long metal legs.

I follow him up onto the roof, glad that the rain has cleared. The wind is blowing a bit, but the sun is out, drying up all but the largest puddles left in the parking lot. The stinky reek of zombie hits me before we even get close enough to look over the edge.

I had almost forgotten their terrible smell. The mall smells of new everything; it’s almost easy to pretend the world hasn’t gone to hell out here.

I watch Silas as he carefully sets up the AR-15 on its tripod. He shows me how to load the magazine and then slap my palm against the bolt catch to chamber a round. I humor him, but I have no interest in firing this monstrous thing. I’m barely comfortable with my tiny pistol!

Silas sets the carbine square to his shoulder and aims it down at the zombies that are teeming below. “Hey you dirty bastards!” he yells, causing them to jostle against each other in excitement as they try to figure out where their next meal will come from.

My stomach starts to do panicky flips when Silas starts stirring them up. I know we’re pretty safe up here on the roof, but purposely antagonizing a huge group of flesh-eating zombies just seems like such a bad idea.

He looks at me and grins, but it isn’t the droll grin from an hour ago in the camping store, this grin is hard and promises a little payback.

“You can reload the ammunition,” Silas appoints as he picks up the first magazine and demonstrates how to press the cartridges into the magazine. Since I don’t want to actually fire the gun, I don’t complain even though inside I rebel a little at being told what to do.

It’s pretty easy to catch on, and I have the hang of it by the time Silas is done with the first magazine. “Just fill them all up,” he says as he thrusts the full magazine into the bottom of the AR-15 and slaps the bolt catch.

I pause in my task for a moment as I watch him take careful aim at one of the zombies below. “I’m aiming for that redhead,” he points out to me, and I lean over a bit further to see if he actually makes the shot.

Silas squeezes the trigger one time and an empty round is ejected from the gun, almost hitting me in the cheek. I jump out of the way and watch as he misses the ghastly creature’s head. The shot lodges into the shoulder instead, making the red-haired zombie stumble.

“Damn,” Silas mutters as he readjusts and aims again. This time I’m ready for the ejection of the casing, and I’m not standing in the splash zone. The red-haired zombie goes down and stays down.

Silas looks at me with a smile. He looks like a kid with his first bicycle– only scarier.

He lets loose a series of rapid shots that puts a noticeable dent in the crowd. He fires dry and looks at me expectantly as he ejects the spent magazine and sets it down.

“Ready?” he asks, holding out his hand for the magazine I was supposed to be loading, and I flush. I’d been so wrapped up watching him rain a little payback down on the zombies that I’d totally forgotten about the task at hand. I’m half done at best, but it only takes me another minute to finish loading the magazine with the .223 cartridges.

I hand it to Silas, who snaps it into the gun and doesn’t waste much time burning through the thirty-round magazine.

I’m nearly finished loading another magazine when he stops. “You’re going too fast,” I complain, about ready to tell him to start loading his own bullets.

“Do you want a turn?” Silas offers, ignoring my complaint, and I shake my head.

“I think I’ll stick with my handgun for a while,” I say, hoping he won’t make a big deal about it. The gun looks like a lot to handle for a newbie. I’ve been watching it thump against Silas’ much stronger shoulder and rain empty shell casings out all over the place, and I’m a bit scared of its power.

Silas looks like he wants to insist that I try it, but thankfully he doesn’t press the issue, probably because he wants to keep it all for himself.

I hand him the magazine I just finished stuffing with bullets and stand up to brush the dust off my pants. “Where are you going?” Silas asks, watching me warily as I walk towards the door that leads back into the mall.

“I thought I’d go back downstairs, maybe find a few extra things to pack…hopefully we can go out and look for a car tomorrow, or later this afternoon.”

Silas is shaking his head before I even finish speaking.

“What?” I ask, not sure what exactly I’ve said that he’s opposed to.

“I don’t think you should go down there alone, not with that weird guy wandering around,” he says, and I give him a funny look.

“I won’t be alone, Silas. Ryan’s down there. Besides, I’m pretty sure Ryder is harmless—to my gender anyway. You and Ryan have more to worry about from him than I do,” I say teasingly and watch a guilty expression flash across Silas’ face.

“What is it?” I demand, certain I’m not going to like whatever he has to say. Silas stays mute and starts to pack up his rifle.

“Nothing,” he says at last. “I’ll come down with you. I should get busy anyway,” he says, standing up, and I’m instantly suspicious.

“Silas,” I say, my voice rising an octave, and Silas winces.

“Jane, its fine. Just trust me,” he says, but I shake my head.

“I do trust you, but you need to trust me too. I deserve to know whatever is putting that guilty look on your face. Did you do something to Ryder?” I ask, trying to think back to when Silas would’ve had the time to track Ryder down and do something terrible to him. I frown. He was with me all morning, he couldn’t have.

“Alright,” Silas says at last, raking his hands through his dark, close-cropped hair, “but you can’t freak out.” He insists, and just the fact that Silas feels the need to tell me not to freak out sends a shot of adrenaline coursing through my body. I know I’m not going to like whatever he says next.

“It’s Ryan…” he pauses, and my heart gives a painful squeeze in my chest. “He isn’t here anymore. He left earlier to find another vehicle.”

“He left the mall? Outside where the zombies are?” I manage to get out past a throat that suddenly feels like it’s choking on air.

Silas looks at me with a pitying look before nodding. “Yes, outside with the zombies.”

Chapter Four

My world spins on its axis, and I have to lean back against the door to steady myself. I look at Silas, hoping to see him laugh or something, anything to indicate that this is his attempt at a dumb joke. Silas doesn’t laugh though, or even move. He’s staring at me, frozen, waiting to see what I’m going to do.

“You’re serious?” I ask, and Silas nods.

“He didn’t want me to tell you.”

It’s a slap in the face to hear this was Ryan’s idea. “How could you do this to me?” I ask, my voice starting to crack. “How could he?” I draw in a deep breath, trying to calm down. I’m very close to having another Camp Freedom-sized melt down.

Silas walks up to me and tries to put his hand on my shoulder, but I brush it off. If something happens to Ryan, I will never forgive either one of them.

“How could you let him go out alone?” I ask, and Silas shrugs uncomfortably.

“It’s what he wanted. He didn’t want to put you in danger for something that was his screw up.”

I glare at Silas for saying that. “Hey, his words, not mine,” Silas objects, but that doesn’t make me any less mad.

“You didn’t think that I would want to know, that I would want to go with him, regardless of whose fault it was?” I spit, and Silas shakes his head.

“Of course I thought you’d want to go. I argued with him not to do it, but he didn’t want to listen. Hell, I even offered to go in place of your precious Ryan, so don’t sit here and bitch at me for something I didn’t have any control over,” Silas yells back at me, and for a minute I recoil from his anger.

“You still could’ve told me,” I say despite him already being mad, and then I turn my back on Silas. I head towards the front because, logically, that’s where I think Ryan would leave from.

My heart stutters when I see a small crowd of zombies have migrated to the front of the mall; they’re bunched around the door like they still retain enough of their humanity to know that’s how they’ll get in. There is a dead one lying lifelessly further up the parking lot, and I have no idea if Ryan killed it, or the people who stole our truck.

I squint and look off into the distance, but there isn’t a lot to see. The road runs past the mall, the same road that we were driving on yesterday when the rain made it impossible to see. In the distance though, I can see a cluster of homes, probably a neighborhood.

I don’t see anything else, so I know in my gut that’s where Ryan would have gone. It’s probably where the zombies came from too because there doesn’t seem to be all that much around.

“Let’s kill the rest of these…” I trail off, I can’t even bring myself to say the word zombie right now. Silas doesn’t need any urging and sets his gun up again, this time at the front of the building.

The zombies fall to a hail of gunfire, black, sludgy blood spraying everywhere. I look down at the pile of bodies on the ground. They used to be people, but I feel nothing. We need to find Ryan.

More zombies lumber around the corner, drawn from back to front by the noise, and Silas takes them out too.

I reload magazines until my fingers get sore from popping in bullets, and then Silas stops. I look over at him. There are still probably thirty zombies left.

“Why did you stop?” I demand, my eyes scanning the horizon again, looking for Ryan—nothing.

“The barrel’s getting too hot. We need to let it cool down or we could risk it melting and wreck the gun.”

“Okay,” is all I say. I’m still not ready to make chit chat with Silas after he lied to me.

In the horizon I see movement, and my heart leaps in my chest—only to get slapped back down when I see that it isn’t one single person, or even a vehicle, but a slow shuffling hoard of zombies that are being drawn by the noise. Even with the silencer, the gun is not completely silent, and in the middle of nowhere, the sound carries.

“We need to get out of here,” I tell Silas, beginning to stand so I can stuff some of the magazines into my backpack.

Silas shakes his head. “That’s suicide,” he tells me, and I wince.

“It was good enough for Ryan,” I throw in his face, not letting him forget.

“That was when the zombies were distracted, now we’ve got them all riled up,” he corrects me, and I feel a flare of anger start to burn in my chest.

“Then kill them—kill them all!” I demand, and watch as Silas’ jaw tightens up. I know he’s pissed at me, but he’s also feeling guilty for his role in the Ryan thing.

Silas presses his finger to the barrel of the gun and taps it a couple times to gauge the temperature.

“How is it?” I ask, resisting the urge to poke it myself. I have no idea what I’d be feeling for.

“Good enough,” Silas shrugs as he leans forward, lines up a couple zombs, and presses the trigger. The harder he pulls the trigger back, the faster the gun dispels rounds. He lets out a couple short bursts that take down one of the shufflers before he holds it down and lets the gun go full auto.

I watch dispassionately as zombies are literally cut in half, their legs shot off with high-powered rounds. Their heads explode out the back like overripe melons. I wince a little, but tamp down on the pity I feel. These things aren’t people, not anymore.

Silas replaces his magazine four times and only stops when all the zombies are down. They aren’t all dead, but they are all down. I shiver as I watch the pile of corpses still wiggling in places. At least most are dead—ripped apart beneath a hail of gunfire. I don’t think we have to be worried about the survivors chasing us though, not with their injuries. I hand Silas another ammo clip and watch as he expertly snaps it in place.

“What now?” I ask, wanting to throw open the front doors and go charging up the hill and into the rows of houses to look for Ryan.

My heart dips. If something happens to him…I don’t even let myself finish that thought. I ruthlessly crush it and push it to the back of my mind.

“We’ve got to wait for that group to get closer,” Silas says, and I look impatiently at the lumbering hoard coming our way. They aren’t very fast, but they make up for it with exuberance. I watch as one of the pack leaders stumbles and falls, and the rest of the group just walks over top of him. They don’t even look down, somehow sensing that he isn’t something they can eat.

When the rest of the group passes, probably seventy or eighty of them by my rough count, all that’s left on the hill is a black stain surrounding lumps of shredded meat.

I shudder thinking what that many zombies could do to me…or Ryan, who’s actually out there somewhere.

A lump forms in my throat. I know I’m not really mad at him, at least not until he’s back here safe and sound—then I’ll let him have it!

“We need a plan,” I tell Silas, watching him lean over the edge to examine his handy work with the AR-15. I wrinkle my nose at the smell. Zombies smell bad enough on the outside, but their insides are even worse. My eyes water at the smell of their liquefied, rotting guts mixed with old, crusted bowel odor.

“I have a plan,” Silas says in true, surly Silas fashion. I look at him expectantly. I might be mad at him, but that doesn’t mean his plan won’t be a good one.

“We lure them over here and shoot them,” he says, and I send him a bitter smile.

“That easy?” I ask, and he nods.

“We’re going to need a lot more ammo, and I think we should attract them away from the doors—at the back against the brick would be the best. I don’t want them smashing in here.”

My heart jumps into my throat. “How could they?” I ask, thinking about the group that was living here incident free for the last couple weeks.

“There’s a lot of them, if they concentrated their efforts, I don’t know if it would hold,” Silas says, talking as he walks over to the back of the mall, bringing the AR-15 and tripod with him. “It’s hard to shoot straight down, so hopefully I will be able to get most of them before they’re directly underneath us.” He sets the gun up as casually as if he was at the shooting range for a little bit of practice. Then he stands up on the edge of the roof, making my stomach clench with anxiety.

“What are you doing?” I demand, resisting the urge to pull him down off the ledge, but he ignores me, of course.

“Hey you assholes!” Silas shouts, making my mouth fall open in shock. My pulse sky rockets as at least seventy-five pairs of eyes snap in our direction. Moving as one, the horde shifts direction and heads our way. Silas waves his arms and continues to yell.

“I hate you!” he shouts, jumping up and down.

He climbs back down calmly and looks at me. “We have to hurry, we only have ten or fifteen minutes before they get here.” I make an effort to close my gaping mouth, but I can’t peel my eyes away from Silas. He just let a whole lot of crazy slip out, and now he’s back to his old self like nothing happened.

“Come on!” he yells at me, turning at a jog and running towards the door. “We’re gonna need a lot more ammo.”

We reach the store, and I’m already sweating, partly from the harrowing run down the stairs, and partly because I know we are about to get battered with more zombies than I’ve ever seen.

“Grab a basket, we’ll just throw stuff in and separate it when we get back upstairs.” Silas commands, springing into action.

I take a minute to strap on my backpack in case things go bad. I really need to get in the habit of wearing it all the time, just in case. Then my icy fingers are snagging a bright red shopping basket, and Silas is recklessly throwing boxes of bullets and spare magazines inside.

“Get some handguns too,” Silas shouts at me. “Now!” he yells when I stare at him blankly.

I rush forward and grab two shiny pistols that are exactly the same; it will probably be easier not to drag around a bunch of different caliber bullets.

I hold them up to show Silas and he grunts, which I take to mean I did a satisfactory job.

“That’s a Glock, nice choice. You’re going to need the .45 bullets,” Silas says, showing me red ammo boxes with an Eagle on the top.

I hastily throw them in the basket as the first zombie hits the window. I let out a squeak but don’t actually scream.

“Damn,” Silas mutters when more join the first. They beat against the window until the glass shatters, falling to the ground with a tinkle that is almost drowned out by their moans.

The metal bars stop them from coming further into the store, which I am grateful for, but I know that not every store has this added protection.

“Let’s go,” Silas calls out loudly to be heard over the moaning. He picks up the basket, making his muscles bulge with the weight.

He doesn’t stop to see if I will follow as he races for the gate, drawing his gun from his hip as he runs.

I pull mine out too, my stomach churning in fear. Please don’t let these monsters be inside the mall! I pray fervently as I chase after his retreating back.

Silas stops just long enough to pull the gate across the camping store, protecting it from any zombies that might get inside the main mall, and then he’s racing down the middle of the mall. I can hear moans coming from inside a few of the stores.

Oh God.

I hope the metal anti-theft gates will be enough to keep them inside the stores. A zombie staggers out from one of the stores that doesn’t have a gate and Silas runs right into him.

The zombie lets out a growl as he’s thrown to the floor. Silas follows him down hard, spilling the contents of his basket as he falls. “Crap!” I yell as I point my pistol at the zombie who’s struggling to get back on his feet.

A slight pop rents the air, and the zombie’s brains dribble out a hole in the back of his head.

I look down at my gun, wondering if I accidentally pulled the trigger without realizing it, but that’s just crazy. I could never be uncertain about the kick back of the pistol; it both terrifies and exhilarates me when I shoot it.

“Jane, get down!” Silas yells, and I hit the ground without question. On my way down I catch a glimpse of him, sprawled on the ground, gun up and at the ready. I hear a snarl and another pop, and then a massive weight falls on top of me from behind and I feel like I’m being smothered.

I stiffen in terror and let out a scream as I try and claw my way out from underneath the zombie. I expect to feel the horrible bite at any moment, but as I keep struggling, it doesn’t come. It must be the zombie Silas shot, I try to reassure myself, but it doesn’t make me feel any better.

I hear the rapid succession of more gun shots, and something cold and wet that can only be zombie ooze leaks onto the back of my neck.

I start to hyperventilate beneath the oppressive weight of the rotting carcass, and when the cold, wet grossness creeps along my neck and I feel it enter my ear—I vomit.

I feel something grab my ankle mid puke, and I scream, but that only makes me start to choke on my own chunks.

I’m dragged coughing and retching, out from beneath the zombie. I look up, expecting to see a flesh eating monster baring its chipped teeth at my leg, but it’s Silas. He stands there holding my leg for a second, looking dumbfounded when he sees me, and I can imagine that I’m quite the sight covered in zombie gore and vomit.

“Did you just puke underneath that zombie?” Silas asks, his mouth quirking up at the corners, and I tug my leg from his hands and struggle to my feet, eying the zombie that had trapped me. He’s huge, like firemen probably had to cut him out through a wall, huge!

“Let’s just go,” I mutter, resisting the urge to take a kick at the bloated corpse of my captor. I shiver when I feel the zombie crud settle more firmly inside my ear drum, thank you gravity, and my hearing is muffled like I’ve dipped my head under water—or, more accurately, zombie guts.

I want to freak out, scream, stomp my feet and, most importantly, race to the bathroom and promptly rip my own ear off and throw it into a bucket of bleach– possibly light it on fire, but Silas is already scooping up the spilled basket and running off, and my legs grudgingly follow.

We’ve almost reached the stairwell when we hear the screams. I skid to a stop, but Silas keeps going.

“Silas!” I call out, knowing full well he heard it too. If I can hear it with my ear full of goop, he heard it for sure.

“Jane,” Silas says, turning back to me, and I know in my very marrow that he isn’t going to help.

“It’s our fault they broke in here. I’m going.” I say, turning around and dropping my basket as I start off in the direction of the screams, but Silas grabs my arm.

“No,” he pushes the heavy shopping basket loaded down with ammo into my arms and gives me a push towards the stairs. “I’ll go check it out. You head upstairs and try to draw them towards the back like we planned.”

I want to argue with Silas, but he’s already running towards the noise. I watch his retreating back for a minute before springing into action.

Keeping more zombies out of the mall is probably the most important thing right now. I’m sweating and tired by the time I reach the top of the stairs; this basket probably weighs twenty lbs. My legs shake, but I force myself to keep running towards the back end of the mall. I set the basket down with a thud and lean over the edge to see what I’m dealing with.

A lot of the zombies did end up where we wanted, only a few rogue zombies wandered off on their own to crash the front windows. I take a quick moment to swipe my hand across my ear. It comes away wet and black, and I wipe it on my pants as I pull my gun off my hip.

“Hey!” I yell, making several zombies look up and moan hungrily. I try to take careful aim before I squeeze the trigger, but I miss my first shot. The zombie beside the one I was aiming for takes the slug in the chest, but stays upright.

It’s difficult to shoot downward, so I aim a little further to the back of the crowd. My next shot hits its target, a female zombie with muddy blond hair sticking up in every direction.

I miss the next shot, but I hit the next zombie. It continues like this until my gun runs out of bullets and I have to reload it. I take a minute to look over my shoulder to see if there’s any sign of Silas, but he hasn’t shown up yet. I get a sick knot in my stomach and pray that my demands don’t get him killed. I shake it off pretty quickly though. If, in this entire apocalypse, I have faith in any one person’s ability to survive—it’s Silas.

My hands are trembling as I finish reloading my gun, so I shake them out before picking the pistol up again. When I do, I take deep, steady breaths, and this time I shoot a little better than fifty percent. I load the pistol for the third time, noticing that the barrel is starting to feel warm.

I fire the next fifteen rounds into the crowd and count eleven take downs. I feel pretty impressed with myself, but I know if I was in a situation where I didn’t have time to sit and line them up so carefully, my numbers would be much lower.

The end of the gun has heated up even more, and I don’t want to be responsible for wrecking it, so I grab the Glock from the shopping basket. It’s different than my nine millimeter, but similar enough that I figure out how to load it with the .45 ammo.

I take aim and am surprised at how much more of a recoil it has. It also doesn’t have a silencer, and the crack of the pistol makes me jump. I hear it echo back to me and worry about how many zombies might hear it. I miss the first shot because I wasn’t expecting it to be so different. I brace myself the next time my finger squeezes the trigger and smile when a zombie goes down like a bag of hammers.

“Good shootin,” Silas drawls from behind my shoulder, and I almost drop my gun off the roof.

“You scared me,” I accuse, turning around and feeling relief when I see a pale, shaking Ryder standing a few feet away.

Silas winks, and I send him a smile that I hope conveys how much I appreciate what he did.

“You’ve thinned them out pretty good, Blondie,” Silas says, surveying my handy work, and I feel a glow of satisfaction in my chest at his praise. “Now it’s time to finish them off,” Silas says, getting in behind the AR-15. I hand him a magazine, and he snaps it in.

The sound of round after round chambering is a sweet one as the zombies start to fall. I quickly stuff another magazine for Silas and leave it beside him.

I look for Ryder, who’s still pale and shaking. He’s walked a few feet away and sat down on an upturned milk crate.

“You okay?” I ask, walking towards him, and he jumps like I spooked him.

Ryder doesn’t say anything. He just nods his head, his eyes looking off vacantly, and I have the distinct impression that he’s mad at us for ever coming here. The mall is pretty much ruined now.

I want to tell him that this could have happened at any time, but Silas’ gun is empty and I know he’s going to need more magazines filled.

“I’m sorry,” I mumble, patting him on the shoulder as I turn and jog back to Silas, who’s cutting a huge swathe through the zombies with the automatic weapon. He’s not really aiming, more pointing at head level and letting loose.

I kneel down and start loading magazines while Silas keeps dishing out a little justice for the human race. We fall into a pretty good routine, though my fingers are starting to get sore, and I’d imagine that Silas’ trigger finger must be getting numb.

Out of the corner of my eye, I sense Ryder get up and come stand behind us.

“Do you want to take a turn loading ammo?” I ask, turning to look at him just as he lunges at me. I dive out of the way on adrenaline fueled instinct, and Ryder trips over the knee-high wall and scratches at thin air.

He doesn’t even try to catch himself. I reach for him, but it’s too late.

“Ryder!” I scream, looking over the edge just in time to see him hit the ground with a dull thud.

Silas stops shooting and joins me looking over the edge.

“What the hell happened?” Silas demands, but I can only shake my head. I have no idea why Ryder did that. I turn and press my face into Silas’ chest, and he puts his arms around me. I don’t want to see the zombies attack him, I can only hope that he died on impact.

“Holy shit, he’s getting up!” Silas exclaims, making my blood run cold. I know I don’t want to see this, but I peel my face out of Silas’ shirt and look anyway.

Chapter Five

Ryder staggers to his feet. Even crazier than getting up from a twenty-foot nosedive off the roof, is the fact that the zombies aren’t attacking him.

I lean forward to get a closer look, and Silas clutches at the back of my hoodie, probably afraid I’ll be the next one off the roof. “He’s a zombie,” I say when I get a good look at his blank eyes and broken bones sticking out at odd angles, and my mouth hangs open in shock. “Did the fall kill him, and he turned that fast?” I ask, even though I know Silas doesn’t have the answers.

“Maybe when you die the zombie infection takes over, and you come back like that?” Silas suggests, and it’s a grim thought until I remember Kyle’s mother.

“No. I don’t think so,” I say with a frown. “Before we met up with you, we went to a house where the woman had killed herself in the garage.” Remembering Kyle is like a bucket of cold water getting dumped down my icy spine. “She didn’t turn,” I say quietly.

Silas looks relieved to hear it. “He must have turned on the roof, that’s why he was grabbing for you, and that’s why he was clumsy enough to fall off the roof,” he says and then frowns. “That sonofabitch. I asked him if he got bit, and he lied to my face!” Silas looks mad enough to spit nails, and I can see his point. Ryder put us all in danger, but I still feel the need to defend our would-be zombie murderer.

“Silas, you shouldn’t talk like that about the dead.” I say, feeling pity more than anger towards Ryder. He was probably terrified and didn’t want Silas to shoot him while he still had a pulse.

I reflect for a moment about how awful it would be to die alone, or even with a bunch of strangers. It makes me think about Ryan. “Let’s finish up,” I say with a fresh flood of determination. I get up and go back to my position, reloading Silas’ magazines with the AR-15 cartridges.

It doesn’t take much longer to clear out the zombies. I watch them fall one by one and feel nothing until he shoots Ryder, and then I have to look away.

“That’s the last of them, Blondie,” Silas says proudly, standing up and stretching, making his back pop loudly.

“Good,” I say, getting up as well. Spending the last hour crouched on the cold cement hasn’t done me any favors, and I need to stay limbered up for our venture back down through the mall.

The thought of fighting our way through the mall makes me tired just thinking about it, but we need to find Ryan, so I put on a brave face.

Silas digs two flashlights out of his pack and hands me one. “The staircase is going to be dark, and I don’t know if those things can climb,” he says, making me feel even more daunted by the task at hand.

I chuck the Glock and spare ammo into my pack, feeling the added weight settle not just on my back, but around my heart. I hand Silas the other one, and he packs it and his share of the ammo into his own bag. He also throws in the spare magazines for the AR-15 and then hefts the AR up onto his shoulder, leaving his pistol at his belt.

“Ready to go Rambo?” I ask, and Silas chuckles.

“Born ready,” he quips, throwing the door to the staircase open and stepping back in case zombies surge out. “There were at least ten beating against the bottom door the last time I came through,” he warns when we see that the stairwell is clear all the way down.

The stairs are empty, the concrete thankfully doesn’t leave any places to hide. We reach the bottom without incident and pause to listen outside the door.

“I don’t hear anything,” I whisper, and Silas nods, bringing the AR-15 up to his shoulder and motioning for me to open the door.

I pull the door open and jump behind Silas, and the rifle goes off as soon as I’m clear. The sound is deafening against the concrete. Silas takes a step back, and I get ready to retreat back up the stairs. I want to look over his shoulder and see what’s going on, but the empty casings are being flung from the gun and I don’t want to get hit in the face.

The shooting stops and I pop my head around Silas’ shoulder, ready for hand-to-hand combat if I have to, but we are the only ones around. I count four zombies on the ground. “Where did the rest go?” I ask in a quiet voice, and Silas shrugs.

“They might have followed our gunfire back outside earlier, or they could be in the mall somewhere still,” he suggests, and I liked his first idea better.

“What now?” I ask, keeping my eyes alert and scanning the area. I don’t like the mall anymore. There are too many places for the dead to lurk.

“Let’s go get your lover boy,” Silas says, and there is actually less spite in his voice than usual when he talks about Ryan.

We are already wearing our backpacks and carrying our weapons, so we have no reason not to leave right away. We keep going and walk right out the front door. We don’t encounter a single zombie. In a weird way it’s almost worse than having to fight our way through a bunch of deadheads—waiting is the worst part, and it gets me jumping at shadows.

Once we get outside in the hot, dusty parking lot, I feel a lot more exposed than I had up on the roof. Silas leads us around the side of the mall, making us walk right past the piles of zombies we killed.

The flies are already buzzing around so thick that it looks like black clouds moving from corpse to corpse. I swat a fly away from my face and try not to let it remind me about the zombie guts I’m still accessorizing with.

“It’s that hill, isn’t it?” I ask Silas, pointing to the lone rise off in the distance. We don’t have the advantage of height anymore, but it looks like the same hill—it even has the same black smudge of zombie sludge marring the grass.

“Yep,” Silas says, never willing to waste words when a simple grunt will do. He digs in his pocket and pulls out a crinkled pack of smokes. “Want one?” he asks, holding them out to me, and for a second, I’m tempted. I’ve already turned into a badass zombie slayer, sort-of, maybe a smoke would help cement my image?

I finally shake my head when I think about my parents, and what they would want me to do right now. “Keep those cancer sticks away from me.” I grumble, feeling ashamed by my urges.

“Suit yourself,” Silas says, lighting one up and taking a deep puff. We walk in companionable silence for fifteen minutes, our eyes scanning the landscape. It’s a bit chilly since it’s the start of fall, but I’m sweating by the time we reach the top of the hill.

Silas grabs my arm and pulls me down, when I would have simply walked over the rise of the hill. “If you stand at the top of this hill, every zombie for miles will be able to see you,” he hisses at me as I lay stretched out on my belly. I don’t really like being on the ground either; it’s a lot harder to run away from this position, but I decide to trust that Silas knows what he’s doing.

We peek over the hill, only popping our heads up enough to see the neighborhood that comes into view. It looks like it’d been a nice subdivision with new houses in neat rows, there’s even a park, but it’s destroyed now from the dead and is littered with the skeletal remains of people, pets, and a surprising amount of trash.

It’s a ghost town. “I think I’ve found Ryan,” Silas says, making my heart speed up in my chest. I scan the area, trying to see what Silas sees.

“I don’t see him,” I whisper finally, frustrated with myself.

“See all those zombies gathered around that one house over there?” Silas asks, and with a sinking feeling in my gut, I nod. “That’s most likely where Ryan is holed up. He must have gotten trapped.”

My head knows that Silas is probably right. Why else would the zombies be gathered there? They don’t give a shit about anything that isn’t warm human flesh. “How can you be sure?” I ask anyway, not wanting it to be true.

“I’m not, but we won’t know until we get them to move,” Silas says as he stares out at the group with a calculating look.

“Are you going to shoot them?” I ask, hesitant to fire bullets towards the house Ryan is trapped in, but he shakes his head.

“If I can avoid it, I will. The noise will bring every biter in the area to investigate.” Silas runs his hands through his short, brush cut hair, and I notice for the first time that it’s not as short as it’d been when I first met him a week and a half ago. It’s even more sobering to realize that I’ve known Silas for such a short time. He’s become such an integral part of my life it feels like he’s always been around.

I peel my eyes away from Silas to look around and make sure there aren’t any zombies coming up behind us. The hill behind us is clear. “Okay…” Silas says, bringing my attention back. “We’re gonna need a vehicle. If Ryan is trapped in there, then he hasn’t found one yet. We can’t lure that group away on foot; it’s too dangerous.

I nod. “Sounds like a plan,” I agree as I pick my 9 mm up off the grass.

“We’re gonna have to be quick and not make any noise when we go down this hill, use the houses for cover, and try not to draw their attention until we’re ready.”

Silas peeks over the hill one more time and then gets to his feet, staying hunched over as he runs, like he’s trying to take up as little space as possible. I was expecting him to take off, so I’m not the least bit surprised. I try to emulate his movements. Silas ducks behind the odd tree as we go, and I do the same.

I’m out of breath when we reach the bottom, not from lack of energy, but from the spike of adrenaline and fear. I don’t hear anymore moans than usual, so I’m pretty sure they haven’t seen us. Silas ducks behind the first house we come to, and I lean back against its solid frame trying to catch my breath.

A gentle thumping behind me makes me spin around, gun up at the ready, and my heart pounds even harder in my chest. A child-sized zombie is staring at me from the other side of the massive window. He bares his small teeth at me and then runs a black, bloated tongue across the glass like he can taste me.

I don’t want to risk making noise when it’s so important to be quiet, but this kid has me tripping balls. I reach out and yank Silas’ sleeve to get his attention. He turns and sees the zombie, and a pained expression crosses his face, and remember too late that he lost his little brother to the zombies.

I put my hand on Silas’ arm, but he shakes me off and takes off running to the next house, leaving the disturbing little zombie behind.

We work our way in the opposite direction from the horde. It won’t do us any favors to get spotted before we have a vehicle.

We scurry along back alleys, and it reminds me of the night before I found out zombies were real. I’d taken the back alley as a shortcut home in the dark. I am one hundred percent sure, now, that the person who ran into me in the alley had actually been a zombie, and not a drunk like I had first assumed. I haven’t had a spare minute to reflect back on that night since this whole mess started, but now that I do, I am so grateful that I wasn’t turned into a zombie before I even knew what was going on. So many people probably died in confusion at the beginning; they didn’t even have a chance of escaping their fate.

A zombie that looks like it’s been through the wringer is staggering along ahead of us. It’s missing patches of hair and flesh from his head, and dragging a leg with the foot completely facing the wrong direction. Silas shoulders his AR-15 and pulls his trusty pistol from his belt—it’s the wiser choice because it’s easier to use and will be quieter.

Silas drops the zombie by shooting it through the back of the head. It never even knew we were here. Up ahead there’s a minivan that might be alright. Silas jogs over and tries the door, but it’s locked.

“Can we break the window and hotwire it?” I whisper, but Silas shakes his head.

“Too risky, this van is new, it would be tough to wire, and breaking the window might set off an alarm.” I shudder thinking about setting off an alarm that would bring every zombie for miles to our location.

“Yikes,” I murmur, and Silas nods.

“I’d only risk breaking a window if the keys were sitting out where we could see them.” He pauses and scans inside the van again for a second time, cupping his hands against the glass. “There’ll be something else—let’s keep moving,” he says as he starts walking away.

I jog to catch up, and have to keep jogging just to keep up with his long-legged strides. Ryan would have slowed down for me, I can’t help think, and it makes me miss him even more. Ryan is the perfect balance to Silas’ prickly personality, his polar opposite.

We reach the end of the alley and will have to cross the street if we want to continue down the next alley. It’s dangerous to go out in the open where we could be spotted by a hoard. The house across the alley has a large garage though, so our risk might pay off. We poke our heads around a tall, cedar fence and spot a group of three zombies tearing something apart.

I look past the zombies, and something about the truck parked further up the road catches my eye. I poke Silas and point to the black truck with the red fuel tank in the back. “Is that our truck?” I ask incredulously, shock making me stand up a little straighter.

It really can’t be this easy to get it back. I can’t help thinking, and then cuss myself out for jinxing us.

Silas had already spotted it and nods grimly, “Yep.”

“What are we waiting for, let’s get it back!” I say excitedly, remembering to keep my voice low at the last moment. It’s a massive breakthrough to find our own truck. The external fuel tank Ryan found had really given us an edge, not having to stop at gas stations so much cuts down on our exposure to the dead.

“We ain’t waitin’,” Silas says as he aims his gun and quietly takes down the three zombies in our path– no fuss, no muss. He steps out into the street and jogs across the road, going to the sidewalk so that he can keep to the shadows of the fences.

I follow, close on his heels, my heart hammering like crazy in my ear. We both freeze when we see movement through the back window.

“They’re in there,” I mutter, and Silas nods grimly.

“Something is.”

“What are you going to do?” I ask, making Silas smile, though it isn’t a nice smile. It’s a ‘we’re getting even’ kind of smile.

He doesn’t answer me as we creep along until we reach the back of the truck. I can’t believe they haven’t spotted us and made a run for it yet.

Silas charges up to driver’s side window and points his gun at the driver. I don’t have a clear view inside the truck, but I do see the surprise on Silas’ face as he takes a giant step back.

