Day 100
Author: Amy Cross
Date: 2022-10-30 20:46:47+00:00
Keywords: Post Apocalyptic; Fiction; Zombies; Dystopian; Science Fiction; Horror; Dystopia
Description: One hundred days after humanity was brought to its knees, Elizabeth Marter has joined a small group of survivors in Boston. Under constant attack from scavengers who live beyond the city limits, Elizabeth and the others desperately try to come up with a plan. But when they learn that a more organized enemy is on the way, they realize that they face a battle for what's left of their resources. Thomas Edgewater, meanwhile, has joined up with a ragged bunch of soldiers who are on their way to Boston. As they wait for their orders, however, Thomas and Toad find themselves ordered to guard a captur
Publisher: Blackwych Books Ltd

Copyright 2018 Amy Cross

All Rights Reserved

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events, entities and places are either products of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual people, businesses, entities or events is entirely coincidental.

Kindle edition

First published: November 2018

One hundred days after humanity was brought to its knees, Elizabeth Marter has joined a small group of survivors in Boston. Under constant attack from scavengers who live beyond the city limits, Elizabeth and the others desperately try to come up with a plan. But when they learn that a more organized enemy is on the way, they realize that they face a battle for what's left of their resources.

Thomas Edgewater, meanwhile, has joined up with a ragged bunch of soldiers who are on their way to Boston. As they wait for their orders, however, Thomas and Toad find themselves ordered to guard a captured zombie. By the time the hundredth day draws to a close, Thomas will have begun to suspect that the mysterious Sarah Carter isn't quite who or what she seems. He'll also have met someone who will change his life forever.

Day 100 is the sixth book in the Mass Extinction Event series, chronicling the collapse of human society through the eyes of two very different people who are gradually being drawn together. Ends on a cliffhanger.

Table of Contents

Prologue

12am

1am

2am

3am

4am

5am

6am

7am

8am

9am

10am

11am

12pm

1pm

2pm

3pm

4pm

5pm

6pm

7pm

8pm

9pm

10pm

11pm

Day 100

(Mass Extinction Event book 6)

Prologue

The impact smashes the truck's passenger side and sends the entire vehicle tipping over to the left. The engine roars and I'm sent slamming into the door, but at the last moment the truck slams back down onto its wheels and screeches along the road before bumping down into the undergrowth and finally crashing headfirst into a tree. This second impact shoves me forward, and only the safety belt keeps my head from smashing into the windshield as it shatters.

Glass explodes all around me, slicing the side of my face as I turn away, and then suddenly the immense wrecking sound stops and I'm left sitting in the ruined, smoking truck.

For a moment, I keep my eyes squeezed shut, but finally I open them and look ahead. The windshield is gone, letting rain and wind come crashing in, and all I see is a dark forest stretching ahead. When I came off the road, I must have hit the beginning of the treeline. I feel dazed for a moment, even though I'm pretty sure I didn't hit my head, and my shoulder hurts from the force of being held in place by the belt. As I start moving my hands and feet, however, I realize that I'm basically okay, even if the truck itself seems to be totally ruined.

What did I hit?

I was driving at full-speed through the rainy, stormy night, along an unlit road, and I think I'd just reached a crossroads. And then, out of nowhere, something came slamming into my side with enough force to almost flip the entire truck. I try to check the rear-view mirrors, but they seem to have been ripped off in the crash, so I reach down with a trembling hand and unfasten the belt, before trying to open the door so I can climb out.

I pull the handle several times, but either the door or the frame – or, more likely, both – got damaged in the crash. The window still winds down, though, so I start scrambling out that way, and finally I jump down and land out in the rainy night air. The only light comes from the moon high above, which picks out the edge of the road at the top of a small incline, but so far I don't see or hear any sign of whatever hit me. I wait, listening in case there's a sudden cry, and then I start scrabbling up the incline until I reach the side of the road. Even after just a few seconds, I'm once again soaked to the bone.

And that's when I see it.

There are small pieces of wrecked metal everywhere, spread out for maybe a hundred meters in each direction, and I can just about make out the rear end of some kind of car that has overturned a little way further along the road. One side of the car's front has been destroyed, but the other side looks to be mostly intact although I still don't see anything to indicate that the driver managed to get out, or even that he or she survived.

I instinctively reach down to my belt, before realizing that I don't have a gun with me. I left that behind in the truck.

I watch the wrecked car for a moment, and then I realize that I need to go over and take a closer look. If this is a trap, then it's one that looks to have left the other party in a worse state, and I tell myself that the person in the car might need my help. I start making my way out cautiously, while remaining poised to turn and run, and finally I get close enough to see that somebody's moving in the front of the car. I can hear movement now, too, as if somebody's desperately scrambling to climb out, and a moment later one of the doors opens on the car's other side and a figure slides out, letting out a pained gasp as it lands hard on the asphalt.

Rain is pattering loudly against the figure's arched back. Whoever this person is, they're wearing what looks like some kind of de-contamination suit, complete with a mask hanging loosely from the back of the neck section.

I walk around the side of the car and stop as I see the figure resting on its hands and knees, desperately trying to get its breath back. Squinting slightly in the moonlight, I try to make out the figure's face, and I realize after a few seconds that it seems to be a girl.

I open my mouth to ask if she's okay, but suddenly she turns to me and I see the fear in her eyes. She looks almost wild.

“It's okay!” I gasp, holding my hands up to show that I'm not armed. “I'm not gonna hurt you!”

She continues to stare at me, as if she can't quite believe what she's seeing. In fact, she looks so horrified, I'm starting to wonder whether she's got some kind of head injury.

“I swear I won't hurt you,” I continue, taking a step toward her. “I don't know what happened, I didn't even see the crossroads until it was too late. I didn't see you coming.” I lower my hands. “I was driving for about an hour, I didn't see anyone at all. I guess I didn't expect to, either. I'm sorry if...”

I pause for a moment, hoping that she might say something.

“Are you hurt?” I ask. “I'm not. I mean, I don't think so. My truck's pretty badly damaged, but I'm fine. Can you stand?”

I reach a hand out toward her, but she doesn't respond. She's staring at me as if she either thinks I'm about to attack her, or she's planning to attack me.

“Thomas,” I say cautiously, hoping to at least get something from her. “That's my name. Thomas Edgewater. Can you tell me your name?”

She pauses, before slowing getting to her feet. She struggles slightly and I reach out, grabbing her arm to hold her steady. Pulling away, she takes a limping step back and the she leans against the side of the car as she struggles to get her breath back.

I want to say something, but I wait, hoping that she might reply.

“Elizabeth,” she says finally.

“Elizabeth?”

She stares at me for a moment, and then slowly she reaches a trembling hand out toward me.

“Hello, Thomas Edgewater,” she says with a faint, trembling voice. “My name's Elizabeth Marter, and I've had one hell of a day.”

12am

Elizabeth

Exactly 24 hours earlier...

“Wake up.”

Opening my eyes, I realize that it just happened again. I was right on the edge of sleep, about to nod off, and then a voice reminded me to stay awake. To stay alert.

Not just any voice, either.

Hearing footsteps in the distance, I turn and look along the makeshift locker room, just as a metal door slams somewhere nearby. I don't see anyone, of course, not yet, but that's how these evening shifts always start. I hear her long before I see her, and then she always steps into view and all hell breaks loose. Sometimes I think that if she wasn't so loud, I might be able to hear my brother's voice again.

“Wakey wakey!”

Startled, I turn and look up to my right, and I see Natalie grinning down at me as she slings her rifle over her shoulder. After all these weeks of teaming-up for night-shift duty, she has the whole slacker-girl-sniper look pretty much figured out, right down to the dirt she always smears onto her cheeks and forehead. Honestly, I think getting to play dress-up is part of the fun for her.

“You are so not a late-night kind of girl, are you?” she asks with a chuckle, as she chews on something. “Even after all this time, you look like you just wanna crawl into bed.”

“I'm fine,” I reply, getting to my feet. My eyes feel sore, and after a moment my sore right ankle sends a twinge of pain rippling up the side of my leg. “I'm ready.”

“Whatever.” Rolling her eyes, she heads over to one of the lockers and pulls it open, before taking out a food pack. “I hope you've got some of your own,” she adds, “because I'm not sharing. Not tonight. Time of the week n'all, means I'm trying to squirrel some away so I can have a little private feast before the next round of rations. You have no idea how a weekly feast keeps my chin up. You should try it sometime.”

“I brought some,” I tell her, as I reach into my pocket to double-check.

“You still owe me a pack from last night.”

“I do?” I pause, before realizing that she's right. I borrowed a pack from her, but right now I only have one pack with me. “Oh. Right. Sorry, yeah.”

Taking the pack from my pocket, I hold it out toward her.

She glances at the pack, and then she laughs.

“That's the only one you brought for the whole shift, isn't it?” she chuckles.

I shake my head.

“You're a terrible liar, Elizabeth Marter. You can pay me back some other time. Preferably before my feast is scheduled, though.” She glances at the clock on the wall, then she turns to me again. “Okay, I guess it's time to get out there. And who knows?” She taps the shaft of her rifle. “If we're lucky tonight, we might even get to use these things!”

***

“Do you know what day it is?” Natalie asks a few minutes later, as we sit on a platform on the side of the building, watching the dark yard that stretches all the way to the fence.

“Tuesday?” I suggest, although to be honest I'm not entirely sure.

“It's the hundredth day,” she replies. “Since this all began, I mean.”

“It can't be,” I tell her, genuinely shocked by the suggestion, although after a moment's consideration I start to realize that she might be right. “Can it?”

“It's the hundredth, alright,” she continues, her face caught by a hint of moonlight as she watches the yard. “Crazy, huh? One hundred days of this madness. I can't decide whether it feels much longer than that, or much shorter. A bit of both, I guess. Time seems to be all out of whack.”

“A hundred days,” I whisper, staring out into the darkness.

It's insane, but I think she's right.

One hundred days ago, I guess I was in the apartment in Manhattan. I was with my brother, and we were probably just beginning to realize that something was seriously wrong. Maybe Bob Sullivan had already started bothering us, I don't remember exactly, but I do remember that creeping sense of fear as each hour ticked past and Mom and Dad didn't come home. I told Henry that everything would be alright, and look how that turned out.

I lied to him.

Well, maybe lied isn't quite the right word, but I promised everything would be okay. I promised I'd keep him safe.

“Are you still the same person?” Natalie asks.

I turn to her, although I can barely see her in the darkness.

“I'm not,” she adds. “I don't mind admitting that. I think I've changed more in these past hundred days than I changed in years before that. It's amazing what you can do when you have no choice, huh? And you've changed just in the time you've been here. Is it really only a month since that time you asked me to show you how to work a gun?”

“I guess so;” I reply. “I mean, I think so. I haven't really been able to keep track.”

“And now look at us,” she adds with a chuckle, “spending all this time as the night shift out here on the southern part of the building. We've really fallen into our little niche, haven't we?” She looks out at the land that spreads out into the darkness of night. “How many hours have we spent sitting up here, perched with our guns, ready to scare away anyone who tries to break into the stores? And how many people have we shot at?”

“We haven't shot anyone,” I reply quickly.

“Only because we're sloppy with our aim,” she says. “We've shot at people, though. We've tried to hit them, haven't we?”

I nod.

“Unless you deliberately miss,” she adds.

“Of course I don't,” I tell her. “I'm just really bad at aiming. Anyway, it's like you said that time, we're just a deterrent. And it's not like we can afford to fire too often, anyway. We don't have that much ammunition left. We're just hear so that hopefully people will realize there's no point breaking through the city perimeter and trying to steal from the storerooms.”

“There have only been three kills in the entire city this week,” she says, turning and looking back down toward the yard. “I think they're up to something with that fence. It's kind of pathetic, really, but I guess beggars can't be choosers.” She raises her rifle, as if she's imagining a target. “They're thieves. Never lose sight of that. They want what we've got, and they'll do anything to take it.”

I want to tell her that they're just people, people very much like us, people who need food. I don't say that, though, because I've said it before and I always get laughed at and called naive, and I'm sick of that. I get enough of it from my father. To be honest, that's one of the reasons I've been avoiding him for the past couple of weeks.

“There's one!” Natalie says suddenly, pointing her rifle toward the far end of the yard. “Did you see him?”

“No,” I reply, raising my rifle in the same direction.

“Son of a bitch, there's one out there,” she continues, lowering her voice now. She's got her hunting voice on, the voice she always uses when she's spotted a target. “The fucker thinks he can come here and steal our shit, does he? Like all his miserable pals before. If that fucker thinks he's got a chance against me and my gun, he's got another thing coming.”

We wait in silence for a few minutes, and I start to wonder whether perhaps Natalie's wrong. Out of all the times in the past that she's claimed to have spotted someone, maybe half those times we've actually ended up firing at an intruder. The other times she's either been wrong, or the intruder evidently had second thoughts and didn't try to reach the storage unit. They must know that we're armed, which means that they wouldn't be trying to get to the unit unless they were completely desperate. They're probably starving to death. Maybe they're trying to steal food so they can feed their children.

“There!” Natalie says suddenly. “Two o'clock!”

I look where she indicated, but all I see is the darkness of the yard. My heart's pounding, however, and I instinctively move my finger onto the trigger. I have to look ready, I have to convince Natalie that I'm prepared to fire, even though I always leave the actual killing to her. Between the two of us, we've not actually managed to kill anyone yet, but the difference is that Natalie at least tries whereas I always deliberately aim a little distance away from the target. I'm scaring them away, is what I tell myself. There's no need to actually kill anyone at all.

“Maybe you were wrong,” I whisper.

“No fucking way.”

“But -”

“I saw the asshole clear as anything,” she continues. “He was keeping low and staying close to the wall, hoping not to be seen. He must be in the shadows over there, close to the containers. Damn, we should move those things, but nobody ever listens to me, do they? We should clear this whole yard and make it so the fuckers have nowhere to hide when they come on their little raiding missions.” She mutters something else under her breath, something I don't quite manage to make out. “If you ask me,” she adds finally, “we should exterminate the lot of them.”

“You can't mean that,” I reply.

“Why not?”

“They're people, just like us!”

“I don't care. They're thieves. We should clear those shanty settlements they've set up near the perimeter. They're not doing anyone any good.”

“My father says the Council's trying to figure out how to let them in,” I tell her. “It's just a matter of controlling the numbers and making sure that there's no disease.”

“And you believe him?” she asks. “Come on, Lizzie, don't be so -”

Suddenly she freezes, and I turn just in time to see that she's moving her rifle, as if she's trying to keep her aim focused on someone. She mutters something under her breath again, as if she's trying to give herself a pep talk.

“What is it?” I hiss finally, looking back down at the yard. “I don't -”

And then I see it.

A figure darts from one shadow to the next, edging closer to the main door that leads into the storage unit. I raise my gun and aim in that direction, although the figure is once again out of sight. Whoever it is, they moved fast.

“Motherfucker,” Natalie says after a moment. “I almost pulled the trigger. Almost. I just wasn't sure. Still, he'll have to cross the main part of the yard if he wants to get to the door, and that's where we'll pick him off.” She adjusts her aim slightly. “If he's got any sense, he'll just turn around and go home like a good little boy.”

I try to aim my rifle accordingly, although the figure could be anywhere in the shadows. After a moment, however, I glance toward the far end of the yard. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm just wired and paranoid and exhausted right now, but I thought I spotted movement over there.

“Did you see something?” I ask. “Near the outlet?”

“Like what?”

“I thought maybe I spotted someone else,” I add.

“Doubtful.”

I watch the area around the outlet, in case the second figure reappears. I know it's unusual for two people to try to reach the unit at any one time, and I also know that they always work in pairs when they do. They stick together. It'd make no sense for one of them to hang back so far, but I swear I saw something move.

“Will you help me keep an eye on the guy we actually saw?” Natalie asks, sounding annoyed now. “If there's someone else out there, we'll deal with him when he gets closer. What's he gonna do from that distance, anyway, stare us to death?”

I hesitate for a moment, before returning my rifle's aim to the closer patch of shadows, where at least we're certain that someone is lurking.

“I really thought I saw someone near the outlet,” I explain. “I swear I did.”

“They can't do anything from over there,” she points out, not unreasonably. “Let's take these assholes out one at a time.” She adjusts her aim again. “I'm feeling lucky tonight, Lizzie. This is the night I finally get my first kill since we were set up on this rotten platform. Night after night of freezing our asses off, and finally I'm going to show these motherfuckers that they're not gonna mess with me. I swear, I'm gonna put this asshole's head on a pole and leave it out there for his buddies to see in the morning.”

“Maybe that's a little extreme,” I point out.

“It's the only language they'll understand. We've warned them enough times already.”

“They're only -”

Before I can finish, I spot movement again, off in the distance near the outlet. I turn and look that way, and a moment later I aim my rifle there as well.

“What the hell are you doing?” Natalie asks.

“There's someone over there!”

“So?”

“So something doesn't feel right,” I tell her. “They never come like this. It's almost as if they're trying to divide our attention!”

“Will you please just say focused?” she asks, reaching over and grabbing my rifle, then forcing me to aim down toward the closest part of the yard. “Hell, Lizzie, you're more easily distracted than my dog. The slightest thing and he'd be off running. Can you just be a team player here?” She pauses. “I miss that fucking dog. I'd rather have that mangy thing out here with me tonight than you. No offense.”

Sighing, I realize I'd better do what I'm told. Natalie's usually right about these things anyway, and I guess the person down near the door is the most immediate threat. If he gets through the door and into the unit, he'll probably be chased off by Docker and the others, but it'll still make Natalie and me look bad. We're supposed to be guarding this entire approach to the building, and I already know that my father doesn't think I'm cut out for the job. I don't want to give him confirmation of that fact.

“That's better,” Natalie whispers, as we both aim our guns at roughly the same spot on the ground, waiting in case the figure in the shadows gets brave enough to run for the door. “We'll make a sniper out of you yet, Elizabeth Marter.”

I flinch as soon as he says that.

“Steady,” she continues. “Stay calm. Let the motherfucker in the shadows make the first move.”

This time I don't say anything. I just want this whole thing to pass, so I keep my rifle aimed in roughly the right direction and I watch for any sign of movement.

It's cold tonight, colder than usual. I don't want to shiver, because then Natalie will make fun of me for being s scared, but honestly I'm -

Suddenly a shot rings out.

“What the hell” Natalie shouts, as a bullet hits the metal railing right between us, causing a brief spark.

Hearing footsteps down below, I look down just in time to see a figure racing out of the shadows and trying to make a run for the door of the storage unit.

“Get him!” Natalie hisses, firing at the man but missing, hitting the ground several feet beyond him.

I aim my rifle, making sure to be a little off, and then I pull the trigger, hitting the ground as the man continues to run.

“I said get him!” Natalie yells, firing again, still missing. “Where the fuck did these assholes get guns?”

I keep my gun focused on the man as he gets close to the door.

“Lizzie!” Natalie shouts, as I hear her reloading. “For fuck's sake, shoot him!”

I hesitate, before pulling the trigger again, aiming to hit the ground and scare the man away.

Instead, I watch in horror as the back of his head explodes, and then he slumps down and hits the ground. Too shocked to react, I simply stare as I realize that I didn't see my shot hit the ground.

“You got him!” Natalie gasps, as she aims her gun toward the outlet where we spotted the second figure. “Elizabeth Marter, you motherfucking sniper bitch, you took the asshole down! We finally got a kill out here!”

I open my mouth to tell her that she's wrong, that I missed, but then I realize that maybe I'm the one who's wrong. Sure, I aimed to simply scare the man away, but my hands are starting to tremble and I've never been a good shot. And as I stare at the figure slumped down there in the yard, and as I replay the moment when I saw the back of his head get blasted away, I feel a cold shudder pass through my chest. Natalie's right.

I just killed that man.

1am

Thomas

I'm so sick of the taste of gasoline.

I spit the foul stuff out and then I tilt the hose, using it to siphon more out of the truck and into my canister. The constant dribbling sound makes a noise – too much for my liking – but as I glance around at the darkness I don't see any sign that I've been spotted. Most of the others are asleep, and the few sentries on guard duty at the side of the road are far too busy chatting away.

My brother would be so proud of me right now. I swear, he used to actually enjoy stealing, it was almost as if it was his hobby. He always used to make fun of me for trying to follow the rules, and I know that over the past few weeks he'd have hated to see me stick around with this bunch of soldiers. I can almost hear him cheering me on as I siphon away more and more gasoline.

I just need a little more, and then I'll have enough to get on the road again. I have to get back to Lake Erie, to find Melissa and Katie and make sure they're okay. They'll be waiting for me. They must be wondering why I'm not back already.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Startled, I turn just as a figure grabs the hose from my hand and pulls it out of the truck.

“Stop that!” I hiss.

“Are you crazy?” Toad asks, keeping his voice low. “Do you realize what'll happen if you're caught stealing?”

“I have to leave!” I tell him. “I keep saying this, but no-one listens to me. I have to get to Lake Erie, and then I have to go find my sister, and then -”

“And you think they'll let you go?” he asks, as he pours the gasoline back into the truck's tank. “They're busy planning for the final journey to Boston. We've been camped in this dump for long enough. Patterson and the others have got big plans, and they need every pair of hands and every drop of gasoline. Every bullet. Every truck. They've already made contact with some people who've been trying to break into the suburban stores at the edge of the city, and with some other groups that are headed that way. Patterson and Carter and the others aren't going to let you just wander away, Thomas.”

“Which is why I have to sneak away,” I reply. “Why don't you understand that? Isn't there anyone out there that you want to find?”

“She's long gone,” he says. “Or if she isn't, I don't know how to find her, not like this. My best bet is to hope that Patterson can establish contact with other groups. Then, eventually, maybe there'll be some kind of system for finding other survivors.”

“I thought you were more the solitary type,” I remind him. “Didn't you used to live all by yourself on a farm?”

“I'm pragmatic. Right now, I need these people, but if this madness ever ends, you can be damn sure I'm going back to my farm and I won't let anyone ever get me away from it again.” He pauses, and I can just about see him glaring at me in the darkness. “Getting to Boston is our only hope,” he adds. “Getting there and taking charge of the place. Deep down, you know I'm right.”

“The difference is, I know where I have to get to,” I reply. “Lake Erie, and then -”

“Not with stolen gasoline,” he says firmly interrupting me. “Patterson would have you shot if he knew what I just caught you doing. He's itching to make an example of someone right now. He's got his little puppy dog McGuinness keeping an eye on everyone, just waiting for one of us to slip up.”

“Please let me go,” I tell him. “Please, Toad, I have to go back for them. I promised.”

“And what exactly was your plan? Were you just going to siphon off some gasoline and then drive away in your truck?”

I pause, before nodding.

“Well, I've got some bad news for you, kid.”

Grabbing my arm, he pulls me around to the side of the vehicle. I'm about to tell him that I don't need his help, but then suddenly I see several small lights in the distance. The night guards usually sit around in total darkness, so the lights mean that something's up.

“You chose the wrong night to try sneaking around,” Toad explains. “You'd have been shot before you even managed to get your engine started. That's why I came looking for you. Someone's spotted something coming this way. Something bad.”

***

“I thought the zombies were history,” McGuinness says, sounding distinctly unimpressed as we stand at the side of the road. She sniffs, before spitting into the dirt. “No-one's seen one in weeks.”

“Which is why this is such a surprise,” Patterson says darkly. “Listen, I'm as surprised as the rest of you, but we've verified the sighting. The damn thing is about five hundred meters out there and coming this way. It's slow, like a lot of them have been, but we can't afford to wait until daylight to take it down. I need a team to go out there and contain the threat.”

“You mean roast it?” Taylor asks.

“I mean stop it, but keep the creature intact if you can,” Patterson tells him. “The patrol team say that this zombie is slow but relatively intact, and Carter's already keen to get her hands on it.”

“How can it be intact after all this time?” I ask.

Patterson turns to me.

“They were all supposed to have rotted away,” I point out. “If this one's intact, then that means...”

My voice trails off as the awful realization hits me.

“Bingo,” Patterson says. “I never subscribed to the theory that all the zombies were gone. I always thought there were more out there, and this new arrival suggests that the virus is still active. The patrol estimated the zombie as being no more than a few weeks into its existence, four at most, which means -”

“It was infected well within the last month,” Toad mutters. “Whoever it was, they initially survived the outbreak.”

“Which means the virus is still able to be transmitted,” Patterson points out. “So much for the idea that we were entering a safer phase of the outbreak. Even if it only travels through body fluids, that could pose a serious threat.”

“Bitey bitey,” McGuinness chuckles. “Gotta watch out for their teeth.”

“We haven't seen any zombies for a while, though,” Miller replies. “That has to mean something.”

“We're out in the middle of nowhere,” Patterson says. “For all we know, the cities are teeming.”

“But you said Boston was -”

“As far as I know,” Patterson says firmly, “Boston is still under the control of a kind of council that thinks it has the right to rule the world. We'll deal with them when we get there, but right now we need to understand what's going on with the zombies. We know their minds are linked, that there seems to be one controlling mind that speaks through all of them.”

“Joseph,” I mutter under my breath.

“The point is,” Patterson continues, “we lost the ability to talk to the zombies when their mouths literally rotted away. If this latest one is fresh, it should be able to talk. The mind of this Joseph guy might be in there, and we can find out some more about what he wants. That's why, if at all possible, we're going to take the zombie alive.”

“How the hell do we do that?” McGuinness asks.

“The good old-fashioned way,” Patterson says. “Ropes and stakes in the ground.”

As he continues to explain, I look out into the darkness beyond this crumby little town. Apparently there's a zombie out there, and apparently it might still contain the shared mind of Joseph Aldred. I'd begun to believe, like most other people around here, that the zombies were no longer a threat. Now that this turns out not to be the case, I can't help feeling a flicker of rage as I realize that Joseph's plan might still be ongoing. He's the asshole who caused all of this, and without his stupid games my family would still be alive. A lot of people would still be alive.

If we find him again, I want to make sure that he pays for all of this. First, though, we have to go and find this zombie, and I'm not exactly thrilled at the prospect. And I swear that – as we set off – I feel a twinge in my left shoulder, in the spot where just over a month ago I was bitten by one of those goddamn creatures.

2am

Elizabeth

“You did it!”

As soon as we're back in the locker room, Natalie throws her arms around me and pulls me tight for a celebratory hug. I honestly don't think I've ever known her this happy. I don't think I've ever known anyone this happy. She's ecstatic.

“Okay,” she continues, pulling back but keeping her hands on the sides of my arms as she grins at me, “full confession time, I didn't think you had it in you. I'm sorry, Lizzie, but I thought you were too scared to actually do it. I even thought maybe you were missing deliberately, but look at you now! You cut that motherfucker down!”

“I... did,” I reply, still shell-shocked.

“Did you see Markham and Stanovsky's faces when I told them?” she continues. “I don't think they believed me until they saw the corpse down there. I bet they'll spend their whole shift talking about it. Damn it, girl, you're going to get a reputation as a cold-blooded killer!”

“I am?” I reply.

“We're lucky they only had one bullet,” she says, turning and grabbing a towel, using it to wipe her armpits. “I mean, they must have found a gun somewhere and figured they could use their only shot to try to distract us. That guy you saw by the outlet must have been the one who fired, but they reckoned without Elizabeth Marter, didn't they? Don't worry, I'm going to let you take all the glory for this. You deserve it.”

“I'm not sure that I do,” I reply, as I look down at the rifle in my hands. I really used this thing to kill a man.

“At first light,” she continues, “we'll go and take a look at the miserable son of a bitch. You wanna see the fruits of your labor, don't you?”

I turn to her.

“Look at you!” she laughs. “You're white as a sheet!”

***

“No, this is wrong,” I whisper as I sit on my bed and lean forward, putting my head in my hands. “You did what you had to do. This reaction is all wrong, you were only doing your job. That guy was trying to steal supplies. It was him or us. You did the right thing.”

I'm trying to make myself believe those words, but it's not easy.

I'm trying to distract myself by changing the bandage around my right foot. A few weeks ago I had to have the new foot removed after it developed an infection, and now I have a stump attached to a specially-rigged shoe. It's not ideal, but at least I can get around. As I fix the new bandage in place, however, I realize that this distraction is only going to be temporary.

In my mind's eye, I'm already seeing the body again, out there in the yard.

Killing someone in self-defense is one thing. I did that months ago, back when I was at the apartment and Bob was trying to get me. But killing someone with a rifle feels different somehow. The fact that I didn't see the guy's face should make it easier, but instead it somehow makes me feel worse. He was just somebody trying to survive, somebody like me or Henry or Natalie or Dad. A father, maybe, or at least somebody's son. Or maybe it was a woman, or even a child. In the darkness, I couldn't tell for sure. It's two in the morning now, which means there's a little over three hours until the first light of dawn. That's when the dead person will become easier to see.

I'm going to have to go out there and look at him, to face what I did.

“Now maybe you're starting to understand,” a voice says suddenly, and I turn to look across the room.

I don't see anyone, but I can feel pinpricks of cold fear rising up the back of my neck as I realize that I recognized that voice.

“You're not quite so innocent anymore, are you?”

Turning, I'm horrified to see that I was right.

Bob Sullivan is sitting on one of the other beds, grinning at me. In an instant, I know that this is a hallucination, that he died months ago and that his body is back in New York. I close my eyes, hoping that he'll be gone when I open them again, but instead I see him still sitting there, still smiling at me. He looks so pleased with himself, as if he's won some argument that I didn't even know was raging. The fact that he's not real, that this is all part of my mind, doesn't make things feel better at all.

Am I finally going crazy?

