Date: 2019-07-05 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Post-Apocalyptic | Infected
Description: Josh Hooper has always been a screw-up. He's done his share of jail time and has battled drugs and alcohol throughout his life. But since moving to Pittsburgh with his sister, Josh has gotten clean and turned his life around . . . just in time for the apocalypse. As society begins to collapse on a Friday morning, Josh drives into the city to get some lifesaving medications for his nephew. When he tries to avoid the mass of panicked people and gridlocked traffic downtown, Josh is arrested, beaten, and detained. Josh and some of the other uninfected are taken to a FEMA camp miles outside the cit

CHAOS

DARK DAYS: BOOK TWO

A post-apocalyptic series by

MARK LUKENS

Chaos: Dark Days Book 2—copyright © 2017 by Mark Lukens

All Rights Reserved

No part of this work may be reproduced without written permission by the author.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead (or any other form), is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by: Extended Imagery

Special thanks to: Jet, Ann, Joe, Kelli, and Mary Ann—your help is appreciated and invaluable.

OTHER BOOKS BY MARK LUKENS:

ANCIENT ENEMY – www.amazon.com/dp/B00FD4SP8M

DARKWIND: ANCIENT ENEMY 2 – www.amazon.com/dp/B01K42JBGW

HOPE’S END: ANCIENT ENEMY 3 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07G1MS6RK

EVIL SPIRITS: ANCIENT ENEMY 4 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07L8KLXVB

THE SUMMONING – www.amazon.com/dp/B00HNEOHKU

SIGHTINGS – www.amazon.com/dp/B00VAI31KW

DEVIL’S ISLAND – www.amazon.com/dp/B06WWJC6VD

THE EXORCIST’S APPRENTICE – www.amazon.com/dp/B00YYF1E5C

POSSESSION: THE EXORCIST’S APPRENTICE – www.amazon.com/dp/B07NCZQTNR

NIGHT TERRORS – www.amazon.com/dp/B00M66IU3U

WHAT LIES BELOW – www.amazon.com/dp/B0143LADEY

GHOST TOWN – www.amazon.com/dp/B00LEZRF7G

THE DARWIN EFFECT – www.amazon.com/dp/B01G4A8ZYC

DESCENDANTS OF MAGIC – www.amazon.com/dp/B00FWYYYYC

A DARK COLLECTION: 12 SCARY STORIES – www.amazon.com/dp/B00JENAGLC

RAZORBLADE DREAMS: HORROR STORIES – www.amazon.com/dp/B076B7W252

FOLLOWED – www.amazon.com/dp/B078WYGMJN

THE VAMPIRE GAME – www.amazon.com/dp/B07C2M72X9

COLLAPSE: DARK DAYS BOOK 1 – www.amazon.com/dp/B07SCPL6QB

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

I started writing this series years ago as a standalone novel, but then I abandoned it for some time. That first draft had most of the same characters as the series that it has become now: Ray and his family, Josh, Emma, Luke, and Wilma. That story was similar to this one, yet still different. I loved the characters in that first draft, but I was never satisfied with the story, and I won’t publish a story unless I’m as happy with it as I can be. A year ago, I had a new idea for this series, a different direction to take it in, but the characters were still there, still alive in my mind through the years. But there was a problem: When I told the story from the multiple viewpoints of these characters, the book got way too long. So I had the idea to tell the story of the beginning of the collapse from these main characters’ points of view in their own books. So, the first book is told from Ray and his family and Emma’s points of view. This second book is told from Josh’s point of view. And the third book is told from Luke and Wilma’s points of view. In the fourth book they will all come together (this isn’t really a spoiler because it is alluded to in all three of these books). I know many readers may skip this Author’s Note (and I’ve heard some readers even skip prologues, even though I can’t understand why—it would be like going to see a movie ten minutes after it has started), so I imagine some readers may get upset if they don’t see much of the characters from Book 1 in Books 2 and 3. And maybe this approach is a little unusual, but I really felt I needed to write these books this way. Does this mean that the first three books could be read out of order? Yes, but I had intended them to be read in order because information is revealed along the way as you get deeper into the series. I do hope you will continue on to Book 3 after this to meet Luke and Wilma. And then from there, I hope you’ll go on to continue this series.

Thank you!

Mark

CONTENTS

OTHER BOOKS BY MARK LUKENS:
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
PART TWO
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
PART THREE
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
PART FOUR
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
A thank you:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

PART ONE

CHAPTER 1

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – Oct. 21st

Josh Hooper was a screw-up. Always had been and still was.

He came out of the guest bedroom that his sister had turned into his bedroom. He saw Kyle in the living room glued to the TV. Marla was in the kitchen with a big cup of coffee in one hand, the cordless phone in the other. It sounded like she was arguing with someone; that’s probably what had woken him up.

The coffee smelled good—he needed coffee, and maybe something to eat. But he went over to Kyle before going into the kitchen, which was really part of the living room in this small apartment. He gave Kyle a gentle push on the side of his head; it was his good-morning gesture.

“Punk,” Josh said to Kyle.

“Quit it, jerk,” Kyle replied, but he couldn’t help grinning.

Kyle was small for his age of eleven, but he was a fighter; it showed in the way he battled both his Type 1 diabetes and his asthma without complaint.

Josh didn’t look over at his sister in the kitchen yet, but he could feel the weight of her stare even though she was still on the phone. She was upset, but she always seemed to be upset about something these days. And often Josh was the source of her ire: he hadn’t cleaned up the apartment enough, he needed to get a job, or keep a job longer than a few weeks. She was always paranoid that he would start drinking again, or worse, using again. Often the drinking led to the drugs. But he’d been sober for six months now—how much more could he do to prove to her that he had kicked his bad habits?

“Why aren’t you playing your video games?” Josh asked Kyle. “You know how much I love to wake up to the sound of someone killing zombies.”

Kyle just shrugged. “I’m watching this.”

Josh watched the TV for a moment. “News? What are you, some kind of nerd?”

Kyle didn’t come back with a sarcastic retort, and Josh could tell that his nephew was absorbed in what he was watching. But not only that, Kyle seemed nervous, maybe even scared. There’d been nothing but nonstop reports on the news about violence and destruction. There were massive protests going on in nearly every major city, even here in Pittsburgh. There were also tons of news reports about seemingly random acts of violence, families found slaughtered, people chopping each other up, some reports of people attacking and ripping others apart, and even eating parts of them. Some reporter on the internet had labeled these people “rippers” a few weeks ago and the name had stuck. There were speculations of some kind of airborne rabies-type virus going around that was turning ordinary people into bloodthirsty animals.

There were also reports of large fires and martial law being declared in several cities including: Boston, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Seattle, Charlotte, and Miami.

But Josh didn’t know what was true and what wasn’t. Over the last few days Kyle had shown him some internet videos on his laptop; he said the videos were from the dark web—probably something Marla wouldn’t be too happy about, but Josh wasn’t going to narc on his nephew. The videos were graphic. Kyle showed Josh a video of two men chasing down another man in what looked like part of someone’s back yard. The men tackled their overweight victim to the ground. One of the men attacked the man’s face and neck, tearing at him with fingers and teeth, while the other one had somehow managed to rip a hole in the man’s stomach and reach his hands inside, pulling the flesh apart so he could pull globs of intestines out.

“That shit isn’t true,” Josh had told him. “Probably some wannabe horror filmmaker.”

“It’s true,” Kyle had told him, and Josh saw the belief in his nephew’s eyes.

“You can’t believe all that shit you see on the internet. You know how many times that shit’s been proven to be fake? And you better not let your mom catch you looking at that kind of stuff.”

But Kyle insisted that the rumors and videos on the internet were true. He was convinced that martial law was being declared and that some kind of zombie disease was spreading.

“You play too many zombie games,” Josh had told him.

On the TV right now there was a reporter at some news desk with the words BREAKING NEWS in the graphic underneath her. A constant newsfeed was streaming across the bottom of the screen.

“Congress has called an emergency leave-of-absence,” the anchorwoman said, and then the feed switched to a reporter on the scene, the Capitol building behind him in the distance.

“They’re going to bomb Miami,” Kyle said in a low voice so his mother wouldn’t overhear him. “That’s where this zombie virus started.”

Josh didn’t respond to Kyle. He watched the reporter on TV, a little unnerved that America’s leaders had decided to run for the hills while society was collapsing and all the economic markets were crashing. So many businesses had closed around here just in the last few days. There were traffic jams in the streets, and the airports were packed with people trying to escape on the few airlines that were still flying. The people leaving were probably rich people going to their bunkers and private islands, Josh thought.

“And they’re going to quarantine New York,” Kyle added. “Shut off the whole island of Manhattan.”

“You’ve been spending way too much time on your laptop, kid,” Josh said. “And you’ve been watching too much news.” He picked up the remote control and turned the TV off. “That shit ain’t good for you.”

Kyle was shocked. “Hey!”

“Why don’t you play one of your zombie games?” Josh said.

Kyle turned around to get permission from his mom. “Can I play Zombie Takeover?”

Marla was still concentrating on her phone call, pacing back and forth between the small island with the granite top that separated the small kitchen from the small living room in their apartment. She hadn’t heard Kyle.

“I’m sure it’s okay,” Josh said. “I’m giving you my permission.”

Kyle just snorted out laughter, showing how much weight Josh’s permission carried in this house.

“Hey, I’m an adult,” Josh said.

Kyle got his game system ready.

Josh had bought the zombie game for Kyle on his birthday four months ago when he’d still had a job. Of course Marla was pissed off about it, but it was one of the most popular games right now and Kyle had really wanted it. Marla felt the game was too violent and that Kyle was too young to play a game like that.

“I need to practice for the zombie apocalypse,” Kyle said as he got the controller ready in his hands.

“You know there’s really no such thing as zombies, right?”

Kyle just looked at Josh like he was dumb. “We need a gun. Do you have a gun?”

Josh was a convicted felon—several times—he wasn’t allowed to own a gun. But Josh decided to spare his nephew that little nugget of information. “No. And we don’t need one.”

“We will. How are we going to fight the zombies?”

“I guess we’ll have to improvise and use some weapons we have around the house.”

Kyle didn’t even look at Josh; he just blew out an exasperated sigh.

Josh stood up, looking around at the apartment. He knew Kyle was watching him out of the corner of his eye. “There,” he said, and he ran over to the kitchen, grabbing the broom leaning up against the wall. “This weapon’s mine. I already called it.”

“A broom? Yeah, that’ll probably work.”

“I’m pretty deadly with a broom. I trained at a monastery in Tibet and all we used were brooms.”

“Did you ever learn how to sweep the floor with it?” Kyle asked.

“Ha ha.”

Kyle’s attention was back on his game. He started to play, but he kept the sound down low, getting as much playing time in before his mom told him to turn it off.

Josh looked at Marla who was watching him even though she still had the cordless phone up to her ear. “I don’t want him playing that game right now,” she said.

“Let him play for a few minutes,” he told her in a low voice. “It’s probably better than watching the news.”

“Yes, I’m here,” Marla said into the phone. “You do? Oh, thank God. Yes. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Please hold it under the name Marla Hooper. Thank you so much.”

Josh made himself a cup of coffee, filling up the cup two-thirds of the way with coffee, leaving plenty of room for cream and sugar. He craved sugar a lot these days, but he tried to control it as best he could. It helped that Marla did most of the shopping and refused to buy sweets and snacks that she felt weren’t good for Kyle.

Marla hung up the phone. “Finally,” she said. “And at least the phone didn’t cut out this time.” They’d been having spotty service with the landline phone over the last few days, and their cell phones weren’t much better.

“Who was that?” Josh asked.

“The pharmacy. I got Kyle’s doctor to send a prescription over there for a few more months’ supply of Kyle’s medications.”

Marla didn’t need to explain further—she was afraid of the pharmacy running out. Josh and Marla had grown up in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and they were used to people panic-buying when a hurricane was coming. And with what had been going on for the last few days, the drug stores and supermarkets were already swamped with people buying up all the groceries and supplies as the news got darker and the economy got worse.

“You want me to pick up the scripts for you?” Josh asked. He used any opportunity to score points with his sister and get on her good side. But even as much as he tried to help, he always seemed to piss her off.

Marla stared at him. She hated it when he called Kyle’s medications “scripts.” But she nodded and looked a little relieved that she wouldn’t have to go out into the nightmare that the streets had become over the last few days.

But he could tell that she was also wary, always worried that somehow Josh would screw things up.

“I know you don’t want to go out in this shit,” Josh said.

They had all gone to the grocery store yesterday to stock up on what they could, but the shelves were nearly empty and the lines were so long. She’d gotten a migraine from the stress. A manager finally rang up their items after an hour wait. The manager complained that half of the cashiers had walked out earlier in the day and he was worried that the store was going to close its doors soon.

“I’ll go,” Josh insisted. He wanted to do this for Kyle, for Marla. He wanted to show her that she could depend on him.

“Okay. Thanks.”

“I’ll be back before you know it.”

Marla grabbed her purse from the kitchen table and pulled out some money. “Pick up anything else you think we might need.”

“Got it,” he said, stuffing the money down into the pocket of his jeans.

“Don’t forget to bring your broom,” Kyle sang out from the couch, his eyes still on the TV screen as he shot zombies in the head, blood spraying out.

“I don’t go anywhere without my broom,” he said.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Marla said, her eyes darting to her bedroom door.

Oh shit, here comes the lecture.

He followed Marla into her bedroom and she closed the door almost all the way. She spoke in a low voice: “I heard Kyle asking you about a gun.”

Josh sighed. “We were just kidding around.”

But the expression on Marla’s face surprised him; she wasn’t angry with him—she was scared. “Do you have one? Please, just tell me the truth.”

“No. You know I’m not allowed to have one.”

Her expression said: When has anything illegal ever stopped you before?

“Can you get one?” she whispered, her eyes flicking towards the door.

“What do you mean?” he asked, never expecting Marla to ask a question like that.

Marla opened the top drawer of her dresser and pulled out a thick envelope. She plucked out a wad of money from the envelope and handed it to him. “I’ve saved some money up. I thought you might know some . . . some people, like some friends of yours who might be able to sell you a gun.”

You mean my druggie friends? he wanted to ask, but didn’t. He wanted to tell her that he didn’t hang around those guys anymore, even though she never seemed willing to believe him. “This isn’t Ft. Lauderdale,” he said. “I don’t know those kinds of people up here.”

She just stared at him.

Okay, so maybe that wasn’t exactly true. He had gotten high a few times when he’d first come up here, but he still wasn’t sure if he could find someone willing to sell a gun right now. “I could talk to a few people.”

“Thank you. I hate to ask.”

God, she looked so scared.

And he was scared, too. If he hooked up with the kind of people who sold guns on street corners and in back alleys, then they would have other things for sale, and he didn’t want to tempt himself. He’d been doing so well lately.

He took the money from her and counted it quickly, five hundred and sixty dollars, plenty to get a simple handgun, nothing too fancy. “I’ll see what I can do. No promises, though. A lot of people might be looking for the same thing right now. A lot of people might be wanting to hold on to their own guns.”

“Thank you,” she said again. It wasn’t something he heard from her very often. “But get Kyle’s medicine first. They’re waiting on you.” There was the tough big sister he knew so well.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m not kidding, Josh.”

“Got it.”

He turned to leave, but she grabbed him before he could get out the door.

“Be careful,” she said, and then she hugged him.

CHAPTER 2

Thirty minutes later Josh was stuck in a traffic jam. He was in Marla’s minivan, which was one more malfunction away from its final resting place—the junkyard. The interior was ripped up, the headliner sagging, the air-conditioner and CD player had quit working a while ago. The engine made a rattling noise and the transmission lazily clunked into gear. But at least it still ran.

Their apartment was only a few miles behind him. He thought about taking a side road, but he saw that so many of the side roads had been blocked off with police barricades; there wasn’t really anywhere to turn around.

And now the traffic had come to a grinding halt.

The drug store was only a few miles up the road. It shouldn’t take too much longer if these cars could get moving.

He rolled down the driver’s window, a slow process for the failing window motor. A blast of chilly autumn air rushed inside the van and it felt pretty good. He knew he was getting a little overheated from the traffic.

As long as the minivan doesn’t get overheated, we’ll be fine.

He looked at the vehicle right beside him—a sleek, black Lexus. A beautiful woman sat behind the wheel of the car. She was dressed in business attire: a gray suit/skirt that seemed tailor-made to fit her shapely body. She was on her cell phone, not looking his way, and she didn’t look happy. He wondered what kind of Lexus it was, but what did it matter? It wasn’t like he was ever going to own a car like that.

Less than a decade ago, when Josh was in his late teens and early twenties, he’d had visions of success. Back when he was young and life was just starting out, back when he had a fresh chance just like everyone else did at that age, he imagined successes in his future. He dreamed of starting his own business one day, maybe some kind of internet thing that would bring in tons of money while he kicked back and relaxed. He’d seen a TV commercial years ago where a group of people in an office were all watching a computer screen because their internet startup company had just gone online. They were all staring at the bottom of the screen, at the counter that was tracking the incoming orders or online visitors or whatever. The point was that a number one popped up in the little box down in the corner of the computer screen. And then the number went to ten. And then to one hundred. And then in the thousands, digits whizzing by. The people had looked at each other and smiled. They had made it, they were a success.

That’s what Josh dreamed of.

But a few years of alcohol and drug abuse had washed all of those dreams away.

Now he was close to thirty years old. He’d never had a real job for longer than a year. He was a high-school dropout who’d never stepped foot on a college campus except for the times he had delivered drugs to students. He’d done a few stretches in the county jail, racking up a few felonies and drug charges, and then he’d finally caught a two-year stretch in prison. Combine that with his spotty work record and he wasn’t exactly the employee most employers were searching for. And there wasn’t a ton of jobs around these days with so many businesses closing down.

Yeah, he had screwed things up pretty good so far.

He tried to find people and circumstances to blame for his life. His father (another drunk and jailbird) had run out on him and Marla when he’d been five years old. There hadn’t been so much as a birthday card or a phone call from him in all these years. Josh’s mother assumed after a few years that Daddy had probably overdosed in some back alley and that he’d become some “John Doe” that no one had ever identified, buried in some unmarked grave with taxpayer money.

When Josh turned twenty-one years old, his mother was diagnosed with colon cancer. Apparently it was not only the voracious kind but the kind that like to spread to other organs. His mother was dead within nine months. Marla had always hated Josh for not spending enough time with their mother in those last few months; he’d chosen to get drunk and high. It had helped with the pain of losing his mother. At least that’s what he’d always told himself.

He had grown up just outside of Ft. Lauderdale—and finding drugs was as easy as throwing a rock. Marla had gotten away from Florida, getting a job offer in Pittsburgh (a job she no longer had—she was working in a fast-food restaurant now as a manager instead of using the college degree that she had racked up her student debt on). And a year ago, just after Josh had gotten out of prison, he’d begged his sister to let him come up here to Pittsburgh to stay with her. He’d promised that he was clean, that prison had finally changed him. He’d told her that he needed to get away from his “friends” down in Florida and make a new start.

Of course Marla had been dubious, but she’d given in. And as soon as he’d gotten up here to Pittsburgh, he’d found some more “friends” that he could buy drugs off of. He’d gone right back to drinking and popping pills. But when Marla had threatened to kick him out, he promised he would change, even breaking down and crying in front of her.

And since that day, almost six months ago now, he hadn’t had a drink or taken any drugs. He wanted to get clean and sober for himself, but he wanted to do it even more for Marla and Kyle.

Kyle had been born with diabetes and a severe case of asthma, along with a host of other physical problems. But Kyle didn’t let his afflictions get him down. He didn’t sit around whining and making excuses for the woes in his life. And in a strange way Josh found strength in watching his little nephew. He realized that looking up to an eleven-year-old kid for inspiration was kind of pathetic, and he never told anyone about it, but it seemed to be working for him.

Was he tempted to drink and to use? You bet your ass. But every day that he spent around Kyle, he steeled himself even more and pushed himself to be a better man. He would rock in his bed at night in the darkness, holding himself and cry like a baby. He wanted a hit. He wanted a drink. He wanted something to cocoon himself and rock him to sleep.

But he wasn’t going to give in. He was going to be strong for Marla. For Kyle.

Even though Josh had never had any children, he was sure this was how a father felt when he looked at his kids. A father wanted to be better for his kid. And Josh wanted to be better for Kyle. He wanted to be strong for him; he wanted to be alert and functional for him. He wanted to be there.

Yeah, it was his stupid little secret, but at least it was working. It was better than any of the counseling that he’d been to. Those counselors had told him to find something in this world, a rock to hold on to, something to anchor him—insert any metaphor you wish here. Well, he’d found his rock.

Marla still considered him a screw up; he knew that. And even though he’d been sober for five months and three weeks and six days, she was still wary of his decision-making skills. And she wouldn’t have sent him out on this errand if she wasn’t truly afraid of coming out here into this madness.

Josh had been watching the news with Marla and Kyle for the last few days, even though he wasn’t much for news. He’d seen the unemployment numbers rising to record levels, the massive layoffs and store closings. They’d watched the stock market plummet and inflation skyrocket. And this morning the banks had closed on the east coast, those closings were making their way west. American citizens were waking up to frozen bank accounts and ATM cards that didn’t work anymore. They were scared. Marla was scared. And Kyle was scared.

But Marla’s biggest fear was Kyle not getting his medications, so Josh was going to get them. This was one mission he was going to accomplish. He was going to prove to his big sister that he was dependable, that he could take care of them.

And now he was stuck in a damn traffic jam.

He looked at the woman in the Lexus again. She still seemed to be trying to call someone on her cell phone, or look something up. But, judging by her angry expression, things weren’t going well. Josh checked his cell phone—a cheap flip phone—but his service had blinked out a while ago. He was sure Marla was calling his phone every five minutes and only getting the out-of-service message. He could see her fuming in the kitchen, the cordless phone up to her ear, pacing back and forth.

Josh turned up the radio in the van, flipping through stations. There were more newsbreaks, nonstop reporting about the collapse of America. Some radio stations were barely coming in, like there was some kind of interference. A few of the stations were nothing but static.

He looked back at the business woman. She seemed to have finally surrendered in her quest to use her cell phone. He caught her eye, and he made a gesture for her to roll down her window.

The woman looked uncertain. Josh could imagine how he looked to this woman. He had shoulder-length, dirty blond hair, an earring, tattoos (some of his tattoos were what people might call “prison tats”) on his arms and a big one on the side of his neck, a scraggily mustache and beard. On any other day this woman probably wouldn’t have rolled her passenger window down.

But today she did.

“Do you know what’s going on?” Josh asked as he leaned out the window. “Do you know what’s holding everything up?”

She shook her head no.

“I couldn’t find anything on the radio about the traffic,” Josh said with what he hoped was an innocuous smile.

“I need to get home,” the woman said. “My office closed down for the day. I don’t know when we’re going to open again.” There was fear in her big blue eyes.

“Sorry to hear that,” Josh said, and it sounded lame. He wanted to one-up her misery, perhaps tell her that he was in a race against time to get some life-saving medicine for his nephew, but he didn’t. “Did you see anything on your phone about the traffic?”

“I can’t get the internet on my phone,” she said. “And I can’t call anyone. It’s like I don’t have any service, and I should.”

Josh nodded. He took off his seatbelt and got out of the minivan.

The woman’s eyes widened in shock. She looked ready to roll the passenger window back up.

“I’m going to see what’s going on,” Josh told her, trying to appease her fears.

He went to the front of the van and climbed up the front of it, then he went up to the roof. He stood there, praying that this roof would hold his weight of one hundred and sixty-five pounds. Marla probably wouldn’t be too pleased if he brought her van back with a gigantic dent in the roof.

But the roof held easily. Once he was up there, he looked around at the crowded street. He saw the problem: the traffic light a few blocks down the street was out. No blinking red or yellow lights—these lights were completely out. And to make matters worse, four vehicles were tangled together in the middle of the intersection, blocking the road up in all four directions.

A lot of people were walking on the sidewalks, and beyond the wreck and the dark traffic lights there were flashing lights of either police or emergency vehicles.

Josh got down off of the van and walked back over to the woman’s Lexus. He bent down next to her passenger window, which he was surprised to see was still rolled down. “Traffic lights are all out. There’s a wreck up there, too. Blocking everything up.”

“Shit,” the woman breathed out. She looked disgusted at this interruption to her schedule. “Is your phone working? I really need to call my daughter.”

Josh could identify with her pain. He could understand her pain; he couldn’t get through to Kyle or his sister. He shook his head no. “Sorry. My phone’s not working, either. It hasn’t been working for a while.”

She looked a little surprised, almost like she suspected that he was lying.

“I need to get to the pharmacy,” he told her, deciding to use the on-a-quest-for-life-saving-medicine spiel on her. But he could already tell that she was no longer listening to him. He saw the dismissive look in her eyes now that he didn’t have a phone she could use—he was of no use to her now. There was no sense in boring her with his petty problems; she wasn’t going to be listening, anyway.

He was at a loss for words. What was he supposed to say? Good talking to you? Hope you get home safe? Why don’t you ask someone else for a phone?

But he said nothing. He went back to his minivan and got inside. He needed to get to that pharmacy before they gave Kyle’s medications away. He wasn’t sure how long they would hold the meds; pretty soon it might be first-come-first-serve. He couldn’t take a chance on this.

He rolled the driver’s window back up and gripped the steering wheel. He stared straight ahead out the windshield and judged the distance to the pickup truck in front of him and then looked behind him at the car right on his rear. He looked to the side of the road. He was pretty sure that if he backed up just a little, he’d have enough room to pull over onto the side of the road. There was a little grassy area along this stretch of road between the road and the sidewalk. If he was going to pull over and walk, then this would probably be his only chance to park the van somewhere.

Yes, that’s what he would do. He would park his sister’s van on the side of the road, lock the doors, and leave a note begging the authorities not to tow this piece of crap away. He would then walk the three miles or so to the pharmacy.

He shifted into reverse and backed up a little. The guy behind him honked immediately, probably laying on his horn in frustration, but Josh ignored him. He was pretty sure he had enough room now to pull over to the side of the road.

After a little more maneuvering, and a few more honks from other motorists around him, Josh was able to pull over to that grassy shoulder. He scribbled a quick note on a piece of paper he’d found in the glove box. He stuck the note on the dashboard, got out and locked the door. He shoved the keys in his pants pocket and felt the wad of cash there that Marla had given him.

And then he started walking.

CHAPTER 3

Josh only made it a few blocks past the dead traffic lights and the car wreck before he found trouble.

He had worked his way through the crowd of people on the sidewalk, and then he headed towards a side street. He figured he would go down the side street to get around the main road and all the traffic and the mob of pedestrians, and then he would come back out on the main road at the intersection where the Walgreens was.

The side street Josh chose to travel was blocked off like all the rest of them were. Wooden barricades with the words PROPERTY OF THE PITTSBURGH POLICE DEPARTMENT stenciled on them were lined up in front of the side streets. To Josh, the line of cops standing guard in front of the barricades looked like some kind of military unit from a dystopian future. Or maybe a group of soldiers from a sci-fi movie ready to fight an alien attack. The cops’ body armor included: black shiny breast plates, shin and forearm guards, thick black boots, helmets, rubber gloves, and gas masks.

Gas masks? That kind of worried Josh a little. But the police were probably expecting riots and protests, which had been going on for the last eight days in the city. Maybe they were just getting ready for the teargas canisters that would eventually be unleashed.

The sidewalks were full now; all of these people couldn’t be motorists who had abandoned their vehicles and decided to walk like he had. No, some of these people were protestors, and some were probably even troublemakers and looters. There were chants coming from a group of people farther down the sidewalk, and he saw some homemade signs waving in the air above the crowd.

Black helicopters roared by above the city, all of them flying pretty low.

Josh tried to sneak past the barricades near the wall of a brick building, but one of the cops spotted him.

“Turn back!” the cop shouted at Josh, approaching him with his hand on the baton hanging from his hip. He sounded a little like Darth Vader from behind the gas mask.

“I need to get down that street,” Josh told the cop.

“Those areas are blocked off. Go back the way you came. Go home and stay inside.”

Josh thought about telling the cop that he wasn’t allowed to tell him to go home, but he didn’t. He decided on a more reasonable approach. “I just need to get down to Walgreens. I can’t get through this crowd. My nephew, he has diabetes and I need to get him some medicine or he’s going to die.”

“Go back,” the cop growled at him and then exhaled another Darth Vader breath.

“Please, my nephew is going to die if I don’t get this medicine for him.”

The cop didn’t seem to care. He took another step forward, his gloved hand still resting on his baton as his final warning. “I said go back.”

“Or what?”

“Or you will be detained.”

What could Josh say to that? This cop was serious. Josh put his hands up in a surrendering gesture to show that he understood the message loud and clear. He turned around and began to walk back the way he’d come. After he got to the next block, he saw a side street that was barricaded, but there weren’t any cops guarding it. There were only so many cops to go around, Josh supposed; they couldn’t guard every side street in Pittsburgh. This was his chance.

And he needed to do something soon. He had an image of hordes of people descending on the pharmacy counter at Walgreens.

After one last quick look around, Josh slipped between the wooden barricades and took off down the street.

“Stop!”

Where had those cops come from?

Wherever they had come from, they were right on his heels now. And they were surprisingly fast even with all of their samurai armor . . . but not as fast as Josh was. He was lighter than they were, but he was also fueled by desperation. And fear.

He couldn’t believe he was being chased. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. There was no reason these streets should be blocked off. What if he lived down here? He wasn’t one of the protestors (even though he probably looked like a perfect candidate). But he was in the right. This was still a free country, wasn’t it?

Josh made it to an alley between the next two buildings. He chanced a glance back to see how far the cops were behind him now.

To his amazement, he saw that the cops had stopped chasing him. Maybe they were willing to let him go, maybe they didn’t see the sense in leaving their posts to chase after one guy.

He turned back around and saw the reason the others had given up the chase. Two more cops in riot gear and gas masks stood right in front of him. One of them was already swinging his baton right at Josh’s head.

The baton crashed into the side of Josh’s head. Everything turned to darkness.

CHAPTER 4

Josh came back to consciousness as he was being dragged to an armored police van.

The first thing he noticed was the blast of pain in the back of his head. The next thing he noticed was that he was in motion, but for some reason he didn’t think he was propelling himself forward—his legs weren’t moving at all. It took him a few seconds to realize that hands were clutching his arms, and other hands were thrust up underneath his armpits—a painful sensation.

He closed his eyes and then opened them again. He saw the pavement floating by underneath his dragged feet. He lifted his throbbing head and saw the open back doors of the police van. A cop stood at each side of the door, both of them dressed in riot gear, both of them wearing gas masks.

No, Josh thought. They’re throwing me in the paddy wagon. They’re taking me to jail.

“Wait,” Josh said, but his tongue felt thick and all that came out was a grunt. “Waidaminute,” he slurred.

Something didn’t feel right in his head. He felt sluggish, tired, and weak. Did he have a concussion? Maybe these cops had seriously hurt him with the police baton he’d been hit with.

“I didn’t do anything,” he said, wanting to scream the words out, but again his voice wasn’t much more than a whisper.

Even with the fuzziness of his mind, Josh could feel a panic building up inside of him. He hadn’t made it to the pharmacy. He hadn’t gotten the insulin and the meds for Kyle. Kyle needed those meds, and now Josh wasn’t going to be able to get them to him.

“Wait!” Josh yelled, struggling even more now as he was carried closer to the van’s open back doors.

This vehicle didn’t look like a regular police van; it looked like something out of a Mad Max movie. It had been fitted with extra steel bars and black metal racks over the lights and tires.

“Wait!” Josh yelled again, but he felt helpless as he struggled. The cops were big and strong, and he was small and hurting. “I didn’t do anything. I . . . I need to get some medicine for my nephew. He has diabetes. He’ll die without the medicine!”

The cops didn’t seem to care.

They had reached the back of the van. Josh felt himself thrown forward. These guys were experts at what they were doing, obviously trained very well at tossing guys into the back of a van.

Josh grabbed at the diamond-plated metal floor, trying to push himself back out of the gloomy space. There didn’t seem to be any windows in the back of the van, and no lights were on at all. It was like being forced into the mouth of a metal cave.

“Get the fuck in there!” one of the cops growled through his gas mask.

Josh pushed back again, trying to force his way back out of the opening. He was about to explain again why he couldn’t be taken to jail, why his nephew needed him to get the meds from the pharmacy, but then he felt an agonizing pain explode in the small of his back—another whack from the police baton. The pain was intense and immediate, but he also felt shock waves of electric tingling shooting down from the small of his back into his buttocks and then down his hamstrings. For a split-second he was frozen in pain, like the blow to his back had seized his muscles up for a moment, almost like he’d been electrocuted.

“You like to fight?” one of the cops said.

Josh felt more gloved hands on him. Two of the cops forced him upright while another one wrenched his arms behind his back, and before he could even fight back—he was still paralyzed from the pain in his back—he felt his wrists bound together with a plastic zip tie.

There was a hard shove from one of them and Josh was pushed into the back of the large van. He clipped his shins on the metal lip of the opening and then landed face down on the metal floor with no way to protect himself now that his hands were bound behind him. He felt another shocking blast of pain in the side of his neck that shot down into his shoulders.

The cops didn’t say anything else. They slammed the doors shut and Josh heard the sounds of heavy latches being closed and locks being engaged. It sounded loud and final.

He lay there for a moment in the darkness, but he knew right away that there were others in the back of the van with him. The overwhelming scent of body odor and sweat hit him immediately. He felt their shoes poking at his body, and he realized that the men were seated on benches that ran down each side of the van’s walls. He was tied up and helpless on the floor, trapped in the back of this van with a bunch of other men.

The police van started up, the motor rumbling. It felt like the floor underneath him was vibrating.

Josh managed to sit up in the middle of the floor. There were tiny slits for windows up at the top of the walls; they allowed just enough light so Josh could make out the shadowy men lined up along the walls. He looked towards the front of the van and saw one bench against that metal wall where only one man sat.

It was like the other men had crammed together, afraid to be near the man at the other end of the van.

Josh stared at the lone man, trying to make out his features in the darkness. The man was large, but he didn’t look fat. He had long dark hair that was tied back in some kind of braid. A short and scruffy beard covered the lower half of his face, making the teeth in his smile look so white. He hunched forward on his bench now that he noticed Josh was staring at him. At least the man’s hands were tied behind his back like Josh’s were—thank God for that.

As Josh watched the man staring at him, he swore he saw a twinkling light in the man’s eyes, like they were somehow reflecting the shafts of light shining in through the slits at the top of the walls. They looked like the eyes of a cat.

Josh felt a knot of fear in his stomach as the man leaned closer, still staring at him with those strange eyes.

“I have to kill you soon,” the man whispered to Josh.

CHAPTER 5

Josh didn’t remember too much about the ride in the back of the police van—it seemed like he might have swum in and out of consciousness while he was crammed in the back with those men. He remembered the large man with the long hair and beard, a dark figure with his hands tied behind his back. The man had leaned forward, whispering to him, telling him that he was going to have to kill him.

The man with the shining eyes. The man’s eyes had seemed to shine with some kind of light, like he was some kind of supernatural character from a horror movie.

This whole thing felt like a horror movie.

But Josh dismissed his memories of the man right away. The light in the man’s eyes must have been a trick of the meager light coming in through the slits that served as windows at the top of the walls of the paddy wagon.

After the police van had reached its destination, Josh and the others were taken out of the back, one by one. They all had their hands bound behind their backs with plastic zip ties. Josh figured the only thing that had saved him from the big stranger in the back of the police van had been that the man’s hands were bound. He didn’t want to think of what might have happened if the man’s hands had been free.

He could still hear the man’s voice echoing in his mind: I have to kill you soon.

Josh was in a line with the other men when they were led away from the back of the van. He kept his eyes on the man in front of him and figured that the dark stranger with the weird eyes was at the back of the line, probably the last one taken out. Josh assumed he wasn’t supposed to turn around in line, but he didn’t really want to turn around and see that man again.

They stood in line, ordered to remain still by the cops dressed in riot gear, some of them aiming rifles and automatic weapons at them.

Josh figured they were being taken to the county jail, but he was surprised to see that they were at what looked like a high school. But he didn’t say anything about it. None of the other men were saying anything, either. They all stood in silence, all of them helpless with their hands bound, all of them clueless about why they were here at this high school.

The men in front of Josh didn’t look like criminals to him. He wondered if they’d been arrested for the same reason he had, for trying to walk down the wrong street. Maybe some of these men had been on their way to the store, just trying to get some food or medication.

That brought the thought of Kyle to him and his heart ached. He could imagine Marla and Kyle waiting in the apartment, wondering if he was going to make it back soon. He could imagine Marla assuring Kyle that his uncle would be back soon, assuring Kyle that his uncle hadn’t screwed up again. No, not this time. He wouldn’t screw this up—this was too important.

When Josh got out of this, whatever this was, then he would make it up to Marla and Kyle. He just needed to talk to someone in charge, explain to them that he’d been mistakenly arrested. This whole thing was a big mistake. He didn’t belong here with these men, especially not the large man who had already threatened his life.

I have to kill you soon.

He had to? Why?

But why even try to understand what some lunatic was babbling about, or what possible reasoning could be behind what he was saying? It was a waste of time.