I cautiously move closer and see a zombified Jamie snarling and snapping at the window. I jump a little when another zombie smacks her head against the back window, trying to get to us. It’s the woman who offered to dry our clothes for us. I struggle with mixed emotions. They were living breathing people who I met yesterday, and now they are zombies. On the other hand, the assholes did steal our truck and left us stranded!

Silas doesn’t even consult me before he yanks opens the driver’s door and jumps back. I quickly follow. Jamie, the zombie, falls out of the truck on his face. I wince when I hear his teeth hit the pavement. “You could’ve given me a little warning,” I mutter. Silas ignores my complaint, waiting in silence for the zombie to get up and start staggering towards us. He waits until he’s closed an alarming distance before shooting zombie Jamie in the head.

I get to see why he waited so long, first hand, as gore shoots out the back of Jamie’s head. Silas shot him point blank, and it made one hell of a mess. I’m guessing he didn’t want any of the brain splatter to go back inside the truck. I stare down at the guy who’d saved our lives yesterday and feel a knot form in my stomach. His skin hasn’t had time to take on the truly rotten look that most zombies quickly develop, he must have turned recently. There is a huge bite out of his cheek and his bottom lip is torn off and completely missing. I look away, being bitten in the face would be a terrible way to go.

Silas doesn’t even bother to look down as he steps over his kill and repeats the process, this time opening the back door. The female zombie falls out of the truck just as gracefully as Jamie did, but she doesn’t get back up. She is in much worse shape than Jamie. I feel sick as I watch her use her only remaining arm to pull herself towards us, her teeth bared and snapping.

Silas takes pity on her, or maybe he just doesn’t want to wait around all day until she finally gets close enough. He walks up and sticks his knife through the base of her skull. She stills instantly, and it’s a mercy. She is covered in ragged bites, and her left arm is completely missing—she wasn’t just bitten, she was torn apart.

My stomach heaves as Silas reaches into the backseat, pulls out a half-eaten arm, and tosses it down beside its previous owner, the flesh smacking noisily on the pavement.

I stare into the backseat and wrinkle my nose up at all the blood and chunks of gore that litter every surface. “Silas…” I start to say, but he’s already shaking his head.

“Forget it, Blondie, we’re taking it.” Silas feels the need to tell me and I let out an annoyed huff as I walk around to the passenger side. It’s not much better in the front. Red blood splatter mixes with dark zombie juices, making me cringe as I gingerly lower myself down on the seat. It’s one thing to be gore covered in the middle of a fight for your life, but for me to purposely climb inside this truck uses up a whole new level of self-control that I never even knew I had.

Silas gets in, not even glancing at the gore, and starts checking all the gauges to make sure everything is working right. It’s a good idea; it would suck to be in the middle of a bunch of zombies and have the truck crap out. The gas tank is full, so Silas puts our petri dish on wheels into drive and we slowly circle back towards the house that had all the zombies so interested.

“What’s the plan?” I ask, and Silas looks away from the road long enough to give me an assessing look.

“You’re not gonna like it,” he says, making my stomach clench, but I shake my head.

“If it saves Ryan, I don’t care if you want me to ride naked on a horse into the middle of those zombies,” I say with a grin, causing Silas to look at me sharply.

“Is that an option?” he asks, causing me to reach over and playfully punch him in the arm.

“Okay, be serious,” I tell him, and the smile slips from his lips.

“I want you in the back of the truck making a bunch of noise so they chase us,” he says baldly, and my mouth drops open.

“Outside?” I ask for clarification, and he nods. I take a deep breath. “Okay,” I say, and I’m a little offended by how surprised he looks at my willingness to cooperate.

“The back window opens, you should be able to climb in and out through there.” I stare behind me at the blood-smeared window. “Okay,” I echo, my voice quieter this time, reflecting my doubt. “Should I go now?” I ask, and Silas nods.

“It can’t hurt to get into position. Just make sure you stay low enough that you don’t get thrown out of the truck, but high enough that they can see you.” I nod my head. “Oh, and, Blondie…” he says, making me look back at him. “Make sure you make a lot of noise—we want their attention.”

I try to memorize his advice as I climb over the bloody seats, making a face when my hand lands in a wet spot. I cringe again when my knees land in several pints of fresh blood, and I know that this must be where the Jamie zombie ate his friend. I try to slide the window open, but my hand slips because of the wet, sticky blood. I wipe my hands on my pants and try again. This time I manage to get a little traction and it slides open, letting in a much needed breath of fresh air.

The window isn’t very big, but I squeeze through once I take off my backpack and toss it out the window ahead of me. I feel like a calf being birthed as I slide out the window and land on my belly in the bed of the truck.

A surge of excitement goes through me when I see that our bags are in the back of the pickup box. The group must have moved them out of the cab to make room, and no doubt wanted to keep them around to scavenge through our supplies.

The wind whips my ponytail into a frenzy, and I dig through my bag, pulling out the noisy Glock. I quickly load a couple spare magazines and leave them next to my knee.

Silas slows down, turns the corner, and then quickly flips a U-turn, making me grab onto the side to keep steady. I open my mouth to berate him but suddenly find myself facing an enormous crowd of zombies. They are still facing the house, moaning and clawing at the vinyl, but when Silas lays loudly on the horn, every eye turns in our direction.

Chapter Six

The zombies let out a collective hungry moan and begin moving towards us like a slow wave. “Make some noise!” Silas yells from the front seat as he honks the horn again. Each blast of the horn makes my body shake with fear. To say you’ll come out here and be the bait and to actually be out here with nothing between you and the dead are two very different things.

I look up at the house and see movement in one of the small side windows—Ryan—it gives me a bit of purpose, and I brace myself for the craziest thing I’ve ever done.

“Hey!” I yell, waving my arms in the air. It works. The zombies lock their gaze on me and put a little extra hustle in their step. I wait, watching as they get closer and closer, and still Silas doesn’t move the truck.

“Silas!” I yell back through the window. “What’s going on?” Terrible what-ifs flash through my head, like what-if the truck suddenly breaks down?

“Hold tight, Blondie, we have to let them get a little closer or the ones at the back won’t move,” Silas calls back.

I stare out at the herd, watching as they get closer, twenty feet, and then fifteen…

A snarl pulls my attention away from the main group, and I realize with a sickening jolt that a lone zombie has managed to walk right up to the side of the truck without my notice. He bumps his chest angrily against the metal and growls. I sidestep to make sure he can’t reach me with his frantic clawing, and raise the Glock.

I aim carefully at his head and punch a new hole in it for him. At this distance, I would have been pretty ashamed of myself if I’d missed. He goes down hard, and I do a quick three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn to make sure I’m not going to get anymore smelly surprises. There are a couple zombies up ahead on the road, but they are still pretty far away, and I really hope Silas will take care of them for me.

I turn back, raise the Glock, and start firing wildly into the crowd. The zombies are only a couple feet away from the tailgate now. I let myself give in to my terror and let out a ragged war cry that turns into a girly shriek.

“Silas!” I scream, ready to turn my Glock towards the driver’s seat if he doesn’t get going. The truck finally starts moving, but he drives so slow that we are only keeping a couple feet ahead of the pack. I go and stand at the front of the box so I can lean against the cab for support. I take the time to aim more carefully and take down a couple more zombies. I don’t want to use up all my bullets, just in case I need them.

Like the damn thing could read my mind and wanted to prove me wrong, a zombie comes snarling and snapping from the left. I act on instinct, raising my pistol to his ragged, ugly face and keep squeezing the trigger.

“Come and get me!” I scream, letting my rage at the situation come unleashed for a minute. Like why is it so hard for me to reach the cabin and find out if my best friend is still alive?

I dry fire and have to stop my carrying on so I can reload. The zombie I shot is a pile of gory pulp on the sidewalk. I look up and my breath freezes in my lungs. Silas and I are zombie pied pipers; the street behind us is lined with the dead. They moan and groan, following our slow moving parade like it’s their only mission in life. Silas turns a corner and stops abruptly, making me pitch wildly in the box before falling flat on my face.

“Hold on!” he yells through the open window, a little too late since I’m already on my face! I feel him slam the truck into reverse and open my mouth to scream at him not to go backwards. That’s where the biters are, but it’s too late.

I feel the wet slap of bodies bouncing off the tail gate. “Silas!” I scream at him, but he doesn’t answer. I dare a peek over the top of the box and then squeeze my eyes shut again. I don’t want to see this.

“Sorry, J, when I took that corner there was another big group of those bastards up ahead, I didn’t want to risk getting surrounded,” Silas yells out the window as he cranks the wheel like a mad man.

The truck slams into drive, and Silas pins it. I finally risk opening my eyes and come face to face with a zombie. He’s managed to hook his arms over the tailgate, and it doesn’t look like he’s into letting go of his meal on wheels. I stand up and immediately lurch forward when Silas hits the gas. I stumble right up to the zombie, cursing Silas, and have to use my hands to brace against the zombie’s shoulders to keep from falling off the end of the truck. The zombie gives a hopeful moan and let’s go of the tailgate to try and grab at me.

I manage to step back quickly, using the momentum from pushing off of his shoulder to avoid his reaching grasp, and he falls backwards onto the ground.

Thank God these things are so stupid, or the human race wouldn’t stand a chance.

I raise the gun and think about shooting Silas, but decide against it, at least for now, since he’s the one driving the truck. I fire into the crowd instead, but I don’t take down nearly as many as I’d like. I’m still a novice at shooting, and the swaying of the truck as we drive doesn’t improve my aim any.

Sweat trickles down my shirt collar—it feels like we’ve been at this all day—so it’s extra disheartening when I look up and see that we’ve managed to draw the zombies only one short block.

“This is taking all day,” I complain to Silas as I pause my shooting, my arms are getting tired and my shoulders are aching. Silas fires a shot out the driver’s side window and, for a minute, I think he didn’t hear me.

“I know what you mean!” he yells back at last, and I frown at him. I doubt very much that he knows how it feels to be back here playing the carrot on a string for a bunch of zombies.

“How much farther?” I ask, being careful to keep the whine from my voice. I want to be a whiner, but it won’t help the situation, and Silas is the type to judge me, not give sympathy.

Silas is silent for a moment while he thinks about it. “I’d say another two blocks or so, it will give the stragglers at the back a chance to catch up.” He stops for a minute to shoot at an especially ugly zombie that is staggering out from between two houses. “When I say get in, don’t waste any time, get through the window, then we’ll gun it back to the house and hope Ryan is smart enough to have gotten the hell out of dodge when the zombies left.”

My heart pounds in my chest, and even though I’m not especially religious, I send up a quick prayer.

We roll slowly through the street, just fast enough to stay ahead of the crowd. Whenever the zombies start losing interest or begin to branch off, Silas slams on the brakes and I yell like a crazy person and wave my arms to draw their attention back our way.

I turn my back on my stinky fan club, thankful the wind is blowing in my favor, and take a look over the top of the cab to see what we’re dealing with ahead. There are a few zombies stumbling towards us from that direction, but the road is mostly clear. I stare at the intersection we are closing in on and grin. I’m pretty sure this is the block that Silas will turn the truck around.

I see movement out of my peripheral vision and spin, gun ready. I’ve gotten used to the dead heads behind us, but the zombies that stagger up to the sides of the truck from somewhere else still terrify me. One scratch and I’d be joining them in all their undead bliss.

My finger twitches on the trigger as I lock onto the moving shape and squeeze.

I let out a hoarse cry and jerk my hand to throw off the bullet’s trajectory—too late—I realize belatedly that the figure standing on the front porch just walked out of the house with a backpack strapped to his back.

Ryan looks just as shocked as I feel. He dives off the porch when the bullet blasts into the concrete right beside his head.

“Silas, stop the truck!” I scream, feeling weak at the knees with relief that I didn’t just kill the guy I’m starting to have feelings for. Silas slams on the brakes, and I have to hold onto the fuel tank to keep from getting thrown out. “Run!” I scream at Ryan as he gets to his feet and catches his first glimpse at the macabre crowd behind us.

My breath catches, and it’s like everything slows down all of a sudden. Ryan starts running just as the first wave of zombies on the road have almost reached him. We accidentally lured these things right to Ryan! I feel like an idiot, even though there is no way we could have known. Silas puts the truck in park and gets out.

Shots start to ring out as Silas lays down some heavy cover fire and zombies only a couple feet behind Ryan start to fall. My hands tremble, but I don’t dare fire my gun this close to Ryan. It’s bad enough that I already shot at him once.

“Keep them off my back, Blondie,” Silas yells at me, and I struggle to peel my attention off Ryan. I look out over the cab of the truck and see a couple of the stragglers closing in on Silas. I kneel on the fuel tank and lean over the cab of the truck, using the roof as an arm rest as I line up the closest threat and squeeze the trigger. My slug hits him in the shoulder and he stumbles back. I cuss under my breath, what is up with all the accidental shoulder shots? I line him up again, and thankfully, this time I manage to put him down for good.

I line up the next one, remembering to breath, and squeeze the trigger. I hit him right in the neck, most likely his spinal cord because his neck suddenly droops down to rest on his shoulder. I wince as I watch him start to walk in circles, unable to get his bearings.

I feel a thump as something lands in the back of the truck with me. I spin, gun up just in case it’s a zombie. Ryan grabs the barrel of the gun, and twists it quickly away from his chest.

“You almost shot me!” he exclaims, wrapping me in a great big bear hug as the zombies that were hot on his trail bump up against the tail gate. I hear Silas’ door slam, and I pull away from Ryan and throw myself down on my butt.

“Hold on,” I warn Ryan just as Silas throws the truck in gear and pins it. Ryan stumbles backwards, but I grab his shirt and pull him with all my strength, towards me. He lands on top of me, making the air vacate my lungs—and not in a romantic way.

“Sorry,” he mumbles in my ear as he rolls off me and sits up. “That guy’s a maniac,” he says, rubbing his elbow where he hit it on the hard metal of the truck box.

“You have no idea,” I say and let out a giggle. Nothing about this crazy situation is funny, but I’m so relieved that Ryan is back.

Silas goes pedal to the metal and puts some distance between us and the zombies before slamming to a stop, making both Ryan and I protest loudly from the back.

“Get in here!” Silas yells, and I stare at the window for a second before ignoring it and jumping to the ground. Ryan follows me and I throw myself into the backseat, making sure to keep my eyes from examining the upholstery too closely.

Ryan isn’t half as lucky and openly stares at it. “What in the hell happened back here?” he asks before continuing without giving us a chance to answer. “How did you get the truck back anyway?”

“Found it,” Silas grunts from the front seat, shrugging.

Ryan sends him an annoyed glance and then looks at me for his answers. I respond by punching him as hard as I can, right in the arm.

“Ow!” Ryan yells, holding his arm. I catch Silas grinning in the rear-view mirror and send him a warning look. “What was that for?” Ryan makes the mistake of asking.

“Are you serious?” I yell at him, and then after thinking about it, I punch him again.

“Okay, that actually hurt,” Ryan complains, and I will admit that it feels good to cause him a bit of pain after everything he put us through.

“I can’t believe you left without me!” I yell, and Ryan at least has the good grace to look sheepish. I catch him throwing an accusatory look at Silas, and shake my head.

“Don’t you dare blame him. You shouldn’t have lied to me in the first place. How would you feel if I did the same thing to you?” I ask and watch his face fall. He probably didn’t think of it like that. I know for a fact that if I ever pulled a stunt like he did, he’d be royally pissed.

“I’m sorry,” Ryan says, and I can tell by his face that he really means it, but I’m not ready to let him off the hook so easily.

“Do you even know what I went through?” I demand, and Ryan nods.

“Worry,” Ryan replies. He’s so sure, he has the right answer, so I shake my head. I was worried, but I’m going to completely terrorize him before I admit it.

“Actually… the mall was overrun by zombies while you were gone. Silas and I had to fight them off. Ryder turned into a zombie and tried to eat me up on the roof. I got zombie guts in my ear, Ryan, IN MY EAR!” I’m shouting by the time I reach the part about my ear.

Ryan opens his mouth “I’m so sor—,” he starts to speak, but I shake my head and hold up my finger.

“Oh, I am not done.” I say ominously, and I watch in satisfaction as he actually breaks out in a sweat. “I go off on a rescue mission with this…” I point at Silas for emphasis, “lunatic! I end up riding in the back of a truck because I’m the zombie bait, and we have a zombie parade down Main Street trying to lure the zombies away from a house that you’re not even in! You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you for real!” I pause to take a deep breath, and then the thought hits me. If Ryan is here with us, who’s in the house that we lured the zombies away from.

I glance up at Silas and see that he’s suddenly thinking the same thing. He cranks the wheel and speeds back towards the house.

Ryan tries to hold my hand, but I pull it out of his grasp.

“To answer your question about the truck,” Silas says from the front seat, uncharacteristically chatty because Ryan’s the one in the dog house. “We came across it parked down one of these streets. That Jamie guy turned and he ate the chick that dried our clothes, it happened back there, right where you’re sitting.”

I see Ryan look down at the chunks, and he pales.

“Silas,” I warn, causing him to give me an innocent look.

The house appears ahead of us, thankfully now zombie free. I look up and down the street, hoping to see someone fleeing the scene, but there’s no one. Silas parks the truck in the driveway and jumps out. I follow him, and Ryan follows me.

We go up to the front door and listen. I can hear a faint noise from inside, but it’s hard to tell what it is.

Silas turns the handle and the door swings open with an ominous creak. Once the door is open, we hear the sobbing.

“Hello,” Silas calls once we’ve shut the door behind us. The sobbing is cut off abruptly like someone is trying to be quiet, but faint, muffled sobs still escape. “We aren’t here to hurt you,” Silas says as he stands in the middle of the entry way listening. The next time we hear the sob, we all stare off to our left, having pinpointed where it came from.

Silas motions to a closed door, and we all creep forward stealthily. Silas throws the door open so hard that it bangs off the wall, and then he charges in with his gun waving around. I think he’s crazy, but I still go in without hesitation to back him up. Ryan and I bump into his back when he stops abruptly.

I peek around Silas’ back and see an older woman, maybe fifty, rocking another woman who looks enough like her that I know right away it’s her daughter. The younger woman has blood ringed around her lips and dribbling down her chin, and my stomach drops to my toes. They are sitting next to a toilet filled with bloody vomit, she must have gotten bitten or scratched.

“Help us?” The older woman begs, and my heart goes out to her. Silas surprises me by stepping forward and kneeling down next to the two women. His hand sweeps across the sick woman’s forehead, checking her temperature.

“Was she bitten?” he asks quietly, and the older woman nods, fat tears splashing down her cheeks.

“Her hand,” she manages to get out, and Silas gently picks up the woman’s hand, making her moan in pain. Her hand is pale and ghastly looking, her fingers are swollen to double their normal size, and the skin around the infection is already starting to flake off.

“What’s her name?” Silas asks quietly, setting her hand back down.

“Norma,” the woman snuffles, relaxing a little beneath Silas’ calm attention. “I’m Margery,” she says, even though Silas didn’t ask.

“I’m Silas, Margery. Do you know what happens when people get bitten?” he asks, and Margery shakes her head, even though I suspect she does—she just doesn’t want to believe it.

“I’m so sorry. I know this is hard to hear, but there is nothing we can do for her,” Silas says, grabbing Margery’s hand instead. Margery pulls it from his grasp and sobs uncontrollably, clutching her daughter to her chest.

After a moment, she seems to compose herself. She reaches down and strokes Norma’s hair and kisses her on the forehead. “I love you sweet girl, you rest now. It won’t be long,” she murmurs and then gently sets her daughter’s head down on a rolled up jacket and stands up.

“I can’t bear for her to turn into one of those things” she says to Silas, and he nods.

“I’ll take care of her for you,” he promises solemnly, and Margery actually smiles a little.

“Thank you, you’re a good boy,” she says, patting him on the shoulder as she quickly walks out of the bathroom and shuts the door behind her.

“Silas,” I say, coming up beside him. “You don’t have to do this alone,” I tell him, but he shrugs me off.

“It’s okay,” he says softly as he pulls his gun out and gently presses it to her temple. Norma looks up at him for a second and nods, like she is giving her permission, and then she closes her eyes.

I turn around and press my face into Ryan’s chest. One second later, the gunshot rings out. It’s deafening in the tiny bathroom.

Ryan wraps his arms around me, and I’m not mad at him anymore. It seems so silly to fight when any moment could be our last.

A gun shot from outside the door interrupts our shared grief, and we all freeze. Silas starts running first, breaking our frozen tableau, and we follow him out, fearing the worst.

I grind to a halt when I see Margery sprawled out on the floor, a rapidly growing puddle of red forming beneath her head. I look away from the gaping hole in her temple, stuffing my fist in my mouth to keep my sobs from escaping.

I didn’t know these people, just the brief ten minutes we intruded on their tragedy but they impacted my emotions, making me feel a huge wave of grief at the injustice of their death.

Silas walks over and grabs Margery underneath her arms, and Ryan joins him in lifting her legs. They lay Norma and Margery together in the bathroom, and I can’t control my tears.

“We need to get out of here,” Silas says, and a slab of granite would have more expression than his face right now. “They’ll have heard the gun shots.”

I don’t need to be told twice, or ask who they are.

We rush to the door and peek out, and my heart dips when I see five zombies prowling around the truck.

“Great,” I mutter, already bone-tired from running for my life at every turn.

“No problem,” Silas says as he steps out the front door, looking like he’s spoiling for a fight.

I sigh, pulling my gun from my holster, and force my tired legs to follow him out. I don’t want him getting hurt—or worse—today has been already been hard enough.

Silas savagely takes care of the zombies before Ryan and I get much of a chance to help. He shoots the first three with his rapid, deadly aim, and then he pulls his new hatchet from his belt and attacks the zombies with brute force.

I can tell he’s pissed, and he’s taking it out on the only things we can blame all this crap on—the zombies.

He chops and hacks for a solid five minutes before finally coming back to himself.

He looks up at Ryan and I, who are frozen, watching him in horror.

“Let’s go,” he says, tossing his axe into the box of the truck rather than taking the time right now to clean it. I wince thinking about its bloody tip rubbing against my suitcase, but after watching Silas brutally slay five zombies, I’m not going to be the one that brings it up.

Ryan casually slides into the driver’s seat, and I give him a grateful smile. I’m not sure if Silas should be driving right now.

“Where to boss?” Ryan asks, trying to lighten the mood a bit, but Silas doesn’t even crack a smile.

“Back to the mall,” he says, and my stomach dips at the idea of seeing that place again.

“I thought you said it was overrun?” Ryan asks, hesitating.

“We got most of them and, besides, the camping store is still secure, I made sure to lock the gate, and with the bars on the window, we can stay there again tonight without too much worry.”

I glance at the darkening sky and let out a frustrated sigh. I’d hoped we would’ve made some progress today towards the cabin, but the camping store is our best option right now, and the logical part of me knows we need those supplies.

We get back to the mall just as dusk fades, turning the sky inky black, and my stomach is a bundle of nerves at the prospect of getting out of the truck to go bumbling around in the dark—but it’s not like I want to spend the night in this gore infected truck either.

We stare out at the dark shadows the mall casts, and I know none of us are overly eager. “I’ll take the keys,” Silas says suddenly, holding his hand out to Ryan for the keys like he’s a tardy teenage son that can’t be trusted with them.

I wonder for a moment if Ryan’s going to tell Silas to piss off. After a tense stare down he hands them over, and I relax a bit. Ryan’s a good guy. He knows we have more important fish to fry than a fight with Silas over who gets to hold onto the keys.

“Let’s go,” Silas says, pocketing the keys and already sliding out of the truck without waiting for us to give the okay. I bite back a growl of frustration and force my stiff muscles to move.

If I survive this trip through the dark, I might just kill Silas after all.

Chapter Seven

As I step out of the truck, the first thing I notice is that the night air has cooled considerably. I draw in a deep breath, then wrinkle my nose as rot and decay fill my nostrils. I’m pretty close to jumping back in the truck and resigning myself to a night spent in the zombie gut hotel, when I remember, belatedly, that Silas and I killed a massive amount of zombies here today. That must be the source of the smell, right?

Even if I wanted to protest, it’s too late. Silas is already moving forward like a man on a mission. It makes me doubly glad Ryan was driving because he was considerate and parked as close as possible to the entrance of the mall… If it had been Silas, he probably would’ve parked us around the block for shits and giggles. We move at a fast jog and cover the distance quickly. We don’t bother opening the doors. We just step over the broken glass that the zombies knocked out when they breached the mall earlier. Our boots make loud crunching sounds on the glass, and I break into a sweat as I imagine that the noise is drawing every zombie for a quarter mile.

Silas snaps on his flashlight, and my stomach does a triple flip. It’s not that I’m a fan of stumbling around in the dark, but the light is a beacon that doesn’t leave much guess work for the zombies.

“Silas,” I hiss, and he looks at me, making me want to shake him and yell don’t look at me, look for zombies. “Do you think that light is a good idea?” I ask forgoing the dramatics, and he lets out a snort.

“You really want to go feeling around in the dark Blondie?” he asks in a tone that somehow makes me feel foolish. This is a bit of a rock and a hard place situation.

“Let’s just hurry up,” I mutter, choosing to ignore him all together.

My gun shakes a little in my hand as we move quietly, but quickly, through the mall. We hear a moan from somewhere deep in the building and freeze, straining our ears, though I find it hard to hear anything over the loud pounding of my own heart. The zombie moans again, but it doesn’t sound very close, and it’s not the excited moan of a zombie that’s spotted someone tasty to eat.

We pass the fountain and, as Silas’s light sweeps over the area, I see several bodies bobbing lifelessly back and forth in the stagnant water. Ryan sees it too and puts his hand protectively on the small of my back. They aren’t splashing around and raising hell, so I assume they are the zombies that Silas took out when he tried to save Ryder.

We reach the imposing metal gate that separates the camping store from the rest of the mall, and I’m relieved that it’s still intact. I’m surprised to see Silas pull a large set of keys from his pocket, rather than his lock picking set.

“Where’d you get those?” I ask, staring at the jumble of keys.

“I found ‘em in the truck’s cup holder, those assholes took the keys with them when they left,” Silas mutters as he begins the daunting task of trying to find the right key.

I feel slightly less bad for the people that stole our truck. Not only did they steal our truck and leave us stranded, but they didn’t even leave Ryder with access to most of the mall.

I turn back to Ryan as he fans his flashlight across our surroundings; this is the most critical time. If we have to run now, we will be running blind through a mall full of zombies, with no safe zone. Everything seems deserted though, and it’s a creepy feeling, waiting to be attacked is actually worse than just getting it over with.

I’m so relieved when I hear the lock click, and Silas starts to slide the gate open. “Hurry up,” Silas prompts us, in agitation, and I’m so excited to be done with this day that I don’t even mind his bossy tone. Silas shuts the gate behind us and locks it up tight.

I finally feel like I can breathe again when I hear the heavy steel gate settle firmly back into place. My body is begging for me to fall into my sleeping bag and sleep for a solid twelve hours, but I can’t sleep like this. I’m covered head to toe in zombie grime and sweat. I walk towards the middle of the store where the display tent is set up and drop my backpack beside a couple camping chairs and a display camp fire.

“I’m gonna go wash these guts off my face,” I tell the guys, turning on my own flashlight as I head towards the back of the store where, yesterday, I’d checked out an employee bathroom that didn’t look too bad.

I pass through the ladies section and grab a change of clothes. It’s a camping store, but they still have clothes, and they’re the kind you wear hiking because they are rough and durable. In other words, they’re perfect for the zombie apocalypse. I grab a thick pair of socks, heavy blue jeans, a pink flannel shirt, and a tan vest with about a hundred pockets that I just know will come in handy.

I find the bathroom without too much trouble and barricade myself in the small, cube-shaped room. There isn’t a shower, but there is a relatively clean toilet and sink with a small mirror.

The first thing I do is kick off my boots and let out a giant sigh of relief when my aching feet hit the cool linoleum floor. Being this close to a toilet reminds me quickly of my aching bladder, and I have to squeeze my legs together to keep from peeing my pants as I hobble towards the toilet. I’ve been holding my bladder for the last few hours, and that’s no easy thing to do with flesh eating zombies literally nipping at your heels.

I sigh as I stare at the swirly pattern on the floor. This is a rare occasion for me, to have this time alone and not have to worry about zombies attacking.

I stand up and kick my jeans off into a pile on the floor, then I peel off my socks—that are more like a second skin with the amount of sweat I’ve poured into them today. I pull my crusty hoody over my head, wincing when doing so rubs some hardened, nasty gunk against my chin.

The shirt I’m wearing underneath isn’t stained, but it is sweaty and smells like B.O, so I peel it off too and stand in my bra and undies, shivering. I quickly wash my hands in the sink, and the icy water makes my skin break out in goose pimples. The water swirling in the bottom of the drain is black, and I frown as I scrub hard beneath my nails to get off all the dirt and blood caked underneath.

At this point I could probably infect myself with the zombie virus with just an accidental scratch.

I throw on the thick socks and new jeans to help ward off the cold, but I leave the shirt off for now because I have a lot of gore to scrub off my face.

There is a hard, half-used bar of soap, but nothing else to wash with, so I scoop up my old t-shirt and dip it into the water, bending over the sink as I begin to scrub at the back of my neck and, especially, my ear. I’m very careful not to get any of the infectious crap in my eyes or mouth, but I still grimace when the cold water runs into my ear and starts to loosen up some of the crusted zombie paraphernalia. I poke a hesitant finger inside my ear canal and dig out a congealed black lump that has a booger-like consistency. I almost barf as I flick it down into the water and watch it swirl slowly towards the drain. Chunks rise up in my throat, but I force them back down as I vow to never again get myself into a situation where zombie guts can get anywhere near my ears.

I shiver thinking about how I went through half my day like this. The reflection scrubbing away in the mirror is gaunt and pale, and there are big bags under her eyes. I’m barely recognizable as the blonde, carefree cheerleader I was.

I spend fifteen minutes scrubbing my face before shoving my whole head underneath the tiny faucet and scrubbing my hair with the bar of soap. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than nothing; my diva days are well behind me. I don’t have a towel, so I use handfuls of paper towel from the dispenser to pat my hair dry. I worry for a split second about the environmental impact of using so much paper—a remnant of my old life—but it sure as hell doesn’t matter now.

I chuck the massive handful of paper in the garbage and practically dive inside the soft flannel shirt. I zip the vest up to my chin and shove my hands in the pockets. I start to warm up right away. I stare down at my old clothes and decide they aren’t worth saving, not splattered with zombie guts, with a whole store at my disposal. I reach down and unhook my weapons belt from my old jeans and fasten it back onto my hip. The weight feels comforting and familiar. I kick the rest of the clothes into a pile in the corner so they won’t be in the way if the guys need to use the bathroom. It might be the apocalypse, but I’m not a complete slob.

I grab the flashlight off the sink and head back out into the store. The cool air hits me right away, and my wet hair makes me shiver. Thanks to the stupid zombies smashing the windows out, the store is several degrees colder than it would have been. I grab the first knitted hat I see, and I shove the plain black beanie on to cover up my wet hair. I’m sure I won’t be winning any modelling awards, but oh yeah, everyone is dead so I guess it doesn’t really matter.

Once my head isn’t giving away all my body heat, I slow down and take my time. I’m not in any rush to go cram myself into a tiny tent between Ryan and Silas, so I wander up and down the aisles shining my light along the rows of stuff, slowly filling my never-ending vest pockets.

I find a small, plastic compass attached to a keychain and loop it through my vest’s zipper. I have no idea if I’ll ever need it, but it pays to be prepared. I find a display of lighters and add one to three different pockets, then some gum, a Swiss army knife, and a fork that folds up in itself and doubles as a spoon.

Something catches my eye next to all the enamel camping dishes. I shine my light on a package of MREs. I’ve heard about these before. My Dad was a big reader, anything about the military, and these boxes are actually individually packed meals that can even be heated without the use of a stove or fire. I grab three individual boxes off the shelf and carry them back to the tent with me.

“What you got there?” Silas asks when I get close. He’s sitting in one of the camp chairs with a kerosene lantern in front of him like it’s his campfire.

“MREs,” I say, feeling proud of myself.

“No way,” Silas says, sitting up and holding his hand out for me to pass him one.

“Way,” I can’t resist saying, and he shakes his head at me, though there is a ghost of a smile on his lips that he’s trying pretty hard to hide. I look around to give Ryan his share and realize that he isn’t here. “Where’s Ryan?” I ask, feeling a flare of panic in my chest. I have to force myself to calm down. There is no way Ryan would take off on me again.

“Don’t worry, lover boy just went to the bathroom,” Silas mocks, sensing my panic, and I flip my middle finger up at him, which only makes him laugh.

I sit down beside Silas and watch as he expertly peels his dinner apart, adding the salt to start the chemical reaction that heats the meal. “This is pretty amazing,” I murmur as I copy his movements and, for once, Silas doesn’t have a smart ass comment.

As soon as I open my entrée pouch, I can smell the delicious scent of beef stew. I burn my tongue, but it barely slows me down. This is one of the best tasting things I can remember eating in weeks. “We need more of these before we go,” I tell Silas around a huge mouthful of chunky carrot and beef cubes, and he actually grins at me.

Ryan still isn’t back, but I’m starting to fade fast. “I’m gonna hit the hay,” I tell Silas, and he nods, not looking up from his kerosene lamp.

“That doesn’t sound like a bad idea, I’ll probably join you,” he says, and I look at him sharply, but then give my head a shake. He obviously didn’t mean it like that.

“Night,” I mumble as I rush off into the tent, glad the darkness is hiding my stupid girly blush.

I strip off my vest and debate leaving my holsters on, but after trying to lie down with the butt of my pistol poking me in the hip, I give up and take it off. Though I make sure to keep the gun within easy reach.

I crawl into my sleeping bag and take a deep breath. The night air is cool, and there’s a definite nip to it. I hear Ryan come back to the tent and listen as Silas stays up with him while he eats his MRE. I fall asleep quickly, listening to the low murmur of their voices.

It feels like my head just hit the pillow, when I wake up. I hear a quiet snore coming from Ryan, and it feels like a time warp. Wasn’t he just outside? Silas is also in the tent to my left, though he is still and silent. I hear a wailing moan pierce the quiet night and realize that’s what woke me to begin with.

Zombies.

I struggle to sit up and look around. I glance over at Ryan, but he’s asleep. So I turn to Silas instead and find him looking back at me.

“What’s going on?” I whisper, not sure if I should be preparing for battle or going back to sleep.

“Zombies outside the store. They’re at the window, but they can’t get past the bars,” Silas assures me. “The damn things have been moaning and groaning for the last ten minutes,” he says, and I’m concerned that I managed to sleep through it as long as I did.