“You're a tough cookie, Elizabeth Marter,” he continues. “I'm gonna admit, when I first met you and your brother, I had the pair of you pegged the wrong way round. I thought Henry was the smart soldier, the kid who'd survive in this bleak world. I thought you'd crumble into nothing, that you'd either die or that maybe your brother would keep you alive. I'm a proud man, but I'll admit when I'm wrong, and I was wrong with you. You're a survivor, Elizabeth, and a damn fine killer.”

“Shut up,” I murmur, with tears in my eyes, hoping to make him go away. “You don't know anything about me.”

“People die all around you,” he says, “but you survive. It's like you refuse to die, and I respect that. Even losing a foot and getting it sewn back on didn't stop you. You just go on and on, leaving people behind when necessary. Like Henry.”

I shake my head.

“And Toad.”

“No.”

“And little Rachel.”

“You're full of -”

I stop myself just in time. I know I'm talking to myself, but Bob's driving me insane.

“You have to go out there when the sun comes up,” he continues, “and look at what you've done. Look your victim in the eyes, if he's still got eyes. Going out there might be the hardest part of all this, but it's the part that'll make you stronger. And you might not like me, Elizabeth, but you know I'm right. You also know I'm really just the smart part of your mind, giving you some straight-talk. I must say, though. The fact that your subconscious mind appeared as Bob seems a little... weird. Pervy, even.”

“Shut up!” I snap.

“You know how to make me go away,” he replies. “When the sun comes up, go out there and -”

“No!”

“You know I'm right.” He starts laughing. “Own what you did, girl. It's the only -”

“No!” I shout, getting to my feet and stepping toward him as his laughter continues.

“Elizabeth?” another voice says suddenly.

Turning, I see that Violet is standing in the doorway, staring at me with a somewhat concerned expression. I stare back at her for a moment, before looking back across the room and seeing that Bob is gone.

Of course he's gone.

He was never here.

“Are you okay?” Violet asks. “Were you talking to someone?”

For a few moments, I'm not sure how to respond.

“No,” I say finally, turning back to her. “I was just thinking out loud, that's all. I was just...thinking.”

“Cool.” She pauses, as if she's still worried, and then she comes into the room and starts removing her jacket. “I just finished paroling the eastern wall. Didn't see anything, but maybe I was being watched. Dunno. I heard a few shots, though. Did something happen at one of the platforms?”

“I...”

My voice dries up.

“Elizabeth?” she continues. “Are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” I lie, “I just didn't get much sleep and now I have to be somewhere.”

“Tell me about it,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I'm back on duty at sunrise. Let me tell you, before all this started I was not an early-riser. Do you know what I'd give right now for a finger-pinch of dope? Or even just a regular cigarette? If old me could see current me, she'd be shocked. It's crazy how we're all becoming different people, huh?”

I try to reply, but I honestly don't know what to say. In my mind's eye, all I can see is that man running across the yard, and then his head being blasted open by a bullet that I fired. I keep seeing it again and again, and hearing the shot too, and hearing the faint thump of the body hitting the ground. And then it repeats, over and over, until I feel like I'm really going to lose my mind.

“Are you sure you're okay?” Violet asks, putting her hands on her hips. “I've never seen you look quite so green around the gills.”

“I have to be somewhere,” I reply, heading to the door and then slipping past her, despite the fact that I desperately need some sleep before I'm due back on duty at the platform. In fact, I'm going to be up there at sunrise, which means I'll see the body. In some kind of sick way, that feels like poetic justice.

“Why do you put yourself through this?” Violet asks.

I turn to her.

“I know I've asked you this before,” she continues, “but I still don't understand. Everyone knows who your father is. You could pull some strings and get a way more cushy job than this. Why do you insist on hanging out with us dogsbodies? Are you trying to prove that you're just one of us? 'Cause you're not, you know, because any one of us would leap at the chance to get out of here.”

“I have a job to do,” I tell her.

“But you can choose your job,” she points out, “unlike the rest of us. Hell, you could get out of your next guard duty if you wanted. You could go stand around talking like the members of the council. Your father wouldn't blink, he'd reassign you in the blink of an eye.”

“I wouldn't be good at that.”

“Do you think you're so good at this?” She glances at my new reattached, which is still kind of weak. “I'm just saying you could take it easy,” she adds, “especially since you're disabled.”

“I'm not disabled,” I reply, wincing a little at all this unwanted pity, “and I'm fine doing the job I do. In case you didn't hear, I shot a man tonight. He was trying to get into the storage unit so I took him out.”

“Seriously?” Her eyes widen with shock. “Did you kill him?”

“What do you think?” I reply, before turning and walking away. I tell myself that I won't look back, not even if she says something really dumb, but fortunately she keeps quiet as I make my way around the next corner.

Stopping, I lean back against the wall and try to get my head straight. I don't know why I just admitted to killing that man. In fact, I didn't just admit to it; I basically bragged about it, to make myself seem tougher. What's wrong with me? It's like I'm becoming the kind of person I hate the most. At the same time, I just had to put Violet in her place, especially after that dig about my foot. Maybe I really am losing my mind.

“Yeah,” Bob says, “maybe you are.”

Turning, I see him standing at the far end of the corridor. I immediately start limping the other way, determined to find somewhere I can hole up and get some peace until my next shift starts.

3am

Thomas

“There!” McGuinness hisses, pointing straight ahead. “Against the night sky. You see it?”

At first I don't see anything, but then I realize I can just about make out something stumbling across the parking lot. The only light comes from the stars above, but that's just about enough to let me make out a slowly moving figure. Immediately I recognize the way that it's walking, and I have to force myself to stay in position. The thought of another zombie encounter is enough to make me want to turn and run.

“You remember the plan, don't you?” McGuinness asks.

“We do,” Toad replies.

“The light'll be the signal,” McGuinness continues. “We don't know how the creature will react to that. It might not react at all, but be ready for the unexpected. Sometimes the eyes on these fuckers give out first, and they're left stumbling around in the dark. I saw that happen with one of them once, it was pretty fucking hilarious. But we want to get this right the first time, without any risks. And remember that these things might be slow, but they're still dangerous.”

“I don't think anyone's forgotten that,” Toad says sternly.

“Determine its weakness first,” she adds. “They all have one. Blindness. Unstable on their legs. Crippled by some -”

“We get it,” Toad says, interrupting her. “You're not the only one who's met a zombie before.”

“Have many have you met?” she asks.

“I haven't been keeping count.”

“And you?”

After a moment I realize that, in the darkness, she's turned to me.

“I don't know,” I tell her. “Lots.”

“I've personally taken down seventeen,” she says, sounding a little proud, “and assisted in three further take-downs. I've encountered another twenty-four that, for reasons, I was unable to neutralize at the time.”

“That's nice for you,” Toad says, clearly not particularly impressed. “Let's focus on this zombie for now, okay?”

We wait in silence for a moment.

“Are you jealous?” McGuinness asks suddenly.

“Am I what?” Toad replies, sounding exasperated.

“That I've got a higher score than you.”

“A higher score? This isn't a game!”

“Don't worry, I understand.” She sniffs. “Some people take down zombies, some run away from them. It's a matter of personal choice.”

Toad mutters something under his breath. I manage to just about pick out a few of the words, and they're not particularly pleasant.

“Patterson and the others should be in position by now,” McGuinness says, as I hear her checking her gun in the darkness. “I want the kid to stay back when we make our move. This is strictly for grown-ups.”

“Hey,” I reply, “I'm -”

“Don't rise to it,” Toad mutters, stepping past us and making his way toward the distant creature. “Stay focused, Thomas, and everything'll be okay. It's when people get emotional and cocky that they make mistakes.”

“Whatever, you pair of losers,” McGuinness replies. “Let's get the rope around this fucker's head, then we can start with the dick-measuring contest. Let's see who actually steps up when it's zombie-hammering time.”

I hear Toad sigh in the darkness, but he and McGuinness are already creeping forward so I set off after them. A moment later I spot a flash of light up ahead, which I know is the pre-arranged thirty-second signal. Miller, Taylor and Sharpe must be out there on the other side of the creature, ready to strike. Part of me wants to turn and run, so that I don't have to see another one of these creatures ever again, but I quickly remind myself that I have to be strong.

We must be down to fifteen seconds by now. When the countdown ends, all hell is going to break loose, but for a moment we all stop and wait in the darkness. The only noise is the distant shuffling sound coming from the creature as it edges closer, but so far it doesn't seem to be aware that we're here.

Five seconds.

There can't be any more than that to go.

Any second now, the light will -

Suddenly a bright blast of light erupts nearby, and in an instant I see the zombie stumbling straight toward us. I just have time to register that she's female, and that her eyes are intact, before she turns and snarls directly at the light.

“Move!” McGuinness yells.

Toad rushes forward and throws the lasso at the end of the rope. Amazingly, the lasso goes straight over the zombie's head on the very first try. The creature snaps around and rasps at him, before taking a step in his direction. Seconds later a second lasso hits the zombie's shoulder and then falls to the ground, as Toad takes several steps back while holding onto the first rope.

“Get on with it!” he shouts.

The second lasso is pulled back toward the light, and then it's thrown again. This time it misses by a mile, and I watch with a growing sense of panic as Miller hauls it closer and prepares to try again.

“Will you get that fucking thing under control?” McGuinness calls out, holding the wooden stake that's attached to the other end of Toad's rope. “We've done our part!”

“Shut the hell up!” Miller replies, taking a little longer this time to prepare the rope. “I can do this if you stop screaming at me!”

“Will you both shut up?” Toad snaps. “I'm literally at the end of my tether now! I'm holding my tether and I need somebody to put the other tether around the zombie's goddamn neck!”

“I'm not the one you need to tell,” McGuinness says. “It's Miller who -”

Suddenly Miller screams, and I turn to see him running up behind the zombie. The creature begins to turn, but Miller quickly places the lasso around its neck and then scrambles back just in time. Although he stumbles and falls, Miller then manages to get to his feet and hurry away, and then he and Taylor start pulling on the rope.

“Make sure you don't rip its head off!” McGuinness shouts, as she pulls the other rope and then drives the wooden stake deep into the ground.

The zombie starts stumbling toward us, but then Sharpe digs the other stake into the ground, securing the creature with the two ropes and holding it in place.

“Make sure they're firmly in the ground!” Toad shouts.

“Yeah yeah,” McGuinness grumbles, “we know how to do it.”

“Did we get her?” Taylor asks breathlessly, as if he can't quite believe that the mission was a success. “Seriously?”

“Don't relax just yet,” Toad says, watching as the zombie struggles to get loose from the ropes. The creature seems confused, as if it doesn't understand what's pulling on its neck and preventing it from walking. “We don't know how strong this thing is.”

“Suck on that!” McGuinness yells, stepping toward the creature as the others start bringing the light closer. “Eat my shit, you zombie motherfucker!”

“Be careful,” Toad yells. “It's still not safe to get too close. Always leave a margin for error.”

Despite that, he follows McGuinness, and I go after them.

“You think you can come into our world and fuck shit up?” McGuinness continues. “You're going straight back to whatever nightmare you crawled out of. And you can wipe that pathetic, rotten look off your face at the same time!”

Ahead, the zombie is snarling as it tries desperately to break free of the trap. Now that Taylor is aiming the light directly at the creature, I can see that it's a girl with shoulder-length black hair. She can't have been much more than fifteen or sixteen years old when she was turned, and she's wearing an army-style jacket over her t-shirt and jeans. Just like the patrol noted, she's not too rotten at all, although her eyes look slightly sunk in their sockets and there's a dark, rotten gash on the left side of her cheek. Her clothes are torn and there's a foul smell in the air, but otherwise she looks less degraded than any zombie I've seen since this whole mess started.

“Ugly fucking bitch,” McGuinness says, stepping over one of the ropes as she circles the creature. “Stinks of piss and shit too. Have you noticed? She must have messed herself right after she turned into this thing. Or maybe she was just a filthy piece of work all along.”

“Are the stakes secure?” Toad asks.

“Of course they are,” McGuinness replies, “stop asking me.”

“I'm going to go and tell Patterson that we did it,” Taylor says, still sounding a little breathless as he takes a step back. “I know he's working on the plans for our approach to Boston, but he has to come and see this. I bet he never thought we'd actually succeed.”

“So is anybody in there?” McGuinness asks, stepping up behind the zombie as it continues to struggle against the ropes. “Anything you wanna say?”

“The damm thing should have spoken by now,” I tell Toad. “In the past, Joseph always started up at the first opportunity.”

“Let's not jump to any conclusions just yet,” he replies, turning to me. “Thomas, you've spoken to these things before, maybe more than any of the rest of us. I'm going to talk to Patterson and tell him that I think you should take the lead here.”

“Me?” I reply, shocked by the suggestion. “I don't think I'd know what to do!”

“You've probably got a better chance than the rest of us,” he says, “and I trust you more than some of the hot-heads around here.”

“Look at her,” McGuinness says, throwing a rock at the zombie's head from behind. “Pathetic. We should give her a nickname. Stinky's too obvious, how about Fuckwitina?” She chuckles. “That kinda suits her, don't you think? She was probably a complete idiot when she was normal, too.”

“See what I mean?” Toad asks, clearly trying to ignore her. “Thomas, you're -”

Suddenly I hear the creature let out a much louder snarl, accompanied by a crunching sound. I turn just in time to see that one of the wooden stakes has come loose from the ground, allowing the creature to swing around and lunge at McGuinness.

“Move!” Toad yells, rushing toward them.

I race over to the stake and grab it, pulling as hard as I can and forcing the rope to go tight before driving the sharpened wooden end back into the ground. Determined to make sure that it can't come loose again, I slam my foot down against the top and push as hard as I can manage. As I do so, I hear voices shouting over my shoulder, and I turn to see Toad pulling McGuinness back as the creature flails against the ropes.

Once more under control, the creature turns and reaches out toward me, but the ropes hold. To my horror, however, I see that there's now blood smeared around its mouth.

“Damn it!” McGuinness shouts nearby.

Turning, I see that Toad is stepping back from her. Kneeling on the ground, McGuinness is holding up her left arm, revealing a deep bite just above the wrist.

4am

Elizabeth

The door's handle sticks slightly, so I have to give it a proper shove before I manage to get it open. Finally, however, I step out from the rear of the building and I stop to look along the dark, pre-dawn street.

I guess I'm still not used to how empty this place is. Thanks to various new arrivals to counter the numerous departures and deaths, we now have a little over four hundred people living here in Boston, which is up from a little under eighty when I first arrived. For a city of this size, that's not a whole lot of people, and the vast majority work at the very edge, guarding the perimeter. It's really only the members of the council who spend much time in the city's more central areas, which means that I barely even see my father these days. He's usually too busy working with Diane and the others, which I understand.

On a night like this, however, I can't help looking around at the empty, abandoned buildings and wondering whether humanity can ever get back to normal. So much has happened, it seems impossible that we can put things back to how they were. This is starting to feel like a mass extinction event.

***

“No, of course not,” Dad says as he steps back, gesturing for me to enter his makeshift home. “I was planning to come and see you in the next day or two, anyway. I've got a job for you, one that'll take you away from the city walls.”

“I like working on the walls,” I reply, limping into the front room, which looks surprisingly neat and tidy.

“It's too dangerous out there,” he says. “Are you okay? Nothing's happened, has it?”

I turn to him.

“No,” I lie. “Nothing.”

“Are you sure? I'll soon find out when I get the daily report.”

“Nothing happened,” I say, figuring that I'll just deal with the consequences of that lie later. I really don't want to have to tell him all about the shooting. “Can't a girl just come and visit her father some time?”

“Of course she can,” he replies. “Why would you even ask?”

“I didn't realize you'd be asleep,” I add, seeing that he's in his bathrobes. “I thought you said you tend to work through the night.”

“I've been getting by on three hours' sleep each day,” he says, as he heads over to one of the cabinets and takes out a bottle of distilled water. “Can you believe that? Somehow I'm actually making it work, too. I guess I'm just doing whatever it takes, like everyone else. I can't wait for all this madness to be over, though.” He comes over and hands me the bottle. “I'm owed a major nap.”

“You think it'll ever be over?” I ask, taking the bottle.

“We just finished going through the latest report,” he explains. “Infrastructure repair is a priority, and we have achievable goals now. We've established communication channels with other groups of survivors, and we've almost eliminated the dangers posed by rogue groups outside the city walls.”

“Oh yeah?” I reply, again deciding not to tell him about the shooting incident tonight.

“Plus, there have been no sightings of zombies for more than thirty days,” he continues. “We're pretty certain now that they're out of the picture. We'll work out exactly what happened later, but for now it seems that the initial wave simply rotted away and the virus is no longer being transmitted. If that's the case, then the worst of this situation is over. We can start focusing on the recovery phase.”

“That seems almost too easy,” I point out.

“Have a little optimism, Elizabeth. It'll do you some good.”

“Do you realize it's a hundred days since this all started?” I ask.

He nods.

“Can you really believe that all of this has happened in such a short space of time?” I continue. “Look at us, and look at where we were just over three months ago. How has time moved so fast?”

“I guess maybe it's always like that in a crisis,” he replies. “I've certainly seen you grow up faster than I thought anyone could. I'm so proud of you.”

“I miss Mom,” I tell him, “and Henry.”

“So do I,” he replies. “Every day. Hey, why don't you get some sleep and come back in the morning?”

“I have guard duty at six.”

“I'll have a word and get you out of it.”

I shake my head.

“You're my daughter,” he says, “you shouldn't be out there doing grunt work.”

“Dad, I -”

“You're too smart for that,” he adds, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Elizabeth, how many times do I have to tell you? You're wasted out there. If you want to carry on with guard duty, I won't stop you. If you need to feel like you're one of the gang, then go for it. But if you really want to help this city, this recovery movement, then you'll put your talents to use in a more effective manner. How about it? Come join me at the central office.”

I open my mouth to tell him that I can't abandon my post, but suddenly I realize that he might have a point.

And then, just as I'm about to accept his offer, I hear a bumping sound coming from Dad's bedroom, and I turn just in time to see Diane Clark coming through to join us. My surprise at her being here is quickly surpassed by my surprise at the fact that she, like Dad, is wearing a bathrobe. She reaches down and pulls it tight, covering her cleavage.

“Oh, Elizabeth,” she says, stopping in the doorway, “I had no idea you were here.” She glances over at Dad. “John, you didn't tell me that your daughter was coming to visit. It's only four in the morning, isn't it?”

“I didn't know she was coming,” Dad says, keeping his eyes fixed on me. He suddenly seems nervous, maybe even guilty.

Looking past him, I see two empty but dirty wine glasses on the table. I guess they must have treated themselves to something from that stash that was found on Beacon Street last week. So much for sticking strictly to rations.

“Elizabeth,” Dad continues, “I was meaning to speak to you about something. Perhaps -”

“It's fine,” I say, stepping back from him, moving far enough to ensure that his hand falls away from my shoulder. Suddenly I feel flustered and angry, and all I can think is that I have to get out of here. I can barely even stand to look my father in the eye. “I'm sorry, I shouldn't have come here unannounced.”

“Elizabeth -”

“Sorry!” I blurt out, turning and hurrying out of the apartment.

“Elizabeth, wait!” Dad shouts, and I can hear him coming after me. “Elizabeth, this isn't what it looks like. Can we talk?”

“I have to go!” I reply. “I have guard duty at six. I have to be ready!”

As soon as I'm out of the building, I start running, desperate to get out of here before Dad can try to stop me. I hurry around the corner, then around the next, and finally I stop once I realize that I can no longer hear Dad coming after me. Breathing a sigh of relief, I close my eyes and try to regather my composure, but I can feel a sense of dread starting to build in my chest as I realize that I just walked in on something I wasn't supposed to see. I knew that Dad and Diane were close as colleagues, but it never occurred to me that there was anything else going on between them.

Dad's already found someone else. Maybe it's wrong of me, but I hate him for that. He's moved on from Mom, and it only took him one hundred days.

5am

Thomas

“Okay,” Patterson says calmly, “good job. You guys did a -”

Before he can finish, the zombie hisses and snarls, twisting again as it tries to break free of the ropes around its neck. The stakes in the ground hold tight, however, and after a few seconds the zombie once again falls still.

The same thing happens every few minutes.

It must be about an hour since we captured the creature, and since then it's been going through alternating periods of rage and calm. Right now it's calm again, standing and watching us but not really reacting in any way. These periods tend to last a few minutes, and they're inevitably followed by a brief burst of fury as the zombie tries again to escape. I'd have thought there'd be nothing except pure rage, and I can't help wondering why the creature's reacting in this way. There seems to be some kind of order to the chaos.

“What?” Toad asks, nudging my arm.

Turning to him, I realize I've been staring at the zombie.

“What's wrong?” he continues, keeping his voice low.

“Nothing,” I tell him, “it's just...”

I look back over at the zombie.

Patterson and a couple of his closest associates are circling, watching the creature from a safe distance. The zombie doesn't seem to be reacting to them, as such; instead, its rage seems to be directed at its predicament, at the ropes around its neck. I'm probably massively overthinking things, but I can't help wondering what – if anything – is going through the zombie's mind. Nothing, is probably the right answer, but these calm periods certainly make the damn thing appear thoughtful.

Suddenly feeling something tickling my hand, I look down and spot a couple of ants near my wrist. I brush them away, but I can already see several more crawling around on the ground.

A moment later I turn and look at the zombie again.

“What are we gonna do with it now we've caught it?” I ask, watching as Patterson and the two other men continue to walk around the creature.

“We oughta burn it,” Toad mutters, “and salt the ashes, just to make sure there's no trace of it left.”

“We can't afford to waste the gasoline,” I point out.

“Those things are evil,” he adds, “and -”

Suddenly the zombie bursts once more into a fit of action, straining desperately on the ropes and snarling wildly. The stakes still hold, and frankly I'm more worried about the creature somehow managing to rip its own head off as it tries to escape. I watch as it struggles some more, and as I do so I start counting under my breath, waiting to see whether this latest burst of activity is like all the others. So far, they all seem to last for about eleven seconds.

“Nine,” I whisper, “ten, eleven...”

And it stops.

The zombie falls still again, right on cue. Except, if there is a cue, I don't know what it is right now.

“Eleven seconds,” I whisper. “Why -”

“Fuck this shit!” McGuinness shouts, and we all turn to see her throwing her gun to the ground. She's been uncharacteristically quiet since Patterson arrived, but now she takes a step toward all of us before stopping again.

I look at the wound on her left wrist.

“It's over,” she says, with a hint of shock in her voice as she holds the wound up for us all to see. “You all know it, and I know it. There's no amount of talking that's gonna changed anything. I'm infected.”

“I told you to wait there,” Patterson replies firmly, “and I'll come over and talk to you in a moment.”

“I'm not waiting around for anything!” she snaps. “Fuck, that stupid bitch bit me and I know her stupid teeth went deep, and that only means one thing.” She pauses, and I swear there are tears in her eyes now. She takes a deep breath, and then she reaches down and grabs her gun again. “I want to take this with me,” she continues breathlessly. “I know it's a lot to ask for, but I might run into a bunch more of those things and I'd dearly like to take them out with me before I go.”

“McGuinness,” Patterson says, “I -”

“Request permission to stand down, Sir!” she barks, snapping to attention and saluting him.

“What are you talking about?” Patterson asks.

“I'm a danger to the rest of you, Sir,” she continues, as a tear rolls down her cheek. “I humbly request permission to take my weapon and leave the encampment. I can't be trusted around anyone, not when I'm almost certainly infected.” She pauses again, and I can see her bottom lip trembling slightly. “I'll go away, Sir, and I'll patrol the farthest reaches of the town. You won't even see me, but I'll be out there making sure that no more zombies come this way. And while I'm doing that, I'll wait to see if I start turning into one of those things. We all know it's going to happen sooner or later.”

“The bites might not be as infectious as they were before,” Patterson tells her.

“With respect, Sir,” she replies, “that would seem to be grasping at straws.”

Patterson pauses, before stepping past us and heading over to her.

“You don't have to leave,” he explains. “We can keep you under observation and hope for the best.”

“I don't want to be a lab rat, Sir,” she replies. “I got bitten, and it's my own stupid fault. Now I want to neutralize the threat that I pose.” Looking past him, she stares for a moment at the zombie. “I might as well be useful in the process, and I don't want to -”

Before she can finish, the zombie bursts into another fit of anger, pulling frantically against the ropes.

“One,” I whisper, “two, three...”

“Are you counting?” Toad asks me.

“Four, five, six, seven, eight...”

The zombie growls as it tilts its head, and I can already see rope burns on the side of its neck.

“Nine, ten, eleven...”

After one final cry, the zombie once again falls still.

“Eleven seconds every time,” I say, turning to Toad. “It gets angry for eleven seconds, and then it stops for a while.”

“Why eleven seconds?” he asks. “What lasts for eleven seconds?”

“I don't know. But I want to know.”

“I don't want to become one of those things,” McGuinness says suddenly, and I turn to see that she's still watching the zombie. “At the first sign, I mean the very first sign, I want to use this gun and end it. The change happens quickly sometimes, doesn't it? It can take a few hours, or days, but after the bite it always happens.” She turns back to Patterson. “I don't want to risk becoming some kind of test subject, tied up like that thing. I don't want to become a zombie at all. At the first cough, I'll blow my goddamn head off.”

“McGuinness,” Patterson says with a sigh, “we'd never treat you like a lab rat.”

“Of course you would,” she adds, cutting him off. “With respect, Sir, it'd be your duty to keep me tied up for observation as I got worse and worse, and we both now a certain lady who'd insist on getting to cut me up. I'm asking for a favor here, Sir. I'm asking to be allowed to go away and end my life on my own terms. Because you can't guarantee me that I wouldn't end up as one of Carter's test subjects. I know you can't.”

“Edgewater here took a bite and survived,” Patterson points out, nodding toward me. “Some people have a natural immunity.”

“I've never had the chance of putting that to the test myself,” she tells him. “Sure, I might be immune, but there's a damn good chance that I'm not. Either way, it'd be irresponsible to stick around here while I wait to find out. With all due respect, Sir, I request permission to leave the company for a period of time, while I determine the truth. It's the only way, Sir, and you know it.”

Patterson pauses, before taking a step back and offering her a salute. I can see from the look in his eyes that he's not happy with the situation, but he's too much of a soldier to let emotions get in the way of making the right decision. I guess I respect him for that.

“Thank you, Sir,” she says, saluting him in return. “It's been a pleasure.”

“If nothing has happened to you after three days,” he replies, “I want you to come back, do you understand?”

She nods, as more tears run down her cheeks.

“You're a good soldier,” he continues, “and it's been an honor to serve with you.”

“I made one real big fuck-up at the end,” she replies.

“You did,” Patterson says sadly. “Unfortunately, a small mistake has had big consequences. I wish you well, McGuinness, and I can assure you that you won't be forgotten by anyone here.”

She pauses, and then she puts her gun away.

“I'm not gonna waste everyone's time with a speech,” she adds, before looking around at the rest of us. “Adios, losers. Don't make the same mistake I made.”

With that, she turns and starts walking away, heading out toward the wilderness. She seems to be talking to herself, as if she's trying to give herself a little extra courage.

“Would you like to take some water with you?” Patterson calls after her. “Some provisions?”

Without looking back, she simply raises her right hand for a moment, as if to indicate that she heard the offer but that she's fine.

“Why doesn't she take some stuff?” I ask Toad. “She might be fine!”

“She's not gonna wait around long enough to need anything,” he replies, keeping his eyes fixed on her as she walks further and further away. “She's too proud. You saw that bite, you know she's screwed. She's gonna go find a nice secluded spot somewhere, somewhere she hopes she won't ever be found, and then as soon as she spots a sign that she's sick she'll kill herself. You can say a lot of things about that woman, kid, but you can't say that she was ever a coward.”

I watch McGuinness for a moment, until she disappears from sight as she heads down a slope, and then she's gone. I never liked her, but right now I feel really sorry for her. I want to believe that she has some hope, but I saw that bite and I saw the blood and I know how these things work. The virus was in the air once, but now it seems to be mostly transmitted through blood and other body fluids.

“Let Patricia McGuinness be an example to the rest of us,” Patterson says. “Don't get cocky. Don't -”

Before he can finish, the zombie breaks into another round of fury, and I immediately start counting. The creature rages against the ropes that are keeping it held in place, and I might be wrong but I think its snarls might actually be a little louder and a little more ferocious than before. If anything, the creature's becoming more and more angry about its plight.

“Eleven,” I say again, as the zombie finally falls still. “Eleven seconds.”

“What was that?” Patterson says, turning to me.

“When it gets angry, it's always for eleven seconds,” I point out. “I've been counting. It's eleven seconds, every time.”

“I'm sure that's just a coincidence,” he replies.

“But what if it's not?” I ask, turning to him. “What if it's important?”

“I don't have time for conspiracy theories,” he says darkly, as if he's irritated by what I told him. “You explain why it's eleven seconds, and I might be interested. For now, I need to get back to planning our move on Boston, but this creature's important and I want teams of two guarding the thing at all times until we're ready to run a few tests on it. Is that understood?”

6am

Elizabeth

“I had the best catnap ever,” Natalie says as she comes into the locker room, almost bouncing along with renewed vigor. “Man, I'm really getting the hang of those. It's just, like, zoom straight into sleep and then, zoom, straight out again. I guess maybe it's got something to do with the lack of coffee and alcohol. How about you?”

She pats me hard on the shoulder and heads over to her locker, where she starts taking out some of her things. After a moment, however, she turns to me.