One of the cops pointed at the building in front of them. The double doors were wide open, letting out a light into the darkness. The building was larger than the other ones, probably the gymnasium. Two men dressed in police uniforms stepped out from the interior of the building. They had gas masks and gloves on. They stood there, waiting.

“Prisoners!” one of the officers called out through his gas mask. “Move in a single file line towards those doors!”

They started moving towards the open doors.

The line halted when they got near the doors, and Josh waited in the darkness. How long had he been in the back of that van? He wondered what time it was now. Little by little, the line moved into the building and Josh saw basketball courts beyond another set of open doors. Two more armed men in uniform and gas masks stood guard at these doors. The bleachers inside the gym looked like they’d been rolled back against the walls to make more room on the floor where hundreds of temporary cots had been set up in rows.

Josh’s heart skipped a beat as he stared at all of those cots and the men who were occupying them.

Was he going in there? He couldn’t go in there.

Two tables had been set up in this small room. A man and woman, both of them wearing gas masks with clear face shields and latex gloves, sat behind the tables with stacks of papers in front of them. Piled up on the next table were bedrolls, all of them army-green. As each prisoner stepped up to the table in front of the man and woman, their zip ties were cut from their wrists. The man and woman asked each man a series of quick questions, and then they were handed a bedroll and escorted into the gym.

No. I can’t go in there. I can’t spend the night here. I need to get that medicine for Kyle. I need to get back to him.

It was Josh’s turn to step up to the table. The plastic strip was snipped away from his wrists and he rubbed them when they were free. He looked at the man and the woman, putting on his best smile for them.

“Name,” the man said.

“Josh Hooper.” He chuckled at them. “I think there’s been some kind of mistake. I don’t belong here.”

“Social security number,” the woman demanded.

“I don’t understand what’s going on here,” Josh said. “Why am I being detained?”

“Social security number,” the woman said again with no emotion from behind her clear plastic mask. She looked weary and detached, like she wasn’t even looking at a human being anymore.

Josh gave the woman his social security number. She scribbled it down in a notebook.

“Empty your pockets please,” the man said, his voice a little muffled by his mask.

“I don’t see why—”

“Take everything out of your pockets and put the items on the table,” the man said a little more slowly. He glanced at the guard standing at the end of the table, his eyes saying: This one might be trouble.

“Okay,” Josh said and dug everything out of his pockets and set them on the table. He stared down at his wallet and the envelope of cash that Marla had given him—six hundred and sixty dollars, money for the gun and for Kyle’s meds. Probably all the money she had. There was also the set of keys, one key to the minivan and the other one to his sister’s apartment.

The man scooped up Josh’s wallet and checked the information against the name he had given. Then he scribbled something else in the notebook, maybe the address from his driver’s license.

“Are you taking my stuff?” Josh asked. “Those are my car keys and money. I need that. I need to get to the pharmacy. My nephew, he’s very sick. He needs some medication or he’s going to die. That’s all I was doing when I was . . . picked up. I was just trying to find some medicine for my nephew. His name is Kyle.”

Josh realized that he was rambling, but the man and woman weren’t listening. They were bagging up his money, wallet, and keys into clear plastic bags and labeling them.

“Next,” the woman said to the guards. She tossed the bags with Josh’s possessions down into a plastic tub full of other plastic bags. If there was some kind of filing system here for everyone’s possessions, he sure as hell couldn’t figure it out. To him, it didn’t look like there was any hope of him ever getting those keys and the money back.

“Wait a minute,” Josh said.

“Take your bedroll and enter the gym,” the man said, his eyes behind his mask were locked on to Josh’s.

The armed guard at the end of the tables picked up one of the army-green bedrolls and held it out for Josh.

“Wait a minute,” Josh said again as the anger flared up inside of him. “This . . . this isn’t right. This is against my constitutional rights. I deserve to know what I’m being charged with. I have the right to a phone call. To a lawyer.”

The man and woman behind the table stared at him with no compassion.

Josh looked at the guard who held the bedroll.

“You gonna be trouble?” the guard asked. “Because we can take a little walk out back and discuss things.”

Josh felt a lump of fear in his gut. His mouth went dry. He saw no mercy in the soldier’s eyes. He shook his head no, not wanting to go out back and “discuss” things.

He took the bedroll and walked to the double doors that led into the basketball courts. The other two guards watched him closely as he entered.

CHAPTER 6

Josh carried his bedroll down a wide walking area at the edge of the gymnasium. The floor to his left was covered with cots, men sleeping on most of them. The place was dark, the overhead lights were off and the only light came from a series of battery-powered lanterns attached to metal tripods—they looked like construction lights—and they were positioned at the corners of the gym. An invisible wall of odor hit Josh as soon as he entered the massive room: a mixture of smelly feet, body odor, and fear.

“Find an empty cot,” the guard at the door told Josh as he entered the gym.

Josh walked past the rows of cots, looking for an empty one. It hurt to walk, the pain from the blow to his back from the police baton ached with each step he took. And now his head was throbbing.

At the far end of the gym, past the sea of cots, was an entryway that led to the locker rooms and bathrooms. Josh headed that way, passing row after row of cots squeezed in close together, maybe a foot and a half of space between each one. There were three-foot wide aisles between the rows of cots.

Searching for a cot with his bedroll in his arms brought back memories of the times he’d spent in the county jail, and the two years he’d done in prison. This felt both similar in some ways, but also different. At least when he’d done time he’d known what he’d been charged with, and he’d known how long he was going to be serving his time. But right now he had no idea why he was being held (except that he’d crossed a police barricade, but surely that didn’t warrant being beaten, detained, and having his possessions taken from him), and he had no idea how long he was going to be here. He also didn’t seem to have any constitutional rights at the moment.

In jail, his fellow inmates had been raucous and bold, loud and bullish. There were even some guys who were happy to be there, happy to have a dry place to sleep and food to eat. But in this gym the mood was completely different. These men (and Josh noticed they were all men) were scared. Josh heard a few whispers here and there, some snoring and a wet cough, but most of the men were very quiet. He could feel their eyes on him as he worked his way deeper into the gym.

Another difference between jail and this place was that Josh could tell that many of these men weren’t career criminals like Josh had spent time with. Many of these men seemed like white-collar guys who’d never seen the inside of a prison, and probably never thought they would.

And maybe this gym wasn’t a real prison in the strict sense of the word—it was a high school—but there was no mistaking that this was a prison. It felt like a prison.

Josh spotted a few empty cots five rows away from the two guards who stood sentry in front of the bathrooms. He walked down the narrow aisle, passing the quiet and frightened men, all of them lying down on their cots like they had been commanded to do so. A few men were sleeping, but most weren’t.

He glanced at the guards as he worked his way to the empty cot he had his eye on. Both of the guards wore respirators over their faces and rubber gloves, and both of them had pistols holstered on their hips. He locked eyes with one of them for a split second and then looked away. He remembered a lesson from jail—you never challenged the guards; you never eyeballed them.

He reached his cot and dropped the bedroll at the end of it. He sat down, the springs squealing slightly. The mattress was thin, but it felt good to sit down. It would probably feel even better to lie down. But right now he just sat there, numb, in shock that all of this was happening.

“You should lay down,” the man sleeping on the cot right next to his whispered.

Josh looked at the man who lay still on his cot, his thin frame covered up with an army-green wool blanket. He was an older man, maybe late forties or early fifties. He had gray hair that had been buzzed short, and there was at least three days’ of stubble on his jaw. He lay on his side, facing Josh. His eyes had been closed a moment ago when Josh had looked at him before sitting down. But now that the man had spoken, his eyes were open—they looked shiny and wet in the darkness.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” Josh said to the man. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Shh,” the man whispered—the barest of sounds. “Keep your voice down.”

“This isn’t right,” Josh insisted, but he heeded the man’s advice and lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’ve got rights. They can’t hold me here like this for no reason.”

The man didn’t respond.

“I want to talk to someone in charge,” Josh said. “There’s been some kind of mistake here.”

“There’s no one in charge to speak to,” the man said. “You keep making trouble and they’re going to take you out of here. And when they take you out, you don’t come back.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Josh asked. He could hear his voice rising a little. He shifted his gaze over to the two guards by the bathroom entrance. He couldn’t tell, but it seemed like they were looking right at him, watching to see if he was going to be “trouble.”

“Why don’t you lay down?” the man whispered.

Josh sighed and kicked off his sneakers. He lay down on his side on the cot, facing the man across from him. He unrolled his blanket and yanked the pillow out, shoving it under his head, and then he pulled the scratchy blanket over him. He moved around for a moment, trying to get as comfortable as he could. He wished he could pop about four aspirins or Advils, but he was pretty sure getting painkillers in this place was going to be out of the question. His back was still hurting pretty bad, but lying down made his headache feel a little better. The pillow smelled musty, and it was cold. It wasn’t terribly chilly inside the gym, but he was sure it would get much colder throughout the night.

“What’s your name?” Josh whispered to the man across from him.

The man didn’t answer. His eyes were closed again, and he was breathing deeply. Maybe he was asleep.

“Name’s Gardner,” the man finally answered with his eyes still closed.

Must be a last name, Josh thought, but didn’t comment on it. “My name’s Josh.”

Gardner didn’t say that he was pleased to meet him.

“What did you do to get put in here?” Josh asked.

“Nothing,” Gardner whispered. “They’re rounding people up.”

Josh waited for Gardner to expound on his statement, but he didn’t. “You know how long they’re keeping us? I need to get back to my sister and my nephew. They need me.”

Gardner waited a long moment before responding. “Not sure. I heard they’re keeping us here for a little while to make sure we’re not infected.”

“Infected?” Josh asked. He remembered the conversations he’d had with Kyle over the last few days; Kyle had told him about rumors of an airborne virus that was turning people into raging lunatics, or zombies as Kyle liked to call them.

“Supposed to be some kind of virus,” Gardner said. “It’s making people crazy. You notice all the soldiers are wearing gas masks?”

“How long are we supposed to wait here?” Josh was getting a little hopeful that he was only being quarantined and that he’d be allowed to leave if he wasn’t infected; he’d be able to get back to Marla and Kyle.

Gardner didn’t answer again for a long moment, but then he whispered: “Not sure. I heard they’re taking us to a FEMA camp after this.”

Josh’s momentary hope withered away in seconds. “FEMA camp? What the hell’s that?”

“FEMA. Federal Emergency Management Agency. I guess there’s a camp set up near here.”

“But I don’t want to go to a FEMA camp. I already have a place to live, and I need to get back there.”

Gardner just shrugged; it was the slightest of movements underneath his blanket, the shifting of wool against his body like the whisper of his words.

Josh was getting annoyed with Gardner’s unquestioning acceptance of this situation.

“A little advice,” Gardner whispered.

Josh didn’t respond; he just watched Gardner who had closed his eyes again as he lay there.

“When the food comes around in the morning,” Gardner finally said, dispensing his advice, “just take it with no questions. And make sure you eat it. When your bathroom break comes up, just take it even if you don’t have to go. Don’t give them any trouble. You don’t fight back and maybe you can make it for a while. You don’t give them any reason to think you’re infected. Don’t give them any reason to think you’re turning into a ripper.”

Josh was about to respond, but his words died in his throat when he heard the commotion at the other end of the gym.

CHAPTER 7

A new prisoner entering the gym with a bedroll under one arm began yelling. He’d taken a few steps into the gym, but then he’d stopped cold, refusing to walk any farther.

Josh sat up and turned to watch the man, his lower back sending some sharp spasms of pain up to his neck as he did so, letting him know that twisting around wasn’t the best idea right now. He held his breath for a moment until the pain subsided a little.

A few other men sat up on their cots in the darkness, watching the scene at the far end of the gym.

“I don’t belong here!” the man yelled. He threw his bedroll at the folded-up bleachers. “You can’t keep me here!”

“Calm down,” the guard yelled, his voice distorted from behind the respirator strapped to his face.

But the man wasn’t calming down. He stared at the guards for a few seconds, and then he rushed them—like a bull rushing a matador.

The guards grabbed at the man, trying to subdue him, but the man seemed much stronger than he should have been for a guy his size. Josh had been at a house party one night in Miami and saw a guy freaked out on some kind of drug. The guy had gone nuts, fighting off four guys at the same time, impervious to pain. And that’s what this guy reminded Josh of.

It took three more guards to wrestle the man down to the floor. They wrenched the man’s arms behind his back and zip-tied his hands as he roared with fury, still thrashing around. The guards yanked the man back up and dragged him back out through the same double doors he had entered.

Once they were gone, everything was quiet again. None of the guards needed to tell the men in the cots to go back to sleep; it was like an invisible wave washed over the men and they all laid back down again. The threat of sudden violence hung in the stifling air of the vast room.

Josh felt suddenly singled out because he was the last man sitting up on his cot. He lay back down and rolled over onto his side again, facing Gardner across the narrow aisle. Gardner’s eyes were wide open again.

“Wait for it,” Gardner whispered.

“Wait for what?” Josh asked him.

“Just wait a few seconds and you’ll hear it. It’s hard to hear, but if you listen carefully . . .”

Josh didn’t ask any more questions. He closed his eyes and listened, concentrating. He could hear the sounds of some men snoring, a few of them coughing. He heard the sound of the next man entering the gym with his bedroll, shuffling his feet. He could even hear a few faint whispers from some of the men a few rows over from his.

And then he heard the noise. It came from somewhere outside, and even though it was faint, it was unmistakably gunfire. Two pops.

Josh’s heart jumped in his chest, the rhythm of his heartbeat knocked out of sync for just a moment. Then his heart beat hard in his chest, getting back into rhythm. A cold sweat tingled on his skin suddenly as his body heated up underneath the blanket.

Did they just shoot that man?

He wasn’t going to ask Gardner; the man was breathing heavier now. Maybe he was sleeping, or maybe just faking. But Josh was pretty sure Gardner was done talking for the night.

Those guards just shot that man outside. That had to have been what those pops were. It had to have been the reason Gardner told him to listen for the sound.

Did that mean the man was infected with some disease? Were they all at risk in here now? Or did they shoot the man because the guards just suspected that he had the disease, the ripper disease or whatever they called it? A chill ran across his skin when he thought of how close he might have come to being suspected of being infected.

He thought back to today when he’d been stuck in traffic. Why had he gotten out and walked? Why hadn’t he tried to turn around and take a different route? Why hadn’t he listened to the cops and not crossed the barricades?

He thought about Marla and Kyle, both of them waiting in the apartment for him to come home. Kyle was probably sure that something had happened to his uncle, but Marla would think that he had met some of his friends and gotten drunk or high with her money. God, he didn’t want her thinking that.

Tears filled his eyes, and he pushed his face into the musty pillow for a moment so a sob wouldn’t escape his throat.

After a moment of crying, Josh got a hold of himself. He wiped his eyes and sniffled—it sounded so loud in the darkness.

He couldn’t just lay here and cry. He needed to think of something, find some way out of here, some way back to Marla and Kyle.

He turned over onto his back after wincing in pain, holding his breath for a moment as the sharp pangs subsided a little. He stared up at the exposed metal rafters of the gym’s ceiling way up there in the darkness. He saw the windows high above the bleachers on one side of the massive room, and there was only the night sky beyond those windows right now. He imagined when morning came, the daylight would flood in through those windows.

After he closed his eyes, he lay there, waiting for his headache to ease a little.

A man whispered in the darkness. For a split second Josh thought Gardner was talking to him again. But he knew immediately that it wasn’t Gardner; this voice was different, and it was coming from another direction.

“I’m going to kill you soon.”

It was the man from the police van.

Josh’s heart jumped in his chest as he sat up on his cot, not all the way, but enough to look around at the sleeping bodies all around him. And then he spotted the large muscular man a few rows away. The man was half-sitting up, just like he was, almost like he was mirroring his movements on purpose.

The man was smiling, and his eyes glittered in the dark.

“I have to kill you soon,” the man whispered and then lay back down.

CHAPTER 8

Josh awoke with a start, and for a moment he forgot where he was. He sat up a little too quickly and both the pain in his lower back and his head froze his movement for a moment as he held his breath. He closed his eyes again as the sharp wave of pain passed in his head, leaving behind a dull throb. The pain wasn’t quite as bad as yesterday, but it was still pretty bad.

But then the memories of yesterday came flooding back, and the pain of those memories was worse. He’d been beaten and arrested by the police and then thrown into the back of a police van with other men.

And there had been a man in that police van with glittering eyes, a man who vowed to kill him.

I have to kill you soon. The words echoed in Josh’s mind like a ghost whispering in his ear.

Josh sat up all the way and turned to look at the cot where the man who had threatened him last night had been, but the man wasn’t there. A lot of the cots were empty. Some of the men stood beside them, stretching. Others were rolling up their bedrolls and leaving them at the foot of their cots. Other men were heading towards the main aisle that formed the perimeter of their sea of cots, where two men in military fatigues and gas masks were pushing a large food cart filled with plastic trays. Two more guards entered the gym from the double doors, pushing another cart.

Josh looked across the aisle at Gardner. The older man was sitting up and watching him.

“How you feeling?” Gardner asked.

“A little sore.”

“They’re coming with the food trays. Like I told you last night, just take your tray. Don’t argue about what’s on it. Don’t demand to speak to someone in charge or try to plead your case. Don’t act angry or unstable in any way.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Don’t try to keep any of the plastic utensils,” Gardner continued like he hadn’t heard Josh’s question. “Return all of them with your tray. Just do everything they tell you to with no complaints or arguments.”

Josh just shrugged. “Yeah, sure, man.” He thought about asking again how long Gardner had been there, but it was apparent that the man didn’t want to answer the question.

“Hey, I’m just looking out for you,” Gardner said. “You break the rules around here and bad things happen. I think you already saw that last night.”

Josh nodded. He remembered the man the guards had taken out last night after he’d refused to walk towards the cots. He also remembered the popping noises that had come from outside . . . gunshots.

These guards weren’t fooling around; they weren’t taking any chances with anyone they thought might be infected.

When their rows were called, Josh fell in with the other men and walked up to the two guards (he thought of them as guards, but maybe they were just police officers or soldiers) and the plastic cart. He took his tray of food without question or argument, just like Gardner had told him to. He came back to his cot with the tray of food and sat down.

After eating, they were told to use the bathroom in groups. Josh waited in line after giving his tray and all the plastic utensils back. The food had been lukewarm and tasteless, some kind of hard biscuit and unidentifiable meat with a side of potatoes, a white gravy ladled over everything. A carton of warm milk and a carton of warm juice completed the meal. But at least it was something in his stomach, and it made him feel a little better, a little less light-headed.

They were told to enter the bathrooms in groups of ten men, and Josh didn’t realize that he was in the bathroom with the man who had threatened to kill him until it was too late.

Josh hurried to a stall in the bathroom rather than a urinal. He ducked inside and closed the metal door, trying to be quiet, trying not to draw the man’s attention. He slid the metal lock in place on the door. Of course he didn’t feel safe because the metal door was flimsy and anyone could crawl underneath the space under the door or over the top of it.

He waited behind the door for a moment, holding his breath, listening. He stared at the graffiti-littered walls of the stall.

Then he heard it—someone walking outside his stall, creeping closer to it. He saw the toes of the man’s boots right underneath the door to his stall.

“I’m going to kill you now,” the man whispered from right behind the door.

Josh didn’t answer. He still held his breath. His plan was to wait this crazy man out, just wait until the guards called them all out of the bathrooms.

But the crazy man wasn’t going to wait that long. He slammed against the stall door and it smashed open immediately, like the door had been secured with string. The metal lock popped off and shot past Josh like a bullet. The man looked like some kind of monster as he stood in the doorway, his long hair wild, his eyes bulging, his mouth opened in a wide grimace, showing strong white teeth. He was even bigger than Josh remembered, especially this close.

Josh tried to back away, but the man was too quick. He grabbed Josh’s shirt and pulled him out of the stall and flung him across the room towards the wall at the other side of the line of stalls. Josh hit the tiled wall, his knees nearly buckling from the impact.

The man rushed at him, his long braided hair flying out behind him as he ran, his eyes full of rage and murder. His fist was up and swinging towards Josh, ready to slam into his face.

At the last second Josh ducked out of the way, and the man’s fist slammed into the tiled wall. There was a cracking sound, not only from the breaking tiles but also from the man’s bones.

But the crazy man didn’t seem to notice that his hand was bloody and mangled. He attacked Josh again.

“Get away from me!” Josh screamed. “I didn’t do anything to you!”

The crazy man was lightning-quick and supernaturally strong, and oblivious to pain. He was on Josh in a second, grabbing his shoulders and throwing him back into the wall. He shoved a forearm into Josh’s throat. Josh felt like he was caught inside a giant vice, and when he was slammed against the wall, the back of his head collided with the tiles. A flash of new pain shot through him, replacing the dull throb that had been there before.

The other “prisoners” watched the fight in horror, none of them stepping in to help.

And it was at this moment that Josh realized that no one was going to try to pull this lunatic off of him—no one was going to save him. He was going to die inside this bathroom, inside some high school gymnasium. He was going to be murdered by this tall, muscular man who had been promising to kill him for a while now.

The crazy man stared at Josh with his insane eyes. Spittle coated the corners of his mouth and the veins protruded in his forehead. He pushed his forearm against Josh’s throat, still pinning him against the wall.

“I can’t let you go with them,” the crazy man said.

Josh tried to ask what the man was talking about, but he couldn’t get the words out through his closed throat. And now bright white dots fluttered around in his field of vision, and the edges of his world were beginning to turn black.

Guards rushed in, knocking the crazy man away from Josh, tackling him to the filthy floor. Josh breathed in a delicious breath of air, then coughed, his throat fiery with pain. It felt like it had been ruptured. But at least he was still conscious, at least he could still draw a breath in and out, at least he was still alive.

He watched as the guards fought to zip tie the large man. They succeeded and got the man up to his feet. Two more guards rushed into the bathroom, their guns drawn. One of the guards pointed his gun right at Josh.

Josh stared at the barrel of the gun pointed at him, his hands shooting up immediately in surrender. “Wait . . .” Josh croaked.

“Round them up and take them outside,” one of the guards said.

No, this can’t be happening. They can’t take me outside and shoot me. I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m going to die in a few minutes, and I didn’t do anything wrong.

As a guard moved in to grab Josh, one of the other men in the bathroom stepped forward. “He didn’t do anything,” the man said. “That other guy busted into his stall and attacked him.”

The guard looked at the group of men standing there. “That true?” he asked the others.

For a moment Josh was certain that the other men weren’t going to corroborate the story, too afraid to say anything, but then they all nodded.

The seconds seemed to stretch out as Josh’s heartbeat hammered in his chest. He stood against the wall, massaging his throat, swallowing with difficulty, both from the injury and because his mouth had gone dry with fear. His head was throbbing, and he felt wetness on the back of his neck, most likely blood dripping down from his scalp.

“Okay,” the guard finally said. He nodded to the other three guards who had pulled the crazy man up to his feet. “Get him out of here.”

The three guards marched the large man out of the bathroom. The crazy man had become strangely docile now, like his message had been delivered and his assignment completed, and now he could go with them to meet his fate. The glittering in the man’s eyes was gone now . . . if it had ever been there at all.

The guard who seemed to be in charge looked back at Josh, lowering his weapon. “You get cleaned up.” He turned to the other men. “The rest of you get back to your cots. Pack up your bedrolls. We’re leaving at nine o’clock.”

Josh could tell that the other men were itching to ask where they were being taken to, but none of them dared to question the orders.

CHAPTER 9

Josh rolled the thin pillow up inside his bedroll, just like the other men were doing. One by one they lined up and stacked their bedrolls up on the table as they left the school gym in a slow-moving line. Josh wondered how many men had (and would) sleep on his same cot, using the same blanket and pillow he’d used. He wondered if they washed the bedding here. He doubted it, and the thought made his skin and scalp itch.

But Josh didn’t complain. His personal effects they had taken from him had never been returned; they still had his car keys, his wallet, the envelope of money Marla had given him. But again, he didn’t complain. After the crazy man who wanted to kill him had been taken away (and presumably shot because he was showing signs of whatever disease was supposedly plaguing the world), he had learned not to step out of line in this place. He had learned not to complain or plead his case in any way; he had learned not to talk back, and most importantly, he had learned not to look violent or unstable in any way. If a few of these soldiers dressed in fatigues, rubber gloves, and respirators decided to take him outside to put two bullets in his head, he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to be able to talk them out of it.

What could he do right now but go along with this? He could only try to survive for as long as possible until he knew what was going on. Or until he saw his chance to escape.

When they were outside, they waited in several long lines as three school buses pulled up. The buses looked like older models, but he wasn’t any kind of school bus expert. But at least the soldiers here (or police or whatever they were) hadn’t zip-tied his hands behind his back (or hit him with their batons) like they had when they had arrested him and brought him here. His back was still sore, his head throbbing, his throat raw.

The day was a little chilly, but not freezing. It actually felt good to be outside, out of that gymnasium and its stale stench of fear and body odor. For such a large place, the gym had felt claustrophobic and dark to Josh.

“You,” one of the soldier/policemen yelled through his respirator, pointing at the first man at the front of Josh’s line. There were at least six other lines of men. “Start boarding that bus. When you get on the bus, walk all the way to the back and start filling up the seats. Two men to a seat until the bus is filled up, and then start boarding the next bus.”

The soldier did not repeat his instructions. The first man in Josh’s line stepped up to the bus and shuffled up the steps. He was followed by the next man. And then the next man.

There were two armed soldiers in combat gear occupying the last two seats, so the men began filling up each seat after that. Josh ended up in the middle of the bus, sitting by a window. An overweight man sat down next to him. The man was dressed in a suit coat and matching pants, his tie gone—maybe taken away from him when he’d entered the gym last night. The man only nodded at Josh, but he didn’t say anything, perhaps too scared to even whisper right now.

And who could blame him?

Josh looked towards the front of the bus as the men sat down. Once they were all seated, a man in civilian clothes with a paper dust mask closed the bus doors and sat down in the seat right behind the driver. The driver, also dressed in civilian clothes, and also with a dust mask instead of a respirator, waited behind the steering wheel with the engine running.

Leaning against the window and pressing his forehead against the cool glass, Josh closed his eyes for a moment. He thought he might even be able to fall asleep in this position until the bus began pulling forward.

He watched the high school as they pulled away, watching the buildings and the gymnasium that had been his home last night, watching the building drift away in the bright sunlight of the day. He didn’t know the name of the high school; he hadn’t seen a name anywhere, or a banner on the side of the gym like: Home of the Fighting Penguins, or something. Maybe that stuff had been removed. And now that he thought about it, he wasn’t really sure where he was. Somewhere near Pittsburgh, he guessed, but he didn’t know which direction he had been driven away from Pittsburgh last night in the police van. And he didn’t know how far away he was from Marla’s apartment. He had to have been driven quite a ways in the police van yesterday while he’d been passed out because it had been afternoon when he’d been “arrested,” and when he’d gotten to the high school it had been dark.

Maybe someone else at this FEMA camp they were going to would know how far away from Pittsburgh they were. Maybe he would see some kind of clue along the way to the camp, maybe a road sign.

They drove for a while. There were a few whispers among the men, but nothing Josh could make out. The guards hadn’t told anyone to stop talking, so a few of them kept on whispering. A lot of them had nodded off or stared blankly ahead.

Josh looked at the man next to him. He thought about striking up a conversation with the man, but the man was already beginning to fall asleep, his head nodding forward, eyes closed. Then the man would come awake suddenly, his head lifting up, his eyes popping open, a snore caught in his throat. And then, a few minutes later, he would nod off again with his hands folded over his ample belly. Hopefully the man wouldn’t slump over onto him when he finally fell into a deep sleep.

Josh looked out the window again, at the glaring morning sunshine, the shadows sharply defined. They were in a rural area, he could see that now. There were hills in the distance, woods all around, the foliage beginning to thin with the coming winter.

The world still looked the same outside his bus window, but also different. He didn’t see many other vehicles on the road as they rumbled down the narrow, two-lane road. There were some military vehicles and some police vehicles—maybe they had shut down the traffic or something.

As their bus passed a string of businesses and homes, Josh saw a few people gathered in groups. He saw a bunch of people huddled together in front of a closed-down gas station. The men and women looked dirty and tired; one of the women had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. They looked like refugees from some war-torn country, staring at the convoy of school buses with blank stares or narrowed eyes of anger and suspicion. This group of people didn’t shout at the buses as they went by, they didn’t throw rocks or display obscene gestures, they just seemed to reluctantly accept what was happening.

And what was happening? A plague? Society finally completely breaking down? Military and police control?

They passed by more homes and buildings. Josh noticed that some people were wearing gas masks and dust masks. Some of them wore cloths or rags tied around their faces, covering their mouths and noses. Some people wore rubber gloves, either the medical kind or the thick industrial kind. But there were also just as many people who didn’t wear any protection at all.

A few people from another building chased their bus; it seemed like they were begging to be picked up, to be rescued. But was this a rescue? Was this FEMA camp they were supposedly going to a salvation?

As the day turned a little darker with cloud cover, Josh realized that all the homes and buildings they passed were dark. Was all the electricity out? Now that he thought about it, there hadn’t been any electricity at the gymnasium they had stayed in last night; everything ran off battery power. Was the electricity out everywhere? That brought his thoughts back to Marla and Kyle. Was their electricity out, too? Were they sitting in the dark and the cold, still wondering where he was?

He couldn’t think about that right now; it brought a panic rising up inside of him. And he couldn’t panic right now. He had to think about something else.

Concentrating on the world that drifted by outside his window again, Josh watched the people milling about among the debris that was scattered across yards and parking lots. There were broken-out windows in stores and homes, charred remains of fires. It looked like the aftermath of a riot.

The traffic lights weren’t working at any of the intersections they went through, and at some of these intersections there was a police car with only one officer inside. Josh remembered the traffic jam he’d been stuck in. He wondered if all those cars and trucks were still clogging up the street he’d been on. He wondered if Marla’s minivan was still parked on that grassy shoulder with the note he’d written laying on the dash.

As they passed two buildings, Josh swore he saw what looked like two people crawling all over another person on the ground. He wasn’t sure what those people were doing to the other one. Were they robbing him? Attacking him? It had only been a second, but he couldn’t help thinking that they had been ripping at him, tearing at his flesh, one of the two had his face buried down into the person’s chest. It reminded him of the internet video Kyle had shown him.

No, that couldn’t be right, could it? Were these the infected people that Gardner had talked about? The rippers that Kyle had found on the internet?

This couldn’t be true, could it?

Josh nearly jumped and screamed when the man seated next to him fell over onto him, snoring. Josh pushed the man back, and he woke up.

“Sorry,” the man grumbled, obviously embarrassed.

But Josh didn’t say anything. He looked back out the window. There were no more buildings out there . . . nothing but woods now.

PART TWO

CHAPTER 10

An hour later the school buses pulled up to a chain-link fence topped with rolls of barbed wire. The sliding gates were guarded by two soldiers with gas masks and M-16s. One guard pushed the gate open, allowing the buses to enter.

All three buses parked in a large dirt area, all of them lining up right behind the other. The driver remained behind the wheel of Josh’s bus, but the man seated right behind him stood up and adjusted his flimsy paper mask (he always seemed to be nervously fiddling with it). He pulled the lever to open the bus door. “Out the door one by one, gentlemen,” he said from under his mask, and then he darted out the door.

Josh waited his turn as the men in the seats in front of him got up and left the bus in an orderly fashion as they had been instructed. Once they were outside, they were told to form a line. He was reminded of footage he’d seen from World War II on the History Channel of Nazi soldiers lining up concentration camp victims, all of them forming orderly lines as they were shot in the head one by one. Was that what these soldiers had in mind? Were they lining them up so they could shoot them one by one, while each man waited without complaint?

He couldn’t let his paranoia get to him. He couldn’t let panic take over. He couldn’t give these soldiers any reason to think he’d gone “wild” and shoot him. As much as he wanted to demand answers, or even run for the gates, he knew his life would end a few seconds later.

No, he would have to be patient and play the game. He’d done it so many times before in jail, and he could do it again.

Don’t give them a reason to suspect that you have the disease. Gardner’s words echoed in his mind. He wondered where Gardner was, which bus he had gotten on, but he didn’t dare step out of line to look for him.

Josh discovered that he was hungry, surprised that he would desire food even under all of this stress. And now that he’d begun thinking about food, he couldn’t stop. He was afraid his stomach was going to growl loudly. A grilled cheese sandwich with some tomato slices and a glob of mayo to dip it in would really hit the spot right now. A sudden bout of homesickness hit him; he wished he was back in Marla’s apartment making grilled cheese sandwiches for all of them, soup warming up on the stove. Thinking of Marla and Kyle almost brought tears to his eyes.

When everyone was out of the buses and lined up, one of the soldiers with the respirator and rubber gloves paced in front of them, barking out orders in between his Darth Vader breaths. “You will be going to an orientation meeting in a few moments. All of your questions about why you’re here will be answered in that meeting. Don’t ask any questions right now.”

The lines of men remained silent. Josh heard a few coughs, and he thought he’d heard a rude comment masked underneath one of those coughs. He heard a grunt from someone else. But Josh was going to be quiet and follow orders for now. He knew how to follow orders; in fact, being in jail three times and prison once had kind of trained him for this.

“You are at a FEMA camp,” the man in fatigues, rubber gloves, and the respirator continued. “You are safe here. This entire compound is surrounded by an eight-foot-tall chain-link fence with barbed wire on top. Nobody can get inside to hurt you.”

There were some nods and grunts from the men.

Josh thought that the fence worked both ways: No one could get in, but also, no one could get out.

“There are rules here that must be followed,” their Darth Vader-voiced host went on. “You will not try to leave. You will not fight with us or each other. You will not question any further rules. These rules are for everyone’s safety. Is that understood?”

A chorus of half-hearted agreements rang out.

The soldier pointed at the Quonset hut closest to them. Josh looked at the other rounded buildings near it, all of them covered with corrugated metal siding. Beyond these buildings in the distance were what looked like a massive collection of mobile homes, their aluminum roofs gleaming in the afternoon sunlight. People roamed around freely near the trailers, but those people were too far away for Josh to make out much detail.

It seemed like they weren’t going to be disposed of here. Maybe this really was a safe place. But that didn’t make him want to get home any less. Maybe he could find someone in charge, someone he could talk to pretty soon, so he could explain how urgently he needed to get back home.

“You are going to enter that building,” Darth Vader Voice continued. “You are going to register with the person inside that building and give them all the information they ask for. Then you are going to give a blood sample to a doctor and answer any questions he has for you. Then you are going to enter the next building and sit down in a chair and wait for the orientation to begin. Is all of that clear?”

More yesses, these louder and more energetic than last time. Josh could feel the same relief coming from the men. Maybe many of them had feared the worst like he had; maybe many of them had feared that they were all being marched to their deaths.

“Inside those buildings, you will be watched by guards carrying automatic weapons,” Darth Vader Voice continued. “You will not be disruptive. Is that clear?”

More agreements from the men.

Darth Vader Voice gestured at the nearest building. The metal building was painted a bland beige. Everything in the camp seemed to be painted beige, tan, white, or was left bare metal. There was no landscaping, no trees, no bushes, just grassy and weedy land, rocks, and sand. It was a temporary city inside miles of chain-link fencing.

Josh waited in line for almost an hour before it was his turn to enter the building. He entered alone and that fear of being exterminated tried to rise up again. But he had to be rational. If they wanted to kill them, they would’ve done it at the school. Or even when they had first arrested him. They wouldn’t have bussed them all the way out here, wherever here was.

The room he entered was large and mostly bare. There was a desk with a pile of beige folders stacked up on it. No computers or TV screens, just an old-fashioned filing system.

A woman with a Polaroid camera took Josh’s photo against a white background and then she handed the photo to the older man who sat behind the desk. The man slipped Josh’s photo inside the next folder that he had selected from the pile.

“Sit down, please,” the man behind the desk said in a weary voice. He seemed as tired as the man and woman who had checked him in at the high school gymnasium yesterday. Josh wondered if this man was doing this willingly, or being forced to.

Josh sat down.

The man shuffled through some papers in his stubby fingers. He squared them up in front of him, clicked a pen and then poised it over the top of the folder, ready to write. The man didn’t look at Josh as he read from the paper inside the folder. “Name?”

“Josh Hooper.”

“Age.”

“Twenty-nine.”

“Date of birth.”

“November nineteenth. Got a birthday coming up,” he added for some levity. “Turning the big three-o.”

But there was no reaction from the stubby man, not even the crack of a smile under his trim, little mustache or a glance upward.

Josh decided not to try any more attempts at humor.

“Where do you currently live?” the man asked.

Apparently I live here now, Josh almost said, but he bit his words back and gave the man Marla’s address. “I live there with my sister and my nephew,” he added. “I would really like to get a hold of them and make sure they’re okay. Let them know I’m okay.”

The older man finally looked at Josh. His cheeks were jowly and his eyes were a deadpan gray. His flesh seemed yellowish, like he was sick with some kind of disease. His expression said: Don’t you think we all want that? Then he looked back down at the paper inside the folder, ready to continue the questioning.

Josh glanced over at the corner of the room where a guard stood motionless with a machine gun in his hands. He wore a gas mask, but Josh could still see the man’s eyes. I’m watching you, those eyes said.

“Occupation?” the man behind the desk snapped.