“You’re sure they can’t get in?” I ask, feeling a prickle of doubt start to nag at my subconscious.

“Yeah, remember when they tried to get in last time and broke the glass? They couldn’t get past the bars then, and it sounds like there are only a couple of them.”

“Okay,” I sigh and lay back down, but I can’t go to sleep knowing they are out there.

Silas lays there for another ten minutes, and we listen to their moans in silence before he throws back his sleeping bag and slips from the tent without a word to me. I sit up and stare after his retreating back. Should I go after him?

The moans get louder; the zombies must have spotted Silas. I hear the faint retort of his muzzled pistol, and one by one the moans get less and less until everything is completely quiet once again.

I hear some rustling and then a large shadow fills the entrance of the tent, and I let out a squeak.

“It’s just me,” Silas says as he zips the tent back up and gets back into his bag.

“Thanks,” I murmur, but he only grunts in response.

The next time I wake up, it feels a little warmer and there is sunlight streaming through the thin tent walls. I open my eyes and see my breath billowing white from my mouth—not that much warmer, apparently.

I struggle to sit up and wonder why nobody woke me. My eyes land on Silas’s side of the tent, and I freeze. They didn’t wake me up because they’re still sleeping. Silas is sprawled out, shirtless, his sleeping bag pushed down to his waist like he’s oblivious to the cold. I don’t mean to look, but my eyes are drawn to his tattooed arms. He has a large dragon tattoo on his upper arm and shoulder, and the tail curves down his shoulder blade towards his chest. I follow it and discover another tattoo over his ribs. My eyes travel to his well-defined abdomen and the little trail of hair under his belly button that disappears into the sleep bag. I realize that I’m being a creep, and jerk my eyes hastily away from him and concentrate on putting my vest back on.

“Did you get enough sleep?” Silas asks, and I blush beet red; he was awake.

I clear my throat. “It was alright,” I say, striving to sound casual as I stand up and grab my belt. I unzip the tent and beat a hasty retreat, stopping outside the tent to quickly loop it on.

I hear a rustle and wince, of course Silas is following me out.

“Morning sleepyhead,” Ryan says, and I spin to find him standing between a row of shelves with an armful of supplies. I feel a rush of guilt that I didn’t even notice he wasn’t in the tent.

“Hey,” I say and rush forward to help. I grab a couple of the fishing rods. “These are a good idea,” I tell him, since it is. We are going to a cabin with a lake. Fresh fish will be a great way to keep from starving. I was never a huge fan of fish before, but I’m more realistic now. I’ll eat whatever keeps the hunger at bay.

“You two slept late,” Ryan says, obviously not done with the previous topic. I walk away to set the rods over by the rest of the supplies we have stacked up, not looking at Silas.

“Zombies kept us up,” Silas mutters, and I hear Ryan let out a surprised sound in the back of his throat.

“I didn’t hear a thing,” he says.

“Six of them were at the front window last night—I took care of them,” Silas says, and Ryan walks over to the front of the store and peeks out the bars at the carnage.

“Shit, sorry man, you should’ve woke me up,” he says, and I finally peek at Silas just in time to see him shrug.

“Blondie was awake. I could have asked her for some back up if I’d needed it.”

I poke around in one of the shopping carts and tear open a box of chocolate power bars and take two, putting the second in my pocket and opening the other one with my teeth.

Silas isn’t acting weird, like he caught me ogling his body, so I relax a little. He must not have seen it because, knowing Silas, he would have called me out on it right away. I decide to chalk it up to a moment of weakness and pretend it didn’t happen. “We should get on the road as soon as possible,” I tell them, glancing at the battery operated clock on the wall and wincing when I see that it’s already nine. It’s like this mall is a time warp that I can’t escape from!

“It won’t take us too long to pack this stuff up—we might as well take as much supplies as we can,” Ryan says, motioning to the case of MRE’s in his hand. “I found a bunch more of these meals in the back. We should make sure we take them all.”

Silas grins like that’s the best news he’s heard in a long time, and I have to admit, it is pretty great.

“I’ll go and pull the truck around to the front of the store so we can start to load her up,” Silas says as he pops open the gate and slides it back into place. “Unlock the front door for me when you see me coming,” he tells me, and I nod.

I turn back and watch Ryan dump his stuff off in the pile. “This place is a gold mine,” he grins, and I feel my own mouth tug up in response. It is nice to have a bit of luck for a change. “I’m going to go get some more,” he tells me before disappearing into the back.

I wish I could follow him and see what’s back in the store room, but I need to wait for Silas. As soon as I get near the front door, the smell hits me and I wrinkle my nose. I stare down at the bodies of the six creatures that are so human like, but also so different. Their skin is mottled and grey, ragged and torn in various places, and worst is their eyes. They are black like the pupil exploded and filled all the white space with darkness. I tear my eyes away from their corpses when I hear Silas drive the truck around the corner. He’s followed by a couple of stumbling zombies who take up the rear like well-trained collies.

He ignores them and backs the truck up until the back end is only a couple feet from the door. I wince when I see him back over one of the zombies he took out last night. The tire struggles for a minute, trying to gain some traction, then goes right overtop its head, popping it like an enormous zit.

The zombies have fallen back a bit, since they’re much slower than the truck, and Silas gets out like he isn’t being stalked and doesn’t have a care in the world. I throw open the door and join him outside once I’ve carefully looked both ways.

I step over one of the zombies from last night and join Silas. I know he can take care of these zombies on his own, but it’s a teamwork thing. I don’t want him to start to think he can’t rely on me.

Silas has already taken out three in a nice neat row, so I aim my gun at the zombie on the farthest left, and miss. I hear Silas snicker, but I ignore him and line the shot up again. This time I hit him in the head and he goes down.

“Ha!” I exclaim, even though I know my marksmanship is really nothing to brag about. Silas chuckles as he takes out four more zombies without pause. “Show off,” I mutter as I scan the parking lot for anything else, but it seems pretty empty, for now.

I walk back into the store while Silas stops and drops the tailgate down before following me. “Load up Blondie,” he says, stooping down to grab a couple large cases of the MREs. I pick one up and am surprised by the weight. It has to weigh at least twenty lbs. Silas pulls himself up into the back of the truck with ease, and I’m relieved that he isn’t trying to get me back there again—I’ve had enough of the back of this truck to last a lifetime.

I pass him the box I’m carrying and then go back for more. We get about six boxes on the truck before our fan club finds us. Silas sees three of them in the distance, and we manage to pack a couple more supplies before they get into gun range. I don’t even bother trying because it’s a fifty yard shot, at least, and I know I’m not that good. I watch Silas take them out, and I feel some grim satisfaction.

“They never quit coming,” I complain to Silas, and he nods, leaning forward to spit off the side of the truck.

“Seven billion people in the world, I wonder how many of them are zombies.” he says, making me feel completely overwhelmed with just one sentence. I don’t see how the human race can survive against the odds if even half of those people are zombies.

Chapter Eight

We are sweating by the time we get the truck loaded up, and Silas secures everything with a ratchet strap. The clock on the wall is putting me on edge as I watch it creep up to 11:30 am. This is not the early start I’d envisioned, though I know these supplies are going to be invaluable.

“Ready to go?” I ask for the third time in the last half-hour, causing Silas to shoot me an annoyed look, which I blatantly pretend I don’t see.

“Ready,” Ryan affirms, holding the front passenger door open for me, and I’m touched. He’s letting me sit in the front, leaving the spilled gut, rotten gore covered backseat for himself.

“Thanks,” I say, touching his arm to show him that I know he’s sacrificing for me. Silas rolls his eyes at our human emotions and jumps into the driver’s seat, sliding on a pair of dark sunglasses he’s found somewhere in the mall.

“Let’s rock and roll,” he says, channeling every corny cliché I’ve ever heard, though somehow still managing to pull it off with his dark sunglasses and tight leather jacket.

“This year, please,” I snark at him to cover up my embarrassment over how hot I’ve been finding him lately. I should have never looked at him without his shirt on!

Silas gives the truck an excessive amount of gas before tapping his breaks, making my seat belt tighten uncomfortably around my chest. I look over at him suspiciously, and he’s grinning at my discomfort. Note to self: Stop pissing Silas off when he’s driving, or next time I might find myself kissing the windshield.

Silas rolls all of our windows down a crack to help with the overpowering smell of rotten asshole that has permeated the truck, thanks to the zombie showdown in the backseat, and then we are zipping our way back onto the roadway and the scenery is whipping by us fast enough that I finally let myself relax a bit.

We are back on the road, and we will find Abby at that cabin; I refuse to believe anything different.

We drive in silence until Silas reaches over and slides a cd into the six-disc changer, and fast-paced country music starts blaring through the speakers. I was never really a fan of country, but it’s nice to listen to something other than our own heavy breathing. I roll my window down a little more since we are on the wide open road, and it’s relatively safe. I close my eyes, focusing on the feel of the warm sunshine on my face even though the wind is a bit chilled.

Something hard pokes my elbow where it’s resting on the center console, and I open my eyes to see that Silas has reached into the backseat and pulled up a medium-sized Rubbermaid tote that is filled to the brim with boxes of AR-15 ammo and spare magazines.

“If you’re just gonna nap, you can do something useful and reload these magazines so we have some spares,” Silas says, his arrogant drawl igniting my temper.

I know we need these magazines in case something happens, but Silas demanding it makes me mad. I open my mouth to tell him to piss off or maybe shove the bullets up his ass, but the warm press of Ryan’s hand on my arm stops me.

I look back at him, and see he’s giving me a look. “I’ll help you,” he volunteers, grabbing a box of ammo and an empty magazine. I still want to yell at Silas, but I can’t really do it now without looking like a jerk.

I ignore Silas’s smirk and yank a black metal magazine out of the box and start pressing bullets into it.

Ryan and I fill an obscene amount of clips until we run out of magazines to load, and my soft, uncalloused fingers are starting to feel sore.

“You should do the nine mil casings next,” Silas says, turning down the music for the first time in an hour. I stare at him, my mouth open a little. “This isn’t nap time, Jane, this is a brief moment of peace we have before the next attack,” he says seriously, and I realize that he isn’t actually being a jerk…okay, he is still being a jerk, but at least he has a very real reason.

“Fine,” I moan, not wanting him to know that I suddenly agree with his point of view. Ryan pulls the tote into the backseat and stacks it before removing a similar tote from the pile beside him. It’s blue with a snap lid, and Silas has scribbled 9mm on the outside with a sharpie.

We fill as many magazines as we have, nineteen in all. My fingers ache from pressing fifteen bullets into each holder. Thankfully Ryan was here to help me do half, or I would probably have carpal tunnel.

I grab my backpack off the floor and throw in a couple extra mags while Ryan puts the tote back.

“Anything else, your majesty?” I ask, and Silas flashes me a grin. It’s weird seeing him smile so much.

“It’s about time you started to address me properly,” he says, making Ryan laugh. I reward Silas with a punch to his shoulder, which he overreacts to by acting like it’s killing him. After a few extra minutes of stray chuckling, we fall silent again listening to the music. My eyelids start to get heavy again, and this time Silas doesn’t feel the need to poke me awake with some insipid chore.

I’m woken up a couple hours later by Ryan’s voice. “Where are you taking us?” Ryan asks sharply from the backseat, and I crack open an eyeball to see what Silas is doing to us now. We are on a quiet road that has tall grass lining either side of the asphalt.

“What’s going on?” I ask, sitting up straighter in my seat. I look at Silas then back to Ryan, and they both look tense. I turn back to the front of the truck and freeze, not sure if I should believe my eyes. Looming up ahead I see the outline of buildings in the horizon. “What’s that?” I ask, grabbing the map and opening it to the course we painstakingly mapped out this morning.

I’m not sure where we are, but it doesn’t matter. At no point on this trip should we be heading into any towns.

“He took us off the route,” Ryan says accusingly, and I set the map down with shaking hands.

“Silas, why did you do that?” I ask, not understanding why he would risk our lives like this. We’d all agreed to avoid communities.

Silas blows out an annoyed breath like it’s paining him to have to explain himself. “This is the shortest route. It’s a small town so there won’t be that many Z’s. The route we picked was going to take us an extra two hours to go around this one itty bitty town.” My reasonable side is screaming at me to kick Silas’s ass, but the part of me that is agonizing over Abby is applauding him.

“You had no right,” Ryan says from the backseat, and I decide to jump on the bandwagon with him.

“Yeah,” I add, making Silas give me a sideways look.

“Jane, you know you want to get there faster,” Silas says, and I’m actually surprised by his use of my real name; I’ve gotten pretty used to Blondie.

“What town is this?” I ask, refusing to agree with him.

“Rockley,” Silas says, slowing down when we reach the town sign and parking just before we enter the town limits.

I study the shady, elm-lined streets up ahead and don’t see a lot of movement, but that doesn’t mean anything. “Population five hundred,” Ryan reads off the sign, and again I’m torn.

Five hundred people make for a pretty small town until you think that number might mean five hundred zombies chasing you down Main Street.

“We’re already here,” I say, not realizing I’m siding with Silas until the words are out of my mouth.

Silas jams the truck into gear and presses the gas. “We’ll be in and out,” he promises, and I turn to look at Ryan to make sure he’s okay with this. He has a mutinous look on his face.

“I don’t know why we bother agreeing on rules if he’s just going to break them,” Ryan complains when he sees me looking at him, and I nod. I do agree. Silas had no right to make these decisions without us, but now that we’re here, I can’t handle backtracking and wasting anymore time.

I hit the powered button and roll my window up further, just in case, as Silas takes us deeper into enemy territory. There is evidence everywhere of chaos and destruction. Bloated corpses lie in the middle of the street, obviously someone around here made a stand.

I turn away from the crows that are feasting on the rotting meat and worry for a second that this virus could jump between species. I push it to the back of my mind though. There hasn’t been any sign of that happening yet, and there is nothing I could do if it happened anyway. It’s best to stick to worrying about things I can deal with—like flesh-eating human monsters.

We pass a post office that is flying the American flag at half-mast. Zombies stagger around, turning to moan in our direction as we go flying by in the truck. I look around, keeping an eye on the dead, but also looking for signs that there are actual humans still alive here. I don’t see much movement other than the shuffling of the dead until we pass an alley and something draws my eye. It’s an odd shape and moving fast.

“I just saw something,” I tell Ryan and Silas, craning my neck back to try and get a better look.

“What was it?” Ryan asks, and I shake my head.

“I don’t know, but it was fast,” I say, my mind tumbling over what it could have been.

“Probably just a dog,” Silas mutters as he scans the area ahead of us, but I shake my head.

“It was bigger than that,” I object, and Silas looks annoyed.

“A zombie then,” he throws out, obviously ready to be done with this conversation.

“It was too fast,” I say, stubbornly refusing to let it go. “Zombies don’t run.” At least I hope they don’t, but what if they’re evolving?

“Just go back and look,” Ryan interrupts our argument to side with me, and I beam at him.

Silas looks like he’s going to ignore us, but he finally lets out a curse and cranks the wheel hard, doing a U-turn right in the middle of the street.

“Where did you see this zombie dog?” Silas mutters, and I ignore the creepy image his words conjure up and point to the narrow back street.

“Over there.”

Silas slowly steers the truck past the alley, and what we see makes my blood run cold. At first I think it’s a child-sized zombie, and that image is terrifying enough, but then I realize it’s actually a little girl running for her life down the middle of the alley with two large zombies in hot pursuit.

“Oh my God,” I manage to get out before my throat closes up with fright. Ryan jumps out of the truck, and Silas and I follow at a dead run.

“This way,” Ryan calls out, and the girl’s head whips around to see where the voice came from. Ryan waves, and the girl turns, her small legs pumping. From my peripheral I see Silas raise his gun.

I don’t think I would trust anyone but Silas to aim towards a little girl and not hit her. It feels like Silas takes forever to line up the shot, and I see why he’s taking the time to be sure, but with each passing moment I want to yell and shake him. His shot takes down the first zombie just as the second one reaches out and manages to snag the end of the girl’s long flyaway hair.

The girl cries out when she’s forced to stop running as her head is jerked backwards.

“Silas!” I yell, unable to contain myself any longer, and thankfully he quickly squeezes the trigger, putting a neat bullet hole in the center of the zombie’s forehead.

The little girl is pulled down with the corpse, and all three of us run forward as fast as we can.

“Are you okay?” I ask, reaching out to grab the girl’s hand to calm her while Ryan gently untangles her hair from the zombie’s rotten fingers. I scan her from head to toe looking for bites, praying that I won’t find any. “Did they bite you, are you hurt?” I ask, not seeing anything, but that doesn’t mean much, even a small scratch would be enough.

The little girl shakes her head, tears leaking down her cheeks. “My mommy tried to bite me, but I ran away.” My heart drops into my guts when I hear that. Ryan gets her hair free, finally, and I gently pull her to her feet.

“I’m so sorry,” I tell her, and she sniffles loudly, her blue eyes filling with a dam burst of tears.

I hear Silas’s gun go off and spin around to find him firing down the alley towards the truck. A group of three zombies are blocking our way, and a fourth is down on the ground thanks to Silas.

“I hate to break this up, but we gotta go,” Silas yells, starting to jog towards the truck, firing as he goes. I don’t pull my gun out because I have my arm around the girl’s shoulders, and I’m pretty confident in the boys’ ability to protect us, as long as we don’t run into too many zombies.

The girl is a little too slow for a life or death run down the alley, so I reach down and pick her up, hoping I can shield her from some of the traumatizing views. She tucks her head into my neck, and I’m glad she can miss at least a little bit of this gruesome stuff. We reach the truck without further incident, though we have definitely attracted some unwanted attention; zombies are starting to stagger out of buildings and yards.

When I open the truck door and try to climb in, the little girl, who was clinging onto me, starts to struggle. “What are you doing?” I gasp, having to do a crazy juggling act to keep from dropping her on the ground.

“I’m not supposed to get in a truck with strangers,” the girls says, absolutely astounding me.

I look over at the zombies and then back at the small, earnest face in my arms. “We are the good guys, okay?” I say, trying to think of something to say that will convince her. “We are trying to save you from those scary guys over there.” I look into her big blue eyes and see she is still having some doubts.

“Oh for Christ sake!” Silas yells from the front seat, sounding like a lunatic as he gets back out and starts shooting at the zombies that are getting too close for comfort. “Get in the damn truck or you’re going to die!” he yells at the little girl, making her eyes go wide. I stare at Silas in shock, and he shoves us both into the truck and slams the door shut before shooting a couple more zombies and sprinting back to the driver’s seat.

Zombies hit the side of our door, making a dull thudding noise against the metal, their ragged fingernails scratching at the glass, and the little girl lets out a high-pitched scream. I’m not very happy about it either, and I clutch her close to me and try to hide both our faces from the gruesome sight of snapping teeth and rotting skin.

Silas slams the truck in gear and we leave them behind, zig zagging around cars and zombies that are littering the road. It only takes us ten minutes to be clear of the town, but it takes the little girl another half an hour to stop sobbing and shaking.

I don’t know what to say to comfort her, I never really babysat kids, so I just sit and stroke her hair and, keep my arm around her, hoping it’s enough.

Ryan reaches up and puts his hand on my arm, and I’m grateful for the comfort that he’s providing me—a huge part of me wishes that I could just break down and cry like this little girl. We probably aren’t even all that different in age. Ryan’s thumb brushes up and down my elbow, and I draw energy from each tiny touch.

Finally, the little girl lifts her head from my shoulder, which is now soaked with her tears, and wrinkles her nose up. “It smells really bad in here,” she says, and it is so opposite from what I thought she was going to say that I let out a small bark of laughter.

Silas takes pity on us and hits the button to lower each window down a couple inches.

“Is that better?” I ask, and the little girl shakes her head.

“Not,” she says bluntly, and I secretly agree with her.

“It’s okay, you will get used to it soon and not even notice,” I tell her, and it’s a bald face lie. The smell still makes my stomach roll.

“Where are you taking me?” she asks, looking out the window with curiosity, and I’m amazed at how resilient little kids are.

“We have a cabin in the woods. It’s a little far from here, but we are hoping it will be safe,” I explain to her, and she nods. “What’s your name?” I ask, not wanting to push her too much, but names are pretty important.

“What’s your name?” she asks instead of answering, and I smile.

“My name is Jane, and the guy in the back is Ryan, and this guy here,” I point to Silas, “is Silas.”

“Silas yelled at me,” she says, and I pat her on the shoulder.

“It’s okay,” I whisper into her ear, “he yells at me too.”

She smiles at that, and Silas scowls, which makes me smile even wider.

“Now you know our names. What’s yours?” I ask casually, not wanting it to seem like a big deal.

“Sunny,” she says, and I blink at her.

“Sunny?” I ask, and she nods.

“Like sunshine,” she says with a small smile on her lips. “My mama used to tell me she named me Sunny because I light up her life.” Her lip trembles, and I don’t know what to say to that.

“It’s nice to meet you Sunny,” Ryan says from the backseat, popping his head into the front to shake Sunny’s hand and make her giggle, and I’m so relieved that he seems to know his way around kids. “How old are you?” he asks, and Sunny shyly holds up six fingers for him to count. “Six?” he asks in mock surprise, and Sunny nods. “I thought you were sixty,” he says, making Sunny giggle at how silly he’s being.

My heart melts even more towards Ryan, seeing how good he is with this poor little girl who has lost her Mom. I catch a glimpse of Silas frowning and pointedly ignore him.

“Are you hungry Sunny?” Ryan asks, and Sunny nods her head so hard that her natural curls, though filthy and weighed down with grime, bounce all over the place. Ryan passes her up some beef jerky, water, and a chocolate bar from his bag. I watch her shove it in her mouth, barely chewing, and feel like an idiot for not realizing how hungry she must have been.

Up until this point, my responsibility towards another living creature had only included a hamster the year before last. That had only lasted about a month before my parents rehomed him. Turbo had not thrived under my tutelage. I was always so busy with school and cheering… I wonder for a minute where Turbo is now, but of course, he’s probably dead.

I look nervously at the little girl in my lap and vow to do better than I did with Turbo, a lot better!

Chapter Nine

Sunny falls asleep pretty quickly. The poor kid had been living on the street for the last two days since her Mom turned from a bite, and I have no idea how she managed to survive this long. She’s so exhausted that, as soon as she eats, her full belly knocks her out as effectively as chloroform.

I hold the little girl in my arms as the truck eats up the miles. We are out in the middle of nowhere, off the beaten path, but I can still see signs of zombies everywhere. The biggest thing is the few that shuffle around in the middle of the road near crashed and abandoned cars. I stare at a zombie slowly staggering across the field and shake my head. I don’t know how the world will ever recover from this.

I hear a rustle and then a schwick kind of a sound, but it doesn’t register with me right away what it is until the sweet scent of tobacco starts to tickle my nose. Ryan is driving now, since he made Silas switch with him outside the last town, no longer trusting him to follow the map. I turn to Silas who’s stretched out in the back puffing away on a cigarette.

“You can’t smoke in here,” I blurt out, getting angry with him.

Silas gives me a blank look, and I’m honestly stunned. “Second hand smoke, there’s a kid in here!” I hiss at him, trying to be quiet so I don’t wake Sunny, but Silas just laughs, igniting my temper even more.

“It’s the end of the world, zombies are more deadly than anything coming out of this cigarette,” Silas drawls stubbornly, and I look to Ryan for help. He has his eyes on the road, but I can see a frown on his face and I know he agrees with me.

“So help me, Silas, if you don’t put that cigarette out right now, I’m going to come back there and feed it to you,” I warn him, ready to set Sunny down and do just that. Silas has been getting on my nerves more than usual the last few days, and I welcome the opportunity to dig an elbow or two into his ribs.

“It’s okay, Jane,” Sunny says suddenly, surprising me. “Please don’t fight.” I look down and see that she’s wide awake, even though she hasn’t lifted her head off my shoulder. “My mommy smoked too,” she says, wrinkling her nose up. I pat her gently on the head.

“It’s okay, Sunny, we aren’t fighting,” I lie. “Just go back to sleep,” I murmur, trying to stroke her hair the way my mom used to do to me when I was younger.

She’s quiet for a few minutes, and I think maybe she’s gone back to sleep, but then she lifts her head and I see how pale she looks. I’m concerned with the way she just went from a pink, healthy shade to being white as a ghost.

“Jane,” she moans, crossing her arms over her stomach. “I don’t feel good.”

I’m instantly on alert. “Are you going to throw up?” I ask, and she nods vigorously, looking like she’s already struggling to keep it down.

“Ryan!” I yell, barely keeping it together. Maybe I’m a freak, but the thought of someone vomiting on me right now somehow seems worse than zombie guts. Ryan is already standing on the brake pedal, and I manage to get the door open just as chunks spray out of Sunny’s mouth. I carefully lift her down, patting her on the back and holding her hair out of the way. “It’s okay,” I tell her, even though my eyes are scanning the area for zombies.

Silas jumps out of the back seat and stands protectively with his gun up, his cigarette dangling from his lips.

I reach up and pull it out of his mouth and throw it on the ground, crushing it viciously beneath my foot. I am so furious with him right now!

“What in the hell did you do that for?” Silas demands, looking away from the road for a second to glare daggers at me before turning his back on me and scanning the tree line.

I pat Sunny’s back gently a couple more times, struggling to get my temper under control before replying. “I told you to put that damn cigarette out and you didn’t listen and look what happened. You made her sick!”

Silas looks incredulous, then his eyes flick to the small girl, bent over barfing into the grass, and he looks…unsure.

Sunny coughs and splutters one last time before standing up, her eyes watering. “It wasn’t the smoke,” she says, shooting my theory all to hell. “The other bad smell is making me sick.”

Silas gives me a cocky look, enjoying the fact that I was wrong. I take a step towards Silas, but Ryan whistles to get my attention, distracting me from pummeling Silas, by passing out a bottle of water for Sunny. I take it, realizing Sunny is much more important right now. I twist the cap off and give the girl a drink.

“Are you ready to go?” Silas asks her, and I look up at him sharply, finding it strange that he’s talking to Sunny at all. He hasn’t been very friendly towards her. He nods towards the tree line, and I see the shape of a lone zombie stumbling eagerly towards us.

Sunny takes a deep breath and nods her head. “I…I think so,” she says, and I give her a big fake smile.

“Great, let’s go,” I say, scooping her up in my arms as I climb into the truck holding her so she won’t be able to look over my shoulder. I hear Silas’s gun fire once, and then he jumps in the back.

Sunny is looking even greener now that we’re back in the stink mobile. I press the button and roll our window down all the way as Ryan accelerates, and a bit of a breeze races through the cab.

Ten minutes up the road, we have to pull over again for Sunny, and I start to feel really bad for the girl. She was probably prone to getting carsick before this, and the smell is making everything so much worse.

I sit in the front seat holding a limp, shivering Sunny and feel a wave of guilt. I would give anything to be at the cabin right now, but is pushing for it today really the right thing to do? Not if a little girl is suffering.

“Guys,” I blurt out before I can change my mind, and every head turn towards me, even poor Sunny. I take a deep breath, unable to believe that I’m actually about to suggest this. “I think we need to find a place to stop for the night and give Sunny a rest and clean out the truck.” I say.

Ryan nods right away, he was probably already thinking it.

“There’s still a good four hours before dark, at least, we could cover a lot of ground,” Silas objects like I knew he would. On some baser level, I want to forget all about it and side with Silas. I force myself to stop being an asshole though.

“Not when we’re stopping every ten minutes because the smell keeps making a little girl sick,” I say, playing devil’s advocate. I know Abby would insist we stop if she was here.

“We’ll start looking for a place,” Ryan says, giving me an approving smile. “You’re doing the right thing, Jane,” he says, making me feel a smidge better, though I still feel crappy that doing the right thing is such a struggle for me.

“Fine,” Silas huffs from the back seat, not that he really had much choice anyway. “Make sure you find a place with a garage.” It’s a good idea and will keep the zombies off our backs while we scrub everything out.

We come across a farmyard with a long tree-lined driveway tucked away from the road, and Ryan pulls in so we can scope the place out. It looks like an alright place. There is a chicken coop in the yard and a bright red barn with white stripes. The house looks nice too. Though the front door is wide open and there are bloody splatters against its white siding and the matching white siding of a large dog house sitting on the porch.

“I don’t know about this place,” I say, having serious reservations.

Silas snorts from the backseat. “You’re upset about bloodstains?” he asks incredulously. “It’s the zombie apocalypse.”

“So you’ve mentioned,” I mutter, annoyed that he thinks I’m being weak when I just want us to be safe.

“You aren’t gonna find very many places that haven’t had something violent happen there,” Silas points out. “Hell, even this truck is a prime example of blood splatter alley,” he says, and right on que, Sunny starts to heave again.

“Fine!” I snap, and Ryan puts the truck into park. We all get out, and I pat Sunny on the back as she heaves a few more times, though she has nothing left to vomit up. Her face is sweaty, and her eyes are glassy as she looks at us.

“Sorry,” she mumbles, and I shake my head.

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” I tell her, and it’s the truth.

“Maybe you should wait here with Sunny?” Ryan suggests tentatively, and I feel a surge of annoyance, I’m positive they are only choosing me to stay with the kid because I’m a girl.

Silas is looking at me. “We aren’t making you stay behind because you’re a chick,” he says, creeping me out like he can read my mind. “You’re staying back because you’re the worst shot,” he says, insulting me without batting an eyelash.

“Fine,” I say, knowing it’s true and accepting it easier than when I thought they were just being sexist. “Careful,” I call after their retreating backs, and they both nod.

I open the truck door for Sunny, but she balks. “Do we have to go back in there?” she wheedles, and I hesitate. I have a pretty good view of the yard from here, maybe it won’t hurt if we stay outside and wait.

“Alright,” I tell her. “But you have to listen to me, and get back in the truck as fast as you can, if I say,” I tell her, and she nods her head exuberantly.

“Promise,” she says, and I hope, for both of our sakes, I’m not making a huge mistake.

It feels like forever that Silas and Ryan are gone, but in truth, they’ve barely disappeared into the house when I begin to feel anxiety cover me like a lead blanket—I’m not used to having this kind of responsibility.

I tell Sunny to stay within arm’s reach, and, thankfully, she listens much better than Abby and I did at that age. I alternate between watching her pick up small pebbles off the driveway and put them in her pockets, and scanning the area for zombies.

“Look, a puppy,” Sunny says with a laugh, and I tear my eyes off the tree line to see what she’s pointing at. A large golden retriever is standing near the house, and the sight of it gives me a shock.

“Get in the truck Sunny,” I tell her, my heart hammering in my chest as the blood soaked dog raises its lip and bares its teeth at us.

“I don’t wanna,” Sunny pouts, blowing her promise all to hell.

“I’m not joking,” I lose my cool and yell at her, and she crosses her arms obstinately.

The dog steps off the porch with a loud growl, and Sunny lets out a whimper.

Without taking my eyes off the dog, I reach over and open the truck door for Sunny, and the little girl dives in. Once she’s safe, I reach for my gun and hold it up with shaking fingers. I don’t want to hurt this dog, though, judging by the amount of blood all over its fur, it might already be wounded.

“Get out of here!” I yell at the dog, taking a step forward, hoping I can scare it off without violence. The dog isn’t afraid of me though and breaks into a run. I consider running away, but I doubt I could outrun a dog, and now I’m not so sure this dog isn’t rabid. It doesn’t look right, and I don’t want to leave it for Ryan and Silas to deal with. I’ve never killed an animal in my life, and I hesitate longer than I should. The dog springs into the air, going for my throat, and I finally pull the trigger.

The dog’s momentum doesn’t slow, even though I’ve knocked three slugs into its chest, and I dive out of the way as the dog’s body hits the side of the truck and crumples to the ground. Sunny lets out a shriek from inside the cab, and I glance up for a second to see her bawling, staring out the window at the dog’s body.

I keep my gun up in case the dog isn’t really dead, but it doesn’t so much as twitch, and I finally relax enough to holster my weapon just as Ryan and Silas come running out of the house. “What’s going on out here?” Silas demands, both guys stop short when they see the dog’s body.

“Jesus, are you guys hurt?” Ryan asks, and I slowly shake my head.

“We’re okay,” I say, looking down at the dog’s body with regret and pity. “Was the house clear?” I ask, and Ryan and Silas look at each other.

“It’s clear, but we need to avoid the living room…” Ryan says.

“Zombies?” I ask, curious, and Ryan shakes his head.

“I don’t think so. We aren’t exactly sure what happened…”

Silas interrupts him with a snort. “We weren’t, but I think in light of Old Yeller here, we know what went down.” Silas walks over, drags the dog away from the truck, and chucks its body into some trees. I take a deep breath and slowly release it.

“There were some people in there, pretty chewed up. We didn’t think it was zombies because no one turned, they were just eaten…” Ryan tells me, his face pale, and I go cold. No wonder the dog was covered in blood. “He was probably starving and went feral,” Ryan says, walking over to give me a quick hug before opening the truck door and holding his hands out to Sunny.

Sunny jumps into his arms and hides her tear-stained face in his neck. “It will be okay,” Ryan soothes her, and I try really hard to take his words to heart.

“I’m gonna pull the truck into the garage,” Silas says, coming back towards us. Ryan passes Sunny over to me while he jogs ahead to the large garage double doors and pulls the first one up for Silas.

I watch them back the truck in and shut the door up tight before they both join me. “Let’s get settled in,” Ryan says, taking Sunny back into his arms to give me a break.

The house doesn’t have the death smell that’s pretty unique to zombies, and I’m grateful for that at least. I hope Sunny doesn’t see the blood smeared dog prints that are tracked throughout the entrance. Ryan takes us into a kitchen and sets Sunny down on a chair.

“You’ll want to avoid that room on the left,” he tells me, and I follow his gaze to a closed door. It must be the living room. I nod, selfishly thankful I got to avoid seeing that.

“Do you want something to eat?” Ryan asks Sunny, and she shakes her head.

“It will make you feel better,” Ryan cajoles, and Sunny slumps in her seat.

“Okay,” she agrees in a small voice, and Ryan pulls some crackers out of his bag and sets them in front of her.

Sunny picks one up and gives it a half-hearted nibble before setting it down. She still looks a little green.

“Do you want to lay down?” I ask, and she nods. I look over at Ryan, and he springs up from the chair to show us the way to one of the bedrooms. We climb the stairs, and he opens up a bedroom door on our left.

“What do you think about this room?” Ryan asks with a grin, and I watch Sunny’s face brighten.