“Lizzie?” she continues. “You look troubled. Like, even more than usual. You always look like you're chewing on a wasp, but right now you've got that face again. Like it's an extra-large wasp.”

“I'm fine,” I reply, getting to my feet. “Are you ready? Markham and Stanovsky will be waiting for us.”

“What happened?” She puts a hand on my arm as I try to slip past her. “Don't tell me you're fine, Lizzie, 'cause I can tell that you're not. Something's wrong. Is it that guy you shot earlier?”

“I don't want to talk about it,” I reply, struggling to hold back tears. “We're supposed to leave our emotions here in the locker room when we go out onto the platform, right? So that's what I'm doing. In fact, for the first time, that's what I want.”

“You look like you're about to cry,” she says. “Then again, you look like that most of the time anyway. Something tells me you were like this even before the world went to shit. Am I right, or am I right?”

“We should get out there,” I tell her coldly. “We've got a job to do.”

With that, I slip out of her grip and head through the door, and then I make my way toward the door that leads to the platform. I have my rifle over my shoulder, and all I can think is that I want to get out there and not think at all for the next few hours. I want to forget everything. I want to become some kind of machine.

***

Warm morning sunlight continues to reach low and long across the yard, casting long shadows. Not too far from the main gate, the dead man's body remains on the ground, but so far there's not enough light for me to really make out any details. From up here he just looks like a smudge, although every few minutes the darkness seems to lift just a little. Soon I'll be able to see him properly. Soon I might even see his face.

I can't take my eyes off him.

It's as if the world itself is slowly uncovering the evidence of what I did. Of my crime. And it feels like a crime, even though everyone around me keeps telling me I did a good job. I'm usually really glad when morning comes, when the light chases away the darkness, but right now I want the darkness to roll back in and stay forever, so that the body remains hidden. Then again, I know I shouldn't hide from the consequences of my actions, so I keep my eyes fixed on the body.

While I was thinking all of that, a little more light has reached the corpse. It's wearing some kind of long white coat that's stained on the back with blood.

Suddenly realizing that Natalie has been uncharacteristically quiet since we came out, I turn and see that she's staring at the wall over her shoulder. Following her gaze, I realize after a moment that she's staring at the spot where that bullet hit earlier.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

She doesn't immediately respond. Instead she stares at the mark for a few more seconds, with a hint of intense concentration in her eyes, and then finally she turns to me.

“That shot missed my head by about three inches,” she says. “Maybe less.”

“You were lucky.”

“Lucky?” She pauses. “Remember about two weeks ago, when those assholes tried to storm one of the checkpoints?”

I nod.

“And they got a few shots off, didn't they?” she continues. “Like, bang bang bang, real fast.”

“Sure. I remember.”

“One of those almost hit me too.”

“I didn't know that.”

“I didn't say anything at the time,” she replies, “but I felt one of those shots go right past my ear. I mean, it could've hit me. And back when all this madness started, there were several times when I had a really close call. I almost died a dozen times in the past hundred days.”

“I think we all had some moments like that,” I point out.

“But I've had a lot!” she says, and now her eyes are wide with wonder. “I was counting them up, and I've had seven really close calls and another five that were pretty damn hairy. Don't you think that's a little weird? It's almost one a week!”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I mean maybe something's keeping me safe,” she continues. “I know this probably sounds crazy, but just hear me out. Nobody's as lucky as I've been lately.”

“We're all lucky to have made it this far,” I remind her.

“But my luck has been almost supernatural,” she replies. “It's been mind-blowing, it's been like something out of a comic book. When I realized we'd hit a hundred days of this madness, I suddenly understood that my survival has been damn near miraculous. I mean, it's almost like I've got a super power, and that super power is the ability to not get killed.”

“Okay,” I say cautiously, “I'm not sure where you're going with this.”

“What if I'm being kept alive for a reason?”

I furrow my brow.

“I'm serious!” she hisses. “What if I've got a purpose, and I have to stay alive so I can fulfill that purpose? What if the world has a job for me to do?”

“Are you talking about God?” I ask.

“No!” she spits back at me. “Don't be ridiculous! I'm talking about something, I don't know what, but something that's protecting me so that I can fulfill my destiny. I know it sounds nuts, but do you know what else is nuts? Surviving so many near-death experiences!”

“I think maybe you're getting carried away,” I tell her.

“Tell that to the bullet that should've hit me in the face a few hours ago,” she replies. “Tell that to the last bullet, that one that I think almost grazed my ear. Hell, tell it to that Edward Pitt asshole who took us hostage a while back. I've had so many near-misses, and they can't all be coincidences. I might not be able to explain it, but I can't deny it either.”

“By default,” I point out, “anyone who's made it this far must have had a lot of luck. I'm sure half the people here could say exactly what you just said. And I survived Pitt as well, remember?”

I wait for her to acknowledge that I'm right, but I'm not sure that she's actually taking on-board a lot of what I'm saying. She seems to have been seized by this sudden idea that somehow she's being protected, and for the first time I actually start to worry about her. She's deluded.

“We'll see if it happens again,” she says finally, with a faint smile. “I mean, that's the test, right? Crazy bad stuff is always around the corner, so I'm sure some asshole'll be shooting at us again before too long. Maybe I'm wrong and I'll get blasted to bits, but I'm not so sure about that. Lizzie, I think maybe I have a purpose. Like, I'm being saved for this destiny that I don't know about yet.”

“Let's hope we all get through it,” I reply, before looking back down toward the dead body again. “There's not a lot of -”

Suddenly I stop speaking, as I see that the corpse is much more visible now. I stare, hoping against hope that what I'm seeing is wrong, but then I get to my feet and head along the platform so I can get a closer look. Finally, squinting and peering down, I see the face of the person I killed.

It's a little girl, no more than ten or eleven years old.

7am

Thomas

“War, ladies and gentlemen,” Patterson says as we all sit listening to him in the abandoned gas station. “I'm not going to sugarcoat this for you. When we get to Boston, we're going to face all-out war with some fellow survivors who have made the wrong choices. The problem is that they heavily outnumber us, so we're going to have to be smart.”

He steps aside, and a woman named Sarah Carter comes forward to take his place. I've seen her around a few times and I haven't spoken to her, but something about her makes me feel nervous. There's an iciness in her pale blue eyes, allied to a sense of calm confidence that seems so at odds next to the chaos of the world all around us. One hundred days into this nightmare, and most people are still trying to find their way, whereas this Sarah Carter woman seems almost to have been born for a moment like this.

It's as if this is where she truly belongs.

“Gasoline bombs,” she says calmly. “We have twelve, and by tomorrow we should have fifteen. We could have made more, but then we'd have risked diluting their effectiveness. Better to have fifteen good bombs rather than thirty damp squibs.”

“There's no such thing as a good bomb,” Toad mutters next to me.

“What was that?” Sarah asks.

He doesn't reply.

“I know what you're all wondering,” Carter continues. Even from here, I can smell the strong perfume that she always wears. “You're wondering how we can possibly take a city with just fifteen bombs and a handful of guns. Well, you're right to be skeptical, but fortunately we've been working on a plan. Mr. Patterson has been able to give us a good outline of the layout of the city as it currently stands, and we've got some good guesses as to where the Council will be located. All we have to do is take out the leadership level, and then we can move in and assume control.”

“You make it sound easy,” Taylor says, sounding doubtful.

“It won't be easy at all,” she replies, “and there will certainly be casualties. Fortunately, there's another part to our plan, a part that we haven't been able to divulge to you all just yet. We're going to be working on something for the next few hours, and I hope to be able to share more information with you shortly before we set off on the final stage of the road to Boston. For now, let's just say that we've been very fortunate. We've found like-minded groups who are keen to assist us.”

“Allies?” one of the others asks. “Do you mean we're going to team up with someone?”

“Patience,” she replies. “You'll find out soon. All in good time.”

“That's bullshit!” he continues. “Why do you get to know and we don't? Who put you in charge?”

“We're just sitting around doing nothing!” Taylor points out. “It's been thirty-nine days since we arrived here, we were supposed to be on the verge of going to Boston and then suddenly we had to sit here twiddling our thumbs!”

“All for a very good reason,” Carter tells him.

“And what reason is that?”

“A beautiful reason,” she replies with a faint, calculated smile. “When you see it... Well, if you see it, you'll understand. You might not get the chance, but hopefully you will. Let's just say that something has been happening a little way from here, something huge that has required coordination with other groups that are opposed to what's happening in Boston.”

“Could you be any more cryptic?” Taylor asks. “What's with all the secrecy? Why can't you just tell us what's going on? Is it anything to do with that zombie that showed up this morning?”

“There's a connection, yes,” she says, before suddenly turning and looking directly at me.

I meet her icy gaze for a moment, but then I have to turn away as I feel a shudder in my chest. I didn't like the way she was looking at me, not one bit.

“We're asking for your trust,” she continues. “We just need a little longer, but I assure you that soon Boston will be ours and the Council will be eradicated. We all have to stay focused and remember who our real enemy is here. We can't afford to turn on one another.”

I glance at her again, and fortunately she's no longer looking at me.

“Human civilization is rising again,” she announces. “We're the agents of its return, and it's going to be better than ever. I promise you all, one day we'll give thanks for what has taken place over the past hundred days. One day, everyone will realize that the past hundred days are the best thing that ever happened to humanity. We're going to turn this nightmare into an opportunity to make the world a better place.”

***

“Are you Thomas Edgewater?”

Stopping as I walk away from the building, I turn and see that Sarah Carter has followed me out. I left as soon as her little pep talk was over, and I was planning to go get some rest before I'm due to meet Toad for some guard duty, and I can't help but shudder again as Carter takes a step toward me.

“Bill Patterson told me about you,” she continues with a smile. “He told me you're one to keep an eye on. He's very impressed by you, Tom. He says that although you're young, you've got some good experience and you know what needs to be done. I can call you Tom, can't I?”

“People call me Thomas,” I reply.

“Never Tom?”

“I prefer Thomas.”

“What about Tommy?”

I stare at her.

“Fine.” She comes even closer. “Apparently you're a very intelligent young man, Thomas. Wiser than your years would suggest. I'd like to have a chat with you some time. Would you care to come to my makeshift little room? It's not far from here.” She places a hand on my shoulder. “I'm sure we could have a good talk. And maybe we could find something else to do as well. After all, it's always good to explore the full range of possibilities in any new relationship.”

I pull back.

“I'm busy,” I tell her.

“Too busy for a little amusement?”

“I'm really busy.”

She pauses for a moment, staring at me as if she's slightly annoyed. I can't shake the feeling that beneath her calm exterior, Sarah Carter is filled with a constantly-churning anger that she's always struggling to keep hidden.

“Apparently you noticed something with that creature that was captured earlier,” she continues finally, changing the subject abruptly. “Bill told me that you counted the gaps between its moments of anger. Something about eleven seconds?”

I swallow hard.

“Is that right, Thomas?” she asks. “Did you count an eleven second gap between its cries?”

“Yeah,” I reply cautiously. “I mean, I think so.”

“Hmm.” She stares at me for a moment. “Do you think that means anything?”

“I don't know,” I tell her. “I'm no expert.”

“But what do you think?”

“I really don't know.”

“Have you been thinking about it?”

“I suppose so.”

“And have you talked to anyone else about what you think?”

I shake my head.

“I think it's an example of a false pattern,” she continues. “Sometimes those occur in the natural world. They're things that seem ordered in the midst of chaos, and we humans tend to notice them very keenly. The problem is, they're not real. Well, they're real, but they don't mean anything. And this eleven second pattern is, I'm sure, very false. It's not something that you need to think about.” She pauses, eyeing me carefully. “Or talk about. Do you understand what I mean?”

“You don't think it matters,” I reply. “Sure. Can I go now?”

“It means I wouldn't worry my pretty head about it all,” she tells me. “You have other things to be worrying about.”

“Anything specific?” I ask, feeling more than a little annoyed by the way she's talking to me.

“There's a place for you in the new world, Thomas,” she says. “A smart boy like you can go places, you can rise and become very powerful. I don't mean to speak out of turn, but men such as Bill Patterson are rather common. Clever, intelligent, sensitive men such as yourself, on the other hand, are rare and valuable. I hope you'll start moving in the right direction, Thomas, and join us in our victories. If you do, I assure you that I'll do everything in my power to help you.”

I'm about to tell her that I don't need anything, but then I hesitate as I realize that there is one thing I want. Not that anyone can do anything about it, but still...

“Could you help me find someone?” I ask cautiously.

“Lost family members?”

“My sister,” I reply. “Her name's Martha Edgewater, she was in California when all of this started. And some friends, too. They're called Melissa and Katie, they're out near Lake Erie, or at least they were.”

“You miss them, don't you?”

I pause, before nodding.

“I miss people too,” she continues. “Before all of this happened, I took it for granted that I could pick up a phone and speak to everyone I cared about. Then suddenly we were all cut off from one another, weren't we? We were left to wonder, and that's the hardest part. If we knew what had happened to them, at least we could deal with it one way or another. But like this, with no information beyond what we see and hear for ourselves... Well, it's very frustrating, isn't it? Like constant torture.”

She puts a hand on my shoulder, and this time I let it stay there.

“Once we've taken Boston,” she says calmly, “I'll personally ensure that a well-equipped team is sent out to locate anyone you're worried about. How does that sound?”

“It's all I want,” I tell her, “and for them to come here so I know that they're safe.”

“Then it's a deal.” She lets go of my shoulder and then she holds a hand out toward me. “Welcome aboard, Thomas.”

“Aboard what?” I ask.

“The journey to power. To success.” Her hand remains outstretched. “Don't be a grunt, Thomas. Grunts are just grateful for whatever they can get. They pump themselves up to hide their inadequacies, like that woman earlier who got bitten. What was her name? McGarrigle? McGregor?”

“McGuinness,”I reply.

“Whatever. Who cares? She's gone now, and she'll be forgotten soon enough.” She pauses. “Don't be like her. Maybe you were a grunt in your old life, but now you have a chance to be more than that. And you'll be able to help not only yourself, but also anyone you care about. Starting with your sister and with whoever you want rescued from Lake Erie. Do we have an understanding?”

I pause, before shaking her hand. Her skin is so cold, I actually flinch.

“Perfect,” she says with a smile, as she pulls her hand away. “We'll talk again soon, Thomas Edgewater, but you made the right choice today. You made a good deal.”

With that, she turns and head back toward the building, leaving me standing all alone and feeling more than a little confused.

Apparently I just made a deal to help Martha and Melissa and Katie. But while I understand what I'm getting out of the deal, I don't quite know what I'm expected to give in return.

8am

Elizabeth

I sit staring at the dead girl's face. I haven't shifted my gaze once in the past hour. Ever since I first saw her features, even from all the way up here, I've been staring straight at her as I feel a very slow, very painful sense of guilt creeping up through my chest. It must be an hour now since I first saw the girl properly, and it's as if I'm in some kind of a daze. Natalie has stopped bothering to ask me if I'm okay, and instead I'm just focused on keeping my head together.

There are no tears.

There's no anguished wailing.

I'm just sitting here, stony-faced and horrified, staring down at what I've done. I shot a little girl in cold blood. I blew the back of her head away. She was just hungry, and I shot her because she was trying to break into our storage unit. I know everyone else here would find ways to justify that, but I don't want to hear their excuses. I just want to sit here and force myself to face the truth. Until, finally, the sense of horror tips slightly too far over the edge and I get to my feet.

“What?” Natalie asks. “Lizzie? What are you doing?”

“She can't stay there,” I whisper. “It's not right. She deserves to be moved.”

“Someone'll drag her away eventually. She's probably not top of the priority list.”

“But it's wrong!”

“Chill. It's just how things are at the moment.”

I stare at the corpse for a moment, as I feel myself filling with the belief that something has to be done fast.

“You've got that look on you face again,” Natalie says after a few seconds. “Like you're chewing a big-ass wasp. Please, Lizzie, tell me you're not about to do something cretinous.”

***

“I really don't think I can let you do this!” Natalie says, grabbing my arm again as she tries to hold me back. “Lizzie, there are rules about going out there! Or if there aren't, there should be!”

“The rules are about going beyond the perimeter,” I point out as I slip away from her and make my way toward the door. “The body's inside the perimeter, so it's fine.”

“She came from outside it, though. Lizzie, you could end up quarantined if you do this! Plus, I'll never let you live it down, because it's really dumb!”

“I don't care,” I reply, leaning my gun against the wall and then unlocking the door. “I know people go out there occasionally to perform maintenance. There's no threat.”

“They wear suits!”

“As a precaution. And sometimes they don't.”

“That's because they know what they're doing!” she says. “You're putting yourself and everyone else at risk. I'll still have to report the -”

“Then report it!” I snap, as I pull the door open. “Maybe I can finally call in a favor from my father and get out of trouble. That's what people keep telling me to do, isn't it? I'm supposed to ask Daddy to get me out of any messes I stumble into.”

With that, I step out into the yard and hurry toward the body, although I stop as I get closer. I was so focused on getting down here, I didn't really stop to contemplate what I'm supposed to do next. Now that I'm here, just a few meters from the dead girl, I suddenly realize that I have no idea what I should actually do with her body. Most corpses – for reasons of hygiene – are simply dragged back to the perimeter and shoved over into one of the pits, and I know that's what'll happen if I don't intervene.

Even the dead of our own community are disposed of in the same manner. At least back in New York I managed to give Henry a proper burial, whereas out here now bodies are simply tossed onto a pile and left to rot like the carcasses of old animals.

“Lizzie, just leave her,” Natalie calls out to me from the doorway. “Let the janitors drag her away. There's nothing you can do that'll make you feel any better. It's not healthy to let things get to you like this!”

“I have to bury her.”

“You won't be allowed. You know the rules, and you know why they're in place. You're taking a risk just by being there.”

Looking down at the dead girl's face, I see that her eyes are still open. She was so thin, and she was just trying to get some food from the stores. She was probably starving to death and coming here was a last resort attempt to find something, anything, to eat. She didn't do anything wrong. She must have been so terrified, racing through the darkness in a desperate attempt to get to the storeroom. She must have known that the task was hopeless, but I guess hunger was clawing at her belly. She'd probably been suffering for days, maybe even weeks, with barely any food. I can't believe how thin she looks.

“I'm sorry,” I whisper, as a gust of wind ruffles her hair. “I wasn't even trying to shoot you, I was trying to miss, but that's how bad my aim is. We should have just found a way to help you instead.”

“Lizzie!” Natalie hisses. “They're coming!”

Hearing footsteps, I look up just in time to see two figures walking this way, wearing anti-contamination uniforms. They're carrying a stretcher, and I feel a sense of nausea in the pit of my belly as I realize that two janitors have already arrived. They're wearing the thick masks that they always wear, with tubes running out of the front and sides, and with big round eye-holes.

“What are you doing out here?” one of them asks, his voice barely audible through the mask's filters.

“I just...”

My voice trails off.

“Did you touch her?” the other janitor adds.

I pause, before shaking my head.

“Are you sure?” the first janitor asks. “Are you really, really sure?”

“She didn't touch anything!” Natalie yells from the doorway. “Leave her alone and get on with your job!”

The janitors stare at me for a moment, before turning and setting the stretcher down. I step back, horrified by this clinical process but at the same time unable to look away. After grabbing the girl's hands and feet, the janitors haul her up and onto the stretcher, and then they take a plastic container and spray the blood on the ground with some kind of cleaning agent. I guess they've done this so many times, they're used to the process, but that doesn't make me feel any better.

“We're going to have to report you for coming out here,” one of them says, turning to me. “There can't be any exceptions, even if you say you didn't touch the body. The rules say that we have to inform the Council of your transgression, and that's exactly what we're going to do.”

“No, we're not,” the other janitor adds. “You know who she is, right?”

“Who?”

“Elizabeth Marter.” He pauses. “John Marter's daughter.”

“Crap, really?” The first janitor stares at me for a moment, and I can just about make out his eyes through the mask. “Never mind, then. I guess she can get away with whatever she wants. Some things never change in this world, do they?”

“I don't want special treatment,” I tell them, but now they're picking the stretcher up and I watch as they start carrying the dead girl away. “Report me!” I call after them. “Go on, I dare you! I want you to! Report me and get me pulled up before the Council! I deserve it!”

“Kid,” one of them sighs, “get out of the way and let us do this. We've got a million other jobs lined up after we're done here.”

I take a step forward, wanting to go after them, but then I stop as I realize that they're going to one of the pits. I've never been out there, and there's a good reason for that: I really don't want to see all the bodies that have been piled up over the past month or so. There must be twenty or thirty at least, all in various stages of decomposition, and I've heard stories about how there are flies buzzing around the place. As the girl is carried away and out of sight, I realize that running after her wouldn't actually achieve anything.

“I'm sorry,” I say again, before turning and heading back to the doorway.

“It doesn't really matter,” Natalie says as I head inside.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing really matters, not right now.” She helps me shut the door, and then she slides the bolt across. “Going out there was a dumb idea. You're lucky they won't report you.”

“They should.”

“But they won't.” She pauses. “The girl's dead, and no amount of self-absorbed moping will change that. She was a thief and she took a calculated risk.”

“She was a kid.”

“Kids can be assholes too.” She steps past me and grabs my gun, before handing it back to me. When I delay taking it, she forces it into my hands. “Let's just get on with things and -”

Suddenly an alarm rings out, and I realize I can hear people running somewhere else in the building.

“Something must be wrong!” Natalie says, her voice filled with urgency. “Lizzie, come on! We have to get to the briefing room!”

9am

Thomas

“I don't get what they want with her,” Toad mutters darkly as we sit side-by-side on the ground, watching the captured zombie. “They're hiding something.”

“Ten, eleven...”

As soon as I get to eleven, the zombie starts struggling again, fighting wildly in its attempt to break free of the ropes. I know I shouldn't feel sorry for a zombie, I know that'd be ridiculous, but I still can't help feeling as if this is all somehow unnecessary. The zombie was a person once, and it's not right that what's essentially a corpse is being left to struggle out here in the open. There doesn't seem to be much dignity in what we're doing.

Finally the zombie stops struggling, although I know it'll start again soon. The pauses between bursts of anger seem random, sometimes lasting a few seconds and sometimes going on for several minutes at a time. The burst of anger, however, always last for exactly eleven seconds. That can't be random.

“He's not in there, is he?” I whisper.

“Who are you talking about?” Toad asks.

“Joseph.” I pause, staring at the zombie. “Before, they all used to gloat as Joseph spoke through them, but that all seems to have changed. Joseph's consciousness seems to be gone, and now the zombies are apparently just empty, hungry monsters.”

“I wouldn't be too sorry if that turned out to be true,” Toad replies. “Then again, I'd like to think that Joseph's mind is out there somewhere, so he can be forced to face justice for what he did.”

“I think he just faded away,” I continue, “and left these creatures behind.”

“That's as good a theory as anything else I've heard.

“But what are they, really?” I ask. “How do they work? There's got to be more we can find out about them.”

“Apparently Sarah Carter's coming out to poke around,” Toad says after a moment. “I don't know what she's planning, but she's the one who wanted the damn thing captured alive. Well, not alive, but you know what I mean. She didn't want it delivered burned on a slab. I guess she's planning to poke around and try to figure out exactly what's going on inside these things.”

“Do you trust her?” I ask.

“Carter?”

I turn to him.

“She's not exactly my favorite person,” he says cautiously, “but I suppose she hasn't exactly done anything to make me dislike her. Not yet. And you have to admit that she inspires confidence. She seems to at least have some clue about what's going on.”

“It's like she's in charge,” I continue. “Patterson's supposed to be the one who's running the whole show, but I feel like Carter's pulling the strings. It's like she tells him what to do. She's doing it more and more, too.”

“I don't know much, Thomas,” he replies, “but I'll tell you one thing I learned a long time before all of this madness started. The more someone tells you to trust them, the more careful you need to be around them. Good, decent folk don't go around urging people to trust them all the time. They don't need to.”

“Carter's always telling us to trust her,” I point out.

“Yeah,” he says with a sigh. “I noticed that.”

“She -”

Stopping myself just in time, I realize that maybe I shouldn't mention the conversation I had with Carter after the meeting. I don't know why, exactly, but something about the way we talked has left a bad taste in my mouth, and I feel that by shaking her hand I might have somehow become complicit in something that I don't quite understand. In fact, the more I think back to that conversation, the more I worry that I made a big mistake, even if I don't yet know what I agreed to.

Or am I being dumb? If shaking that woman's hand means I get to help Martha, Melissa and Katie, then does it matter what I have to give in return? Surely their lives are the most important thing? Right now, all I care about is finding a way to get them here.

Suddenly the zombie starts struggling again, breaking my train of thought. I look over and see that the creature is twisting harder than ever against the ropes. I start counting in my head, but then I'm distracted as I see something fall out of the creature's tattered jacket and land on the dusty ground.

“What was that?” I ask.

“It looked like a book,” Toad says, “or a wallet. Or a purse, I guess.”

Getting to my feet, I edge closer, just as the zombie falls still again. I'm not dumb enough to get close, but I know it's safe to approach a little more.

“Stay back from her!” Toad calls out. “Remember what happened to McGuinness!”

“I'm not going to do what she did,” I reply, peering at the fallen object and seeing that it looks like a small, dark purse. “I just want to see.”

“What is it?” Toad asks.

“I think you were right,” I tell him. “It's a purse. It must have been in her pocket all this time.”

“I guess she won't be needing it anymore,” he says with a sigh.

Looking around, I spot some old, half-rotten branches that have been left out to dry in the sun. Some of them are a couple of meters long, and after a moment I head over and pick one of them up.

“Now what are you doing?” Toad asks.

I head back toward the zombie, and then I stop and wait.

Sure enough, a moment later she bursts into another frenzy, snarling louder than ever as she tries to get free. She pulls and pulls on the ropes, but there's no chance of them coming free so I simply count to eleven and then, just as I expected, she falls still.

Without wasting any time, I reach out with the branch and use it to start scraping the purse this way across the ground.

“What are you doing?” Toad hisses. “Are you crazy?”

“It's fine,” I reply, “she can't reach.”

“That thing might be infected!”

“It doesn't work like that.”

“And you're an expert suddenly, are you?”

“Relax, I'm not going to touch it!”

As soon as it's close enough, I turn the purse around with the branch, and then I use the tip to carefully un-clip the front of the purse and open it up. As I do that, I stop at the sight of a driving license bearing a name and a photo.

“Jane Anne Kincaid,” I read out loud, “born on November the twenty-third. She's twenty-one years old.”

I look at the photo, which shows a smiling, pretty girl with dark hair. She seems so happy, but after a moment I turn and glance back at the zombie. She's rotten and dirty, with blood smeared on her face, and patches of skin have fallen away from her cheeks, but somehow despite all of that I can just about recognize her from the picture. It's crazy to think that one hundred days ago she was a normal person, and she's this thing that we've got trapped here.

Clumsily opening another section of the purse with the branch's tip, I find some business cards. I don't dare risk pulling one of them out, but from the visible section I can tell that this Jane girl was apparently self-employed.

“Jane Kincaid,” I read out loud. “Freelance writer.”

I turn to Toad.

“She was some kind of journalist, I think.”

“Everyone was something before all of this started,” he points out. “Except me, I suppose. I was just sorta living my life on the farm, preparing for...” His voice trails off for a moment. “People used to make so much fun of me. They used to use the word prepper as a synonym for madman. Turns out I had the right idea, although I hadn't counted on a whole bunch of visitors. I'd have been alright if I'd just turned everyone away.” He pauses again. “There's one person in particular I have to find when this is all over. I know she's out there, I know she's okay. Somehow I just feel it.”

“I think maybe Jane Kincaid was really just a blogger,” I continue, as I look back down at the card. “There's a website address. Not that that's particularly useful anymore. Maybe she just scraped by and -”

Suddenly she snarls again, and I flinch as I take a step back. Somehow I'd forgotten that this would happen, and I watch as she struggles against the ropes. I look down at the calm, smiling face on the driving license, and then I look at the furious, rotten face that's screaming right in front of me. I forgot to keep count this time, but I guess that doesn't really matter. After a few more seconds she falls still again, and her latest bout of rage seems to be over.

Heading back over to the purse, I grab another branch, and with two in my hands I'm able to tilt the purse onto its side until some photos slide out from a side compartment.

The first photo shows Jane and some other people her age. I guess this is her with some of her friends, relaxing and having fun in a bar. Growing up on the farm back in Oklahoma, I never really had many friends and I certainly never thought I'd living a city life. The scene in this photo looks pretty alien to me, but I can't deny that Jane and her friends look happy. And when I look at the next photo, showing them on a beach somewhere, I'm struck by the fact that they look like normal teenagers having a good time.

And now look at her.

Dead but still moving, she's trapped in the ropes. Her flesh is rotten in places and her clothes are ragged, and she looks – I shouldn't think this, but it's true – like some kind of monster. She barely even seems human, and I suppose in some ways she's not. She still just about has a human body, but I guess her brain has rotted so much that her mind is gone.

Suddenly hearing footsteps over my shoulder, I turn and see that Sarah Carter is coming this way across the dusty scrubland, with two assistants who are each carrying a large metal case. I instantly feel a shudder pass through my chest. Something about that woman just makes me feel really cautious.

“Stick around, boys,” Sarah says with a faint smile, as she stops and looks over at the zombie. “We're about to learn the truth about these disgusting things.”

10am

Elizabeth

“There are plenty of reasons why they might not have come back,” Dad is saying as Natalie and I enter the briefing room, which is buzzing with activity. “We can afford to give them more time before we start panicking.”