“I’m out of work right now,” Josh said, turning back around to look at the man. “I was in the middle of looking for another job. But the economy was so bad and it was hard to find one.”

The man’s eyes met Josh’s again, and Josh had the feeling that this man really didn’t give a shit about his sob story. “Skills?” he asked and looked back down at the paper inside the folder, ready to write down Josh’s response.

“Sorry?”

“What kind of skills do you possess? What kind of jobs have you done in the past?”

“Mostly restaurant work. Fast-food work. Cooking and dishwashing. Some food prep. I’ve also done some construction work here and there. A laborer.”

The man scribbled some words down quickly. “Social security number.”

Don’t you already have that? Josh wanted to ask. Along with my wallet, keys, and money. But he didn’t say that—he gave the man his social security number.

“Okay,” the man said, and he closed the folder with Josh’s Polaroid photo inside. “Now you’re going to go into the next room and see the doctor. He’s going to draw some blood and run some tests. He’ll have some questions for you.”

Josh nodded.

The man opened a drawer and pulled out a laminated card attached to a bright blue cloth necklace that looked like a thick shoelace. “Wear this at all times. You’ll get a new laminated ID soon with your photo and number on it. You will be consigned to a module with three other men, and you will be assigned a job that matches your skills as closely as possible.”

It sounded like a speech the man had recited many times now.

“But why am I being held here?” Josh asked, breaking his promise to himself not to question anything.

“It’s for your own safety.”

Josh was about to argue, but the man held up a stubby hand and shook his head, his jowls quivering just a bit. “After you see the doctor, you will go into the assembly hall and wait for the orientation to begin. Much more will be explained then.”

Josh knew it was futile to keep asking questions. He got up and went into the next room. In there he saw a doctor who sported a stained white coat; he had the same worn-out expression the last man had. The doctor pointed to a chair next to a table where his nurse stood.

Another armed guard waited in this room, and he had the same protective gear on that the last one had.

The doctor and nurse wore latex gloves and paper masks.

Josh sat down and the nurse stuck a thermometer under his tongue and wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his upper arm.

She looked at the doctor. “Blood pressure’s a little high.”

“I’m a little nervous,” Josh said.

The nurse drew a small vial of blood from Josh’s arm and then taped a cotton ball over the puncture with a plastic bandage. She took the vial of Josh’s blood and put it in a container holding more vials.

The doctor sat down at the desk which was catty-corner to Josh’s chair. He pulled out a pen from his lab coat and looked down at the stack of papers in front of him. “I’m going to ask you some questions.”

Josh nodded.

“Have you been nauseous in the last few days?”

Josh wasn’t sure what the correct answers were. He didn’t want to be misdiagnosed with whatever disease was out there and get a prescription of two bullets in the head. He could feel the guard’s eyes on him. “No.”

“Have you experienced any headaches or neck pain?”

You mean besides being beaten up by cops and attacked by a lunatic in the bathroom? “No.”

“Any blurriness of vision?”

“No.”

“How about mood swings? Hallucinations?”

“No.”

“Any violent urges that you can’t control?”

“No.”

“Any confusing thoughts? Slurred speech? Memory loss?”

“No.”

The doctor seemed satisfied. He got up and walked over to the counter where the nurse had dabbed a drop of Josh’s blood onto a glass slide and inserted it into a microscope. The doctor looked into the microscope for a moment, and then he and the nurse exchanged glances. Both seemed satisfied that everything was okay.

“Is there some kind of disease going around?” Josh asked. He glanced at the guard to make sure he wasn’t stepping out of line with his question.

The doctor looked at Josh, and to his surprise answered the question. “We think there might be. But more of that will be explained in the orientation. If you start getting any of those symptoms I asked you about, I want you to report back here immediately.”

Josh nodded. Take two bullets in the head and call me in the morning.

The doctor instructed Josh to leave out the back and walk across the dirt path to the building right behind this one.

CHAPTER 11

Josh sat in an uncomfortable metal folding chair as he waited for the orientation to begin. The large room was full of the men he’d ridden to the FEMA camp with on the school buses. All the men had bandages taped to the crooks of their arms from where blood had been drawn, and they all had the laminated IDs hanging from their necks on the blue strings. The room buzzed with talk, some of the men huddled together in groups, hunched forward and whispering conspiratorially. The smell of body odor and dirty clothing hung over the room like a haze.

The metal folding chairs were arranged in eight rows and Josh was in the middle of the third row back from the cheap podium at the front of the room. There was nothing else in the big room, nothing on the walls, no other furniture. The floor was a concrete slab and the metal walls arched over top of them, forming a ceiling which bounced back echoes of the men’s conversation. It was a little chilly inside, a little colder than outside without the sunshine, but not too bad.

Finally, a man walked out from a doorway to the left, followed by three armed guards. He marched up to the podium and stood behind it while the soldiers got into position behind him. All the soldiers had rifles, but they weren’t wearing gas masks and rubber gloves now. Maybe the lack of gloves and masks meant that the soldiers weren’t worried about any of the men in the building being infected. Josh could only hope.

The man who stood at the podium was somewhat thin, but he also looked powerful, like he used to be an endurance athlete or a martial artist. He had a dark, neatly trimmed beard, short hair, and wire-rimmed glasses. He was dressed business casual, and he wore his own laminated ID card around his neck. He set a few papers that he’d brought with him on top of the podium, arranging them neatly.

The men grew silent.

“This is an orientation meeting,” the man said in a surprisingly deep voice for his build. “My name is Sean, and I’m going to give a brief explanation of why you are here and the circumstances we are all facing. Please don’t interrupt with questions right now. You can ask them at the end. Just hear me out and I suspect that many of your questions will be answered along the way.”

Josh heard grumbling of uncertainty coming from a few rows behind him.

“This is a FEMA camp,” Sean said. “FEMA stands for Federal Emergency Management Agency. We help when disasters strike America. Like earthquakes and hurricanes. And disaster has now struck America—the worst disaster in our nation’s history. We believe a pandemic is spreading quickly across America, and around the globe. We don’t have a total understanding of it yet, but we believe it’s an airborne pathogen that affects people’s brains, shutting down rational thought and triggering murderous rages.”

Josh thought about the crazy man back in the high school gym who had attacked him. The crazy man had said that he needed to kill him; he’d said that he needed to keep him from going with the others. And after the crazy man had been subdued, that craziness had gone out of his eyes, like he was suddenly awake and normal again.

What had the crazy man meant? Go with whom?

Josh couldn’t wonder about that right now—he would have plenty of time to ponder those questions later. Right now he wanted to find out as much as he could about what was going on and how long they would have to stay here at this FEMA camp.

“You men were detained for twenty-four hours. You were monitored for symptoms of the disease, which has been coined the Ripper Virus for now. Maybe not the best name for this disease, but the media tagged the word ripper to this a few days ago, and it seems to have stuck. After your monitoring, you were brought here to have your blood tested and to ultimately be protected from the pathogen. While you are here, many of you will be given a job to do based on the skills you possess. Please try to comply and help out as much as you can. We’re all in this together, and we need to help each other.”

Josh thought of Marla and Kyle for the millionth time. Were they out there with this virus? Were they infected? Maybe they were in a FEMA camp somewhere. He could only hope.

“You will be assigned a modular unit,” Sean continued. “Four men to a unit. You will not change units. You will get along with the men in your unit. There will be peace here at this compound. There will be no fighting, no arguing, no stealing, and no attempts to leave. You are being kept here for the time being for your protection, I assure you of that. After this orientation, you will line up outside and you will be assigned your modular unit number. Before going to your unit, you will be taken to the cafeteria for lunch, and then you will be able to stop at the commissary. There you will find things you need like bathroom supplies, extra clothing and shoes, reading material. Everything else has already been provided in your unit. Each unit has a bathroom and a kitchen, but there are no appliances in the kitchen, only a water cooler. You will eat all of your meals in the cafeteria. The schedules of meals and the commissary will be posted in your units, along with a complete list of the rules of this camp. You will be assigned your job within the next twenty-four hours.”

Even though Sean was thin, he seemed to exude power. He stood as straight as a light post, staring at the crowd of nervous and confused men seated in front of him. He stood with his legs apart, his body balanced, his hands gripping the podium as he eyed the men in the room. Josh was certain Sean was military, or at least ex-military.

“I’ll take any questions now,” Sean said.

A man in the second row raised his hand tentatively.

Sean’s eyes flicked like a reptile’s to the man, like he’d spotted the movement of prey. He stared at the questioner, waiting for him to speak.

The man started to stand up, but then he stopped in mid-motion like he wasn’t sure if he might be breaking some kind of rule.

“It’s okay to stand,” Sean told him with just the twinge of impatience. And was there disdain in his voice and eyes?

The man stood all the way up and cleared his throat. “Are there any women here at the camp?”

“No,” Sean said simply. “This is a male camp. There are other camps for women and any male children under the age of sixteen. We decided not to mix women and men, for some obvious reasons.”

The man plopped back down into his metal folding chair. He was either satisfied with the answer or too scared to question Sean any further.

Sean nodded in Josh’s direction and for a split second Josh thought he was looking right at him. Then Josh heard the rustling of clothing from right behind him as a man in that row stood up.

“What about our families?” the man behind him asked in a booming voice. “I was arrested for no reason. I wasn’t read my rights. I haven’t been able to go look for my family. I haven’t had any contact with them. I don’t even know if they’re still at home or if they’ve been . . .” The man paused and seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “Or if they’ve been taken to a camp.”

Grumbles of agreement rippled through the crowd.

Sean stared at the man, and to Josh it still felt like he was looking right at him. “As I said before,” Sean said, standing perfectly still, “our country is facing a devastating pandemic. We don’t know much about this disease, but we know that it has spread very quickly. We believe it’s airborne and spread simply by breathing on each another. We’ve reacted as best we can; saving those we can, trying to keep the uninfected from the infected.”

“But when can we leave? When can I contact my family?”

“Right now all communications are down. There is a nation-wide blackout of electricity, phone service, and internet service. We can’t let anyone leave until we’re sure it’s safe. I’m sorry I can’t give you more information than that right now. As soon as we know more, we’ll update all of you.”

Sean’s eyes scanned the crowed of seated men like he was gauging whether this meeting was beginning to get unruly. “We have taken down all of your information: your names, social security numbers, your addresses. We will try our best to reunite you with your loved ones in the coming days and weeks. But you must be patient, and you must prepare yourself for the reality that this pandemic may have taken one of your loved ones.”

The grumbling and whispering between the men was getting louder.

A man one row ahead of Josh shot to his feet like a piston. “What if one of our loved ones is in one of the female camps? Our wives and children?”

“We are in the process of matching up information right now,” Sean assured him. “We’re doing the best we can without electricity, phones, computers, and other technology. It’s a slow process, but we’re working tirelessly on it. If we find any matches, we’ll let you know.”

Josh wasn’t going to ask any questions right now. He’d spent enough time incarcerated to know not to be the squeaky wheel that got the attention.

Another man near the front of the audience got to his feet a little hesitantly, his arm up in a weak wave.

Sean’s dark eyes darted to the man, and he nodded at him, directing him to speak.

“How did this . . . this disease or pandemic, whatever it is, get started? I mean, I didn’t hear anything about it on the news.”

Again, Josh thought of all the articles Kyle had shown him from the internet, the rumors of some kind of mutated rabies virus affecting people and turning them into monsters, or zombies as Kyle called them. There had been stories about governments around the world keeping a tight lid on the pandemic, controlling the media and suppressing the truth.

“Was this some kind of terrorist attack?” another man called out.

Sean exhaled slowly like these questions were beginning to annoy him. “We’re not sure how it started. But it’s a good possibility that it was a terrorist attack.”

“Are they going to attack us now?” the man who had asked if this was a terrorist attack said. “While we’re weak?”

“I’m not privy to that kind of information,” Sean said, his words clipped.

It could’ve been us, Josh thought. Some kind of bioweapon we were working on that got loose. Some kind of accident. Or something worse.

The men were talking even louder now.

Sean put a hand up, silencing the men. “I don’t have all the answers you’re looking for right now. But I assure you, as soon as we learn more, we’ll tell you. And now, that concludes the orientation. You will line up outside where your quarters will be assigned to you.”

Josh got to his feet. He was glad he was reasonably safe for the moment, but he couldn’t help feeling that Sean was lying to them about a lot of things, and he couldn’t help feeling that for some reason he was in danger here inside this camp.

CHAPTER 12

After the orientation, Josh and the other men lined up outside. Each of the men was given an index card with a number written on it. Josh’s card read: 183. He saw the modular buildings in the distance (in Florida they called them trailers), and he noticed now that all of them were painted the same drab beige, and they all had large numbers painted high up on the walls near the front of the trailers. He glanced down at his card again. 183. How many trailers were here? Hundreds? Maybe at least five hundred, he guessed.

Before they could go to their quarters, the men were pointed in the direction of another collection of Quonset huts, all the structures painted battleship gray. These buildings housed the cafeteria, laundry area, commissary, and then beyond that, closer to the fence, were garages, kitchens, offices, and supply houses.

Josh walked in the line as he was ordered. He followed the men into the cafeteria where they formed another line. His stomach rumbled. He didn’t care what they were serving, he was going to eat every bite of it. He grabbed a plastic tray and moved slowly down the line as bored servers loaded up his tray with some kind of stew, packs of crackers, a piece of bread, a pat of butter, and a sweet roll for dessert packaged in cellophane. He was also given a bottle of water and a juice box.

As he went to find a seat at one of the tables, he looked for Gardner, but he didn’t see him anywhere. He ended up sitting down at a table with some other men he didn’t recognize. He ate his food quickly. The other men talked among themselves, mostly just introducing themselves, telling each other where they were from and how they had gotten here. The stories were mostly the same; they had been arrested even though they hadn’t committed any crimes. Just like him. A few of the men vowed to complain, to fight back. Josh ignored their talk and finished his food.

After he was done eating, Josh went to the commissary. He wanted to get his stuff and get to his trailer. Even though his belly was full—that pain was taken care of for the moment—his head, back, and throat were still throbbing. He just wanted to rest right now, lie down somewhere and think about what he could do to get out of here.

He entered the commissary area, and maybe commissary wasn’t the right name for this place because they really didn’t have to pay for anything here, they just took what they wanted within reason.

A heavyset, balding man with glasses barked instructions at them as they entered. “Please take only what you need. Make sure there’s enough for everyone. Only one pair of shoes for each man. Only one extra set of clothes right now. Only one extra coat or jacket. Two books at a time. You can return those books for two more.”

Josh took a plastic Wal-Mart bag from the table and walked over to where other tables had been set up, heaped with clothing. One table had pants, one had shirts, one had winter clothes. Shoes were in laundry baskets on the floor, each pair tied together with plastic ties. There was a table of personal care products: toothpaste, toothbrushes in packages, travel-size shampoos and soaps.

This reminded Josh of church rummage sales he’d gone to with Marla and Kyle. Marla loved going to garage sales, church sales, and thrift stores.

He wondered where all of these clothes, jackets, and shoes had come from.

From the ones they killed, his mind whispered.

Where had that thought come from? He wasn’t sure, but little spiders of fear tickled his skin.

He sifted through the clothes and picked out an extra pair of pants in his size and a long-sleeved T-shirt. He found a black hoodie sweatshirt that was at least a size too big for him, but he stuffed it down into his plastic bag, anyway. He found a pair of dark brown hiking boots in his size and he added them to his bag, making it a little heavier now. The shoes were a little worn, but the bottoms still had plenty of tread on them. He found a pair of leather work gloves and threw those in his bag, too.

At another table he picked up some travel-size items, one of each. He could literally smell his own body odor—he desperately needed a shower. He hoped the trailer would have running water and hot water for a shower, but he wasn’t going to get his hopes up too high.

A man near him sifted through some clothing, selecting casual clothes. He wore a dark suit and he could have been a financial advisor or a store manager in his previous life. He had soft, doughy skin that was sagging a bit like he’d lost quite a few pounds in the last few days. His blue eyes were quick and nervous, but he didn’t say anything to Josh.

Josh went over to the table of paperback books. He wasn’t much of a reader, but he picked out two books: ‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King, and a Louis L’Amour western.

He went back towards the entrance and waited at a table with a big sign that read: STOP HERE. At this table, two men went through everyone’s bag to make sure only the proper amount of items was being taken. The men looked apologetically at Josh during the search, but Josh smiled back at them, hopefully showing them that he understood that they were only doing their jobs. Probably jobs that they had been forced to do—and Josh would be assigned one of those jobs soon.

Josh stepped outside with his plastic bag and he headed for Trailer 183. The trailers were set in orderly rows with barely six feet of space separating them. The little yards in between the trailers were full of weeds that had recently been whacked down by a maintenance crew.

Twenty minutes later, after multiple wrong turns through the maze of dirt paths between the rows of trailers, Josh found his new home. The trailer was shorter than the normal mobile homes he was used to. There was no skirting underneath the trailer to hide the wheels. A set of metal steps led up to the aluminum door. All the trailers were painted beige with dark brown trim, and they all looked new.

Josh climbed the steps to the front door. He waited there for a moment, and he could hear the men inside talking.

Or were they arguing?

God, he hoped he was going to get some decent (cellmates) roommates.

Should he knock?

No, he didn’t want to present any kind of weakness when meeting his roomies for the first time. Josh was five foot ten, and he was close to a hundred and seventy pounds, not an imposing figure of a man in any way. But he wasn’t a scrawny weakling, either. And with his long hair, scraggly beard, and prison tats, he was sure people could guess at his checkered past.

His jail-time instincts kicked in. He remembered all the times he had gone from processing to the cells in the county jail, meeting his new cellmates for the first time. It was important to show confidence and boldness immediately, no fear or signs of timidity. You showed them that this wasn’t your first time being locked up.

Josh took a deep breath and yanked the door open. He stepped inside the trailer and slammed the door shut. He stared at the three men gathered together in the living room. They all stared back at him.

Mission accomplished. He had scared the shit out of them.

Within a few seconds, Josh took the whole room in; he was standing in a small living room area with an attached kitchen at the front of the trailer. There was a small table and set of chairs in the kitchen, cabinets and a countertop separated the kitchen from the living room. There were no appliances in the kitchen, as Sean had said in the orientation, only more cabinets.

The living room had a sofa and two recliners. All upholsteries and fabrics were generic brown or some kind of reddish-orange color. The carpet was burgundy; the walls were fake wood paneling. Pale brown curtains hung over the windows that were covered with cheap plastic blinds.

“What’s up?” Josh barked at the men as he threw his plastic bag on the couch like he was claiming it.

The three men just stared at him, none of them answering or moving a muscle.

Josh sized them up in seconds. One man was shorter than Josh by a few inches and much older and rounder. He wore a business suit that was stained with dirt and grime. He had on a pair of wire-rimmed glasses that were bent a little at the nose, his eyes bulging behind those glasses on his fleshy face.

The next man was tall and thin. He wore a dull brown coat over a white shirt and faded jeans. His hair was salt and pepper gray, and spikey, like he had abandoned the idea of combing it anymore. He looked like he could be a teacher or a professor. He seemed to exude that air of intellectual superiority that Josh had sensed so many times from people in his life.

The third man was younger than the other two, about Josh’s age. He had darker skin and looked Latino. He had the hardest edge of the three men, the only one who didn’t look intimidated by Josh.

Josh had hoped that Gardner would be one of his roommates, but he was pretty sure the chances of that were pretty slim. Maybe he would find which trailer Gardner was staying it, but for now he was going to have to try to get along with these guys.

“I’m Josh,” he told the three men. He decided to try to mess with their heads a little. “I was just outside the door for a few minutes. I heard what you guys were talking about.”

There, that would screw with them for a little while.

The three men looked at each other as if they just realized how conspiratorial their tight little group might seem. They all seemed to read each other’s eyes, almost like they were communicating telepathically for a minute. And now it seemed like they had come to a silent agreement, the heavy-set man and the Latino man nodding at the tall one in the middle.

The professor guy looked right at Josh. “Okay,” he said. “You might as well be in on our escape plan, then.”

CHAPTER 13

“Escape?” Josh said, realizing how shocked he sounded, realizing that he’d blown his story about eavesdropping on their conversation.

The three men frowned, maybe figuring out that Josh had been lying about overhearing their conversation.

“We can’t stay here,” the professor-looking man said quickly. He seemed to be the spokesman for this little group.

Josh was at a momentary loss for words—an unusual event for him.

“You in or out?” the Latino man demanded.

“You’re not going to say anything to anyone, are you?” the older man asked with a whine in his voice.

“He’s not going to say anything,” the Latino man answered for Josh.

This was all going a little too fast for Josh. He hadn’t been expecting this.

“Look,” Professor said, taking a step towards Josh and speaking in what sounded like his most reasonable voice, making non-threatening gestures and movements, like he might scare Josh out of the trailer and to the closest soldier. “This is all wrong. Keeping us detained here is wrong. Keeping us from our families is wrong. I know they said they’re doing it for our protection, but it’s still wrong.”

“Yeah,” the older man said. “I didn’t ask for their help. I didn’t ask to be protected.”

“I don’t know where my wife and kids are,” Professor said.

“Me either,” the Latino man added.

Josh had the feeling that the professor had talked these two men into going along with his escape plan in mere moments—he certainly seemed convincing.

“What about you?” Professor asked Josh. “What about your wife and kids? Do you have a wife and kids?”

“No,” Josh answered.

“But you have a family. You have someone you care about, don’t you?”

Josh nodded, but he didn’t feel like going into detail about his personal life right now, not wanting to reveal too much to these guys just yet. And his silence seemed to be making all three of them nervous.

“Josh, right?” Professor asked. “You said your name was Josh.”

He nodded.

“I’m Wendell,” Professor said. “This is Miguel, and that’s Larry. We’re not doing anything wrong yet. We’re just talking about things. Just discussing things. That’s all. There’s no harm in talking, is there?”

Josh shrugged.

“You don’t want to be here, either,” Wendell said, almost like it was already a foregone conclusion. “I can see it in your eyes.”

“I don’t think any of us want to be here,” Josh told him.

“How did they get you?” Wendell asked. “How were you arrested?”

Josh took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I was on my way to a Walgreens. I needed to pick up a prescription for my nephew. He’s only eleven years old. He has Type 1 diabetes and asthma. Marla, my sister, was afraid they were going to run out of medications because of the power outages and riots. I went to get the meds and there was this massive traffic jam. All the traffic signals were out. I couldn’t get anywhere, so I pulled over and parked. I tried to walk to the drugstore. And then I got arrested.”

Wendell nodded knowingly. “And you weren’t even doing anything wrong.”

“And they beat you,” Miguel said.

Josh touched the bruises on his throat. His most obvious injuries were from the crazy man in the bathroom, but he didn’t tell them that.

“Were you at the high school?” Larry asked.

Josh nodded. “Yeah. For one night. Last night.”

“We were there the night before that,” Wendell said. “We’ve already spent a night here. There are others who’ve been here longer than that.” He watched Josh for a moment, letting his words sink in.

“Longer than that? How much longer?”

“Some say a few days. Some say a few weeks.”

“A few weeks? That doesn’t make any sense. All of this just started happening in the last few days.”

Wendell nodded knowingly. “Yes. It’s like they were already rounding people up long before all of this started happening. Like they knew what was going on long before most of us knew about it.”

“That’s . . . that’s crazy,” Josh said.

“There were reports for weeks of strange murders and violence,” Larry said. “People turning into raging animals. Killing their families. Murdering strangers. Eating them.”

“I never really paid much attention to the news,” Josh said. But Kyle had. Kyle had known what was going on. Why hadn’t he listened to his nephew?

“Yes,” Wendell said. “The government and the media did its best to suppress reports of what was happening. But I heard stories, like so many others did. There was stuff on the internet about it. Articles and videos.”

Again, Josh thought of Kyle showing him the videos he’d found on the dark web, trying to convince him that the zombie apocalypse was beginning.

“The power just went out everywhere,” Josh told them. “That’s what this guy Sean told us in the orientation just a little while ago. A nationwide blackout. And right before I got arrested, I heard on the radio that all the banks had shut down. Everyone’s accounts were being frozen until Monday.”

“Shit,” Larry whispered.

Wendell sighed like this was devastating news, maybe worse than he had imagined.

Josh almost felt like asking these three men if they still felt like escaping, if they still felt like going back out into the nightmare that this world had become. But he didn’t.

“This still isn’t right,” Miguel said. “Holding us here against our will. I could see if we chose to stay here, but they shouldn’t be allowed to keep us here. It should be our choice.”

“Yeah, that part doesn’t make sense,” Larry said.

“Look at you,” Miguel pointed at Josh. “You were arrested illegally. You said you were just trying to get to a drugstore for some meds.”

“Well, actually, there was this sectioned-off area, and a cop told me not to go down the side streets. But I went anyway. They chased me. I almost got away, but then these two cops sprang up out of nowhere. I didn’t even have a chance to run before they cracked me in the head with their batons.”

“So you were beaten and detained for walking down a side street,” Wendell said. And now he sounded more like a lawyer than a professor.

Josh just nodded.

“Did they even read you your rights?” Wendell asked. “Did they ever tell you why you were being detained? Did they ever allow you to contact a lawyer?”

“Phones were out,” Josh said and realized that it was a weak argument.

“What they’re doing is illegal,” Wendell said. “It’s unconstitutional.”

“You’re not going to say anything about this, are you?” Larry asked Josh.

“No.”

Larry seemed to melt with relief.

“That’s good,” Miguel said, and Josh could hear the threat in his tone. “We’re all in this together now.”

“I don’t see how we’re going to get out of this place,” Josh said, already jumping onboard with the escape plan. He had planned on figuring a way out of this place anyway, and maybe it would be better to have these three guys’ help. At the very least they could be some kind of distraction while Josh formed his own plan.

“We’ve been assigned our jobs,” Wendell said. “And you’ll get your job soon. We just need to keep our eyes and ears open while we work, search for some kind of weakness in this place. And then we put our heads together and come up with a plan.”

Josh nodded. “Sounds good, I guess.” He looked around at the living room, and then over at the kitchen. “How do you know this place isn’t bugged?”

The three men froze for a moment. The blood seemed to drain from Larry’s face.

“I don’t know if you guys have ever done jail time,” Josh said, “but they record everything that goes on in there. The cells, the phone calls, the mail. What’s stopping them from recording here? They’ve got electricity going in some areas around here with generators. And a lot of recording equipment runs on batteries.”

“Why would you think of that?” Miguel asked, not even bothering to hide his suspicion.

“Well,” Wendell jumped in. “If that’s the case, then I’m afraid it would be a little too late to worry about it now. But I don’t think this place is bugged. I don’t think any of these trailers are bugged. All they need to do is keep us afraid and keep patrolling the perimeter. It’s pretty simple.”

Then how are we going to get out? Josh almost asked, but didn’t.

Then another thought occurred to Josh, one he didn’t want to bring up at this moment. What if one of these three was a mole? Some kind of snitch. It wouldn’t be so unbelievable that the soldiers had planted a mole in some of these trailers. Maybe jail time had made him paranoid, but paranoia could keep you safe.

He would go along with their escape plans as long as they made sense. But he was going to keep his eyes out for his own escape. Because if there was one thing he was sure of right now, it was that everyone here wasn’t being detained for their own protection. No, something else was going on here. Something bad, he was sure of it. He just hoped that he could get away from this place before he found out what it was.

CHAPTER 14

Josh found out that the trailers didn’t have showers or running water of any kind, the only water was the portable water cooler that stood in the corner of the kitchen. His new roommates told him that there was a building near the cafeteria that housed the public showers. And they wanted to warn him upfront that there was no hot water.

Great.

Well, it wasn’t his first time taking a shower with a bunch of other men. Josh got his change of clothes and soap and shampoo. Wendell told Josh that towels were provided, and he was supposed to throw the towel in the bin for the laundry crew on his way out.

The shower was cold as promised, but it felt good to be clean again. He brushed his teeth at one of the sinks and combed his hair back as best he could with his fingers since he’d forgotten to grab a comb from the commissary.

At five o’clock, their scheduled time for dinner, Josh followed his roomies from their trailer to the cafeteria.

Again, like this morning, he stood in line with a plastic tray in his hand. Soon, two pieces of white bread were slapped on his tray, and then some kind of brown stew was ladled on the tray beside the bread. Josh grabbed a few packets of fake butter for the bread, a bottle of warm water, and a can of generic cola. He sat down at a table with his new roommates, his co-conspirators. He had settled into that slightly nervous, hyperaware mental state that he usually adopted when he was incarcerated, appearing relaxed, but always on alert.

They ate in silence, as if any conversation might afford an unintentional slip of their escape plans. The stew tasted like it came from a can; there was a slight metallic taste to it. The edges of the bread were a little stale, but Josh spooned the stew over the pieces of bread after lathering the butter on top. The water and soda quenched his thirst, but he wished he had some hot tea for his sore throat. He hoped one more day would ease the soreness of his throat.

After he’d finished eating, Josh looked around at the men in the cafeteria, trying to spot Gardner. He had to be here now. Maybe he was on a different cafeteria shift, a night shift, but he hadn’t seen him since the high school; he hadn’t seen him in any of the lines when they got on and off the buses, he hadn’t seen him in orientation, or anytime afterward.

“I’m going to stretch my legs,” he told his new roomies. He’d finished his meal way before they had—he’d learned to eat fast in jail, and he’d learned to eat everything on his tray before someone came up wanting to trade, or just outright take his food. He took his empty tray up to the trash bins and then set the tray into a big plastic tub with other trays. Armed guards stood near the entrance doors.

For our protection.

As he walked around the cafeteria, he tried to spot Gardner in the crowd of men eating at the tables. Gardner was a thin, middle-aged man with gray hair—but that could be the description of many of the guys here.

“Can I help you?”

Josh turned around. A tall, thin man dressed in an oversized Polo shirt and baggy camouflage pants stood there. His combat boots were shined to a high gloss. He was smiling, but there was a nervousness in that smile, a tension in his eyes. Josh was sure he would see beads of sweat breaking out on the man’s forehead at any moment.

“Uh, I was just leaving,” Josh told him.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait for everyone else. It just keeps everything working easier.” The thin man frowned, his eyes shifted down quickly to Josh’s ID hanging from the blue shoestring around his neck. “Didn’t you read the rules listed in your quarters?”

Josh nodded and smiled. “I must’ve missed that part.”

The thin man returned Josh’s smile, but he didn’t seem ready to walk away until he was sure Josh was going to sit down again.

“Actually,” Josh said. “I was looking for someone. A man I met at the . . .” He didn’t know how to describe their detention center. “At the high school gym.”

The man didn’t seem like he knew what Josh was talking about.

“Anyway,” Josh continued. “I don’t see him here and he should’ve come with us here on the buses.” Josh gestured at all the men who were eating or had finished up. Some of them were beginning to look his way, suddenly interested in the conversation.

And that seemed to be making the thin man more nervous. He shrugged his bony shoulders, his smile slipping a bit. “Maybe he’s on a different shift.”

“Yeah, maybe. But we all just got here from the high school this afternoon. I haven’t seen him anywhere.” Josh could sense the guards becoming interested in their conversation, too.

“Please take your seat,” the thin man said, and now there were beads of sweat popping out on his forehead and clean-shaven upper lip. The smile was long-gone now, no false pretense of politeness anymore.

Josh nodded. He could see the armed guards out of the corner of his eye; they were creeping closer. Josh could imagine the guards escorting him outside in the late afternoon chill and “diagnosing” his disease, remedying it with a couple of bullets to his head. He could imagine the men in here finishing up their bland meals even though they’d heard the unmistakable pops of gunfire from outside, pretending that nothing had happened. Josh hadn’t forgotten about the man who’d been taken outside of the high school gym, or the crazy one who had attacked him in the bathroom.

Listen, Gardner had whispered last night in the gymnasium. Wait for it.

Josh didn’t want to be dragged outside and shot, or even detained somewhere else. He wanted to make sure he wasn’t acting “unstable” in any way.

“Sure,” Josh said with a smile, hopefully disarming both the man in front of him and the soldiers nearby. Josh had always been a natural charmer; it had gotten him out of a lot of jams through the years.

He walked back through the crowd of men to his table. Fear buzzed on his skin. He felt like something lethal was running up behind him right then, like a predator about to pounce. He sat down at the table with his roomies who were staring at him in horror.

Josh risked a glance back at the thin man—he was gone. The soldiers were back at their posts beside the doors.

“What the hell are you doing?” Larry whispered.

“I was looking for someone,” Josh told him.

CHAPTER 15

“Who were you looking for?” Larry asked Josh when they were back in their trailer.

“You risked exposing us,” Miguel snapped, not waiting for Josh’s reply. He looked at his two friends beside him. This guy’s a liability, his eyes said. I knew we shouldn’t have trusted him.

“I was looking for a guy I was in the gym with,” Josh explained. “He slept on the cot right across from mine. His name is Gardner. I haven’t seen him anywhere since we left the high school. I didn’t see him on the bus I rode here. I didn’t see him in any of the lines or at orientation.” He kind of saved my life, he almost said, but didn’t.

“Maybe they took him,” Miguel said.

That was one of the things that Josh feared but didn’t want to say out loud.

“Same thing might happen to you,” Miguel warned. “You keep acting like that, like you did in the cafeteria, same thing might happen to you.” He looked at Larry and Wendell. “It might happen to all of us.”

“But why would they take Gardner?” Josh asked.

“Maybe he was infected,” Larry said. “Maybe he was showing symptoms. You remember all of those symptoms the doctor asked us about. Maybe he had admitted to some of them.”

Josh sighed. “Those were pretty vague symptoms. Fatigue and confusion. Mood swings. Who hasn’t had those, especially after what we’ve gone through?”

“Maybe there was something in his blood,” Miguel argued. “They took samples of our blood and looked at it under a microscope.”

“It is possible he was infected,” Wendell said, jumping in to be the voice of reason.

“I don’t think so,” Josh told him. “He didn’t have any of those symptoms at the high school. He had his shit together. More than I did.”

“Oh, you’re the expert on symptoms now?” Miguel asked.

“Gardner was the one who told me about this plague, about everything that was going on. He was the one who told me to stay cool and not to do anything crazy to get the guards’ attention. So if he was infected, how would he change so quickly?”

“Maybe he was in the early stages when you saw him this morning,” Larry said. “I heard the disease comes on pretty quickly.”

Josh still refused to believe it.

“So what are you trying to get at?” Wendell asked.

“I don’t know,” Josh said. “It just seems weird, that’s all.”

“Maybe your boy was a plant,” Miguel said. “Some kind of mole getting information out of people. Out of you.”

Josh shook his head no again. “I don’t think so.”

*

Hours later, when the darkness had blanketed the FEMA camp, Josh slept on the couch in the living room. The other three men had already claimed the bedrooms in back so Josh got stuck with the couch. He didn’t care; he could sleep anywhere. But right now sleep was evading him, insomnia setting in.

He lay in the dark and stared up at the ceiling. It was pretty dark, but there were some floodlights on poles around the camp, probably lighting this place up like a beacon in the dark from a distance. They must be using industrial-sized generators for the electricity they produced here, Josh guessed. But how long would the fuel last? This place seemed like it was supposed to be temporary shelter.

It was deathly quiet now. Every so often Josh could hear the sounds of a vehicle patrolling, and then men walking—most likely soldiers patrolling.

He closed his eyes, thinking about Marla and Kyle. He wondered if they were in a camp like this. He wondered if they had gotten sick. Infected. Sean had said there was a women and children’s camp. Maybe there were more camps, dozens of them all over the county, maybe hundreds of them.

Tears welled up in his eyes. He didn’t want to cry, but he couldn’t help it. He felt so useless here. Helpless. He cried because he missed them. Marla had done so much for him over the last year, definitely more than he deserved. He’d let her down so many times in her life, and here he was, letting her down again.

Josh rolled over onto his side, facing the back of the couch. It had a musty smell that reminded him a little of the pillow and blanket in the high school gym. It was cold inside the trailer, but he had a blanket and bedsheet over him.

He finally drifted off to sleep an hour later. He saw Marla and Kyle in a dream. He saw them huddled in the dark apartment, afraid and alone. And then he was suddenly outside. He saw the infected ones, the crazy people they called the rippers. Two rippers were chasing a man into an alley, and that alley looked just like the one he’d seen on the way here when he’d been staring out the window of the bus. The two rippers attacked the man, tackling him to the ground. The man screamed and fought back, but the rippers were too fast, too strong, too ferocious. They used their hands like claws, like they were animals. One ripper had a knife gripped in his hand, and he cut into the man’s stomach, pulling the incision out wide, stretching the skin. He yanked out intestines from the slit in the man’s abdomen, blood bubbling up. The victim thrashed and screamed, his howls turning into gurgles as the other ripper bit into his throat, wrenching his head back and forth like a dog pulling meat off a bone. The ripper’s lips were dark and glistening with blood in the streetlights.

Then Josh was back inside Marla’s apartment building again, but this time he was in the hall, then on the stairs. The elevator didn’t work anymore—the power was out. It sounded like someone was stuck in the elevator, pounding on the doors from a higher floor, begging for help. Everything was cold and dark in the hallway. He could hear the sounds of the rippers somewhere in that darkness, hordes of them running through the halls, smashing doors in, beating on walls and doors with sticks and other weapons.

He was panicking, trying to make his way up to the second floor, up to Marla’s apartment. He had to get to his sister and nephew before the rippers found them.