“Wow,” she breathes as she steps further into a room that obviously belonged to two little girls. The walls are painted a light pink with white lace curtains, and there are bunk-beds with the latest princess bedding on both the top and bottom. My eyes scan the room stuffed with toys of every kind, and I smile at Sunny’s enthusiasm, even though a small part of me wonders what happened to these little girls.

“Maybe there will be some clothes that fit you,” I say, looking at Sunny sitting on the clean, pink bedding in her grubby, travel worn clothes. They don’t look like they were the best even before she was forced to live on the street for two days, and I wonder how many of the holes in her jeans were there before the zombies.

I open the closet doors and see rows of frilly dresses, Sunny exclaims loudly over them, but I stubbornly shake my head. “These aren’t the right kind of clothes to wear right now,” I tell her and shut the door firmly, going over to the large dresser drawers instead.

The first drawer is stuffed full of underwear and socks. I pick up a pair of underwear and read the tags—two different sizes. “What size clothes do you wear?” I ask her, and Sunny shrugs.

“I don’t know,” she says, and Ryan, who’s sitting beside her, flips the back of her collar down and checks the tag.

“Size six,” he informs me, and I nod my thanks.

“It looks like we have a size four, and a seven,” I say, digging through each thing to check the sizes.

“That isn’t too bad. The sevens should fit,” Ryan says, and I grin at him.

“We’ll have to pack some of this stuff up for her,” I tell them, and Sunny claps her hands.

“Everything is so pretty in here,” she breathes, delicately running her fingers over a fuzzy pink blanket, and I feel sad by how awestruck she is. It’s a nice room and actually looks pretty similar to my own room growing up and I realize, not for the first time lately, just how lucky I was.

I pass Sunny a clean pair of pink leggings, a t-shirt with a pony on the front, and a pink sweater that looks like it will be really warm. Ryan excuses himself while she gets dressed.

I look around the room and decide to pack a few things up now. If I’ve learned anything during this zomb-pocalypse, it’s that you can’t put things off or you’ll probably go without. If a hoard were to show up here, we’d have to run for it.

I grab a pink duffel bag with a picture of a ballerina on the side and empty all the tutus and tap shoes out into a pile on the floor, then I start going through each drawer and separating all the small-sized clothes from the bigger stuff and throw it into the bag. The bag is already bulging, but I manage to squeeze in a couple extra books, dolls, and ponies– no sense letting all this stuff go to waste.

“Is that for me?” Sunny asks, her eyes bulging, and I nod, giving her a big smile. I’m surprised when she leaps out of the bed and gives me a huge hug. “Thank you,” she murmurs, her words muffled in my vest.

I pat her on the back before I usher her into the bed. She chooses the bottom bunk, and I tuck the blankets around her. “Have a sleep, and you’ll feel better when you wake up,” I tell her, and she finally shuts her eyes after making me promise that she can play with the toys when she wakes up.

I leave the room smiling with the duffel bag slung over my shoulder. Ryan is out in the hallway, and he smiles back. “Cute kid,” he says, and I nod.

“Where’s Silas?” I ask, and Ryan nods towards the stairs.

“He’s out in the garage taking some of the stuff out so we can clean it.” I’m a little surprised at that.

“I’m gonna go put this bag in the back for Sunny,” I say, and Ryan looks like he wants to follow me, but stops.

“Do you think it’s okay to leave her up here alone?” he asks, and I shrug.

“I have no idea,” I tell him honestly. “The house is clear, and the garage is attached, so we could leave the door open to listen for her,” I say, and Ryan nods.

“Good idea,” he walks up and kisses me on the forehead before sliding the duffel bag off my shoulder. He slings it over his own shoulder, and I have to suppress a giggle. He looks pretty adorable with that pink bag. I don’t say anything though; I’ll leave that up to Silas.

Silas, predictably, bursts out laughing when Ryan and I walk into the garage. Ryan looks confused, and I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing.

“What?” he asks, frowning at Silas.

“Is that your new purse?” Silas mocks with a chuckle. “Do you carry your tampons in there?” A giggle escapes my lips, though I stiffen my upper lip when Ryan looks my way. It’s immature I know, but we don’t have a lot of moments like this anymore.

“Real mature guys,” Ryan mutters, loosening one of the tie down straps and shoves the duffel bag into the back of the truck. I watch him skillfully tie it back up and stop laughing. I really do have a lot to learn. It seems unfair that this stuff comes so naturally to both the guys.

“How’s it going back there?” Ryan asks Silas, choosing to ignore the fact that he’s still laughing. Silas stops laughing and wrinkles his nose.

“Not too good. I’ve got everything unpacked, but it’s gonna be a big job,” he says, and I peek my head around to look at the seat. There are enough windows in this garage that we have plenty of natural light. Though after looking at the seat, I kind of wish I couldn’t see it quite so well.

It’s a gory mess. I knew it was bad, but this is the first opportunity I’ve had to really examine it. The blood has dried and hardened, though the smell has only gotten worse. Small green fuzz is starting to grow out of the black crusted zombie blood, and I wince. That can’t be healthy! The floor is no better, but I’m hoping we can pull out the mats and get rid of most of that mess. In addition to the blood and mold, there are also small bits of bone and skin fragments everywhere. I stare at a piece of skin that has dehydrated and shriveled up enough to mold itself around the top of the headrest.

“This is impossible,” I say, feeling discouraged before we even start.

“I saw some cleaning supplies under the sink, I’ll go get them,” Ryan says, taking off at a jog. I’m left alone in the garage with Silas as we both stare at the mess.

“I have an idea,” Silas says, reaching into the truck and pulling one of the levers on the side of the seat. The seat starts to fold up, and Silas yanks it right out of the truck.

“Whoa,” I say, surprised that the seats are removable.

“These seats come right out. It will make it easier,” he says as he lifts the seat down onto the garage floor, being careful to keep the grossness away from his face.

The next seat is bigger and is actually two seats together, so I go around to the other side and help him lift it out. Though really, I’m probably more of a hindrance than a help.

The truck looks way different without the seats, and the main mess is now just on the carpet mats. Silas reaches in and pulls them out, which takes care of a lot of it, but there is still some gore that the carpet didn’t catch. “A little elbow grease and the carpet is probably salvageable. The seats are screwed though,” Silas says, and I can’t help but agree with him.

“Are we just going to drive it without seats?” I ask, feeling skeptical. Silas shakes his head.

“That won’t work because the front seats are messed up too, and the driver needs to be able to sit up.”

Ryan comes back lugging a cardboard box of stuff. “I found some gloves, bleach, pine sol, and a broom,” he says, setting his stuff down and staring into the truck.

“This isn’t gonna work,” Silas says, putting a damper on Ryan’s excitement. “The seats are too messed up. We’ll never be able to get the stains out, never mind the smell.”

“What if we…” Ryan starts to say and then trails off—he has no idea either.

“If we had electricity and an industrial upholstery cleaner—maybe,” Silas says, though from the tone of his voice, he’s still skeptical

“What are we going to do about Sunny then?” I blurt out, making Silas look sour.

“She might just have to suck it up,” Silas says, making Ryan and I both glare at him. “What?” Silas demands, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “This isn’t some princess tea party, its life and death.”

“If we can fix it, we have to try,” Ryan says stubbornly, making Silas roll his eyes.

“She needs to toughen up, and fast,” Silas disputes, sounding cold and heartless.

“Silas, she’s just a little girl,” I remind him, but he stubbornly shakes his head.

“Exactly,” he says like that proves some sort of point. “I wouldn’t go getting attached if I were you,” he says callously, and I actually gasp.

Ryan steps forward and shoves him hard enough that his back hits the wall. “Shut up,” Ryan warns him, but Silas just grins at him in a twisted way.

“You two can’t handle the truth,” he taunts us, making me want to slap him. I curl my hand into a fist and squeeze until my fingernails hurt my palm. “She’s going to die, and there’s nothing you two can do about it. We can barely survive—a kid has no chance,” he says flatly.

Ryan pulls his arm back to punch Silas right in the face, but I throw myself between them.

“Don’t!” I warn Ryan, and he looks stunned.

“You’re actually gonna defend this guy?” he spits, and I shake my head.

“No, he’s being a jerk, but it won’t help anything to hit each other.” Ryan shakes his head, steps away from Silas, and turns his back on the both of us.

“I don’t care if you think it’s pointless, I’m going to clean the truck anyway,” Ryan huffs as he grabs a seat and starts spraying it with something.

Silas and I watch him work in silence for a few minutes. I turn to Silas, and there is a weird look in his face, self-loathing probably.

“I didn’t say I didn’t want a clean truck,” Silas says, walking over towards Ryan and pushing the seat out of his hand. “I just said this isn’t the way to do it.” Ryan’s scowl is black as he looks up at Silas.

“What then?” I demand, and Silas grins.

“Silas saves the day again,” Silas says, making both Ryan and I cringe. “I’m going for a drive, this is a super common truck, especially out here in farm country, there has to be another one around. We can swap the seats.”

I digest his idea. It’s kind of crazy. “How will you even find another truck?” I ask, and Silas snorts.

“Most of the population is dead, people’s vehicles will just be sitting where they left them. I’ll do a snatch and grab on the first one I see.” Silas pulls the keys out of his pocket and starts towards the truck.

“Wait,” I say, and Silas surprises me by actually stopping. “You can’t go alone,” I say, making Silas look annoyed.

“I’ll go with him,” Ryan volunteers, making my heart stutter.

“You can’t,” I say, making them both look at me sharply. “You’ll kill each other.”

Silas laughs. “One of us might die, Blondie, but it wouldn’t be me,” he says cockily, and again I have to resist the urge to slap him.

“I’ll go,” I say, surprising myself. Have I become some sort of dangerous thrill seeker?

Ryan and Silas both shake their heads. “It’s too dangerous,” Ryan says, and I narrow my eyes at him.

“Someone has to stay with Sunny who can protect her properly,” I tell Ryan, and he and I both know that person should not be Silas.

I jump in the passenger seat before either one of them can protest. Silas stares after me before shrugging his shoulders. “Blondie and me will be back before dark. You protect the brat and hold down the fort,” Silas says, obviously trying to stir Ryan’s temper once more before we leave.

“Do you have to be such a jack ass?” I ask him when he gets in the driver’s seat, and he nods at me with a grin.

Ryan looks like he’s going to refuse, but after a couple seconds of staring after me, he goes to the door and lifts it for us. We drive out, surprising a zombie that’s hanging around outside the garage door. Silas runs him over with the truck before revving the engine and taking off like a shot.

I look back in the rear-view mirror and watch Ryan stab the twitching zombie in the head before pulling the door back down.

My stomach twists into knots of anxiety. I hope we aren’t making a huge mistake by breaking up the group.

Chapter Ten

We drive in silence for the next few miles, our eyes scanning the landscape for our very own Hail Mary save. I know Silas is pretty good at stuff like this, but I still try and keep a mental map of each turn we take. I’m a little terrified of getting turned around and lost out here. Everything looks the same. Sure, we all know where we’re headed, but I would hate myself if I stranded Ryan in the middle of nowhere without a vehicle, and only a little girl to help him reach the cabin.

“Relax, Blondie, I know where the farm is,” Silas says, tapping his temple like I’m supposed to believe he’s infallible, and once again I find it creepy that he seems to be able to read my mind.

“Where are we going?” I ask, pushing the feeling aside, and he shrugs.

“Hopefully not too far,” is all he says before cranking up the country music. I bite back my annoyance as we tear down the deserted country road at breakneck speeds.

I reach over and snap off the music. “I can’t take it anymore,” I admit. “You need to find a new CD.”

Silas chuckles. He seems way more relaxed now that we’re away from Sunny and the farm.

“So…” I say, and Silas looks at me uneasily, his face turning back down to a scowl.

“What?” he asks gruffly.

“Why were you being such a dick back there?” I blurt out and then hold my breath, waiting for him to explode.

“Just drop it, Jane,” he warns me, and I really do want to follow his advice, but I figure if we’re trapped together in this truck, I may as well make him hash it out—clear the air.

“I can’t,” I tell him honestly.

“It’s like I said, and I’m not saying this to be a dick, but you shouldn’t get attached to Sunny. Little kids can’t survive this. Honestly you shouldn’t get attached to anyone,” he clarifies, and I feel my anger start to rise, but then I take a closer look at Silas. He isn’t gloating or trying to piss me off. He honestly believes this.

“Is this because of your brother?” I ask, hating to bring it up, but I feel an almost burning need to find out what is making Silas tick. Silas’s mouth turns down, and he shakes his head.

“Drop it, Jane,” he warns, but he isn’t yelling. His voice is quiet, and that’s almost scarier than angry Silas.

“If Sunny was your brother, you’d want someone to help him,” I say, knowing that I’m hurting him and hating it, but I want to drive my point home. He can’t take his feelings out on a little girl.

“My brother is dead!” he yells at me, his face twisting into grief for a second before he turns back to the road and looks away from me. “He’s better off. That bite saved him a horrible, hard life.” I sit in my seat, shocked that he actually just said his brother is better off being dead. Silas reaches over and flips the radio knob and country music pounds back through the cab. I don’t turn it off this time because even terrible country music is better than the awkward silence between us.

We develop a bit of a routine. Every time we come to a farmhouse, Silas pulls in and we slowly circle the driveway looking for what we need. There are a lot of old beater trucks in this area and a few new ones too, but, so far, none that match what we need.

Silas even gets out and peeks in garage windows, but still, nothing.

“Maybe we should just take one of these other trucks?” I suggest, but Silas instantly shakes his head.

“We have way too much stuff to move, never mind the fuel tank, it’s half full, and we’d never be able to move it ourselves,” he tells me as he puts the truck in park and stops to pull out the map. “There has to be one around here somewhere,” he says, but I’m not sure I believe him. We’ve been at this for over an hour already.

“It’s gonna get dark soon,” I remind him even though I’m pretty sure he knows.

“Yes, Mother,” he snipes back, folding up the map and cranking the wheel of the truck to change directions.

“Where are we going?” I ask, not liking this at all.

“There’s a small town about ten miles from here. There will be something there for sure,” he tells me, and my stomach sinks. What is with Silas and all these towns?

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I say, making him release an annoying snort of laughter.

“It’s too much of a crapshoot going farm to farm, we need somewhere there are more people to increase our chances.”

I don’t even bother reminding him that more people mean more zombies. He already knows; he just doesn’t care.

I see the town up ahead and wonder how we missed it this whole time. It’s the only thing around here for miles! The first thing I see is a large blue water tower that juts up higher than any other buildings. It’s another one of those small, picturesque towns that could be on a postcard with all the white picket fences. Silas tears through the middle of town past zombies who are so slow they almost look like statues.

He takes a corner much faster than he should, and then we are on a smaller side street with shady trees overhead. “What about that one?” I ask, pointing to a blue Ford parked up the street.

Silas shakes his head. “It’s too old, the seats won’t match up,” he tells me, and I feel disappointment, though I guess it really couldn’t be that easy.

We drive up and down the smaller side streets, avoiding the main part of town until I see a truck that looks a lot like the truck we’re driving. I must see the truck at the same time Silas does because before I can even open my mouth, Silas slams on the brakes.

We both pull our guns from our hips and ease out of the truck. Silas walks over to the other truck, cups his hands against the window, and examines the upholstery. “It looks the same,” he says, and my heart does a little leap of joy.

Silas reaches over and tries the door handle, but it’s locked. “Damn it!” he cusses.

“What now?” I ask nervously as my eyes scan every nook and cranny in our surrounding area for movement.

Silas doesn’t answer me as he pulls his axe from his belt and swings it as hard as he can at the driver’s side window. “Get ready to move, Blondie,” is the only warning he gives me before the horrible honking alarm starts to go off.

My heart falls to my feet, and I stand rooted to the spot, stunned. Is Silas for real? I stare at Silas as he uses the handle of the axe to clear out the rest of the window and then reaches in and hits the door locks.

“Turn it off!” I demand, but he just shakes his head; he can’t hear me over the screaming alarm.

“Silas!” I squeak, spying a group of curious zombies that comes surging around the corner of the street, but of course, the alarm is so loud he can’t hear me.

Silas has the first door open and is manhandling the front seat out, but he doesn’t have time to place it, so he just chucks it in the truck box on top of our other supplies. A few zombies are staggering out of a nearby house, and I raise my gun and aim at them. The shot goes wide, so I do the craziest thing ever, and run towards them so I can get closer for a better head shot.

The zombies go down hard each with a neat bullet in their brain, they land with a soft thud in the overgrown grass, and I suck in a deep breath as I sprint back towards the truck. Silas has one of the backseats out, but he’s forced to drop it to bring his gun up and take out a zombie that’s gotten way too close.

He shoots me a dirty look as he picks the seat back up, stepping over the corpse to race around to the other side of the truck. I grind my teeth together in frustration. He’s seriously mad at me? He’s the one that set off the zombie beacon! He didn’t even stop long enough to loop me in on his big master plan.

I sense more than feel a shadow fall across my back, and the terror makes me lose my mind. Silas is in front of me, so I know whatever is behind me is nothing good. For a split second I’m almost tempted not to look, but that would be crazy. I spin just in time to avoid a zombie whose teeth have almost made their way into the flesh of my shoulder. “Holy shit!” I yell as I press the muzzle of my gun to the zombie’s face and pull the trigger. He’s so close that I can’t do anything else. I take off at a dead run back towards the truck. I need something solid at my back so I don’t have to worry about attacks on all sides.

More zombies are approaching, and I really don’t see how we’re going to get out of this alive. “Just leave it Silas!” I scream at him at the top of my lungs to be heard over the blaring truck, but he stubbornly shakes his head, reaching into the back of the truck to pull out another seat.

I aim and squeeze off a few more rounds, but my fingers are shaking too much, so my shots aren’t hitting. I stop for a second and shake my fingers out, hoping to get rid of some of my jitters, though it isn’t likely with this many zombies coming at us.

The entire street is filling up with zombies in all directions. Attracted by the noise, they’re swarming like locusts, and I lose my nerve.

“Silas!” I scream, aiming at a zombie that’s gotten so close that I actually hit him. Silas glances up from tossing the other seat in the back of the truck. “We have to go!” I yell to be heard, and thankfully, after taking a look at the crowd, he nods.

The zombies are closing in fast, and I watch Silas climb up into the back of the truck to avoid the few that are snapping at his ankles. It’s a tight squeeze with all the seats he’s jammed up there on top of the stuff we already had.

“Jane!” he yells, taking the keys from his pocket and tossing them over to me, and my heart stutters.

I watch them sail towards me, and I reach for them. They’re almost in my palm when a zombie bumps into me, knocking me back against the truck. I let out a scream, expecting the bite at any moment, but instead I feel the air whoosh by me as a bullet comes within an inch of my skull.

The zombie goes down right on top of the keys, and I let out a frustrated yell as I’m forced to roll the stinking corpse to the side. I grab the keys out of a puddle of black sludge and leap into the truck. I’m glad we didn’t already replace the old gross seats as I wipe the keys a couple times against the filthy upholstery before ramming the key in the ignition, with a quick prayer that the goop doesn’t cause some kind of engine failure.

The truck fires right up, and I let out a sigh of relief, even though we are nowhere close to being home free. Zombies beat against the windows, snarling and snapping at the glass, and through all of that noise I can hear Silas yelling at me to get the hell out of here. I press down on the gas and force the truck through the wall of zombies. They are thickest on the road, so I aim the nose of the truck towards somebody’s once perfectly manicured lawn and pin it when I see a break in the crowd. Zombies bounce off the truck, and I only begin to relax once we’ve outdistanced the horde.

I drive us out of town, and finally the hammering in my heart slows down enough that I can hear other things over the roar in my ears. The first thing I hear is that damn country music cd, and it makes me even madder at Silas.

I reach over, pull it from the disc changer, and chuck it out the window as hard as I can. I feel a small surge of vindictive pleasure doing so, I’m not gonna lie. I drive a few more miles until I’m sure the road is deserted, and then I pull over and get out.

Silas jumps down from the box of the truck and grins at me. I don’t return it. “That was some good drivin’ back there,” he exclaims, his southern drawl extra pronounced in his excitement.

I start walking towards Silas and his stupid grinning face, and Silas, of all the crazy things, holds his arms out to me like he thinks I’m going to hug him! I walk right up to him and give in to the urges I’ve been having for the last few days, and punch him square in the face.

Silas doesn’t move a muscle when my fist bounces off his cheekbone, but I do. My hand feels like it’s on fire. I let out a roar of pain and clutch my throbbing hand to my chest as I double over. I look up to see Silas watching me with a grin on his face, and I’m thunderstruck. He isn’t even mad.

“I might have deserved that,” he admits, surprising the hell out of me.

“Damn right you did,” I say, forcing myself to stand up straight despite the throb in my knuckles. “I threw away your stupid CD too!” I yell at him, and he actually throws his head back and laughs.

“I don’t think Garth Brooks and the Dixie Chicks deserved that, but I did,” he says, and I’m starting to wonder if he didn’t do some sort of voodoo personality swap with one of the zombies back there.

“First time hitting someone?” he asks.

Even though I’m pissed at him, I nod grudgingly.

“Next time don’t put your thumb inside your fist,” he tells me, making me blink in surprise. It’s weird that he would help me because chances are, if there is a next time I punch someone, it will most likely be him!

Silas takes a bottle of water out of his backpack and takes a long swallow before pouring some on a clean t-shirt, also from his bag. He folds it up into a small square and passes it over to me. “Put this on your hand for a while. It’s not ice, but it’s the next best thing,” he says, and I reluctantly take it.

“Thanks,” I mumble, feeling guilty when I notice that his eye is starting to get a bit of a bruise.

“Let’s get back, it’ll be dark soon,” Silas says when I continue to stare at his face.

I almost miss the stupid CD on the way back to the farmhouse where we left Ryan and Sunny, neither Silas nor I have much to say, and the silence is a bit heavy.

We pull in, and I’m relieved to see that there aren’t zombies scratching at the outside of the house. Everything looks quiet. The garage door opens as soon as we pull in, and I know that Ryan was watching for us. I can imagine how worried he must have been because, if our roles were reversed, I would have been a wreck.

Silas backs us into the garage, and Ryan pulls the garage door shut. There isn’t a lot of light left, but I can still see a bit in the dimness of the garage. My door is wrenched open, and Ryan pulls me into his arms. I hug him back tightly, glad we made it back to him.

“Sunny was worried about you,” Ryan tells me, and I nod, hiding a smile in his collar—I don’t think Sunny was the only one.

“I’ll go and let her know we’re back,” I tell him, and he presses a kiss to my cheek before letting me go.

“Play nice,” I warn them as I walk away through the darkening house, my cheek tingling where Ryan kissed it. I wonder, not for the first time, what is up with all the chaste pecks? I crave the hungry, open mouthed kiss he gave me back in New York, but he hasn’t made a move like that since. The teenage girl part of my brain agonizes over it. Did he hate it? Is he just not that interested in me? The survivor side of me knows that we don’t have time for fooling around. I make my way upstairs and see a light coming out from underneath the bedroom door.

I walk in to find her playing with the dollhouse. A black garbage bag is taped over the window, and a camping lantern is lighting the place up.

“I’m back,” I say to get her attention, and she jumps up and races over to hug me.

She almost knocks the breath out of me when she connects with my waist with all the grace of a cement block.

“Hey,” I laugh, and she joins in.

“I’m glad you’re back,” she squeals, and her enthusiasm warms me up.

“Me too,” I tell her, and I really mean it.

“Do you want to play dolls with me?” she asks, and it’s a tempting offer. I look back at the door. Silas and Ryan are busy in the garage, so there is no one here to judge me. I look into Sunny’s hopeful face and nod.

“Okay,” I tell her, walking over and grabbing a doll in a sparkly purple dress. Dolls sound like the perfect way to unwind after almost getting eaten alive by zombies.

Chapter Eleven

“You going up to bed?” Silas asks, and I nod.

“I’m gonna go check on Ryan and Sunny, see how he made out putting her to bed,” I tell him, a smile tugging at my lips as I remember the way Sunny insisted that it had to be Ryan who read her a story. “Besides, it’s creepy down here in the dark,” I admit my ulterior motive, and Silas chuckles.

“It is a little grim, being in someone else’s house in the middle of all of this,” Silas admits, and I’m surprised that he’d admit such a thing to me. The living room would have been an ideal place to crash, but with the dog attacks—it’s too gruesome. That’s another reason this place is creeping me out!

We’ve had to hang out in the kitchen all night, and in addition to the chairs being hard and uncomfortable, the entire wall facing out to the back deck is made of glass. It lets in enough moonlight to see, but it’s also creepy and far too big to cover up with garbage bags. So candles and lanterns are out. Glass walls don’t exactly leave me feeling safe from the thousands of zombies wandering the countryside. When I raised the alarm, both Silas and Ryan assured me that the six-foot-tall wooden fence surrounding the backyard would keep the zombies away. I try not to think about the town where I met Silas and how the zombies had managed to push up against the back gate and break it open…

“I might come up with you,” Silas says, pulling my attention away from my dark thoughts. “It’s getting a little cold down here, a smaller room will hold the heat better,” he says, getting up off his chair and stretching his long body until I hear his back pop and crack. I wince, and he smirks at me, having seen my face in the moonlight. I give one last look out at the yard. Tonight is one of those cold, clear nights where the stars look extra bright, and the grass is covered in a thin layer of white frost. Winter is coming, and I am not ready to spend it without electricity and heat.

“Come on,” Silas says gently, touching my arm, and I jerk my gaze away from the window. “It will be alright,” he says, thinking my worry is only for the glass wall. I nod, and he keeps a warm hand on my arm to guide me through the dark house as we make our way upstairs. A crack of light escapes out from underneath the girly bedroom that Sunny has claimed for her own.

Silas and I creep in, not wanting to wake Sunny. Well—I creep—Silas is just naturally stealthy. We both stop and stare at Ryan and Sunny, a smile tugging my lips upward. Ryan is lying on his back with Sunny snuggled up against his shoulder, both of them sound asleep, tucked underneath the pink blanket. Though Ryan has also unzipped his sleeping bag and stretched it overtop the two of them for added heat. I walk over and gently remove the princess book from Ryan’s chest.

Silas grabs his own sleeping bag from our pile of stuff by the Barbie dream house and climbs the ladder to the top bunk. I hesitate, not sure what to do. The beds are only twin sized, and Ryan and Sunny are both sprawled out, leaving me no room to join them.

“I don’t bite,” Silas says with a chuckle from the top bunk, and I pause. It’s no big deal, I tell myself as I walk stiffly over to grab my own pink and red sleeping bag, courtesy of the camping store.

“Will you bring my backpack too?” Silas asks, and I nod as I snag the strap around my wrist and pass both things up to him before kicking off my shoes and climbing the ladder.

I roll my sleeping bag out beside Silas while he’s busy digging in his bag. “I’ve been meaning to get my hands on you,” he says suddenly, and I freeze, my heart accelerating to beat wildly in my chest.

“What?” I squeak, sure I am overreacting.

“Yes,” Silas confirms, grabbing my hand, and I look up at him sharply.

“What are you doing?” I ask in confusion, finally noticing the first aid kit in his lap.

“I want to take a look at those stitches I gave you, it’s probably time for them to come out,” he says, rolling up my sleeve, and I let out a big sigh of relief. I was overreacting, thank God. Silas isn’t interested in me like that. I’m so glad I didn’t freak out at him and make myself look like a fool!

I watch Silas gently poke and prod at my arm. It’s healed up a lot in the last week and a half, and now I barely think about the six-inch cut that runs a ragged line from my wrist towards my elbow. I look like I tried to kill myself.

Silas take a small pair of scissors from the bag, and I snatch my arm away from him. “What are you doing?” I demand, not liking the idea of anything sharp coming too close.

“I have to take out your stitches,” he tells me, surprisingly patient, and I hesitate.

“For Christ sake, you let me put them in didn’t you?” he demands, losing a bit of his cool.

“Yeah, but that was an emergency, and I didn’t know you then,” I quip, making him look up angrily. Though when he sees the smile on my face and knows I’m only teasing, he relaxes again.

“Keep it up and these stitches will start growing into your skin,” he warns me, and that does it for me. I hand over my arm.

“Is this going to hurt?” I can’t help asking. I’m a baby, and I know it.

Silas shrugs, and I narrow my eyes at him suspiciously. “No vodka today?” I ask, and he laughs.

“It won’t be that bad,” he promises, using the scissors to snip the knots at either end of the stitching. I wince, expecting pain, but it doesn’t hurt.

Silas carefully picks up one end of the thread and starts to tug it loose, and a burning sensation tears through my wound.

“Hey!” I almost yell before remembering to lower my voice, so it’s a whisper yell.

“It burns a bit, kind of like rope burn, but that’s all,” Silas tells me as he gives it another tug. It’s not horrible pain, but it’s also not pleasant. My eyes water a bit as Silas tugs the last piece of thread out. “All done,” he tells me, holding the string up like some sort of prize. “Do you want to keep it as a memento?” he asks.

I frown at him and shake my head. “No thanks,” I say, wrinkling my nose. “I think the scar will be memento enough to remember the time I almost died,” I tell him, and he nods, tossing the string over the edge of the bed. I almost tell him to get up and put it in the garbage properly, but I guess it doesn’t matter.

I stare down at my arm, at the jagged scar. It isn’t pretty, but I’m alive, and considering the circumstances, Silas did a pretty good job. I look over at him as he tucks away his tools and have to suppress a snicker. I can’t believe I ever thought this guy was a doctor.

Silas looks up and sees me grinning at him and smiles back. I run my hand over the scar, surprised at how fast the human body can heal itself. It barely hurts anymore, just the odd twinge when I try and do something crazy.

I tug my vest and weapons off, but leave them close by. Then I crawl into my sleeping bag that Silas has kindly unrolled for me and settle in, letting out a sigh as my tired, aching body finally has a chance to relax. I’m much too young to be this sore and tired at sixteen!

“What was your life like before?” I blurt out and feel Silas stiffen beside me. “Sorry,” I apologize, but he shakes his head.

“It’s okay,” he says, surprising me. “I’d just graduated high school a few months before all this started,” he says after a minute of silence—I didn’t really think he was going to answer. “I still lived at home, didn’t go to college or anything like that, but I was working in a welding shop, making pretty good bank.” I look over at Silas, but he’s staring up at the ceiling like he can see his old life up there.

“I partied on the weekends with my friends,” his voice catches, but he clears his throat and continues. “I hunted with Dad and my little brother, we lived on a great parcel of land that sat at the edge of some woods…” He trails off and then looks at me.

“What about you?” he asks, and I’m kind of disappointed. I wanted to learn more about Silas, but that was a lot for him to share though, so I don’t push.

“I was a junior,” I say, picking through my life in my head, trying to think of what to share. “Head cheerleader,” I add, and, predictably, Silas laughs.

“Figures,” he says softly, but I don’t detect any disdain in his voice.

“You saw the house I grew up in,” I tell him, and he nod.

“Yeah, it was nice,” he agrees, and I start to feel like I actually like the person lying beside me.

“My Dad is…was an investment broker, and my Mom was a house wife. We had these huge dinners every Sunday night—we were always so busy during the week—but we always came together on Sunday, usually Abby was there too.” A tear leaks down my cheek, and Silas reaches up and brushes it away.

“Do you think we would’ve been friends before?” I ask to change the subject as much as for my own curiosity, and Silas chuckles.

“Definitely not, Blondie,” he says honestly, and I know he’s right. Silas is the type of badass that good girls like me were warned to stay away from. I fall asleep with a smile on my face, remembering the good times even though they’re gone.

I’m having a great dream about my parents, life is back to normal, and we are happily planting a garden out back in our yard… A scream rips through the night. At first I think it’s part of my dream, but when I hear it again, it startles me awake.

For a second my confused brain teeters between wakefulness and sleep, trying desperately to hold onto the image of my parents—but they’re gone. I struggle to sit up, glancing blearily around. The lantern is still on, and the room is lit up like a Christmas tree. I accidentally elbow Silas in the stomach, and I hear him groan.

“Sorry,” I whisper automatically, “What’s going on?” I spy my weapons belt pushed down near the end of the bed and lunge for it, strapping it around my waist by muscle memory as my eyes adjust to the light, and I scan the room.

Silas jumps down off the bed and, after grabbing my vest, I scurry down to follow him. Sunny is sitting up in the bed, tears falling down her cheeks, and Ryan is sitting beside her, trying to comfort her. “What’s wrong?” I whisper, and Ryan shrugs helplessly.

“I think it was just a bad dream,” he says, but Sunny shakes her head.

“I heard them,” she sobs harder, and I start to get the creeps. Silas walks towards the door like he’s going to throw it open to prove there is nothing outside, but Sunny screams, and starts freaking out when he gets too close. “NO!”

“Silas, don’t,” I warn him, not sure if I’m siding with Sunny because opening the door will upset her further, or if I’m now just as scared as she is. Silas pauses outside the door, and then we hear it.

There is a sudden flurry of scratching at the door. In the quiet room it’s overly loud, and we all stop and stare at the door in shock, unable to look away. Sunny opens her mouth to scream, but Ryan slips a hand over her mouth. I look over at Silas, but suddenly I can’t see him because the entire room goes dark as the flame from the lantern flickers and dies.

“What just happened?” I whimper. I feel something brush past me and jump.

“It’s just me,” Silas murmurs, and I can hear him digging around. I can’t see anything, but I still pull my pistol from my hip. It makes me feel a little less helpless, even if it probably won’t save my ass in the dark.

The light from a flashlight beam cuts through the oppressive darkness. With the bag over the window, there hadn’t even been light from the moon.

Ryan still has his hand over Sunny’s mouth, and the scratching at the door hasn’t stopped.

Silas stops to check out the lantern. “It ran out of kerosene,” he tells us, and I’m only slightly relieved that it wasn’t some sort of ghostly intervention, just good old fashioned bad luck.

“Put the kid in the closet,” Silas barks out orders, and I half wish I could go hide in there too.

I watch Ryan carry Sunny, wrapped up in the pink blanket, and sets her in the closet, urging her to close her eyes and be very quiet. She whimpers when he shuts the door, but other than that, she stays quiet.

“What in the fuck is out there?” Silas demands when the scratching stops and a low chorus of growling takes over.

All three of us stand with our weapons out, pointed at the door, not sure what kind of monster is out there.

A bark interrupts the quiet, and all three of us stare at each other in surprise. “Dogs,” I whisper, my heart sinking. “There were more of them?” I ask, and the guys shake their heads. They don’t know any more than I do.

“It makes sense,” Silas says after a moment, looking pissed off. “We were so stupid. How didn’t we think this through?” he demands, pacing back and forth in the small room. I’m not following, and, by the look on Ryan’s face, neither is he.