“All the patrols know that they have to stick to their schedule,” Diane says firmly. “Not sticking to the schedule is itself a sign that something's wrong. A five-man patrol could easily have sent somebody back to keep us informed if they needed more time. Kepler's a good commander. The fact that they're two hours late means that they've run into a problem.”

“What's going on?” Natalie whispers to me.

“It sounds like a patrol didn't come back,” I reply. “They take that sort of thing really seriously.”

“What are you doing here?” Dad yells, hurrying over to us. “You don't have permission to be in here!”

“I'm sorry,” I tell him, “but -”

“Not you.” He grabs Natalie by the arm and marches her back out into the corridor. “You're lucky I don't get you thrown into solitary confinement for entering this place without authorization.”

“She's with me!” I tell him.

“I'm with her!” Natalie snaps, pulling free from his grip.

“I'm sure you have a job to be doing,” Dad says, pushing her against the wall and then coming back into the briefing room. Turning, he makes a point of sliding the metal door shut, and I see Natalie's face curl into a scowl before she disappears from view. “I've told you before, Elizabeth,” Dad continues, “this room is off-limits to anyone who doesn't need to be here.”

“I guess I should leave, then,” I point out.

“Don't be fatuous.”

He steps past me and heads back over to the desk where the planning documents have been laid out. A dozen or so other officials, mostly members of the Council, are talking in hushed tones, and it's clear that there's a real sense of emergency.

I want to leave, to show Dad that I know I shouldn't be here, but curiosity gets the better of me and I start drifting toward the table, keen to find out exactly what's happening. To be honest, over the past month or so I still haven't quite figured out what's happening or who's on which side. None of the maps make much sense to me, and I feel as if everything beyond the limits of Boston must be complete chaos by now.

“The longer we sit around trying to figure this out,” Charles Bloom is saying, in that increasingly-adversarial tone that he's adopted lately, “the more we become targets. A missing patrol is a declaration of war. Let's not sit around and let our opponents dictate the pace. We need to strike hard and fast.”

“Charles raises a good point,” Dad says, turning to the others. “This is no accident. I think someone's testing us, to see how we respond. To see whether we're strong enough to defend ourselves.”

“Exactly!” Charles continues. “We're being prodded and poked by someone who wants to know our weaknesses. We have to strike back with maximum strength.”

“Are you okay?” a voice whispers next to me, and I turn to see that Diane Clark has come over.

“I'm fine,” I say tersely, turning back to watch as Charles and the others continue their debate.

Diane's the last person I want to see right now, after I interrupted her in my father's room during the night.

“I'd like to talk to you, Elizabeth,” she continues, keeping her voice low. “I'm not going to patronize you. I think you know what it's about.”

“I'll talk to my father, thank you.”

“Good luck,” she sighs. “I asked him to talk to you, but he said that there's nothing to talk about. I just want to make sure that there's nothing bubbling away beneath the surface. I'm a firm believer in getting things out into the open at the earliest possible point.”

“Good for you,” I reply, forcing myself to keep from looking at her. “I'm sure that approach works just fine.”

“Elizabeth, if -”

“And I'm sure they need you over there,” I add, finally turning to her again. “I'm not going to talk to you, Diane. Not about anything. What you and my father do is none of my business, so I'd appreciate it if you could keep me well out of the whole thing.”

She hesitates, as if she's about to reply, but then she nods as if she understands.

“You know where to find me if you change your mind,” she says. “My door's always open. I just hope that we can be civil, Elizabeth. Your father has always spoken very highly of you, even before all of this madness began.”

“Before it began?” I reply, struggling to work out exactly what she means. Staring at her, I feel a fresh, cold anger rising into my chest. “Did you know my father before it started? Have you known him for more than a hundred days?”

“Your father and I have been colleagues for years,” she replies. “Didn't he...”

Her voice trails off for a moment.

“Well,” she adds finally, forcing a smile, “there's no need to go into all of that right now, is there? As I said, you know where to find me, and I hope that one day soon we can have a proper talk. There are so few of us left in the world now, Elizabeth. We need to work together, as friends, rather than finding the things that divide us.”

With that she turns and walks away, leaving me standing alone and shocked. Spotting my father over at the desk, still talking to Charles, I can't shake the feeling that Dad has been lying to me. He could have mentioned that he and Diane go back a long way, and it seems suspicious that they've suddenly fallen into bed together. I really don't want to think the worst, but now I'm remembering all those times when Mom would look after us while Dad worked late. Is it possible that Dad's relationship with Diane was actually going on before all of this started?

Filled with simmering anger, I start making my way over to ask Dad.

And then I freeze, as I see a familiar face at the table. I blink several times, convinced that this has to be a hallucination, but his face remains and I watch as he talks to some of the others.

It's Bob.

He's not looking at me. He's chatting away to Diane and Charles, as if he fits right in here with them.

When I thought I saw Bob earlier, I was able to tell myself that the whole thing was an illusion. After all, I remember shooting Bob on the seventh or eighth day of this madness, and I don't think there can be much doubt that the man is long dead. If that's the case, though, how can he be here and how can he be talking to people?

I head over to take a better look. The fake Bob hasn't spotted me yet, which I guess is a good thing, and it's clear that he's busy talking to a couple of Dad's colleagues. They're locked in an animated conversation which seems separate from what Dad and Charles are talking about, and finally I come up behind Bob – or whoever he is – and stop to listen.

“We need a system of screening people,” one of the men is saying. “We can't afford to keep turning people away. We need more able-bodied people in this city, and -”

Before he can finish, he glances straight at me.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

I open my mouth to reply, but suddenly the fake Bob turns and looks at me, and I feel an instant rush of relief as I see that it's not Bob at all. He looks a little like him, sure, but the similarity is pretty superficial and I guess my subconscious mind must have made the difference.

“Do you want something?” the Bob look-alike asks. “We're kind of in the middle of something here.”

“No, it's fine,” I say as I back away from him. “Please, carry on. Ignore me.”

I continue backing away, until I bump into somebody else. Then, suddenly feeling as if I'm in danger of drawing attention to myself, I hurry out of the room. Once I reach the corridor I stop and try to get my head together, but deep down I know that's something's wrong. That's twice today that I've hallucinated Bob, and this condition seems to have come out of nowhere.

I need to get my head straight, and fast.

11am

Thomas

“Try again,” Carter says, as she watches one of her associates pick up another rock. “That last one was inconclusive. I want to know whether she's able to identify the threat, or whether it's simply a response to pain.”

The man steps around behind the zombie and hesitates for a moment, before throwing a rock. His last throw merely hit the zombie's arm, but this time the rock thuds against the side of her head.

She snarls and turns partway toward him, and for a few seconds she pulls again on the ropes.

“It's not clear enough,” Carter continues, evidently unhappy with how her tests are going. “I need to know whether the creature is responding to specific inputs. Let's try this again. And please, can we stick to the rules for once? We're not out here tossing rocks at random, like apes. We're here to conduct a serious scientific study.”

“Do we have to watch this?” I mutter, as Carter makes some more notes. “They're torturing the damn thing.”

“It's a zombie,” Toad replies. “I'm pretty sure a little light torture is acceptable.”

“It still doesn't feel right.”

“Come on, Thomas,” he says with a sigh, “don't start feeling sorry for the thing.”

“I don't feel sorry for the zombie,” I tell him. “It's the person it used to be, that's all. I feel sorry for her.”

“I'm pretty sure that the offer for us to stay was, in fact, an order,” Toad replies. “She needs a couple of guards to stick around, just in case anything goes wrong. She's not an idiot, she knows these creatures are dangerous and unpredictable.”

At that moment, as if to prove Toad's point, Jane lashes out again, snarling at Carter and pulling on the ropes in a desperate attempt to attack. The stakes are still firmly embedded in the ground, and as Jane struggles I can't help wondering whether she's going to accidentally dig the ropes straight through her own neck and decapitate herself. Then again, at least that would mean this whole business would be over, and right now I can't help thinking that Jane's being needlessly tormented.

Is Sarah Carter really learning anything from what she's doing?

I watch as another rock hits Jane, this time hitting her in the mouth and knocking out several teeth. Pulling back slightly, Jane tries to turn away, only for the ropes to once again hold her in place. She still seems not to understand about the ropes at all, which I guess proves that there's not much brain activity going on in there.

“Is she in pain?” I ask.

“They don't feel pain,” Toad points out.

“But she looked like -”

“Don't.”

I turn to him. “Don't what?”

“Don't start feeling sorry for a goddamn zombie, Thomas. Whatever that Jane girl was once, now she's a monster. There's nothing left of her real mind.”

“What if there is?” I ask, turning to look again at Jane as she pulls on the ropes. “What if even a tiny part of her has survived in there? We don't know how it works, not for certain. If only certain parts of her brain have rotted, what's left might somehow be aware.”

“That doesn't even make sense,” Toad replies.

“What if she -”

Before I can finish, Jane lets out another scream, this one more anguished than before. Turning to look over at her, I see that Carter is using some kind of long, modified leaf-picker to gouge away a chunk of skin and flesh from the side of Jane's neck. She's working quickly, and mumbling to herself, and after a moment she pulls off a significant chunk, which she then deposits in a plastic box that one of her assistants quickly seals.

“What did she do that for?” I ask.

“I need a live sample to study,” Carter says, turning to me with an arched eyebrow. “Don't think I couldn't hear you two nattering away over there. Your compassion for this poor creature is commendable, Thomas, though perhaps a little misplaced.” She takes the plastic box from her assistant and wanders over to join us. “Even with the minimal equipment that I've managed to scrape together, this sample will undoubtedly reveal a great deal about how these creatures work. We can't use them if we don't understand them, can we?”

“Use them?” I reply. “How?”

“Humanity is going to recover,” she continues. “Things looked shaky for a while, but we're finding our feet again and if anything this culling of the herd might prove to be a blessing in disguise. There'll be no more worries about over-population for a while, will there?” She smiles. “Before this disaster, the world was making great strides in technology, but we were being held back by the sheer number of useless people. There were more than seven billion people on the planet. I don't know how many there are now, but I imagine it could be well under one billion. This is a chance for our species to start over.”

“I'm not sure it's going to be quite that easy,” Toad suggests.

“The world was going to hell,” she says firmly. “This zombie outbreak is our reprieve. And I've always been a firm believer in the idea that when you encounter a negative, you have to turn it into a positive.”

With that, she slowly holds the box out and removes the lid.

I flinch and pull back as I see the patch of rotten meat.

“Don't be afraid,” Carter continues, “it won't hurt you. It might, however, be a kind of Rosetta Stone of the human body, allowing us to see how it functions under different stresses. There's no way the human body should have been able to survive in this zombie form, so obviously there are some major aspects that we've failed to take into account. Maybe the zombie can become a force for good.”

“How?” I ask.

“That's what I need to find out,” she says, before closing the box and making sure that the lid is securely in place. “I don't know what I'm going to discover, Thomas. I just know that it's going to be something very new.”

Feeling something crawling on my hand, I look down and quickly swat away another ant.

“So far,” Carter continues, looking back down at the piece of meat, “I can tell you that the sample is very dry. That's not exactly a surprise, but I'm curious as to how these creatures are able to move when they're so desperately dehydrated.”

“Wouldn't they start falling apart?” I ask.

“They certainly should.”

“So they can't be that dry,” I continue. “Something must be keeping them mobile.”

“You have a good analytical mind,” she replies. “I like that. These zombies aren't magical creatures. There's science behind them.” She looks back down at the sample. “I can't wait to get this thing under a microscope.”

“And where are you gonna get one of those from?” Toad asks her.

“Oh, you'd be surprised what I've managed to pick up,” she says.

“You just happened to find a microscope in the dust somewhere?” he replies, sounding skeptical.

“Darling, I practically sleep with one in my hand at all times,” she says with a smile, before glancing at me again. “Everyone travels with their essentials in an emergency. For me, that meant putting some equipment into a backpack. The weight was unfortunate, but I managed to keep going.”

“So now you're going to cut her up like a lab rat?” I ask.

“I want the pair of you to continue guarding the creature,” Carter says, turning and starting to head back toward the town. “I might want to take some more samples later.”

“Jane,” I reply.

Stopping, she turns to me. She looks completely oblivious, as if she has no idea why I just said that word.

“Her name was Jane,” I continue. “Her purse fell out. I saw her name.”

“You didn't touch it, did you?”

I shake my head.

“Good,” she says after a moment. “Well, Jane is a very nice name. Perhaps one day Jane will be rather famous for the insight that her body will provide.”

With that, she turns and walks away.

“Well,” Toad mutters, “she certainly has opinions about a lot of things, doesn't she?”

“What if she's right?” I reply uncertainly.

“You can be right and still sound like an ass,” he points out.

“I don't want her to be right,” I tell him. “The world was okay before. Not perfect, but okay. There's always someone who's unhappy, I guess it was just her turn to be miserable for a while. But all of this isn't better than what we had before.”

“I can watch the creature,” Toad says after a moment. “I mean, Jane. I know you don't like seeing her.”

“It's not that,” I reply, turning to him, “it's just that she's alive. Or she was. She should be treated with some dignity. That's basically a corpse that they're messing with.”

“There's not much dignity in the world anymore,” Toad says with a sigh. “I guess dignity's one of the things that got lost when everything turned to crap.” He pauses. “It shouldn't be like that, thought,” he adds after a few seconds. “You're right, Thomas. When Carter and the others are finished with this Jane girl, we should make sure that she's treated properly.”

“Maybe we should do something now,” I suggest.

“Do you know why I hid myself away on my farm?” he asks. “I hated the state of the world, but I also knew there was nothing I could do to change it. I withdrew in disgust and waited for what I figured was the inevitable breakdown of society. And do you know what? I was pretty much right that something was gonna happen. The point is, assholes like Carter can't be stopped. Sure, you can stop the individual asshole, but there'll be plenty more to take that one's place. So don't fight. Just carve out a place for yourself.”

“So why are you here now? Why not run back to your farm?”

“I'm tired, Thomas,” he says, putting a hand on my shoulder as, nearby, Jane lets out another angry snarl. “I can sit here for a while and keep an eye on things. But you can take a break for a while, Thomas. You don't have to see any more of this.”

12pm

Elizabeth

“You...”

Bob grabs the hilt of the knife and slowly slides it out from his chest. Blood pours from the wound, and it's clear that he's getting weaker by the second.

“You fucking little bitch,” he blurts out, his mouth filling with blood.

“Yeah,” I say, taking a deep breath to steady my nerves. “Well, so what?”

With that, I pull the trigger and shoot Bob straight in the center of his face. His forehead explodes and he falls backward, crashing into the cabinets before finally slumping down to the ground. His body twitches for a moment, but finally he falls still. Just to be absolutely certain that he's gone, I step forward, place the gun against his temple, and fire one more time. The other side of his head is blasted apart, with bits of bone and brain slopping down onto the ground.

“Fuck you, asshole,” I whisper.

And that's it.

No matter how many times I run that moment through my mind, there's absolutely no room for error. Bob Sullivan died that day, and I saw his goddamn head explode. Some of the events of the past hundred days might seem like a blur, but that particular moment is seared into my memory with such strength that I know I'll never forget. Bob is dead, and the dead don't come back to life, not the way I saw him today. Which means there's only one possible explanation.

Leaning forward on the edge of my bed, I put my head in my hands and try to focus.

I'm cracking up.

That's twice I've hallucinated Bob today, and both times the experience felt so real. It's as if I could have reached out and touched him, or picked up the odor of his sweaty cologne. Squeezing my eyes tight shut, I force myself to remember that Bob's long gone; in a way, however, that only makes me feel worse because now I know that I'm imagining the whole thing. What if, after a hundred days of this insanity, I'm losing my grip? What if this is only the beginning of something much more serious?

“Don't do this,” I whisper, trying to urge myself to stay strong. “Everyone else is holding up, you're not going to be the one who cracks. You've seen some bad things, but no more than the others. You're tough. You're strong. You can pull yourself together.”

As I say those words, however, I suddenly realize that I've begun rocking back and forth. Startled, I get to my feet and step over to the window, and I look out across one of the training yards. Rocking back and forth isn't exactly a classic sign of sanity, but I know I can pull myself back from the brink. I focus on watching the yard, as two figures make their way across to one of the other buildings. Everything out there looks so calm and peaceful, and I try to use that fact in order to anchor myself to some kind of reality.

For Henry.

I have to stay sane for Henry, and for Rachel too.

And then, suddenly, I spot a girl walking across the yard.

It's not just any girl, either. It's the girl I shot last night.

***

“Did anyone see her?” I ask, hurrying along the street at the far end of the yard. “Hey! Did you see a girl coming this way just a few minutes ago, wearing a white dress?”

Two men look at me as if I'm crazy, so I make my way past them. To be fair, they might have a point.

I keep telling myself that I can't have seen the girl, that it must just have been someone who looks a lot like her, but I have to know for sure. If I can just find her and prove to myself that it was a case of mistaken identity, I can calm down and stop worrying.

“Did you see a girl come this way?” I ask another man as he walks past me. “She was wearing a white dress. She's not very old, she's just a child.”

“Sorry.”

Suddenly hearing a roar overhead, I look up just in time to see the three helicopters racing across the city. No doubt they're heading out for another attack, or maybe just to check out the local area. I watch as they disappear into the distance, and then I look once more along the street. For a moment I feel lost, as if I'll never know whether I really saw the girl in the white dress, but then I realize that I have to keep searching. If I don't get an answer, I'm going to go crazy.

“It was just someone who looks like her,” I tell myself, whispering under my breath. “Lots of people probably have white dresses, even here in Boston right now.”

Spotting Violet up ahead, I head over to her.

“Hey there,” she says, sitting on the sidewalk and wiping her boots clean. “What are you up to one this fine day, Elizabeth Marter?”

“I'm looking for someone,” I tell her. “Have you seen a girl?”

Looking up at me, she uses a hand to shield her eyes from the sun.

“A girl?” she asks cautiously. “Any particular type of girl? Or aren't you picky?”

I look both ways along the street. It must be several minutes now since I saw the girl from the window, which means she's had time to wander off in any direction. Even with so few people around, finding her is going to be extremely difficult, but I can feel a sense of panic rising in my chest at the thought that she might be gone.

“Are you okay?” Violet asks after a moment. “You seem all hot and bothered. Did something happen? Apart from all the usual crap, I mean.”

“There was a girl,” I say, turning back to her. “She was wearing a white dress. Did you see her?”

“I can't say that it rings a bell,” she replies, before smiling. “Not unless you mean the girl you took down in the night.”

“Have you seen her?”

“Only when they were taking her out to dispose of her. I caught a glimpse.”

“Where exactly were they taking her?” I ask. “To the hospital?”

“The hospital?”

“She was dead, wasn't she?”

“She only had about half her head left. I mean, I didn't take her pulse, but I could see bits of her brain sticking out.”

“And she wasn't a zombie or anything like that?”

“I don't think so.” She furrows her brow. “Elizabeth, you're not making a whole lot of sense right now. Maybe you drank some dodgy water. Do you want to sit down and maybe take a moment to figure stuff out?”

“Where do they take them?” I ask.

“Where do who take who?”

“The men in the contamination suits,” I reply, trying to hide the fact that I'm getting increasingly frustrated. “Where do they take the bodies after they carry them away?”

“Are you sure you wanna know? 'Cause I found out a while back, and I wish I didn't.”

“It's a pit, isn't it,” I continue. “Somewhere outside the city?”

“It's about a mile that way,” she says, pointing along the street, “once you get past the inner boundary. I haven't been there myself, but I know the guys who dispose of bodies and they've told me about it. It's just a big open pit, and they toss the bodies in and leave them there to rot. Something to do with not wanting to contaminate the ground within the city by burying them properly, and also about scaring off anyone who comes near the city. Sounds pretty old-fashioned, doesn't it? They might as well stick the heads on poles to warn people.”

“They just throw them into a pit?” I ask, horrified by the idea.

“It's a restricted area,” she continues. “No-one's allowed out there without a contamination suit. I doubt it's a very pretty sight. I used to be curious, but now I know I wouldn't want to go out there, not for any money. It's one of the many things I like to pretend isn't real.”

I look along the street again, just in case there's any sign of the girl, but deep down I already know what I have to do. I need to prove to myself that I'm not losing my mind, which means either finding the person I mistook for the girl, or going out there and seeing her body in the pit.

“Elizabeth?” Violet asks, still shielding her eyes as she looks up at me. “Are you sure you're okay?”

***

There are two men guarding the storeroom where the contamination suits are kept. They look pretty relaxed, and I'm not surprised. I doubt anyone really wants to steal much from a dusty storeroom filled with old boots and suits, so for the most part the two guys just get to sit around and talk. As jobs go in this city right now, that's not too bad.

But I need one of those suits.

I need to be sure that the girl in the white dress is in the pit. If I see her body, I'll know for certain that she's not miraculously up and walking around.

On my way here, I told myself that I'd simply distract the guards and slip into the storeroom, but now that plan is starting to feel a little flimsy. Exactly how am I supposed to distract them, and then how am I supposed to sneak inside without getting seen, and then how am I supposed to sneak out again in a suit? What seemed like an easy idea is rapidly turning out to be fraught with complications, but I know I have to find a way.

Okay, maybe if I -

“I think we need to talk.”

Startled, I turn and see that my father is standing right behind me.

“I got a report that you were seen acting strangely,” he continues. “Elizabeth, I think I know what this is about.”

“I talked to Diane,” I stammer, feeling a flicker of anger. “I know the truth.”

“I shouldn't have hidden it from you,” he replies. “That was wrong of me. Come on, let's go find somewhere a little more private. It's time for me to tell you what really happened to your mother.”

I open my mouth to tell him that I'm fine, but then that final word hits home. Why's he suddenly talking about my mother?

1pm

Thomas

I watch as two of the creatures tear the arms from a blood-soaked figure, while a third creature is already tearing at its torso. The figure is staring at me, and suddenly I realize that I recognize the wide, terrified eyes.

“Quinn,” I whisper.

I take a step forward, but before I can do anything I see her intestines being torn out, and although she's still staring at me, I know it's too late to save her. She opens her mouth, as if she's trying to say something, but finally her head drops as her guts spill out onto the mud. I freeze for a moment, unable to stop staring at the glistening meat as two of the creatures start tearing at it with their hands, forcing it into their mouths as fast as they can manage. After a moment, I spot movement and I realize that one of Quinn's hands is reaching up, almost as if she's still -

Suddenly feeling a sharp pain on my shoulder, I turn and find that one of the creatures has bitten into my flesh.

“No!” I gasp, suddenly opening my eyes and leaning forward.

I'm sitting on the ground, around the back of one of the buildings. I just came here to rest my eyes for a moment, but I guess I took a quick catnap. I don't remember the last time I actually slept properly, and I've been surviving on these short, sharp bursts of sleep. Unfortunately they usually come with vivid nightmares, and this time I was reliving the moment a month or so ago when I got bitten.

Reaching up, I touch my left shoulder and feel a twinge of pain. When the bite happened, I was so sure that I was going to die. Now I know that I have this rare immunity, which Carter reckons is shared by less than 1% of the population. I guess that makes me lucky, but nothing can take away the memory of teeth grinding through my shoulder, or of the fear that I felt when I left Melissa and Katie behind.

I should be back with them already.

Suddenly I feel something on my left hand. Looking down, I spot a couple of ants nonchalantly making their way toward my wrist, so I raise my hand and blow the bugs off. I swear, every day there are more and more ants around this place. If we don't move out soon and actually make the move to Boston, we're going to be overrun.

Hauling myself to my feet, I realize that my mouth is dry. Besides, if I sit here any longer I'll only doze off again, and I don't much feel like having any more nightmares right now.

***

“The current plan is to reach Boston next week,” Taylor is saying as I enter the old gas station, which has now been re-purposed to function as a general rec room. “The way I hear it is, we're meeting up with several other groups to take the place by force. Apparently some assholes in Boston think they've got the right to take charge of everything.”

I loiter near the doorway, hoping to glean some information. There have been so many rumors swirling around, it's hard to make sense of exactly what's going to happen next.

“These people in Boston have set themselves up as the saviors of the universe,” Taylor continues. “Of course, they want to be in charge, too. Funny that, huh? They've managed to get a nice little collection of guns and food, and they'll only share with people who agree to bow down and lick their boots.” He sniffs with derision. “When we all get there, they'll learn a pretty fast lesson about who's really in charge.”

Suddenly he glances toward me.

“Did you come here for something, Edgewater, or are you just eavesdropping for fun?”

“Sorry,” I mumble, turning and heading across the room.

“We can't have people setting themselves up as boss just 'cause they feel like it,” Taylor says with a sigh. “I think some folks need a refresher about how democracy actually works.”

“I heard we might be moving out much sooner than they're letting on,” Greer suggests. “That they're gonna spring it on us. Maybe even today or tomorrow. Apparently they're way more advanced with their plans than they've admitted, and they've been in contact with other guys who are also headed to Boston. When we're told to get going, it's going to be real sudden.”

“Water, please,” I say to the guy at the table where the rations are being kept. “Thomas Edgewater.”

He checks my name on a list, and then he hands me a bottle of murky-looking water.

“One left after that,” he mutters, “for the day.”

“I know.”

Turning away, I unscrew the top and take a drink. The water doesn't taste particularly nice, but it's the best we can manage right now. Patterson's got a team working on extracting and cleaning water from a local mud-pit, and mixing it with what little rainwater we've managed to collect. It might not be much to look at, but at least it's water

“I can't wait to get into action,” Taylor continues, before glancing at me again. “How about you, boy? You're not exactly the most promising specimen. Have you ever been in a real fight before?”

“I used to fight with my brother,” I tell him.

He immediately starts laughing, as do the other men sitting around with him.

“My brother was tougher than any of you,” I add, although I know I sound pretty desperate. “He always knew what to do in any situation.”

Well, that might not be entirely true. But these assholes don't know that.

“Is there really going to be a big fight?” I ask cautiously.

“They say there are a few hundred people in Boston right now,” he replies. “By the time we've met up with the other units, we should outnumber that, but obviously Boston'll have a strategic advantage. We should be able to take 'em, though. Apparently Carter and the others have got some kind of top-secret trick up their sleeves that the rest of us aren't allowed to know about.”

“Like what?” I ask.

“Like who knows? Must be something pretty crazy, though. There have been messages running from our camp to a couple of others, coordinating something. I also heard that one of the other camps managed to capture a scout party that had been sent out from Boston. They got a lot of information out of those folks before they killed them.”

“We're gearing up for war,” adds Stiles, one of the other men. “Those idiots in Boston won't know what's hit 'em.”

“Why do we have to fight at all?” I ask. “Can't we all work together? I know that sounds weak, but we don't have the resources to waste fighting each other.”

“Tell that to the people in Boston who've been appropriating all the supplies in their area,” Stiles replies. “They think they're in charge of everything. They've got this group of leaders, they call them the Council, and apparently they sent word that we can all go and work for them if we like. And if we don't like it, then we all have to leave the area. Very friendly, right? So we're going to spring a bit of a surprise on 'em and then maybe offer them our own terms. See if they like that.”

The others let out a murmur of approval. They seem so keen for this war to get started, but I'm not so sure that I agree. As I take my bottle of water outside, I can't shake the feeling that we should be finding a way for everyone to cooperate. Instead, it seems like all the surviving groups are starting to turn on one another.

“Hey, Edgewater!” a voice calls out, and I turn to see Symons waving at me from one of the other buildings. “Carter wants to see you!”

“Tell her I'm busy,” I reply.

“She says you're gonna want to hear this,” he continues. “It's about your sister.”

***

“Where?” I ask, my heart racing as I try to process what I've just been told.

“Southern California,” Sarah Carter replies with a smile, as she peels off a set of plastic gloves. “I told you I'd try to help, Thomas, and I did that. There's a group in Southern California that's already well advanced with plans to get things back up and running, and one of their first tasks was to create a database of survivors. Only about five hundred people survived in the entire state, but it seems like the Edgewater luck has held out. Martha Edgewater is listed as one of those survivors.”

“Are you sure?”

I still can't believe that this is true.

“I doubt there are too many young women with that name in Southern California,” she points out. “By all accounts, your sister has spent the past hundred days with a small group who traveled slowly north. Eventually they met up with some others and holed up in a remote town, and waited for help. I don't know the details, but it sounds as if your sister and her friends managed to avoid getting into too much trouble.”

“So where exactly is she now?” I ask.

“At one of the processing centers,” she replies. “They're quite organized out there in California at the moment, Thomas. They haven't had to deal with the infighting that's going on here, so they've been able to restore at least some of the infrastructure. Apparently they're already working on power generation again. I imagine that your sister, if she's anything like you, is contributing a great deal.” She pauses. “I'm sorry I can't set up a way for you to talk to her right now, but I'm reliably informed that she's all in one piece. She's been told that you're here and that you're alive, and I imagine that you'll be able to speak to her by radio some time in the next few days. Airtime's hard to come by, but it might be possible to get you a few minutes. If I can pull a few more strings, that is.”

“And she's alive?” I stammer. “She's really, truly alive?”

“I need you to promise me something,” she adds. “If you tell other people about your sister, they might get demoralized. After all, not everyone can be this lucky. Please, just keep it to yourself for now. Can you promise me that?”

I pause, before nodding.

“I knew you'd be pleased,” she says, but then I see a flicker of concern in her eyes. “Thomas, I also have some bad news. It seems that there was a group of survivors out at Lake Erie, but that they were attacked by helicopters sent from somewhere. From Boston, I imagine. Anyway, from what I gather everyone there was killed.”