“Marla! Kyle!”

His voice was attracting the rippers—they were homing in on him. He looked back and saw a group of rippers rushing up the stairs. They looked like a street gang waving their sticks and knives around. Their faces were pale, their hair stringy and dirty, their clothes soiled and in tatters, a few of them were completely naked. Their mouths were open in screams of rage, dried blood crusted around their lips, staining their faces and hands. The rippers’ eyes shined in the darkness, they shined like cats’ eyes. They shined just like the crazy man’s eyes had shined in the back of that police van.

Josh made it up to the second floor, and he ran towards Marla’s apartment. Somehow he had his keys in his hand even though they had been taken away at the high school. He held the key to the apartment door in his trembling fingers, trying to slip the key into the lock as that mass of insanity rushed towards him from the darkness.

“Come on,” Josh whispered. He couldn’t control his shaking. It felt like he was going through pill withdrawals.

But then he turned the key and heard the sound of the lock disengaging. He pushed the door open, slipped inside, and closed it. He locked the deadbolt.

The rippers were at the door in seconds, beating on it with their sticks and their fists.

Josh backed away, deeper into the apartment, into the living room and kitchen where he had left them; Kyle on the couch playing his video game, Marla in the kitchen with her cup of coffee.

But they weren’t there now.

“Marla! Kyle!”

No answer in the dark apartment. No sound except the rippers beating at the door.

“They’re gone,” a woman whispered.

Josh turned towards the voice. For a moment he thought Marla had spoken to him, but he knew it hadn’t been her. The voice belonged to a beautiful young woman. Her hair was long and blond; it almost looked white in the darkness. She had a subtle glow around her . . . like an angel. Her eyes were covered with dark sunglasses, and he knew—like how you knew things in dreams—that she was blind, but in a way, she could still see things.

“I’m so sorry,” the woman said. “They’re gone.”

“What do you mean? They’re dead?”

Josh heard a noise coming from Marla’s bedroom. Maybe it was Marla and Kyle. Maybe they were hiding in there, waiting for him to come and save them. He looked at her bedroom door. It was closed. There were four fingermarks of blood on the white door, like someone had tried to hold on to the door while being dragged away.

“That’s not them,” the woman said.

He looked back at her. She stood in the same spot, staring at him from behind her dark glasses, even though he knew she couldn’t see.

“Who’s in there?” Josh asked.

“Something bad . . . worse than you can imagine,” she told him.

Worse than these rippers? he almost asked, but didn’t. Instead he asked: “Who are you?”

The door of the apartment crashed in, almost coming completely off of its hinges. The rippers practically fell over top of each other trying to get to him.

Josh just stood there. Where else was he going to go now? Marla and Kyle were gone . . . what else did he have to live for?

He looked back at the beautiful woman one last time before the rippers pounced on him, but she wasn’t there anymore.

Josh jolted awake, sitting up on the couch. His skin felt clammy and tingly. He was trembling, and for just a second he thought he was going through withdrawals again. This was what it felt like, and he’d had some crazy nightmares while trying to get clean and sober. His head was throbbing again. It felt like he had a sinus headache and his face felt a little swollen.

He sat on the edge of the couch. He needed his feet on the floor. The nightmare had been terrible. It had been so real, like he’d actually been there in Marla’s apartment. And then there was that woman, the angelic woman who glowed slightly. Had she been some kind of angel?

If she was some kind of angel, then who had been behind the bedroom door? Something bad, the woman had said. Worse than you can imagine.

He needed to stand up. He needed to move around. He needed to go outside for a moment, get some fresh air. It might not be a good idea to be outside right now—there was a curfew clearly posted in the list of rules on their kitchen wall—but he needed to be outside in the air for a moment. It felt like he couldn’t breathe correctly in here, like he couldn’t draw an entire breath in. He’d never been claustrophobic; his many stays in jail cells had never really bothered him. He’d even spent thirty days in the “hole,” and that hadn’t really bothered him too much either. But now he felt claustrophobic, panicky, jittery. He needed to get outside for a moment.

Trying to be as quiet as possible, Josh slipped his feet into his new hiking boots. They were dark brown instead of white like his sneakers. The new pants he’d selected earlier in the day were also black jeans and his hoodie was somewhere between a black and a very dark blue. Maybe he’d been subconsciously selecting dark clothing for his eventual escape from this place.

Maybe he could scout this place out right now, see what their best escape route might be. His roomies seemed intent on making an escape, but Josh also believed those three were more talkers than doers.

It was chilly outside but not freezing. Actually it felt a little refreshing at the moment. He’d always liked the cold weather. Growing up in Florida, there wasn’t much of a change in the weather in the different seasons, and even though practically everyone griped about the cold and snow up here, he kind of liked it.

Josh listened for a minute at the rear of their trailer, but he didn’t hear any patrol vehicles. It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to get stopped by a patrol; he was fairly sure that there would be no second chances at this place.

It was pretty dark, and there were plenty of shadows to keep him hidden, but the street lights provided enough light for him to see where he was going. He moved like a cat in the darkness. Years ago he had helped some of his buddies burglarize houses (always when the people were gone), and he’d learned how to sneak through the night without a sound.

After he’d gone past a few rows of trailers, he stopped. He heard the sound of a patrol vehicle coming his way. He crouched down next to the trailer he was by and watched the street as the Jeep passed. Two men were in the Jeep, one driving and the other one holding a rifle. They didn’t seem to be actively searching, and they weren’t sweeping the trailers with a spotlight or anything. Maybe they were complacent, certain that none of these men would dare break curfew or try to escape, like they were content that the wild ones had already been weeded out.

He watched the Jeep disappear past the front of the trailer on one of the many dirt trails through this place and then he made himself wait a long moment, listening as the sound of the Jeep’s motor faded away. Maybe it would be a good idea to learn the schedule of their patrols.

If we aren’t prisoners here, he wondered, then why are these armed soldiers actively patrolling this camp and its perimeter?

Josh darted across the dirt trail to the next rows of trailers. He wasn’t really sure where he was going, but he realized that he was working his way towards the chain-link fence that surrounded this place. Who knows? Maybe tonight was his chance to escape. The sooner he was out of here, the sooner he could get to Marla and Kyle.

He was in the shadows of another trailer, working his way down to the end of it when he froze.

“I see I’m not the only one who can’t sleep,” a voice said from the darkness.

CHAPTER 16

Josh whirled around, not sure if he was going to run or fight, not sure of anything, just needing to see who had spoken to him.

A thousand thoughts buzzed through his mind. He thought of the dream he’d had earlier, of the blind woman who had spoken in Marla’s apartment, startling him. But this was a man’s voice. Was it one of the guards? Had one of the men from the Jeep seen him and circled back, sneaking up behind him?

“It’s okay,” the man said as he walked closer.

Josh let out a held breath. Something about the man’s voice was non-threatening, setting him at ease almost instantly. For a split second he thought it was Gardner’s voice, that slow, methodical cadence he had to his speech.

But it wasn’t Gardner.

The man revealed himself, walking out of the shadows into a splash of moonlight. He was about Josh’s height and build, but a few years older. He had dark hair that was a little long, and there was at least a week’s growth of stubble on his face. His hands were shoved into the pockets of his hoodie sweatshirt, a gray one. His stance was relaxed, but there was a subtle tension in him, like he could move quickly if he needed to, like a spring suddenly uncoiling. The man had large eyes, almost doe-eyed, but they were watchful. He seemed to be trying to present himself as some harmless stranger, but Josh could tell that he was someone to be wary of.

“It’s okay,” the man said again with no smile, no movement at all. “I’m just out for a walk, too.”

Josh nodded. “Where were you headed?”

The man didn’t answer for a moment, seeming to mull over Josh’s question, deciding how much information to reveal. They were two strangers in a standoff, each of them trying to decide how much to trust the other. “I’m from Trailer 220,” he finally said.

Josh didn’t believe him, so he made up his own number. “I’m from 137.”

“I’m Ethan.”

“Good to meet you, Ethan,” Josh said, but he didn’t offer his own name. He glanced back at the way he’d come, the deep shadows between the two trailers painting the ground black. He felt a little exposed here at the backs of these trailers, standing in this large grassy area between the rows of trailers, in this wash of moonlight beyond the safety of the shadows.

“I should really get going,” Josh said.

“I was in the cafeteria earlier,” Ethan said. “I heard you asking Fincher about someone.”

“Fincher?”

“That tall, thin man who was questioning you.”

Josh remembered.

“It seemed like you were looking for someone.”

“Yeah. I was looking for a guy I met when we were detained at the high school. His name was . . . I mean his name is Gardner. I don’t know his first name. He’s an older guy. Maybe in his early fifties.”

Ethan just nodded, still not moving at all.

Josh began to get the feeling that Ethan was some kind of mole sent out at night to catch people snooping around, ferreting information out of them before calling the suspect in. He wasn’t dressed in fatigues and he didn’t seem to have a weapon on him, but he might have something in the pockets of his hoodie where his hands were shoved into.

“Maybe he was infected,” Ethan said, but it didn’t sound like he believed his own suggestion.

“I don’t think so,” Josh answered.

Ethan was quiet, not asking for a reason why Josh believed that. “You think something else happened,” he finally said—a statement, not a question.

Josh nodded slightly. “I don’t know what happened. I just wanted to find him. That’s all. I want to make sure he’s okay.”

“Do you know what’s going on out there in the world?” Ethan gestured with a nod of his head in the direction where the fence would be in the distance, hidden in the darkness.

Josh was surprised by the question. “I heard it’s some kind of pandemic. That’s what we were told at the orientation.”

“It’s kind of like a plague,” Ethan said.

“What do you mean by that?”

“It’s kind of like a plague. An ancient one. A biblical kind. Something brought down by God Himself to the unjust. Like Noah and the flood. Like Sodom and Gomorrah. Every so often humanity gets too far off course, becomes so wicked and irredeemable, so far from what God had intended, that He needs to reset everything. He needs to start over . . . wipe most everything away and start over.”

Josh was beginning to get a weird feeling from Ethan, and dread wormed its way through his insides. He was suddenly tense, his nerve-endings buzzing, adrenaline beginning to course though his veins and muscles.

“They’ve taken some of the people here,” Ethan said.

Josh thought of the crazy man who had attacked him in the gymnasium bathrooms. Could Ethan be just as crazy as that guy was? Could Ethan be displaying the first symptoms of this ripper disease? Or was he just a guy out walking around while having some kind of nervous breakdown? Maybe he had lost track of his family, his friends, everyone he knew. Maybe his world was falling apart like Josh’s was.

Even though he felt like running, Josh waited for another moment in front of Ethan. He needed to know more about what he’d just said. “What do you mean, they’ve taken some people?”

“They’ve taken some of the people here, some of them by random. They’re experimenting on them.”

Was that what had happened to Gardner? Had he been taken away for experiments? Was that what was going to happen to all of them eventually? “How do you know that?”

“Why do you think we’re all here? You think they rounded us up for our protection?”

Josh didn’t answer Ethan’s questions. “You seem to know a lot about what’s going on here.” His earlier suspicion about this guy being some kind of mole came back to him. He needed to be careful what he said to this guy. But he also needed to know more.

“Are you planning to escape?” Ethan asked.

Josh felt his balls shrivel and try to crawl up inside of him. His body tensed even more, his heartbeat thudding inside his chest. He felt a prickly sensation on his skin—not unlike the feeling he’d had when he’d woken up from the nightmare earlier. But he tried to stay calm. “Why do you ask that?”

Ethan didn’t answer. He just stared at Josh in the darkness, standing motionless like he was wrestling with his own decisions, weighing his own options.

Josh felt tense, not sure if he was going to have to fight or run.

“I want to show you something,” Ethan said, and he started walking away like he expected Josh to follow him.

CHAPTER 17

This guy could be crazy, Josh thought as he watched Ethan walk away. Or worse, he could be a mole trying to get Josh captured by the guards.

But Josh found himself following Ethan.

“What do you want to show me?” Josh asked when he’d caught up to Ethan, walking beside him.

“Do you wonder why the women and children aren’t here? Do you wonder why all of you are separated from them?”

Josh didn’t answer.

“They need you guys to work,” Ethan said. “They need to keep this machine running as long as they can, but the machine is breaking down, and it’s not going to ever be fixed again.”

Josh still didn’t say anything. He wasn’t even sure if he knew exactly what Ethan was talking about—Ethan seemed to know certain things, but he also seemed to be rambling. For all Josh knew, he was just wandering around out here with some crazy guy whose mind had finally cracked.

“The machine’s broken now,” Ethan said. “And they know it.”

“What do you want to show me?” Josh asked again.

“Proof,” he answered. “Proof that they know the machine is broken. Proof that they don’t know or even understand what’s really going on. They’re just guessing, and they’re experimenting on us so they can learn.” He stopped walking and looked up at the moonlight, exhaling a plume of warm breath in front of his face. For just a moment it looked like his eyes had glittered in the moon’s light. “I can show you what’s coming soon.”

Ethan’s words were chilling Josh more than the cold air. There was a sense of doom in Ethan’s words, in his voice.

They hadn’t started walking again. It almost seemed like Ethan was waiting for Josh’s permission to continue. And maybe he was.

“Okay,” Josh said, breathing out his own plume into the night. “Show me.”

Ethan started walking again without another word, and Josh fell in step beside him. They kept close to a lot of the trailers, staying in the deeper shadows that they made. Neither of them made a sound, both of them creatures of the night by experience and instinct.

Soon the trailers gave way to other buildings at the far end of the camp, closer to the back fence. Josh saw the cafeteria kitchen where he was supposed to report to tomorrow morning—in a few hours, really. But they moved away from those buildings, towards the northwest corner of the camp, walking beside the wall of a block building that was dark and looked abandoned. Ethan, in the lead, came to the corner of the building and stopped. He put a hand up, signaling Josh to stop. Then he waved him forward.

Josh realized that he could hear the sound of machinery in the distance. He was at the corner a second later, and he saw the lights of tractors and backhoes in the distance, moving dirt around in the field closer to the fence. There was also a row of buildings in the distance, the windows lit up.

“This is what you wanted to show me?” Josh asked.

Ethan didn’t say anything.

“What are they doing?” Josh asked.

“They’re digging giant holes.”

“For what?” But as soon as he asked the question the answer came to him. But no, that couldn’t be . . .

“The plague has surfaced here,” Ethan said. “Not many know it yet, but they’ve found some infected ones here. They’ve been as careful as they can be, but people have gotten infected here. Even some of their own. Even some who have worn gas masks and gloves.”

Josh stared at the tractors working in the distance, wondering why they were working at night. Maybe so the other men wouldn’t see. In the machines’ lights, Josh saw a few men standing there. They seemed to be directing the men in the tractors. A front-end loader pulled up with its bucket full of something. Josh wasn’t sure, and he couldn’t trust his eyes at this distance in the darkness, but he could have sworn the bucket was full of dead bodies.

“See those three buildings?” Ethan asked, pointing. “That’s where the scientists experiment on the men, selecting them at random. Most weren’t infected at first, but some of them are now. People are starting to turn in this camp. And it’s going to happen quickly.”

Josh looked at Ethan. “How do you know all of this?”

“They’ve been experimenting on the infected,” Ethan said, ignoring Josh’s question. “They’ve been trying to figure out what’s going on, but they don’t understand the disease. There’s no sign of bacterial or viral infections. No prions or pathogens of any kind.”

“What are you trying to say? This isn’t really a disease?”

“It’s a biblical plague, and there’s nothing they can do about it.”

Josh began to get the feeling that Ethan knew some things about what was really going on in this camp, but he also believed that Ethan was incorporating his own beliefs and theories into it. Perhaps Ethan’s mind was beginning to crack. Maybe he was showing the early signs of this ripper disease that was going around. What symptoms had the doctor listed? Hallucinations, mood swings, confusion?

“How do you know so much about this?” Josh asked again, and he didn’t care if his tone was accusatory.

“I just do,” Ethan said, staring at him in the shadow of the building. “You need to leave. As soon as possible. Tomorrow, after your shift. The kitchen where you work is close to the fence.”

“How do you know where I’m working tomorrow?”

Ethan ignored the question like he didn’t have time to go into a long explanation. “There will be a long cut in the fence near the kitchen tomorrow. You walk straight out from the dumpsters, go about forty-five paces. It will be hard to see the cut in the chain-link, but it will be there. You’ll see the slit in the fence when you push on it.”

Josh wondered again if this whole thing was a set-up. But what else could he do? Just stay here and wait until another opportunity came up?

“I used to be one of them,” Ethan said. “I worked with the scientists here. You haven’t seen the scientists yet—they stay to themselves.”

And then it hit Josh like a boulder—everything Ethan was saying must be true.

“I don’t have the time to explain everything,” Ethan said. “Just please trust me. You need to get out of here. You get to that slit in the fence at exactly five o’clock tomorrow afternoon.”

“How am I supposed to know what time it is?”

Ethan reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a wristwatch. He handed it to Josh.

Josh took the watch. It was a gold watch on a gold band, and heavier than he had expected. He could hear it ticking slightly.

“It lights up,” Ethan told him. “Just press that button on the side.”

Josh pressed a small button and the face of the watch lit up with a greenish glow.

“The time is dead on,” Ethan said. “You wear that watch tomorrow, and exactly at five o’clock you get to the slit in the fence. The guards might see you, but if you’re quick, you can get outside the fence. Once you’re outside the fence, you run towards the woods. They won’t chase you once you’re outside the fence, once you get to those woods.”

Josh was going to ask why they wouldn’t chase him after he was outside the fence, but he didn’t. He’d already made up his mind that he was going to trust Ethan. What other choice did he have? This might be his only chance to get out of here and get back to Marla and Kyle.

Then his thoughts turned to his roomies. Was he supposed to tell them about this? How would he get the three of them to the cafeteria tomorrow at the end of his shift? None of them worked in the kitchen with him.

“You need to get back to your unit,” Ethan told Josh.

Josh nodded.

“And be careful tomorrow. You get out. You get as far from here as you can.”

Ethan walked with Josh to the other end of the building, but then Ethan started walking off in another direction. Josh began to walk back the way he had come, but then he turned and looked at Ethan. He wanted to ask him something before he got too far away.

“Why are you helping me?” Josh asked him.

Ethan took another two steps. For a second, Josh was sure that the man was going to ignore his question and keep on walking. But then he turned around and walked back towards him. He stopped when he was only a few feet away so his voice wouldn’t be overheard by the men in the trailers nearby. “Because I have to.”

Josh thought about asking Ethan what he meant by that, but he didn’t.

Ethan turned and walked away, blending in with the shadows of the trailers a moment later.

CHAPTER 18

Josh didn’t sleep well the rest of the night. It was a fitful sleep. He was in and out of dreams, and there were more nightmares. But at least he didn’t dream about the angelic blind woman or whatever horrible thing was waiting behind his sister’s bedroom door. He had tossed and turned all night, wondering if he should tell Wendell, Larry, and Miguel about the conversation he’d had with Ethan. He wasn’t sure if he should tell them what he’d seen last night or if he should tell them about the slit in the fence that Ethan had told him would be there at five o’clock this afternoon.

Part of Josh wanted to tell the three of them. He was sure they wanted to get back to their families as much as he did. But part of him also wondered if they might be liabilities. And he wondered how he was supposed to get all three of them to the kitchen at five o’clock without rousing suspicion from the guards and the other men.

But in the end he couldn’t turn his back on them; he decided to tell them everything.

As soon as the sun was up, Josh was off of his couch and dressed for work. He’d decided to wear the same black clothes he’d worn last night, including his hoodie. He wore the same hiking boots he’d worn last night—not the best shoes for work in a kitchen, but he wanted to be ready to flee just in case Ethan was telling the truth about the hole in the fence. He had the gold watch Ethan had given him stuffed down into his pants pocket.

His roomies came out of the back bedrooms a few minutes later, all of them dressed; they even had their shoes on. They were all ready to go to the cafeteria to eat breakfast, and from there Josh only had a short walk to the kitchen where he worked. Wendell, Larry, and Miguel would be off to their jobs.

“We need to leave today,” Josh told them as soon as they came out of their rooms.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Miguel asked.

“We need to leave today,” Josh said again.

Larry sighed. “We don’t even have a plan yet.”

“Hold on,” Wendell said, ever the moderator of the three. He looked at Josh. “Let’s hear him out.”

“I couldn’t sleep last night,” Josh told them. “I woke up from a nightmare, and I needed to get up and move around. So I went outside for a little bit. I went for a walk.”

“A walk?” Miguel asked in shock.

“Which we’re not supposed to do in the middle of the night,” Larry said, pointing over at the rules taped to the kitchen wall. “I think they were pretty clear about that.”

Josh stared at Larry’s droopy face. “Dude, do you want to escape this place or not?”

Larry just sighed again and looked to his roommates for help.

Josh wondered if Larry really wanted to escape or if he was just going along with Wendell and Miguel—a consummate follower.

“Let him finish,” Wendell said, seemingly a little annoyed by Larry’s interruptions.

Josh continued quickly. It was getting late, and they all needed to get to work. If they waited too long, they wouldn’t even have time to eat breakfast, and Josh planned on loading up on as much food as he could at breakfast and lunch, packing in as many calories as he could in case Ethan was telling the truth about the hole in the fence.

“So you couldn’t sleep,” Wendell said, making an exaggerated hurry-up motion with his hand like he was winding an invisible wheel.

“Yeah. I went outside, and I ran into this other guy walking around out there. He said his name was Ethan. He seemed weird at first, saying some strange things, but he also seemed to know a lot about what’s going on around here.”

The three men just watched Josh.

“Ethan said that he saw me in the cafeteria yesterday looking for Gardner. I told him that I hadn’t been able to find my friend the whole time I’ve been here at this camp.”

Wendell nodded like he remembered the scene from the cafeteria yesterday.

“Gardner should be around here somewhere,” Josh continued. “He came from the same place I did, that high school gymnasium. He should’ve been on one of the buses.”

“Yeah, I thought we already went over all of this,” Miguel said.

“I know. But this Ethan guy said that maybe Gardner might have been infected with this disease that’s going around. The one they call the ripper disease.”

The three men nodded impatiently, eyes rolling, indicating that Josh was still going over previously covered ground.

“Well, Ethan said that maybe Gardner was taken away even if he wasn’t infected. He said that they are taking some of us randomly. Doing experiments on these guys here.”

That got their attention.

“No way, man,” Miguel said. “That guy’s wrong. Maybe they took your friend because he’s infected, but they’re not taking us. We’re not infected. They took blood samples from all of us. And they all came back negative.”

“Yeah, but Ethan said that they really don’t know what this disease is. They don’t even know how to identify it. There are no signs of viruses or bacteria. Nothing. That’s why they’re doing experiments on us. He also said that no matter how many precautions they have taken, some of the people here are turning. Even some of the soldiers who have worn gas masks and gloves the whole time are turning.”

“This Ethan guy might be lying,” Larry said. “He could be a mole for them. You think of that?”

Josh nodded. “It’s possible. But I don’t think so. He showed me something.”

“What?” Wendell asked. He seemed to be the most open of the three, the one who was the most willing to believe Josh.

“You can go look at it if they’ll let you near it. But I’m sure they only work at night.”

“What do you mean?” Wendell asked.

“Ethan showed me this place near three small buildings at the other side of the camp.”

“We’re not supposed to go to the other side of the camp,” Larry said. “Don’t you remember them telling you that when you got here?”

Josh didn’t respond to Larry. “There was this big field near the fence and those buildings,” Josh continued. “There were tractors and backhoes digging this big hole in the ground.”

“So,” Miguel snapped. “So they dug a big hole in the ground.”

“In the middle of the night,” Josh reminded him.

“So they dug a big hole in the middle of the night.”

“In one of the buckets of a front-end loader, I could have sworn I saw dead bodies,” Josh said. “They’re digging mass graves out there.” He almost asked them where they thought all of these clothes and supplies had come from, but didn’t. Even he didn’t like the thought that he might be wearing a dead man’s clothes.

“Dead bodies,” Larry said. “You’re saying you saw dead bodies.”

“I couldn’t say for sure,” Josh said, “but it sure looked like it.”

“Well, that’s not so strange,” Wendell said. “It is possible that there are infected among us, and they are weeded out when we first arrive here. That’s why they take the blood samples. And when they find infected ones, maybe they just kill them. And then they bury them so the disease won’t spread. Maybe they disinfect the area somehow.”

“But that’s not what Ethan said. He said that they can’t identify this disease in the blood. He said they don’t even know what they’re doing.” He decided not to add Ethan’s ramblings about a biblical plague and God starting things over. “But don’t you see? If they can’t figure out who’s infected and who’s not, if they can’t figure out who’s going to turn, then they’re going to kill all of us. This whole FEMA camp,” Josh said, using air quotes when he said the words FEMA camp, “is just a cover for their experiments, but they don’t know what the hell they’re doing.”

“This is crazy talk,” Miguel said. But he looked scared for the first time.

“You guys said you wanted to escape,” Josh told them. “What better reasons do you need than these?”

“So this guy told you that the big holes they’re digging are for all of us,” Wendell said.

“He didn’t say that exactly. But he said we’re here to keep working, keep the machine running for as long as possible.”

“Machine running?” Wendell asked.

Josh shook his head a little, dismissing Wendell’s question. He didn’t want to let them know that Ethan might be a little crazy. “I think he was using some kind of metaphor or something, like we’re parts of the machine, and the experiments are the machine. I mean we still make stuff here, but I think it’s all a cover for the experiments.”

Wendell nodded like that made sense.

“And you believe all of this shit?” Miguel asked Wendell.

“There’s more,” Josh said. “Ethan told me that I needed to leave today. This afternoon. He told me that there would be a place in the fence near the back door of the kitchen with a slit in it so I can escape. He told me to go through the opening in the fence and run for the woods.”

The three men were silent for a long moment.

Here it was, the actual escape plan. Would they go for it, or would they scoff now, even with a plan in front of them?

“You think you can really trust this guy?” Wendell finally asked, but there was hope in his eyes.

“I don’t know,” Josh said. “But I’m going to try. I’m going crazy thinking about my sister and my nephew. I’m sure you guys are going just as crazy thinking about your families. If I thought they were going to let us out of here in a few days, I would try to wait it out. But I don’t think that’s what’s happening. I think there are bad things going on around here, and I’m going to take my chance at leaving. I’d rather die trying to escape than wait around to be experimented on.”

“I don’t believe it,” Miguel said, throwing his hands up in a mock surrender. “This Ethan guy could be a mole, just like Larry said. Hell, he,” and he pointed a finger right at Josh, “could be a mole for all we know.”

“Yeah,” Larry agreed. “He could be setting us up. Trying to get us in trouble.”

Josh sighed. He realized now that he shouldn’t have even said anything to these guys.

“What about this Ethan guy?” Miguel asked. “Is he leaving with you today at five?”

Josh didn’t answer because he wasn’t sure.

“Did he say he was going to meet you there?” Miguel pressed.

“He didn’t say, but he might be there. I don’t know.”

“And why do you have to be there right at five o’clock?” Miguel continued with his interrogation. “That doesn’t seem a little suspicious to you? Why can’t you leave any time you want to?”

“I don’t know,” Josh snapped.

“Smells like a set-up to me,” Miguel said, looking at Wendell and Larry with smug satisfaction.

“Hold on, guys,” Wendell said in his calm, reasonable voice. “Let’s think about this for a minute. I mean, what do we have to lose? Why don’t we meet at the back of the kitchen this afternoon, go to the fence, see if the hole is there? If not, then maybe it was just some crazy guy feeding Josh a load of bullshit. But it’s worth a shot, isn’t it? What else have we come up with so far?”

“That’s what I’m going to do,” Josh said. “An hour before my shift is done, I’ll be heading to the fence. I’m going to take some trash out to the dumpsters and then I’m going to keep on walking.”

Wendell nodded. “I’ll be there, too.”

“How are you going to get out of work?” Larry asked.

“Yeah,” Miguel said. “I’m on the maintenance crew. I’m not going to be able to just walk away whenever I want to.”

“We don’t all have to go at the same time,” Josh said. “If no one sees either me or Wendell leaving, then the opening will still be there. You could even wait until the sun sets, or even go at night.”

The two men seemed to be considering the idea; perhaps liking the idea of someone testing the escape plan out before they had to do it.

Josh worried now that one of them might make a run for the fence before this afternoon and blow the whole thing. He was beginning to believe that Ethan had meant this information for him only, that he had selected him purposely, almost like he had been waiting out in the darkness, knowing that he would come along soon. And hadn’t he said as much? When Josh had asked Ethan why he was helping him, he’d said because he had to. But why?

“I’ll be there,” Wendell said, looking right at Josh. He looked at Larry and Miguel. “You two can be there if you want to, or you can wait until later like Josh suggested. Maybe that’s even better. Josh and I will go first, then you two can go later. But I’m going to try. I need to find my wife and kids. I . . . I have to.”

“And what are you two going to do if you go to the fence and there’s no opening there?” Miguel asked. “No opening, just guards waiting for you?”

“Then you two will know that it was all a set-up and to abort the plan,” Wendell said. “But I think Josh is right, it’s worth the risk. At least to me it is.”

CHAPTER 19

Josh worked all day in the kitchen. He got a forty-five minute break for lunch that he took in the cafeteria. He didn’t see his roomies in the cafeteria, but there weren’t a lot of men at that time in the cafeteria—maybe the kitchen crew ate at different times than a lot of the other men. Still, the lack of men in the cafeteria bothered him for some reason—it seemed like there were fewer people now. He shoveled down some bland food, eating the processed junk, thinking of it only as calories for later.

He was on dish duty when he went back to the kitchen, washing the stacks of pots, pans, trays, utensils, and cups in three deep metal sinks. The water was cold and the industrial-sized bottle of dishwashing liquid didn’t seem to work too well on the oily pots and pans, but Josh didn’t care, hopefully he wouldn’t be eating from these dishes ever again after today.

As he did the dishes, Josh noticed that some of the guys from the morning shift hadn’t returned after lunch. He was beginning to get a sick feeling that some of the men were already being rounded up, that whatever the agenda was at this camp, it was being ramped up—the machine was speeding up now. He thought that it would only be a matter of time before all hell broke loose here.

The afternoon hours dragged by. Josh was tired from barely sleeping last night, but he was also wired with adrenaline just thinking about a possible escape. He prayed that Ethan had been telling the truth.

An hour later, about ten minutes until five o’clock, Josh and another man who called himself Peanut (without really explaining why) collected some bags of trash and took them out to the large metal dumpster, which looked more like a construction dumpster than a restaurant dumpster. Peanut was on his way back to the door that led inside the kitchen, and Josh was hanging behind, picking up any spilled trash around the dumpster.

“You coming?” Peanut asked at the doorway.

“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” Josh told him. “I want to get some of this cleaned up. Can’t believe these guys can miss a dumpster this big.”

Peanut just shook his head and went inside. He closed the door almost all the way.

Josh picked up a few scraps of trash near the front of the dumpster, taking his time, glancing at the far corner of the kitchen building, hoping to see Wendell and the others any minute now. But he couldn’t wait too long. He pulled his gold wristwatch out of the pocket of his pants and checked the time. It was almost five o’clock now. Almost time to go.

“Josh.”

Josh whirled around towards the back of the dumpster from where the whisper had come. A second later Wendell stepped out from behind the dumpster with a big grin on his face.

“How long were you back there?” Josh asked him.

“Quite a while,” he said, still smiling. “I didn’t go back to work after lunch. I came here and waited.”

Josh wondered if some of the guards were looking for Wendell right now.

“I don’t think they’ll miss me,” Wendell said, as if reading Josh’s mind. “It seemed like a lot of guys didn’t show up for work this morning, and I’m not so sure the guards are keeping an accurate count.”

“Okay,” Josh said, hoping Wendell was right about that.

Wendell stood there, still smiling, practically beaming now in the late afternoon light.

“What is it?” Josh asked him.

“I found the opening in the fence.”

“You did?”

He gestured with his head to the left, like he didn’t want to point. “It’s down there, about twenty yards away. I dug at the ground with the heel of my shoe, digging a little hole to mark where it is.”

So, Ethan had kept his word. The slit in the fence was right where he said it would be.

“Someone must’ve cut the chain-links with a wire cutter,” Wendell said. “They’re clean cuts. You can’t even see them unless you really look for them.”

Josh wanted to ask Wendell why he was still there behind the dumpster if he knew the tear was in the fence; he wanted to ask him why he hadn’t left already. But he didn’t want to insult the man. Obviously Wendell had waited for him and the others.

“What about Miguel and Larry?” Josh asked.

“I don’t know,” Wendell said. “We can’t go look for them now. We gave them a chance to get here. I really don’t think they want to take the chance. But when we don’t come back tonight, they’ll know that there really is a hole in the fence, a way to escape.”

Or they’ll think we got taken. But Josh didn’t say that. And Wendell was right, they had given Miguel and Larry a chance to get here; they couldn’t worry about them now.

“You ready?” Wendell asked. He looked excited, but he also looked nervous.

Josh nodded, glancing quickly at the wristwatch Ethan had given him last night.

“Hey!” someone yelled.

Josh and Wendell turned and looked at the approaching man from the other side of the kitchen building. For a moment Josh’s heart froze in his chest, but then he saw that it was Larry running towards them, running as fast as he could.

Larry was out of breath when he met up with them by the dumpster.

“Where’s Miguel?” Wendell asked.

Larry shook his head no, still trying to catch his breath. “I . . . I asked about him, but the guards told me to keep moving.”

Josh couldn’t help believing that it was a lie.

“And . . .” Larry continued and then inhaled a few huge gulps of air. He was definitely out of shape, and Josh wondered how this man was going to be able to run all the way to the woods. “And those guards are wearing gas masks again. And rubber gloves.”

Wendell just nodded knowingly.

“I think they’re beginning to round some of us up,” Josh told them. “A lot of the guys on my shift didn’t come back after lunch.”

“Hey, listen,” Larry said, looking right at Josh. “I went out to the northwest area where you said, to those three buildings you were talking about. And I saw a lot of tractors out there in that field, digging big holes in the ground. You were right. That guy Ethan you talked to last night was right.” He hesitated for a moment. “So, was he right about the hole in the fence?”

Wendell couldn’t help smiling, but it was a bittersweet smile since only three of them were here instead of four. “Yes. It’s there.”

Larry sighed with relief and looked like he was going to cry. “Thank God.”

“We should get going,” Josh said. He looked back at the door that led inside the back of the kitchen—it was still open a crack just like Peanut had left it. But it would only be a matter of time before Peanut, or someone else, came looking to see what was taking him so long.

“Wait,” Larry said. He glanced back the way he’d come.

“Wait for what?” Josh asked. “It’s almost five o’clock.”

“I . . . I just want to catch my breath for a minute.” Again, Larry looked back the way he’d come.

And then it hit Josh—Larry was waiting for someone. Was he waiting for Miguel? No, he’d just said that he couldn’t find Miguel. Larry was waiting for someone else. Josh looked down the fence line. He couldn’t see the dugout area where Wendell had marked the opening in the fence, but Wendell had said that it was only about twenty yards away. That wasn’t too far. Even if it was twenty-five or thirty yards, it still wasn’t too far. But it would be like running a mile if the guards came.

And that’s what was happening right now, wasn’t it?

Josh thought about running, but he knew Wendell wouldn’t go with him—he wouldn’t leave Larry behind. And Josh wasn’t going to leave Wendell behind, either. Wendell had had his chance to leave earlier, and he had stayed to wait for the rest of them. The least Josh could do was return that courtesy. But first he needed to make Wendell realize that Larry had already double-crossed them. He wasn’t sure if Larry had sold Miguel out, or if they were working together, but he was sure that he had told the guards about their plan.

“What happened to Miguel?” Josh asked Larry.

That got Larry’s attention. “What?”

“You didn’t try to find Miguel, did you?”

“What are you talking about?” Larry asked, trying to sound offended, but he wasn’t pulling it off.

“You sold Miguel out. And then you sold us out. You’re doing whatever you can to save your ass.”

“What are you talking about, Josh?” Wendell said, ready to jump to his friend’s defense.

Except Larry wasn’t Wendell’s friend; he was just a guy Wendell had met a few days ago.

“He ratted all of us out to save his ass,” Josh said. “He’s waiting for someone to come. Waiting for the guards. Can’t you see that?”

Wendell looked at Larry, then at the corner of the kitchen building from where he’d come, then he looked back at Larry again. “How did you get out of work?”

“What?” Larry asked, trying to smile. “What kind of question is that?”

Josh could tell that Wendell was beginning to see it now, but it might be too late. “We gotta go, Wendell,” Josh said. “They’re coming.”

As if on cue, soldiers ran out from behind the corner of the kitchen building from where Larry had come moments ago. They wore gas masks, rubber gloves, and their camo fatigues. They were all armed with rifles. “Stop right there!” one of them yelled in his Darth Vader voice.

CHAPTER 20

Josh didn’t hesitate. He grabbed Wendell’s arm and pulled him, knocking the tall man off balance just a little. For just a second Josh didn’t think Wendell was going to run, that he was going to wait a little longer as he tried to process what was happening. But then he fell in step right beside him, both of them running down the fence line.

“There they are!” Larry shouted. “Just like I told you!”

Just then, exactly at five o’clock, an explosion went off somewhere else in the camp, just a momentary distraction for the soldiers, but it was just the few seconds that Josh and Wendell needed.