“What?” Ryan demands, and Silas turns to us with an ill look on his face.

“One dog couldn’t have taken out that family we found downstairs,” his words sink in, and I start to shiver. It had been a family?

“Can they get in here?” I ask, not feeling as reassured as I should at finding out it isn’t zombies outside our door. The dogs are just as bad; they will still shred us apart, we just won’t turn into zombies after.

Silas nods his head. “Eventually,” he confirms all our fears.

“How’d they even get in here?” Ryan asks, and the glass wall flashes through my mind before I dismiss it. The dogs probably didn’t smash a window. We would have heard it break. Something tugs at my memory, and I suddenly remember the doggy door.

“The dog door,” I say out loud, remembering now that I saw one that led into the house beside the blood-stained dog house.

“We need to get out of here,” Silas says, staring at the door, thinking.

Ryan presses a button on his wristwatch and it lights up. “It’s almost dawn,” he tells us, and my heart pounds harder at the thought of facing these things in the dark.

“Do you think we can hold out until its light?” I ask, and Silas nods his head.

“It’s probably best not to go out there shooting blind. They aren’t dumb like the zombies. They have a pack mentality, even though they’ve been domesticated.” Silas warns.

The dogs growl and snarl outside the door; the sound of their claws chipping away at the bottom of the door makes me shake as I run around gathering up our supplies. We pull the blackout bags off the windows since we’ll need the light, and then Ryan grabs Sunny from the closet and we all climb up on the top bunk to wait for the sun.

I feel a bit safer up here, if the dogs break in, they probably won’t be able to reach us before we can shoot them—though that depends on how many dogs are out there. I do worry about the bunk bed not being made to hold all our weight, but since none of us are overly large, I push the thought to the back of my mind. Having a bunk bed collapse underneath me is not even in the same category of scary as being torn apart by a pack of wild dogs.

We sit uncomfortably squished together on the twin-sized bed like sardines, guns out, backpacks and sleeping bags rolled up and strapped to our backs, ready to move out the second we get an opening.

Ryan tries to entertain Sunny by bringing up a few of the dolls, but she still starts crying every time the dogs do something especially noisy. I know that I should be helping Ryan with Sunny, comforting her in some way, but when the dogs break out in a loud chorus of growls outside, I’m just as paralyzed with fear as she is.

“They’re fighting,” Silas whispers, and amid the growls I hear a dog yip and cry out, and then a thud. The scratching stops at the door for a bit and we all listen, straining our ears to hear more whimpers of pain and then a loud chorus of growling.

“What the hell are they doing?” Ryan asks, but Silas only shrugs.

“I’m not the fricken dog whisperer,” Silas snipes, adjusting his gun.

Light finally starts to creep into the sky and just in the nick of time. The bottom of the door is starting to wear away, and for the last ten minutes we’ve been able to see a large canine snout with massive white teeth as the dog gnaws persistently at the hollow core door.

Sunny lets out a squeal, which only seems to spur the dogs on faster. More growling, and the black snout is pushed out of the way to be replaced by an even larger dog. Judging by its nose, it looks like a German Shepard. Great.

We sit for another half an hour, our muscles getting stiff, until the room is flooded with sunshine. “It’s time,” Silas tells us, picking up his AR-15 from beside him on the bed. The gun looks massive and out of place in this princess themed bedroom, but I’m really glad he has it.

The plan is to pepper the door with high velocity shots, and hope it will take out most of the dogs, before we make our run for the truck. We carefully climb down from the bed. Ryan carries Sunny. I hear him whisper for her to cover her ears, and I do the same. Silas stands, legs apart and with the AR held up to his shoulder, he aims for the bottom half of the door. The Shepard has enough of its head in the room now that I can see the whites of its eyes. They are either rabid or starving, and as much of an animal lover as I am, I don’t care at this particular moment. These dogs want to kill me, so I am okay with killing them first. They’re very obviously out of control and need to be put down.

Silas presses his finger to the trigger, letting the machine gun go full auto as he empties half the rounds out of the magazine. The bottom of the door is a mess. The thin wood is shredded by the bullets far worse than anything the dogs accomplished in the last two hours.

Silas lets go of the trigger, and I pull my hands off my ears and hold my gun up, ready. Silas creeps forward to push open the door, and I follow him like a shadow. Ryan takes up the very back because his arms are full juggling Sunny and her pink blanket.

The scene outside the door is total carnage. Four dogs lay dead, punched full of bullets, and a fifth dog lies further back, its bones almost picked clean.

“That must have been the fight we heard earlier,” Silas tells us, “they ate the loser.”

I shudder, and Ryan tells Sunny not to look.

We make our way down the hallway towards the stairs. We have no idea if we got all the dogs, or if the survivors ran off.

The stairs are still dark because there aren’t any windows in the stairwell, but I can see the light at the bottom, so I just tell myself to breath. Silas snaps around the corner, gun up, doing a sweep like some kind of well-trained military guy, and I’m impressed. We freeze when we see the dog standing in the kitchen in front of the huge plate glass window. It’s a massive black dog that looks like a mixed breed. He lifts his lip exposing ultra-white teeth as he growls at us, his hackles rising, and Silas squeezes off two quick shots. The first one hits the dog, and he goes down. The second bullet goes right through the window, making the entire wall of glass crack and fall to the floor with a loud clatter.

I stare at the gaping space in the wall. “Holy shit,” I mutter, “Shouldn’t that have been safety glass or something?” I ask, and Silas shrugs.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he says, and we make our run for the garage. The door is still shut tight like we’d left it, so we don’t have to worry about dogs in the garage.

I let out a sigh of relief as we burst into the garage unscathed. It must not be as well insulated as the rest of the house because the dip in temperature is noticeable.

Sunny and I jump into the back of the truck, and I’m shocked at how nice the truck looks and smells. It smells like bleach, which kind of reminds me of being at the swimming pool. Silas and Ryan did a great job.

“Nice job,” I tell Silas, and he shrugs casually as we wait for Ryan to open the garage door. He gets the door up about a foot and half when I see something that makes my blood run cold. Four legs are standing just on the other side of the door, and they aren’t zombie legs.

Silas sees it too and jumps from the truck to warn him. Ryan doesn’t need his warning though because he’s already gotten the door up high enough that the dog has his head through the opening and has clamped his sharp teeth around Ryan’s knee.

Ryan lets out a scream of pain, and Silas leaps on the door handle, driving the heavy garage door down with all his weight. The dog lets go of Ryan, and I jump out of the truck just as the dog is struggling to get free from the door, but it’s pinned down. Half of its body is outside and the other half is inside the garage with us, and despite the fact that this dog just took a chunk out of Ryan, I wince.

Silas pulls out his pistol and shoots the dog point blank behind the ear, and its struggles cease.

“Are you okay?” I ask Ryan, and he nods even though I can see blood starting to seep through the leg of his jeans.

“Get in the truck!” Silas yells at us both. “Jane, you drive,” he adds, and I help Ryan limp into the back of the truck with Sunny before climbing behind the wheel.

Silas yanks the door up, letting the momentum pull it the rest of the way as he runs into the passenger seat and slams the door shut. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he tells me, and I pin it out of the garage.

“Stop!” he yells, and I look around in confusion as I slam on the brakes, making Silas bump his head on the windshield.

“Sorry,” I mutter, and he ignores me, rolling down his window and firing two shots in quick succession. I follow the direction of his barrel and see another dog slumped into the grass over by the trees. How many of them are there?

“Okay,” Silas says, rolling the window back up. “Now, let’s get out of here.” I go to put the truck in drive, but he puts his hand on my arm to stop me. “I’m driving,” he says, opening the door and getting out, coming around to my side.

I give him a dirty look, but I slide over to the passenger seat. I’m woman enough to admit that I’m not the best driver in this group.

“Are you okay?” I turn around and ask Ryan, and he nods. He has his pant leg pulled up. The bite looks painful, but there wasn’t any tearing at least. I stare at the perfect impression of a bite while he disinfects it, sucking in a deep breath as it burns and bubbles away the germs.

He hands me the bandages when I hold my hand out to help him.

“I’ll live,” he assures me and Sunny as Silas slams the door and puts the truck into gear accelerating a lot smoother than I’d done.

“Man, I can’t believe our shitty luck!” Silas vents as we get back on the road.

I nod my agreement. I mean, I can understand zombies, it’s the zombie apocalypse, but man-eating dogs…it just seems unfair.

I gently wrap Ryan’s leg, and he smiles his thanks before carefully pulling his jeans back down. “I was lucky back there,” he says, letting out a sigh, and I can’t help but admire him. I don’t know many people that would consider themselves lucky after being used as a chew toy.

“It could have been a lot worse, that’s for sure,” Silas agrees.

After making sure Sunny is okay and handing her a juice box from our supply, I pick up the map and stare at it. Despite all our problems, we’ve been making good time. That detour Silas took the other day, through the town where we found Sunny, saved us at least one hundred miles.

I start to feel a hum of excitement. We could reach the cabin tomorrow or the day after, at the latest, if this pace keeps up. I close my eyes and visualize Abby in my mind’s eye. We’re almost there.

Chapter Twelve

“You would not pay a million dollars to eat McDonald’s again!” I snort with laughter at Ryan’s crazy exclamation. The road is a long, boring place to be, especially without an iPod, or the radio—I’m almost even sorry I tossed Silas’s CD! Without technology or radio, we’ve actually resorted to talking to each other.

“How do you know?” he challenges, but there’s laughter in his eyes.

“I’m not gonna lie,” Silas chimes in from the driver’s side, “I miss me some Mickey D’s.”

I roll my eyes at them both. When I’d asked Ryan what meal he would go back and eat again before the world ended, I had expected something a little more sophisticated than a Big Mac with super-sized fries.

“What about you then, princess?” Silas asks, and I’m surprised that he’s getting into our game. The miles fly by outside the window. We haven’t had a problem since we left the house that Sunny has dubbed ‘the bad puppy house,’ and it’s nearly noon. We are all in fairly high spirits now that we are finally back on the road.

“Beef dip and fries with a Caesar side salad…oh, and chicken wings,” I say, my mouth watering at the very idea, and both of the guys gape at me.

“Geez Blondie, wouldn’t all that stuff be against your cheerleader diet?” he teases, and I laugh. I was never overweight, but like the typical teenage girl I am, I deprived myself of everything good tasting in an effort for true perfection. I let out a very Silas-like snort and shrug. The apocalypse diet has taken care of any extra softness I might’ve had. Diets be damned, these days I’d probably eat an entire cow myself if we ever came across one.

I stick my tongue out at Silas, making all three of us laugh. “Hey,” Ryan warns us, holding his finger up over his lip, and I look back and smile at Sunny. The little girl is fast asleep with her head leaning against the window.

I’m kind of jealous of the simplicity of children. I didn’t get much sleep last night either, and I’d love to be able to lay my head down and rest, but I have this unshakable feeling that bad things will happen if I’m not awake to monitor the situation—it’s crazy, I know, but that’s what the apocalypse will do to a person.

“I’d go for pizza too,” Ryan says, rubbing his flat belly. “All meat, loaded up with stuffed crust, and bread sticks,” he finishes, and my insides quiver at the thought of eating a hot slice of pizza again.

All this talk about food makes me wonder what kind of food Ryan was eating in prison, before the zombies and his subsequent break out. You always hear horror stories…, but it doesn’t seem like the time to ask with Sunny and Silas around. I doubt it’s something he wants to share. Besides, I like him the way he is right now—smiling and happy.

“It’s funny, I’m even craving macaroni and cheese,” I tell them and watch as they both make a face. “I know,” I agree, not sure why I’m thinking about the cheesy junk I couldn’t stand before…

“You know, a box of macaroni isn’t beyond our culinary reach…” Silas says, and I realize with a start that he’s right. All we need to do is find a box and boil some water!

“We’ll keep an eye out for you,” Ryan promises, and I smile at them both.

It feels a little weird that we are all smiles this morning, but it’s just so nice to have a bit of a break from constantly running for our lives, fighting off the dead, someone stealing our truck, getting attacked by a pack of dogs... Not that we are completely safe now, but for once, things aren’t going completely sideways. We’re almost to the cabin, and I feel in my gut that Abby survived. This is the first moment since the beginning of all this mess that I’ve actually felt able to draw a breath.

We don’t see much zombie activity as we drive, keeping to the country roads to put distance between us and the small towns that randomly dot the area. We pass the occasional group of zombies in the ditch, but they are way too slow to catch up. After a couple hours, my heart eventually stops leaping out of my chest every time we pass the ugly bastards.

I get so good at tuning out the gruesome corpses outside my window that I don’t give the group on the road up ahead more than a cursory glance—until Silas slams on the brakes.

“What are you doing?” I yelp, looking back over my shoulder to see how close the zombies are getting. They aren’t that far away!

“There was something weird about that first zombie,” he says, intently staring out his window at the pack leader as it races up to the truck. The first zombie is dressed oddly. He’s dressed all in black, and he even has a little white clerical collar at his throat.

“That front one’s a preacher,” Ryan says, looking a bit stunned. The zombie raises his arms and waves them around like crazy in the direction of the truck, making us all lean forward in surprise.

On closer inspection, the guy is sweating like a pig in the heat of the noon sun, and the group behind him aren’t his pals, they’re chasing him. The preacher slips on some long grass and falls down.

“He’s still alive,” Silas exclaims. The man struggles back up to his feet just as the closest zombie gets a little too close.

Silas hits the door locks and jumps out, laying down some cover fire. The preacher ducks his head but doesn’t slow his pace as he makes his way for the truck. I watch the zombie right behind his shoulder go down with an exact bullet between the eyes. I think about getting out to help, but Silas has it covered, and I’d be no help anyway. The preacher opens the back door and flings himself inside when Ryan moves over to make room. Silas ducks back inside and quickly tucks his gun back into his belt.

“Praise the Lord,” the sweaty preacher manages to get out, after a few moments spent huffing and puffing to catch his breath. “Thank you so much,” he pants, and none of us are quite sure what we should say. We stare at him like the oddity he is—a preacher roaming the countryside in the middle of a zombie outbreak. It’s kind of like seeing a fish walking around on legs!

The first zombie reaches the truck and beats against the window, making Sunny wake up with a shriek. She looks blearily around. Her eyes land on the preacher, and she screams again.

“It’s okay,” Ryan soothes her as Silas slams the truck into gear.

We peel away, leaving behind a cloud of dust and a spray of loose gravel, and Sunny finally starts to calm down. I glance into the back and see the preacher eying Sunny as she sniffles and burrows her face into Ryan’s side.

“You from around here?” Silas asks, obviously not feeling tongue-tied in the presence of a man of the cloth.

“Yes, sir. Born and raised,” the preach replies, seeming weirdly chipper for a guy that was almost a zombies lunch. “Would you good folks mind giving me a lift back to my church?” he asks, and I’m surprised.

“You’re holed up in a church?” Ryan asks, obviously feeling as curious as I am, and the preacher nods.

“We sure are. It helps us feel closer to Him. The name’s Ted Danvers,” he reaches out to shake Ryan’s hand, but Ryan notices the zombie crud on his hand and pauses awkwardly.

“Oops, sorry about that,” Ted Danvers says with an odd little laugh, and thankfully, for Ryan, he puts his hand down without insisting on the shake.

“Is this church close by?” Silas asks, and I hope for Danvers’s sake it is. I don’t think Silas is above making a preacher walk back to his church through a zombie wasteland, if it goes too far out of his way.

“Just back down the road a couple miles,” Ted says pleasantly as he points out the way. Silas doesn’t say anything, but he does turn the truck around.

“Thank you!” Ted says gratefully, reaching up to loosen his collar. “I was out trying to gather supplies for my parishioners, and that group back there started to chase me.”

“You have parishioners?” Silas asks, eying the new-comer in the rear-view mirror. Ted nods.

“Plenty of them, they began to seek me out when they first saw the signs of the Rapture,” Silas snorts at this, and I quickly look back to see if his cynicism has offended the holy man. The guy is examining the back of Silas’s head with curiosity.

“So where’s your bag, if you were out looking for supplies?” Silas asks suspiciously, and I almost open my mouth to shush Silas—not that it would do any good. I close my mouth and choose to say nothing…

“I lost it back a ways when the dead started after me,” Danvers says smoothly, and we all fall back into an uncomfortable silence.

“You kids all alone out here?” Danvers asks, causing Silas to look back at him sharply.

“We can handle ourselves,” Silas spits, and the Preacher holds his hands up in mock surrender.

“Never meant to imply otherwise, you obviously must have some skills to be surviving out here this long. You’re just awfully young—it’s a real shame…” The preacher trails off, and none of us say anything. “The church is right up here,” Danvers says, pointing toward the horizon where a big white steeple is visible.

We pull into the driveway, and I can’t help but notice all the vehicles in the parking lot. He must have a ton of people in there to take care of.

“Thank you very much, young people,” Danvers says with a smile as he sets his hand on the door, but he doesn’t actually get out and leave. “The Lord knew I was in need, and he sent you to my aid.” He reaches up and slaps Silas on the shoulder, making Silas stiffen at his touch.

“You’re welcome,” I say politely when nobody else opens their mouth. I frown at Silas; these boys really need to work on their social skills.

“Say, I have an idea. Why don’t you kids come on inside and take a rest from whatever it is you’re doing?” Silas is already shaking his head. “Break bread with me,” Danvers insists.

“Sorry, but we have somewhere to be,” Silas says bluntly, and we all watch Danvers’ face fall.

“Oh… alright then,” he says glumly, and I’m pretty sure we are going to Hell for hurting the feelings of a preacher. “I just wanted to let my parishioner’s thank you for helping me out. I know they would want to, and the church ladies always put on a great potluck…” he trails off and just sits there.

“You getting out?” Silas asks rudely, and I actually blush. I want to get to the cabin too, but being rude to a man of God just seems so….wrong.

“Maybe we could come in for a quick bite,” Ryan says finally after the man doesn’t seem to be making any effort to leave.

“That would be lovely, young man,” the preacher beams.

I glance around at all the cars that are parked haphazardly around the gravel parking lot. There doesn’t seem to be any zombies visible, but I’m a little concerned that some might come stumbling out from between the cars and surprise us.

We all bail out of the truck, but Sunny hesitates, shrinking back against the seat when I try to give her a hand down. “I don’t want to go,” she says bluntly, and once again I’m jealous of the way she can just say exactly what she’s thinking—I don’t want to go either!

“It’s okay, Sunny,” Ryan says cheerfully, “we are just going to meet some nice people, have some lunch, and then we’ll be right back in the truck.” Sunny still looks skeptical, but she reaches out and grabs Ryan’s hand with the blind trust that only children seem to possess.

“Good, good,” the preacher exclaims loudly, rubbing his hands together excitedly. “It’s just right through here,” he says, motioning us toward the front steps.

The church is quiet as we approach. Even though being quiet is a good policy whenever zombies are involved, the church almost seems too quiet for as many people as the cars in the parking lot suggest.

“After you, dear,” Preacher Danvers motions to the door, and I realize that I’m in front of the pack. I throw the door open and step inside the dim church. Everyone follows me in, bumping into my back when I balk just inside the door.

The smell hits us right away and we tense, all three of us going for the guns at our hips. A church full of living, breathing people should not smell like death. It’s so strong it makes me gag.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a deep voice bellows out, making my hand still just before I reach my gun, and I glance around quickly to see we are surrounded by three men, all pointing automatic weapons at us.

“Son-of-a-bitch!” Silas spits as the men motion us to come deeper into the church and shut the door.

Sunny lets out a whimper, and I wrap my arms around her shoulders. I want to tell her everything will be alright, but I can’t get the lie past my lips.

We all turn to Danvers to see what he’s making of all this, but he doesn’t seem the least bit surprised, and now there’s a half-demented smile playing across his lips that definitely wasn’t there before.

I see Silas’s hand inching towards his gun, but one of our captors sees it too and hits him hard with the butt of his rifle, right in the face. Silas goes down on his knees with a grunt of pain, blood running from his nose and trickling from a cut on his lip. Sunny starts to scream.

One of the men looks like they’re going to hit Sunny too, but Ryan bravely steps in front of her, making the three men laugh, and I slap my hand across her mouth to try and get their attention off of her.

A rather creepy looking individual with a bowl cut points his gun right in my face. “Don’t try being a hero,” he warns me, and I almost snicker. Me? Out of our entire group, I’m the one they pinpoint as being the badass that might mastermind some daring escape? Not likely.

“Take off that belt,” another guy demands, making me feel the furthest thing from laughing, as all my heavy weapons are yanked roughly from my waist and tossed to another guy who starts pawing through it right away.

I feel exposed and helpless without my belt, and the smell of rotting corpses does nothing to reassure me that this isn’t the end. I can’t help but freak out, wondering if these guys are going to feed us to some pet zombies or something equally as horrible.

They press a wicked looking gun into Silas’s back, and he grudgingly gets to his feet and hands over his own knives and guns, then Ryan next. They even search Sunny, though she doesn’t carry a weapon.

I want to scream in anger when they use itchy rope to tie my hands behind my back and pat me down once more, far more thoroughly than needed.

When they are finished binding us all up tighter than a trussed up turkey on Thanksgiving, they open a door and shove us inside. It’s dark, but slowly, I begin to make out the shapes of rows of pews.

My heart pounds so hard in my chest that I’m worried I won’t be able to hear any zombies shuffle up. My eyes search the darkness, trying to make out the shape of anything lurking in the dark. I don’t think there is anything, nothing has attacked us yet, but I can’t be sure. The smell of rot and death persists, and Silas goes and sits down heavily on one of the hard, wooden benches.

“What are we going to do?” I ask in a whisper, trying to keep the panic from my voice, but it comes out all tight and squeaky.

“We need to figure out a way to get out of here,” Silas says, looking around for anything he can use to escape. I’m not sure if he can see much though, because I sure can’t.

“We should’ve let the zombies eat that son-of-a-bitch!” Silas curses, and I wish we could go back and change things too.

Chapter Thirteen

“What are they gonna do to us?” Sunny asks tearfully, and I don’t know how to answer—nothing, I hope.

“They aren’t going to do anything,” Silas interrupts, surprising me that he’s taking the time to reassure the little girl. “We’re getting out of here.”

I look around the room. There doesn’t seem to be any obvious escape routes. There are a couple stained glass windows that let a tiny bit of light filter through, but they are small and located too close to the ceiling for us to climb out.

It’s ironic that one of the things that makes this church so secure from the dead is the same reason we won’t be able to escape.

I struggle against the rope that’s wrapped so tightly around my wrists. It instantly starts to rub and chafe uncomfortably, but I try to ignore the sting and keep tugging.

“Blondie,” Silas calls quietly, coming up beside me. I look up at him in the semi-lit darkness. My eyes are finally starting to adjust, and I can see a little better. Silas looks grim.

“Reach inside my jacket, the inside pocket on the right,” Silas tells me, and I wrinkle my nose at him.

“Why?” I demand, hear him let out an impatient breath.

“I have a knife in there that they didn’t find,” he whispers, and his words make my heart leap inside my chest. My hands are behind my back like everyone else’s, and I have to do some twisty maneuvers so my back is to Silas. I shake out my fingers to try and ward off the numbness that’s starting to creep up into my blood-deprived digits, so it isn’t with a lot of grace that I force my hands roughly into Silas’s pocket. He’s tall, and the angles are all wrong. My hands fumble around, and I can feel the hardness of the handle amid the fabric, but I can’t actually grab it.

“Just relax and take your time,” Silas murmurs soothingly in my ear, which seems crazy since we’re being held captive by a bunch of lunatics, and time is of the essence! “Breathe,” he commands when I attempt my uncoordinated attack once more.

I wipe away an angry tear, it’s so frustrating that such a simple task is so difficult for me, especially now when it matters so much.

I stop my exploration by brute force and pause to take a deep breath like Silas suggested. I feel hot and sticky with sweat and fear, and I’m sure I don’t smell the best either. I gently move my fingers to feel the edge of his pocket and then concentrate on dipping my hand inside. My thumb brushes against the knife, and I get excited and lose contact again.

“Almost had it,” Silas confirms as I pull back for a moment to regroup, panting, and my wrists burning like they’re on fire. I turn around and look at Silas as an idea strikes me. He’s looking back at me calmly, totally uncharacteristic for Silas—but he probably realizes that freaking out at me right now will only make me more nervous and inept.

“I have an idea,” I whisper and feel my face flush a little. It’s weird enough that it might just work. Sunny and Ryan are watching us now, which makes me feel even jumpier, but this is life and death, and I have to push all the other dumb teenager stuff aside.

“Try to hold still,” I tell him as I take a step closer and use my head instead of my hands. It’s odd, and the thick jacket covering my face, makes me sweat worse as I press my forehead into Silas’s rib cage and try to locate his pocket with my mouth. I can hear the crazy beat of his heart hammering away, and now I know that as calm as Silas is acting, he’s secretly tripping balls right now too.

I find his pocket by using my tongue to locate the opening—gross, I know—only it doesn’t seem that gross. Thankfully, his coat is new and clean of any zombie guts, and the inside of his jacket smells like Silas, fresh soap and outdoorsy. I get a good grip on the pocket with my teeth after realizing it’s too small for me to slip my whole face inside. I bite down hard and pull with everything I have.

I feel Silas sway towards me a little, but he rights himself quickly and stands his ground, and finally I hear the most joyous sound of my life: the fabric tearing. I feel the knife about to fall, so I press my chin into Silas’s ribcage to pin it down. I hear him let out a little squeak, and his entire body shudders, and despite the seriousness of the situation, I smile a little and tuck the information away for another day. Silas is ticklish.

I feel the knife slip, and I wipe the stupid grin off my face and slowly nudge the pocket knife along until I’ve got it clamped between my teeth. I straighten up, feeling a surge of elation, and Silas motions me towards one of the pews.

“Set it down there on the seat,” he tells me, and I eagerly jog over to carefully drop it where he instructed.

Silas sits down and manages to get a hold of the knife with his bound hands. Then we all sit for ten minutes, with our breath held, while he tries to cut himself loose.

It’s very anti-climactic watching him. He’s tied so tightly that he doesn’t even look like he’s doing anything other than sitting on the bench. I hear him grunt in pain, and move in closer out of concern. I’m close enough that I can see the beads of sweat popping out on Silas’s forehead. It seems like an eternity before he stands up and pulls his hands from behind his back.

His ropes are bloody, but he doesn’t complain as he brushes past me on his way to Ryan and begins to cut him loose. “No offense to you, Blondie, but if those guys came in here right now, I want someone free who stands half a chance in a fight against them,” Silas mutters as he hacks away at Ryan’s ropes.

“I didn’t say anything,” I protest innocently. His reason actually makes a lot of sense to me, now that he’s looped me in.

“You were thinking it,” he retorts, finishing up with Ryan and moving in behind me. I feel the cool press of the knife against my skin, but thankfully he doesn’t cut me. The ropes spring off, and the air actually makes the rope burn hurt worse.

“Thanks,” I tell Silas gratefully, but he doesn’t reply as he kneels down behind Sunny. The little girl whimpers when he starts to cut, but Silas is uncharacteristically gentle with her.

Sunny runs to Ryan as soon as she’s free, and Silas doesn’t bother sparing her another glance.

“See, Blondie, this is why you don’t always need a Crocodile Dundee sized knife,” Silas takes the time to tell me, and because he’s expecting some kind of reaction from me, I stick my tongue out at him—though I also make a mental note to start hiding my own small jackknife somewhere from now on.

“What now?” I ask, and we all look to Silas for an answer.

“We need to get out of here, but they have our guns and the keys to the truck,” Silas says, thinking out loud.

We all freeze when we hear the door being unlocked from the outside. “Put your hands behind you and pretend you’re still tied up,” Silas whispers urgently as he lunges forward and kicks the severed rope under one of the pews.

We all gather in a tight circle and move as far away from the door as possible, up towards the podium at the front.

One of the large men who’d wielded an automatic weapon earlier comes strolling in, though he’s ditched the scary looking machine gun now for my pistol. Anger flashes through me as I recognize the muzzled weapon. The man strides in without fear, wrongly assuming we are no threat to him because we’re tied up, and I can’t help but wonder how many people they’ve done this to! He seems so calm and confident; I know we can’t be his first victims.

He gets closer and points the gun towards us. “Time to go,” he orders with a sneer, and fear starts gnawing away at my belly. I have a lot of trust in Silas, but what can he really do with a small knife against a man with a gun?

“Where are you taking us?” Silas demands, probably trying to piss the guy off so he’ll make a mistake.

“To meet your maker,” the guy says with an evil chuckle, and Sunny starts to whimper. Ryan quickly moves in front of her before she can give away the fact that her hands are no longer tied behind her back.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask, taking a page from Silas’s play book.

“I’m not the one doing nothing,” the guy replies with a twisted grin. “I just like to watch ‘em bleed out,” he retorts, and I feel sick just looking at this monster’s face.

“We’re not going,” I goad him, and he gets a funny look on his face as he strides towards me, intent on proving me wrong. He pushes past Silas and Ryan as he takes a grab at me.

The boys spring into action, and Ryan jumps the guy from behind while Silas lays a bone-crunching punch to the center of his face. Our captor lets out a roar of anger and accidentally drops his gun when he’s forced to use both hands to ward off his attackers.

I dive for the gun, and the guy aims a brutal kick at my ribs just as my hand grazes the barrel. I let out a yelp and double over in pain as all the air is forced out of my lungs. My head spins, and I try to suck in a breath but can’t. I begin to panic and look up just in time to see Silas viciously stab the guy in the stomach. He stabs him several more times before he collapses down on his knees, and I have the vague presence of mind to wrap my fingers more firmly around the gun and roll out of the way with it.

Silas stabs the guy again and then pushes him all the way down onto the ground. The guy collapses beside me with his eyes wide and lifeless, and if I’d enough breath left in my lungs, I definitely would’ve screamed.

“Are you okay?” Ryan asks, falling to his knees beside me.

Despite the horrible pain, I nod.

“Just force yourself to take that first breath,” Silas tells me, bending down and clasping my hand and pulling me to my feet. The sharp pain of being pulled up makes me gasp and, thankfully, air finally finds its way inside my burning lungs. The next breath is easier, and even though it still hurts, it isn’t as bad as it was. Silas pulls the gun from my hand and pats me on the shoulder.

“You did good, Blondie,” he tells me.

I manage a weak smile at his praise; it is few and far between.

Ryan lets go of me to tend to Sunny, and I use a wooden pew to lean on as I watch Silas skillfully take apart my pistol and check how many rounds are left in it. “Full,” he says when he catches me watching.

“What now?” I ask, hiding the majority of my pain so I won’t be a burden.

Silas ignores me for a minute as he bends down to search the corpse of the guy he just ruthlessly dispatched. He pulls another gun from the back of his pants and hands it to me. “You and Sunny stay here,” he commands. I want to object, but he has that look on his face that says it won’t change his mind.

“Shouldn’t we all sneak out of here together?” Ryan questions, and I smile at him gratefully. It still hurts to breath, never mind talk.

Silas shakes his head. “They have our keys, and probably half of our supplies pulled out of the truck by now,” he disagrees. “Besides, we can’t leave them alive to keep hurting people.” The last bit is spoken with a deadly intent that makes me shiver, glad that Silas is on my team.

“You stay here and keep the kid safe,” Silas says, obviously done debating anything. He motions for Ryan to follow him. Ryan looks torn between staying to protect us and going out there to protect us. After a minute he walks over and plants a short but sweet kiss on my lips.

“You’ll be okay,” he tells me, and I’m not sure which one of us he’s trying to convince. I pull away from Ryan’s arms and see Silas watching us, his eyes lingering on my lips. He looks away when I glance up at him.

“Keep it together, Blondie,” is all he imparts to me as he heads to the door.

Sunny and I watch the boys sneak out the open door before disappearing, slipping away into the shadows.

Sunny starts to cry, and I pull her more closely to my side, wincing when she burrows her head in a painful spot. I pat the girl gently on the back as I struggle to take a couple deep, not-at-all calming breaths. “It’s going to be okay, Sunny,” I tell her more confidently than I feel. “You need to be a good girl and stay quiet,” I say sternly, trying to channel my inner Silas.

I lead us past a couple rows of pews before I steer her into a row mid-aisle. She goes to sit on the seat, but I shake my head. “Let’s sit on the ground instead,” I tell her, and she slides to the floor without protest. I join her with a small huff of pain, and then we have nothing to do but wait.

I worry what the effect of seeing all this violence will have on Sunny as she grows up, if she grows up. Hell, I should probably be worried about myself too!

We hear gunfire erupt from somewhere in the church, and I grip the pistol until my knuckles turn white. I hear the door creak open, and my heart stutters in my chest. I glance carefully around the aisle and see that it isn’t Ryan or Silas, but one of the guys that helped kidnap us.

I look back at Sunny and put my finger up to my lip to warn her to be quiet. Something about my face must have alerted her to how serious this is, because she claps her hands around her mouth and closes her eyes, burrowing herself right underneath the pew. I wish I could do the same thing, but I wouldn’t fit.

The guy is breathing heavily and moving up and down the aisles, looking for us.

This is a dangerous game of cat and mouse, and I have to repeat my warning to Sunny back to myself. Every fiber of my being wants to scream at the top of my lungs.

As the guy gets closer, my mind wars with what to do. Part of me wants to pop up and shoot him, but he also has a gun and is probably a much better shot. I finally settle on hunching down further and praying that he won’t spot us.

It doesn’t work. “Well, well, what have we got here?” a cruel voice says as he stops right in front of us. He has his gun in his hand, but the barrel isn’t aimed at anything in particular—he doesn’t seem very afraid of little Sunny and me. My brain screams at me to use it to our advantage.

“Please don’t hurt us,” I whimper, and it isn’t acting. I’m shaking like a leaf right now.

“It’s a little too late for that,” the guy spits angrily, stepping back a bit to give us some room. “Stand up.”

I motion for Sunny to stay behind me and climb shakily to my feet. When I’m on my feet, the guy finally spots the gun in my hand, but his reaction is totally opposite of what I expected. He actually laughs at me.

“What do you think you’re going to do with that, girl?” He taunts me, and I feel a white hot surge of anger streak through me.

“Let us go!” I demand.

The guy actually continues laughing and bends over to slap his knee. “Not on your life,” he manages to get out around his laughter.

My mind goes blank, and I squeeze the trigger.

The gun is aimed at him, though I’m not sure what exact part of him. I know I’m close enough that I can’t miss, and if I do, we will be dead. I squeeze the trigger without any thought of pity or remorse for another life. This guy wants us dead. It’s him or us.