“I was there for the helicopters,” I tell her. “There were three of them, but Melissa and Katie survived.”

“Thomas,” she sighs, “I think you need to -”

“No, they survived!” I say firmly. “I know it sounds crazy, but they really did! It was chaos but they made it through!”

“There were further attacks,” she explains. “After you left them. The helicopters have been flying out from Boston almost constantly over the past month, killing pockets of survivors wherever they find them. It seems the leadership in Boston assume that most people are infected. The only reason they haven't tried to attack us yet is that we've established communication, and or now they think they might be able to manipulate us. No-one's safe from them, though. They're merciless in their aggression, and when the time comes we're going to have to take them down. But the people around the Lake Erie area weren't so lucky.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I mean that your friends Melissa and Katie are almost certainly dead.”

“No, they would have survived,” I tell her.

“Men from Boston killed them,” she explains. “Now do you understand why it's important that we capture that city? Whatever's going on in Boston, the people in charge there are murderers. They murdered your friends and they'll murder us, too, if we stand in their way. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you about your friends, but I thought you'd appreciate the honesty. I don't want to sugar-coat anything for you, Thomas.”

“They might have escaped,” I suggest, although I can hear the sense of desperation in my own voice now. I know I'm clutching at straws. “Melissa was smart, and she was fast. She'd have managed to find a place to hide, to keep herself and Katie safe.”

“From what I hear, that's highly unlikely.”

“You don't know them. I do! They'll be fine. They'd have...”

My voice trails off.

“They'd have found a way,” I add finally, even though deep down I'm not sure I believe that anymore. “They'd have figured out some kind of...”

Again, I fall silent.

“No-one survived, Thomas,” Carter says, placing a hand on my shoulder. “The men from Boston killed them. At least you know that your sister's alive. That gives you some hope for the road ahead, doesn't it?” She pauses, staring at me as if she's trying to analyze my reaction. “By the time we've overrun Boston,” she adds, “I should be able to get your sister Martha brought here to join us. You'll have a grand family reunion, and you can start rebuilding. Just as soon as we've taken Boston. You understand that, Thomas, don't you?”

“Why would anyone kill the people at Lake Erie?” I ask, with tears in my eyes. “They weren't hurting anyone. They just needed help.”

“Power,” she replies. “That's all there is to it. The people in Boston want to seize power, and they're exterminating anyone who stands in their way. Killing people, even weak people, is a way of showing strength. They're getting more powerful by the day, but we've built a coalition that's going to take them down.” She squeezes my shoulder. “We're going to avenge all the people they've killed, including your friends, and then we're going to start a new chapter in which families are reunited and a stronger, better future can be built. You're with us on that, Thomas, aren't you?”

“I...”

For a moment, all I can think about is Melissa and Katie, and all the other people at Lake Erie. I want to believe that they're okay, but at the same time I have no reason to doubt Carter's version of events. I want to hold out hope for a miracle, but I've believed in miracles before and they didn't come true. I even managed to hallucinate George, only for that illusion to fall away. I don't want to waste time on any more illusions, not now. And the prospect of seeing Martha again is enough to keep me going.

“If it helps,” Carter says, heading back to one of the benches, “I've been examining the tissue that I extracted from that zombie earlier. Sorry, what did you say her name was, again?”

“Who?” I ask, before realizing what she means. “Jane. Her name was Jane.”

“I've been examining the tissue from Jane,” she continues, “and I've learned a great deal. As your shoulder wound suggested, some people have a natural resistance to the virus. In other words, Thomas, we're the chosen ones. Regardless of whether you believe in God or genetics, we're the ones who have survived and now we have to seize our chance. First, though, we have to destroy the cancer that's growing in Boston. Are you with us in that task, or are you against us?”

I pause for a moment, and in my mind's eye I can't help imagining Melissa and Katie running from the helicopters, and then shots being fired and their bodies falling to the ground.

“I'm with you,” I whisper, before turning to Carter. “Those people in Boston have to pay for all the innocent people they've killed.”

2pm

Elizabeth

“You said Mom was in a taxi,” I say cautiously, watching Dad's face as he in turns stares back at me. We're in one of the bunk rooms, which is empty since everyone else is out on duty. “You said she turned into one of those things, and that she was...”

My voice trails off for a moment.

Even though I wasn't there when Mom died, I have a really strong mental image of her trapped in a taxi. I imagine her falling sick, then returning later as one of those creatures. Eventually soldiers found her and eliminated her. That image has been going around and around in my head for so long now, even haunting my nightmares. Yet now it seems that things might not have happened that way at all.

“You said she was dealt with,” I add finally, as I feel tears in my eyes.

“Most of what I told you was true,” he says, “up until that point. After that, however, it gets a little more difficult. A team did indeed find your mother in a taxi, and she had indeed become one of those things. But somehow during the encounter, she got a jump on one of the soldiers.”

I wait for him to continue.

“What does that mean?” I ask cautiously.

“It means she attacked him.”

I flinch.

“Mom wouldn't do that,” I tell him.

“It wasn't really her, not by that point.”

“Mom wouldn't attack someone!”

“It wasn't really -”

“She wouldn't!” I yell.

He sighs.

“I don't know why, but you're lying,” I continue. “You have to be. You always lie.”

“Your mother was last seen stumbling away from that taxi,” he explains, and now he looks as if he too is on the verge of breaking down. “After that, there was a clean-up operation that got rid of most of the zombies, but nobody had time to stop and catalog them all. A few escaped. They left the city and wandered into areas that still haven't been reclaimed. If it's any consolation, Elizabeth, any of the zombies from the initial outbreak would now be in a very bad state. They might even have become immobile.”

“So you mean...”

Staring at him, I feel a sense of nausea in the pit of my belly as I realize what he's suggesting.

“So you mean,” I say cautiously, struggling to keep from bursting into tears, “that she might still be out there somewhere? As a zombie?”

“It's highly likely that she was destroyed in the initial round-up.”

“But you don't know that for sure.”

He pauses, before shaking his head.

“And you can never know that,” I continue. “Not until those other areas have been checked.”

“The zombies in those areas will be destroyed,” he replies.

“You mean killed?”

“There's really nothing that can be done for them, other than putting them out of their misery. They'll be eliminated and then burnt. Checking them all, one by one, would simply be too draining on resources and too dangerous. At some point, we all have to make decisions that we'd maybe prefer we didn't have to make.”

“But what if Mom's still out there?”

“You have to accept the uncertainty, Lizzie. We're never going to know for sure.”

“What if there's a cure?” I ask.

“There's no cure.”

“But what if she's still in there?” I continue. “What if some part of her is still in the zombie? Has anyone tried turning them back, making them people again?”

“That is never going to happen, Lizzie.”

“You can't just leave her out there!” I snap, sniffing back tears. “We have to find her! We have to know what happened to her! We have to know for sure!”

“We can't!” he replies, and now he sounds angry as well. “That's what I'm trying to get you to understand, Lizzie! It's the uncertainty! We're not going to get answers to all these things. Your aunt Elaine, your cousins in Utah, your old friends from school... You're probably never going to find out what happened to them, and you have to live with that uncertainty instead of letting it eat away at you.”

I shake my head.

“We can find Mom,” I tell him. “We can bring her back.”

“No-one's going to find her,” he replies. “She's gone.”

“But there's a chance!”

“I don't even know why Diane told you,” he continues. “I told her about your mother in strict confidence.”

“Diane didn't tell me,” I reply. “Not about Mom. Not directly, anyway. She told me another of your dirty little secrets.”

“What secrets?”

“Were you having an affair with Diane Clark before all of this happened?” I ask.

He freezes, and in that instant I see the answer in his eyes.

“Where are you getting that from?” he asks cautiously.

“Save it,” I reply, feeling as if I want to hit him. “I already know that it's true. I guess at least now I know why you're not too fussed about finding Mom. It must be easier for you if she's out of the picture.”

“That's completely unfair,” he says sternly.

“It's completely true!” I reply, stepping toward him. “Mom's out of the way, and that's convenient for you because it means you don't have to tell her that you're a lying, cheating -”

Suddenly he slaps me, and I take a step back in shock.

“You don't know anything,” he says, his eyes filled with a kind of white-hot anger. “You're a twenty-two-year-old girl who acts like she's barely into her teens. You run around this place telling everyone that you don't want special treatment because of who you are, when the truth is you've received nothing but special treatment! And you most assuredly do not know anything about your mother and me!”

“I go out on that platform every night with a gun!” I stammer, my voice trembling as tears start running down my face.

“And then what do you do?”

“I sleep, I eat, I...”

“Most people here have three, maybe four jobs. We're in a dorm room right now, Lizzie, but do you see people sleeping? No, because they're all out doing other things. Even your ratty friend Natalie pulls her weight. Meanwhile, you do one job during the night and then you're free to wander around amusing yourself the rest of the time.”

I shake my head.

“I keep trying to get you to work with me in the offices,” he replies, “because I'm hoping that at least there you might be useful.”

“I shot someone last night,” I remind him.

“And now you think you're special?” he asks, stepping toward me again. “Everyone else here has shot a lot more than just one person, Lizzie, and they didn't have a goddamn meltdown each time! They just reloaded and waited to do it again, because that's how the world is right now!”

I open my mouth to reply, but for a moment I can only stare at him with a growing sense of horror.

“I do my best,” I manage finally. “I'll do more.”

“If you'd just stayed put in the apartment in Manhattan,” he replies, “you'd have been fine. Your one job was to look after your brother, and you couldn't even -”

He stops suddenly.

“I couldn't what?” I ask, although I already know what he was going to say.

“Forget it,” he sighs. “This conversation has gone horribly wrong, Lizzie, and I think we should both take some time to cool off. Meanwhile, I'll pull you from guard duty and have you reassigned to the offices, where you genuinely might be able to make a real contribution. Frankly, you were a danger out there anyway.”

“I want to stay on guard duty,” I reply. “I want to do double shifts. Or triple! I don't even need to sleep!”

“I should have taken you off guarding a while ago,” he says. “The others have complained that you're a distraction. Even your buddy Natalie put in a request for you to be moved on, but I insisted that you had to be given more chances. So there's your special treatment right there.” He sighs again. “It'll be fine, sweetheart,” he adds, before reaching out to put a hand on my shoulder. “Now that this is out in the open, we can -”

“Don't touch me!” I shout, pulling away from him.

“I'm sorry I slapped you,” he replies, “that was unconscionable.”

“Maybe I should have become one of those zombies too,” I suggest. “That would have been easier for you.”

“Don't say that,” he replies. “We're family, Lizzie. You're all I have left and I love you.”

“You have Diane Clark,” I point out, unable to hide the bitterness in my voice. “You have your job. You have a world to help rebuild. Maybe you don't even need a family. I'm so sorry that we didn't all conveniently shuffle off and leave you free to do whatever you want.”

“Let's take some time,” he replies, “and not say anything else that we might regret. You look exhausted, Lizzie. When was the last time you slept?”

“That doesn't matter,” I tell him. “I don't want any more -”

And then I see her.

The girl in the white dress, walks past the open doorway. She's only visible for a couple of seconds, but in that time she manages to briefly turn and look straight at me, and our gazes meet. She looks calm, not angry at all, and there's blood on one side of her heed. Then she's gone, but I realize after a moment that I can hear her footsteps heading further and further away along the corridor.

“Did you see her?” I ask.

“Who?” Dad replies.

I push past him and hurry to the doorway, and then I look out and see that the corridor is empty. The sound of footsteps is gone, but I swear I heard that girl.

“Lizzie, you're starting to worry me,” Dad says. “I've already received reports that your behavior is causing concern today. Let me take you to get checked out, okay? You've been through a hell of a lot, and I think maybe the strain is getting to you.” He puts a hand on my shoulder from behind. “There's no reason to be ashamed or embarrassed, sweetheart. I'm sorry about what I said just now, I didn't mean those things. Let me help you.”

I pause, before turning to him.

“Rachel,” I say after a moment.

“What?”

“You told me Rachel was evacuated to Philadelphia.”

“There was a -”

“Was that a lie?” I ask, interrupting him. I wait, watching his face for some hint of an answer that I can believe.

“Lizzie -”

“Was that another lie?” I ask, and now my voice is trembling with fear. “Was it just something you told me to make me feel better?”

“Rachel was moved to the Philadelphia facility,” he says cautiously, but I can tell that he's choosing his words with great care.

“And there's been no update since?”

“I haven't spoken to them very much. When I have, we've had other things to discuss.”

“But she's safe, right?” I continue, still hoping that I can believe him. “Rachel is safe and healthy.”

“As far as I know, yes. I can certainly check during my next dispatch to the team over there. Would you like me to do that?”

“I would,” I reply, and then I take a step back. “I'll be fine, just so long as you can get me an update on Rachel's condition.”

“Of course,” he says. “You do believe me, Lizzie, don't you? I'm not lying to you, not about this. No more lies, I promise.”

“Yeah, we'll see,” I tell him, and then I hurry away.

The worst part is that – deep down – I don't know that I believe him. I think I don't trust my own father, and now I'm terrified that they took Rachel away and used her for experiments. I tried so hard to keep her safe but maybe I let her down, just like I let down Henry. Maybe nobody should ever rely on me again.

3pm

Thomas

“Thomas, you're such a bonehead, do you know that? You're, like, my second-favorite brother.”

I can hear Martha's words echoing through my thoughts, even as I sit here leaning against the side of an old diner. In all honesty, I'd kind of abandoned hope of ever seeing my sister again. I set out several times to go to California, to search for her, but I always allowed myself to get distracted. Now I realize that I was just scared to go and learn the truth, because deep down I thought there was no chance of actually finding her alive.

But she's out there somewhere. She survived, just like I did.

“Mom!” I remember her yelling one morning. “Tommy's being an idiot!”

I can't help smiling. Martha was sometimes a little bratty, but I guess she must have changed over the past hundred days. I know I have. I can't wait to see her again, but I'm also a little worried about what she'll be like. There's also the fact that I'll have to tell her what happened at home, about what happened to Mom and Dad and to Joe and to the farm. That won't be easy for her, but I can't hide the truth.

And then I hear another voice in the back of my mind, a voice that I've been trying to ignore.

“Help us, Thomas!” Melissa screams. She sounds terrified. “Why didn't you come back and -”

She's cut off before she can finish. Closing my eyes, I swear I can see her body on the ground, and Katie's body too. I was supposed to go back and help them, I was still planning to go, but now it's too late. They're gone. They probably thought that I forgot about them.

Hearing footsteps, I open my eyes and turn just in time to see that Toad is coming this way, although he doesn't seem to have noticed me yet. When he finally spots me, he slows for a moment before finally stopping a few feet away.

“Did someone else take over guard duty on Jane?” I ask.

“I'm just having a little break,” he replies. “She's perfectly secure, and to be honest it got a little much listening to her screaming every few minutes. She kinda needs to change the record.”

“You can't just leave her there,” I point out, getting to my feet and brushing off a few more ants from my hands.

“I told you, she's secure.”

“But -”

“I was out there for a couple of hours,” he says, as he brushes an ant off his forearm, “all alone with just a zombie for company. After a while, that kind of thing gets into your head. I had to leave for a little while, or I'd have gone crazy. Don't worry, I'll go back in half an hour. The important thing is that the ropes are secure, so there's no chance of her breaking free and going for a little wander.”

“It's okay,” I reply, “I can go and keep an eye on her.”

“Are you sure?” He sighs. “Sorry, Thomas, I don't mean to drop it in your lap. It's just that the whole thing was really getting to me. I guess I'd been hoping that the days of zombies were behind us. Now it looks like there are still some around after all.”

***

Stopping at the edge of the scrubland, I immediately feel a shudder pass through my chest as I see Jane still secured by the ropes, still struggling to get free. It must be, what, around twelve hours since we captured her? I can't help wondering how much longer we have to keep her like this. If Carter doesn't need her anymore, she should just let us put her out of her misery.

“Hey,” I say as I start making my way closer. “I've come to keep you company.”

I know speaking to her is dumb, but in some strange way it's helping me to stay sane. Spotting her purse still on the ground, I wander over and use another old stick to open it, and I once again look down at the photo of Jane on her license. In some small ways, she reminds me just a little of Melissa, and for a moment I just stare at the image as I think back to my time at Lake Erie.

Finally, realizing that I'm being dumb, I sigh and look back over at Jane.

I immediately freeze as I see, to my shock, that she's staring straight at me, but that something seems to be moving all over her body. I take a step closer, and to my horror I realize that there are thousands and thousands of ants crawling all over her, covering her almost completely. There have been plenty of ants out here for a while, but it's as if they've suddenly all recognized her as a food source.

“Hey!” I yell, even though I already feel completely helpless. “Leave her alone!”

Grabbing a longer stick, I use it to brush some ants off Jane's shoulder, although when I look down at the ground I see that there are two lines running across the dirt. One line of ants is heading onto Jane, and the other line is heading away from her, and when I lean down to see closer I realize that some of the ants are carrying small chunks away from her body. It's as if they're slowly eating her. They seem so organized.

“No!” I say firmly, using the stick to squash as many of the ants as I can manage. “Get off her! You've got no right to do that!”

Immediately, the fleeing ants scatter and start to form new lines, and I watch as they disappear into several different holes in the ground. I reach out to squash them all, but at the last moment I can't help realizing that this is hopeless. I turn and look back up at Jane and I see that the swarm of ants is all over her, to the extent that I can barely even see her face anymore.

Her features are just about visible, however, and after a few seconds I realize that she actually seems to be staring at the purse next to my feet. I wait, convinced that this is just a coincidence, but she's stiller than at any time since her capture and I swear it's as if she's actually, genuinely looking directly at the purse.

Almost as if she recognizes it.

“It's yours,” I say out loud. “You don't know that, though, do you?”

I wait.

“Do you?”

I hesitate, before using the stick to start sliding the purse across the dirt, moving it closer to Jane. I keep telling myself that this is a silly idea, that I'm imagining things, but as I stop just a few feet from Jane I see that she has turned to keep her gaze focused on the purse. The license photo is visible, and when I look at Jane's rotten, bloodied, ant-covered face I can't shake the feeling that somehow, deep down, she seems to have responded to an item from her old life.

“Do you remember?” I ask cautiously. “Are you starting to -”

Suddenly she starts snarling again, pulling violently against the ropes and struggling with every sinew in her body to attack me. Her rage seems absolute, maybe even stronger than before, but I hold my ground and count to eleven. Sure enough, she stops snarling at the exact moment that I'd anticipated, and then she stares at me for a moment longer before looking down once more at the purse.

“That's you,” I tell her. “In the photo, I mean. That's you, before all of this, when you...”

My voice trailed off.

“Jane Anne Kincaid,” I continue. “That was your name. You don't remember that, do you? You can't.”

She doesn't respond. Instead, she simply continues to stare at the purse.

“Jane?” I say cautiously.

No reply.

I swallow hard.

“Jane!”

This time, she immediately turns and stares at me, but she doesn't snarl. She seemed to react to her name, and for a moment she simply stares at me before, slowly, she lowers her head and looks once more at the purse. I know I'm probably imagining things, but I swear there's just a hint of sadness in her expression, and it's impossible not to consider the possibility that part of Jane Kincaid is still in there somewhere, that her real mind has been stirred. The idea seems crazy, but at the same time I can't deny that she definitely seems to be reacting to the purse.

I hesitate, before using the stick to move the license aside, revealing the photo of Jane smiling with her friends.

Instantly, Jane lets out a low, murmured sound that suddenly turns into a growl. She turns away, and for a few seconds it seems as if she's about to become angry again, but then slowly she looks back down at the photo. She stares at the picture of her younger, happier self, and then she tilts her head slightly.

“Do you remember?” I ask, even though I feel pretty silly standing here and trying to talk to a zombie. “I don't know how long ago that was, but it can't have been too long. Do you remember the people in that picture, Jane? I think they must have been friends of yours, maybe even part of your family.”

I wait, although I'm starting to realize that she might not be able to communicate.

A moment later she snarls again, lunging at me but quickly being held back by the ropes. She twists and turns, and now it's clear that her anger is definitely stronger than before. She rages against the ropes, and this time she leans her head back slightly and screams, as if she's howling at the afternoon sky. I don't remember her doing that before, and she continues to cry out for a moment before slumping back forward and look once again at the photo. Then, slowly, she lets out a low, pained murmur.

“Give me some kind of signal,” I continue. “Anything, to let me know that you understand. Just the tiniest sign is enough.”

Again I wait, half-expecting to see a tear roll down from her rotten eyes, but instead she simply continues to stare at the photo. It's almost as if she's transfixed, as if she's not even aware of my presence at all. And as I continue to stare at her, and as the ants continue to eat her body, I start to realize that I know exactly what I have to do.

4pm

Elizabeth

“She's okay,” I whisper, sitting in the storeroom with my back against the wall, squeezing my eyes tight shut as I gently rock back and forth. “She's safe. I never saw her actually turn. She just looked funny, that's all. I over-reacted.”

I keep thinking back to the last time I saw Rachel. She had this look in her eyes, a kind of intelligence that seemed like it came from somewhere else. I remember Doctor Kennedy's words, too, when she was talking about her own concerns.

“We noticed certain... unusual signs,” she told me. “She seems to stare a lot, and a few of the nurses said they felt she was watching them.”

That's not all she said, though. She said Rachel still had a chance.

“She might be absolutely fine,” I remember her reminding me. “Let's focus on the positives, okay? With the limited resources at our disposal and the need to err on the side of caution, false positives are absolutely possible. We just have to wait and see, and hope that over the next few days she just turns out to be a normal little girl.”

“I'm going to find you,” I whisper, as I try to force myself to have hope. “I'll never stop until -”

Suddenly I hear her. Just for a fraction of a second, I hear her crying in the distance. I immediately scramble to my feet and look along the corridor, but of course the sound is already gone. And although my heart is pounding, Rachel's cry is one illusion that I know for a fact can't be real. Whatever happened to her, I'm absolutely certain that she's not here in Boston. That cry was hers, I'd recognize it anywhere, which can only mean one thing: I really am losing my mind.

I need to face my fears head on.

***

“I'm gonna take a break,” one of the men says, sounding pretty bored as he gets to his feet and steps away from the doorway. “You coming?”

“You happen to know anywhere with a pool table?” the other man asks.

“I wish, but there have to be some around somewhere. Come on, it's the middle of the fucking day, we've been on duty ever since the sun came up and we've already carted one body away. We deserve a lunch break, and no-one's going to miss us.”

“Fine,” the other man mutters, and he starts following his friend out along the street, heading toward the ruined gardens in the distance. “This is the part they never warn you about, isn't it? The sheer, mind-numbing tedium of days spent doing nothing.”

“You heard that alarm earlier,” the first man says, as they wander off into the distance. “Sooner or later we'll find out what that was about. I don't think things'll be boring for long. I don't know about you, but I'm getting the feeling that stuff's stirring in the background, stuff we're not being told about. And when it all comes out, it's not exactly going to be good, is it?”

I wait behind the wall, watching until the two men have vanished into the garden. Then I peer along the street, looking both ways to make sure that there's no-one around, and finally I hurry into the little building where the hygiene workers store their equipment. There aren't technically any rules about who can be in here, but I still know that I'd get into trouble if I was spotted. Equipment is like gold-dust at the moment and everything has to be accounted for. There's no way I'd be able to just borrow something without a good reason.

So much for having to cause a distraction. A little luck is far more effective.

Reaching the storage room, I start going through the lockers, and I soon find what I'm looking for. Taking it out from its compartment, I examine the suit itself, and then I spot a row of masks on a nearby table. Each mask has small round eye-holes and thick pipes extending from the face section. When somebody's wearing one of those, it's impossible for anyone else to know who's inside.

“I'll bring it all back soon,” I whisper as I head over and grab a helmet. “First, I just have to see.”

***

The contamination suit – which I guess should be called an anti-contamination suit, but I don't make the rules – is hot and heavy as I walk toward the perimeter checkpoint.

No, not hot and heavy.

Make that boiling and crippling.

On top of that, the joins are sharp around the top of the legs, pinching my skin. I'm going to have some marks after this, but that doesn't matter. All that matters is getting out to the pit where the bodies are tossed, so that I can see for myself that the girl in the white dress is really down there. That way, I'll know for certain that the images I've been seeing are just hallucinations, and then I'll know that I simply have to focus on getting my head into gear.

Up ahead, there's a single guard manning the checkpoint, although several snipers are in the area to watch for any attempted incursions. I've heard that very few outsiders ever attempt to come this way, on account of the heavy weaponry on display, so to be honest I'm more nervous of that guard than I am of anyone trying to rush through from beyond the perimeter. I can barely see out of the mask's two glass eye-holes, which are already getting a little fogged-up in places, but I know that I just have to keep walking and act like I'm supposed to be here.

After all, nobody can see who's under one of these things.

“Morning,” the guard says as I approach, and he barely even glances at me. He's too engrossed in a tattered paperback book he's holding, which he must have found in one of the abandoned buildings.

I keep walking, waiting for him to wave me through, but he doesn't even do that. I guess the suit is enough for him to assume that I'm legitimate. So I walk straight on past him, taking care not to slow at all, and then I feel a tightening sensation in my chest as I realize that I'm beyond the city perimeter for the first time since I arrived. I'm officially outside Boston and in the so-called wildlands.

“What's up with you?” the guard calls after me. “Cat got your tongue? Having a bad day, huh?”

I raise a hand to acknowledge him, but I don't look back. My heart is racing and I'm terrified that he might call me over, but there's nothing. And then, just as I'm starting to worry, I look ahead at the desolate landscape and I spot something dark in the air, a kind of smudge, and I realize I can hear a faint but rising buzzing sound.

Flies.

There's a huge swarm of flies buzzing above the pit.

I almost stop, but I force myself to keep going. With each step forward I feel a stomach-crunching tightening fear, but I know I just have to get this done. I make my way toward the edge of the pit, which is much smaller than I expected, and finally I stop and look down into a shallow ditch that's no more than twenty feet square and four or five feet deep.

And it's filled with bodies.

There must be thirty or forty people here, tossed in one by one after getting shot. The ones who die further out are left to rot where they fell, but the ones who actually break the perimeter cordon are thrown into these pits. As flies buzz all around me, sounding so loud against the sides of the mask, I look down at the bodies and I see the faces of the dead, twisted and contorted in their final moments. Some died screaming, some look as if they were in agony, whereas some look so utterly calm and peaceful. Some of them show no obvious signs of injury, as if they could just sit up and be fine, while others have had sections of their bodies or heads blown away. The one thing they all have in common, however, is the fact that they look emaciated, as if they were on the brink of starvation when they died. Some are rotten through, but some are just extremely malnourished.

Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I spot movement. I look to the left, out past some old freeway signs, and then I realize somebody's watching me from behind a small building. I see a face peer out at me again, but the person quickly pulls back, and strangely I don't feel scared. After everything I've been told, I know that most of the people beyond the perimeter are just scared and hungry. They're far more likely to make a move away from the checkpoints, where there aren't so many visible guns.

“Hello,” I whisper, for no real reason.

I guess I just want to feel normal. Then again, I don't blame the vagrants for not daring to come any closer to me. We've killed so many of them already.

I glance around, just to make absolutely sure that there's nobody sneaking up on me, and then I look back down into the pit. As I do so, I have to brush some flies from my glass eye-holes, and I can still hear their infernal buzzing. I'm pretty sure loads of them are crawling all over the outside of the mask, and buzzing in the air right next to my ears. For a moment I try to swat them away with my gloved hands, but then with a sigh I realize that I'm wasting my time. I guess there are some thing you just have to accept.

And then I see her.

The girl in the white dress is down there in the corner of the pit, on her back with her head tilted back. I guess I'd figured she might be difficult to spot, but in fact she's right there in the open and I have no doubt that it's her. I make my way along the edge of the pit and then I crouch down to take a closer look. Fortunately the mask doesn't let any of the stench through to my nostrils, because I'm pretty sure this place must smell terrible. As more and more flies buzz all around me, I peer more closely at the girl and I see her dead eyes staring up toward the sky.

“So you're crazy, then,” Bob's voice says.

I don't turn and look at him.

I know he's right behind me, or at least that's what I see if I looked.

But looking would make the illusion stronger, right? It'd be reinforcing something that's not really there, and that's the last thing I need right now.

“Don't feel bad,” he continues. “People go crazy all the time, and you have been through a lot. Not everyone's cut out to flourish in a post-apocalyptic wilderness. Me, I'd've been just fine, if I'd gone out into the world instead of sitting around in that apartment building. I'd have done well, and I reckon your little brother would have done well too. The irony is, the only one who made it out of that building was the one person who couldn't hack it.”

“What do I do now?” I whisper, still staring at the dead girl.

“Everything you do tends to turn to shit.”

“I know, so what do I do to stop that?”

“I doubt there's anything. Your only option is to try to pull yourself together, to see if you can be strong. Nobody said it'd be easy, Elizabeth. You've gotta stand up to your hallucinations. You can't keep looking away.”

I stare at the dead girl for a moment longer, before realizing that maybe the voice of Bob is right after all. I hesitate for a moment, before getting to my feet and then slowly turning to him.

He's right next to me, grinning at me with that same hideous face that I remember from Manhattan.

“You're not really here,” I say firmly.

“No, I'm not.”

“You're dead.”

“I am indeed.”

“So you can't hurt me.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Because you're just a figment of my imagination.”

“Oh, I am a figment of your imagination, but there's no just about it. Because figments of the imagination can be dangerous, Elizabeth. They can make bad things happen and they can definitely hurt you.”

“You're not really here,” I say again, “and you'll go away now.”