“Get them!” Larry yelled. “They’re trying to escape!”

Josh didn’t look behind him as he ran. He kept his eyes focused on the fence, looking for the dugout area that Wendell had created. Even when the soldiers began firing their rifles, he didn’t look back. Even when he heard Larry scream when he was mowed down with bullets, he didn’t look back. If he was going to get shot, he didn’t want to see it coming.

Wendell pointed at the fence, yelling. “There it is!”

But Josh had already seen the dugout area on the ground, and he could see the tear in the chain-link fence. He was there first, and he squeezed through the opening. He turned to help Wendell and then watched as Wendell was rocked forward into the chain-link fence from the bullets. His eyes were wide with shock as he clutched at the chain-link, his fingers grabbing on to it. Maybe he was wondering how things had gotten so crazy, how he was going to die in some FEMA camp, shot for trying to escape.

Josh couldn’t save Wendell—he knew that. Blood was already spreading out all over the front of him from the exit wounds. He might already be dead, but his body was propped up against the fence, blocking the shots and blocking a little of the soldiers’ view of Josh. It was late afternoon and overcast, the light not ideal for shooting at targets. The soldiers were running forward and trying to shoot at the same time with their heavy rubber gloves. And these soldiers didn’t seem like they were the best shots in the world. All of those factors together might have saved Josh’s life as he ran through the tall grass and weeds, trying to disappear in the gloom, racing towards the trees in the distance.

The guards won’t chase you. That’s what Ethan had told him last night. As long as he was outside the fence, the guards wouldn’t come after him. But they were still shooting at him. He not only heard the crack of the rifle shots, he thought he could actually feel the bullets whizzing by him.

Josh spotted a group of rocks at the top of a slight rise in the ground. Once he was out here, he realized that the land was hillier than he realized, with slight rises and dips. The rocks might be his only protection. He dove behind them. He stayed low behind the group of rocks that were only about four feet high, just enough to shield him. He waited there, not daring to peek around the rocks at the soldiers, praying that Ethan was right about the guards not chasing him once he was outside the fence.

Ethan had been right about everything else so far.

The bullets continued, some of them pinging off the grouping of large rocks. He still didn’t want to take a chance on peeking at the fence in the distance to see if the soldiers had moved Wendell’s body out the way and were coming through.

Another explosion sounded from somewhere inside the FEMA camp, and suddenly there were fewer gunshots, and then none. Maybe they didn’t want to waste their ammunition on one person escaping, or maybe they were going to check out the explosions.

Josh risked a peek around the rock he hid behind. It was already so much darker out here just in these last few minutes, the sun down behind the tops of the trees of the woods now. The wind had picked up, the breeze colder now than before.

The guards hadn’t come through the opening in the fence. Wendell’s body was crumpled up there at the bottom of the fence, just a dark shape in the gloom now. It looked like the guards had moved on to other matters, Wendell’s body forgotten. Josh was sure that all hell was breaking loose now inside the camp. The soldiers were no longer pretending to be keeping those men there for their own good; it was probably going to be a mass extermination now. Maybe their experiments had failed. Maybe they were all just giving up now.

Josh saw a spiral of smoke in the sky above the camp. The explosion. Josh couldn’t help but wonder if Ethan hadn’t been behind that explosion. Maybe that was the reason he’d wanted Josh to wait until exactly five o’clock to leave.

Why me? he thought. What had made Ethan talk to him about all of this? He still couldn’t help feeling like all of this had been some kind of destiny—something he usually didn’t believe in. It had been the nightmare with the blind woman in it and the horrible thing that waited behind the bedroom door that had woken him up; the dream had caused him to want to go outside. It was almost like Ethan had waited in the darkness for hours, waiting for Josh to come along so he could tell him about what was really going on in the camp, and tell him how to escape, show him the machine as it was breaking down.

Or maybe Ethan had just been waiting for anyone to come along, and it had been just a big coincidence that it was him.

Josh wondered if Ethan had crafted his own escape plan, but for some reason he didn’t think so—he felt that Ethan was going down with the ship, somehow atoning for the sins he had committed inside that camp while working with the scientists. Or maybe he knew he was turning.

He got to his feet when it was almost dark. He wanted to make it to the woods before it got too dark to see. There was a nearly full moon tonight, but with this cloud cover there might not be that much light. And he still wasn’t sure if those guards might come after him. They might drive a Jeep and look for him, or come with dogs (even though Josh hadn’t seen a single dog at the camp).

He got to his feet, suddenly aware of how much the temperature had dropped, glad that he had his black hoodie on. He looked down and noticed that he still had his ID hanging around his neck on the blue string. He unzipped his hoodie a little and tore the ID off of him, tossing it down in the grass. Then he zipped his hoodie back up and pulled up the hood to protect his ears against the cold and disguise him a little better in the darkness, and then he started marching towards the woods.

CHAPTER 21

It was five hours into the night when Josh came across a house in a clearing just beyond the edge of the woods. He had trekked through the woods in those last five hours, only stopping twice to rest for a few minutes. He jumped at every sound, imagining the guards coming to look for him. But then he imagined the rippers, picturing them like the zombies in Kyle’s favorite video game.

He was cold now, shivering uncontrollably. He’d been studying the house for nearly fifteen minutes now, crouched down and peeking around the trunk of a tree. The house, and a building in the distance that must be some kind of shed, were both completely dark. A small car and a truck—some kind of SUV—were parked in the driveway in front of the garage. The concrete driveway ended at a dirt trail that disappeared through the woods at the other side of the clearing, a road leading out of here. Josh watched the windows of the black house, looking for any sources of light like candlelight or lanterns, but he hadn’t seen anything in the last fifteen minutes. But that didn’t mean that there weren’t people inside watching him from those dark windows, people with guns.

Everything was quiet all around him, except for the occasional night sounds in the woods: the fluttering of an owl’s wings, the skittering of some kind of rodent along the forest floor, the chilly breeze blowing through the branches and rustling the leaves. The cloud cover had receded and the nearly full moon and stars were bright enough to provide a surprising amount of light once Josh got to this clearing.

He was still shaking from the cold, but part of his trembling could be his nerves getting to him. He pulled the gold wristwatch Ethan had given him out of his pocket and pressed the little button at the edge of the dial to illuminate it. He was behind the tree now as he looked at the watch, but he still cupped it in his hands, hiding the tiny amount of green light it put off. It wasn’t even eleven o’clock yet, but it felt so late. He was so tired; he was exhausted.

Was the house empty? It was hard to say. The two vehicles in the driveway was a good sign that someone might be there. But they could have left in other vehicles. Or they could have left with someone else. But if they were home, there was a pretty good chance they were armed.

He didn’t know what to do.

It would probably be better to inspect the house in the morning, when he could see better, but he didn’t think he could stay out here in these woods all night—it was still so long until dawn. It was time to make a decision, the cold was really starting to seep into his bones now, and he needed to move; it felt like his body was going to seize up and quit working soon.

He decided to take a chance on the house. He would peek in the garage windows and check the side door to see if it was locked. He wanted to stay away from the house windows until he was certain no one was home.

After a quick prayer, he crept out of the woods and darted across the matted-down, crinkly grass of the side lawn. He felt exposed out here in the open yard for the few seconds it took him to get to the wall of the garage. He expected to hear shouts of alarm or a gunshot at any moment. But nothing happened. He made it to the garage that jutted off of the front of the house, flattening himself against the wall. He waited there for a moment, listening, getting his breathing under control again. He wasn’t too far from the garage window. He moved down towards it, then cupped his hands to the sides of his face and peered inside.

Nothing but blackness—it was too hard to make anything out inside.

He moved down to the front of the garage and peeked around the corner. The vehicles on the concrete driveway were bathed in the milky moonlight, their windshields dark, the metal cold and gleaming. Everything was still quiet. No dogs were barking, thank God. He could go and see if the doors of the vehicles were unlocked. If he couldn’t get inside the garage, then he might try the car or the truck, anything to get out of the freezing wind for a while. If both vehicles were locked, then he might move on down the dirt trail into the woods. Maybe he would come across another house.

Josh turned around and went back to the garage window. He could definitely climb through the window if he could get it open. He pulled up on the window but it wasn’t budging. He didn’t have anything to pry it open with, and now he wished he would have taken a knife or some kind of utensil from the kitchen before he ran away this afternoon.

As he tried to force the window open, he heard a twig snapping somewhere behind him. He turned around, expecting to see the burly homeowner dressed in camo fatigues and netting with twigs poking up from his hat, a shotgun in his hands, a smile of bliss on his bearded face, so happy that he finally got to shoot something besides a deer.

But no one was there.

Josh rubbed his hands together, trying to warm them up. He crept down the lawn beside the wall, keeping in the house’s shadow. He came to the door that led inside the garage. He tried the doorknob, not really expecting it to be unlocked, but it turned easily in his hand.

He froze with the doorknob still clenched in his hand. He couldn’t believe his luck, but if anyone needed a lucky break in these last few days, it was him. He gently pushed the door and hoped the weather-stripping around the door wouldn’t make that sucking sound, which would probably be an amazingly loud sound in the night’s silence.

The door opened easily and soundlessly. It seemed newer. In fact, this whole house seemed to have been built recently. He stood in the open doorway, still ready if the homeowner was there in the garage waiting for him. He’d already rehearsed a speech in his mind about being cold and hungry, trying to make it down to Pittsburgh to find his family. But he didn’t think anyone would care about his sob story. They would probably just shoot him before he even got a few words out, the shotgun blast the last thing he saw in his life.

There didn’t seem to be anyone in the garage. His eyes were adjusting quickly to the darkness, and already he was making out objects all around the large room. To his right was the wall separating the garage from the house, a door that was painted white led into the interior of the home with two wooden steps in front of it. To the right of the door was a stacked washer and dryer combo. To the left of the door was a wall of metal shelves crammed full of typical garage stuff: sports equipment, tools, building supplies, holiday decorations, and other odds and ends.

There was no vehicle parked inside the garage because the middle of it was taken up with a variety of exercise and weightlifting equipment. There was a big weight bench, a squat rack, another bench with a leg curl on it, a multi-station exercise machine closer to the big door of the garage.

Great, this homeowner probably looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger or something.

His heart jumped when he saw a body hanging closer to the front of the garage, but then he realized it was just a punching bag.

Maybe the homeowner was also a trained boxer or some other kind of martial artist as well as a bodybuilder—that would be nice.

There were rows of cabinets on both sides of the longer walls of the garage, the countertops cluttered with all kinds of stuff that Josh couldn’t make out in the darkness.

At least everything was quiet, and he already felt warmer now that he was out of the wind. He closed the door quietly but didn’t lock it. He moved deeper into the garage, walking over to the metal shelves. There was a refrigerator on the other side of the shelves. The electric would probably be out, but there might still be some drinks inside. Just the thought of it made him realize how thirsty he was.

He stood in front of the refrigerator and saw that there was a little space between the fridge and the wall that he might be able to crawl into and hide. He went back to the shelves and found a stack of towels closer to the washer and dryer. He took the towels with him and set them down next to the refrigerator, and then he opened the door to the fridge as quietly as he could.

There was a gallon of water inside and he took that out. There were also dozens of cans inside. Beer? Maybe. Or sodas. But he didn’t dare open one of those—it would be too loud.

He opened the water and sipped it. Warm, but it tasted okay. He drank down a few more swallows and screwed the cap back on.

After setting the gallon of water near the refrigerator door, he got his “bed” ready, spreading towels out on the floor of the little cubby space. He wadded one towel up and used it as a pillow. He sat down in the cubby space; it was cramped but cozy. He leaned against the block wall. He thought he’d felt some cobwebs, but he didn’t even care. He closed his eyes for a moment, just glad to be inside.

He listened as he sat there, but he still didn’t hear any noises coming from inside the house. Maybe no one was here. Still, it felt strange—something felt off here and he couldn’t tell what it was.

If he could just sleep for a few hours and get out of here without anyone knowing, then he could move on down the road in the morning. His back and throat were still a little sore, and he had a slight headache. Now that his thirst was sated, he felt hungry. But there was nothing he could do about that right now. He closed his eyes again, and he wondered if he was going to dream of Marla and Kyle again. Or the blind woman and whatever waited behind the bedroom door.

And that’s the last thing he remembered before drifting off to sleep.

CHAPTER 22

Josh snapped awake in the garage.

It was daylight. He’d attached the wristwatch to his wrist last night, and he looked at it, pushing up the sleeve of his hoodie. He had to wait a few seconds for his eyes to adjust, but then he read the watch dial—it was nine-thirty in the morning. His body was stiff now, hurting more than it had been last night. He’d slept in the same position all night and now he practically cried out as he stretched his legs out. He had a kink in his neck, but it could still be sore from the beating he’d gotten from the cops.

He sat there for a moment, listening. But the house was quiet. He didn’t hear any sounds from outside except a few birds chirping in the woods, chirping away like everything was normal and rippers hadn’t taken over the world.

Josh looked around at the garage, at the refrigerator right beside him and the gym equipment situated around the room.

His mouth was gummy with thirst. He opened the gallon of water and drank down a few swallows. Quenching his thirst made him realize that he needed to pee. He stood up, still trying to be as quiet as possible. He could go outside and pee, but he didn’t want to be seen from any of the windows. Now that it was daylight, he’d be spotted in a second by anyone inside the house. No, he needed to pee in here. He didn’t want to just pee in the corner, so he looked for something to pee into.

He found an old plastic bowl on the shelves where he’d found the towels last night. He took the bowl back with him to his corner and set it down on the ground while he unzipped his pants. He picked up the bowl and was ready to pee into it.

Now the homeowners will come into the garage.

It sounded shockingly loud when he peed into the bowl, the spray seeming to drill the plastic. But he couldn’t stop it now, so he just let it flow. Steam drifted up from the bowl as he kept peeing. He was afraid he was going to fill up the bowl and make the mess that he’d been trying to avoid.

But then he was finished. He bent over and set the bowl down in front of the refrigerator door, being careful not to spill it. He zipped and buttoned up and then slid the bowl back into his little cubbyhole.

He was still so cold, but he was beginning to warm up from his movement. And now that he’d drunk some water, relieved himself, and was fully awake, he needed to decide what to do. Should he move on down the road? Check the vehicles in the driveway? Or should he take a chance on peeking inside the windows of the house?

Now that it was light, he saw a bicycle hanging from the wall on a rack, some kind of mountain bike. He could take that, it would be better than walking. He’d promised himself that he would never steal again, but he considered this an emergency situation.

He checked the fridge again now that he could see better. Like he’d suspected last night, the cans were a nearly fifty-fifty split of beer and sodas. There was also a bottle of wine, a few wine coolers, and half of a watermelon that had tinfoil over the top of it. No other food at all.

A quick search of the garage yielded no other food; he’d been hoping to find some granola bars of maybe a pack of peanuts. He did find a hunting knife in a sheath. He took off his belt and slid it through the slot in the knife holster, and then he put his belt back on. It wasn’t a gun, but it was better than nothing. He also grabbed an aluminum baseball bat.

He’d made his decision. Maybe the knife and bat made him feel a little braver, but he decided to take a chance on peeking in the windows of the house. He couldn’t shake the feeling that there was no one in the house. He hadn’t heard a noise from the house all night or this morning. He had to at least try. If he saw someone in there, then he could run for the woods. Most likely they wouldn’t shoot through their windows or even chase him into the woods.

But you never knew.

What if there were people inside, but they were infected? But he dismissed that idea, sure that if there were rippers inside, he would have heard them by now.

No, every instinct told him that this house was empty. And there could be food inside, and other supplies. Maybe he could find the keys to the car or the truck.

Josh opened up the side door of the garage, the same one he’d entered last night. It opened just as quietly as it had last night. He thought about trying the door near the washer and dryer that led inside, but he wanted to peek in a few of the windows first. Just to be safe.

He stepped outside and closed the door carefully. The woods were only thirty yards away if he needed to run. He crept down the side of the house, keeping close to the vinyl siding on the wall. It was colder out here, and he was trembling again, gripping the aluminum baseball bat. He should have looked for a pair of gloves in the garage. Even a pair of gardening gloves would be better than nothing. He knew with the baseball bat and hunting knife on him, there would be no hope of begging for help if he came across the homeowner with a gun.

Josh’s breathing quickened as he neared the first window. And a few steps later he was right beside it. He leaned the bat against the wall of the house and peeked in the window, cupping his hands beside his face, keeping as far to the side of the window as he could.

There were people inside the house. But they were lying on the floor in the living room. For just a second he thought they were sleeping, but then he saw the blood and gore everywhere. There was no mistaking now that the entire family inside this house was dead.

CHAPTER 23

Options ran through Josh’s mind at warp speed. He could run away now; the killer could still be inside. Or one of the rippers who had done this might be in there.

Or he could burst inside and try to help anyone who might still be alive. Maybe there was a survivor hiding inside somewhere.

But Josh did neither of those things. Instead, he grabbed his baseball bat and moved on down to the next window and peered through that one. From this angle, he saw the bodies better. Three of them were on the floor: a woman, a teenage boy, and a girl who looked a little smaller than the boy. A man sat in the recliner with a shotgun between his legs, the barrel pointed up at him. He was leaned back in the chair, his face a gory mess.

They were all dead. That was it. The father had killed his family, and then he had killed himself.

Josh went back to the garage. He entered and walked right to the door that led inside the house. He gripped his bat as he tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. Why not? The father had planned on killing his family and himself, why would he worry about locking the place up?

Still cautious, Josh entered. There could be someone else in the house.

The smell hit him right away, an invisible tidal wave of rot and decay assaulting him. Josh turned away for a moment, trying not to gag.

After a quick trip back out to the garage, Josh found a basket of clean laundry on top of the dryer. He used his new hunting knife to cut a wide strip off of a T-shirt. He tied the wide strip around his face, covering his nose and mouth. It didn’t completely block out the smell, but it helped a little.

He went back inside the mud room off of the garage. There was a small bathroom off to the left. The other doorway led to a galley-style kitchen. Everything looked new: cherry cabinets, granite countertops, wood flooring, stainless-steel appliances.

Josh hesitated in the kitchen for a moment, not wanting to go around the long counter into the living room, to where the bodies were. Instead of going into the living room, he went through the doorway to the left. It was a master bedroom. The bed was unmade, and there were two open suitcases on the bed, a few clothes thrown inside like someone had been interrupted in the middle of packing. It didn’t seem like anyone was in here—living or dead—but he checked the master bathroom just to be sure.

Now he needed to check the rest of the house, and that meant going into the living room.

He stared at the bodies on the floor. The boy and girl were sprawled out, blood and gore staining their bodies and the floor all around them. Half of the girl’s head was gone, just a few long strings of bloody meat and a splash of blond hair on that side, one blue eye staring out from the other half of her face.

The mother was face-down with a big hole in her back. Josh guessed that she’d been trying to run for the front door when her husband had shot her, the force of the blast knocking her down. There was a smear of blood along the floor from where she’d slid a little.

The boy looked to be maybe fourteen or fifteen years old. He’d been shot in the chest, and he lay in a curled up, fetal position, his eyes half closed, his mouth open.

The father was in the recliner, the shotgun between his legs, the butt of it on the floor. The blast had taken most of his head off, the wall behind him splattered with pieces of his head, the blood dark now. An open Bible was on the table next to him.

Josh moved past the dead, careful not to step into any of the smears of blood or bits of meat. Either the rag around his face was masking the smell better now, or he was just getting used to it.

After a quick check of the bedrooms on this side of the house, he was satisfied that the house was empty. He checked the girl’s room first, and then the boy’s room, and then the guest bathroom. He went back to the boy’s bedroom and looked through the closet, finding what he’d been looking for—a backpack. All the kids had backpacks these days, and he’d rather use the boy’s dark blue backpack than the girl’s pink one—he’d be the laughingstock of the apocalypse.

He went back to the kitchen and rummaged through the drawers and the pantry. He stuffed some canned food into the backpack, and then a handheld can opener. He added a few utensils: a fork, a spoon, and a butter knife. He took a stack of coffee filters, thinking that he could strain water through them if he needed to. He added two garbage bags, a small pot and pan. He found a box of matches and two disposable lighters. He grabbed a pack of batteries.

In another kitchen drawer he found a map of Pennsylvania. He opened it up and refolded it so that the southwestern corner of the state was showing. He knew he couldn’t be too far from Pittsburgh, but he couldn’t really be sure where he was. He’d been in and out of consciousness during the police van ride, so he couldn’t account the exact amount of time that had passed, but he didn’t think the police van would transport their prisoners hours away. So he guessed that the high school he’d been in had to be in one of Pittsburgh’s suburbs. But where? And in which direction? He hadn’t seen the name of the school, or if he had, he couldn’t remember it. He needed to find out where this house was on the map somehow—that would give him some kind of starting point.

He spotted a pile of mail on the counter, the envelopes stacked up near the wall where the upper cabinets started on that side of the kitchen. He grabbed the envelopes and shuffled through them. He found an electric bill with the name Kurt LaRose on it right above the street address of the house. He searched for the town on the map and found it. He folded the map into a smaller square so he could study that area and look for the street the LaRose family lived on, but he couldn’t find it; this map wasn’t detailed enough, only showing the main roads in the town. He kept the envelope with the address on it and shoved it down into the backpack with the map.

Now he had a pile of supplies on the granite countertop near the sink. He turned to the other cabinets above the stove, the only ones he hadn’t checked yet. He opened them and froze. Inside were a few bottles of liquor. The cans of beer in the garage refrigerator hadn’t really tempted him too much, but these bottles did. There was a bottle of brandy that was nearly full. And there was an assortment of pint bottles of whiskey and vodka, all of them unopened. Without thinking about it, he took three of the bottles of liquor down from the cabinet. He told himself that he wasn’t going to drink it, but he wanted to have it just in case. Maybe he could use them to trade with someone. He swaddled the bottles in dishtowels and wrapped some duct tape around them, cushioning them so they wouldn’t break. He threw the duct tape in the pack, too.

Next, he went back into the master bedroom and looked around. He took the backpack into the bathroom. He took two rolls of toilet paper, a toothbrush, a half-full tube of toothpaste, mouthwash, a bar of soap, a package of Band-Aids and some gauze pads. He found a box of latex gloves and he took those.

He searched through the medicine cabinets, looking over the medicine bottles. He didn’t want to believe that he was looking for pain pills, but he had to be truthful with himself.

No pain pill score—nothing but some cholesterol medicine and generic pain relievers. He added the pain relievers to his backpack. Better than nothing.

The backpack was getting a little heavy, but he wanted to get everything that he could from the house right now because he didn’t have any intention of coming back in here again.

He looked through the walk-in closet, quickly inspecting the clothes. He didn’t really want to take any of the man’s clothes—not only because he was dead now but also because he was at least two sizes larger than Josh, but he found an extra set of clothes that might be able to fit him. He also grabbed a black coat he could wear over his hoodie. He found a knit hat and a pair of black leather gloves in the dresser drawers. There were some shoeboxes stacked up on the top shelf of the closet. He searched through the boxes and found a box of shells for the shotgun that was still cradled between the dead father’s legs in the living room.

Back in the kitchen, he searched for the keys to the vehicles, selecting the keys to the Ford Expedition.

Now he had pretty much everything he needed from the house . . . except the shotgun. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves and walked into the living room. He stood in front of the dead man and picked up the shotgun. He didn’t even check to see if it was loaded. He just took it.

Out in the garage, he used one of the towels he’d slept on last night to clean the gun off. There wasn’t much blood, but he dampened the corner of the towel with water from the plastic jug and wiped the gun down, getting it as clean as possible.

He also did a better search of the garage, adding a few more things to his backpack and pillowcase including: a pair of work gloves, a multi-tool (it contained various screwdrivers, knife blades, and a can opener—he put this in his pocket), a length of rope, another roll of tape, a tiny can of lighter fluid, and a small ax.

After zipping up and donning the backpack, he added a few cans of sodas to the pillow case, but not so many that it would become too heavy. He tied the open end of the pillow case into a knot and picked it up. He carried the pillow case, shotgun, baseball bat, and the gallon of water outside to the Ford Expedition.

Josh put his supplies in the passenger seat of the Expedition—the backpack on the seat; the pillow case, shotgun, baseball bat, and gallon of water on the floor. He went around the front of the truck and got in on the driver’s side, sitting down behind the steering wheel. He shut the door and pushed the button to lock the doors, all of them clicking loudly. He looked around him at the gray morning, trying to spot any movement, but he didn’t see anything. He pulled the folded-up map of Pennsylvania out of the backpack and set it in the center console along with a pen so he could mark where he was as soon as he found a street name on the map.

He slipped the key into the ignition and twisted it, hoping the truck would start.

It roared to life. The gas gauge needle flicked up to three-quarters full. He noticed a digital display with the temperature and the direction on it—due east right now. A compass would definitely be helpful.

The Expedition rumbled there in the driveway, kind of quiet for such a big vehicle. He turned the heat on, blasting it, but it was going to take a while before the engine heated up enough for the heat to work.

He had everything that he could think of to take with him: a map, a shotgun with a box of shells, food, and water. Now he just needed to find his way back to Pittsburgh, back to his sister and his nephew.

CHAPTER 24

Josh sat in the Ford Expedition as it idled in the driveway of the dead family’s house. He sat there, trying to come up with a plan. He didn’t know if it was going to be safe to drive on the streets. Maybe there were military vehicles and police patrolling the streets now, blocking intersections, setting up checkpoints, rounding people up and taking them to other FEMA camps.

But he needed to take a chance on the streets—at least try. He needed to get to Marla’s apartment complex, find her and Kyle, and make sure they were safe. He wouldn’t allow himself to even think that they might be hurt or killed (or rounded up and sitting in a FEMA camp somewhere).

He hadn’t slept that well curled up in the little cubbyhole of a space between the refrigerator and the wall in the garage last night, but at least he had gotten some sleep—a little was better than nothing. His body felt stiff from the cramped-up position he’d been in all night, and the night’s cold weather seemed to have permeated his bones. But at least the injuries to his head, throat, and lower back were beginning to feel a little better. Maybe he could find somewhere to park his vehicle tonight if he couldn’t make it all the way to Pittsburgh.

Right now he needed to eat something. He was shaky, and it was probably getting close to twenty-four hours since he’d eaten his last meal—his lunch in the FEMA camp cafeteria. He’d made himself drink plenty of water this morning. Who knew where he would find more clean water? Maybe he could raid more empty houses on the way. It was difficult to plan things out when he didn’t have a lot of information at the moment. But he would just play it by ear. Besides, he’d never been much of a planner, more of a seat-of-the-pants kind of guy; his life so far had been a testament to that.

He fished through the backpack, looking for something quick to eat. His stomach grumbled uncontrollably just at the thought of food. He decided on a can of Vienna sausages for the main course, a package of cheese crackers, a pack of peanuts, and a snack cake for dessert.

The truck was beginning to warm up a little as it sat there running in the driveway. The needle on the temperature gauge was creeping up a little now. He was finally beginning to feel a little warm.

He ate the Vienna sausages first—his least favorite item in this meal. He even sipped the salty brine afterwards right from the can. Next, the peanuts, and then the crackers. He saved the chocolate snack cake for last, savoring it.

He tried the radio as he ate. First, he pressed the buttons for the pre-set radio stations, but he got four stations of static and two stations that blared emergency signals. He scanned through the stations, stopping when he came across the president of the United States giving an address.

His heart jumped for a moment as he listened. Maybe there was hope. Maybe this outbreak, or whatever it was, wasn’t all over America, but just in this area. But after ten minutes, he realized that the president’s speech was just the same short message over and over again. After his short speech ended, there was twenty seconds of dead air, and then a male voice announced: “And now a message from the president of the United States.”

Josh listened to the president’s speech again. It wasn’t much, but at least it was some kind of information. For one thing, his hope that this outbreak was some kind of regional thing was squashed. This plague must be nationwide, at least it sounded that way when the president spoke. Maybe it was even worldwide. It seemed like basic services had all been cut: electricity, phones, internet, just like Sean had said at the orientation meeting. The president said that local authorities would be reaching out. Yeah, Josh had already been through the reaching-out process. No thank you.

The president said something about terrorists. Was this some kind of terrorist attack? Had terrorists caused this pandemic? Had they released some kind of bioweapon? If so, were those terrorists getting ready to attack now that America was crippled? A chill ran through him as he thought of nuclear missiles heading this way, the fires of hell raining down on America while it was down on its knees.

But what could he do about it? What was he supposed to do, find some place to hunker down? Maybe. But not until he found Marla and Kyle first.

As he listened to the president’s speech again, some things didn’t make sense to him. For one thing, if this was some kind of terrorist attack, then why and how had the electricity and water been shut off? Why had the banks all closed down last Friday morning? Why had the economy been collapsing for weeks? Were all those things the result of terrorist attacks? Had they unleashed some kind of widespread cyberattack before the bioweapon? Josh wasn’t an expert in these matters, but he just couldn’t believe that something like that had happened.

And why had the police been rounding people up? Why were they taking people to FEMA camps? Why were they experimenting on them? To find out what this disease was? That’s what Ethan had said.

Josh hadn’t seen the experiments with his own eyes, but he was willing to take Ethan’s word for it because Ethan had been right about everything else so far. Obviously Ethan had been high up in the hierarchy at the camp, but maybe he had chosen to break ranks and warn people.

That made Josh wonder why Ethan had chosen to tell him about what he knew. Why had he waited outside a trailer in the middle of the night?

Why me?

Josh didn’t want to fall into the trap of thinking he was special somehow, fulfilling some kind of destiny. But still, it felt like Ethan had been waiting there specifically for him.

It didn’t matter now. It was over, and right now he needed to focus on getting on the road, on getting back to Marla’s apartment. He didn’t have Kyle’s meds with him, or Marla’s wad of cash, but at least he could be there to protect them. They could find more money and medicine. He could even search some houses along the way.

He checked the other radio stations, letting the radio scan. But it was a pretty quick process because the scanner was skipping over most of the stations, only stopping at two more that had the same recording of the president’s speech. On another station a man delivered a fiery speech about the End of Times, but Josh was pretty sure that was also a recording. He listened for a moment, not because he found what the man had to say useful or interesting, but because it just felt good to hear another human voice for a moment.

He switched to AM on the radio and finally found a station playing music, but it was the same song over and over again—Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Maybe it was some radio station operator’s idea of a sick joke before he or she left.

There were a few CDs in the truck, all country music, artists that Josh had never heard of before. He decided to go without music. It would probably be better to drive in silence so he could concentrate better.

He checked the map again, circling the town on the map that was listed on Kurt LaRose’s electric bill with the ink pen he’d found in the center console. He had to be somewhere inside that circle—at least it was a place to start. And when he found out exactly where he was, he would mark out a route towards Pittsburgh, traveling down back roads as much as possible. If the police and military were out patrolling, they would probably be sticking to the main roads and highways. Plus the more crowded the town, the more rippers there would be.

After making sure the shotgun was loaded with shells and propping it up against the passenger seat within easy reach, he shifted into reverse and backed out of the driveway. He wasn’t going to bother trying to hide the weapon because he had no intention of stopping for any cops. Obviously he wouldn’t be going back to the same FEMA camp that he’d just escaped from, but they might try to take him to another camp. Or they might do worse.

He took a deep breath as he turned around in the front yard, the tires crunching on the brittle grass, and then he shifted into drive and headed towards the dirt trail that led into the woods.

CHAPTER 25

After leaving the dead family’s home, Josh drove down the dirt trail through the woods. The houses he passed along the way looked dark and quiet—maybe there were more slaughtered families inside. There were pickup trucks parked in the long, winding driveways. Some homes had small boats on trailers. Some yards had old junked cars parked together, some of the junkers tucked away underneath metal awnings attached to the sides of older homes. A few dogs barked as he drove by, but none of them ran out to the road as he rumbled on past. He’d seen one person moving down the side of a home, but even though the person looked older, he was moving fast and Josh suspected that the man was a ripper. And even if he hadn’t been a ripper, there would be too many tough questions to answer if Josh stopped to talk to the man, like why he was driving Kurt LaRose’s SUV, and where exactly Kurt and his family were right now.

He kept on driving until he came to a paved road. He stopped there for a moment, idling at the stop sign while he looked on the map for the paved street.

But he didn’t find it. This street must be too small for the map, too. He would have to find a bigger street. He turned east, hoping he would at least be heading in generally the right direction.

The woods thinned out as he drove down this road, and the homesteads tucked away in the trees became small dairy farms and cattle ranches.

Josh hadn’t seen too many other vehicles on the road. There was no one in front of him and no one behind him. He’d only seen two vehicles pass by, a minivan crammed full of panicky-looking people that might have been a family or just a group of people traveling together, and an older pickup truck peppered with rust and dents. Two burly rednecks were in the pickup, and even though Josh tried not to stare at them as they passed by, he saw that there were rifles on the gun rack in the rear window. After the truck had driven by, Josh checked his rearview mirror to make sure the truck wasn’t turning around in the middle of the road to follow him.

The road curved through fields, around bends, across little rocky creeks, up into groups of trees, and then descending into farmland again. The leaves of many of the trees had dropped a month ago, the forest floor a carpet of dead leaves and dormant grasses. It looked like nature was simply dying instead of preparing for winter.

Josh passed a few vehicles on the side of the road. A few of them looked like they’d been parked there, just abandoned. Others had crashed into trees, fencing, and one vehicle had taken out a row of mailboxes before flipping over into a shallow ditch.

It felt like he was driving through some disaster movie, like he was trapped in the aftermath of a catastrophe.

And it was a catastrophe, wasn’t it? Some kind of pandemic. But how was it spreading so fast? How had things gotten so bad so quickly?

A biblical plague, that’s what Ethan had called it.

Josh wondered if he was infected. Maybe he was, but if he was, he was sure he would have started showing symptoms by now, he would have already begun turning into one of those rippers. Maybe he was immune. And if that was true, then there had to be others who were immune. Maybe that was who the scientists would have started experimenting on next—the immune. He pictured himself strapped down to a hospital bed in one of those metal buildings, screaming and struggling as he was pumped full of chemicals. A shiver crawled across his skin.

As the land flattened out, Josh saw something in a cow pasture to his right that made him slow the Ford Expedition down to a stop right there in the middle of the road even though all of his instincts were screaming at him to keep driving. The field was littered with the carcasses of dead cows, some nearly skeletons with stringy pieces of meat left on them. But it wasn’t the eaten animals that had gotten his attention—it was a mob of rippers chasing down a cow like a pride of lions running down a water buffalo. The cow was terrified, spinning in a circle and snorting, kicking. But there were too many rippers, and they had sticks, knives, and rocks.

The cow was down in less than a minute, and once it was on the ground the rippers swarmed the animal like insects, tearing and slashing at its hide with their knives, bashing its head with the rocks. Hopefully the animal was unconscious by now and out of its misery. The rippers feasted on the cow’s insides, pulling out meat and strings of intestines, blood smeared all over their faces, hands, and arms.

Josh tore his eyes away from the grisly feast and looked at the rearview mirror, aware that he was still parked in the middle of the road.

He looked back at the rippers and the mutilated cow. Many of the rippers had noticed him, some of them standing up. A few of them were already walking towards the fence that sectioned off the pasture from the road. Their faces were covered with blood, their clothes saturated. Some of them looked like their hands and arms were sheathed with dark red gloves.

How could it have gotten this bad?

Josh stomped down on the gas pedal, speeding forward down the road as panic gripped him. The rippers were running now, but they were angling towards the road like they were trying to cut him off, seemingly stronger and faster than they should have been.

No way they were going to be able to head him off.

Could they?

It was close . . . closer than it should have been. The rippers got to the barbed wire fence, trying to get through the strung wires, getting hung up, but not caring, just pushing their way through as barbs tore at their flesh, yelling and screaming, their blood-smeared faces twisted into masks of rage, clawed hands reaching out.

Josh kept his foot stomped down on the gas pedal, racing past the monsters. He watched the rearview mirror as some of them poured out into the road, some of them still running, like dogs chasing a car.

Were they following him? How long would they keep following him?

The road dipped down into another valley and Josh lost sight of the horde of rippers. But he wasn’t slowing down now. He drove as fast as he could without getting too reckless.

Ten minutes later it began to rain as he came to another cross street. He stopped the Ford at the stop sign, but he left the vehicle in drive with his foot on the brake pedal, the engine rumbling. He checked the name of the street on the sign and then ran a finger across the town on the map.

There. He found the road on the map. It was a small road, but at least he knew he was somewhere on this road. He would take this road south and check the next major cross street he came to. Eventually he would find exactly where he was on the map, but in the meantime he would just keep heading—

Slam!

Something pounded at the passenger window.

Josh looked up from the map, dropping it down onto the floorboards. He hadn’t been paying attention to what was going on around him, focusing too long on the map. A ripper was at the passenger window now, a woman. She had dried blood caked around her mouth, but the rain was beginning to wash some of it away. Her hair was wet, matted down to her skull. She beat at the window again with both fists.

She was going to break the window any second now.

Josh had seen many horror movies throughout his life; he’d always been a fan of them. This woman looked like something out of a zombie movie with her rictus grin, wild eyes, and tattered and filthy clothing. Except this woman wasn’t a shambling corpse—no, this woman was very much alive and insane with rage.

And there would be more of them.