He lets out a strangled cry, and the humor is quickly replaced with new looks of shock, pain, and anger. I see his hand raising his own gun up, and everything is like slow motion as I pull my gun up faster and fire another round right into his face. He drops like a lead balloon, and I stare down at the man I just murdered, stunned.

I hear the clatter of running footsteps and duck back down, though with the body lying out in the aisle, it won’t be hard to figure out where we’re hiding. I sit hunched on the floor, sweating bullets with crazy, hot tears running down my cheek as I resign myself to commit murder again.

“Jane?” I hear Ryan’s frantic voice call out as he enters the room, and I’m so relieved that I collapse, bawling on the floor.

“Jane?” Ryan calls again, and I hear Sunny stand up behind me and call back to him. Then I feel his strong, capable hands wrapping around me and dragging me out of my hiding spot. He holds me tightly, and I feel Sunny’s small arms wrap around us both.

“I was so scared when I heard that gun shot,” he tells me, sounding like he’s on the verge of tears himself, and it makes me bawl harder thinking about what I did and what could have happened if I hadn’t done it.

“Is it safe now?” Sunny asks the question I should have had enough sense to ask.

“It is,” Ryan tells us, squeezing us even closer to him. My ribs protest, but I don’t. I bawl for another ten minutes, and Ryan holds me the entire time, even Sunny pats me on the back.

“I’m sorry,” I say at last, pulling away from his soaked shoulder, feeling embarrassed.

“No, it’s okay,” Ryan denies.

I finally look up into his face and give him a watery smile. I’m suddenly grateful that I’m not wearing mascara right now—I would have the worst raccoon eyes! I shake my head at my deranged brain. Is this really the stuff I think of after just killing a guy? Talk about a strange coping mechanism! I let out a ragged sob at the reminder, but force myself to take a deep breath rather than giving in to it.

“Where’s Silas?” I ask suddenly, looking around and realizing that he didn’t come in with Ryan and hasn’t shown up since.

Ryan hesitates and my heart sinks. “Is he dead?” I ask in a dispassionate voice, even though my emotions are starting to well up again.

Ryan quickly shakes his head to reassure me that he’s alive. “No, sorry,” he exclaims, “He is… interrogating Danvers.” He confides in me, and I wince. I’m sure that isn’t going very well—for Danvers. “We should probably wait here,” Ryan tells me, and I nod, too tired to argue. We walk as far away from the bodies as possible and sit down to wait.

We hear footsteps, half an hour later, and we all look up, suddenly alert, guns up.

“It’s me,” we hear Silas call from the hallway before he even tries to enter the room.

He walks in, covered in blood. I jump up and run to him, looking for his wound, but he waves me off impatiently. “It’s not my blood,” he tells me, stopping me in my tracks.

“Oh.”

“Let’s get out of here,” is all Silas says next, holding up the keys to our truck, and we all nod, glad to be getting the hell out of this place.

We don’t bother taking anything other than our own stuff that they took from us. Silas hands me back my leather weapon carrier, complete with all my stuff, and I somehow find the strength to belt it around my waist. Then we’re outside in the bright sunshine, and it’s like a completely different world than the horror story back inside the church.

I’m grateful there are no zombies outside in the parking lot. I don’t think I have the strength right now to fight any off. We load up into the truck, and Silas gets the motor running before ducking back out again.

I turn in my seat and watch him pumping some gasoline from the tank in the back into a bucket. Then he disappears, sprinkling gas all over the outside of the church. I watch him light a match and the gasoline ignites with a woof, the flames licking hungrily over the pristine white wash of the exterior.

Silas looks like some kind of movie hero, outlined by the flames, and then he’s running to beat hell, back to the truck as the inferno really gets going.

We peel away at breakneck speed, and I can’t help but wonder if the flames will bring all the zombies in the area, and if they’ll be stupid enough to walk right into the fire when they get here. I hope they do.

Chapter Fourteen

“You shouldn’t cry for him,” Silas snaps ten minutes into my latest crying jag, and I look up and narrow my eyes at him through the tears that won’t stop falling down my cheeks.

“I’m not crying for him, you idiot. I’m crying for myself,” I say stuffily, having no other way to describe the emotions plaguing me right now.

Silas glances into the backseat at Sunny, who has curled up into Ryan’s arms and fallen asleep. “You did the right thing,” he tells me after making sure the girl is asleep.

I nod my head. “I know. It was him or us… I didn’t even think about it, I just pulled the trigger.” I take a deep breath and scrub angrily at the tears that run down my cheeks. “I just didn’t know I was the type of person who would be able to pull the trigger,” I say honestly, and Ryan reaches up and touches my shoulder from the backseat.

“That guy was bad news, they all were,” Silas says, a dark look coming over his face.

“How do you deal with killing people?” I ask him honestly, knowing he must have killed at least a couple people today, and who knows who else before I met him. Silas frowns as he thinks about the question.

“Easy,” he says softly after a minute of thinking.

I look over at him incredulously. Nothing about this experience is exactly what I would describe as “easy.”

“I only kill the people that need killing.” He replies.

I open my mouth to say something—I’m honestly not even sure what—but he cuts me off.

“It’s a completely different world now, Blondie, and believe it or not, we are actually the lucky ones.” I let out an unladylike snort, causing Silas to shoot me a sharp, disapproving look. “We got to survive when millions of others didn’t. That’s all the matters, it’s up to us, now, to figure out the rest. It’s like the cavemen when the Ice Age hit, or the meteor that destroyed the dinosaurs—adapt or lay down and die.”

I fall silent, not willing to argue with Silas’s twisted logic because it actually makes crude sense, so I close my eyes for a minute and just focus on the feel of Ryan’s hand rubbing rhythmically against my shoulder. My eyes feel gritty and sore from all the crying. Poor Sunny has been traumatized, even more than usual, and Silas is a bloody mess and smells like gasoline, which is giving me a headache…

“I want to stop for the night,” I say, glancing at the clock on the dash. “It’s nearly five anyway.”

“I think that’s the best idea you’ve had all day,” Silas allows, surprising me with his willingness to stop and set up camp for the night… but, I guess the guy is covered in another man’s blood.

We drive in silence until we come across a place. It’s a small farmyard with a fair-sized travel trailer parked in the driveway. The yard looks abandoned enough, but the first thing I do is scan for a doghouse. I have a feeling ‘no dogs’ will be a crucial part of our checklist from now on.

“This place looks alright,” Silas says as we pull in. He surprises me by pulling alongside the large, white camper, rather than the house.

“What are you doing?” I ask, not sure what his intentions are, but having an inkling, and it makes me extremely nervous.

“This trailer looks like the perfect place to spend the night,” Silas says, “We’ll have to check and make sure it’s empty, and the house, but it’s a lot smaller and will be easier to secure.”

I stare at the travel trailer with mixed feelings. It will be easier to check for the bogeymen, and there for sure aren’t any pet doors, but if the zombies come, we will essentially be trapped in a tin can with only one way out. My stomach ties in knots at the thought.

“You’ve had a bad day, why don’t you stay here and look after Sunny while we check things out?” Ryan suggests kindly, and for once, I don’t argue that they’re being sexist. He’s just being nice.

I nod, and the boys get out of the truck with their weapons drawn. They are in and out of the house quickly, just in time to intercept a lone zombie that comes stumbling around the corner of the house. I fumble with the door handle to warn them, but Silas has already seen it and pulls his hatchet from around his belt. He lands two solid whacks to the zombie’s rotten skull before the thing collapses into a decrepit pile at his feet.

I watch them look around the corner of the house to see if there are any more nasty surprises lurking around, but they must not see anything because I see Silas pointing towards the trailer, looking like he’s cajoling. Ryan obviously gives in because they walk over side by side. Silas gives the door an experimental tug, and it surprises us all by opening right up. They step back as they wait to see if something stumbles out to attack them, but everything is still, and after a moment they jog up the steps with their guns at the ready.

I hold my breath until I see Ryan poke his head out and motion for me to join them. I reach over, wincing when my rib sends a jolt of pain racing through my body, and I gently shake Sunny awake.

“Rise and shine, sleepyhead,” I tell her, realizing with a pang that it’s the same thing my Mom used to say to get me out of bed every morning.

Sunny is instantly alert, most likely a product of all the horrors we’ve been through lately. “Where’s Ryan?” she asks automatically, and I point out the window for her.

Her eyes follow the direction of my finger, and she visibly relaxes when she spots him. “What are we doing?” She directs her question at me, even though her eyes never leave Ryan.

“Stopping for the night,” I tell her, gingerly jumping down from the truck and opening the back door so I can give her a hand out. She takes my hand with a serious look on her face, and together we make our way to the travel trailer.

“What is this?” Sunny asks when we climb up the steps and find ourselves inside a pretty luxurious set up.

“This is how rich people go camping,” Ryan says with a laugh, and I have to smile at his joke. He’s right on the money.

“We used to live in a trailer like this, only it was bigger and not as nice,” Sunny says as she walks towards the back where there is a set of bunk beds and claims the bottom bed for herself. “Ours didn’t have wheels,” she clarifies as she sits down and pulls out one of her dolls.

I look around the camper, and it really is nice. It even has stone counter tops, a much bigger fridge than I was expecting, and a stove! “There’s even a bathroom,” Silas says with a grin as he opens up a doorway and points inside. I walk over and take a peek into the smallest bathroom I’ve ever seen in my life.

“Everything is mini,” I say as I stare at the tub that doesn’t quite look big enough for me to actually bath in comfortably. It will probably be perfect for Sunny though.

“I’m going to go take a look around for some propane bottles…we might be able to get some heat going and even have a hot shower,” Silas announces as he makes his way to the door, leaving us to stare after him open mouthed.

“Is there anything that guy doesn’t know everything about?” I ask Ryan, making him shrug as he takes a seat at an actual table with bench seats on either side—it kind of reminds me of those restaurant booths, but smaller.

Silas is only gone a couple of minutes when the door opens again, making me jump. “It’s only me,” Silas says, catching the look on my face.

“I know that,” I tell him, not liking the fact that he’s actually being nice to me—it means he pities me, and I’d rather have asshole Silas telling me to get over it than that.

Silas ignores me, and walks over to the thermostat that’s located just outside the bathroom door, and starts pressing buttons like he knows what he’s doing. A humming noise begins from somewhere deep in the bowels of the trailer, followed by a slight woofing sound as the furnace ignites and warm air begins pumping through the vents.

It doesn’t take very long for the trailer to heat up and make me uncomfortable in all my layers. I peel off my vest and sweater, right down to my thin t-shirt, marveling at how fast technology, even something like indoor heat, starts to feel weird if you go without it for long enough.

I bet if my cellphone suddenly started working again too, I would find it so strange to pick it up and be able to have that convenience again! I spent my whole life surrounded by technology, and it only took a couple of weeks on the road, amid a zombie infestation, to wipe it from my mind.

Silas seems satisfied with his work and walks over to lock the outside door before peeling off his shirt as he walks towards the bathroom. “I call first shower… because I’m the one covered in blood,” he says, and none of us argue—he’s earned first dibs on this one.

I prowl around the trailer, appreciating the plush carpeting beneath my feet in the back bedroom with the bunk beds. There is another bedroom, at the very front when you first walk in, that looks like the master. I open cupboards and find a few canned goods, a bag of marshmallows, and even some pots and pans.

“Why wouldn’t these people take the trailer with them when they left?” I ask, completely stunned that someone would ignore this gem. It’s practically a mini house. I look over at Ryan, and he looks uncomfortable.

“They didn’t exactly leave,” he tells me, fiddling around with his fingers, and my stomach does a sick flip flop.

“They were infected?” I ask, even though I honestly don’t want to know, and Ryan nods.

“Inside the house. We put them down,” he trails off, not wanting to go into the gory details.

Silas steps out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam and interrupts our disturbing conversation. “Why are you guys sitting here in the dark?” he asks, grinning when we look back at him blankly.

He wanders around, sliding the blinds down over all the windows. “The glass is tinted, and these blinds are specially made to keep the light in,” he tells us, making me wonder how he knows all this stuff.

Then he reaches up and hits one of the buttons on an overhead light, and it actually turns on.

“How did you do that?” I demand, feeling like Silas just created electricity like some sort of ancient deity.

“This trailer runs off of a twelve volt battery. It might not have enough juice to last till morning, but we can use it for now. We can even charge it off the truck, if we want,” he spouts off knowledge that blows me away.

“How do you know so much about this?” I ask. We never had any sort of recreational vehicles.

Silas shrugs. “My parents had just gotten a new travel trailer, very similar to this one, for their anniversary. We camped in it all summer.” Silas stares at the wall for a minute before looking up at me. “You gonna go hop in the shower, Blondie?” he asks, changing the subject, and I nod.

“You bet,” I tell him, picking up my backpack and dragging it into the tiny bathroom with me.

I poke around a bit to see what kind of treasure came with the rig, and I discover some fluffy towels beneath the sink, as well as a couple rolls of toilet paper, some chemicals for the trailer’s plumbing, and a bottle of Ibuprofen. I peel my clothes off and stare down at my upper body. There is a huge bruise over my rib cage that is already an angry purple with a hint of a yellow tinge around the edges.

I wince and pop a couple of the aspirin from the cabinet as I turn the water on as hot as I can stand. The tub is small and irritating, but it isn’t half bad as a shower, and having hot water makes everything else seem tolerable.

I wish I could stay in the shower all day, but I don’t want to hog all the hot water, so I cut it short, breathing in steam as I wipe the condensation from the mirror and examine myself. Even with the heat on, the air still has a bit of a chill.

I get dressed in a comfortable pair of navy sweats and a pink waffle knit, thermal top before grudgingly forcing myself to leave the comforting confines of the mini bathroom.

Silas and Ryan are deep in conversation but break apart when they see me. “What’s going on?” I ask, though I’m not sure if I could gracefully handle bad news right now—obviously Ryan is thinking the same thing.

“Nothing,” Ryan says, getting to his feet and giving me a quick squeeze as he walks by to take his own turn in the shower.

I make my way over to where Silas is still sitting on the couch and sit down beside him. “What’s going on?” I ask, knowing he will be straight with me. He looks at me like he’s gauging if I can take it or not, before nodding.

“That church,” he says, digging in his pocket and pulling out a smoke. He puts it between his lips but doesn’t actually light it, and I can’t help but think that maybe I’ve gotten through to him about smoking around Sunny. “Danvers was a nut. He thought the zombies were part of the Rapture.” Silas pulls the smoke out of his mouth and tucks it behind his ear. He seems a lot more unsettled tonight than I’ve ever seen him, and I have to wonder if killing is really that easy for him after all. “They were killing people,” he tells me, and his words make my blood run cold.

“All those vehicles in the parking lot?” I ask, and Silas nods his head.

“They were all dead. Men, women, and kids. They were dumping the bodies in one of the rooms, that’s why it smelled like that…” he trails off, and I know what he saw is haunting him pretty bad tonight.

I gently put my hand on his arm, and for once he doesn’t immediately yank it away. “There must have been a hundred bodies,” he says, and I don’t ask any more questions, letting him pick what he wants to share with me. Silas snorts with laughter, even though he and I both know there is nothing funny about what we saw at that church. “He was completely nuts,” he says again, shaking his head. “He actually thought he was doing God’s work. All those people came to him for comfort and he killed them all. He thought the survivors were God’s chosen, and by killing them he was separating their souls from their bodies and letting them pass through to Heaven.”

Silas is actually shaking as he finishes his story, and I instinctively move in closer and hug him. He surprises me by not immediately rejecting me like he always does and instead he wraps his arms around me tightly. He squeezes me so hard that I let out an involuntary yip of pain when my ribs protest, and he releases me immediately.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, getting to his feet to open a cupboard door and stare inside. “I’m starving,” he says, his drawl thicker than usual, and just like that, Silas is back to his regular self, or pretending to be anyway.

I blink up at him in surprise and then get to my feet, wincing a little. Silas turns around and catches the grimace on my face.

“I should check out those ribs, make sure they aren’t broke,” he says, coming to stand in front of me, and I blush when he gently grasps the bottom of my shirt. “…unless you’d rather Ryan took a look at it,” he says, his hand pausing.

“I…” I begin, not really sure what to say. I wouldn’t be any more comfortable lifting my shirt for Ryan.

“It’s just your ribs,” Silas says calmly. “You’d show more skin in a bathing suit.” His words do calm me a little, since I did use to rock a pretty awesome bikini, so I give a quick nod. He gently peels my shirt up just high enough to see my rib cage, stopping before he exposes my bra.

He glances up at me sharply when he sees the bruising. “You should have said something—does it hurt?” he lectures, and I give him a rueful smile.

“Only when I breathe,” I retort, not wanting to admit how badly it actually does hurt. Silas stares at me grimly without cracking so much as a smile, and I feel the urge to squirm beneath his gaze. Thankfully he looks away, back at my ribs, and gently runs his fingers along each rib. I know he isn’t pressing hard, and it doesn’t hurt until he gets to the two bottom ribs where I took the full force of the kick.

I grit my teeth while he prods away. When he finally removes his hand, my legs go weak with relief, and I have to grip the table for support. “You were lucky, nothing is broken,” he says, and I nod, grateful that it wasn’t worse. “It’s very likely that your ribs are bruised or cracked though,” he says, dumping cold water all over my gratitude. I frown at him, panic starting to bubble up in my chest.

Bruising doesn’t sound like more than a mild annoyance, but the cracked word has me scared. “What does that mean?” I demand, terrified that I am in need of a hospital, with none around.

“It’s impossible to tell without an x-ray, but fortunately both are treated the same way,” Silas says, stepping back and letting my shirt fall back down as he reaches for his pack. When he steps away, I can clearly see Ryan silhouetted in the bathroom doorway, and for the life of me I have no idea how we didn’t hear him come out.

“Ryan,” I squeak, feeling like I’ve been caught doing something inappropriate, even though I know that isn’t true.

Ryan frowns at me. “Why didn’t you tell us your ribs hurt?” he demands, sounding very much like Silas, and it takes a minute for me to realize that he isn’t yelling at me for letting Silas feel around beneath my shirt.

I take a deep breath of relief and wince when it hurts. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to be a bother,” I tell them honestly, and they both frown at me.

“You’re never a bother,” Ryan tells me gently.

“You are a bother, especially when you get hurt and don’t tell anyone. You’re a huge pain in the ass,” Silas says at almost the same time, and if it didn’t hurt so much, I probably would’ve laughed my head off. These two really are polar opposites.

Silas is unrolling a long tensor bandage from his bag when Sunny comes wandering out of her bunk. She drops her Barbie on the floor and looks up at us with her lower lip trembling.

“What’s wrong with Jane?” she asks, and I force a smile on my lips, solely for her benefit. “Is she going to die?” she asks, her voice getting louder with each tremble, and thankfully Ryan jumps to my rescue.

“Nothing, sweetheart. She just has a small owie.”

I grin at Ryan using the word “owie.”

“Why don’t I run you a nice warm bath?” Ryan suggests instead, and Sunny gives him the biggest smile ever. It’s probably been a while since she had hot water, if she’s had any since the zombies came.

Ryan runs Sunny some water and then leaves the door open so we can all hear her splashing around, leaving Silas the unpleasant task of bandaging my ribs. Unpleasant for me—not Silas. I let out a yelp, and Silas hands me a pillow to put over my face so I won’t freak Sunny out—how kind.

When Silas finishes, my ribs ache worse than they did before. “Hopefully it isn’t serious, and you’ll feel better in a couple days,” he tells me, digging in his bag and shaking out a couple pills. I look at his hand suspiciously, debating if I should take them or not.

“This isn’t going to knock me out is it?” I can’t help asking, and Silas shakes his head impatiently.

“No,” he tells me, and feeling reassured, I finally take them. I trust him enough not to lie to me. “It would be better if we had some ice,” he tells me as he puts all his stuff back in his bag. “You should lie down and relax for a bit,” he suggests, and Ryan nods too.

They insist that I take the big bed at the front, and then Ryan and Silas deal with Sunny and prepare dinner. Ryan even brings me dinner in bed, even though I protest that I’m fine.

“Just rest your ribs, Jane!” Silas calls from the table, and I lie back with a sigh and try to accept their help graciously.

The excitement of the day, the warm meal, warm shower, and warm air filling the trailer, all combines to knock me out practically as soon as my head hits the pillow.

I wake up suddenly when something grabs my face and begins to pry my eyelids open…

“Is she dead?” Sunny asks, letting out a shriek and jumping back when I wake up with a yelp, my arms flailing.

“Sunny. We told you to let Jane sleep!” Ryan says, stepping into the room and scooping Sunny up in his arms. “Sorry about that,” he says to me, and I shake my head as I struggle to sit up.

“It’s okay. What time is it?” I ask, letting loose a big yawn.

“Eight,” Ryan says, checking the watch on his wrist, and I’m surprised I was able to sleep that long—even more surprised that I managed to have such a good sleep after killing a man the day before.

“I’m glad Sunny woke me up.” I reassure the little girl, and she beams at me. “You two probably would’ve let me sleep all day!” I tell them, only half joking. Sunny nods her head emphatically, confirming my suspicions. “I want to reach the cabin today,” I tell them, swinging my legs over the side of the bed and getting gingerly to my feet.

My ribs protest, but already the pain isn’t as bad as it was yesterday. I think it probably is just some minor bruising, and I have no doubt that, if I still had access to an internet search, I could confirm it.

“I don’t want to leave this house,” Sunny pouts, folding her arms over her chest and looking totally adorable, even though she’s mad.

“We might be able to take it with us,” Ryan tells the little girl, and that’s news to me.

“We will?” I ask, and Ryan nods.

“We were talking about it last night, and Silas checked the weight against what the truck can haul and we’re good to go on that front.”

“Where is Silas…?” I ask, falling silent when we all hear a masculine shout from outside the trailer.

Ryan and I look at one another, twin expressions of worry etching deep lines in our faces, before running for the door, our guns in hand.

I just barely have the presence of mind to tell Sunny, “Go hide in the bathroom, and don’t come out!”

Then Ryan and I are racing outside, barely pausing before we throw the door open, our eyes looking everywhere for danger, ready to fight off an unknown number of zombies to save our friend.

My eyes land on Silas, and we both dig in our heels and stop in surprise. I was expecting to find Silas locked in a death struggle with zombies, possibly even bitten already… Instead, Silas is standing a few yards away with his gun trained on the back of a guy wearing a black hoodie with the hood up, who it appears he just caught digging around in the back of our truck.

“Take it easy, I have a gun,” Silas warns the guy when it looks like he’s going for something at his hip, and the guy freezes, hands up in the air.

“Turn around nice and slow,” Silas commands, and the guy hesitates. “I will shoot you,” Silas tells him, his voice leaving no doubt in any of our minds about how serious he is. With a loud sigh, the guy slowly turns around.

For a minute I’m not sure if what I’m seeing is right, and my mouth falls open as I look to Ryan to see if he sees it too.

“Silas, put the gun down,” I tell him, but he stubbornly shakes his head.

“Not on your life, Blondie,” he retorts, adjusting his aim a little.

Chapter Fifteen

“Pull that hood down,” Silas demands, and our would-be thief pulls the hood back to reveal a cascade of dark chestnut hair that falls well below her shoulders.

“Silas,” I protest when he still doesn’t lower his gun. He spares me a quick glance and arches his eyebrow up at me in challenge.

“What?” he demands, and I shake my head at him.

“You can’t aim your gun at her!” I say in exasperation, but Silas just shrugs.

“Why not?” he demands, even though he knows damn well why not! I’m nearly speechless by his behavior, but not so speechless that I don’t yell at him.

“Because she’s pregnant!” I cross my arms in front of my chest and seriously think about walking over to stand in front of her so Silas will be forced to aim his gun somewhere else.

Silas snorts, and that’s when I know that the semi- sensitive guy from last night is long gone this morning. “How do you know she’s really pregnant?” he asks suspiciously, causing me to point in exaggeration towards the swollen belly that is straining the fabric at the front of her hoodie. “Even if that’s true,” Silas continues. “It doesn’t mean she isn’t dangerous.”

I look to Ryan for help and am shocked to see that he’s actually nodding his head along with Silas.

“But…she’s pregnant,” I mumble, wondering if I am the only sane person in this asylum.

“And Danvers was a Jesus freak, Jane. You need to be smart if you want to live long enough to be part of the new world,” Silas lectures me, and I do feel a bit like a fool. However, I refuse to believe that everyone is now a psychotic maniac.

“Prove it,” Silas tells the shaking woman as he motions to her with his gun, and she flinches.

“Prove w…hat?” she asks, clearly puzzled.

“Prove that bump underneath your shirt isn’t some basketball you chucked under there to trick people,” Silas says. It sounds so ridiculous I could almost laugh, except now I also need to know that she isn’t some kind of fraudster waiting to slit our throats in our sleep.

The woman raises her chin and shakes her head. “Look, I don’t know what kind of sick shit you three are into, but I’m not showing you anything,” she looks angry, and if it had been me on my own, I might have folded, but not Silas. I wince when he cocks the hammer back on his pistol, and so does the woman.

“Alright,” she holds up her hands again, puffing hard. “Just, please don’t hurt me or the baby,” she begs, and Silas gives her a single nod.

Her hands shake as she starts to pull the bottom of her shirt up. “Nice and slow,” Silas demands, obviously worried she might be going for a weapon, and I’ll admit, the thought also crossed my mind.

The woman shoots us all an angry look and lifts her shirt to reveal, not a basketball, but a bulging, swollen belly, all pale flesh marked by angry red stretch marks. I grimace a little; I can’t help myself. The miracle of life is not a pretty sight.

“Thank you,” I tell her, speaking for the group when neither of the guys says anything. “We aren’t sicko’s or anything, we’ve just been through hell and run into A LOT of not very nice people lately.” I shrug, trying to show her that we don’t mean her any harm.

I elbow Silas in the ribs, and he grudgingly puts the weapon down. “You could have just asked us for some food,” Ryan says, finally speaking up, and I know he’s like me, a bit of a bleeding heart, horrified to see a pregnant woman out here alone.

The woman snorts, reminding me vividly of Silas. “You said it yourself, there’s a lot of not very nice people out here. I’ve learned the hard way to avoid them.”

I nod. I totally get where she’s coming from. I don’t think I would have been walking up and knocking on any doors either, if our situation was reversed. “Do you want to come in and have a rest? We have plenty of food,” I offer, giving her my best ‘we are not dangerous criminals’ smile… even though we did just make the poor woman show us her baby bump. The woman is already shaking her head and backing away.

“I think I’ll just be on my way,” she says stubbornly, and I have to suppress the urge to shake her.

“Where’s your car?” I blurt out, the question perplexing me now that I’ve thought of it.

The woman looks like a deer caught in the headlights. “It’s…” she starts to stammer, and I can already tell that she is trying to think up a quick lie to tell us.

“Is it okay to come out now?” Sunny interrupts suddenly, poking her head out of the trailer door. The woman looks startled to see her and pauses to watch the little girl cautiously look both ways for danger before running over and nestling in beside Ryan.

“Sunny,” I start to lecture her, but then purse my lips, not wanting the woman to think we are monsters. I glance up and see that she’s looking at the little girl with a soft expression on her face.

“My car broke down a couple days ago, I’ve been walking ever since,” the woman admits, looking up and catching me watching her.

My eyes go round as I stare at her enormous belly; that can’t be comfortable. “That’s terrible,” I say, “And super dangerous!” I can’t resist adding. Can this chick even run?

“Would you like to come in and have something to eat?” Silas asks her again, having read the change of heart on her face the moment she saw Sunny. She doesn’t really think we’re monsters anymore.

The woman thinks for a minute before nodding her head. “Thank you,” she says wearily, and Ryan and Sunny lead the way, leaving Silas and I to follow them in.

I watch the woman pause to kick off her shoes, and my eyes widen to see how swollen her feet are. She lets out a sigh and gingerly lowers herself down onto the couch—her belly is too large to fit at the table.

Silas digs in his bag and hands her a bottle of water, and she gratefully gulps it down. He pulls out an assortment of power bars and sets them down beside her. Then he digs out an MRE and holds it up so she can read it: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, and corn. She nods her head vigorously and attacks a power bar while we all watch intently as Silas heats up the MRE.

“What’s your name?” Sunny asks with the typical bluntness of young children, and the woman gives her a small smile as she quickly finishes chewing her mouthful.

“I’m Natalie,” she says, and Sunny beams.

“I had a friend named Natalie in school…before,” she tells our guest, and Natalie gives her a sad smile.

Silas hands her the food, and we all watch as she takes a huge bite and burns her tongue, but it doesn’t really deter her. It makes me wonder when the last time she had something to eat was. She glances up at us staring at her and blushes.

“We should go do something,” I say, hoping the boys will get the hint. “Lots to do,” I add, giving them each a look in turn.

“Yeah…okay,” Silas says, turning around and going outside without another word.

“I actually should pack up,” Ryan mutters, giving Natalie a kind smile before he pulls Sunny away with him into the back bedroom to start packing up their stuff.

I give the woman a nod and then follow Silas outside.

“See, don’t you feel good helping someone out?” I ask, coming up behind Silas as he’s tightening the ropes over our load in the back of the truck, where Natalie had been loosening them. He spares me a quick glance.

“Not especially,” he grunts before going back to his task. I roll my eyes at his back before turning around to survey the yard. One of the trees catches my eye, and I let out an exclamation of delight.

Silas spins around, with his gun up, and frowns when he doesn’t see anything that needs shooting. “What’s going on, Blondie?” he asks, clearly confused, and I give him a grin as I point across the yard at the enormous tree dotted with bright red apples.

Silas doesn’t say anything as he starts walking over, and I jog to catch up. “Do you think they’re still good to eat, because it’s been so cold?” I ask, my heart stuttering when I remember the early fall frost we experienced the night before.

Silas stands underneath the tree and examines it, reaching up to pluck a low hanger apple. I watch him polish it on his sleeve and take a big bite. I can hear how crisp it is by the loud crunch, and my mouth waters.

“They taste alright, I don’t think it’s been cold enough to wreck them,” he says after he swallows his bite. He catches a glimpse of the longing on my face and reaches up to grab an apple for me. “The ones on the ground aren’t good, but everything still on the tree should be fine,” he says, and I start to wonder if he’s somehow an expert on apple trees too!

The fresh apple is one of the best things I’ve tasted in a long time. The canned fruit is okay, but nothing compares to the taste of something organic and fresh from the garden. “We should pick a whole bunch,” I suggest excitedly, and Silas glances up at me.

“I thought you were in a big rush to get to the cabin?” he asks, and I frown.

“I am, but I don’t think stopping to pick a couple apples will make or break us,” I retort, turning my back on him to look around for something to collect the apples in.

“I have some grocery bags in my backpack,” Silas says, pulling his pack off and digging around until he pulls out a handful of crinkled plastic bags. He passes me a couple and then begins to reach up and pluck apples from the lower branches. I look up a little, and then up some more. Silas is tall, but I’m not even tall enough to reach the apples on the lowest branch. I walk over and pull myself up into the y-shaped crook of the tree. Silas glances over at me and chuckles as he watches me climb, not very gracefully, until I can reach some of the higher apples. I make sure I’m not going to fall on my face, then let go of the rough bark and start to hastily fill my bag.

“So, Ryan said something about taking the trailer?” I ask, striking up a conversation with Silas. Silas grunts in response and picks a couple more apples before replying.

“Might as well. It’s better than most of the houses we stay in, no more clearing houses or being attacked by stray dogs in the night, and we could use it when we get to the cabin too,” he defends.

“I think it’s a great idea,” I tell him as I fill the first bag and pass it down to him, pausing to eat another apple before starting on my second bag. I’m halfway through my second bag when a lumbering shadow catches my eye.

“Silas,” I murmur, and the urgency in my voice alerts him to the danger. He looks up at me quizzically, and I point over his shoulder. He spins, dropping his bag of apples, and already has his gun up before he’s even come to a complete stop.

The zombie is lurching along at a fairly quick pace, obviously she heard us talking and decided to come join us for lunch. She’s an ugly one too, with grisly chunks of skin hanging off of her like a half-peeled orange. At my gross fruit analogy, my stomach churns my half-digested snack around, and I drop the apple in my hand. She’s still far enough away not to be dangerous to us yet, but Silas easily lines up the shot and drops her. I watch her greasy strands of hair and blood-stained yellow sun dress thud into the grass, and feel relief.

“I think we should go,” Silas says, turning around, and for once I don’t argue. We’d momentarily lost ourselves picking apples like the world hadn’t ended, but then a zombie had shown up, and reality had bitched slapped us both hard, right across the face.

Silas reaches up and helps me out of the tree, and we both scan the area, looking for any more dead heads as we make our way back to the trailer. “I’m going to hook up the trailer. I found a hitch lying beside it in the grass, so it won’t take very long. Why don’t you go and see if everyone is ready?” Silas suggests, and I nod.

I find Sunny sitting beside Natalie, showing off her favorite Barbie. “Hey,” I say, smiling at Natalie and Sunny, even though I’m still feeling grim from my apple picking. They smile back at me, and Ryan comes over and touches me on the shoulder as he brings some bags over and sets them down by the door. “So, Silas wants to get back on the road,” I tell them and then watch as Natalie’s face falls. “Where are you headed?” I ask her, and she blushes.

“Watseka,” she replies, obviously unwilling to elaborate. I am not all that familiar with geography, but that name sounds familiar. It pushes at my conscious until it’s an all-out prod.

“Wait a minute,” I say, drawing every eye towards me. “Watseka is on the way to the cabin. Abby’s family always stopped there for ice cream...” I tell Ryan, and his face splits into a grin.

“That’s perfect, we can give you a ride,” he enthuses, and I smile, glad that we can help her. It’s right on our way, so Silas can’t even complain about it too much.

We feel a slight swaying as Silas backs up to the trailer and connects it to the truck. “That would be great thanks…” the woman says as she slowly gets to her feet with a grunt of pain. We clearly hear her hip pop and we all wince, especially her, as we head for the door.

I let Natalie have the front seat because it has more room, and we all wait in silence for Silas to come back from pulling the slides in on the trailer. Our temporary home looks much smaller now; it’s surprising.

Silas gets into the truck and slams the door, eyeballing the pregnant woman riding shot gun.

“She’s coming with us?” he rudely asks Ryan and me, completely skipping over asking Natalie herself.

I shake my head, knowing Silas can see me in the rear-view mirror. “She needs a ride to Watseka…it’s on the way,” I tell him when he looks like he’s going to object.

“Fine,” he huffs, though he doesn’t really seem all that mad, so I am mostly convinced it’s all for show.