“Will I?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

I squeeze my hands tight into two fists, as the sound of buzzing flies gets even louder. I swear, I can almost feel the flies inside the mask, even though I know they can't possibly get through.

“Because I'm making you go away,” I tell him. “Right now.”

I stare at him.

I blink.

His grin grows.

“Nice try,” he adds, and then suddenly he shoves me in the chest, pushing me back so hard and so suddenly that I don't have time to react.

I fall down into the pit, landing on my back against a knot of arms and legs and head. I immediately cry out and turn to get up, but my feet slip and I fall down. Twisting around, I see my left hand resting on the face of a dead man, and then I spot thick, juicy maggots crawling all through what's left of his rancid flesh. I turn to look at my right hand, and I see more maggots and flies everywhere. Screaming loudly inside the mask, I turn and try to make my way back toward the edge of the pit, but my feet keep losing their grip against the slippery, rotten bodies all around. I desperately want to take the mask off, so I can breathe better, but I know I can't do anything so stupid.

I just need more air.

I gasp as I start crawling over the bodies. A moment later I clamber over another, and then I freeze as I see that it's the dead girl in the white dress. Up close now, I look directly into her face and I see that her eyes are looking straight back at me. For a few seconds I'm terrified that she's somehow come back to life, but then I move my head to one side and I realize that it was just a coincidence that our gazes met. I force myself to crawl past her, and finally I reach the edge of the pit and reach up. As I do so, however, I suddenly feel something on my face, and I look down just in time to see a thick, juicy fly buzzing around inside my mask.

Screaming, I fall back and land once more on the pile of bodies. Now there are more flies inside the mask, crawling all over my face, and somehow the space around my head seems to be filling up. I don't know how the flies are getting in, but they're everywhere now and I can even feel some crawling up my nose. I open my mouth to scream again, but immediately a swarm of flies rushes in. I can't spit them out fast enough, and some tumble down my throat while others buzz around next to my teeth and beneath my tongue.

Grabbing the sides of the mask, I twist it to one side and then – even though I know this is a mistake – I pull the entire thing away and throw it to one side. The flies are everywhere now, but at least I can start frantically brushing them away from my face. As I do so, however, I'm suddenly hit by the terrible smell of the rotten bodies, and I start gagging. Leaning forward, I feel an intense, sharp pain in my gut as I gag again and again, as if something in my stomach is out of control and heaving over and over again. The sharpness keeps getting stronger, and it's moving up toward the back of my throat, and I can't even breathe as an icy sweat breaks out all over my body.

A moment later I feel the maggots starting to burst up from my throat and into my mouth. Leaning further forward, I vomit them up, and a great torrent rushes out of my mouth and splatters against the corpses. I squeeze my eyes tight shut as the pain in my stomach becomes intense, and I try to tell myself that none of this can be real, that it's all in my head. It's just another hallucination.

Suddenly the pain stops and my mouth is dry, and I open my eyes. I'm still in the pit, but all the maggots are gone and the flies are simply buzzing around. The mask is still off, but only one or two flies are on my face and I quickly brush those aside. I take a deep breath, and now it's clear that the pain and the nausea were all in my head. I manage to banish the hallucinations, however, which means that I actually took control of my own thoughts. If I can do that, then maybe I still have hope.

I turn to reach for the mask, but then I freeze.

Slowly, I look down at my left hand, and to my horror I see that another, paler hand is reaching up from the mass of bodies and gripping my wrist.

The dead hand belongs to the girl in the white dress. I stare at the hand for a moment, unable to understand how it could possibly have reached up and grabbed me, but deep down I already know that somehow she's alive. Maybe she came back from the dead because she sensed my presence, because she knows that I'm the one who killed her. So I turn and look at her, and sure enough she's staring straight at me with an expression of pure hatred in her eyes.

“I'm so sorry,” I whisper, my voice trembling slightly. “Things shouldn't be like this.”

Suddenly she lunges at me, screaming and grabbing my head and then shoving me back. She lands on my chest and snarls, dripping blood from her mouth, and then she leans closer.

I blink and she's gone.

I'm standing at the edge of the pit still, staring at Bob, and I feel a rush of relief as I realize that I never actually fell into the pit at all, that it was just another in a long string of hallucinations. I don't even know what's real and what's not anymore, I just know that I can't trust myself.

“See you around, kid,” Bob says calmly, before looking past me as if he's spotted something over my shoulder. “Looks to me like shit's about to get real.”

“Huh?”

In an instant, he's gone. I hesitate for a moment, before realizing that I can hear a strange humming sound nearby. Turning, I'm shocked to see that something in the distance is kicking up dust. Whatever it is, it's coming this way fast, and finally I spot a buggy racing along the ruined road. I take a step forward, but then I realize that the buggy is one of ours, one of the ones that's used by teams that go out on patrol. And as the buggy races past me, I see a single, injured figured strapped into the seat. I don't even have time to react, before the buggy hits a rock on the road and spins, quickly flipping and then barrel-rolling as it crashes into the checkpoint.

5pm

Thomas

For weeks now, I've been siphoning off small quantities of gasoline and hoarding it in a hiding place at the back of an old store. I don't have enough to fill the truck's tank but, as I remove the boarding that covers the stash, I figure that I have enough to burn a zombie.

***

“It won't hurt,” I say as I crouch down next to the end of the gasoline trail. “At least, I don't think it will. It shouldn't. It'll just all be over real quick. Okay?”

Looking up at Jane, as ants continue to crawl all over her, I feel a sense of fear in my chest. I know I have to do this, that I have to save her from the indignity of being slowly eaten by the ants, but I also know that I'm about to set fire to another human being. Or to what's left of her, anyway. She's still moving, still tugging on the ropes occasionally, although those bursts of anger have stopped ever since she saw her purse. I don't know what caused the anger, and I might never know why they lasted for exactly eleven seconds, but the purse – or, more specifically, the photos inside – changed something.

“I'm sorry about what they did to you,” I continue, feeling as if I should say something before I strike the match. “All the experiments, I mean. I'm sorry no-one stopped that. I don't even know what she wanted with all those pieces of you, all those little chunks she cut off, but it was wrong. I mean, unless she had a really good reason, but I don't think she did.”

Furrowing my brow, I realize that I maybe just contradicted myself.

“It's about respect and decency,” I add, trying to get back on track. “It's about treating each other right.”

I pause, trying to think of something else, of something meaningful. I guess I've never really been good at stuff like that, so instead I watch Jane's face as the ants continue to swarm. Deep down, I'm half-expecting her to say something, or for her to show some other sign that she's still in there, but finally I realize that I'm just delaying the inevitable. I'm waiting for some kind of poetic moment that's never coming.

“Sorry,” I say again. “It'll be alright. I promise.”

With that, I light the match and let it fall.

The flames are instant, rushing across the ground and up to Jane's face. She immediately twists away and screams, but she's already burning and I scramble back as I watch her pull first one way and then the other on the ropes. Her scream is rising above the sound of the flames, and I can't help wondering whether a zombie would scream at all or whether, instead, the sound might be coming from Jane herself. A moment later one of the ropes snaps and Jane falls to the side, dropping to her knees as the flames consume her body.

I pull back further, prepared to turn and run if necessary, but instead I simply watch as Jane remains on her knees. I can feel the heat of the flames against my face as I stare in open-mouthed horror at the sight of Jane's figure slowly crumpling to the ground. I tell myself that it must be over, that there can't be anything left in the inferno, but then the figure turns slightly as if some part of the creature refuses to die. I can just about make out the shape of a body in the heart of the brightness, still twitching, still fighting for a few more seconds until finally the figure slumps all the way down and the movement ends.

All around, ants are scurrying away from the flames.

***

“Hey Thomas, are you okay?” Toad asks as I wander back along the dusty road that leads toward the rationing post. “Is something burning out there?”

“Not anymore,” I reply, barely able to get the words out.

In my mind's eye I'm still seeing the sight of Jane's crumpled corpse on the ground. The flames began to die out a few minutes ago, revealing nothing but a collection of charred bones. I know those creatures are pretty resilient at times, but I defy anything to move around when it's just a bunch of bones that aren't even connected. The creature's gone and so too, I'm certain, is Jane. Maybe she wasn't really in there, maybe I imagined that, but maybe she was somehow aware and maybe I just found a way to release her.

Stopping, I turn to Toad and see that he's staring into space, as if he's lost in his own thoughts. I watch him for a moment, and I swear there's an unusual, uncharacteristic expression on his face.

He looks...

Happy?

“What's wrong?” I ask.

It takes a moment before he turns to me.

“Huh?”

“What's going on?” I continue. “You look funny.”

He opens his mouth, but then he holds back. Then he looks both ways along the street, before coming over to join me.

“I'm going crazy,” he says, with a hint of excitement in his voice, “and I have to tell someone, but you've gotta keep it under your hat, okay?”

“Keep what under my hat?”

“I was sworn to secrecy, but I found out something today and it's all I can think about right now.” He sighs. “You know Carter? Sarah Carter, I mean.”

I immediately bristle at the mention of that name.

“Sure,” I tell him. “Why?”

“I finally talked to her,” he continues. “Well, I talked to her once before, but that was only brief. This time I was sent to deliver some crates to her in that makeshift lab she's got going, and we actually got talking. Man, it's crazy how that woman still does her hair and make-up even when the world's basically ended all around her. Priorities, right? But the thing is...”

His voice trails off. He looks along the road again, and it's clear now that he's really worried about somebody overhearing us. It's as if he's about to tell me something that's massively important.

“She's been able to listen in to some of the broadcasts from Boston,” he explains finally, lowering his voice even further. I'm standing right next to him and even I can barely hear him. “Nothing too exciting, mostly military stuff, but a few names have been bandied about and she mentioned someone who sounded familiar to me. Do you remember the girl I told you about?”

“The one you're in love with?”

“I never said I was in love with her.”

“You just talked about her all the time,” I point out. “It's not exactly hard to figure out.”

“The thing is, and I know this is going to sound incredible, but the thing is... she's in Boston.”

“How do you know?”

“I'd mentioned her to Carter before. I'd mentioned her name. And then Carter overheard chatter on the radio about a bunch of people in Boston, and Lizzie's one of them. Apparently she's pretty high-up, she's on their Council or something like that. To be honest, that sounds like exactly the kind of thing that Elizabeth would do, she was always kind of bossy. But the point is, she's alive and she's in Boston. Can you believe that?”

“You're lucky,” I tell him. “My -”

I stop myself just in time. Carter warned me not to tell anyone about my sister being alive out there in California, and I guess I should stick to the promise I made.

“I'm going to find her,” Toad continues. “When we get to Boston, I'm going to find Lizzie and... I don't know what we'll do then, but at least I'll have her back. And Rachel too, hopefully. But after all this time, I'm going to see Lizzie again and then we'll see what happens after that, but do you get it, Thomas? There's hope. I'd given up on ever finding her again, on her even being alive, but now there's hope. To be honest, I was having my doubts about going to Boston, but now I know that it's worth the journey.”

“That's great,” I tell him. “I'm really pleased for you.”

“I know I'm just being an idiot,” he says with a sigh. “She probably won't even remember me, but it's worth a shot, right?” He turns and looks along the street, and now the faraway expression has returned to his eyes. “At least there's a chance. And if she's alive, then I know what we'll do. We'll go back to my farm, we'll fix it up and we'll get on with our lives. The rest of the world can do what it wants, but we'll get on with things alone. If that's what she wants, anyway. I mean, I hope it is. I'll have to ask her.”

“I have to go and check something in one of the ammunition stores,” I reply, “but I'll be back later.”

I wait, and after a moment I realize that he's lost in thought. The news about this Lizzie girl has really animated him, almost brought him back to life after a few days when he's seemed pretty hopeless.

“I'll be back soon,” I mutter, turning and walking away.

It's funny, I talked to a girl on the radio a while ago, and her name was Lizzie too. Or rather, Elizabeth. For a moment I wonder whether there could be a connection, but then I remember that this particular Elizabeth said she was on a farm in Pennsylvania. Or was it Pittsburgh? I don't even remember. I know coincidences happen, but it's pretty unlikely that it's the same girl and that she then somehow moved from that place all the way to Boston. Some coincidences are just too huge to believe.

And then, as I spot Sarah Carter walking into a nearby building, I suddenly think back to what she told me about Martha, and to what she's apparently told Toad, and I realize that I'm right.

Some coincidences really do seem too good to be true.

6pm

Elizabeth

“What do we have here?” Dad yells as I follow him along the corridor. “Is this an attack?”

“It's a survivor from the patrol we thought we lost earlier,” Lando Marcus says breathlessly, joining us as we walk. “Five men went out on what was supposed to be a routine patrol, and only one of them made it back. He was hurt even before his buggy hit the checkpoint, but we've managed to stabilize him for now.”

“I need to talk to him,” Dad says firmly.

“It's too soon to be -”

“Does he still have a mouth and a tongue?”

“Yes, but -”

“And can you bring him around?”

“I could, but the pain -”

“Then bring him around,” Dad barks, stopping and turning to Lando. “We need to know what happened to that man out there. We need to know what attacked our patrol.”

“That man is dying,” Lando continues. “Even with all the facilities in the world, he'd have little chance. Here, with what we've got, I won't be able to hold him together for much longer.”

“I need to know what he knows,” Dad replies, and I can hear the sense of urgency in his voice. “Are you going to help me, or do I have to go in there and wake him up myself?”

***

“They came so fast,” Jackson murmurs, his voice slurred thanks to the pain medication that's being pumped into his body. “Five or six of them, just swarming our group.”

“Zombies?” Dad asks. “Were they zombies?”

“Men and women,” Jackson replies. “Like us.”

“I knew we should have picked them off sooner,” Dad mutters. “We've been too lenient, letting groups exist beyond the perimeter. We should have devoted more resources to setting up an additional layer of security.”

“They killed the others,” Jackson continues. “It was so fast, we couldn't even react. Hollings told me to take the buggy and get out of there, to make sure I got back to report what we'd found. I wanted to stay and fight, Sir, I swear. I wasn't a coward.”

“No-one's calling you a coward,” Dad tells him. “If you hadn't made it back, we wouldn't know what's going on out there.”

“There are soldiers,” Jackson explains. “Lots of them. They're in small groups, but we overheard them talking. There are all these groups and they're planning to link up, and then they're going to come and attack us. They're coming to Boston and they want to take control. They won't let anything stop them.”

“We need to send the helicopters out,” Charles Bloom says. “Blow them all away.”

“That's not an option,” Dad replies.

“Why not? We just -”

“We don't have the ammunition for the guns on the helicopters,” Dad says firmly turning to him. “We're out. We've been sending the helicopters on routine spying missions, and to intimidate the other groups, but the truth is they can't actually do much.”

“But we have guns here, right?” Charles points out. “We have to get ready to fight.”

“We have ammunition for our soldiers here,” Dad replies, but I can tell that he's deeply worried. “Whether it'll be enough is another matter.”

“We have to surrender,” suggests another Council member, Jonathan Day. “Negotiate. This doesn't have to end in war. Instead of succumbing to the baser urges of our species, we should take the higher ground and extend an olive branch.”

Realizing that someone is next to me, I turn and see that Diane Clark has entered the room.

“I'm sorry,” I whisper, turning to leave, “I know I shouldn't be -”

“Stay,” she replies calmly, placing a hand on my shoulder. “You might be able to help, Elizabeth.”

“I can't help with anything,” I tell her.

“Please stay,” she continues, and she sounds genuine. “It never hurts to have another opinion in the room, especially when things look bleak.”

“Why do things look bleak?” I ask.

“We vastly underestimated the numbers that are heading toward us,” she explains, keeping her voice low while Dad and the others continue to talk on the other side of the room. “We're running low on ammunition, and negotiation with the enemy is not an option. Their approach to reconstruction is directly at odds with ours, and we have reason to believe that they're working with a very dangerous woman named Sarah Carter. If Carter's involved with them at all, we have to stand firm and fight them. I personally would rather die than let that woman build the future that she imagines.”

“Who is she?”

“Has your father never mentioned her?”

“I don't think so.”

“She's someone from the past. Someone who before all of this was laughed out of every military group and every scientific community on the planet. But if our intelligence is correct, she's using this disaster to mount something of a comeback. If she's with one of those groups, then the danger they pose is magnified a thousandfold. And at this moment, we might be the only people standing in her way. We can't let her get control of this city.”

“You've met her before?”

“I worked with her for a while, before she was cast out of the scientific community. Your father did, too. That's how I know that she's dangerous. Maybe it's a good thing that she's here, though. We have a chance to stop her before she causes too much damage. How she's managed to link up with an army, I can't imagine, but she can be very manipulative. There's nothing she won't do in order to get her own way. She's the kind of person who believes that the ends justify the means, no matter the cost.”

“But if -”

“Wait,” she adds, looking past me, “I need to hear this.”

“What do you mean, herding?” Dad is asking as he continues to talk to the man in the bed. “How exactly does anyone herd zombies?”

“We were able to watch for a while,” the man gasps. “They had hundreds of them, maybe thousands, and they were blasting them with some kind of high frequency signal. We couldn't hear it ourselves, but we picked it up on a scanner. Every couple of minutes they broadcast this signal for exactly eleven seconds, and it seemed to keep the zombies focused. It made them easier to control.”

“Why were they doing any of this?” Dad asks. “Where were they herding them to?”

“Where do you think?” The man pauses for a moment, with fear in his eyes. “They're coming straight toward Boston.”

Dad turns to Diane, and then to me. I can see the concern in his eyes.

“This sounds highly improbable,” Diane says as she heads over to join them. “I find it very difficult to believe that these people have managed to find and then control hundreds of zombies. And directing them here would be almost impossible.”

“I've seen it,” the man replies. “Send another patrol out there. The zombies are getting closer all the time. Soon they'll be here.”

“Then we'll burn them,” Diane explains. “If we find them, we'll use whatever resources we need and we'll destroy them all, but I still have my doubts.” She turns to Dad. “Send some men out there, but tell them to be careful. And to not go very far. If this zombie train has somehow managed to get close to us without being noticed, we'll deal with it.”

“Our gasoline rations are limited,” Dad points out. “There's no -”

“We'll make it work,” she adds, cutting him off. “For now, I still need to verify all of this new information, so let's just hang tight. In the meantime, I want our gasoline inventory to be rechecked, to make sure we have every drop that's on the lists. We might be facing our biggest test yet and we need to be ready. If these zombies really are heading our way, then I'm sure I'm not the only one who realizes the time for negotiation is over. People are trying to destroy us, using the most underhand methods imaginable. This means war.”

***

“Do you agree?” I ask a short while later, as I stand in the doorway and watch Dad at his desk. “Are we at war?”

He turns to me.

“Why do we have to fight?” I continue, trying to stay calm. “Shouldn't all the survivors be working together?”

“We should be,” he replies, “but that just isn't how it's working out.”

“But the things he said are impossible, aren't they?” I add, stepping toward him. “You can't control zombies with some kind of blast of sound. That's crazy.”

I wait, but he doesn't say anything. I can see from the look in his eyes, however, that he's worried.

“It doesn't make sense,” I continue. “What kind of eleven-second signal could they be using to keep the zombies under their control?”

“We don't know what's possible and what's not, Elizabeth. A scout part has been sent out to verify the story, and until they return we simply have to take some prudent steps so that we're ready for the worst-case scenario. If you're hoping that I'll tell you not to worry, then I'm afraid I can't do that. Right now, we just have to sit tight and wait to see what happens. And we have to plan, which means I have to figure some stuff out so... I'm sorry, Elizabeth, but I need to focus on these plans right now. Could you shut the door as you leave?”

“Sure,” I reply, surprised by how cold he sounds.

I pause, and then I turn to go out into the corridor.

“Are you okay, by the way?” he calls after me. “You seemed a little spaced-out earlier. How are you doing now?”

“Me?” I turn to him. “I'm fine.”

“No nightmares?”

“I...”

For a moment, I can't quite work out why he asked me that.

“It'd be understandable,” he continues. “I remember you used to get nightmares when you were a kid. Your mother and I would wake up and you'd be next to our bed, crying and asking to climb in.” He smiles. “You always used to deny it at first, but we knew you'd had another bad dream, and you'd end up spending the night with us. Your mother used to worry terribly, but I told her it was just something kids go through. Henry never really had the same problem, but I remember you having nightmares two or three times a week, all the way up until you were in your early teens.”

“I remember,” I reply, shivering slightly at the memory of sneaking into Mom and Dad's room all those times. I turn to leave the room, but then I hesitate for a moment. “I used to have these scary dreams,” I continue, “about monsters or ghosts, and I'd wake up and I'd be home in our apartment and everything would be fine.” I pause again. “Now I have dreams about being home, and about everything being fine. And those are the worst nightmares of all, because eventually I have to wake up back in this world where Mom and Henry are dead, and our old lives are gone.”

“Do you have anyone to talk to about all of this?” he asks.

“I talk to people.”

“But about your mother, and about Henry?” He stares at me for a moment. “Lizzie, if you need someone to talk to about their deaths -”

“I'm fine.”

“You should try to find someone,” he adds.

I swallow hard. I thought he was about to open up, to tell me how he feels about Mom and Henry being gone, but I guess not. I guess this isn't really the right moment.

“Shut the door when you leave,” he says again, as he looks back down at his papers. “I need some time to work on this plan before all hell breaks loose.”

“Sure.”

With that, I step back and shut the door, and then I turn and make my way along the corridor. With each step, I get closer to the exit at the far end, and to the voices that are shouting in the yard. And I swear, I'm starting to feel as if my nightmares are bleeding into every waking second.

The nightmares have won.

7pm

Thomas

What's she doing in here?

Now that the sun is going back down, all the shadows are getting long and it's difficult to see properly. Carter came in here a while ago, and I'm pretty sure she hasn't left yet, which means she's somewhere in one of the rooms. I know she has temporary labs all over the place, in several buildings, and I also get the impression that she likes to keep herself to herself. She's been turning down help whenever it's offered, unless she really needs something. She's been creeping around, and now my suspicions are a little too strong to ignore.

Stopping in the next doorway, in almost complete darkness, I listen to the silence and wait for any hint that Carter's nearby.

All I hear, however, is a few voices yelling in the distance, far beyond the walls of the building.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe Carter isn't here at all. I mean, why would she be working in the dark? She'd at least have some kind of flashlight set up, but the entire place seems to be unlit and I'm starting to think that I'm getting suspicious over nothing. Carter might have a habit of sneaking around and always looking like she's hiding something, but some people are just like that. Maybe I'm getting all suspicious over nothing. Then again, I'm sure I can smell that perfume she always wears.

I hesitate for a moment, in the darkness, and then I turn to leave.

“Don't you want to see?” a voice asks suddenly.

I freeze, and then I look over my shoulder.

A flashlight comes to life, casting a beam across the darkened room, and I see Sarah Carter staring at me. At the same time, I have to hold my hands up to protect my eyes from the intensity of the light, which points directly at my face for a moment before being lowered slightly.

“Sorry,” Carter continues, her voice sounding very calm and certain, “I didn't mean to startle you. I just wondered why you made the effort to come in here, only to turn around.”

“It's not any of my business,” I tell her.

“That's not an answer.”

I pause, before lowering my hands. I can just about see Carter's face now, and I feel a shudder pass through my chest as I realize that she's staring at me.

“Come and look at something,” she says finally, stepping past me and heading over to one of the benches. “Don't be frightened, Thomas. I've made a discovery and, well, I'd like to share it with someone. Especially since you helped bring the discovery about.”

“I didn't do anything,” I tell her.

“Let me prove you wrong. Come.”

She stops and switches on a flashlight that's attached to a wooden post. Light blasts across the bench, and I see that there's various equipment laid out. Carter is adjusting something on what looks like a microscope, and after a moment I walk over to get a closer look.

“Recognize this?” she asks, using a set of tweezers to remove a small item from a dish.

Leaning a little closer, I see that she's showing me a scrap of human flesh.

“It's one of the samples I took from the girl out there,” she says. “Nice work burning her, by the way. How did you know I wouldn't be needing her anymore?”

She smiles, as if she knows that I didn't consider her work at all, and then she slides the piece of flesh under the microscope before taking a look through the viewfinder.

“There are two components to the virus,” she explains. “There's the sickness, which causes death remarkably quickly. Then there's the mechanism by which the dead body is revived, which seems to be caused by a process that begins in what's left of the brain. I haven't figured it all out yet, although I must say I've made remarkable progress despite having such poor equipment.”

She steps back from the microscope and turns to me.

“Take a look,” she continues.

“Why?”

“Why not? Aren't you interested?”

I pause, before walking over and looking down the viewfinder. At first the image is merely blurry, but as I squint slightly I start to see a magnified image of the little chunk of flesh. To my surprise, I see that there appear to be tiny black threads running through the meat.

“The threads are very interesting to me,” Carter explains. “They're something new, and they seem to spread as the virus takes root, then they remain once the subject is dead. And then, once the so-called zombie rises, the threads seem to be instrumental in keeping the corpse moving. How that works, I don't know yet, but look at this.”

Suddenly she moves the piece of flesh away, before putting a second piece in its place.

“What do you see?” she asks.

“There are no black threads in this one,” I reply. “So it's normal, right?”

“What would you say if I told you that the second specimen is also from the creature?” she continues. “What would you say if I told you that even though the specimen is dead, I managed to cause the black threads to almost entirely dissipate. They're still slightly there, although I anticipate that with time they'll vanish entirely.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“It means I might have found a way to reverse the condition.”

I turn to her.

“I might have begun to find a way,” she adds, with a faint smile. “There's much more work to be done, but at least I'm actually getting somewhere. The poor creature was far too far gone, there was no point experimenting on her any further, but I would very much like to get my hands on somebody who's a little more fresh, so that I can determine whether I can truly reverse the condition. It's a little late to save everyone, but hopefully my work means that some people will be able to survive the infection.”

“Have you told anyone else yet?” I ask.

She pauses, before taking the specimen away and putting it back onto its dish.

“No,” she says after a moment. “There's no need, not yet. I only told you because you wandered in here. Frankly, I'm impressed by your sense of curiosity. I value curiosity very highly as a personality trait.”

“Is it true about Martha?” I ask suddenly. I hadn't even meant to give voice to that question, at least not yet, and now I'm scared of the answer.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You told me my sister's alive in California,” I remind her. “Her name's Martha. But then I found out that you told someone else that someone he cares about is alive in Boston and, well, those seem like two really big coincidences. And I was thinking that coincidences like that don't really happen so often.”

“You're a smart boy.”

“So is it true?” I ask again. “Is my sister alive?”

She pauses, before taking a step toward me.

“Honestly, Thomas,” she says after a moment, “I have no idea and I don't really care.”

“Then why did you -”

“Loyalty,” she continues, cutting me off. “Willingness to follow. Call it what you will, but I need everyone to come to Boston with me. If that means telling some little white lies to people, giving them hope where before there wasn't any, then that's what I'll do.”

“How many other people did you lie to?”

“As many as necessary. Quite a few, to be honest.”

“And you swore them all to secrecy?” I continue.

“Obviously one of them blabbed to you,” she replies. “I think I can guess which one.”

“You can't just lie to people!”

“Of course I can, if it serves the ultimate purpose of getting us all to Boston. I need to get into that city, Thomas, and I need to do it as a free woman, not as a prisoner or as a beggar. The people there are dangerous and I need to arrive with some leverage. But it's taken longer than I anticipated to prepare us for that move, and we've been sitting around here twiddling out thumbs for over a month now. I noticed a certain lack of application on the part of some people, and I intervened to... motivate them.”

“By lying to them. By pretending that their loved ones were waiting for them.”

“Yes.”

“And you admit that?”

“Yes.”

“And you're not sorry?”

“It's a shame it had to happen,” she replies, “but it was entirely necessary. I know some of the people who are gathered in Boston, Thomas, and they have to be stopped. I worked with at least a few of them, and their ideas are extremely dangerous.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I tried to warn others about them in the past,” she continues, “and I ended up being pushed out of the scientific community. I was shunned, ostracized, all for raising legitimate concerns. Eventually I withdrew and waited, hoping against hope that my warnings would be heeded.”

She turns and heads over to a bench, where the flashlight's beam picks out various pieces of equipment.

“Diane Clark, in particular, is extremely dangerous,” she explains. “She and her allies believe that humanity has a right to swarm all over this planet, like ants. They believe that technology should enable us to support more and more people, to give billions of people a good life. They were going to drive us to extinction before this disaster, and now they want to push us back there. They want to return us to the days of mass over-population.”

“Maybe they just want to save people,” I point out.

“They're well-meaning idiots,” she replies, glancing at me. “Let's be honest, Thomas. Think back a hundred and one day, to just before all of this started. Of the seven-plus billion people on this planet, how many of them truly mattered?”

“You can't say things like that,” I tell her.

“This mass extinction event was a happy accident,” she explains, “and it gave us a chance to reorganize. To adjust our approach to civilization. I won't let that opportunity slip through our fingers, just because a bunch of do-gooders in Boston are too afraid to face the difficult questions. Better to have a small number of people who live well, than billions who live crushed together in misery. And if doing the right thing means that I go down in history as a villain, then so be it. At least I'll know that I did the right thing for our species.”

She looks down for a moment at her equipment.

“But I was wrong to lie to you,” she add, “and to lie to all the others, and I see that now. I was hoping to figure something out once we reached Boston, but...”

Her voice trails off, and then she turns to me.

“Thank you, Thomas,” she continues, “you've helped me understand something. Tonight we leave for Boston, to join the other groups that are already on their way there. But first, I think I have to set something right.”