Josh stomped on the gas pedal, turning the steering wheel to the right at the same time. The woman tried to hold on to the Expedition, trying to pull on the door handle. As Josh turned right, the woman’s legs must have gotten swept under the truck because a second later he felt the back tires bumping over her.

In the rearview mirror he saw her crumpled body on the wet pavement. She was either twitching with death spasms or trying to crawl to the side of the road.

Josh realized that he had tears in his eyes now. He hadn’t even remembered crying. He wiped at his eyes, but kept his foot planted down on the gas pedal.

It was raining a little harder now, making the gray day even drearier. He sped down the country road, heading southeast, hoping that it would be better in the next town.

CHAPTER 26

It wasn’t better in the next town.

Josh drove into the edge of a town called Grandling. At least it had stopped raining, but the sky was still overcast. The curving street turned away from a neighborhood of homes and straightened into the downtown area of the town. Two and three-story buildings that housed businesses on the bottom and apartments on the upper floors lined both sides of the streets, standing like dark silhouettes against the gray afternoon sky. The businesses looked vacant. Many of the windows were smashed out. Debris was strewn across the sidewalks. Cars and trucks were parked on both sides of the street, many of them wrecked into each other, a few of the hoods open, some of the windows broken. A few cars had been abandoned in the middle of the road with doors wide open, and Josh had to navigate around them.

Two blocks into the downtown area, a small group of rippers ran right out in front of the Ford Expedition. They had been hiding behind a delivery van and Josh hadn’t seen them until the last second. He slammed on the brakes and turned the steering wheel at the same time, trying to avoid the rippers, but he hadn’t avoided all of them—he’d hit at least two or three of them, running over one of them. The airbags had deployed during the collision, blocking his vision and stunning him at the same time for a moment. He felt the SUV run up and over the bodies on the street, bones crunching, tires skidding on the wet pavement and bodily fluids. His world felt like it was skewing as the truck tipped over onto its side even though he fought like hell with the steering wheel. The vehicle was on its passenger side, sliding across the pavement with a screeching of metal. At least the road was wet and there weren’t any sparks. And then at some point he was upside-down, the SUV sliding on its roof. The vehicle came to a jolting stop as the front of the Expedition hit an abandoned car on the side of the street.

The airbag was a deflated mass draping down into the darkness of the ceiling of the Ford below him. He hung upside down in his seat, still held in place by his seatbelt. He was dazed, wondering how he had lost control so quickly. Why had he turned the wheel so quickly while slamming on the brakes? It had been a natural reaction to try not to hit them—he should have just plowed right through them.

Right now he needed to get out of this metal tomb. His head was pounding and there was an intense pain in his shoulder and abdomen. He smelled gasoline.

He wasn’t sure how many of the rippers he had killed in the collision when he had slammed into them. He had to have killed a few of them, maybe most of them. But there would be more.

At least one of the rippers was outside his truck; he could hear him growling and making noises like a dog trying to talk, his footsteps crunching on the broken glass from his vehicle.

And there were more coming—a lot them. He could hear their cries in the distance.

He needed to get out of this vehicle right now.

The pain in his shoulder and abdomen was coming from his seatbelt digging into the flesh of his shoulder and gut. He fumbled to unbuckle it, but the belt was wedged into his waist so hard he was having trouble finding the belt buckle.

I’m never wearing my seatbelt again.

The footsteps of the rippers were getting closer to his wrecked truck. He looked around for his shotgun. He spotted it next to his backpack, but they were lying on the ceiling, out of reach, crammed up against the passenger window that had shattered at some point during the crash.

Need to hurry . . .

Josh’s fingers trembled as he ran them down the belt to the seat just under his right hip and found the seatbelt buckle. He pushed the button to release the seatbelt, jamming his thumb down. But the button wasn’t releasing the belt. He was stuck, trapped in here like a trussed-up goat waiting for the slaughter. He pressed the button again and again, listening to that mocking clicking sound coming from the seatbelt buckle, a futile sound. He still had the knife on his belt, and he was about to dig it of the holster on his belt, but then . . .

. . . something made a louder clicking sound, and the buckle released. He collapsed down onto the ceiling, his knees hitting the steering wheel. He was upside down, crumpled into a ball on the ceiling of the Ford. With panic coursing through his veins, urging him on, he exploded into movement, wrenching his body around and crawling towards his backpack and shotgun. He pushed the gun and pack towards the shattered passenger window, pushing them through and onto the pavement littered with broken glass. He crawled out through the window, dragging his body across the broken glass and wet road, moving more quickly than he ever thought he could, fueled by pure panic now. Bits of jagged glass bit into the palms of his hands and the knees of his pants as he crawled along, but he didn’t feel any of it—there would be time to address those wounds later.

If there was a later.

He realized as soon as he was out of the Ford that he was in a pocket of space between the line of parked cars and his SUV that had struck the side of a parked car at an angle so that the space towards the front of his upside down vehicle was closed off. His only escape routes were: towards the back of the Expedition, over the undercarriage of the Expedition (which wasn’t the best option because of the hot exhaust pipes and the smell of gas everywhere), or over the line of parked cars right behind him.

He didn’t even get a chance to think about it because a ripper was closing in from his best escape route—the back of the Ford Expedition, where a rear tire was still spinning. Josh was sitting on the pavement in between the vehicles with the shotgun in his hands. He aimed it at the approaching ripper. He pulled the trigger and tried to absorb the recoil of the weapon as best he could from this awkward position.

But it did the trick. Josh wasn’t an expert with firearms, but one didn’t really need to be an expert with a shotgun. The ripper was knocked back by the blast. Chunks of flesh disappeared from his face, neck, and shoulder in a pink spray. The force of the blast spun him around like a clumsy ballet dancer, and then he crumpled down to the pavement at the rear of the Ford.

For just a second Josh thought the shotgun blast hadn’t killed the ripper. He was racking another shell without even thinking about it. For just a second he thought these rippers might actually be some kind of zombies, and flashes of Kyle’s video game came to mind. But then the man who had once been a human with a family and a job and a mortgage just laid there on the street, blood and bits of brain leaking out of his ruined head.

The ripper was definitely dead.

Josh got to his feet and picked up his backpack, slinging the straps over his back. It was a little tight, and he wished he had adjusted the straps a little better, but he didn’t have time right now. He ran towards the rear of the Expedition, irrationally afraid that the dead ripper was going to grab him as he ran by.

Once he was beyond the Expedition, Josh froze.

There were dozens of rippers in the street now, creating a half-circle from the parked cars all the way around to the other side of his Expedition. He was surrounded, and they were closing in fast.

Josh had his shotgun in his hands, his finger on the trigger, but there was no way he could get all of them. He fired, blowing away the closest one. He racked another shell and fired again. A woman’s face was erased, replaced by chewed hamburger with a few glimpses of stark-white bone. He shot another ripper, and then another one as he backed up to the parked car right behind him.

The gunshots and carnage should have slowed the rippers down. It should have backed them up, but a few of them were still advancing. But not all of them. It was almost like these next few were the front line of soldiers, a suicide squad willing to sacrifice themselves for their entire troop. The other rippers had drifted back, like they were waiting for Josh to keep shooting, to kill a few more and run out of shells.

How many more shells did he have left in the shotgun? He wasn’t sure, but there couldn’t be too many more. He would never be able to reload. He needed to run, escape over the car right behind him, but then how far would he get? If he could even get over the car. He could see himself trying to scramble over the wet metal hood of the car as the rippers’ hands grabbed his ankles and pulled him back down in the street.

Two rippers, a man and a woman, were moving in closer to Josh. The man had a broken piece of what looked like a baseball bat, and the woman clutched a kitchen knife. Many of the other rippers held weapons, and two rocks flew at Josh from somewhere in the crowd. Josh ducked out of the way of one of the rocks just in time. He actually felt the rock whiz right by the side of his head and shatter the car window right behind him.

He blasted the man and then the woman away with the shotgun; they collapsed down onto the pavement, blood spreading out from their wounds.

Four more rippers were moving in now. One of the rippers was an overweight man, his body jigging underneath a filthy and torn T-shirt. The other two rippers were women with scraggily hair matted down to their faces and necks from the rain. A tall and slender black man with a bald head kept opening and closing his mouth like he couldn’t wait to bite down on human flesh.

It was now or never. Josh needed to get off four shots and then launch himself over the hood of the vehicle right behind him. He didn’t want to turn around and look at the wrecked cars right behind him and somehow give away his escape plan. These rippers acted like crazed animals, but they were cunning in their own way.

Before Josh could pull the trigger, the gray day around him lit up with light as the Ford Expedition blew up.

PART THREE

CHAPTER 27

Josh had never been near an explosion before—he’d never even seen one in person, only in the movies. In the action movies he had watched, the character near an explosion stumbled around in a fog as all sound faded away for a moment, all movements in slow motion.

And that’s how Josh felt. He realized that he was still alive. The shotgun was still in his hands, but everything felt slow, and his hearing was gone for a few seconds. There were big gray spots in his field of vision, an aftereffect from the blast.

Then, just like in the action movies, everything seemed to speed up again. He heard a high-pitched noise, and then his hearing came back.

Someone was shouting at him.

Not the rippers, he thought as his stunned mind tried to work. No, the shouting was coming from a human, someone speaking words, yelling words at him. The person was somewhere behind him, somewhere beyond the tangle of wrecked cars lined up in front of the sidewalk.

“This way!”

Josh realized that the explosion of the Ford Expedition had scared the rippers, driving them back across the street. One of the rippers had been too close to the rear of the Expedition and he was on fire, down on the street now, writhing and screaming in pain. None of the other rippers moved in to help the burning man.

Josh glanced over at the Ford Expedition, the whole undercarriage was burning now.

A ripper emerged from the smoke, running right past the burning ripper on the street. This ripper had a knife raised up, and he was howling as he ran right for Josh.

As Josh raised his shotgun to shoot, a fiery object flew into his field of vision and struck the approaching ripper, the flames exploding and spreading out all over the ripper, who collapsed onto the pavement, screaming as the flames engulfed him.

“Hey! This way!”

Josh didn’t hesitate this time. He turned to run, up and over the hood of the car right behind him, sliding across it and falling down onto the sidewalk on the other side. The rippers had been startled by the fire, frightened by it, but the fear of fire wasn’t going to hold them back very long.

A man stood about ten feet down the sidewalk, close to the wall of a brick building. He was tall and thin, maybe in his mid-fifties. His close-cropped hair was entirely gray. Everything seemed long on the man: long arms, long legs, long fingers wrapped around a glass bottle with a rag poking out of the top of it. Even his face seemed long and thin, with a pointy chin. He was dressed in dark pants and a black sweatshirt that looked a little too small for him, the sleeves too short for his long arms.

Josh realized what the man was holding—a glass jar of gasoline, or some other flammable liquid, with a rag in it that could be lit. A Molotov cocktail. That must have been what he had thrown at the Expedition and then at the ripper.

“This way,” the man yelled again. “Follow me!”

The man didn’t seem like he was going to give Josh much of a chance to catch up—he was already running down the sidewalk to the end of the building.

Josh ran down the debris-littered sidewalk, following the man to the corner. He held the shotgun as he ran. The backpack felt a little heavy on his back, slowing him down a little, but at least it was tight against him and it wasn’t swaying back and forth as he ran. He didn’t want to ditch the pack unless he absolutely had to—his extra shotgun shells were in there. He promised himself that he would keep some extra shells in his pants pockets from now on.

At the corner of the brick building, Josh followed the man across the street of the intersection to a three-story Victorian house that took up the entire corner of the next block.

Josh followed the man down a walkway through rows of manicured shrubs on both sides. The front porch of the house was supported by massive columns painted a bright white that stood out in the gray, rainy day. Everything about the house looked new and bright, like it had been recently renovated and painted.

The man was up the steps and across the wide front porch in a few strides. He pushed the front door open. Josh was thinking that the door hadn’t been locked, but then he realized that the wood was splintered at the edge of the door like someone had kicked it in.

They were inside and the man closed the door as best as he could. He grabbed a two-by four leaning against a wall and jammed it up underneath the doorhandle. There was already a piece of wood nailed on the floor to help keep the wood stud in place. Slats of wood had been nailed over the glass pane in the front door, some of those slats of wood torn away, broken glass from the window everywhere.

The man picked up his jar of clear liquid after bracing the door shut, and then he ran for the stairs. “Come on,” he said over his shoulder. “We need to get upstairs.”

Josh followed the man up a wide set of steps that wound up to the second floor. Outside, the rippers were already at the front door, pushing on it and beating against it. Fists and sticks smashed more of the slats of wood loose from the window and hands reached in, clawing at the wood brace and the doorhandle.

Upstairs, Josh followed the tall, thin man down a wide hallway with bedrooms off of it.

“You have a way out of here?” Josh asked.

“No.”

“We’re going to be sitting ducks up here.”

“They won’t find us,” the man said when he was right underneath an attic access in the ceiling. He jumped up and grabbed the thin rope with a ceramic knob hanging from the end of it. He pulled the rope down and the access door opened, a wood ladder unfolding on the way down.

“You serious?” Josh asked.

“Trust me. It will work. It’s worked so far.”

The man went up the stairs first, using one hand to hold on to the ladder’s rungs, the Molotov cocktail cradled in his other hand.

What the hell? Josh thought. It’s better than trying to get out a window, and all the windows he’d seen on the ground floor had been boarded up. And even if he got out of the house, there were too many rippers out there right now.

Josh scrambled up the ladder. Once he was in the attic, the man pulled the ladder back up, the ladder folding in on itself with squeaks of wood and the twang of the springs. When the access was closed, the man pulled the tiny rope up inside through the hole in the door until the decorative knob hugged the ceiling below them, probably looking like a decorative feature on the ceiling, then he tied the rope around a hinge on the folded steps to keep it in place.

“They’ll know we’re up here,” Josh said.

“Shh.”

“They’ll know,” Josh whispered. “They’ll smell us.”

“Their sense of smell isn’t so great,” the man said. “But they might be able to hear us if you don’t stay quiet.”

Josh didn’t say anything even though he wondered how this man knew so much about the rippers.

The rippers were already inside the house, tearing through the downstairs in their search, smashing things, stomping around. Some of them were bounding up the steps to the second floor now.

The man had eased away from the access stairs, crab-walking silently on the plywood floor towards the sloped ceiling, which was really the trusses of the roof with bats of insulation stuffed in between them. Josh did the same thing, backing away from the access door, trying to be as quiet as possible.

There were two sets of windows up here on each side of the vast room that took up the entire third floor. One set of windows looked out at the front yard of the house, and the other set looked out onto the back yard. All the tall, skinny windows were covered with pieces of plywood and cardboard, but the light of the gray day seeped in around the edges and gave them enough light to see.

The attic was pretty sparse. There were a few boxes stacked up here and there, but it was mostly empty. A large brick column, part of the chimney, dominated the middle of the room—it ran from the floor up to the peaked ceiling.

It looked like the man had been hiding up here for a few days now. He had crawled towards the side of the attic where he had set up some kind of living quarters. A blanket covered a thin mattress, the bed tucked away under the sloped ceiling where it met the floor of the attic—a little cubbyhole he tucked himself into at night. There were cardboard boxes, crates, and bags at the foot of his bed. Most of the boxes looked like they held extra food and jugs of water. A suitcase was closed and lay flat near the head of his bed.

How long had this man been up here? How long was he planning on staying up here?

Josh finally settled against the wall on the opposite side of the man’s living area. He took his backpack off and set it down right beside him, his shotgun within easy reach. He wanted to reload the shotgun, but he didn’t dare make a sound right now. He was going to trust this man for now, unless he saw that folded-up access ladder across the room begin to move, then he would reach for his backpack and load the shotgun as quickly as he could. He didn’t really have a plan after that—just kill as many of the rippers as he could before they got to him and tore him apart.

The rippers were right below them on the second floor, stomping through the rooms and hallways, searching. Josh could hear their muffled growls and screeches. There was what sounded like a fight down there, and it was over in a matter of seconds. Maybe one of the rippers had killed another.

Josh checked his body for damage. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off a little (but there was still plenty of it pumping through his veins right now), he could better judge any injuries that he had. He was a little sore, but nothing excruciating. No broken bones that he could tell. His nose hurt from where the airbag had punched him in the face, but it didn’t seem to be anything serious. His shoulder and abdomen were still a little sore from where the seatbelt had cut into them, but it wasn’t bad. The palms of his hands were a little cut up from the broken glass he’d crawled across, but they’d already stopped bleeding. He picked at a few tiny pieces of glass that were embedded in his flesh. The knees of his pants were ripped, but there was no major damage done to his skin. He was wet from the rain, but not soaked. His long hair was damp, and he combed it back with his fingers. He was scared, but he was alive, and as the minutes ticked by, he was beginning to believe that this guy’s plan might work.

Now that Josh was calming down a little, trying to breathe as quietly as he could, he was actually beginning to feel a little sleepy—he knew he needed rest. He hadn’t slept well at the high school gymnasium or at the FEMA camp, and he definitely hadn’t slept well curled up in the little space between the refrigerator and the garage wall last night at the LaRose house. At least he’d eaten this morning—now he was just cold and tired, trembling a little. He would love to change into another set of clothes that he had in his backpack, but he wasn’t going to make a sound until he was sure those rippers were gone or until the man across the attic said it was okay.

Josh lay down on his side, curled up around his shotgun. He used his backpack as a pillow. He was facing the access door, watching it as he lay there. But then his eyes closed, and he drifted off to sleep.

CHAPTER 28

The access door was jerked down, the ladder unfolding with a crash. A shaft of light shot up from the hallway below, shining into the attic like some kind of alien light beam.

The rippers stormed up the ladder, snarling and growling. Their hair was tangled, their clothes in tatters. Some of them had weapons and knives gripped in their filthy hands. They smelled like a combination of rotting meat and shit.

They were running across the attic floor, right towards Josh.

Josh looked for his shotgun in the darkness, but it wasn’t there. He looked across the attic at the man’s cubbyhole where his mattress and blankets were laid out. The man was gone.

The man had left the attic sometime during the night, taking Josh’s shotgun and backpack.

At the farthest corner of the attic, deep in the shadows, another man stood. For a brief moment Josh thought it was the man who had rescued him with the Molotov cocktail. But no, this man was as tall as Josh’s rescuer, but he was much wider and more muscular. And his eyes were shining in the darkness.

Somehow Josh knew at that moment that it had been this man behind his sister’s bedroom door—this man was the terrible thing waiting there, the bad thing that the blind woman had warned him about.

“You can’t let him get you,” a woman’s voice said.

Josh whirled around to look, even though the rippers were closing in quickly.

The blind woman stood in front of the three windows, but the plywood pieces and cardboard were gone now. A bright light flooded in through the three windows, bathing the beautiful woman in an angelic glow.

“You . . .” Josh said.

“You have to find us,” the woman said.

“But I have to find Marla and Kyle,” Josh told her. And then he felt a sudden weight on his heart, a depressing sensation that all hope was lost for his sister and his nephew now.

“No,” Josh whispered as he watched the blind woman standing in the bright light. He felt the rippers on him now, tugging at him, pulling at him, then pushing him, jabbing at his sore shoulder almost like they were . . .

. . . trying to wake him up.

Josh bolted awake, sitting up too quickly.

The man was right in front of him with a battery-powered lantern. The windows were still mostly covered up with pieces of plywood and cardboard, but a bright light was flooding in around the edges.

Josh looked over at the folded-up ladder on top of the access door—it was still closed. He looked over at the corner where he’d seen the dark man in his dream, the man with the shining eyes. But there was no one there.

“I think you might have been dreaming,” the man in front of him said.

Josh nodded, clearing his throat.

“I’m sorry,” the man said. “I had to wake you up. You were starting to scream. Making too much noise.”

Josh nodded, indicating that he understood. He looked down at the floor. His shotgun and backpack were still there. “I had a nightmare,” he whispered and then cleared his throat again, trying to build up enough saliva so he could swallow.

“Here,” the man said, offering Josh a plastic jug of water.

“Thanks,” Josh said and took a sip of the water. It was warm, but it was the best drink he’d ever had in his life.

The man backed away, leaving the jug of water with Josh.

“How long was I out?” Josh asked, still whispering.

“All night,” the man answered.

“All night? It’s . . .”

“It’s the middle of the day now.”

Josh felt sore from sleeping on the plywood floor all night, but he also felt rested for the first time in days. He had obviously given in to his exhaustion last night. His hair and clothes were dry now, and his groin and underarms felt chafed raw. He was cold, but it wasn’t as cold up here as Josh had expected. Maybe the man had run some kind of heater up here or something, or maybe it was just insulated really well. Josh was very hungry, and he had to take an urgent piss.

The man walked over to his living quarters. Even though there were obviously no rippers down on the floors below right now, the man still walked light on his feet, practically tiptoeing across the plywood floor, which thankfully didn’t creak at all. He came back with an empty plastic milk jug with the top cut off. He offered it to Josh.

“What’s this?”

“I assume you need to go to the bathroom.”

Josh nodded as he got to his feet. “Uh, thanks. What about number two?” And then he added quickly: “Not that I need to go right now.”

“I have a bucket for that if you need it,” the man said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder towards his living quarters.

“Okay,” Josh said. “Thanks.”

The man walked away, giving Josh some privacy.

Josh grabbed his backpack and went behind the large brick column. He urinated into the mouth of the empty milk jug. It reminded him of peeing into the plastic bowl inside the garage yesterday morning. He guessed he was going to have to get used to this, hiding out and peeing into plastic containers. He was also going to have to get used to being cold and scared and hungry all the time.

No use bitching, he told himself. He’d learned that in jail. Bitching about things didn’t get you anywhere. Wallowing in misery got you zero sympathy from anyone.

Right now he needed to change his clothes, maybe take his hiking boots off for a little and air his feet out—change his socks, too. He pulled out the extra set of clothes he’d taken from Kurt LaRose’s house and laid them down on top of his backpack. He pulled his boots off, and then his socks. He undressed and then dressed quickly in his new clothes. It felt like heaven to have different clothes on, even though they were a little big for him. His old clothes weren’t wet anymore, but they were stiff and smelly now. He balled them up and brought them over to “his side” of the attic.

“I’ve got some food,” Josh told the man as he rummaged through his backpack, his stomach growling just thinking about it.

“Save your food,” the man said “I’ve got plenty.” He nodded at all the boxes of canned and boxed food he had neatly stacked up. “Come on over here.”

Josh walked across the floor in his new socks. The smell of the plywood and insulation was strong up here, but not strong enough to cover the sour smell of the man and the bucket of waste he had hidden somewhere among his possessions.

The man sat at the edge of his mattress, the blanket folded up at the end of it. He already had two cans of food in front of him and a handheld can opener in one large hand. One of the cans was corned beef hash and the other one was fruit cocktail.

Josh sat down on the floor across from the man. “What’s your name?”

“Isaac,” he answered. “Isaac Ackerman.”

“My name’s Josh Hooper.”

The man had both cans open now. He offered a plastic fork to Josh.

They traded cans back and forth, each taking a bite and chewing and swallowing slowly, each of them savoring their food, trying to make it last.

“Sorry about the nightmare,” Josh said.

Isaac just shrugged.

“You have nightmares?” Josh asked.

Isaac was quiet for a while. Josh wasn’t sure if Isaac was just normally a quiet guy or he’d become that way after a few days hiding up here in the attic.

“Sometimes,” Isaac finally answered as he methodically stabbed a piece of syrupy peach with the prongs of his fork.

“I dreamed the rippers got the access door open,” Josh said. “They were running towards me, about to tear me apart. Big shock, huh? A dream like that.”

Isaac just nodded.

Josh didn’t mention that he’d also dreamed that Isaac had ditched him and stolen his shotgun and backpack. He also left out the part about the shadowy man with the shining eyes and the blind woman and her strange message: You need to find us. Josh wanted to believe that she’d been talking about his sister and nephew, but he knew she hadn’t been. When he’d asked her about Marla and Kyle, she hadn’t answered him, but he had felt an overwhelming sense of loss crushing him.

They were dead. He could feel that in his bones, in his soul.

Or they were lost. They had become rippers.

But he wasn’t going to give up on them. He was going to his sister’s apartment. It was just a dream, that’s all; it didn’t mean anything, just his subconscious making shit up, nothing more.

“Is this your house?” Josh asked. It didn’t seem like Isaac was going to volunteer any information.

Isaac nodded. “This was my mom’s house. My wife and I . . . and the kids, we moved in about four years ago when my mom got real sick. She was gone a year later.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Josh said without really thinking about it, like some hollow platitude that had automatically slipped out of his mouth from years of habit.

Isaac shook his head a little, his mouth curved up into something resembling a smile. “At least she didn’t have to see all this shit.”

Josh didn’t really know what to say to that. And he didn’t bother asking about Isaac’s wife and kids—he could already guess what had happened to them.

CHAPTER 29

“I was on my way to Pittsburgh when you tossed your Molotov cocktail at my truck,” Josh said.

“Sorry about your truck.”

“No, it’s okay.” He was about to say that the truck hadn’t been his, anyway—he’d gotten it from a family that didn’t need it anymore. “Thanks, by the way, for saving me.”

Isaac ate a spoonful of the crumbly corned beef, being careful not to drop any. He chewed slowly and carefully, like maybe his teeth hurt or his mouth was sore.

“You got more of those Molotov cocktails up here?” Josh asked.

Isaac nodded.

“You got any guns?”

“No.”

“I’ve just got the shotgun,” Josh said but didn’t say any more, not wanting to go into detail about how he had pulled the weapon out from between the legs of a dead father. Just the thought of it brought back the smell of rotting flesh in his nostrils for a moment.

They traded the cans of food again, only a few bites left in each can.

“I need to find another vehicle,” Josh said. “Get back on the road, but I really appreciate you helping me out.”

Isaac gave Josh a hopeless look. “The rippers are still out there waiting, you know. You might not see them all the time, but they’re out there.”

“I need to get going.”

“I would suggest waiting for a few days. Let the rippers forget about us for a while.”

“I can’t wait that long.”

Isaac just waited for Josh to explain.

“I need to get to Pittsburgh. Find my sister and my nephew.”

“And you think they’re still alive?”

A fragment of the dream came back to Josh. For just a moment he saw the blind woman standing in the glow of the window again, telling him that he needed to find them. And that crushing feeling of hopelessness was back.

It was just a stupid dream. No matter how real it had seemed, it had just been a dream.

“I’m hoping and praying that they’re still alive,” Josh answered Isaac.

“Hoping and praying isn’t enough anymore.”

Josh didn’t say anything. He shoveled the last bite of fruit into his mouth and then drank the last of the syrup. He handed the empty can to Isaac.

“Odds are that they’re already dead,” Isaac said as he shoved both empty cans into a big black trash bag. He wiped off the forks with a rag that didn’t look too clean and stuck them back into a plastic Ziploc bag with a few other plastic utensils. “Or they turned into rippers.”

“I’m just trying to stay positive, man.”

“Better to be realistic.” He looked over at the boarded-up windows. “There’s no such thing as positive thinking anymore.”

“I have to try to find them.”

“Why?” Isaac asked.

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“You want to find them just so you feel like you have some sense of purpose in this shitty world.”

“No, I’m going to try because I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least try.”

“But the chance that they’re alive is small.”

“I don’t care.” Josh realized that his voice had been rising, and he was on the verge of losing his temper.

What was wrong with this guy? Why was he trying to talk him out of looking for his sister and his nephew? Isaac was beginning to rub Josh the wrong way. There was something about him that reminded Josh of guys he’d known before, guys who thought they were so much smarter than he was, so much more privileged, and more worthy. There were some guys in the world like Wendell, who were smart but didn’t try to go out of their way to make other people feel dumb (he didn’t want to think about Wendell right now and what had happened to him back at Camp FEMA), but Isaac was one of those guys who made himself feel better by putting other people down. Josh was thankful that Isaac had saved his life, but he wasn’t going to be talked down to like this.

But maybe the real reason Josh was getting angry was because Isaac was right. The trip back to Pittsburgh was a longshot, he knew that. But he had to try; he had to make up for his failure to Marla and Kyle, for getting caught by the cops and leaving them alone, for not being there for them, for letting them down like he’d done so many times before. Josh the screw-up. Josh the fuckup. God, he just wanted to do something right for a change.

“So what are you going to do if you get to Pittsburgh and you can’t find them?”

Josh stayed quiet for a few minutes, seething a little. He was sure Isaac could tell that he was angry, but the man didn’t seem to care. Isaac was taller than Josh by at least six inches, but Josh could already tell that he was stronger than the older man, and in much better shape. Plus he had the shotgun with him. But it almost seemed like Isaac was poking at him purposely, trying to provoke him somehow.

“I hadn’t planned that far ahead yet,” Josh said.

The feelings of dread and sorrow that he’d felt in the dream were still with him, and the certainty that the only two people in this world that he loved were gone. Kyle had been his strength these last six months while he’d gotten himself clean and sober; he would do anything for that kid, fight anyone, take on anything. And if that reason for fighting, if that reason for living was gone now . . . what would he do? Slip back into his old ways? A panicky feeling came over him as he thought about being truly alone in this world with no one he cared about, and no one who cared about him.

He glanced back at his backpack lying near his shotgun. Inside that backpack were those bottles of liquor swaddled in the dishtowels he’d wrapped them in, taped up and protected like a treasure. Those bottles were already calling him, offering their promises of comfort, a cocoon of apathy to slip into, a bliss of forgetfulness.

Not yet. No, he wouldn’t give in just yet.

“What happens, if by some miracle, you find your sister and your nephew?” Isaac asked.

Josh turned back around and looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“What I mean is, say you find them. Are you planning to stay in Pittsburgh? Stay in the house or building you’re in? Do you travel somewhere else? Do you have other destinations in mind?”

“Like I said, I haven’t planned that far ahead yet.”

“There’s nowhere to go,” Isaac said as if Josh had answered his question, like he had a rebuttal ready that he didn’t want to waste.

“You don’t know that.”

“It’s kind of obvious. This disease, it’s everywhere now.”

“How do you know?” Josh remembered Sean at Camp FEMA telling them that the blackout was nationwide, but could Josh really believe Sean? He’d been lying about everything else at that camp, maybe he’d been lying about the blackout and the plague.

“Look around you. You see anybody coming to rescue us? Just about everyone has turned into a ripper, even the rescuers themselves. When’s the last time you saw a military patrol go by? Or even a police car. When’s the last time you heard a helicopter in the sky? Or an airplane? How many vehicles did you see on the roads on your way here?”

Josh didn’t answer Isaac’s questions—he didn’t have to.

“This disease has spread quickly, and we’re just two of the unlucky bastards who were immune.”

“So you think this is a disease,” Josh said. He thought of what Ethan had said back at the camp, calling it a biblical plague.

They don’t know how to identify it, Ethan had said. They don’t even know exactly what it is. Even with all of their precautions at the camp, men were still getting infected. They had experimented on the infected, and they had also begun experimenting on the immune, trying to figure out how this pandemic worked.

But Josh didn’t tell Isaac any of that, not wanting to volunteer any more information to this man—not because he thought Isaac was dangerous, but because he didn’t want Isaac analyzing everything he said, picking everything apart and making him feel foolish.

“I think it’s some kind of airborne plague,” Isaac said. “Had to be for it to spread so quickly. It grew exponentially. You know what that means?” Isaac looked at Josh like: Of course you don’t know what that word means.

Josh had heard of the word before, but couldn’t exactly define it.

Isaac continued quickly before Josh had a chance to say anything. “Exponential growth is like a doubling of something, and then it keeps on doubling and doubling. It doesn’t take too many doublings before you’re in the millions.”

Josh doubted that.

“It’s true,” Isaac said as if he’d read Josh’s mind, or perhaps he’d noted his expression. “You ever hear the story about the man who invented the game of chess?”

Did Josh look like he knew the story of the man who had invented chess?

“The story goes that a man had invented the game of chess,” Isaac continued. “The king was so grateful for the game that he told the man that he could have anything he wanted. The man only asked for one coin, the equivalent of a penny in their money system. But he wanted that coin doubled the next day. And then that amount doubled. The king and his men laughed at the modest request, but he honored it. He gave the man one coin the next day. And then the day after that one coin became two. Two became four on the next day. Four became eight. Eight became sixteen. But twenty days later the king realized that he wasn’t going to be able to honor the request anymore because they didn’t have enough coins in the kingdom. He had no choice but to execute the man.”

“That’s a real uplifting story,” Josh said, but he didn’t believe a word of it.

“It’s kind of like that with a pandemic. One person infects two, and those two infect four, and those four infect eight. Only it’s worse, because the exponential growth starts over with each new infected person, until you have circles of infection overlapping each other. It only takes a few weeks before everyone on the planet is infected.”

Josh didn’t believe that, either. He couldn’t help thinking that there were some people on some Pacific island somewhere or up in the mountains of Siberia who weren’t infected yet. “What are you, a scientist or something?”

Isaac didn’t answer right away. The question seemed to hurt him for just a moment, like memories were flooding back whether he wanted them to or not. “I taught science in high school.”

Josh thought that Isaac looked like a science teacher. He sure acted like one now. “Still doesn’t mean that everyone is infected. There could be areas that were quarantined.” But he thought of the FEMA camp—it had been quarantined yet people had still turned into rippers there.

“It’s over,” Isaac said in a low voice. “It’s all over for us.”

Josh got up and walked over to the windows with the pieces of wood and cardboard over them. He needed to get up and move, but more than that, he needed to get away from Isaac. He hadn’t put his hiking boots back on yet, and his footsteps in his fresh socks were silent across the plywood floor of the attic. He stood by the window, in the little strip of light that was pouring in from the edge of the cardboard.

Josh looked down at the gold wristwatch Ethan had given him, pressing the little button on the side to illuminate it. It was twelve thirty. Still pretty early in the day. Still some daylight left so he could go out there and look for another vehicle and get back on the road.

He was about to peek out the narrow gap between the cardboard panels over the window, see if he could spot a car or a truck he could use. But before he even brought his eye up to the window, he heard someone screaming from outside.

CHAPTER 30

Josh pulled a piece of the cardboard away from the window so he could see better, throwing it down on the floor behind him.

“What the hell are you doing?” Isaac yelled, seemingly more concerned about his pieces of cardboard than the screams coming from outside. He was up on his feet, moving quicker than Josh would have expected.

Josh looked out the window at the intersection just beyond the front yard of the house. “There’s a guy in the street.”

Isaac was across the attic in a flash, standing right beside Josh.

“He’s just . . . laying there,” Josh said. “He must be hurt.”

Isaac stared out the window for a moment.

Josh noticed a funky smell coming from Isaac, not body odor really—and Josh didn’t have much room to talk about body odor since he was sure he wasn’t smelling his freshest these days—but it was something else, almost the sickly pungent odor of an unhealthy person, like a nursing home smell.

The man lying in the middle of the intersection looked pretty young, maybe in his mid-thirties. He was dressed in ripped jeans and a gray sweatshirt stained with dark spots that could be blood. His dark hair was a little long, matted down against his forehead, the skin of his face shiny with sweat. He screamed again, looking around wildly. He started to crawl, dragging his legs behind him like he was paralyzed.

“Oh shit, he’s hurt,” Josh said. “We need to help him.” He was already starting to head for his backpack and the shotgun.

But Isaac touched Josh’s arm, stopping him.

Josh looked at Isaac, who shook his head slowly, like a doctor about to give a family bad news.

“What?” Josh said.

“I’ve seen this before.”

“Seen what before?”

“Look out the window again.”

Josh felt butterflies fluttering in his stomach now, that shivery feeling he got right before looking at some horribly gross photo. But he looked out the window again.

“His legs are broken,” Isaac said. “That’s why he can’t move them.”

“How do you know that?”

“The rippers did it to him.”

“I don’t see any rippers.”

“Wait a minute.”

Josh waited and watched. The man was still crawling across the pavement of the intersection, and now Josh saw that his legs were bleeding and he was leaving a trail of blood behind him like some giant slug. The man hadn’t crawled very far, maybe ten feet. He moaned in pain with every slight movement. He looked around as he crawled, like he was waiting for the rippers to come.

And then they came. Three rippers darted out from behind a truck, racing into the intersection.

The man tried to fight back, but he was no match for them. Two of the rippers grabbed the man’s arms and dragged him back into the middle of the intersection. They held him down while the third ripper bit the side of his face, tearing away a piece of flesh. The man screamed and the rippers let him go—he held a hand to his face as he howled in pain, trying to stop the flow of blood.

The three rippers looked right up at the house, right at the attic windows. And then they ran back from where they had come from, hiding again.

The man began to crawl again. He looked like some giant insect that had been partially crushed on a road, an insect trying to get back to the grass even though there was no hope of survival.

“They’re using him as bait,” Isaac said.

Josh looked at him. “You said you’ve seen this before?”

“It was a woman last time. The day before you got here. She was in the same spot in the intersection. The rippers, they were darting out, two or three at a time, tearing a piece off of her. A finger. A mouthful of flesh. An ear. Part of her nose. But they didn’t do enough to kill her, and they didn’t do enough so that she lost too much blood. They had broken her legs. Probably with bats or rocks or something. She thrashed and screamed, tried to crawl. But they would just drag her back to the middle of the intersection if she crawled too far.”

“God,” Josh whispered.