I reach down and pull out one of the apple bags and pass them around like I would have done with a bag of chips back in the old days. We munch apples in silence as the miles fly by.

“So where about in Watseka are we dropping you off?” Silas asks finally, breaking the silence, and Natalie jolts as she peels her eyes away from the scenery outside the window.

“Just anywhere is fine,” she says vaguely, and I don’t miss the way she nervously licks her lips.

“Natalie,” I say, not sure how to gently probe the information out of her…

“Cut the shit, tell us all about this secret mission you’re on, or you’ll be back to walking,” Silas interrupts—not quite how I was going to phrase it.

Natalie goes pale at the mention of walking. “Alright,” she agrees after a moment. “I didn’t want to tell you because I was afraid that you wouldn’t help me.” My heart sinks like a stone at her announcement, and my brain fills in all sorts of crazy details in the absence of real information.

“I’m looking for my husband,” she says, and I blink in surprise. That doesn’t sound like anything bad. “He’s in the Watseka jail,” she says baldly, and I can’t help but catch Silas’s grimace in the mirror.

“What’s he in for, murder, rape, robbery?” Silas asks, listing off a string of rather terrible things.

“Nothing like that!” Natalie interjects, holding her hands up in the air as though to calm Silas down. “My husband was picked up for a DUI the night everything started to go down. I was going to come pick him up in the morning, he was only supposed to spend the night in the drunk tank, but then everything started to happen that night, and I…” Her words are interrupted by a ragged sob that wracks her body, and big fat tears start to fall down her cheeks. “I couldn’t get away,” she whispers.

“You know it’s been two weeks,” Silas tells her, “The chances of him still being alive are not good.”

“Silas!” I yell at him, but he only shrugs.

“It’s the truth. She’s chasing a ghost, putting herself and that baby in danger for no good reason.” I watch Natalie’s shoulders stiffen at his words

“I’m not an idiot,” she tells Silas, and I’m surprised by the vehemence in her voice. “I know it’s a long shot, but I have to know for sure. I’m not asking for your help, just a ride into town.” Ryan and I look at each other in surprise, worried about Silas’s reaction, but he’s silent for a while.

“Okay,” he says finally, and we all stare at him.

“Okay, what?” I ask, not quite sure what he means by it. Silas looks at me in the rear-view mirror as he continues. “We’ll help her look for her husband, a quick in and out.” My face must have shown my shock because Silas presses on to convince me. “A police station could be a gold mine if it hasn’t been picked over, and we could still make it to the cabin tonight.” He looks at me like he expects me to object.

“It’s okay,” I tell him. “We should help her, I’m just surprised it was your idea,” I tell him with a grin, making Ryan and I laugh, and Silas scowls at us.

“Thank you!” Natalie tells Silas once our laughter dies down, and she has to wipe away a couple emotional tears.

Silas doesn’t really acknowledge her gratitude, and I can’t help but think that he’s uncomfortable with it. “Reach in that glove box and pull out the map, let’s see how close we are,” he barks at her instead, making me press my lips together to hide my smile. Silas really is a secret softy.

Chapter Sixteen

We unhook the trailer and leave it hidden at an abandoned farm a few miles from town. Silas thinks the bulky trailer might get us into some trouble if we run into a big group of zombies, so we unhook it, leaving the hitch with the truck, and hope it will still be here when we get back.

Watseka looks like it’d been a nice little town before the zombies. A large Welcome to Watseka sign greets us as we pull into town, and in the distance I see a really weird tower with a smiley face on it that seems very out of place in the apocalypse. It’s not a city by any stretch of the imagination, but it isn’t a one horse town either, so we will have to stay vigilant.

“I don’t suppose you have any idea where the cop shop is?” Silas asks as he steers the truck around a group of ten or so zombies staggering around in the middle of the street.

Natalie pulls her eyes away from the gruesome bunch and digs in the pocket of her pants, pulling out a torn and ragged piece of paper. “I have the address,” she confirms, passing it along to Silas.

Silas glances down briefly to read it, and the truck smacks loudly into a zombie on the road. “Shit,” Silas growls as he cranks two wheels up onto the curb to avoid more of them, and my stomach flips at the idea of the truck breaking down right here in the middle of zombie-ville.

“Do you think the truck is okay?” I ask anxiously, and Silas nods.

“I wasn’t going very fast, it probably didn’t even leave a dent,” he assures us. Sunny has her face pressed into Ryan’s side to avoid seeing all the terrifying things outside the window, and I feel awful that we had to drag the little girl into danger. Part of me wanted to leave her with the trailer, but that wouldn’t be any safer, even if one of us stayed with her. We only have the one vehicle, so anyone who stayed at the trailer would be trapped there if something happened to the rest of us, or if, God forbid, a hoard came along.

“It’s inside the municipal building,” Natalie points to a nice looking brick building up ahead, and my palms start to sweat. It feels like we arrived at our destination way too fast.

There are a lot of zombies around, and more are being drawn by the movement of the truck. I have no idea how we are going to get close to this building with all of these assholes staggering around out there.

“Are you guys ready to go?” Natalie asks, breaking the silence, her hand on the door handle, and Silas shakes his head.

“Hold up. You’re not going,” he tells her point blank, and I watch her angrily cross her arms over her chest.

“Like hell,” she argues, and I see a pissed off look cross Silas’s face.

“Look outside at all those things,” Silas argues, pointing to the flesh-eating monsters that are starting to gather. “Do you really think you’ll be able to outrun them in your condition? Can you run or jump, and do you even own a gun or know how to shoot one?” he demands, making Natalie look even angrier.

“I’ve made it this far,” she points out, but Silas isn’t having any of it.

“You accept our help, the way I say, or you’re on your own,” he says with finality in his voice, and Natalie turns pale at his threat. The zombies have reached the truck now and are starting to bang their fists against the glass, clawing and moaning. Silas hits the gas and easily outdistances them, parking further up the block. I look back and see that they are doggedly staggering after the truck.

“If those doors are locked, we might have to climb in through a window,” Ryan says from the backseat. “We will be in and out much easier than you would be, you need to think about the baby,” he continues with far more diplomacy than Silas, playing on her new mommy hormones, and finally at last, Natalie nods her head stiffly.

“Do you have a picture of this guy…what’s his name?” Silas asks.

Natalie reaches into her coat and pulls out a worn photo of Natalie and a pretty good looking guy, smiling into the camera with a Christmas tree in the background. “Hank,” she says, passing the picture over to Silas. “His name is Hank.”

“Now we’re talking,” Silas says as he double checks his ammo supply. “Jane, you stay here with Sunny.” Silas instructs, making me purse my lips in annoyance.

“No!” Sunny shrieks from the backseat and starts bawling as she claws desperately to hold on tighter to Ryan. “I want Ryan to stay,” she cries.

“Jesus, Jane. What did you do to that kid?” Silas asks me, and I can only shake my head.

“Sunny, I have to help find Natalie’s husband,” Ryan tries to comfort her, but Sunny just cries louder.

“Okay, new plan. Jane, you’re with me. Ryan’s on babysitting duty.” Silas says, making a snap decision.

Ryan looks furious, like he wants to argue, but Silas motions for me to get ready. I pull my gun from my hip and hold it in my trembling fingers.

“The rest of you, drive the truck around and keep those things off our back,” Silas says, interrupting Ryan’s protest. Then he jumps out of the truck, and there is nothing left for me to do but take a deep breath and follow him.

He runs quickly to get behind a small copse of landscaped trees, and I dive in right behind him, my head turning in all directions for any sign of danger. My heart hammers so loudly in my chest that I almost don’t hear it when a zombie growls right beside us, apparently he was just hanging out behind these trees too. Silas swings his axe hard and gruesomely splits his skull, dropping him. He wipes the goop off on the zombie’s shirt and turns to me, handing me the picture of the guy we are here to find. I take a quick look at the guy, who looks a little preppy, and then tuck it into my pocket for safe keeping.

I peek out at the truck and see that a couple zombies have started to break off from the main group and head in our direction. The truck starts to move suddenly, Ryan must have gotten into the driver’s seat, and the shrill beep of the horn makes my pulse sky rocket. The zombies’ attention is riveted back to the truck, and Silas turns away to scan the area behind us, confident that Ryan can handle his part.

There is a lot of open lawn and flower beds between us and the building, and I hear Silas let out an annoyed huff as he takes off running. I grip my pistol and start after him. One of these days, he’s going to regret always running off and leaving me—I’ll probably be dead, but at least Silas will be sorry.

We reach the building without too much trouble, though there are a couple zombies hanging around the front. Silas raises his gun and takes them out, never missing a shot even though he’s still at a dead run. The front door is made of glass and is covered in zombie crud. They’ve obviously been pawing at it for a while, which is hopefully a good sign that the guy we came for might still be alive.

Silas tries the handle, but it’s locked. “Do we smash it?” I suggest to Silas as he scans the rest of the building. It’s all brick and stone walls, but there are a lot of tall, waist-high windows. Silas shakes his head and motions for me to follow him as we slip around to the side of the building. It still feels pretty exposed, so he carries on until we are at the rear of the building. We try the back door, but it’s locked too. There isn’t much out here other than lawn, so it feels more protected from prying zombie eyes.

Silas curses as he walks up to the first window and tries to peer inside. I do the same, but you can’t really see anything. I spin around to protect our back from any incoming unfriendlies, but thankfully, the only stirring is the breeze.

Silas uses the head of his axe to smash in the window, and I wince at the noise. We both freeze, waiting to see what will happen. After a few thundering heartbeats, where a flesh-eating zombie doesn’t poke his head out through the glass and snap its teeth at us, Silas cautiously pokes his head inside.

“Empty office,” he whispers, pulling himself carefully through the window before reaching out to give me a hand. “Watch out for the glass,” he warns me, even though I don’t need to be told. My heavy duty boots crunch on the glass, and I’m glad, not for the first time, that Silas made me trade in my flimsy running shoes.

I land inside, my feet soundless on the grey office carpet, and I relax a bit when I see that the door is closed and the office looks undisturbed. “Is this the police station?” I ask, looking around, but Silas shakes his head.

“This is also the municipal building, we might be in that area,” he creeps forward and listens hard outside the door before turning back to me. “Ready to go?” he asks, and I’m actually a little touched that he’s checking with me first. I nod, and he cautiously turns the door knob and peers out. It’s a little dark. Even though there are a lot of windows, most of them are covered over with shade blinds. Silas clicks on his flashlight, and I do the same. Then we creep out, together, into the main room.

The air doesn’t smell rotten in here, but we are still on high alert. It’s eerie to be in a place that is completely foreign to you when something could jump out and attack you at any minute.

There are a bunch of desks with computers in the immediate area, and further towards the front of the building there is a large counter, most likely to service the community when they come in to pay their water bills and such.

“It’s probably on the other end,” Silas says, motioning to where the wall is sectioned off to divide the building. I nod, even though Silas isn’t waiting for my confirmation, and we head in that direction. I stumble over a chair leg and let out a squeak of surprise, causing Silas to spin around and aim his flashlight right in my face.

“Hey!” I complain.

After he’s assessed the situation and seen that my foe is actually just a chair, he turns away with a shake of his head. I blink a couple times to clear the spots away from my eyes, and then take off after Silas.

It feels like we reach the ominous door much too fast. Silas tries the handle, and it’s actually unlocked, possibly because it’s already locked inside a secured building, but more likely because there are going to be zombies inside wearing policeman uniforms.

I take a deep breath and blow it out to calm my nerves, and Silas gives me the ‘get ready’ look before he swings the door open and steps back. We find ourselves staring into a black hole. It’s obviously a hallway of some sort, but there are no windows. Silas brings his flashlight up just in time to illuminate rotting, pale skin and chipped, chomping teeth as a zombie comes stumbling out of the darkness and takes a swipe at Silas.

Silas doesn’t have enough room to really raise his gun or swing his axe, so he rams his axe handle up against the zombie’s throat and uses it to hold him off. I start towards Silas with my knife out to give him a hand, but another zombie comes lurching out of the hall. My stomach gives a sick flop when I see that my assailant is only four feet tall.

The little boy is missing a large chunk of skin from his neck and hands, and he comes at me with exposed skeleton fingers, the bones clicking loudly together. I feel bad for the boy, but that doesn’t stop me from ramming my knife down, as hard as I can, into the top of his skull. Usually I’m not tall enough to pull off a move like this. I feel a lot of resistance and realize, belatedly, that the top of the skull is probably one of the thickest parts of bone, but my knife is huge and razor sharp and my muscles burn until it sinks into the squishy brain beneath. The boy zombie stills instantly, and I pull my knife from his head with a surge of guilt just as Silas finally gets enough room to bring his pistol up and press it underneath his zombie’s chin.

The snarling of the zombie is silenced when the bullet blows out the back of his head. “Shit,” I hear Silas cuss, and my heart skitters.

“Were you bit?” I ask, dreading the answer.

“Nah,” Silas replies. “Just got covered in brains,” he tells me, giving me the willies when I think about all the germs floating around in that mess.

Silas holds his flashlight up with his gun, just like I’ve seen people do in the movies when they’re sweeping rooms. I try to mimic him, but it feels awkward, so I give up and grip my pistol at my side in my predominant hand and hold my flashlight up with my left.

“Looks clear, but keep an eye out,” Silas murmurs as he takes the lead. The hallways is super creepy, and the various puddles of blood and ooze we pass don’t help set my mind at ease. We pass by several closed doors marked Interrogation room 1, 2, and 3, which I am quite sure hold zombies. I press my ear up against the jam and hear a lot of shuffling feet mixed with moaning growls.

A zombie wearing a policeman’s uniform comes wobbling out of an open doorway, spots us, and growls loudly as he switches course to come at us. Silas hits him with a vicious swing of his axe, and he goes down twitching. I aim my flashlight into the room as Silas takes a final swing, and I see a female zombie also wearing an officer’s uniform. She’s standing in the corner next to a coffee pot and a box of moldy unfinished donuts, almost like she’s gone dormant. When the beam of my light catches her attention, she swings around and lets out a hiss. Her once tidy bun is pulled out in disarray, and her nose has been completely chewed off! I aim carefully as she draws closer, my hands shaking only a little, and I actually manage to take her down with a single shot.

I sense Silas’s approval, though he doesn’t actually speak as we carry on down the hallway of horror. “Do you think we should be looking in some of these rooms?” I ask the back of Silas’s broad shoulders, but he shakes his head at me.

“I’m betting there will be something at the end of this hall,” he says, and I’m confused.

“Why do you think that?” I ask, causing Silas to look back impatiently. “None of these little side rooms would be big enough for the holding cells, or the bull pen,” he says, shining his light down the hallway to the blue door at the very end of the hall. “That door,” he says, increasing his pace. We can see from here that the rest of the doors down this hallway are shut, thank God!

I’m beginning to think this hallway is a cake walk when Silas stops abruptly before we reach the door on the end, and I accidentally run into his back. “What’s wrong?” I hiss in the dark, checking nervously behind us with my light.

Silas turns to me and grins. “For once something is right,” he tells me, motioning to the door in front of us.

“Armory?” I read out loud, not exactly sure what that is.

“It’s the guns,” Silas tells me with a small snort of distain. “Geez, Blondie, were you raised under a rock?” he can’t resist adding, and I bite my lip to keep myself from arguing with him. This isn’t the time or place.

Silas presses his ear up against the door and listens while I keep an eye on what’s going on behind us. “Okay, I have good news and bad news,” he tells me, stepping away from the door, and I look at him expectantly.

“What?” I ask, curiosity getting the better of me when he doesn’t reply until I’m forced to ask.

“We found the guns, but there are zombies in there too,” he tells me, and I swallow.

“Can you tell how many?” I ask, having some faith in Silas’s abilities. Silas shrugs.

“Maybe five,” he estimates, and I really want to ask him how he came up with that number, but, again, it’s not the time or place for chit chat.

“Guns blazing?” I ask, knowing Silas better than I probably want to. He nods, and I wince but slap a fresh mag into my 9mm—just in case his guess is wrong.

Silas tries the door knob and it turns. I’m kind of surprised they would leave the armory open like this, but I guess since the zombies are inside, someone probably ran in and didn’t make it back out.

“Ready, Blondie?” Silas asks, and I make an agreeable sound come out of my constricted throat. Silas and I stand shoulder to shoulder, probably because he doesn’t want to risk having me accidentally shoot him in the back. Silas takes one more look up and down the hall and then throws open the door and raises his gun.

Two things occur to me at once. One, we are lucky. This room has a barred window so we can actually see what’s going on, and we don’t have to use the flashlights. I throw mine down to the ground to free up my hands. And two, Silas was wrong. There are a lot more zombies in here than he thought.

I hear Silas’s pistol fire in quick succession, and it wakes me up a bit. I aim at an ugly bastard with flaking skin, wearing a cop uniform, and I fire into his face as he heads towards me, teeth snapping. He drops and another one instantly takes his place. The zombie behind him trips over the body of his fallen comrade, and Silas moves in quick to strike him with the axe. I force myself to follow Silas deeper into the room as we make a push towards the zombies. “Watch out!” Silas calls, and I feel a bullet rush by my face to plant into the skull of a zombie that was just about to take a bite out of my shoulder.

“Shit, thanks,” I mutter as I raise my gun and fire at the next rotting corpse. I miss and hit him square in the chest.

“A little higher, Blondie,” Silas grunts as he swings his axe and splits a zombie from forehead to nose. I readjust my aim, and this time my bullet hits true.

I’m breathing heavily, and a cold sweat is rolling off my body as I take out another two zombies, and Silas takes out four.

I lean against the wall panting and wipe my forehead with my sleeve. “What happened to five?” I demand, and Silas shrugs, not even bothering to look apologetic.

“It’s not an exact science,” he tells me, making me frown. I glance around the room and am surprised by the body count littering the floor. I’m also a little leery that some of them might not be completely dead and could spring up to bite me in the leg.

“Do you think they are all dead?” I ask, hating the whine in my voice, no doubt Silas will laugh at me.

He actually doesn’t, and it surprises the hell out of me. Silas bends down and quickly examines each corpse before he nods. “They are all dead,” he confirms, ignoring the bodies again as he heads over to a locked gun rack.

“Awesome, this place hasn’t been picked over,” he tells me with excitement, emphasizing every word.

“There are a lot missing,” I point out all the open lockers, but he just shrugs.

“That’s probably from the cops. If it had been hit up since then, these shelves would be picked clean.” he explains as he walks around. He finds a set of keys hanging out of one of the open locker doors and tries them out on a couple of the other locker doors.

“Jackpot!” he exclaims, pulling several small black handguns from the locker. He sets them down again and glances around, spotting a large black canvas duffel bag against the far wall.

“What are those?” I ask, coming up to stand beside him.

“Glock 22,” Silas says proudly. “These guns are wicked because they can fire both 9mm and .40 caliber ammunition.” I watch him load six into the bag and frown.

“Why do we need so many?” I ask as he moves on and tries the keys in another locker. He pulls out a wicked looking gun and strokes the barrel—this is just like the gun store all over again!

“We can always use more guns, or use them to trade for other supplies if we find other people who aren’t lunatics,” he answers me as he loads two of the large guns into the bag.

“Is that an AR-15?” I ask, my untrained eyes not really seeing much difference, but Silas’s scoff alerts me to my error even before he corrects me.

“Wrong again, Blondie,” he retorts. “Colt M4 Carbine,” he tells me, and I nod, even though I have no idea what it means.

He opens the next locker, and it’s stacked with boxes of ammo. “Do me a favor and load these boxes for me, would you?” he asks, and I nod, stepping over the fallen body of a zombie to get to work. It figures that he gives me the boring job!

Silas has added a couple more guns to the already straining bag by the time I get all the bullets loaded. He even has to lean on it to get it zipped up. I look at the bag and am skeptical that he will be able to carry it.

“Give me a hand with this,” he tells me, proving me right. I grab one end and grunt when I lift it.

“Silas…” I start to say, but he shakes his head.

“We’ll leave it in the hallway and grab it on our way out,” he says, and I grumble but nod. I know we need these weapons, but we also need to be able to run away from the zombies, and we won’t be running anywhere lugging this thing around.

We dump the bag outside in the hallway, and I can already feel the strain in my back. I loudly roll my shoulders until they pop, and then I give Silas a dirty look. It really isn’t his fault, but it’s nice to blame him anyways.

“Let’s keep going. The sooner we can confirm this joker is dead, the sooner we can get the hell out of here,” Silas says, and I nod, remembering that we are on schedule to reach the cabin today if we hurry.

We reach the door at the end of the hall, and I don’t even bother asking Silas how many he thinks we’ll find on the other side. He pauses to listen at the door but doesn’t volunteer any estimations.

“Okay,” he says, throwing the door open, and light momentarily blinds us. I blink rapidly, panicking that a zombie is going to get the jump on me before I have my 20/20 vision back. I only see spots for a couple of seconds, but they are the longest few seconds of my life. Silas is careful to shut the door behind us so we won’t have to clear the hall again—it’s smart. I scan the area for danger, and Silas does the same. We are in a wide open area dotted with tons of windows. There is a huge wooden counter that separates the public waiting area, where we are standing, from all the desks on the other side. A snarl brings my attention to a zombie on the other side of the counter.

“Damn, that’s an ugly one,” Silas remarks blandly as he walks over and cracks its skull open with his axe. The zombie falls to the floor, ceasing its rage-filled howls, and smashes its face on the countertop on its way down, leaving a nasty, gooey smear on the wood. I watch Silas hop up on the counter and swing his legs over, landing quietly on the other side. My heart skitters in fear of being left on the wrong side of the counter—it’s girly and foolish, I know—but the zombie apocalypse is really a time when you want to be able to rely on the buddy system.

I jump up on the counter too and carefully check out the floor before I jump down. There are a lot of desks set up, and a lot of them have pictures of families on them. I look away from one particular picture that stands out—a smiling picture of the little boy I had to take out in the hall. His Dad probably thought the police station would be the safest place for him when this all started.

“Come on, Jane,” Silas calls me over impatiently, and I jog to catch up, trying to shake off the image of the smiling little boy. Silas points to a door he’s found with a sign that says Holding Cells, and then he steps boldly inside. I am really starting to hate walking through doors. The mystery of what might be waiting on the other side is terrifying. It doesn’t seem to bother Silas though, so I do try and suck it up.

A zombie in a policeman’s uniform snarls at us immediately and starts towards us with a look of hungry intent. Silas drops him before he even gets close. I take a deep breath and instantly regret it. This room stinks!

I gag a little and pull my shirt up to cover my nose. It doesn’t really help, but it makes me feel better. The cells are filled with bodies, all dead, some still walking around snarling, and others that are curled up on the floor, slowly starting to rot into the concrete.

We look in each cell as we walk all the way to the end, stopping at the last cell to stare. There is a half-chewed, naked body lying on one of the beds and another body sitting cross-legged at the top of the bunk. Blood, piss, and crap dot the cell, making it stink worse than the others. Silas and I glance at each other in surprise as we stare at a blood-covered creature sporting a thick beard as he slowly gets off the bunk. He opens his mouth, and a weird rumbling sound comes out. Silas raises his gun to shoot this terrifying thing, probably, like me, thinking it’s some kind of new hybrid zombie.

The zombie holds up his hands in surrender and finally gets one word out. “Please,” he groans and then drops to his knees.

Silas lowers his gun, stares at the guy kneeling on the floor in a pile of human feces, and sighs. “Tell me that’s not the guy,” he begs, and my heart stutters when I realize that, underneath the blood and other nastiness, there is something kind of familiar about him.

I reach into my pocket, pull out the picture Natalie gave us, and hold it up to compare. “Yep, it’s the guy,” I say once I confirm that the two bear a striking resemblance.

Silas looks almost queasy. “Shit,” he mutters, and I have to bite my tongue to keep from pointing out just how accurate his sentiment really is.

Chapter Seventeen

“Hank?” Silas asks apprehensively, and the man on the floor nods his head weakly.

“Do you know where we can find some keys?” I ask. I see Silas shaking his head out of the corner of my eye, and I ignore him. Hank looks up and points towards the zombie cop we’d taken out earlier.

“Guard,” he manages to get out around a throat that sounds like he’s spent the last two weeks chewing up and swallowing gravel.

Silas mutters something illegible and stalks towards the downed zombie. I watch him as he starts rooting through the zombie’s pockets with a disgusted sound, and thankfully he finds the keys pretty quickly. They are covered in some gelatinous zombie goop, and I have to suppress a shiver—poor Silas.

“Natalie sent us,” I say, kneeling down so I can look the man in the eyes, and they immediately start to water with tears. “She’s okay,” I say awkwardly, having absolutely no experience in these type of situations to fall back on.

“I’m going to let you out, but if you try anything, I’ll shoot you,” Silas tells him, not messing around. “Do you understand?” he demands, not moving an inch towards the cell door until he gets an answer.

I see Hank’s eyes widen in shock and am hit with the realization that he’s been locked in this cell for the last two weeks. He might not have that much of an idea about what’s going on. I glance at the snarling corpse in the cell beside him and wince, then again, maybe he has some idea.

Hank nods his head and pulls himself slowly to his feet as Silas quickly opens the door and steps back. He doesn’t offer to help the man. I almost offer but then see the smear of blood mixed in with the wild tangle of his beard, and I step back behind Silas. I’m still not exactly sure what’s going on with this guy, and the word of a pregnant chick we only met three hours ago is definitely not enough.

Silas looks at me, and I give him an exaggerated eye bulge and eyebrow wiggle, trying to point out the blood. Silas scrunches his nose up at me in confusion and looks back to Hank. Hank’s got himself up and is clinging to the bars for support.

“Help,” Hank rattles out between gasps.

Without thinking, I move forward, but Silas pushes me behind him and strides forward instead. I watch as he hesitates, trying to find a spot on his orange jumpsuit that isn’t covered in blood and other equally distasteful things; he finally settles on gripping the other man’s wrist.

Hank tries to lace his arm around Silas’s shoulder, but Silas ducks away. “Sorry man, but you’ve got to take that suit off,” Silas demands, and my mouth opens to gape at them both. “Blondie, don’t look,” Silas instructs me, and I immediately turn away without any argument. I might be a worldly zombie slayer now, but I’ve actually never seen a naked man before.

“I’m sure there is something around here to change into,” Silas mutters. I hear the faint rustle of clothing and feel a blush creep up into my face. Okay, let’s get out of this nasty cell block.” Silas says, and I glance at the bodies of the other men curled up in their cells.

“Are you sure that they’re…not alive?” I ask in trepidation. I’d hate to leave anyone trapped inside a metal cage to die slowly.

“All dead,” Hank’s gravelly voice answers me, instead of Silas, and I almost turn around until I remember that Hank is now naked.

“You take the lead, Jane,” Silas commands.

I nod and start heading for the door.

“Be careful, you never know what might be on the other side of that door,” Silas adds, his words making my blood run cold. I already knew to be careful, but Silas really has a way with words.

I slowly start to push the door open with my gun held at the ready—another creepy door—great! I only get the door open a few inches when a rotting hand snakes its way through the open jam and takes a swipe at me. I let out a shriek, and by the sound of things, so does Hank. An ugly face with half-chewed-off, rotten lips and teeth dripping with strings of viscera joins the hand.

The zombie has his hand caught in the door, but his brain is so far gone that he no longer understands the concept of an outward swinging door, and his own weight keeps pushing it closed on his hand.

“Silas…” I start to say, but he interrupts me.

“You can handle this,” he says, and my heart drops into my toes. “What if I wasn’t here?” he questions, and it actually does help firm my resolve. I raise my gun, and the zombie stupidly bites the end of the muzzle, so I pull the trigger. He falls to the floor, and I wait, heart hammering in my chest, to see if another one will take his place. A few seconds go by and nothing happens, so I start to push the door open. It’s a lot harder now with a corpse blocking the way, but I put my shoulder into it and, eventually, it gives. I step out into the bullpen and scan the area. I don’t see anything else, so I take a step further.

Silas huffs a bit as he deposits Hank into one of the office chairs and hands him a notebook off the desk to cover himself. “I don’t suppose you remember where you got your jumpsuit?” Silas asks.

Hank nods and raises a shaking hand to point to a closed door beside the one that leads back to his cell.

Silas looks at me briefly before motioning for me to come with, and I know he was probably weighing the pros and cons of leaving me alone with a strange man that we just liberated from jail, versus the need for someone to stay behind and protect Hank in this seemingly clear room. I’m actually a little touched that he cares.

We make our way over to the closet, making sure that we still have a clear visual of Hank, and we both lean in and listen at the door. We can hear some bumping around, and I feel a stab of annoyance—another zombie. “You throw the door open, and I’ll shoot it,” Silas says, letting me catch a break, and I nod gratefully.

I grip the door handle and pull, stepping back behind the door as I go. I can’t resist the suspense, and I peek around just in time to see a zombie come charging out of the linen closet. Silas raises his gun and then seems to think better of it. He holsters the gun, pulling his bloody axe from the loop on his belt and cleaving his attacker right through the forehead. The zombie twitches and falls to the floor, taking Silas’s axe with him. Silas reaches down, pulls the axe from the biter’s head with a wet slurp, and then shines his flashlight cautiously inside the small room.

I gingerly step over the zombie’s body, trying not to look too closely. I wrinkle my nose as the stench of zombie attacks my senses when I step inside the closet. The zombie has probably been in here since the beginning—I shine my light around at all the shelves that have been knocked into disarray and wince when I see that some of the jumpers are messed up and crusted over with zombie goop.

“What size do you think he is?” I whisper to Silas, and he shrugs, frowning at me.

“This isn’t a fashion show, just get him a large—it should fit,” he snaps.

I don’t argue, but I do let out an annoyed huff that hopefully leaves no doubt in Silas’s mind just how annoying he’s being.

I grab a couple pairs to tide him over for now. Even though I’m sure prison orange isn’t Hank’s favorite color, it’s better than his birthday suit!

“Who are you people?” Hank asks as we step out of the closet, overtop the downed zombie, and Silas throws a jumpsuit at him. “I mean…you’re just kids, but your shooting guns and murdering those…things…with an axe.” Hank takes a shaky breath and starts to pull his coveralls on. I turn my back to avoid seeing anymore of Hank than I’d like.

“Zombies,” Silas says, and I hear Hank suck in a breath.

“Come on, kid,” Hank says in a disbelieving voice, and I have to supress a smile to hear someone call Silas a kid—I bet he loves that.

“What do you think’s been going on for the last couple of weeks?” Silas asks the other man, and he must not have an answer because he doesn’t reply. “Did you think they just forgot to come in and feed you guys?” Silas snorts. “What did you think those things in the cell beside you were?” he presses, and I hear Hank let out a sniffle.

“Silas,” I warn him, and he lets out a sigh of frustration.

“The world’s changed now, almost everybody is dead. You get bit by one of those things—you die,” I hear the zip of fabric and turn around to see Hank wobbling as he stands holding onto the desk for support.

I look at Hank with a critical eye. He looks like he was already on the slender side even before spending two weeks in an unattended jail cell. I’m not sure how we are going to evade the zombies with this guy in tow; he can barely walk! I dig in my bag, pull out a bottle of water, and hand it over to him—feeling like the biggest jerk on earth, making him wait this long! The thought occurs to me, with the reduced human population, I could actually be the biggest jerk on earth right now.

Hank’s hands shake as he sinks back down into the chair, trying to twist the lid off the bottle. Silas reaches over and gives the lid a quick twist, using only two fingers to show off, and I shake my head. I’m pretty safe from the title of biggest jerk left on Earth—as long as nothing happens to Silas. All joking aside though, I’m stunned by how weak this guy is. I give Silas a worried look over the top of Hank’s head, and he shrugs.

“Thank you,” Hank manages to gasp after he’s chugged more than half the bottle. Silas hands him a power bar and from his own bag, and the guy barely chews it.

“Natalie is okay…she’s here?” Hank asks when there’s nothing left but the wrapper, which he’s even licked. I’d started to pull another one out of my bag, but Silas had shaken his head. I guess after not eating for so long, he would probably get sick.

“She’s okay. She’s been trying to get to you,” I reassure him, and he sighs.

“And the baby?” Hank asks with a great deal of trepidation on his face, and I nod.

“She’s still pregnant,” I say awkwardly, not really sure what the guy expects from me. I’m no OBGYN— and honestly—anything could be going on inside that enormous baby bump.

“I have to find her,” Hank says, standing up and swaying dizzily on his feet.

“You might want to wash some of that blood out of your beard first,” Silas says pointedly, and I gasp—I can’t help it. It’s such a terrible thing to bring up. It was pretty obvious to me when we rescued Hank, and Silas too, I’m sure, that the only reason he was still alive this long was because he’d been eating his cellmate. I swallow at the mental image that comes back to haunt me of the naked man on the bunk with pieces missing out of him. It’s honestly like Hank is already halfway to being a zombie.

Hank’s face falls at the reminder, and even though he’s deathly pale, he somehow manages a blush. “You have to understand…I didn’t know what else to do,” he says brokenly, and it’s quite obvious to me that Hank regrets what happened. My own stomach heaves just thinking about eating the flesh of another person, though in his defense, he was starving to death.

“Did you kill that guy?” Silas asks, and Hank’s expression goes from regret to horror.

“I’ve never killed another person in my life,” he denies hotly. “I don’t know if Nat told you, but I was only in this cell for a DUI.” He takes a deep breath, and I can see the expression of self-loathing on his face. “That guy was a diabetic. After two days, when no one came back to inject him with his insulin, he died.” Hank is actually shedding tears by this point in the story. “I didn’t…you know, at first,” he admits. “I made it nearly a week before I couldn’t stand the hunger anymore. We’d just been given lunch when everything started to happen, so I had a bottle of water that helped keep me going.” He scrubs his hands over his face and winces at the feel of his dense beard.

“Let’s find a bathroom or something,” I suggest, not particularly wanting to hear much more of his story—it’s not really our business anyway. Silas looks annoyed that I’ve interrupted just as things are getting good, but he gets to his feet from where he was leaning up against a desk.

“I saw a locker room just over here,” Silas tells us, leading the way to another set of doors. We bust the door open, prepared for a fight, but it appears to be one of the few places that are zombie free in this whole police station.

“You will probably be able to find something in here,” Silas says, pulling open a couple of the lockers and throwing a shaving kit at Hank. Hank tries the faucet, but nothing comes out. So I give him another bottle of water, and he takes a sip before setting the plug in the sink and dumping the rest inside the porcelain bowl.

I watch him with blatant curiosity as he finds a cordless beard trimmer in the bag and quickly runs the blade over his face. A lot of his matted, dirty beard hair falls to the floor in a heap. He quickly washes the rest of his face before running a regular razor over the rest. He cuts himself in several places because his hands are shaking so badly, but Silas doesn’t step in to help him, and I certainly am not going to offer.