8pm

Elizabeth

“We're gonna blow some mother-fucking heads off,” Natalie says as she pulls her locker open and takes out her rifle. “If people think they can come and destroy what we've got going here, they've got another thing coming. They're gonna learn the hard way that they can't mess with Boston.”

“We don't know for sure that there's going to be any fighting,” I point out, hoping for the best even though I know I must sound horribly naive. “This might be a false alarm.”

“Do you really think so?” she asks. She starts checking her rifle, and I can't help noticing that she seems breathless, almost cocky. For a moment she pauses, staring at the weapon with a sense of wonder. “This is destiny calling,” she adds finally. “Do you realize that, Lizzie? Destiny's calling us all out there onto the battlefield, and we're going to learn who we really are. Maybe this is what I've been waiting for. Maybe this is why I've been kept alive.”

“Kept alive?”

“I told you,” she says, turning to me, “it's like I've been protected from all those bullets.”

“You don't seriously believe that, do you?” I ask. “You've been lucky, Natalie, that's all.”

“Nobody's that lucky,” she replies. “Are you finding it hard to believe, Lizzie? Don't you get it yet? There's some kind of force that's working behind the scenes, making sure that we're able to succeed. If you don't see that right now, Lizzie, then that's fine, but it's coming. Destiny has led us to this moment and destiny will take us through it to whatever's next. That's why I'm not afraid of the coming battle. I embrace it.”

“Because you don't think you'll die?”

“If I do, it'll be for a good cause. But the truth is, I really believe that I'm being saved for something. Your guess is as good as mine when it comes to what that thing might be, but I'm ready to meet it head on. I just have to make sure that I'm ready. This battle is just going to be a blip, that's all. We just have to go out there, get it done, defeat the enemy, and move on to the next stage. Honestly, all this fighting is only going to make us stronger.”

I open my mouth to ask whether she really thinks all of this is true, but then I realize that the look of sheer mania in her eyes is already enough of an answer.

“Nice suit, by the way,” she says with a smile. “Since when did you go around in one of those contamination suits? Got an extra job, did you?”

“You're getting ahead of yourself,” I point out. “Like I said, we still don't know that there's going to be a battle at all.”

“We do now,” a voice says, and I turn to see Violet is standing in the doorway. She looks terrified. “The patrol came back just after sunset,” she adds. “Zombies are coming. And an army. It's really war.”

***

“I'm not going to lie to you,” Diane says as she stands on a makeshift stage, addressing the gathered soldiers out here in the yard. “While we can stop the zombies, we're going to have a much harder task with the hundreds and hundreds of armed enemy combatants heading this way. I'm asking all of you to believe in our project today, to believe in Boston, and to do whatever it takes to repel the attack on our city.”

“Hell, yeah,” Natalie mutters under her breath, as a murmur of approval ripples out across the crowd.

“As I speak,” Diane continues, “our forces are mounting an early attack to destroy the zombies. That's the easy part. The harder part will come in about two hours from now, which is when we anticipate the first wave of enemy combatants reaching our perimeter. They seem to be well-armed and well-equipped. I'm sure I don't have to tell you all that they represent the absolute antithesis to our work here in Boston.”

There's only one functional light out here so, as I look around, I can see little more than the silhouettes of heads stretching as far as the eye can see. I don't know how many people are gathered here, but there are a little over four hundred people living in Boston right now and at least fifty or so of them are either too young or too sick to fight. I guess we probably have slightly fewer than four hundred fully-able soldiers, whereas reports are suggesting around six or seven hundred soldiers have been spotted coming this way.

We're out-numbered and out-gunned, but for the first time I actually have faith in the Council. Maybe it's just desperation that's making me feel this way, but I feel as if we have a chance.

“I've been waiting my whole life for this,” Natalie says, as Diane continues to speak.

Turning, I see that Natalie is staring straight ahead, as if she's in some kind of trance.

“I never had meaning in my life before” she adds. “I was just a scrappy kid. I never really believed in anything. Hell, I never really cared about anything except my dog. But now I feel like I can contribute, like I can actually stand up and do something meaningful.” She puts a clenched fist against her chest, directly above her heart. “Tonight, I'm going to make up for all my stupidity. I'm going to help save the world.”

“We're just going to be gunned down like fools,” another voice says, and I turn to see Violet standing nearby. She's staring straight ahead too, but there are tears in her eyes. “It's just like every other fight. The people who start it are gonna be nice and safe, while we're the grunts who go out there and take a load of bullets.”

“You've got to believe in what we're fighting for,” Natalie tells her. “Where's your pride, dude?”

Violet doesn't reply. Instead she continues to stare forward, watching and listening as Diane speaks. After a moment, however, a tear rolls down Violet's cheek. I look down at her hands and see that she's trembling with fear.

“It won't come to war,” I say, turning back to Natalie. “Things don't have to be like this.”

“Of course they do,” she replies with a smile. “If you believe in something, you have to be ready to fight for it. You have to be ready to die for it. And I am, Lizzie. For the first time in my life, I'm ready to do something important. I just wish I could be on one of those helicopters that's going out to burn the zombies. I was so good on those helicopters, I can't believe I haven't been up there again.”

“Everyone will be assigned to an outpost near the perimeter,” Diane continues. “You'll be given a job to do, and weapons, and after that you'll be on your own. We simply don't have the numbers to pair people up. Each outpost will hold between three and six individuals, depending on the outpost's size, but you won't be able to work in pairs. I can't emphasize this enough. Each of you will have to work alone, and you'll have to stick to the orders that you've been given. And that, I promise you, is how we're going to win the battle for Boston.”

***

This gun is heavy, heavier than the ones I've been using so far. It's a little longer, too, but in every other way it seems pretty familiar. I'm standing alone in one of the locker rooms, practising how to use this thing, hauling it off my shoulder over and over again and then turning to face an imagined foe.

“Blam,” I whisper, before turning again.

I see another.

“Blam.”

I keep doing this, trying to get myself into the right mindset. Every so often I hear voices yelling in the distance, and the sound of people running, but I know we still have a little time before it's time to go out to the outposts. I've already been assigned to number nine, which is one of the smaller positions. I guess my job will be to pick off enemy combatants as they approach past the old packaging depot, which shouldn't be too difficult. Not for someone with good aim, at least.

I imagine another enemy, and I aim at him for a moment before pretending to pull the trigger.

“Blam,” I say under my breath.

In my mind's eye, the man drops down against the muddy ground and I'm already alert for the next danger. I turn toward the doorway and aim my gun again, and I can't help but notice that my hands are very firm. There's none of the trembling that I remember from before. It's as if the seriousness of the oncoming threat has finally forced me to just focus on getting the job done. Maybe I was overthinking things before and allowing myself to worry too much. Maybe I can be a soldier after all.

“Blam,” I whisper.

I turn the gun again.

Suddenly I see her.

The girl in the white dress is standing next to the one of the bunks, staring straight at me. I can see blood on one side of her face, but it's her eyes that are truly shocking: she has the same expression I saw when I went over to her in the yard, the same dead look that seems slightly glazed over. At the same time, she's staring straight at me, and after a moment she takes a step closer.

“You're not real,” I tell her.

She stops and stares at me for a moment longer, and then she steps closer again.

“You're not real,” I say again.

She stares, and then she steps closer still.

“You're not real,” I tell her for a third time, determined to keep my head together.

I blink.

And she's gone.

I don't dare move, not at first, but finally I look around and see that there's no sign of the girl. Having seen her body in the pit, I now know for certain that she's gone, and that these visions of her have been nothing more than hallucinations. Not that this knowledge made it much easier to actually push the visions away, but right now I don't have time to go crazy, so I aim the gun for a moment longer at the spot where she was standing and then I pretend to pull the trigger.

“Blam,” I say out loud. “I'm sorry.”

“So sincere,” Bob's voice says, sneering at me from behind. “I'm sure your apology was a lot of comfort to her at the moment when -”

“And you can fuck off too,” I say, turning and seeing him, then miming pulling the trigger. “Blam.”

He raises an amused eyebrow, but in that instant he disappears. I keep the gun aimed at him for a moment longer, just in case he comes back.

“Lizzie?” a voice says. “What are you going?”

Turning, I aim the gun at the figure in the doorway, but then I lower it as soon as I see Natalie staring at me with a furrowed brow.

“Sorry,” I reply. “Target practice.”

“Uh-uh.” She rolls her eyes. “Sometimes you worry me, Lizzie Marter. You really do. But we can fix you once we've won the battle for Boston.” She smiles. “Are you ready for war?”

“Yeah,” I say, slinging my gun over my shoulder and heading over to join her, “I'm ready.”

9pm

Thomas

“In an hour or so, we finally set off for Boston,” Sarah Carter says as she stands on a platform, addressing us all. A single light picks out her face as rain begins to fall. “We're going to join the other convoys in a great battle to take the city.”

I feel a knot of fear in my chest, getting tighter by the second.

“First, however,” she continues, “I have a confession to make. I have done something very cruel, something that I want to put straight. Over the past few days, I have lied to many of you, I have told you individually that I have located your loved ones and that after the fight or Boston you'll be reunited with them. I was lying. I haven't located anyone for you, and it's highly unlikely that any of your loved ones are alive somewhere out there.”

A murmur of anger starts to spread, rippling through the crowd. For a moment, I actually start to wonder whether people might be about to turn violent. After all, they're basically being told that they were tricked into lending their support to this entire enterprise, and I wouldn't be surprised if their anger spilled over into a desire for revenge.

“But I want you to understand why I lied,” Carter adds. “The truth is, this upcoming battle could not be more important. It's a battle for the future, a battle to decide who gets to shape humanity's next stage. That's why I panicked and lied, a move that I now deeply regret. I want to thank Thomas Edgewater for making me understand that I was wrong, and for showing me that I should instead tell the truth.”

I look around, and I can tell that the others are all shocked. Spotting Toad in the crowd, I see that he's looking down at the ground. I know how much that Lizzie girl means to him, and he must be heartbroken to have had his hope snatched away so cruelly.

I feel the same way about Martha.

“The people in Boston want to restore the world to how it was,” Carter says, “which will only mean another inevitable disaster along the way. They will lie and cheat to put things back in order, so that they can retake their positions of power. I've lied to you, but I did so with good intentions and now here I am, admitting to that lie and asking for your forgiveness, and asking that you come with us to Boston so that we can save what's left of our species. Are you all with me?”

No-one says anything. No-one claps. In that moment, I realize that Sarah Carter has failed miserably. She must be the most hated woman in the world right now. Maybe she thought that her little speech about honesty would encourage people to 'connect' with her, to trust her, but if anything it's had the opposite effect.

This whole crusade is going to fall apart before it even gets going.

***

“What, you're still going to Boston?” I ask, shocked, as I hurry along with Toad toward the parked vehicles. “After everything she just said? Why?”

“Because she was honest with us,” he says, tossing a bag into the back of one of the trucks and then turning to me. “No bullshit lies. No propaganda. No easy solutions. She told the truth, finally, and that's more than anyone else was doing back in the days before this disaster hit.”

“She told the truth about having lied to you!”

“And I understand why she did that. It can't have been easy, keeping morale up while we all sat around waiting for our orders to get going. Sometimes leaders have to do whatever it takes.”

“I didn't think you were so keen on being manipulated and bossed around,” I tell him.

“It's not that simple, Thomas,” he says with a sigh. “This isn't the time for just sitting around, contemplating our navels. We have to decide whether we want to be part of the future, or part of the past. And when the choice is that stark, I can't help myself. I'm going to choose the future.”

“But...”

Before I can finish, I see others heading toward the vehicles. Turning, I look around, and with a slow sense of dread I realize that Toad is far from the only person who's preparing to join the convoy that's heading to Boston. I was so sure that Carter's speech had derailed the whole thing, but if anything she seems to have galvanized her support. In fact, as I look around, I realize that everyone is here, and a moment later I hear an engine starting somewhere in the distance.

None of this makes sense.

Are people actually reacting favorably to Carter's speech?

“Going back to how things were is not the answer,” Toad says, as I turn to him. “The world we lived in is gone. The people we loved are gone. That's what Carter's speech showed me. We can't live in perpetual hope that everyone's going to miraculously come back. We have to look forward. I might not agree with Carter's ideas, but I do agree with the idea that we have to move on. And if the people in Boston are trying to take us back to how things used to be, then I guess the next step is to wipe them out of the way.”

“We don't know what the people in Boston are really like,” I point out. “We don't know what they're really planning.”

“You heard Carter, she said -”

“She already admitted that she lied to all of us!” I snap. “How can you believe her now?”

“Everyone lies,” he replies. “Very few people admit to that and apologize. In fact, she's the only one I remember right now. So in some strange way, I think I'm actually starting to trust her. And what's the alternative? Sitting around, waiting to die?” He checks that the truck's rear-board is secure, and then he heads over to the door. “We're going to build a future, not rebuild the past.”

Stunned, I watch as he climbs into the truck, and then I turn and see that others are doing the same. Over the past few days, I've noticed that people were getting less enthusiastic about the journey to Boston, but Carter's speech – which I thought at the time was a mess – has somehow managed to bring everyone back together. I don't know whether that's by design, or whether she just got lucky, but either way the effect is stunning.

Spotting General Patterson up ahead, I see that he's talking to Carter. They seem to be discussing tactics, but after a moment I realize that it's Carter who's giving orders. Patterson's supposed to be in a charge, but Carter's telling him what to do and he seems to be accepting that situation. As I continue to watch them, I can't shake the feeling that Carter seems to be unusually persuasive.

Patterson turns and walks away. I wait to see what Carter will do, and after a moment she makes her way around past the corner of a nearby building. As she disappears from sight, I can't help wondering what's really going on with her. She just gave a speech that was easily the most pathetic and weak that I've ever heard, one that should have made people desert her in droves. Instead, somehow she managed to make everyone more loyal and more determined to stick with her.

Is everyone else crazy here, or am I the crazy one?

Glancing over my shoulder, I see that my truck is waiting for me, and that Taylor is dropping a couple of cans of gasoline next to the door for me to take. I guess rations are being given out, and everyone is simply assuming that I'll be joining the rest of them. I hesitate for a moment, figuring that I don't really have much of a choice, and then I turn and head over to the nearest building. When I reach the corner, I take a look around the edge and see to my surprise that Sarah Carter is leaning back against the wall.

I can only see her silhouetted against the night sky, as rain continues to fall, but after a moment she reaches into her pocket and takes out what looks like a small box. She opens the lid and stares down at whatever's inside, and then she seems to freeze for a moment, as if she's staring at something that has left her completely stunned. A moment later she leans back and puts a hand on her own forehead, and I can't shake the feeling that she seems to be upset by something. Upset and tired. Exhausted, even.

And then she suddenly closes the box again and turns to come this way.

I pull away just in time, and then I run back toward the trucks. Reaching the edge of the convoy, I glance over my shoulder and see that Carter is only now coming into view, which means she shouldn't have been able to see me running. That's good, because I'm not sure that she'd take too kindly to being watched. She walks this way, and then she heads toward the large truck over by the old bank.

“Let's go!” she calls out, raising her voice so she can be heard over the increasingly heavy rain. “Once you've got your rations, get your engines started. There's no time to waste. Anything else you need to do can wait until we've taken Boston. We're moving out!”

I pull back as she turns, and fortunately I don't think she spots me. I really don't want to attract any more of that woman's attention, and I take a deep breath as the rain starts really crashing down. Already starting to get drenched, I hurry to my truck and fill up the gas tank, before climbing inside and looking out the window as vehicles start moving all around me. Lights are blazing through the rainy night, and I swear that even here in the truck I can hear the ground shuddering as so many trucks and vans and cars rumble along in the same direction.

Reaching forward, I start my truck's engine.

I don't know why I'm going with the others. They might have been impressed by Carter's speech, but I sure wasn't. At the same time, I have nowhere else to go and I guess I'm still clinging to the hope that somehow Martha and Melissa and Katie might still be alive somewhere, and that by getting back to civilization I might be able to find them. Carter might have been lying earlier about Martha, but that doesn't mean that my sister might not be alive out there. And if traveling with this convoy – even joining them in some kind of war – is the best way for me to discover the truth, then that's what I'll do. Besides, I also want to figure out what's going on with Sarah Carter, and how she managed to persuade so many people to join her as she travels to Boston with that mysterious little box.

The rain is really coming down now.

10pm

Elizabeth

It's chaos.

The siren started blaring about thirty seconds ago, and now people are racing to their positions. Rain is crashing down now, hammering against the buildings and getting blown through the night air; the ground is getting slippy and any stretches of grass or dirt are being churned into mud. Most of the lights have been switched off, to confuse the enemy as they approach, so we're running in almost complete darkness. Occasionally people bump into one another and I hear grunts as well as voices calling out, but something there's order in the heart of all this madness. Somehow people seem to know what they're doing. We've been trained well.

“I'm on lookout five!” Natalie yells as we hurry together along the street. “That's got a good clean view all across the old depot area. I'm gonna be one sick bastard, taking out anyone who tries to attack from that direction. Where are you?”

“I have to go to lookout nine,” I tell her, “and -”

Suddenly somebody slams into me in the darkness, with enough force to shove me to one side and send me thudding down into a patch of mud. I wince as I land hard on my own bag of supplies, but I immediately start getting up and after a moment Natalie grabs my arm and helps me to my feet.

“I'll see you on the other side of this, yeah?” she says, and I can't even see her face now in the darkness. I can only see her silhouetted against one of the buildings. “Peace out, sister.”

She grabs my hand and holds it up, then she squeezes so hard that for a moment I worry my fingers might break.

“We're gonna do this, you know,” she continues, sounding a little breathless now in her excitement. “We're gonna fucking do this and we're gonna wipe the floor with those fuckers who're coming this way. They think they can mess with Boston, but they can't 'cause we've got destiny on our side. All those bullets that've missed me, they were sent as a message, telling me to be ready for this moment. 'Cause right now I'm not the only one who's about to whip some ass. It's all of us, Lizzie. We all made it to this moment and we're all... I was gonna say blessed, but I don't think it's that. It's something cooler. And whatever happens, I know we're gonna win.”

She twists my hand around.

“Boston rules!” she adds, before letting go and turning away.

“Sure,” I reply, a little shocked by her vehemence but impressed by her determination. “Boston rules.”

I hear her various weapons rattling as she hurries off into the darkness, but I don't hear any reply from her. I watch for a moment until she's completely disappeared, and then I take a deep breath. I wish I felt Natalie's level of confidence, but I guess that doesn't really matter. All that matters is that I get to lookout post nine and do what's expected of me. Who knows? Maybe in the heat of battle I'll turn out to be a pretty good shot after all? Either way, I'm going to go and do my job.

Turning, I hurry along the sidewalk. There are still people running and yelling all around me, although the streets are noticeably a little emptier now. I guess most of the others have already reached their positions, which means I'm a little late. I pick up the pace, but when I start running I feel a flicker of pain from my right leg. The fake wooden foot seems to be coming a little loose, but I figure that's something I can fix once I reach the lookout position so I keep going, and I break into a run as I pass position eight and spot the building up ahead that serves as lookout position nine. The rifle over my shoulder is hanging a little loose, but again that's something I can sort out once I'm at my post.

Suddenly my fake foot twists and comes loose. I land with all my weight on the stump of my right leg and I let out a gasp of pain as I fall. I land on my knees and topple down against the soaking wet sidewalk, but I immediately roll onto my front and try to get up. My right leg is agony now, and I reach for the chunk of wood, although then I realize that it's not important right now so instead of reattaching it I simply slip it into my pocket before turning and half-limping, half-hopping toward the door that leads into my designated building. I don't know how, but from somewhere a sense of determination is starting to rise up into my chest, and for the first time I'm actually starting to think that I can do this. Finally, with voices still calling out in the distance and rain still lashing own, I gasp as I bump against the wall, and then I shuffle over to the door.

“Lizzie!”

A hand grabs my shoulder and pulls me around. In the darkness, it takes me a second to realize who I'm facing.

“Dad?” I stammer. “What's wrong? Shouldn't you be with the Council?”

“I should,” he replies, “but I came to find you first. I need you to come with me.”

“I have to -”

“This is important, Lizzie!” he snaps, taking hold of my arm and pulling me away from the wall. “I need you for something.”

“Wait!” I gasp, almost falling over for a third time as I limp after him.

“Where's your foot?” he asks.

“In my pocket. It's a long story.”

“You can put it back on in the car.”

“What car?”

Without answering, he leads me across the dark intersection and toward another street. I'm really struggling to maintain this pace, what with all the equipment on my back and the lack of a right foot, but somehow I manage to keep up as we head along the next street. I'm starting to realize, however, that Dad seems to be leading me away from the lookout positions, which makes no sense.

“They're waiting for me,” I tell him, raising my voice so that hopefully he can hear me above the rain. “Dad, where are we going? I've been assigned to position nine.”

“I don't care where you've been assigned,” he replies sternly. “You've got something more important to do.”

“Dad, I can fight!”

“I know you can.”

“I'm serious!” Pulling away, I wobble for a moment before managing to steady myself against an old fire hydrant. “Dad, I get it you think I'll screw up, but I can do this. I'm ready for it. This is my city now, just like it's everyone else's, and we have to fight for it.” I pause, waiting for him to admit that I'm right. “I'm not a coward,” I continue finally, and I actually believe those words. My voice isn't even trembling anymore. “I can fight, just like everyone else can fight. When it comes down to it, I know what I have to do, so let me do it.”

Turning, I start limping back toward position nine.

“Lizzie, I need you,” Dad says suddenly, grabbing my shoulder from behind. “You're the only hope we have right now. Put your foot back on and come with me.”

Stopping, I turn to him.

“We're going to lose this fight, Lizzie,” he continues, silhouetted against a rare electric light that has been left on outside one of the Council buildings. “We're outnumbered, and we've been outmaneuvered, and our supplies are running perilously low. Short of a miracle, all we can do is try to hold the enemy back while we wait for reinforcements.”

“How long will that take?” I ask. “When are the reinforcements coming?”

“They're not. Our radio systems are down. Maybe it's sabotage, maybe it's just bad luck, but we haven't been able to get a message out. Our nearest functional ally is the base in Philadelphia, they can help us but only if they know that we need help. Right now, they don't know anything at all, so no-one's going to come riding to our rescue. Without reinforcements, this battle is just going to be about forestalling the inevitable.”

“No, we can fight,” I tell him. “Didn't you hear Diane? She said -”

“What was she supposed to tell all of you?” he asks, interrupting me. “That we're doomed? That we might as well put our weapons down and let the enemy stroll right into town? There's still a chance that we can get out of this mess, Lizzie, but for that to happen we need those reinforcements to come in from Philadelphia. And that's where you come on.”

Suddenly an ominous boom rings out in the distance, and we both turn to look along the rain-strewn street as the ground shudders slightly beneath our feet.

“The outer perimeter guards must have been engaged,” Dad warns me. “That gives us half an hour, maximum, before the fighting reaches the main perimeter. It also means that the enemy will be sending units to circle the entire city and find other ways through, which means that there isn't much time. Now move.”

“But -”

“Lizzie, move!”

He pulls me along the street, almost dragging me. I just about manage to hop along at his pace, but I'm starting to wonder exactly where he's taking me and why. He mentioned a car a few minutes ago, which doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, but the one thing I know for sure about my father is that he always has a plan. He always has multiple plans, all ready to go whenever the situation develops. I might not trust him much to tell me the truth about things, but I absolutely trust him to be ready when there's trouble.

He leads me around the next corner, and that's when I spot a dark car parked close to the Council's main office.

“Put your equipment down there,” he says, pointing toward a patch of sidewalk that's protected from the rain by a set of old billboards. “I'll make sure it gets to people who need it.”

“I need it,” I point out.

“Lizzie, I don't have time to say everything twice. Please. Trust me on this. And put your goddamn foot back on. You're going to need it. Don't make me tell you a third time.”

I hesitate, before limping over to the designated spot and starting to haul the equipment off my shoulders. I Let out a gasp as I drop the various bags of ammunition onto the dry patch of ground, and I can feel a twinge of pain in my back as I turn and make my way over to where Dad has already opened the door on the driver's side of the car. Reaching down, I take the piece of wood from my pocket before strapping it back into place against my stump. Once I'm done, I turn and see that Dad is staring at me.

“Lizzie, I meant to ask earlier,” he asks, sounding a little confused. “Why are you wearing a contamination suit?”

“It's a long story,” I tell him.

“Never mind,” he mutters. “Get into the car.”

“Why?”

“I'll explain it all, but first I need you to get into the car.”

I pause, and then I do what I'm told. The suit makes it a little difficult for me to maneuver myself, but after a moment I manage to get into position, and then I watch as Dad makes his way around to the other side. Opening the passenger-side door, he climbs in and then he switches on the small light above us. As soon as he does that, I see the fear and uncertainty in his eyes, and I struggle to hold back a wave of sheer panic.

“Dad?” I ask cautiously. “What is it?”

Reaching into his pocket, he takes out a clear plastic bag that looks like it contains some kind of envelope.

“Lizzie,” he says after a moment, as he places the bag on the dashboard, “you're our only hope. This car is filled with gas, and there are spare cans in the back. There's enough for you to get to Philadelphia and -”

“Why would I go to Philadelphia?” I ask, still trying really hard to not panic. “Dad, I'm staying here!”

“I have to send someone!” he says firmly. “Lizzie, I love you with all my heart, but you're not exactly a great soldier. I have no doubt that you'd hold your position on that outpost, I know you'd give it your all, but I also know that you're the only person I trust to get this message to Philadelphia. You made it all the way here from Manhattan. You're resourceful, you're reliable, and I have this crazy feeling that you'll make the journey regardless of what's thrown at you. Every able-bodied person is manning the outposts right now, the rest are too young or too old or too sick to drive, so it has to be you.”

“Dad, I want to -”

“You're the only one I trust!” he adds.

“But...”

My voice trails off.

“And I mean that with all my heart,” he continues. “If I send someone else, all I'll be able to do is hope that they succeed. If I send you, I know you'll get there, and that reinforcements won't be too far away. This is what you're good at. Philadelphia's about three hundred miles as the crow flies, so you're going to need to drive fast through the night, but you can absolutely do this. If it all goes according to plan, we can have reinforcements here within twenty-four hours. I think we can just about hold on until then.”

He slides the bag toward me across the dashboard.

“This note explains everything to the people in Philadelphia. Some of the information in there is beyond top secret, Lizzie, and it can't fall into the hands of the enemy. It gives away some of our weaknesses. Just get it to Philadelphia is fast as you can, okay?”

“I...”

“You're the only one, Lizzie,” he continues, with a hint of desperation in his voice. “I believe in you.”

I swallow hard.

“I'm not a coward,” I tell him, with tears in my eyes. “I swear, I can fight.”

“I know,” he replies, before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a handgun, which he sets on my lap. “Hopefully you won't need that, but it's loaded so at least you have it in case anything goes wrong. As for cowardice, don't even say that word. You're about to drive out into the night, hopefully dodging any enemy traps or scout parties, and then you're going to have to go at full speed across an inhospitable landscape that could be filled with pretty much anything. Frankly, that sound terrifying to me.” He puts a hand on my shoulder. “How many times do I need to say this, Lizzie?” he adds. “I know you can do this. I know you can save us all.”

“Why don't you come too?” I ask. “Two of us would stand a better chance than one.”

“I'm needed here.”

“But -”

“We don't really have any proper military commanders left,” he explains. “Hell, I trained in medicine initially, Lizzie. You know that. I never expected to be in charge of defending a city, but here I am and it seems that I have a knack for it. The other members of the Council are generally deferring to my judgment. Every time I ask them for their opinions, they just ask me what I want to do. Can you imagine how that feels? I've basically got the weight of the city on my back, and right now it's looking like everything's going to come crashing down. That's why I need you to do this for me. As crazy as it sounds, Lizzie, you're currently our last, best hope.”

“Shouldn't someone come with me, though?” I ask, struggling to hold back tears. “What if I screw up?”

“You won't.”

“But what if I do?”

“You won't, because you're my daughter and I trust you. You're Elizabeth Marter and I trust you more than I trust anyone else in this city.”

“But shouldn't someone come with me?”

“You have to do it alone.” He squeezes my shoulder. “I'm sorry, sweetie, but you do. Everyone has a job right now, and most of them are having to do their jobs alone. That's just the way things are. And you have to get going right now, because there isn't much time. I know it's scary. In some ways, it's scarier than picking up a gun, but I'm begging you to do this for me. For all of us. For the future.”

With that, he leans back and turns to get out of the car, although after a moment he stops and glances back at me. As he does so, I'm suddenly struck by the fear that this might be the last time I ever see him, and that thought terrifies me to my core.

“I'm sorry about some of the things I said earlier,” he continues. “I didn't mean to make you feel bad. And I'm sorry about some of the things you found out about me, and about the lies.” He pauses. “The truth is, Lizzie, I'm not a good man.”

“Of course you are,” I reply with tears in my eyes. “Dad, you're -”

“And I never have been,” he says, interrupting me. “I don't know why, but my instinct has always been to cheat and lie. To do what's best for me. To be cruel, sometimes. I have horrible, evil thoughts, and left unchecked I would do the worst things imaginable. When I met your mother, for the first time I wanted to be better. I still had all those thoughts, but your mother inspired me to try to be a good person. And then when you and your brother were born, the same thing happened all over again.” He pauses again for a moment. “Then all of this madness started. I lost your mother, and Henry too, and I thought I'd lost you for a while too. I was alone, and my worst instincts started to come back to the surface. I'd known Diane for a while as a colleague, but I swear nothing happened between us while I was with your mother. Nothing much, anyway. I had a few slips. I'm just the kind of man who needs someone to keep him on the right path. Someone to inspire him to be good. You do that for me, Lizzie. You shouldn't have to, but you do.”