“I wanted to save her,” Isaac said. “But I knew I couldn’t. I don’t have a gun. I went down there with the Molotov cocktails. Two of them. I got down there and lit the first cocktail and threw it at the rippers. The fire scared them a little, backed them up, but I still couldn’t get to the woman. For a moment I held the second cocktail, ready to light the rag. I was considering throwing it at the woman. I knew setting her on fire would’ve been just as bad as the torture she was going through, but at least it would have been over for her.”

Josh wasn’t so sure being burned alive would be much better. “But you didn’t throw it at her, did you?”

Isaac just shrugged. “The rippers started charging again. I threw the second cocktail at them and went back into the house. The fire gave me a few seconds to run, long enough to get back upstairs, back up here to the attic.” He paused for a moment. “They came after me, but I got the ladder pulled back up, the access door closed before they got up here. Pulled the string up to the ceiling. They can’t seem to figure out where I’ve gone when they come up here. They look for a while, and then they give up and leave.”

“Are you trying to say they’re using those people down there to flush you out of the house?” Josh asked.

Isaac nodded. “I think so. It’s like they know I’m in the house, but they don’t know where. They used the woman as bait.” He shook his head, his eyes moist with unshed tears. “I wish I had a rifle. Some kind of gun. Maybe I could’ve shot her and put her out of her misery. After I was up here again, they kept it going for hours. Torturing her. Taking more pieces of her. Making her scream and scream, trying to get me back out there.”

Josh looked back out the window as the man screamed even louder. Three more rippers had come back to the intersection. They dragged him back the few feet he had crawled, back to the center of the intersection. Two of the rippers held his arms down again, while the third bit a chunk out of the other side of his face. The man thrashed violently, trying to break free from the rippers, but there was no hope.

“That could’ve been me,” Josh whispered. He looked at Isaac.

Isaac just shrugged.

“They made me wreck,” Josh said. “A few of them ran out in front of my truck. I think they were trying to get me to swerve, sacrificing themselves so I would crash. They wanted me to wreck the truck so they could drag me to the intersection.”

“Maybe,” Isaac said.

“But why did you help me? You said you couldn’t help the woman. Why did you go down there to help me?”

Again, Isaac just shrugged. “I . . . I just felt like I needed to help. You had a gun. You could fight them off for a few minutes. It gave me time to help.”

It didn’t sound like much of an answer to Josh. And he had a sudden feeling that there was more to it than that, more that Isaac wasn’t telling him for some reason.

But Josh didn’t call Isaac on it. He looked back at the window again, thinking again that that it could have been him out there yesterday, his legs shattered with rocks and baseball bats. He could have been trying to crawl across the pavement as three or four rippers darted out to drag him back and tear pieces of his body and face away. He shuddered, trying to push the thought from his mind.

“We still need to do something for that guy down there,” Josh said.

“There’s nothing we can do,” Isaac told him.

Josh looked back out the window at the intersection below. “There’s only a few of them.”

“No, there’s more. You can’t see them because they’re hiding, but there are hundreds of them out there. They’re just trying to flush us out. Like I said, they know we’re in here, but they can’t figure out where. It’s probably driving them crazy.”

Josh watched the man in the middle of the intersection for a moment. It seemed like the man had given up on crawling away. He just lay there on his side in the road like it was too painful for him to even move anymore. He was breathing hard, and he had vomited, the blood from his face mixing together with the vomit on the road in front of him.

“We’re safe for the moment,” Isaac said in his most reasonable tone. “But we won’t be safe up here forever. Eventually they’ll figure out where we are. They’ll figure out how to get the access door open.”

And then we’ll be sitting ducks, Josh thought.

“It’s like they are animals,” Isaac said. “It’s almost like this disease has regressed them back to what we used to be millions of years ago.”

“Cavemen?” Josh asked.

“If you want to call them that. Back then, hundreds of thousands of years ago, our brains weren’t as developed as they are now. We used a lot more of our limbic regions back then, a part of our brains that control our base urges and needs . . . our survival instincts.”

“So that’s what you think the rippers are? Some kind of Neanderthals or something?”

“Well, I think they are something before the Neanderthals, actually.”

“What do you mean? This disease, or whatever it is, it’s changing us into what we used to be hundreds of thousands of years ago?”

“More like the disease is shutting down parts of our brains, the parts that make us human.”

Josh looked back out the window again. Isaac had said that he wished he could have put the woman out of her misery the day before yesterday. Maybe Josh could do that for this man. But he couldn’t kill the man from this window with the shotgun; the buckshot would be like pellets just peppering his skin lightly from this far away, if it even reached that far. And the shot would give away their position. He could imagine rippers standing on top of each other, building some kind of human ladder to crawl up to this window.

“The rippers are like animals now,” Isaac said again, almost like he was talking to himself now. “But they’re getting smarter.”

CHAPTER 31

“What do you mean they’re getting smarter?” Josh asked.

Isaac hurried over to his side of the attic and picked up a spiral notebook that was near the head of his bed.

Josh felt a little sick to his stomach discussing the intelligence of the rippers while the man down there was being tortured, picked apart little by little. The canned corned beef and fruit cocktail he’d eaten a little earlier wasn’t settling too well in his stomach. He looked back out the window. He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away. The sky was a deep blue, a perfect chilly fall day. The sun was bright, shining down on the intersection like a spotlight, illuminating the horror with an uncaring eye. It seemed like too beautiful of a day for what was taking place down there on the street.

Isaac was back at the window with his notebook. He opened it as he talked, somewhat excited now—it was the first real emotion Josh had seen from the man.

“I’ve been watching them,” Isaac said. “Studying them. Writing everything down.”

The pages of the notebook were covered with scribblings. There were also some diagrams and a few crude drawings.

Isaac grew more excited as he talked, speaking faster. Maybe he was beginning to snap, maybe watching and jotting down notes was something that made him feel normal again. “They’re getting smarter. They’re still like animals, like raging animals, but they’re learning and adapting and getting smarter. They seem to have some kind of hierarchy—even though I don’t know exactly how it works. They seem to hunt in packs, and there seems to be alphas and betas among those packs. And then there are what I call the soldiers. The soldiers seem to be some kind of lower-class members of the pack, or their tribe, or whatever you want to call it. The soldiers are the ones who seem willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the group.”

Josh noticed that Isaac was talking even faster now, shifting his weight from one foot to the other like he couldn’t stand still. Maybe Isaac was just excited, but Josh began to wonder if he was high on something, maybe some kind of pain pills. Josh remembered what that high was like.

“But even though they seem to have regressed,” Isaac said, “they also seem fundamentally different. Stronger and faster, not as vulnerable to things like the cold weather and pain. Not only have their brains been altered, but it seems like their bodies have as well. Of course the brain controls so much of our bodies, so much more than we’re even aware of, that it could just seem like their bodies have gone through actual physiological changes.”

Isaac paused like he’d lost his train of thought for a moment. He flipped to another page in his notebook. “They hunt, or prowl, or whatever you want to call it, at all times of the day and night. They don’t seem to prefer night over day or the other way around. And they always seem to be moving around out there, almost like they work in shifts, some sleeping while others are hunting. As far as I can tell, the time they are least active is the early morning, from about four a.m. to about seven or eight a.m.”

Isaac flipped to another page. “Oh, and it seems like they take care of the children in their packs, like mammals would, but they get rid of any who are too old, sick, or injured in any way. They just sacrifice them. Maybe even eat them.”

“That’s all cool, Isaac,” Josh said as he pointed at the window. “But we still need to help that man down there.”

Isaac stared at Josh with a confused look on his face. “Haven’t you been listening to what I’ve been saying? That’s exactly what they want us to do. They know we’re up here somewhere, and they’re angry at us. We got away from them and they want us bad. They want to draw us outside. We can’t fall for it.”

“I can’t just stand here and watch this. I can’t listen to this man scream for hours.”

“You said you want to go to Pittsburgh,” Isaac said. His voice grew stern—a teacher’s voice. “You said you’re looking for your sister and your nephew.”

Josh nodded. “Yeah?”

“You think there are a lot of rippers here in this town? Wait until you get to a big city. How many thousands of them do you think you’ll have to face there? You think this is horrible, what kind of horrors do you think are waiting for you there? It’ll be much worse than this, I can assure you. You’re just going to have to find a way to get used to it, or you’re not going to last very long.”

“If I don’t do anything, then I’m as much of an animal as they are.”

Isaac closed his notebook. “I’m not going back out there. I went out there for you because I knew you had a chance. But that guy out there, he doesn’t have a chance. He’s too far gone. Even if you rescued him, you wouldn’t be able to save him. He’s not going to survive. He’ll die of infections. Or hell, he might even die from shock and pain. He can’t walk. What are you going to do, carry him? How are you going to get him up here into the attic?”

“I didn’t say I was going to rescue him,” Josh said. He went over to his backpack and picked up his shotgun. “I’m going to put him out of his misery.”

Isaac didn’t respond; he just stared at Josh with his notebook still clutched in his hands.

“You don’t have to go down there with me,” Josh said. “I’m not asking you to. I just need a few of your Molotov cocktails.”

“They’re just trying to flush us out,” Isaac said in a low voice. “Why can’t you see that?”

“Are you going to give me the Molotov cocktails or not?” Josh knew that he wouldn’t have much of a chance without them. Would he take them from Isaac? Point his shotgun at him and threaten him? Rob him of his gasoline and glass bottles?

Isaac walked back to his bed and laid his notebook down on the plywood floor.

Josh rummaged through the outer pocket of his backpack and found the lighter. He pulled it out and shoved it down into his pants pocket. He took out the box of shells for the shotgun and loaded the weapon. It sounded so loud in the attic, but he needed the shotgun fully loaded. He stuffed a dozen more shells into his pants pockets.

Isaac came over to Josh with two Mason jars. A small part of the metal top was cut out, enough to stuff a strip of cloth down into the gasoline in the jar, part of the cloth hanging out as a wick. “How are you going to carry these and your shotgun?”

There was a strap on the shotgun and Josh slung it over his shoulder. He held his hands out for the two jars.

Isaac handed them over. “I wish you would change your mind.”

Josh didn’t say anything. He walked around the brick chimney to the access door where the wooden ladder was folded up on top of it in sections. He crouched down beside it, setting the Molotov cocktails on the floor beside him. He took a deep breath and laid a hand on the ladder, ready to push it down.

The man outside screamed again. Josh could hear it all the way in here. He had to do this; he couldn’t let the man suffer like that much longer.

But he hesitated for a moment. He tried to calm his nerves, trying to slow his breathing, trying to slow his rapid heartbeat. He could feel the blood rushing through his neck and head with each heartbeat.

Isaac touched him on the shoulder.

Josh hadn’t even heard Isaac move through the attic and crouch down beside him. Was it because Isaac had gotten so skilled at moving silently across the attic, or was it because Josh had been focusing too intently on his task and ignoring his surroundings?

For just a second Josh thought Isaac had come to join him, changing his mind at the last moment. But Isaac crouched there in the gloom with a long finger to his lips, his eyes wide. He pointed down at the floor, mouthing a few words that Josh couldn’t make out. But he didn’t need to; he knew what Isaac was trying to tell him: the rippers were downstairs.

And then Josh heard the creaking somewhere down below the attic floor. It sounded like someone was walking around down there, trying to be quiet. Maybe a ripper was right below them in the hallway, or maybe the ripper was in one of the bedrooms with the destroyed furniture and Isaac’s family’s possessions strewn about.

Josh was trembling now, unable to stop his body from shaking. His hand was still resting lightly on the folded-up ladder on top of the access door. He’d just been about to push it down so the door would open and the ladder would unfold in sections on the way down. He had been so close to giving away their position.

They’re getting smarter. That’s what Isaac had said only minutes ago. They’re still like animals, like raging animals, but they’re learning and adapting and getting smarter. And this proved it—some of the rippers had stayed behind in the house waiting for him and Isaac to appear. Or maybe the ripper was just a straggler, scrounging around for food. Or maybe there was more than one ripper down there. Maybe there were five or six of them, waiting in the darkness for as long as it took.

Josh had been so close to giving themselves away to the rippers, so close to probably killing himself and Isaac. No matter how much Josh wanted to help the man out in the street, he couldn’t get Isaac killed in the process, not after the man had saved his life.

He could picture himself opening the access door and swinging the ladder down, maybe even getting down to the first floor. And then the shooting would start. The rippers outside would hear the shots, and they would storm the house. Maybe Josh could have gotten some shots off, taken a few of the soldiers out. But then what? Would he have even made it to the street to shoot the man out there? And if he hadn’t made it to the street, he would have to run back up here. And then what? Light the Molotov cocktails on the way? Light them inside the house, drop one, and catch it on fire? And who knew how many of the rippers he would get with the shotgun if he made it out to the street. He wasn’t exactly an expert with a shotgun. Or any gun, for that matter.

He could imagine making it back upstairs to the hallway. He could imagine Isaac closing the access door, the ladder folding back up as he did so. And then he would pull up the thin rope with the decorative ceramic knob on it, bringing it up flush to the ceiling so Josh couldn’t jump high enough to grab it. And then the rippers would overtake him, maybe even break his legs and drag him out to the intersection to join the man out there.

Would Isaac close the access door to save himself?

Josh wasn’t sure, couldn’t be sure, but it wasn’t something he wanted to find out. He pulled his hand away from the folded-up ladder like he was afraid the slightest of touches might set it off, like it was a giant coiled spring or some kind of bear trap with a hair trigger. He backed away from the ladder and access door, then he got to his feet. He followed Isaac as he crept back to his “home” area. Josh handed the two jars of gasoline with the white strips of cloth hanging out of them to Isaac, and he couldn’t hide how badly his hands were shaking.

Isaac didn’t say anything about Josh’s shaking; he set the jars of gasoline down into a cardboard box with the others. He sat down on his mattress, as silent as a cat.

The man outside screamed again, a wail that rose to a high-pitched crescendo before dying back down.

Josh looked at the boarded-up attic windows. The afternoon was growing late, the shadows taking over up here, turning the attic gloomy.

“I know you wanted to help him,” Isaac whispered.

Josh didn’t respond to Isaac as he took his backpack off and set it down on the plywood floor not too far away from Isaac’s mattress, closer to the window. He sat down on the floor, leaning back against his pack with the shotgun in front of him.

The creaking from downstairs had stopped, and the house was silent now. Josh wondered if those creaking noises had really been the rippers moving around down there. He guessed that Isaac knew every creak and pop in this house. And now Josh wondered if those noises had just been the house settling. He wondered if Isaac had told a lie about the rippers being down there to stop him. But Josh didn’t ask Isaac—he didn’t want to know.

Outside, the man screamed again.

“I have something that will help,” Isaac said.

Josh looked at Isaac—he held a full bottle of whiskey in his hand.

CHAPTER 32

Hours later the attic was practically pitch-black. The man outside was still screaming every once in a while, like he was being jabbed or poked or stabbed. Or bitten. But Josh didn’t go and look—he didn’t want to see what the rippers were doing to the man.

The man had just screamed again, a howl of pain that stretched out for at least sixty seconds. But then his screams died down into wailing, and then to moaning. How wasn’t the man dead yet? He had to bleed out eventually, didn’t he?

Isaac was already getting pretty drunk.

“You sure you don’t want some of this?” Isaac asked, holding the bottle of whiskey by the neck, lifting it up just a little.

Josh could barely see Isaac in the darkness, but he could hear the whiskey sloshing around in the bottle. “No. I used to be an alcoholic.”

“I was never much of a drinker,” Isaac said like he hadn’t really even listened to what Josh had just said, or maybe he was past the point of caring now.

Josh hoped that Isaac wasn’t going to get wasted and start stumbling around, screaming and yelling, drawing the rippers up here. But so far, even though Isaac’s words were beginning to slur pretty severely, he was still calm and relaxed.

“You think you’re a coward now, don’t you?” Isaac said.

Josh didn’t answer Isaac. He still felt sick to his stomach about leaving the man out there to die a slow, tortuous death. He wished he could have gone down there to help the man, and he’d been ready to go until Isaac had stopped him when he thought he’d heard the rippers down below. But secretly Josh had been happy for an excuse to stay up here in the attic. He’d been scared as he crouched down next to the access door, there was no denying that. If he was going to be absolutely truthful with himself, he had been relieved that he didn’t have to go down to that street.

Maybe it was good he hadn’t gone down there to kill the man in the intersection. He had others to think about now—at least that’s how he was rationalizing his guilt. He had Isaac to think about now, the man who had saved his life yesterday. If he would have gone down there, chances were pretty good that the rippers would have killed him, and then stormed up here and killed Isaac. He also needed to think of Marla and Kyle. If they were still alive, if there was even a remote chance of that, then they needed him. What if they were waiting on him and he got himself killed by doing something impulsive and stupid? He’d been doing impulsive and stupid things his whole life. He’d never listened to other people’s advice. He had always been selfish, placing his own urges and desires above everyone else’s. That’s why he’d gotten drunk and high so much in his life—it was all about himself feeling good, and to hell with anyone else. But he needed to start thinking differently now. He needed to be less emotional and think about things before he did them. One stupid move didn’t just get him in trouble with the law these days . . . no, one stupid move nowadays would get him killed.

“You’re not a coward,” Isaac said. “There’s nothing we can do for that man out there in the street. Not now.” He took another sip from his bottle.

Josh leaned back against his backpack in the dark, his legs stretched out, one ankle crossed over the other, his shotgun within easy reach. He still had the extra shotgun shells stuffed down in his front pants pockets; they dug at his skin a little, but he wasn’t going to take them out now.

“I felt like a coward when I didn’t help that woman,” Isaac said. “Remember that woman I told you about before? The one who was in the intersection before you got here?”

Josh remembered.

“I felt so . . . so bad that I didn’t . . . that I couldn’t help her.”

“But you helped me,” Josh said.

Isaac didn’t say anything. He took another sip of whiskey.

“What are your plans?” Josh asked him.

“Plans?”

“Yeah. You’re going to hide up here in your attic forever?”

It was Isaac’s turn not to answer.

“Why don’t you come with me to Pittsburgh? We could go and find a car or truck tomorrow and drive out of here.”

“I’ve got a car sitting in my garage.”

“You do?” Josh’s spirits rose right away. “That’s great. We could take that.”

Isaac took another sip of whiskey. “Why should I go anywhere? My wife and boys are gone now. Everyone in my family. Probably everyone I’ve ever known. There’s nothing left for me out there in the world.”

“So you’re just going to stay up here, until . . . until what? You starve to death?”

“I could wait up here for a while,” Isaac said, his words even sloppier now. “I suppose one could wait them out.”

“Wait them out?”

“How long do you think the rippers can survive?”

Josh hadn’t really thought about that.

“If this is some kind of virus that has affected people, then maybe the virus is slowly killing them, like the rabies virus kills its host. Maybe their brains are boiling in fluids as we speak. And even if the disease that has infected them doesn’t kill them, then maybe they’ll die of other means. How long will the easy food left behind by us last for them? After the winter, they may be starving by spring.”

“They’ll just start eating each other,” Josh guessed.

“Yes, but by doing that, their numbers will dwindle even more.”

Josh nodded in the darkness. It made sense, and it gave him even more hope. “And maybe they’ll freeze to death,” he added.

“Maybe,” Isaac said like he was pondering the thought of it.

“Maybe?”

“From what I’ve observed so far, and this is just a guess, it seems like the rippers aren’t affected by the cold like we are. Or maybe they can just ignore the pain. But I can’t help thinking that this virus has changed the way their brains work, not just in the obvious sense, but in other ways. I can’t help thinking that they are changing. Adapting.”

“What disease could change a human like that?” Josh asked.

“I don’t know. Diseases can definitely change the way people look, their skin, their nerves, the way their brains work.”

Josh remembered Ethan at the FEMA camp telling him that he and the other scientists couldn’t figure out what was causing the plague and turning people into rippers, but he didn’t tell Isaac that; he didn’t want to get sidetracked here. “So your plan is to live up here through winter and wait them out? You ever think that you might freeze to death up here yourself? Or starve?”

Isaac didn’t say anything.

Josh sighed. “So go with me to Pittsburgh. I could use someone with me, someone to watch my back. And I could watch yours.”

Isaac was drinking again.

The pull of the alcohol’s sweet voice was whispering to Josh, but he swore he wasn’t going to give in to that temptation. He had made a promise to Marla and Kyle, and he wasn’t going to break it. He wasn’t going to show up with liquor on his breath. If he couldn’t find them, if there was no hope of finding them, then maybe he would get rip-roaring drunk. But not right now.

“Do you know how the rippers got their name?” Isaac asked.

Great. Isaac wasn’t answering his question—he was taking another side road now to another subject that had just popped into his liquored mind. Josh didn’t bother answering Isaac because he knew the man was going to continue on with his story whether he wanted him to or not.

“There was a reporter at the scene of a gruesome murder. A teenager had killed his entire family. He had used various kitchen knives on them. Police shot the kid. Killed him immediately. The kid had cut the bodies up so badly that the reporter said they looked like victims of Jack the Ripper. The news report went viral online. People commented about it, and the nickname stuck. The rippers. Americans love nicknames.”

Isaac took another swig from his bottle and continued. “I used to watch the news on TV. Read reports online. I’d heard about all of these murders and all the senseless violence. But I didn’t think too much about it at the time. I even thought that some of it was fake news and clickbait headlines.”

“My nephew knew,” Josh said, and a sharp pang of guilt knifed through him. “He tried to tell me about it, but I wouldn’t listen. I told him not to believe that shit he read on the internet.”

“Yes, there were sensational stories on the internet,” Isaac agreed. “But I think there was so much more than that. I think so many of the stories were suppressed by the news media and the government. I think those in power knew what was beginning to happen long before the general public did.”

Josh just nodded. He agreed. Those “in power,” as Isaac called them, had probably flown to some private islands or were safely tucked away in some underground bunkers.

“Two weeks after I really started paying attention to the stories on the news, my wife and my little boys were dead.” Isaac said.

Isaac took another drink, and the whiskey sloshed around in the bottle. The sound was driving Josh crazy, the sound of comfort, the sound of a blissful cocoon of apathy to drown in. He felt like curling up in a ball on the dusty plywood floor and covering his ears, which would not only block out the sound of the whiskey sloshing in the bottle but also the man screaming himself to death down in the street, and the creaks and pops of the house, which could either be the house settling or rippers sneaking around down on the lower floors somewhere. But most of all, covering his ears would block out the sound of Isaac talking and his tales of misery. His story was just one more story piled onto so many others, millions of others.

“You don’t have to talk about it,” Josh told him.

“I know.” A pause for a moment. “My wife’s name was Cynthia, but I always called her Cindy. A few days ago, Friday, when things really got bad, when the banks closed and the president was on TV declaring martial law, that’s the day I started noticing Cindy’s symptoms. Maybe I didn’t want to believe it at first, but deep down I knew she was getting sick, exposed to the plague that was going around. But I kept on lying to myself, fantasizing about getting Cindy to a hospital so she could be treated.”

Isaac was quiet for a moment, not even taking another sip of his whiskey. Even the man outside was quiet for now.

“Cindy started talking to herself on that first day,” Isaac said. “Whispering, really. She was saying things that didn’t make any sense. I even asked her what she was talking about, trying to understand what she was trying to say. But she just snapped at me. She would get so angry suddenly. And then there were some lucid moments; she was herself again for a little while, but then it would start all over again. I made her drink plenty of water. I took her blood pressure with a wrist cuff. Her blood pressure was a little high, but not too bad. I took her temperature, thinking she might have a fever. But her temperature was normal. Actually she was a degree below normal. I couldn’t call for help. The phones were down by then. The internet wasn’t working. The power had just gone out.”

Again, Isaac was quiet for a moment, and Josh thought that his voice had cracked. Maybe he was steeling himself, trying to continue without crying.

“I only left her alone for a few minutes,” Isaac whispered. “I wanted to go down the street to the pharmacy. I wanted to ask the pharmacist if I could get something for my wife. I told the boys to stay in their room. I told them not to let Mommy in. I told them to lock the door. I didn’t want to take them with me because . . . because there were others out there by then. Rippers.”

“You don’t have to go on,” Josh said.

“Do you believe in God, Josh?”

The question shocked Josh a little—he hadn’t been ready for it, and his mind stumbled around for an answer. He discovered that he really didn’t have an answer for Isaac’s question. God, or the idea of a god, was an abstract idea for him, something he didn’t really bother thinking about very much. He had prayed a few times in his life. He had prayed the first few nights in jail and in prison. He had prayed when he had suffered through withdrawals. He had prayed many times when he’d been on the hunt for a fix. “I don’t know,” he finally answered. “I think so. I want to.”

“Well, I don’t,” Isaac said. His voice was the loudest it had been so far. “I believed in science and medicine. I was a science teacher and science was my god. I put my faith in the principles that man had come up with. I taught my students to believe in these two cruel gods of science and medicine. I had indoctrinated my students, baptized them into the cult. And where did my beliefs get me? Science and medicine in the end had let me down. My wife died anyway. My boys died anyway. And I have this fear that my gods, science and medicine, brought about this plague that’s out there right now, the plague that killed my family and so many others.”

Isaac was getting pretty drunk now. Josh was sure he was going to have to suggest that Isaac put the bottle down soon. Isaac had been so quiet before, but now the alcohol was loosening him up considerably.

“The pharmacist couldn’t help,” Isaac went on. “There was no cure, no way to fight this disease that was spreading from person to person. There was no help on the way. I came back home. Cindy had gotten into the boys’ room. The door, it wasn’t bashed in, so I guess she must’ve convinced them to open the door for her. I told them she was sick and that they needed to stay away from her. But they didn’t listen. They had always been closer to her than me.”

Isaac took another drink. “Cindy brought a kitchen knife into the bedroom with her. A big one. She had . . . she chased them around until she caught them.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Josh snapped.

Isaac stopped talking.

“I’m sorry,” Josh said in a whisper. “I just don’t want to hear any more of it. I know you might want to talk about it, but I don’t want to hear it.” Images of Marla infected with the disease entered Josh’s mind; he could picture his sister chasing Kyle around with a butcher knife, Kyle too scared and confused to even run.

“I’ll spare you the details,” Isaac said, and it sounded like he was sulking now. He took another drink. It sounded like he’d spilled some of it.

“You know,” Josh said, “it might not be such a good idea to get so drunk. We need to stay alert. What if the rippers figure out how to get up here?”

“The first night I came up here to the attic, I could hear the rippers outside. I could hear them yelling. I could hear their animal cries, or whatever you want to call them. I boarded up the front and back doors downstairs. I boarded up the windows. But they could get in, eventually. I couldn’t run, couldn’t leave. I didn’t even want to. If the plague was happening here in this small town, then it was happening everywhere. The helicopters and planes had stopped flying over us. The military patrols had never reached us way out here, probably sticking to the bigger cities. I knew it was all over for us, for civilization. So I came up here to the attic. I brought a mattress up here with me from the guest room. Some pillows and blankets. I don’t have a gun so I did the best I could as far as weapons: a few kitchen knives and these Mason jars full of gasoline. And I brought this bottle of whiskey up here.”

Isaac’s words were slurring so badly, and his sentences were beginning to run together.

“I never drank much,” Isaac continued. “Maybe the occasional drink at a holiday party or something. We’ve had these bottles of liquor in the house for years. Crown Royal. Grey Goose. Some others. They were for when guests came over and wanted a drink. I told myself that I was bringing the whiskey up here in case I ran out of gasoline; maybe I could use it for fuel. But I was lying to myself. I knew that I was eventually going to drink it.”

Isaac stopped talking for several minutes. Josh thought that maybe the man was on the verge of passing out. But then Isaac jumped like he’d been startled into consciousness. “Don’t ever lie to yourself, Josh.”

Josh thought of his own bottles of liquor swaddled protectively in his backpack. He thought of the lies he’d told himself, and the lies he was still telling himself.

“You can’t lie to yourself,” Isaac said. “You’re all you got now.”

“I think it’s about time for last call,” Josh said, even though Isaac was well beyond last call now.

“You know why I went down there for you?” Isaac asked. “You know why I lit those Mol . . . those Molotov cocktails? You want to know the real reason I rescued you?”

Josh had been wondering about it.

“I had a dream about you,” Isaac said.

CHAPTER 33

Isaac’s words stopped Josh cold.

Isaac had a dream about me?

Josh thought of the dreams he’d been having lately of the beautiful blond woman and the dark shadowy man with the shining eyes.

“I saw your accident in a dream,” Isaac said. “Saw the whole thing. I saw your truck flipped over. I saw you crawling out. Rippers attacking. You shooting at them. I didn’t even hesitate when you crashed your truck—it was just like my dream. I grabbed three cocktails, and I ran downstairs. I knew the rippers wouldn’t be in the house. I knew they would be distracted by you. I knew I needed to help you. I don’t know why, but it just felt important.”

Josh was still too stunned to say anything.

“I’m not a religious man, like I told you before. I told you about my gods, the ones that let me down. But when I saw the accident, the same one I’d seen in my dream, then I knew I had to help you. It was like . . . like this force or something was pushing me.”

Josh thought of the blond woman again, the glow around her in the dreams, like she was an angel. Find us, she had said in the dream.

“I jus’ had to tell you that,” Isaac mumbled.

Josh looked at the window. Even though Isaac had replaced the pieces of cardboard, there was still a small slit of the window showing, a dark blue line of night sky in the darkness of the attic. He thought about ripping the rest of the cardboard off of the windows so that the faint moonlight might light up the attic a little. He was feeling lost in the darkness now, like he was adrift in an endless void, and the only point of reference for him was that little slit of night sky.

He watched the window, curled up next to his shotgun, his head resting on a balled-up shirt. He closed his eyes and saw himself at the window with Isaac earlier. Isaac had been so excited, showing him his notebook full of notes that he’d taken on the rippers, his study of them. Josh had suspected that Isaac was high at that moment, buzzing on some pain pills. He’d seen the symptoms so many times before. He’d felt the high of opioids so many times before.

But pain pills and alcohol would not be a good mix.

Josh sat up in the darkness. He realized that he had drifted off to sleep, but the thought of Isaac taking pills and drinking had woken him up.

No, it couldn’t be.

“Isaac?” Josh whispered.

No answer. Josh couldn’t even hear Isaac snoring. He couldn’t even hear the man breathing.

“Isaac?”

No answer.

Josh listened in the silence for another moment. There were some creaking and popping sounds coming from below. Either the house was settling again or there were rippers sneaking through the rooms somewhere down there.

He needed to wake Isaac up. He rummaged in his backpack until he found the small flashlight he’d taken from the LaRose family home. He cupped one hand around the end of it to block off all the light and then he turned it on, holding it like a burglar would, moving his fingers just slightly to let a little light out.

Even before he got to Isaac, Josh could smell the mixture of bodily fluids coming from the mattress: vomit, shit, and piss. Isaac was lying on his side, his face staring up at the sharp rise of the ceiling over him with the bats of insulation tucked in between the trusses. His eyes were barely open, just slits. His mouth was opened wide with a river of dried puke crusting his face and the sheets below him on the mattress. The whiskey bottle was on its side, only a little left inside, some of it spilled on his bed. The front of his pants were dark with the urine that his bladder had let go of when he died.

Josh sat back on the floor and turned the flashlight off for a minute.

What was he supposed to do now?

He crawled back to his backpack and curled up with it. He really craved a drink now, but he craved the pain pills even more, especially now that he knew Isaac had them stashed somewhere up here. He hated himself for wondering about the pain pills, automatically wondering how many might be left, dreaming of finding a whole bottle.

Josh wadded up the extra shirt again and laid his head down on it. He lay on his side and stared at that little slit of night sky at the edge of the window, that dark blue line between the cardboard and the wall.

He’d never spent the night in an attic with a dead man before.

CHAPTER 34

Josh woke up to the sound of rustling clothing. There was a moment of silence, then that sound again. They were sly sounds, sneaky sounds, the sound of someone trying to creep up next to him in the darkness.

He opened his eyes. It was still dark in the attic, but the world outside that little slit of window between the cardboard and the wall was lightening up with the rising sun, and that helped him see better in the attic.

Had the rippers gotten inside the attic? Were they sneaking up on him? Had they figured out how to open the access door and pull the ladder down without making a sound?

Josh looked over at the access door on the other side of the chimney. Even though it was still so dark in the attic, somehow he could see the folded-up ladder piled up on top of the floor. The access door wasn’t open.

“Josh . . .”

Isaac shambled out of the darkness, shuffling towards Josh into a shaft of morning light. Isaac’s mouth was hanging open, the line of dried vomit still stuck to his face and neck, the front of his pants still dark with urine. His body was slow but jerky, and he seemed to be dragging one foot behind him.

Josh needed to run. But where? To the access door?

“You’re . . . you’re dead,” Josh whispered at Isaac as he approached. “I saw you. You’re dead.”

But maybe Isaac hadn’t been dead, maybe he had only passed out and now he was awake.

Isaac kept coming forward, his hands out now, his fingers curled into claws.

“Josh.” This was a different voice. A woman’s voice.

He looked at the window and saw the woman again. She stood in the same spot as she had in the previous dream.

Because this is a dream, he told himself.

“You need to come find us,” the woman said.

Josh didn’t answer her. He just stared at her, basking in the sudden glow that was pouring in from the window behind her, lighting up this half of the attic, the cardboard and pieces of wood now ripped away. The light felt so good . . . the heat of it. The goodness of it.

He knew Isaac was shuffling up behind him from the dark half of the attic, opening up his vomit-encrusted mouth even wider to bite him, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the woman and that wonderful light that poured in around her.

“Where are you?” he asked the woman.

She didn’t answer. She began to fade away.

Panic filled Josh, and he jumped up to his feet. “No, wait. Don’t go. Tell me where you are. How am I supposed to find you if I don’t know where you are?”

The woman’s face was scrunched in confusion behind her dark glasses, like she didn’t understand his question, or maybe she couldn’t hear him anymore.

Josh snapped awake. He was curled up around his backpack on the plywood floor, his head resting on the wadded-up shirt. He was holding on to his backpack like it was some big stuffed animal. He was freezing, his body aching from the cold. For a few seconds it felt like he couldn’t even move, like his joints had frozen solid during the night.

He noticed that it was a little lighter in the attic, but it wasn’t fully morning yet. He looked at the strip of window between the edges of the cardboard and the wall; that strip of sky was lighter now, a pre-dawn blue.

For a second Josh thought of the dream. He thought of Isaac stumbling towards him like a zombie. His skin crawled with the creeps as he saw the image of Isaac shuffling towards him from the darkness. But Isaac wasn’t the walking dead. Zombies weren’t real. And Josh knew now that there were worse things than zombies, there were worse things waiting downstairs and outside. Isaac was dead, and he wasn’t coming back. Maybe he was the lucky one.

With a low grunt, Josh sat up. His muscles and bones protested the movement. He grabbed the extra shirt he’d used as a pillow and put it on for some more warmth. He rooted through his backpack and found the pair of leather gloves he’d taken from Kurt LaRose’s dresser drawer, wishing he’d worn them in his sleep last night. He also could have used one of Isaac’s blankets, but he couldn’t bring himself to move Isaac’s body to get to it. Not just because of the vomit and piss that were on it, he just didn’t want to sleep with a dead man’s blanket covering him; he didn’t want it touching his skin.

You’re going to have to get used to it, he told himself. You’re walking around wearing a dead man’s clothes, with a dead boy’s backpack on your back that’s filled with a dead family’s supplies. You’re carrying around a shotgun that killed an entire family.

But that was different. Josh didn’t know the LaRose family. But he knew Isaac. Well, he knew him a little, anyway.

Josh clenched his fists inside the gloves that were a few sizes too large for his hands. He paced around in a little circle near the chimney, trying to get his blood flowing faster so he could warm up a little. He walked softly, practically tiptoeing so he wouldn’t make a sound. He went back to his backpack and picked it up. He went to Isaac’s bed.

Isaac was in the same position, staring up at the ceiling through half slits for eyes and a mouthful of puke. He didn’t look scared. He didn’t look peaceful. He just looked dead. If anything, he looked stoned out of his mind.

That’s because he had been stoned and drunk out of his mind last night. The mixture of pills and alcohol had eventually shut down parts of his brain, shutting down his breathing along with other vital organs until he just slipped away.

“Not a bad way to go,” Josh mumbled.

It was distasteful, but it had to be done—Josh needed to go through Isaac’s stuff. He had decided to leave for Pittsburgh today, as soon as he could. Isaac said yesterday that he had a car down in the garage. That would be Josh’s only chance to get out of here. It would be a suicide mission to go and look for another vehicle, hoping to find one that had the keys in it, and one that still ran and had enough gas in it. He wasn’t sure if Isaac’s car was in working condition, but he had to assume it was if Isaac had mentioned it. He couldn’t help thinking that Isaac had said something about his car last night because he had already planned on killing himself, he was just waiting for the right time.

He had waited until I came along.

That made him think about the conversation with Isaac last night, when Isaac had talked about the accident he’d seen in his dream.

He said he’d seen me in his dream. He said that he knew he had to help me.

It must have been a pretty compelling dream to get Isaac to risk his life. More like a vision than a mere dream. He thought about Ethan at the FEMA camp for a second, and how he had said that he had needed to help him, how it seemed like he’d been waiting out there in the dark for him to come by. And then Josh thought of the crazy man in the bathrooms at the high school, the man who had tried to kill him because he couldn’t let him go with them. Who had the man been talking about? Had he been referring to the “them” that the woman in his dreams was talking about, the woman who had visited him last night? He couldn’t help thinking that all of these things were connected somehow.