He wipes away the blood and splashes water over his face and head before standing up and using the spare pair of coveralls to dry himself off.

“What now?” he asks, and I’m surprised at how different he looks with a clean shaven face.

“We connect with the rest of our group and get the hell outta here,” Silas says, and I pray that it will really be as easy as he says.

Silas takes the lead, with Hank in the middle and me taking up the rear, and we make our way back over to the large wooden counter. We’d just jumped over it before, but now we have Hank, and he seems pretty weak, so Silas walks around to the far side where we can see a small swing door built right into the counter.

Silas stops suddenly and aims his flashlight down on the ground, and Hank lets out a hoarse yell. I peek around his shoulder, wondering if I need to start shooting, and see a zombie down on the ground. It was a female police officer once, but now she is a deadhead who’s somehow managed to get herself trapped underneath the gate. Her snapping teeth and top half of her torso are on our side, and the rest of her is invisible on the other side of the gate. I’m not sure if she pulled herself under there herself, or some poor bugger slammed the gate shut on her, trapping her there.

Silas doesn’t mess around. He brings his large steel-toed boots down with a resounding crunch on the crown of her head. He grinds his heel into her head again and again, until her rotting flesh gives way and her skull caves in under the pressure.

Hank grips my shoulder with bony fingers that feel like they are a pair of vise grips, and I have to bite my lip to keep from letting out a squeak of pain. Hell, Silas would probably shoot him dead where he stands.

“How do you two do this?” Hank asks, and Silas shrugs as he swings the gate open to reveal that the other half of her body is actually not on the other end of the gate. All this zombie has left is a ragged stump where her legs were chewed off all the way up to her pelvis.

Hank stops to vomit, and I feel bad for him, remembering the first day when all this stuff started happening and everything seemed so gross. Though the guy did just eat his cellmate, so I’m not really sure where this falls on the grossness scale for Hank.

The waiting area is still empty, and I count my lucky stars. Silas sees Hank leaning heavily on me, and he walks over and yanks him off without so much as a please. I half expect him to toss the other man to the ground, but Silas helps support his weight instead, and I’m proud of how far Silas has come.

I stare at the heavy steel door that leads back out into the hallway of doom, and I feel my guts quiver at the reminder of what we had to do to get here. I think about warning Hank about the bodies we left on the other end of the door, but Silas is already pushing the door open, and I bring my gun up in case we find any more unwanted guests.

The hallway is black and just as terrifying as before, and Hank balks, but Silas brings his flashlight up and forces the smaller man to step through with him. I bite my lip until I taste the tangy, metallic taste of blood on my tongue and follow them through, shutting the door quietly behind us and immersing us back into the stifling black.

Hank whimpers, and I hear Silas shush him angrily. “Buck up,” Silas whispers.

Even though I know he isn’t talking to me, I pretend he is and try to strengthen my resolve.

Since we’ve already cleared this area, we make much better time and reach the heavy duffel bag we left in front of the break room much faster than we first found it.

I try to heft the bag up since Silas is helping Hank, and I do get it up, but the weight makes my knees want to buckle. I take three staggering steps and then set it down. I’m as useless as Hank with the weight of this bag.

“We are not gonna be able to bring all this stuff, and Hank,” I tell Silas. By the look in his eye, I know he’s seriously debating leaving Hank behind.

“Okay…” Silas says, his eyes scanning the hall, and I’m kind of not following.

“Okay, what?” I prompt, and his gaze finally settles on me.

“We don’t need to go all the way back through the building. We came in through a window, we can go out through any window.” Silas pokes his head into the break room, and Hank winces at the gory scene before us. “This window will do fine,” Silas says, pulling the shade up and revealing a window that isn’t covered over with heavy metal bars. Silas raises his axe to smash out the window.

“Wait!” I call over to him, and he turns to me with a frown.

“I’m all for getting the hell out of here, but what’s the plan?” I demand, and Silas frowns more deeply.

“We’ll have to leave Hank and the guns here and go get the truck—they’re both too heavy for us to support,” he decides.

“You and I are going to find the others?” I ask, wanting clarification, and Silas shakes his head.

“You should probably stay here with Hank,” he tells me.

“Why don’t you stay here with Hank, and I’ll go find the truck?” I question, but Silas is shaking his head before I even finish my sentence.

“You’re not going out there alone, it’s too dangerous,” he tells me, frowning when he sees the grin on my face.

“Exactly, Silas. I’m coming with you,” I tell him.

“Jane, I’m a much better shot than you,” he reminds me, but I just shrug it off.

“There’s a lot of zombies out there, we’ll be safer in pairs,” I tell him. Silas shrugs, and then nods towards Hank.

“What about him then, wouldn’t he be safer in a pair?” he asks, and I know he doesn’t actually care, he’s just looking for a way to keep me in here. I let out a very Silas-like snort.

“Nice try. Hank will be the safest one of us all.” I remind him as I walk over to the only other door in the room, knowing it’s most likely either a bathroom or a closet. I pause to listen for any sounds and hear a faint scuffling. I force myself to pull the door open anyway, with my gun at the ready. A lone zombie turns slowly and opens its mouth to growl at me, and I put a neat bullet hole right in its forehead.

I quickly scan the closet and relax a bit when it’s clear. I grab the zombie by its boots—which seems like the safest choice, germ wise—and drag the biter’s corpse from the closet, leaving behind a trail of black goop. “Zombies can’t open doors,” I say, turning around and motioning for Hank to come forward. “You’ll be safe in here until we get back,” Hank hesitates in the threshold of the closet.

“I just spent two weeks locked in a cell, I’m a little claustrophobic,” he admits to me, and I hesitate. It does seem cruel to make him endure this.

“Do you want to live or not?” Silas snaps, obviously sick of wasting time.

Hank nods, “Of course.”

“Then get in the damn closet,” Silas snaps.

Faced with the dark scowl on Silas’s face, Hank steps inside. I hand him my flashlight and another granola bar, hoping it will help reassure him.

“What about a weapon?” Hank asks, his voice going all high and squeaky when Silas is about to shut the door.

Silas mutters something illegible, pulls one of his many knives off his belt, and hands it to Hank. “Not a gun?” Hank asks, clearly disappointed, and Silas rolls his eyes.

“Do you know how to shoot a gun?” Silas asks, and Hank thinks for a minute before shaking his head.

“Try not to stab yourself,” Silas tells him as he slams the door shut and walks back over to the window with a shake of his head. I glance at the closet one more time, feeling a small twinge of guilt at leaving Hank, even though he does have the easy part, and then I join Silas by the window.

Silas wraps the head of his axe with a dishtowel that he finds on the counter next to the moldy donuts, and he smashes the glass out. It’s a bit quieter this time, though the glass still tinkles as it hits the window frame and the ground.

Silas carefully pokes his head outside to make sure the coast is clear and then jumps out, which I take to mean it is. I climb up onto the sill, and Silas turns around and grabs my waist, lifting me down. I stand in the grass, blinking in the bright sunshine, my eyes instantly locking on a group of six zombies that aren’t all that far away from us.

“I thought it was clear,” I demand of Silas, making sure to keep my voice low. Silas shakes his head.

“We’d be waiting a long time for that, Blondie,” he says, grabbing my hand and taking off at a jog. The zombies are slower than us, so we race right by them, not bothering to take them out. I worry for a minute that they might get in through the broken window and get Hank, but the windows are a good ways off the ground, coming up to my waist, and I’ve yet to see a zombie that is limber enough to make that climb.

Silas is practically dragging me along, and my legs are starting to burn from the fast pace as we reach the end of the building. We peek around the corner and come face to face with a zombie. He was just standing there, but as soon as he sees us, his horrible dark eyes light up, and he takes a swing at Silas. Silas, not wanting to risk the pop of his gun, uses his axe to split his skull and then peeks around the corner again, this time with a bit more caution.

“How is it?” I whisper, and Silas shrugs.

“As good as it’s going to get,” he admits, and I don’t like the sound of that at all. I feel his hand tighten around mine, and I know that he’s preparing to make a mad dash again.

We round the corner at a breakneck run, and I almost dig my heels in when I see all the corpses dotting the lawn. As if he can read my mind, Silas gives my arm a rough yank like he’s warning me not to screw around. Like I have so many times already, I put blind faith, and my life, into Silas’s hands and keep pace as we sidestep zombies and narrowly avoid groping hands and jagged, germ-infested fingernails.

Silas lets go of my hand, raises his gun, and shoots some of the zombies that are blocking our path. I might not be connected to Silas anymore by touch, but I stick to his side like glue. I no longer have a problem with how fast he’s running.

The landscaped grass turns into the paved parking lot out front, and my heart sinks as we stop for a moment, both of us breathing hard and looking around.

“Where’s the truck?” I ask with trepidation, and Silas shrugs. I didn’t really expect him to know. We’ve both been inside this past hour—I taste stomach bile when I think about what could have happened to the others in that timeframe.

Zombies are converging on us from all sides, and Silas raises his gun and starts shooting a path. He pauses just long enough to shout at me. “We can’t stay here, we’ve got to keep moving,” he says, his accent becoming thicker with his fear, and I don’t have a lot of hope for us if Silas is scared.

Silas takes off for the small opening he has just cleared, and I force my shaking legs to keep up, my mind warring with twin fears: We are going to die out here. And, what happened to the others?

My fear for the others is temporarily pushed to the back of my mind when a zombie manages to grab onto my backpack. I let out a hoarse cry as his teeth sink into the canvas material, and Silas swings his axe. It goes whistling by my ear and lodges in my attacker’s neck. Black goop leaks out—it no longer sprays like our blood—and little droplets hit the back of my neck when Silas pulls the axe out.

Zombies are starting to close in on us again, getting closer and closer, and then I feel the zombie wrap his arms around me, his fetid breath on the back of my neck, and I know my end is near… “Just run Silas!” I scream at him, knowing that if he doesn’t go like right now, he won’t be able to. Silas swings his axe again, and this time he hits his mark. The zombie goes down, his teeth still clamped on my bag, and Silas’s arms, gripping me around the waist, are the only thing that keeps me from following him down.

I hear a piece of my backpack rip, and then the dead weight is off of me, and Silas is urging me back into a run, shooting into the crowd like a mad man. I’m not a very good shot yet, especially under all of this pressure, but I bring my gun up anyway and start firing into the crowd at random. Who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky and take some of these fuckers out with me.

Chapter Eighteen

Silas and I make a push against the zombies, madly shooting our way towards our rapidly closing escape route. My stomach hurts; I’m so afraid of a ripping, tearing death. I try not to think about it and just focus on trying to survive and not get bit, but it isn’t an easy task. There must be fifty zombies gathered here, all of their attention riveted on us, and more zombies wander in with each passing minute.

The zombies in front of us close rank quickly, more popping up to fill the empty spaces made by those we take down. There is nothing left to do but retreat, which would be a great plan if there weren’t zombies behind us too. They form a tight circle around us, and that circle keeps getting smaller as they stagger closer.

“I have two bullets left!” Silas yells to be heard above the raucous of the dead, and I nod grimly. His meaning is crystal clear. Even though we’ve never talked about this outcome before, I don’t want to be ripped apart, and I don’t want to come back as one of those things either.

“Do it!” I yell back as tears fall freely down my cheeks.

Silas pulls me into his arms and holds me tightly against his body for a second before leaning down and pressing a kiss to my tear-soaked lips. He lingers there, much longer than a simple goodbye kiss might warrant, and I’m thoroughly shocked. I don’t kiss him back at first, but then after a couple of seconds I find my lips moving against his. He pulls away from me, his dark eyes burning with something I can’t even begin to name.

“I always liked you, Blondie,” he murmurs in my ear as he presses his pistol to my temple. I try to give him a half smile to make this easier on him, and completely fail. “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you.”

His words hurt my heart, and I wish that I was strong enough to do this so Silas doesn’t have to. “It wasn’t your fault,” I tell him, and it’s true. I would have been dead long before today if it hadn’t been for Silas.

The zombies blocking our path suddenly go flying to the side like pins at the bowling alley as the nose of the Ford forces its way into our midst.

“Holy shit!” Silas shouts as he snatches his pistol away from my head, looking sick about what almost happened. “Get in the back!” he yells as he pushes me hard, urging me towards the truck. He picks me up and manually throws me into the back of the truck just as he’s tackled to the ground from behind by a zombie.

“No!” The scream is torn from my throat as I watch the zombie latch onto Silas’s arm and begin to gnaw.

“Just go, Jane!” Silas yells at me, his eyes pleading with me to listen. His words are almost the exact same thing I’d said to him a few minutes ago, and he hadn’t left me for dead.

I jump out of the back of the truck, stumbling when I hit the ground hard, and slam my gun into the back of the zombie’s head point blank, pulling the trigger. Silas is showered with little bits of blood, bone, and brain matter as the zombie slumps down on top of him. The other zombies are so close that it won’t be more than another couple steps before they reach us. I start firing into the crowd as Silas jumps to his feet and joins me, firing until his magazine runs dry and we’ve knocked the zombies back enough to allow us to climb into the back of the truck.

I climb up on my own this time to be sure Silas will have enough time to get in. I can hear Ryan firing out his window too, but my whole world is focused on surviving right now. As soon as we are in the back, Ryan jams the truck in drive and takes off like a shot, mowing down zombies left and right.

“Hold on to the tie down straps!” Silas yells out, showing me where to grab the rope and wind my wrist through so I won’t get thrown from the truck. I shift uncomfortably on the top of the boxes and bags we have loaded in here, and I pray that we will be alright, but I know for certain that one of us won’t be.

I can’t even see because I’m crying so hard. I only know we are out of the thick of things when I no longer feel the thud of zombie bodies bouncing off the truck. Ryan speeds up as he aims the truck out of town and cranks it to a stop once we’ve passed the Welcome to Watseka sign. I lift my head when we come to a stop, and we are once again out on the open road where we can see for miles in all directions. There are a few zombies off in the distance, but it will take them a long time to reach us.

As soon as the truck has stopped, I’m at Silas’s side, trying to take a look at his bite as gingerly as I can. “Are you guys okay?” Ryan demands, jumping out of the truck and running up to us.

“Silas got bit,” I sniffle, tears still streaming down my face.

“Blondie…” Silas starts to say, but I break down. I don’t think I can handle another goodbye. “Jane!” Silas yells at me, giving me a rough little shake, and I look up at him.

“I’m okay,” he tells me, and I blink.

“What do you mean? I saw you get bit,” I argue with him, my heart starting to swell with hope, but I brutally tamp it down. This could just be Silas playing it tough.

Silas pulls off his gore-soaked vest and strips his shirt off to reveal that he’s wearing some sort of black arm guards going from his wrist to just above his elbow. “What in the hell is that?” I ask, not sure what I’m seeing.

“It’s paintball armor,” Ryan answers instead of Silas, a grin splitting his face, and I’m stunned.

“The bite didn’t go through?” I double check, my mind spinning. Silas gingerly peels off the Lycra-padded sleeve to check it out. His arm is sweaty underneath the sleeve, and there is a large bruise from the zombie’s jaw, but nothing broke the skin. Silas sags in relief, and that’s when I know for certain that he wasn’t sure his padding would work either.

I’m so relieved, I reach out and slap him. “I thought you were going to die!” I yell at him, feeling immense relief. I reach out and slap him again.

“What was that for?” Silas demands, and I give him an angry look.

“When were you going to share your little zombie armor idea with the rest of us?” I yell, and Silas glares back, refusing to be cow-toed.

“This was my own paintball gear, from before the outbreak, and we haven’t come across any places that stocked it. I checked the mall, they didn’t have it.” His answer makes me settle down a little. I glance up and see that Natalie has gotten out of the truck and is staring at us with tears in her eyes, clutching her swollen belly.

“It was too late?” she asks, and I glance at Silas—crap!

“Hank’s still alive,” I tell everyone, and Natalie blinks in surprise.

“Then where is he?” she demands, her face changing from despair to hope to anger in a matter of seconds.

“We had to leave him back at the cop shop…” I start to say, trailing off at the look on Natalie’s face.

“What?” she demands, her voice raising an octave.

“He was too weak to walk. We’ll have to go back for him with the truck—and a bag of guns,” Silas says, taking over for me.

“How could you leave him like that?” Natalie demands, and I begin to feel a prick of anger. We were almost killed trying to rescue this guy!

“If we’d brought him with us, he would have been dead back there. If you think you could have done a better job, you would have been dead too. You weren’t in that building, and you should thank your lucky stars you weren’t,” Silas snaps, obviously feeling a little pissed at how ungrateful she’s being. Natalie blinks at us, and the anger melts off her face.

“I’m sorry,” she says, rubbing her belly. “It’s the baby, the hormones make me crazy,” she says with an awkward chuckle.

“I think everyone’s emotions are running high right now,” Ryan interjects, trying to diffuse the situation. “Is he in a safe spot?” he asks, and I think about the closet we shoved Hank into, though there isn’t a chance in hell I’m going to tell crazy, preggo Natalie that. Silas and I look at each other and then nod to the rest of the group.

Ryan catches our glance and looks suspicious about what exactly we did to the guy, but like us, he doesn’t want to risk setting Natalie off. “Then we’ll let the zombies settle down and go back.” Ryan decides, but Silas shakes his head.

“No offense intended, Natalie, but this guy seems like a bit of an idiot,” Silas says baldly, and Natalie winces. “I don’t think you have that much time to waste before he’s gonna decide we’re all dead and set off on his own.”

“Silas might be right,” I have to agree. Even though I just met him, I can see Hank doing this—he definitely didn’t like going into that closet—and we never did discuss a timeframe.

“The truck is faster than the zombs, we can be in and out in a matter of minutes,” Silas decides, once again taking over the rescue mission. “Ryan, you’re driving again. Take us around to the back of the building, and you’ll see two windows broke out, you’ll need to head to the farthest one. If everything is clear, Blondie, and I can be in and out.”

Ryan is already shaking his head. “I don’t think Jane should go back, you almost bit the big one last time,” he says, and I feel hurt by his lack of faith in me.

“Jane can handle it,” Silas interjects, surprising the hell out of me. “Besides, she already knows what we’re doing once we get inside. It would be a huge waste of time bringing in a new person—plus, you know we can’t trust her to drive,” Silas adds in just as I was beginning to feel charitable towards him. I shake my head at him as we all hop back into the truck. Ryan, Sunny, and Natalie are squeezed into the front seat; Silas and I are in the back. This way we won’t have to open numerous doors and risk letting zombies inside to get at Sunny.

We speed back into town with Ryan at the wheel, driving far more recklessly than I’m used to. At high speeds, he goes up on curbs to avoid zombies, races across lawns, takes out mail boxes, and hits the occasional zombie. The front end is already dented in from when he saved us earlier—so I guess he figures, screw it!

We reach the building quickly, and a lot of the zombies are still hanging around where we left them, jostling each other around like a nest of stirred up hornets.

“We aren’t going to have a lot of time,” Silas tells me as we zip around them, the truck tires tearing up the overgrown lawn. Ryan passes the first window we broke and keeps going until he screeches to a halt outside the second window where we encounter a bit of a hold up.

The group of six zombies we passed earlier is now scratching around the window, and I wonder how they can possibly sense Hank tucked away in the closet. Silas and I burst out of the truck, and even Ryan gets out and starts helping us clear the window. I walk up to the closest zombie and put a bullet in the back of his head, making his brains blow out his forehead.

“You came back!” I hear Hank yell from inside the room and frown. No wonder the zombies are so excited, the moron wasn’t in the closet anymore.

“Shut up you idiot!” I hear Silas yell back as he cleaves a zombie through the skull with his axe. Ryan shoots the last two. Then Silas picks me up and throws me up on the window sill, and I pull myself into the room.

“Get going,” I tell Hank as I push him towards the window. He lands, not very gracefully, into Ryan and Silas’s arms, and they toss him in the truck. Ryan gets back in the driver’s seat—none of us trusting a bunch of strangers alone in our running truck with Sunny. Silas hops lightly through the window, and I help him push the heavy bag out onto the ground. He winces when it drops with a dull thud.

“I’m sure your precious guns will be okay,” I tease Silas as he hops out of the window. He turns to me with a grin and pulls me down from the window by my waist, setting me down so that we can both lug the enormous duffel bag and toss it into the back of the truck.

Zombies are rounding the corner of the building already, so we don’t have time to tie it down, but if Ryan takes his driving down a few notches from the Fast and the Furious level, then its weight should help keep it from falling out—at least till we get out of town.

Silas holds the door open for me, and I slide in next to Hank, wincing when he bumps me as he reaches up front to hug and kiss Natalie.

“Everybody hold on,” Ryan tells us unnecessarily as he takes off again, cranking the wheel, dodging zombies, and jumping curbs until we are once again out of town. We pull over next to the inaccurate Welcome sign. Natalie and Hank get out and embrace each other, kissing on the mouth. I gag a little and look away. It’s not that their kissing is gross, but Hank had been eating his cellmate, and I know for a fact he didn’t have time to brush his teeth!

I turn to Silas, who also has a grossed out look on his face. He looks at me and shrugs before climbing into the back to strap down the guns.

I feel a pair of arms wrap around me from behind and just about jump out of my skin. I do jump out of the arms, swatting them away and spinning around with my gun up. Ryan looks shocked, and I quickly put my gun away. “I’m so sorry!” I exclaim, feeling guilt at the wounded expression on his face. “I just had a zombie do that exact same thing to me today, and it’s made me a little jumpy,” I admit, and the hurt melts off his face, replaced with a worried expression. “I’m alright,” I reassure him before he can ask. Thankfully, I was lucky today, and it’s nothing a hot shower won’t solve.

We pile back into the truck, and I end up in the backseat with Natalie and Hank as they play tonsil hockey with each other. As gross as it is, it’s better than ending up pressed up against Silas or Ryan. My mind is spinning from Silas’s confession when we thought we were going to die, and that kiss… I’m not sure what I’m feeling, but I would be lying to myself if I denied that his kiss had thrilled me. It could have just been the adrenaline rush from thinking I was about to die too, but I think there was a bit more to it than just chemical reactions in my body.

I glance up and catch Ryan watching me in the rear-view mirror and give him a small smile.

“You two have a choice to make,” Silas says, breaking the silence as he turns from the front seat and looks into the back—avoiding eye contact with me—and focussing on Natalie and Hank. “We are heading to meet some friends of ours, so you two need to decide if you are going to go your separate way, or come with us.”

Hank and Natalie look at each other with indecision stamped on their faces.

“We are getting close, so you’ll need to make your mind up soon. If you aren’t gonna be part of our group, we can’t risk taking you to the place we’ll be holed up,” Silas explains, and his reasoning is solid. I hadn’t thought of it before, but if Hank and Natalie left us, they could come across another group and give away our location—and who knows what kind of maniacs might decide to pay us a visit.

“You don’t know what it’s like out here, but I think we should stay with these people,” Natalie says softly, her eyes on Hank. “They seem like good people, and there aren’t that many of those left anymore.” Hank’s eyes narrow as he looks at his wife’s face, probably wondering if something happened to her out on the road. I wondered the same thing myself when we first came across her this morning.

“What about your mother?” Hank starts to ask, but Natalie is already shaking her head.

“She didn’t make it,” Natalie says hollowly, and Hank puts his arm around her.

“I’m so sorry, Nat. What about my sister?” Hank asks with obvious trepidation, and Natalie shakes her head.

“She was one of the first to fall sick—it was actually strange—but she wasn’t bit when she turned,” Natalie tells him gently, and Hank looks shell shocked at the news. I feel bad for him. This must be a lot to take in all at once, and I also wonder if his sister had the uncommon blood that changed first, according to that doctor in New York.

“We’ll do whatever you think is best then,” Hank says at last, leaving the decision up to his wife. Natalie reaches over and takes his hand.

“We’ll come with you,” she tells Silas. “With the baby coming soon, I don’t want to be out on the road somewhere…” she looks nervous when she talks about the birth of her baby, and I don’t blame her. I can’t imagine. There are no hospitals, no doctors, not to mention bringing a helpless newborn into this nightmare. I feel bad for her.

“Sounds good,” is all Silas says as he turns back around. I sit and stare uncomfortably out the window as Hank cries and Natalie tries to soothe him.

We reach the trailer, and I’m out of truck before Ryan even has it in park. “What about you, Blondie?” Silas asks, still not looking directly at me as he double checks the straps holding down our stuff in the back of the truck.

“What?” I ask, not sure what he’s talking about and also feeling a little disgruntled that he kissed me when he thought he was going to die, and now he won’t even look at me!

“We aren’t that far from the cabin, but we’re all dirty and gross. Do you want to stay here for the night, or should I hook up the trailer?” I bite my lip, wanting to pick the cabin, of course, but not sure it’s right for me to make the decision for the rest of the group.

“Whatever you pick is fine by me,” Ryan says, and I give him a huge smile.

“I don’t care either,” Silas says, obviously figuring out that I’m hesitating because of him and the others.

I look to Natalie and Hank, and Natalie shakes her head. “We’re just grateful for the ride, we’ll go wherever you want,” she says.

“Thank you guys,” I tell them, starting to feel all kinds of emotions crash over me. This is it, the end of my journey, which has felt like it’s been months. I should be ecstatic, but I’m terrified. I didn’t realize it, but trying to get to the cabin has given me a purpose. I’ve tried really hard not to think about what would happen if I actually got to the cabin and Abby wasn’t there.

“It shouldn’t be more than an hour,” I murmur, knowing that it’s close to Watseka because that is where we always stopped for ice cream just before reaching Lake Manaruke each summer vacation. “I want to go,” I say, firming my resolve. I was tempted to put it off another day, but then realized that nothing would change tomorrow, and I will still be feeling the same way without any excuse to delay it.

Sunny surprises me by climbing into the truck next to me and snuggling against my side. “Why are you so sad?” she asks, reaching up and brushing away my tears. “Don’t you want to see your friend?” Her nose scrunches up in adorable confusion.

“I’m not really sad,” I tell her, having no idea how to explain this all to a six year old. “I’m just nervous, and excited,” I tell her, plastering a big smile on my face so she will stop asking questions.

“Why don’t I read you a book?” Ryan suggests to distract her, and I give him a grateful look as Sunny scrambles across the seats and plants herself in the small middle seat between the driver and passenger seats. Ryan digs a book about ponies out of his bag and starts to read.

Silas hops into the driver’s seat, having just hooked up the trailer, and rolls his eyes at Ryan, but he doesn’t say anything for Sunny’s sake, and then we are on our way.

The truck eats up the miles, and we start to see less and less zombies the further from civilization we get. I’m hopeful that will be a good sign for us. We reach the small grocery store at the base of the mountain, and Silas pulls into the deserted parking lot and digs out the map to examine it.

“The turn is just up there on your left,” I tell him, starting to vibrate, and I’m not sure if it’s from excitement or fear.

Silas folds the map up and puts it away. “I didn’t realize it was up on the mountain,” Ryan remarks.

“It will be a great defense against the zombies,” Silas agrees, looking out the window at the store. “Do we want to grab any more supplies while we’re down here?” he asks, and everyone in the truck shakes their head in unison.

“I just want to get there,” I tell him, no longer overly worried about what the others want. I need to know.

“We have enough to last us a while,” Ryan agrees. “I think we should see if we can set up a safe home base at the cabin and then come back without the people who don’t need to be down here risking their lives,” he says, and I frown.

“You’re not talking about me are you?” I ask, not wanting to be treated like I belong in a bubble, and Ryan shakes his head.

“Are you kidding?” he says with a small grin. “I wouldn’t dare–I was actually talking about Natalie, and Sunny…and I guess Hank, since he’s so weak right now,” he clarifies, and I relax.

“Half of our group is a handicap right now, you’re right,” Silas agrees bluntly, and I almost open my mouth to protest, but really, I don’t actually care. Natalie knows she shouldn’t be running through zombified grocery stores in her condition, Hank is half starved and weaker than a newborn calf, and Sunny is just a kid and has no idea we are even talking about her. I look at the little girl, obliviously playing with her doll, snuggled into Ryan’s side, and I feel good about not dragging her around anymore than we have to.

Silas puts the truck in gear and gets back on the road, carefully maneuvering the trailer so it can make it around the sharp turn that starts to immediately lead us straight up the mountain.

It isn’t your regular kind of road by any stretch of the imagination. The top of the trailer scratches against some of the lower hanging branches, making us all wince at the sound, but Silas doesn’t stop and I’m grateful. I think if we have to stop even one more time before actually reaching the cabin, now that we are so close, I will probably go crazy and run off into the woods, pulling my own hair out!

We wind around curves that are familiar to me and crest hills that make us feel a bit like we are on a roller coaster. Finally, we round the corner and get our first view of the lake as the terrain plateaus a little. We see a cabin up on the right, nestled away into the forest, but it looks abandoned.

“Is it that one?” Ryan asks, leaning forward to squint at it, looking for any sign of life. I shake my head.

“No,” I tell them, thankful that it isn’t because that house is definitely abandoned. For a few more miles, we wind along the road, which follows the lake around, and then another cabin comes into view. My heart stutters in my chest when I see people standing outside.

“Is that them?” Silas asks, starting to tap his brakes, but again I shake my head.

“That’s someone else’s cabin,” I tell them, my pulse hammering. We aren’t alone; there are other survivors up here.

The people openly stare as we drive by. They all hold a gun or weapon of some sort, but they don’t make any threatening motions towards us with them. It’s almost like they are just as afraid of us as we are of them.

Sunny sits up in her seat and waves to them through the window, and one of the younger women slowly waves back. We pass a few more cabins, most abandoned, but some have cars in the driveway or people standing out front. With each live human I see, I begin to feel like there might actually be hope for humanity.

“It’s the next one,” I say, and my voice comes out in a whisper as we round the bend. I hold my breath as the familiar brown cabin comes into view. It looks exactly the same as it always has, untouched by everything else going on in the world. Three vehicles come into view parked outside the cabin, and I let out a strangled sound in my throat.

“It’s them!” I scream, startling everybody in the truck. I see Silas frowning at me in the rear view mirror.

“Jane. We need to be careful,” he warns me. “We can’t just burst in there, it could be anyone,” he says, his words dragging me down, and I shake my head in denial.

Ryan is frowning too, but he’s also nodding in agreement with Silas. “There are three cars,” he points out, more than there should be for just Megan and Abby.

“They probably brought people with them from the Camp,” I protest, not willing to believe anything other than the fact that my friend is alive and well inside those walls.

“I hope that’s true,” Ryan says.

“You should wait here, Ryan and I will go check it out,” Silas suggests, parking the truck along the road rather than pulling into the driveway and announcing our arrival, and I stubbornly shake my head.

“No. I’m going,” I tell him, not willing to give on this at all, unless they do something drastic, like tie me to the truck.

“Fine,” Silas snaps. “But you do as I say, and don’t take any risks.” I nod automatically—I’d pretty much agree to anything at this point.

“Will you be okay in the truck with Natalie?” Ryan asks Sunny, and the little girl nods.

“Nattie is nice, and she has a baby in her tummy,” the little girl replies, fondly patting Natalie’s stomach and making the pregnant woman smile.

“We’ll take good care of her,” Natalie promises, and Silas hesitates.

“I’m sure you are very nice people, but if you do anything like try to steal our truck or harm one hair on that little girl’s head, I will find you and kill you,” Silas promises, making my jaw drop.

Natalie looks offended that he would even suggest such a thing, and Hank looks ready to pee himself. “I’ll take care of her, like I said,” Natalie snaps, and Silas nods.

“Thanks,” Ryan says hastily as we pile out of the truck.

“We should do some recon first,” Silas says, pointing to a back window, and we pull our guns from our belts as we creep through the brush.

“That’s the living room window,” I tell them as we reach our objective, and I have to stand up on my tippy toes to see inside. The cabin looks like it always has with its large stone hearth, Navajo themed couches, and the bear skin rug… with the exception of the large man standing in the middle of the living room talking to someone who has their back to us, and my heart sinks. From what we are seeing, I can’t be sure who is occupying the house.

“Put your hands up,” a gruff voice behind us demands, and my heart plummets even lower. That is definitely not Abby! Silas and Ryan react much faster than me, spinning with their guns up. They don’t do as they’re told and instead aim their own guns at the man who’s snuck up behind us. I turn more slowly, bringing my pistol up level with the guy’s chest.

“We don’t want any trouble, man,” Silas tells him, and my world spins on its axis.

The man in front of me lets out a strangled cry when his eyes land on me, and he falls to his knees in the dirt and pine needles. My jaw drops, and I barely get my gun out of the way before he reaches for me.

Silas is faster though and slaps his hands away from me, pointing his gun in the guy’s face.

“Silas, don’t…” I manage to say, staring at the man with an unfamiliar black beard covering up half of his face.

Abby comes running around the corner and squeals, “Jane!” she shrieks, tears running down her face. Ryan automatically lowers his own gun, recognizing her and Megan, who’s right on her heels.

“Who the hell is this guy?” Silas demands, deducting on his own that the teenage girl running towards me is the long-lost friend I came to find.

“Dad,” I manage to get out and then collapse sobbing against my father’s shoulder. He squeezes me so tightly that I can’t even breathe, and my injured ribs ache in protest, but I couldn’t care less as I tuck my head into that special spot on my dad’s shoulder that is so familiar to me.

We are both crying openly when I pull away just far enough to get the words out. “Where’s Mom?” I ask, even though I’m dreading the answer.

“I’m here, Sweetheart,” my mom cries, running up behind me, making it a group hug. I look up through tear-filled eyes and see everyone that I was missing. My parents, who I just travelled around five zombie-infested states looking for, are here and alive by some crazy miracle. Abby and Megan are standing behind them, beaming at me, with a couple people I don’t recognize, but one I do—Sargent Regg from Camp Freedom. Ryan is smiling down at me, and Silas is looking uncomfortable with all the emotions, and I feel my heart swell with love for them all. This is more than I ever expected I would find when I reached the cabin.

“How…?” I gasp, and my parents move back a little to give me some breathing room, though they both still keep their arms wrapped around me. “How are you here—and what is up with that beard?” I demand, using the palm of my hand to rub the prickly thing on my Dad’s face.

Dad bursts out laughing as he wipes his tears away with his sleeve. “That is a long story, my girl,” he tells me with a soft smile as he reaches up and tousles my hair like I’m a little girl again. “I’ll tell it to you too, just as soon as you tell me all about yours,” he promises, and I grin.

“Deal.” I reply, sticking out my hand so we can shake on it.

Coming Summer 2016

Upcoming Work by Megan Berry

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