I open my mouth to reply, but I'm honestly not sure what I'm supposed to say.

“I love you,” he adds, before climbing out of the car. “Now drive, Lizzie. There's a map in the pocket next to your seat, setting out the various routes you can take. Keep your lights off, at least for the first couple of hours, in case you attract attention. The city hasn't been encircled yet, so you should be fine, but you have to drive. All our lives depend on you!”

With that, he slams the door shut.

“I love you too!” I call out as he hurries away, but I don't know whether he heard. “Dad? I love you!”

I want to go after him, but he's already vanished into the darkness as for a moment I sit all alone in the cold car and I listen to the sound of rain drumming against the roof. For a moment, the idea of starting this car and driving away feels impossible, like an act of supreme cowardice. Then I look at the letter in the bag on the dashboard and I realize with a sense of horror that Dad might actually have meant every word that he said. We really are outnumbered here in Boston, and we really haven't got any help coming this way, and he really does need somebody to go out on a desperate mission to warn the people in Philadelphia and to get them to send reinforcements.

And out of all the people here in Boston, out of all the four hundred or so, I'm the one he trusts the most to get the job done.

I take a deep breath, before setting the letter on the seat next to me and then placing the gun on top to hold it down, and then I turn the key in the ignition and bring the engine to life. Then I reach into the pocket on the inside of the door and I take out what turns out to be a set of hastily-drawn instructions, along with some crude maps. For a few minutes I look at all the maps, trying to figure them out, and finally I'm able to see the route that Dad thinks I should take. I don't know Boston well, especially not beyond the central section that we've been using as our base, but the route seems pretty straightforward so I take a moment to make sure it's in my head and then I set it aside.

I turn the light off, and then I fumble to find the right pedals in the foot-well. I'm not exactly the world's most experienced driver. In fact, calling me a bad driver would be an insult to bad drivers everywhere, but after a moment even I'm able to get this car rolling forward, and I start slowly and carefully driving along the street.

Dad told me to keep the lights off, so I switch on the windshield wipers to get rid of the rain and then I lean forward and peer out. I'm just about able to see the way, and I know roughly which direction I need to go, so I increase the speed a little and continue to drive away. At least the streets are empty, since everyone's manning the lookout positions and getting ready to fight. There's still a part of me that feels bad, as if I'm being a coward by accepting this task, but I keep reminding myself that the whole city is waiting for these reinforcements. If I don't do this, or if I fail, Boston will fall.

So I drive.

I make my way through the dark, deserted streets. I cross the city and leave through the industrial suburbs, and I don't encounter another soul along the way. I guess Dad was right when he said the enemy hadn't yet managed to surround the city, which means that hopefully I have a clear road for the next few hundred miles.

And then, glancing at the rear-view mirror, I see that there's a faint orange glow on the horizon behind me.

Bringing the car to stop, I turn and look back toward the city. Rain is still pouring down, but I watch as the orange glow flickers and flares before dying down and then flaring again. There's only one possible explanation, which is that the battle for Boston has well and truly begun, and for a moment I can't help but imagine what it's like. In my mind's eye I see Natalie letting off shot after shot, and I see Violet and Michael and Rick and all the others doing their best to keep the city protected. I also see Dad directing operations from the Council's main chamber, probably with people like Diane and Charles trying to help as well. But it's Dad who'll be in charge, even though he started out as a doctor in this mess, because Dad's always the one with a plan. And right now, his plan is to hold the city while I go and fetch help.

“You don't actually think you've got a hope for pulling this off, do you?” a familiar voice asks suddenly.

I look straight ahead and grip the wheel.

It's not Bob.

I can't hallucinate Bob again, not right now.

When I glance in the mirror, however, I'm just about able to make out his face leering at me from the car's back seat.

“One stupid little girl driving out across the country?” he continues. “Is that the plan? All those people back there are going to get slaughtered, Lizzie. You're never going to be able to help them.”

“I'm not crazy,” I reply, staring straight ahead. “I'm sane. I can do this.”

“Give up, Lizzie. All you're doing is giving those poor bastards some false hope. That's cruel.”

“I'm not crazy,” I say again. “I just had a really bad day, that's all, and I slipped a little bit.”

“You're going to fail.”

“My name is Elizabeth Marter,” I say firmly, trying to keep myself focused, “and I am not insane. I just had one hell of a day, that's all.”

I take a deep breath, and out of the corner of my eye I see that Bob's no longer visible in the mirror.

After looking one more time at the glow on the horizon, I gently hit the gas pedal and start driving once more along the road.

“Good luck,” I whisper, thinking once more of all the others back in Boston. “You'll be fine. And I'll bring help.”

“Whatever,” Bob's voice says, as he reappears in the mirror. “You're hardly -”

“I'm not insane!” I blurt out, realizing that I have to stay focused in order to keep him away. “I just had a bad day. I had a hell of a bad day. My name is Elizabeth Marter. I'm sane. I just had a bad day.”

And he's gone again.

As long as I keep saying those words, as I keep reminding myself that I just had a bad day, I can do this. I can stay on the road and I can keep Bob out of my head and I can do the job that I was given. I can help save everyone in Boston, just so long as I keep the car's lights off to avoid attracting attention, and I keep driving, and I focus on making sure that not even a scintilla of Bob drifts back into my mind.

“It's going to be fine,” I whisper to myself through gritted teeth, as I grip the wheel and push the pedal to the floor. “My name is Elizabeth Marter and I've had one hell of a day.”

11pm

Thomas

There's a glow ahead, on the horizon.

The truck's windshield wipers are just about managing to do their job, and I can make out the lights of the other vehicles in our convoy. In the distance, however, there's now a faint orange glow burning on the horizon, and I feel a shiver pass through my chest as I realize that the battle must have begun. We're headed that way, although clearly we're going to be pretty late to the fight. The other groups must have arrived before us, and I guess they're trying to fight their way into Boston. We're just a little late, that's all.

I still don't understand how Carter was able to rally these people to her cause. I've been replaying her little speech over and over in my mind, trying to work out what appealed to the crowd, and I still don't know. Are they just latching on to anyone who can even pretend to be a leader? Or is there something about her, something I don't see, that makes other people react?

A bump in the road causes the truck to judder heavily, knocking me around in my seat, but I keep hold of the wheel. I don't know if I imagined it, but I think the rain just got even worse, and the pounding on the roof is incessant. Glancing over at the far corner of the windshield, I see drips of water starting to break through the damaged section that Joe was always planning to fix. I honestly don't know whether it'd honor his memory more to fix the damn thing, or to just let it carry on leaking until the truck is nothing more than a rusting hulk somewhere.

Suddenly there's a loud popping sound, and the rear left of the truck starts grinding against the road. I feel the vehicle slowing down, and several other cars and trucks move past.

“Come on,” I mutter under my breath, hoping against hope that this isn't too serious. “Don't fail me now.”

I can hear metal grinding against the asphalt, however, and deep down I already know that something must be wrong with the rear left wheel. More and more vehicles overtake us, until we're left at the very rear of the convoy and I have no choice but to steer the truck to the side of the road and bring it to a halt. I cut the engine, and immediately the rain sounds so much louder on the roof above. I can see the lights of the convoy's last vehicles already disappearing ahead into the rainy night, and I know that with each passing second I'm getting left further and further behind.

For a moment, I actually think about turning around. I could fix the wheel and then get out of here. Then again, I know that sticking with Sarah Carter, Patterson, Toad and the others is my only real option, other than heading out alone into the unknown. And that didn't work out so well the last time.

After opening the door, I grab the flashlight from the dashboard and then I step out into the rain. Within seconds I'm soaked to the bone, and I have to wipe rain out of my eyes as I switch the flashlight on and aim the beam at the truck's damaged wheel. To my relief, I see that there doesn't seem to be any damage other than a flat tire. That's something I can change without too much trouble. Any real damage would be a much more serious problem.

I head around to the truck's rear and grab my last spare tire, slipping it free from the ropes and then hauling it down. I picked this thing up at the town, in exchange for some of my rations, and now I'm glad I did. At the time, I figured I was just being over-cautious, but now it looks like this spare tire might damn near save my life. I grab the jack as well and then I head around to the side of the truck, and I kneel down in the rain to get started on the job of changing the tire. This isn't going to be easy, but Joe taught me how to fix pretty much anything on a truck so I guess I'll get it done eventually. And then I'll catch up to the convoy, hopefully before it's too late. I don't want to turn up after the fighting is over. I don't want to seem like a coward.

I work for a long time in the rain, struggling every step of the way. I don't know exactly how long it takes to get the tire changed, but it must be at least forty minutes, maybe fifty. I must be getting out of shape, because my arms are aching by the time I pull the jack away, but at least I've managed to get the job finished. I drag the old, ruined tire around to the rear of the truck and stow it away safely, just in case I later find something I can use it for, and then I put the jack back into place.

Glancing past the truck, I realize I can still see that faint glow in the distance, which means that the fighting' raging. If anything, the glow is a little brighter than before. I can't imagine what it's like in Boston right now, but I just hope that it ends before too many people get hurt. I finish fixing up the rear of the truck, and then I turn to head back around to the front.

Suddenly I hear a loud thudding sound somewhere near the driver's door, and I freeze. Whatever that was, it was loud enough to be heard over the pouring rain, and a moment later I hear something slamming repeatedly into the metal. I stay completely still, trying to figure out what I'm hearing, but now there's only the sound of rain.

I almost call out, before thinking better of that idea.

Stepping around to the corner of the truck, I look along toward the driver's door and raise my flashlight, but there's no sign of anyone. I cast the beam around, checking that nobody is anywhere nearby, and then I make my way cautiously toward the door. I try to tell myself that I'm just getting jumpy, that it's natural for me to be imagining things, but deep down I know that the thudding noise was too distinct, too clear even against the backdrop of all this rain, for it to have been anything other than what it sounded like.

Something hit the side of my truck, and it happened several times.

A moment later, as if to confirm that fact, I hear another thud, this time coming from the truck's other side. I look around to see if I can spot anything, but all I see is rain dashing the windshield. I hesitate for a few seconds, and then I crouch down and shine the flashlight under the truck.

I flinch as soon as I see a pair of boots on the other side, around by the passenger-side door. The boots are big and black and bulky, and for some reason I feel like I've seen them somewhere before.

Getting back up, I peer through the truck's window and spot something moving out on the other side. There's definitely somebody there, although I can't imagine who'd be out here on the road so close to midnight. Then, seeing something written on the side of the figure's upper arm, I squint and peer more closely, and then I realize that I know exactly who I've found.

“McGuinness?” I whisper, barely able to believe the truth. “What the hell?”

For a moment I'm too shocked to know what to do, but then a sudden burst of relief hits me as I realize that she's alright after all. I race around the front of the truck, and then I stop as I see that she has her back to me. I pause for a few seconds, as my relief starts to sour a little and I realize that McGuinness seems to be leaning a little to one side, as if she's sick. Somehow, deep down, I've got this really strong got feeling that something is really wrong here.

“McGuinness?” I call out, raising my voice so she can hear me above the rain. “It's me, it's Thomas Edgewater! What are you doing out here? Are you trying to join the convoy? Is that it? We're heading to Boston. If you want to jump in with me, I can take you.”

I wait.

What's wrong with her?

“McGuinness, come on, what are you doing?”

When she doesn't reply, I realize that something's definitely weird about this situation. The last time I saw McGuinness, she was walking away from the rest of us after getting bitten by Jane Kincaid. She said she was going to wait and see whether she became sick, and that she'd shoot herself in the head if she began to turn into a zombie. That was about twelve hours ago, maybe a little more. Now she's starting to sway a little, and I take a step back as I begin to understand that her plan must have gone wrong.

And then, slowly, she turns toward me.

I let out a horrified gasp as I see that the front of her face has been entirely blown away. Everything's gone: her eyes, her nose, her forehead, her mouth, it's all been blasted upward, leaving just a mass of rain-dashed meat with some sections of bone poking out. Water is cascading down from where it's begun to pool in what's left of her eye-sockets, while her open throat is glistening in the light from my flashlight. She must have put the gun in her mouth and fired, but the angle was wrong and she succeeded only in destroying her face. She would have bled out pretty quickly, though, so there's only one possible explanation for the fact that she's standing here now.

She takes a step toward me.

She's a zombie.

“No!” I stammer, pulling back and hurrying back around to the other side of the truck.

I wait for the inevitable attack, but for a moment nothing happens. With no eyes or nose or ears, I guess McGuinness – or what's left of McGuinness – can't really do very much at all, and I figure she might not even know that I'm here. Sure enough, she slowly turns and fumbles her way along the side of the truck until she reaches the front, where she stops again. She pauses, and then she tilts what's left of her head back and looks toward the sky, and she hesitates as rain comes falling down against what's left of her face.

Figuring that she can't see anyway, I raise the flashlight a little and aim it at her, and for a moment I simply stare at the sight of raindrops dancing across the mashed meat of her features, and I see that some of the water is even running straight through her head and dribbling out around the top of her neck. Most of her brain seems to be intact, but I can't even begin to imagine why she's standing there like this.

Finally, I carefully open the door and climb into the truck, and then I pull the door shut and lock myself inside. McGuinness didn't seem to notice me moving at all, but as I set the flashlight down I can't help but wonder why she's still just standing there. I guess if she can't see and she can't hear and she can't smell, her only sensory input is coming from the rain as it falls on her. I have no idea how intelligent these creatures might be, but it must be pretty strange to have no impressions at all other than thousands of tiny cold drops falling onto what's left of your body. The sensation certainly seems to have stopped her in her tracks.

I pause, before reaching for the key, but for a moment I can't quite bring myself to start the engine. I have no idea how McGuinness will react, but I know I have to get going.

I take a deep breath, and then I turn the key.

As soon as the engine starts, McGuinness turns and lunges at the hood of the truck, as if she's frantically trying to attack the vibration that she must be feeling against her body.

I put the truck into reverse and drive backward along the road, finally stopping again with the headlights blazing out through the rain. The beams pick out the sight of McGuinness flailing around with her hands, as if she's trying to find whatever just startled her.

“I don't want to become one of those things,” I remember her saying earlier today, after she got bitten. “I'm asking to be allowed to go away and end my life on my own terms.”

And now look at her, stumbling around in the road, in the pouring rain, seemingly tormented by everything she feels. This is exactly what she feared becoming the most.

Reaching down, I put the truck into first gear. I know what I have to do, even if I hate the idea of doing it. McGuinness wanted some dignity in her death, and so far she hasn't had that at all. The easy option would be to just drive away, to let the situation take its course, but I owe it to her to try to help out in some small way. I'd want someone to do the same thing for me, so I take a deep breath and then I floor the gas pedal, and I drive straight at her. At the last second I close my eyes, squeezing them tight shut as I feel a heavy thump. The truck bumps over something, and a couple of seconds later I hit the brakes.

Opening my eyes, I turn and look back.

McGuinness is on the ground. I went right over her, but after a moment I see that she's still moving down there on the asphalt. Her arms are twitching, even though her legs are shattered, and her pelvis looks to have been smeared into the ground. I wait, hoping that she'll stop moving, but her arms are still reaching out and then I see what's left of her head starting to turn.

I put the truck into reverse, and then I stare straight ahead as I drive backward. A few seconds later I feel the wheels driving over something, and I feel a sickening sense of nausea in the pit of my stomach as I keep my foot down. Looking out through the windshield, I wait until McGuinness comes into view again, and then I stop the truck.

She's even more broken than before, yet somehow she's still twitching. Parts of her body look like nothing more than a mashed pile of meat and bone, but one of her forearms is still moving and her head has survived too, moving frantically as if somehow the creature is trying to survive. Do these things never give up?

I know I have to finish this, so I take a deep breath and then I put the truck back into first gear before slowly driving forward. This time I'm really careful to make sure that my front right tire goes straight toward the head area of the flailing body, and I wince as I feel a sickening crunching sensation. I keep my foot down, determined to finish the job, and finally I drive away from the body and stop to once again look over my shoulder.

The body is still there on the asphalt, but this time I don't see anything moving. I can't really see any specific parts of the body, no feet or arms or head, and instead it all just looks like a mashed pile of human remains. I keep my eyes fixed on the mess for a few more seconds, just in case there's any kind of a twitch or a flicker of life. Maybe somewhere deep inside the creature, there's still some kind of drive to survive, but at least I'm pretty certain now that Patricia McGuinness will no longer be stumbling around as a member of the undead.

“Rest in peace,” I whisper, before making the sign of the cross against my chest.

I don't know why I said and did either of those things, but I guess they just felt appropriate.

It's always going to be like this now, isn't it? No hope. No dignity. No humanity. Just death and killing and watching the worst happen. For the first time, I feel all the hope leaking out of me until I feel completely blank. There's nothing left in the world except death and pain and suffering, and there's not even going to be any respite or honor for the people who've been killed. This is it. This is how humanity is going to end.

Turning, I grip the steering wheel and take a deep breath as I prepare to drive on. I need to catch up to the convoy, or at least to follow them to Boston, and for a moment I look at the distant orange glow that seems to be even bigger than before.

I should have pressed the pedal down by now, but something's holding me back. I keep thinking about the sensation of the truck driving over that body, and somehow the memory has frozen me in place. When I get to Boston I'm going to see more terrible things, more horror, and that possibility seems too awful to contemplate. Slowly I lean forward and rest my forehead against the steering wheel, and I try to empty my thoughts entirely as I listen to the sound of the rain on the truck's roof.

I have to get going.

I have to join the others.

It's just that, for a moment, I can't bring myself to actually start driving. If the world is just going to be one horror after another, I'm not sure I can stay sane. After what I saw happen to Jane Kincaid and to Patricia McGuinness today, I feel as if I've hit some kind of limit. Then I start thinking back to everything else I've seen over the past hundred days – to my family dying; to Deputy Sheriff Haims; to Lydia; to that Beau guy; to all the others – and I can't help wondering what and who I might encounter in the next hundred days. Everything has been steadily getting worse, and I'm not sure I can handle another hundred days like this.

Maybe I'll just start imagining Joe's voice again. After all, I once imagined him speaking to me from the rotting body of an old woman. At the time I thought that was real, that he was really helping me find Martha. I almost drove off across the country to some imagined meeting point, before I realized that the whole thing was impossible. I keep waiting for his voice to come back to me, and sometimes I actually want that to happen. Anything would be better than being alone.

Another hundred days of this madness feels impossible.

I don't want to drive straight into a war-zone, but I guess I've got nowhere else to go, no-one else to see or to help, so what are the alternatives? Somehow I don't think I'm quite the suicide type, so I figure I might as well make myself useful. Up until this moment, I've been living for the hope that I'll find Martha, and that Melissa and Katie are still alive too, but as I sit here now I realize that I can't keep up that pretense any longer.

They're gone.

Martha almost certainly died out there in California, and I can only pray that her death was quick and painless.

As for Melissa and Katie, it seems that the people from Boston have been exterminating survivors wherever they find them, and I no longer have the strength to believe in miracles. Their bodies are probably rotting somewhere, riddled with bullets. I guess the only hope is that they don't end up turning into those creatures.

Everyone's gone.

So finally, slowly, I press the gas pedal and ease the truck forward, heading off toward Boston. Not because I want to go to war, but because I have nowhere else to go. Remembering Patterson's warning, I switch off the truck's headlights, figuring that there's no need to advertise my presence to anyone, and then I sit in the darkness and drive, staring at the road ahead and trying to pick out the right route. As I do so, I feel the horror of the past hundred days creeping into my mind, but somehow I manage to push it all out by forcing myself to feel nothing. No sadness. No pain. No loss or loneliness. I feel nothing. I'm numb, and I'm driving toward the distant glow of war, and I'm going to fight.

And for the first time, I don't care whether I live or die. I even push the pedal to the floor, so that I'm driving at full speed through the night even thought I know that's a risk. Maybe I won't even make it to Boston, maybe I'll crash before I get there, maybe a zombie'll crash through the windshield and bite me to death. Maybe I don't care.

Suddenly something flashes toward me from the right-hand side, and I have no time to react. The impact smashes the truck's passenger side and sends the entire vehicle tipping over to the left. The engine roars and I'm sent slamming into the door, but at the last moment the truck slams back down onto its wheels and screeches along the road before bumping down into the undergrowth and finally crashing headfirst into a tree. This second impact shoves me forward, and only the safety belt keeps my head from smashing into the windshield as it shatters.

Glass explodes all around me, slicing the side of my face as I turn away, and then suddenly the immense wrecking sound stops and I'm left sitting in the ruined, smoking truck.

For a moment, I keep my eyes squeezed shut, but finally I open them and look ahead. The windshield is gone, letting rain and wind come crashing in, and all I see is a dark forest stretching ahead. When I came off the road, I must have hit the beginning of the treeline. I feel dazed for a moment, even though I'm pretty sure I didn't hit my head, and my shoulder hurts from the force of being held in place by the belt. As I start moving my hands and feet, however, I realize that I'm basically okay, even if the truck itself seems to be totally ruined.

What did I hit?

I was driving at full-speed through the rainy, stormy night, along an unlit road, and I think I'd just reached a crossroads. And then, out of nowhere, something came slamming into my side with enough force to almost flip the entire truck. I try to check the rear-view mirrors, but they seem to have been ripped off in the crash, so I reach down with a trembling hand and unfasten the belt, before trying to open the door so I can climb out.

I pull the handle several times, but either the door or the frame – or, more likely, both – got damaged in the crash. The window still winds down, though, so I start scrambling out that way, and finally I jump down and land out in the rainy night air. The only light comes from the moon high above, which picks out the edge of the road at the top of a small incline, but so far I don't see or hear any sign of whatever hit me. I wait, listening in case there's a sudden cry, and then I start scrabbling up the incline until I reach the side of the road. Even after just a few seconds, I'm once again soaked to the bone.

And that's when I see it.

There are small pieces of wrecked metal everywhere, spread out for maybe a hundred meters in each direction, and I can just about make out the rear end of some kind of car that has overturned a little way further along the road. One side of the car's front has been destroyed, but the other side looks to be mostly intact although I still don't see anything to indicate that the driver managed to get out, or even that he or she survived.

I instinctively reach down to my belt, before realizing that I don't have a gun with me. I left that behind in the truck.

I watch the wrecked car for a moment, and then I realize that I need to go over and take a closer look. If this is a trap, then it's one that looks to have left the other party in a worse state, and I tell myself that the person in the car might need my help. I start making my way out cautiously, while remaining poised to turn and run, and finally I get close enough to see that somebody's moving in the front of the car. I can hear movement now, too, as if somebody's desperately scrambling to climb out, and a moment later one of the doors opens on the car's other side and a figure slides out, letting out a pained gasp as it lands hard on the asphalt.

Rain is pattering loudly against the figure's arched back. Whoever this person is, they're wearing what looks like some kind of de-contamination suit, complete with a mask hanging loosely from the back of the neck section.

I walk around the side of the car and stop as I see the figure resting on its hands and knees, desperately trying to get its breath back. Squinting slightly in the moonlight, I try to make out the figure's face, and I realize after a few seconds that it seems to be a girl.

I open my mouth to ask if she's okay, but suddenly she turns to me and I see the fear in her eyes. She looks almost wild.

“It's okay!” I gasp, holding my hands up to show that I'm not armed. “I'm not gonna hurt you!”

She continues to stare at me, as if she can't quite believe what she's seeing. In fact, she looks so horrified, I'm starting to wonder whether she's got some kind of head injury.

“I swear I won't hurt you,” I continue, taking a step toward her. “I don't know what happened, I didn't even see the crossroads until it was too late. I didn't see you coming.” I lower my hands. “I was driving for about an hour, I didn't see anyone at all. I guess I didn't expect to, either. I'm sorry if...”

I pause for a moment, hoping that she might say something.

“Are you hurt?” I ask. “I'm not. I mean, I don't think so. My truck's pretty badly damaged, but I'm fine. Can you stand?”

I reach a hand out toward her, but she doesn't respond. She's staring at me as if she either thinks I'm about to attack her, or she's planning to attack me.

“Thomas,” I say cautiously, hoping to at least get something from her. “That's my name. Thomas Edgewater. Can you tell me your name?”

She pauses, before slowing getting to her feet. She struggles slightly and I reach out, grabbing her arm to hold her steady. Pulling away, she takes a limping step back and the she leans against the side of the car as she struggles to get her breath back.

I want to say something, but I wait, hoping that she might reply.

“Elizabeth,” she says finally.

“Elizabeth?”

She stares at me for a moment, and then slowly she reaches a trembling hand out toward me.

“Hello, Thomas Edgewater,” she says with a faint, trembling voice. “My name's Elizabeth Marter, and I've had one hell of a day.”

COMING SOON

Days 101 to 108

(Mass Extinction Event book 7)

OTHER BOOKS

BY AMY CROSS INCLUDE

Horror

Stephen

The Farm

The Haunting of Hardstone Jail

Asylum (The Asylum Trilogy book 1)

Meds (The Asylum Trilogy book 2)

The Madness of Annie Radford (The Asylum Trilogy book 3)

The Devil, the Witch and the Whore (The Deal book 1)

Like Stones on a Crow's Back (The Deal book 2)

The Devil's Blade

Haunted

Devil's Briar

The Night Girl

Last Wrong Turn

Friend From the Internet

The Haunting of Caldgrave House

The Haunting of Blackwych Grange

The Bride of Ashbyrn House

The Ghosts of Hexley Airport

The Curse of Wetherley House

The Haunting of Marshall Heights

The Ghosts of Lakeforth Hotel

The Ghost of Shapley Hall

The Body at Auercliff

The Haunting of Emily Stone

The Soul Auction

The Dog

The Border

The Death of Addie Gray

Eli's Town

Laura

Annie's Room

The Priest Hole (Nykolas Freeman book 1)

Battlefield (Nykolas Freeman book 2)

Perfect Little Monsters and Other Stories

Twisted Little Things and Other Stories

The Ghost of Longthorn Manor and Other Stories

The Vampire of Downing Street and Other Stories

Room 9 and Other Stories

Fantasy / Horror

Grave Girl

Raven Revivals (Grave Girl book 2)

The Gravest Girl of All (Grave Girl book 3)

The Library

Beautiful Familiar

Dark Season (book 1, 2 & 3)

The Hollow Church

The Vampires of Tor Cliff Asylum

Dead Souls (book 1 to 13)

Lupine Howl (books 1 to 6)

Also by Amy Cross

THE FARM

No-one ever remembers what happens to them when they go into the barn at Bondalen farm. Some never come out again, and the rest... Something about them is different.

In 1979, the farm is home to three young girls. As winter fades to spring, Elizabeth, Kari and Sara each come to face the secrets of the barn, and they each emerge with their own injuries. But someone else is lurking nearby, a man who claims to be Death incarnate, and for these three girls the spring of 1979 is set to end in tragedy.

In the modern day, meanwhile, Bondalen farm has finally been sold to a new family. Dragged from London by her widowed father, Paula Ridley hates the idea of rural life. Soon, however, she starts to realize that her new home retains hints of its horrific past, while the darkness of the barn still awaits anyone who dares venture inside.

Set over the course of several decades, The Farm is a horror novel about people who live with no idea of the terror in their midst, and about a girl who finally has a chance to confront a source of great evil that has been feeding on the farm for generations.

Also by Amy Cross

ALICE ISN'T WELL

(DEATH HERSELF BOOK 1)

“There are lots of demons in the sky above London. The problem is, this one came crashing down to earth.”

Ten years ago, Alice Warner was attacked and disfigured by an attacker in her own home. She remembers nothing of the attack, and she has been in a psychiatric hospital ever since. When she's finally released, however, she starts working as a security guard at an abandoned shopping mall. And that's when she starts to realize that something is haunting her, keeping just one step out of sight at all times...

Meanwhile, seventy years earlier, a little girl named Wendy is left orphaned after a World War 2 fighter plane crashes onto her house. Taken to a monastery, Wendy is quickly singled out by the nuns for special attention. They say she has been possessed by a demon, and that there's only one way to save her soul. Fortunately for Wendy, however, there's someone else who seems to know far more about the situation.

What is the shocking connection between Alice and Wendy, reaching out across the years? Does a demon really lurk in the girl's soul? And who is Hannah, the mysterious figure who tries to help Wendy, and who seventy years later begins to make her influence felt in Alice's life too?

Alice Isn't Well is the first book in the Death Herself series, about a dark figure who arrives in the night, promising to help deal with the forces of evil whenever they appear.

Also by Amy Cross

MEDS

(THE ASYLUM TRILOGY BOOK 2)

“Welcome to the Overflow. And remember, all roads lead back to Lakehurst.”

At the edge of a ruined town, a burned-out hospital houses one final, functional ward. There, a small group of doctors and nurses tend to patients who have been consigned to the Overflow. Unloved, forgotten by the people who knew them, these are the patients who will never receive visitors. If something happens to them, no-one will ask questions.

When she starts work at Middleford Cross, Nurse Elly Blackstock thinks she's getting a second chance. She soon discovers, however, that this particular hospital is unlike any other. In one of the beds, an old man grapples with the horrors of his past, while in another there's a woman condemned to a life of darkness and silence. Ghosts stalk the corridors, and more ghosts are on the way. And watching over all of this is the hospital's administrator, Nurse Kirsten Winter, a woman who is desperately searching for someone named Annie Radford...

Asylum: Meds is a dark horror novel about the lengths one woman will go to as she searches for the truth about the voices in her head.