The memory of the dream from last night played in his mind. He saw the glow coming in from the window again, everything so vivid and so real. He could still feel the goodness in that glow of light. It felt like he belonged to that beautiful woman, belonged to her and those who were with her.

A chill ran through Josh when he thought of being with a group of people he could trust, a family.

But that made him think of Marla and Kyle—his real family. He knew Isaac had been right about the odds of both of them still being alive, but he had to try. And this morning was the morning he would begin the last part of his journey to look for them. Isaac was dead now, there was no reason to stay here any longer. He hoped Isaac was right about the morning being the least active time for the rippers.

Josh picked up Isaac’s spiral notebook with the ink pen stuffed down in the metal spiral. He flipped through the book; only a quarter of the pages were filled with writing, but maybe Isaac’s observations could prove useful. He put the notebook into his backpack along with a pair of binoculars Isaac had near his bed; they were small, but they looked well-made.

After covering Isaac’s body with a bedsheet, Josh went to work looking through the rest of Isaac’s boxes and bags, seeing if there were any other useful things he could take with him.

You know what you’re looking for.

Josh ignored that voice in his head, the voice he called “the pill voice.” But ignoring the stench coming from Isaac’s body wasn’t as easy. Isaac’s body wasn’t rotting yet, but the piss and shit smells were even worse now, even with the bedsheet covering him.

He found a few canned goods in some cardboard boxes and stuffed those into his backpack to replenish his supply. He didn’t want to take too many; he didn’t want his backpack to be too heavy. He even hefted it to make sure it was still light enough to run with it on his back. He would sacrifice a little extra food to keep his pack light. It was better to be able to run with the pack on his back rather than having to ditch it because it was too heavy. He thought of the struggle he’d had when running from his overturned SUV as Isaac was tossing Molotov cocktails at the rippers.

He would take the rest of the gasoline cocktails with him—he had a plan for those. He took all five of them and lined them up next to the access door with the folded ladder on top, laying his shotgun down next to them. He had a plan . . . well, just the barest semblance of a plan so far, but it was the only thing he could come up with.

CHAPTER 35

Josh was almost ready to go now. He had the Molotov cocktails lined up by the access door beside his shotgun. He had his backpack closed and ready to go. Yet he was still waiting. He still needed to look for one more thing, something he hadn’t found in any of the cardboard boxes.

The room was getting lighter, enough for him to easily see everything now. The minutes were ticking by quickly. But he still had to look for the pills. They had to be here somewhere. Unless Isaac had taken all of them.

There was only one last place to look—on Isaac’s bed, and on Isaac’s body.

He pulled the bedsheet off of Isaac and tossed it on the floor. He still had his gloves on, and he pushed Isaac over onto his stomach, the body flopping down, arms slapping down on the thin mattress. The smell of shit was worse now. Josh gagged, nearly puking. He was close to retching, but he didn’t vomit.

There was nothing underneath Isaac’s body. He checked the man’s pockets, feeling the outside of Isaac’s pants pockets for the bulge of a pill bottle. Nothing on him, either.

Just slow down. Take a breath for a minute. If the pills are here, they’re not going anywhere.

Josh exhaled a long, slow breath. His heart was pounding and his body had warmed up now. He stood up from his crouch and then pulled the mattress with Isaac’s body on it away from the wall. Isaac wasn’t a big man, but it was still tough to pull the mattress across the floor with him on top of it.

God, I’m out of shape.

As he pulled the mattress, he heard the faint but unmistakable sound of something being dragged along the floor with it, something small caught underneath the mattress. The sound was so low that if he hadn’t been listening for it, he might not have even heard it. Now that the mattress was a few feet away from where the angle of the ceiling came down to the floor, he had more room to search around Isaac’s bed. He tipped the other side of the mattress up and saw three orange pill bottles on the floor. Isaac’s body rolled off the other side of the mattress and onto the floor with a thud that sounded so loud.

Josh froze. If there were rippers downstairs, they would have definitely heard the sound of Isaac’s body hitting the floor. He needed to be more careful.

He listened for several minutes, trying hard not to even breathe. Finally, he was pretty sure there were no rippers down there. If there was, then they were being very quiet, hiding silently in the dark and waiting.

They’re getting smarter. That’s what Isaac had said before. They’re changing. They’re adapting.

Josh picked up the first pill bottle, and he knew right away that it was empty, but he shook it anyway.

Oh, God . . . please.

But the other two bottles had pills in them. One was nearly empty, but the other was almost full. He shined his little flashlight on the label of the full one and read it: A prescription made out to Sandra Ackerman. Vicodin.

His heart fluttered and his mouth went dry with need.

Just in case, he told himself, his pill voice speaking now. These are just in case. Just for an emergency.

It took so much willpower not to take two of the pills right now, or crush them up and snort them to get them into his system faster. He forced himself to slip the bottles and flashlight down into a side pocket of his backpack and zip it up.

He was ready to go now.

As he crouched down next to the access door and rested his gloved hand on the folded-up wooden ladder, he had a flashback from yesterday, when he’d been about to go downstairs to kill the man out in the street and put him out of his misery.

Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t heard the man scream all morning. Maybe the man was finally dead. Or maybe the rippers had dragged his body away so they could eat it. Josh wondered if he should go to the window and pull the cardboard away, look out there and see if the man was still there. Maybe they’d left his body alone in the intersection and the buzzards were already at it. No, the rippers wouldn’t leave fresh meat behind like that, would they?

He couldn’t let himself get distracted. The sun was coming up now, and he was losing precious minutes, if Isaac’s observations about the lull in the rippers’ activity were to be trusted.

Still, it might be smart to look out the window before going downstairs.

Why? What did he think he was going to see? The rippers hiding down there among the cars and trucks, waiting for him to come outside?

Maybe it would be better to wait one more day up here. That would be one more day of rest, one more day that he could eat the rest of Isaac’s food and build up his strength.

But if he waited one more day, Isaac’s body was going to start smelling worse, maybe smelling so bad that it would attract the rippers and they would figure out that he was hiding up here above the ceiling.

He could wrap Isaac in a blanket. But would that really cover up the smell of him that much?

If he stayed one more night, then that would mean sleeping another night up here with a dead man.

Could he do that?

You’re going to do that and much worse things in the bleak future ahead of you.

Where had that thought come from? It had come from the pill voice, the voice of doubt and surrender, the voice that whispered in his ear to just give up. That little imp of addiction that floated just behind his left shoulder, whispering into his ear.

He couldn’t wait up here crouched next to this access door all morning. His legs were beginning to cramp up, and if he waited too much longer, this “sweet spot” of opportune time would slip by, the optimum time period where he might have a five percent chance of survival rather than zero.

He thought of Marla, and then of Kyle—his strength. He pictured them huddled in the apartment with the door locked and barricaded, both of them rationing their food and water, almost out of supplies now.

They needed him. They were waiting for him. They were depending on him. He couldn’t be Josh the screw-up now.

He held his breath and made sure the shotgun was within easy reach. Then he pushed down on the folded-up ladder, pushing the access door open at the same time. He tried to be quiet, but the ladder unfolding on the way down was startlingly loud. He was sure the noise was traveling out of the house and echoing down Main Street out there, rousing rippers from their sleep.

But it was too late now. The door was open. The ladder was down. There was no turning back now.

CHAPTER 36

Josh was halfway down the ladder with the shotgun in his hands when he had a picture in his mind of dozens of rippers holed up in Isaac’s house, hordes of them sleeping in shifts while they waited for him or Isaac to come down. Why hadn’t he thought of that? It seemed like the rippers were camped out somewhere else, in some of the other buildings and houses nearby, but why wouldn’t they be camped out in Isaac’s house, too?

He was on the floor now, the shotgun in his hands. He didn’t see any rippers down here. His eyes darted to the doorways that led to bedrooms, then back to the last two doorways behind him, then back to the head of the stairs in the distance. There was enough light to see, but everything was still murky in the early morning shadows.

Josh held his breath and his pulse throbbed in his ears. His senses seemed to be hyperaware at the moment as he listened, trying to look everywhere at once. He wished he had a handgun, something not so unwieldy as the shotgun. But at least the shotgun was deadly, and you didn’t really need to be as accurate—just point and pull the trigger.

When he was pretty sure he was safe, Josh climbed back up the ladder and took the Mason jars of gasoline down one at a time and lined them up on the floor. He pulled the rags out of four of the five jars and threw them in a heap on the floor against the wall. He held the shotgun in one hand while he dribbled the gas out of the first jar, dribbling a line from the wooden steps of the ladder to the back bedroom doorways.

It felt so strange being in the hallway of Isaac’s home, a house owned by a dead man he barely got to know. It felt like he’d woken up in another world, some alternate dimension of horror, or maybe it was more like he was trapped inside of Kyle’s zombie video games that he loved so much.

“I need to practice for when the zombies come.” That’s what Kyle had told him so many times when he had played the video games with him. Josh had beaten Kyle a few times, but he was pretty sure that Kyle had let him win. He wished he could think of this like a video game—just point and shoot his shotgun; just keep shooting until the zombies finally overwhelmed you, and then it was “game over.”

The hallway was a wreck. Clothing and pieces of smashed furniture were strewn up and down the hall, but the bedrooms were even worse. Two of the bedrooms still resembled boys’ bedrooms, and Josh couldn’t help wondering which of the two rooms Cindy had killed her sons in. There were stains along the far wall in one of the bedrooms, but it was still too dark to make out much detail, and he didn’t venture very far into the bedrooms, just far enough to splash some gasoline around.

He used the second Mason jar of gas on the rest of the hallway, dribbling a line of gas to the stairs, then, drenching the wood flooring. That left only three Mason jars of gasoline. He stuck the shotgun in the crook of his arm like some old farmer, and that left his hands free with the last three jars of gas.

At the head of the stairs, he stared down at the foyer below. The room down there was lit up because the front door was ajar and most of the slats of wood were torn away from where the glass panel used to be, allowing the morning light to invade the home.

He went down the steps, slowly dribbling out a line of gasoline from the jar in his right hand as he went. The stairs were solid, barely even creaking as he descended the steps. His heart was beating faster than ever. He’d been freezing when he woke up less than thirty minutes ago, and now he was sweating underneath his clothes. He could feel dots of perspiration breaking out on his forehead.

He made it down the stairs into the foyer. He splashed the rest of the gasoline around the baseboards of the foyer, and then he set the empty glass jar down. Now he could carry the shotgun in one hand and splash the rest of the gas from one of the jars all the way to the garage—wherever that was.

He waited a few seconds longer in the foyer, listening for any sounds coming from outside, his eyes on the slightly open front door. The foyer was a large room and archways to other rooms led off to the right and to the left. Josh wasn’t really sure which way the garage was. He hadn’t had time to get a good look at the house when he’d been behind Isaac as they ran up the walkway to the front door. But he tried to picture in his mind where the intersection of streets was in relation to the front of the house, and he guessed the garage would be to the right.

He kept an eye on the front door as he moved towards the archway to the right, expecting a horde of rippers to come crashing in at any second. But there were no sounds coming from outside. He would have closed the front door, maybe even taken the time to try to barricade it again, but the door wasn’t going to shut anymore—the doorhandle area was splintered apart now from when the door had been smashed in by the rippers. The decorative glass panel in the door was busted out. Bits of glass littered the wooden floor in front of the door, reflecting the brighter morning light—they looked like little yellow and orange gems.

It was cold in the house, and there were some unpleasant smells down here—the smells of the dead. Josh hadn’t seen any of Isaac’s family upstairs in the bedrooms and he wondered if Isaac had moved their bodies, or if the rippers had.

As he made his way through the archway, Josh dribbled gasoline out of the Mason jar. The room he entered was some kind of living room, or sitting room, or maybe a reception room—whatever they called these rooms in these fancy houses. But now the room was a disaster; furniture torn apart, décor ripped off of the walls, windows broken, drapes pulled down and dragged along the floor.

The living room led to a dining room that was just as wrecked as the living room. A large hutch had been tipped over and it had crashed down onto one end of the dining room table.

The kitchen was off of the dining room and Josh kept his line of gasoline going. It was a wide, galley-style kitchen, with cabinets on both sides of the walls. The one end opened up to what was probably a breakfast area with a small table and four chairs, most of them smashed to bits. At the other end was a door that Josh hoped led out to the garage.

Cabinet doors were open, some of them hanging by one hinge, others torn off completely. The food had been ransacked, cans and boxes pulled out, flour spilled all over the countertop and down into the sink. The food wrappers were torn to shreds. It looked like an army of raccoons had been let loose in the kitchen. The refrigerator door was halfway open, the smell of rotting food drifting out of it.

Josh couldn’t avoid walking along the wrappers, papers, and broken dishes all over the hardwood flooring. The sound of glass and ceramic crunching under the soles of his hiking boots sounded so loud. He stepped over to a counter and looked into the cabinets. Everything edible that could be opened was gone, but the rippers had been unable to get the canned goods opened. Some cans had been dented and one was squished flat, but most were left alone. On the counter there was a busted jar of grape jelly. Blood was mixed in with the jelly where a ripper had probably cut himself (or herself) on the shattered glass.

He thought of Isaac as he looked at the food. Isaac had said that the rippers could be waited out. He said that maybe many of them would freeze to death (even though they seemed to have either adapted to the cold or it no longer bothered them), or they would starve to death after the easy food ran out. Maybe other diseases, maybe even the common flu, might kill some of them off. Common infections might kill others. Or there was always the chance that Isaac had been right and the virus that had turned them into rippers would eventually kill them, leaving behind a handful of uninfected and immune humans in the world.

Josh thought of what Ethan had said at the FEMA camp, that the scientists there couldn’t find a virus infecting the rippers, or a bacterial infection, or any kind of parasite or toxin. If that was even true.

But something would kill the rippers in time. If it wasn’t this “disease” they had, then maybe the cold or starvation. At least Josh hoped so, and he hoped it would be soon. But right now, hour to hour, he needed to survive. And he needed to get out of this house. With every minute that ticked by, the sun rose a little higher in the sky, the air got a little warmer, and more and more rippers were waking up from their sleep.

He walked down the center of the kitchen, trying to be careful, trying not to step on any of the broken glass or spilled food, but it was impossible to avoid everything.

At the door to the garage, he tested the knob. It had a lock on the inside, but the button was pushed out. He grabbed the knob and turned slowly . . . quietly.

As he pushed the door open, he wondered if there might be rippers right on the other side waiting in the garage for him, knowing all along that he’d been heading there. Thankfully the hinges on the door didn’t squeal. There was no smell of blood or rotten meat coming from the garage, and that was a good sign.

Josh stood in the doorway, staring at the two-car garage. He had his shotgun ready in his hands, but he didn’t want to use it unless he absolutely had to—the noise of a shotgun blast would bring every ripper within earshot.

The garage was murky, but not pitch-black. There was one small window on the far wall that had slats of wood fastened across it, blocking most of the light coming in. A little farther down that same wall was a door that led outside. That door had a pane of glass in it, but there were slats of wood nailed over the window. The large garage door had a line of small windows in it that looked like they were made out of Plexiglas, but at least they let in a bit of light from outside. The walls were cluttered with a network of shelves, boxes, crates, and plastic tubs, everything practically overflowing with stuff.

And there, right in the middle of the garage, as promised by Isaac, was a car. The vehicle had been pulled into the garage so he would have to back it out when he opened the doors. He would have rather the car had been backed into the garage, but just seeing the car parked there was a relief.

Josh shuffled quickly down the three wooden steps that descended to the concrete floor. The passenger door of the car was unlocked, and he pulled it open. The dome light came on inside so maybe that meant the battery in the car was still good. He wasn’t sure what kind of car it was, a Ford something or other, but it looked pretty new, no more than ten years old. He’d kept the last Mason jar of gas to take with him, the rag still tucked down into the hole in the lid. He set the Molotov cocktail down on the floorboard and then took his backpack off and set it down on the passenger floorboard, wedging it against the cocktail so it wouldn’t spill. He thought about collecting a box of the canned goods left behind in the kitchen, but he didn’t know if he had that kind of time.

A noise—something bumping into a wall—came from outside and Josh froze.

CHAPTER 37

Josh stood very still. The car door was still open and the dome light inside shining—that light seemed so bright in the murky garage, and Josh was sure that it was like a shining ray of light shooting out through those little windows at the top of the garage door. He could imagine rippers perking up and noticing the light coming from the garage.

He listened again for the noise. It was hard to tell exactly where it had come from, but it had sounded like a bumping noise. Maybe from the front door?

Hell with the cans of food, he thought. The rippers could be rushing inside the front door right now. They might even check this house regularly, hoping to catch him and Isaac in here.

There was another noise from outside; this one sounded like it had come from right outside the garage door. It sounded like a twig snapping.

Maybe it was just the wind blowing the branches into the side of the house.

I just need to get in the car and go.

Josh eased the passenger door closed, pushing on it gently to shut it. He rushed around the front of the car, ready to get inside . . . and then he froze.

He didn’t have the keys.

Josh looked back at the door that led into the kitchen. He had closed the door when he’d come out here. How could he have forgotten about the car keys? He tried to remember if Isaac had said anything about the keys to the car, but he couldn’t remember. He remembered Isaac saying something about this car parked in the garage, but nothing about where the keys might be.

A horrifying thought crossed Josh’s mind—what if the keys were up in the attic somewhere, stashed among Isaac’s boxes and bags of stuff he’d brought up there with him? It made sense that he would have brought the car keys along with all of that other stuff while he hid up there.

But Josh had gone through Isaac’s stuff. He couldn’t remember seeing a set of keys.

You weren’t looking for keys, the pill imp whispered to him, hovering there just out of sight, smiling. You were looking for the pills. You were only worried about the pills.

He felt sick to his stomach at the idea of having to go all the way back up to the attic, at the thought of searching through Isaac’s stuff and going through his pants pockets again. Had the keys been in one of his pockets, a bulge that he had somehow overlooked because he’d been worried about finding those bottles of pills?

Maybe Isaac had had his final exit strategy planned out for days, never intending to come down here to this car. He had made up his mind to down a handful of pills and wash them down with whiskey. Maybe the promise of this car was Isaac’s farewell sick joke. Who knew what Isaac had done with the keys? Maybe he had thrown them away in the back yard somewhere.

But if Isaac was set on killing himself, then why had he waited days to do it? Had he been working up the courage?

No, Isaac had said that he’d been waiting for me. He said that he’d seen me in a dream, and that he knew I needed his help.

Josh couldn’t give up now. He needed to calm down and think about this rationally. Right now, he was going to rule the idea out that Isaac had played some kind of sick joke on him and thrown the keys away.

So where were they?

He was pretty sure they weren’t up in the attic. It didn’t mean they weren’t up there, but for now he was going to concentrate on looking around down here. He took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly, his breath clouding up in front of his face in the cold garage. His body was buzzing with nervous energy, every nerve-ending screaming at him to run, but he needed to fight against those instincts and try to think.

First, the car. Could the keys already be in the car? It was the best place to start looking.

Josh opened the driver’s door, every sound so loud inside the garage, every sound magnified, practically echoing. The dome light came on again, that bright beacon of light. He sat down in the driver’s seat and flipped a switch on the dome light to turn it off, then he searched the car, checking the center console, the glove box, and under the floor mat. Nothing. He pulled down the sun visors—that’s where people kept the spare keys in the movies.

No keys there.

He got out and checked under the rear wheel wells. Maybe Isaac had a spare key in one of those magnetic boxes that stuck to the wheel well or under the bumper. He didn’t find a spare key there or under the bumper.

What about on the shelves or wood counters along the garage walls? He checked, moving junk around, checking metal cans of odds and ends.

No keys.

More snapping-twig noises came from outside. It sounded like someone was walking around out there, trying to be stealthy and quiet, but getting closer.

He needed to go back inside the house—the keys had to be in there somewhere. He grabbed his shotgun from the passenger seat and the last Mason jar of gasoline and hurried up the wood steps to the door.

Still no rippers in the kitchen, but Josh waited in the doorway for a moment, listening. It didn’t sound like the rippers were inside the house yet, but they could be waiting right now; they could be listening for him to make a sound. If they were inside the house already, or if they decided to storm the front door, he was a goner. He could light the trail of gasoline that he had dribbled from the stairs to the kitchen and throw his last Molotov cocktail at them. He could shoot as many as he could with his shotgun, pumping round after round until he was out. But how long would that give him? Maybe he would get to the garage, get inside the car, but then what? He would be surrounded and trapped. They would shatter the windows and pull him out, dragging his body across the jagged glass sticking up in the doorframe.

He couldn’t think about that right now. He needed to move, he needed to try to find those keys in the kitchen. If they weren’t in the kitchen, or downstairs somewhere, then he would have to go back up to the attic to look for them. And if the keys weren’t with Isaac, somewhere on his bloating body, then he would have to wait up there until he came up with a new plan. He wished he didn’t need the keys. He wished he knew how to hotwire a car, but even with his extensive criminal history, he’d never learned how to hotwire any kind of vehicle. Besides, it wasn’t as easy as it was made out to be on TV and in the movies, especially with newer cars.

Maybe the keys were in the kitchen somewhere. A lot of people kept their keys in the kitchen. That’s where Marla kept hers, hung on some wooden artsy-craftsy thing on the wall. But if Isaac had had one of those wooden key holders on the wall, it was probably torn off by now and somewhere among the debris covering the floor.

Maybe the keys had been in some kind of dish on the counter—that’s where he used to keep his keys when he lived in Florida. Well, really, he’d just throw them somewhere on the kitchen counter.

Or on the table beside his bed.

Josh looked up at the ceiling, wondering which room up there might be Isaac’s bedroom.

Check the kitchen first. Then I’ll worry about going upstairs. Let’s take it one step at a time.

He looked down at the floor, searching the debris and smears of food and dented cans, the shattered glass and broken dishes and silverware, shredded and torn pieces of paper and food packaging.

A noise sounded from somewhere else in the house—it sounded like the front door swinging all the way open and slamming into the wall. There was someone else inside the house, he was sure of it now.

They were coming.

CHAPTER 38

Maybe the wind had blown the front door open.

Josh watched the archway that led to the dining room, his shotgun aimed in that direction. From where he stood, he couldn’t see much of the dining room, but he saw that everything was beginning to brighten up with the rising sun.

He made himself tear his eyes away from the archway. He looked down at the floor, taking a careful step deeper into the kitchen, moving down the counters, getting closer to the breakfast area. He saw more items on the floor, most likely crap from some of the “junk” drawers: candles, pens, nail clippers, holiday greeting cards, a bottle of nail polish, a few random toys, AA batteries.

He crouched down and picked up the AA batteries, pocketing them. The smell of the gasoline he had splashed all over the place was stronger now that he was closer to the floor.

Two things happened at the same time: he spotted a set of keys a few feet away poking out from underneath a takeout pizza menu, and he heard a crashing noise from the living room, like a piece of furniture had just been smashed.

Then he heard the sound of running feet—those running feet were coming this way. They knew he was here. Maybe they’d been trying to be quiet, trying to be sneakier, but they’d given themselves away and now they were coming.

Josh sprang forward two steps, not caring about being quiet now. He grabbed the set of keys, praying that they were the keys to the Ford in the garage, praying that they didn’t belong to another vehicle parked outside somewhere. If these weren’t the keys, then he was screwed, a perfect ending for a lifelong screw-up.

He shoved the keys down into the same pocket he had just stuffed the AA batteries down into. He pulled out his disposable lighter and grabbed the Molotov cocktail sitting on the counter next to his shotgun. He wanted to grab his shotgun and run, the urge was almost overwhelming, but he had to make himself do this. With trembling hands, he lit the rag poking out of the Mason jar and the cloth flared up in flames.

The rippers were now racing through the dining room—almost to the kitchen.

Wait . . . just one more second.

The first of the rippers shot through the archway, a young man with shoulder-length hair, his clothes stained and torn, his face filthy, his eyes wild, mouth open in a snarl. There were others behind him: men and women, all of them growling and screeching. They would have already rushed down the galley-style kitchen at him, but the sight of the fire had stopped them for just a moment.

But they weren’t going to wait forever.

Josh threw the Molotov cocktail at the rippers, aiming it at the floor by their feet. The jar exploded on impact and the flames rose up in a brief fireball, igniting the trail of gasoline he had created—a trail that the rippers were standing on. The rippers screamed and shouted unintelligible words. A few of them tried to stamp at the flames, but most rushed backwards into the dining room as the smoke roiled up from the flames, building in the air.

Josh grabbed his shotgun and ran for the door that led out to the garage. He didn’t bother shooting; he wasn’t going to waste the shells right now. He would wait until he was cornered.

Before racing down the steps into the garage, Josh twisted the little lock on the doorknob before shutting the door. Maybe it would slow them down for a few seconds. He also tipped over a tall cabinet away from the wall, knocking it down in front of the door once he was inside the garage.

He spotted a red plastic gas can. No way it still had gas in it, right? Surely Isaac had used all the gas he had to make the Molotov cocktails he’d brought up to the attic with him. He picked up the can and felt the weight of the gas right away—there was at least half a gallon inside. He knew he might be wasting time, but he splashed some gas all over the door that led outside and all over the wooden cabinet he had tipped over in front of the door to the kitchen. He flicked the lighter, and the cabinet caught fire immediately. He set the other door that led outside on fire and hurried to the Ford.

The garage was filling up with smoke incredibly fast. He needed to get the garage door open. He thought about just backing the Ford up into the garage door and busting through it, but he couldn’t take the chance of destroying the car or getting hung up in the garage door if he couldn’t tear it away completely. He unlatched the metal bar at the top of the door so he could pull the door up manually.

His lungs were already burning, and it was getting hard to see, but once he got the door open, daylight flooded in and the smoke poured out. He couldn’t see any rippers out here, but he could hear them coming.

Josh kept low as he hurried back to the car and got inside, slamming the driver’s door shut and locking it. Everything had been going his way so far, the fire stopping the rippers in the kitchen, no rippers waiting on the other side of the garage door when he had opened it. He was sure this was when his luck would finally run out—these would be the wrong keys.

His hand shook as he tried to stab the key into the ignition, and for a panicked few seconds he was sure that these were the wrong set of keys. But then the key slid in smoothly.

He hadn’t even considered that the battery might be dead, or the car might not start for some other reason. He heard the motor trying to turn, a slow wind.

How long had this car been sitting in this cold garage? A few days? A week? Months?

The car was still trying to turn over when Josh heard the rippers pounding at the door to the kitchen, bursting through it even though the cabinet in front of it was on fire.

CHAPTER 39

The rippers in the kitchen weren’t trying to push their way through the burning cabinet yet. Josh was more worried about the rippers outside that were about to rush in through the open garage door at any moment—they had probably already started running towards the sound of the door opening and the smoke rolling out.

“Come on!” Josh screamed at the car as the motor tried to turn over, making a whrrr whrrr sound. He could feel tears in his eyes now; he wasn’t exactly sure when he had started crying.

He twisted the key one more time, and the engine started, the motor running so smoothly he couldn’t even hear it over the crackling flames in the garage and his heavy breathing.

Josh shifted into reverse and stomped his foot down on the gas pedal. He couldn’t see anything behind him except a wall of smoke, but he sped into that grayness.

The back of the Ford hit the first rippers that had gathered just outside of the open garage, perhaps hesitating because of the smoke. They were like animals now, and maybe they had that natural fear of fire that all animals did, an innate fear encoded in DNA for millennia. At least he knocked the few rippers out of the way and hadn’t run over them. He was afraid of getting the car stuck on too many bodies.

Now that he was on the driveway and beyond the smoke pouring out of the garage door, he could see a little better. He saw that he had knocked two rippers into the shrubs that lined the driveway.

Isaac’s front yard was a collection of shrubs, small trees, and small sections of lawn—a garden that must have taken decades to create. There were little pathways through the garden along with concrete benches, fountains, and other decorations. It had probably been beautiful once, a centerpiece of this little town, but nothing was beautiful in this world anymore. The driveway curved out a little towards the main street of the town, but another section of the driveway branched off through some shrubs and trees towards the side street.

Josh hit the brakes and shifted into drive. Now that he was beyond the smoking garage he was exposed to the hundreds of rippers that had collected in the front yard and at the front door, more of them rushing towards him from the street. It would only be a matter of seconds before they all jumped onto his car and bogged him down, a sea of legs, arms, and growling faces smeared across the windows of the car. He thought about keeping the car in reverse and backing down the driveway as fast as he could, mowing down as many of the rippers that got in his way, but he couldn’t take a chance of hitting a tree or getting stuck among the run-over bodies gumming up his tires. He stomped his foot down on the pedal and sped towards the narrower strip of concrete that led out to the side street. He knew he was probably going to hit a few more rippers going this way, and there was the possibility that he could damage the radiator, but at least he had a clear view through the windshield.

Rocks and sticks pelted the car as he sped towards the side driveway, but the projectiles had all come from the passenger side and only the back passenger window had shattered. Most of the rippers seemed to be on that side of the car, in the front yard of the house, like they had been in the process of storming the house from the main street.

So far the path to the side street was clear. Josh gunned the gas and sped down the driveway and out onto the street, turning left as soon as the front tires hit the road, the back tires screeching as the car slid. He wrestled with the steering wheel, straightening the car out, driving away from the intersection. He wasn’t sure which direction he was going, but he didn’t care right now. His only thought was getting as far away as he could from this town.

He raced down the side road of the town. There were a few rippers running alongside the street, a few throwing rocks and other debris at the car, but only a few had run into the road and he had avoided them easily as he drove faster.

He glanced at the rearview mirror and saw the smoke from Isaac’s house drifting up into the morning sky. The house was probably burning pretty good now, and soon it would be an inferno. The fire might even spread to the other nearby homes and buildings, until rain and snow eventually put the blaze out.

Josh heard himself laughing as he drove, gripping the steering wheel so tight his hands ached. His laughter was a strange sound, like it had come from someone else in the car; it was a lunatic’s giggle. He was also crying at the same time. Laughing and crying. But at least he’d gotten out of Isaac’s attic. At least he was still alive.

PART FOUR

CHAPTER 40

It took Josh nearly twenty-four hours to get to the outskirts of the suburbs of Pittsburgh. Last night, as soon as it was getting dark, he holed up in a looted gas station, barring himself in the manager’s office. He was able to get a few hours of sleep through the night, but that sleep had been fitful, every little noise waking him up. He thought he was going to dream about the beautiful blind woman again, or even the shadowy man with the shining eyes, but he hadn’t. He’d had a dream of a man and his son, but he could barely remember the dream. He’d also seen another man in his dreams, a muscular man with a buzzed haircut and cold eyes. Maybe the dreams didn’t mean anything, and maybe he hadn’t slept long enough to actually dream. He got back into Isaac’s Ford just before sunrise, using that lull in ripper activity to get a lot of his traveling done.

And today, he’d lost Isaac’s car when he was only a few miles away from Marla’s apartment building. The road was blocked with wrecked and abandoned vehicles and there was no way around them. He had to leave the car on the side of the road. As he hurried away, he only looked back once at the dark blue vehicle that had gotten him so far in this nightmare world. The car’s body was dented and scratched, two of the windows blown out, one tire almost flat. He thought of Isaac in that moment.

He had his backpack on and his shotgun in his hands when he slid down into the ditch beside the road. He waited down in the ditch for a few minutes, lying on his stomach on the grassy wall, listening. He remembered being a little boy in Florida, playing Army Soldier with his friends in the woods, crawling through the brush with their fake rifles and plastic squirt guns that they had spray-painted black. They had hidden in the ditches, waiting for the “enemy” to come by so they could pop up and make machine gun sounds, yelling at them that they were dead.

That had been play. This was real. Josh had never been a soldier in the army. He’d never even considered enlisting into the military (and the military wouldn’t have accepted him because he had already racked up his first felony by the age of eighteen), but now he wondered if this was how a soldier felt during war—scared shitless while hiding in a ditch. He felt like a soldier in a war that he had never signed up for, a war he’d never seen coming.

Smoke drifted up into the gray sky on the horizon and the closer he got to Pittsburgh, the more he realized that parts of the city (or hell, maybe all of it) were on fire. Isaac had guessed that the military might bomb many of the major cities to wipe out as many rippers as they could. Maybe that was a good thing. The more rippers that the military killed with bombs and fire, the better. But then Josh wondered if the military had dropped nuclear bombs on the cities. That would be a bad thing. He wondered if radiation was in that dark gray smoke on the horizon right now. He wondered if the radiation was in the air he was breathing right now. And if not radiation, there were surely toxic chemicals from manufacturing plants.

Had Marla and Kyle been bombed? Had they been exposed to radiation or chemicals?

Josh waited in the ditch a little longer, still listening for any sounds. He peeked up over the edge of the ditch and saw a small group of rippers, six of them, all of them moving together like a pack of dogs, all of them looking around, hurrying, crouched forward, their clothing dirty and torn, their skin grimy and hair tangled, their eyes wild. But they hadn’t seen him. He slipped back down into the ditch without a sound.

He needed to find some better cover. Those rippers could circle back, or there could be more of them.

After making himself wait five more minutes, Josh got moving. There was a screech in the distance—one of the rippers calling out to the others. And then that call was answered with another screech that echoed through the hazy air. Then Josh heard howling noises and whistling sounds. It was like some kind of rudimentary language. Josh had watched documentaries on the History Channel with Kyle about Bigfoot (Kyle was fascinated with the idea of Bigfoot roaming the woods of North America), and the Sasquatch hunters claimed that the creatures communicated in howls, screeches, and whistles. And some of those sounds they had recorded on the show sounded very similar to what he heard right now from the rippers.

Josh hurried down along the bottom of the dry ditch as far as he could, keeping low and trying to make as little noise as possible. Once he got to the end of the ditch, he had no choice but to climb up the side of it to a small concrete walkway with a metal railing on both sides, part of a bike path that entered the woods. Farther down the street the beginning of a tract of houses began where the small patch of woods ended.

He got to the first house and slipped around back. He peeked around the corner and looked at the line of houses across the street. He didn’t see any rippers over there, but he was sure they were around somewhere. The air was cold and he could see his rapid breaths, but he was sweating a little under his layers of clothes. He could smell the smoke in the air even this far away from downtown Pittsburgh, and there was an acrid odor in the smoke.

Josh slipped down the back of the house and crossed a yard to the next house, a two-story home with gray siding and darker gray trim. There was a screened-in area on the wooden deck that had been built onto the back of the house.

He reached the deck and climbed the steps. The wood door to the screened enclosure was unlocked, and he pulled it open without making a sound. He slipped inside and crept to the back door. He was about to try the doorknob on the back door, but then he stopped. He heard someone talking inside the house. A female voice.

Rippers don’t talk.

As silently as he could, Josh squeezed his hand around the doorknob and turned gently. It was locked.

He spotted a window down the wall and he hurried over to it. He didn’t expect the window to be unlocked, but maybe he could pry it open. He tried the window, and it slid up easily. Even though the house was probably at least eighty years old, it had been renovated with new siding, windows, and doors recently so the window slid up without a sound.

Josh couldn’t believe his luck. He slid his backpack off and crouched down in front of the window. He had his shotgun in his left hand and he moved the curtain aside so he could peek inside the room.

There was no one inside the room. It looked like it used to be a bedroom, but it had been converted into a home office. The office was messy, papers and books thrown around like someone had been searching for something. Maybe the homeowners had left and had packed quickly, grabbing what they could before taking to the highway, hoping somewhere else was better. Isaac hadn’t believed that there were other places that were better and Josh believed him now—nowhere was better. Josh wasn’t too egotistical to admit that Isaac had been a lot smarter than him, and so far Isaac had been correct about a lot of things.

Or maybe the homeowners hadn’t left. Someone was in the house, at least one woman, but there were probably more people than that.

Josh pushed his backpack through the open window and set it down on the floor, and then he froze for a moment. He heard someone approaching outside—the unmistakable sound of someone walking through dead leaves. It sounded like the person was coming from the side of the house. Maybe more than one person.

He needed to get inside the house fast, but he still needed to be quiet—he didn’t know who was in the house, how many there were, if they were friendly or not. He laid his shotgun on the floor just inside the window, setting it down on the carpet without a sound. He pushed the drapes aside and crawled through the window. He ducked down once he was inside, sliding the window shut and pulling the drapes almost all the way closed. He watched from the bottom of the window through the part in the drapes as a group of rippers walked through the back yard. There were four of them, three men and a woman. They almost seemed like a patrol of soldiers. They were silent and seemed to be communicating with each other through glances and slight gestures.

One of the rippers hurried over to the steps that led up to the wood deck.

“No,” Josh whispered to himself. “Go away.”

The ripper stopped and almost seemed to be sniffing at the door of the wood deck, like he was picking up Josh’s scent somehow. The other three rippers were moving on without him.

Josh watched the ripper—he was only ten feet away. He hoped the ripper couldn’t spot him through the window. The ripper was a man in his mid-thirties, his short hair spikey with dirt and filth, a few small leaves stuck in it. His clothes—some kind of flannel shirt, jeans, and work boots—were filthy and torn in places. His hands were black with grime, and maybe even dried blood. That same dark substance was caked all around his mouth, making his teeth seem even whiter.

One of the other three rippers screeched, like he was calling the straggler. The curious ripper left the deck steps and caught up with the others.

Josh breathed out a sigh of relief and closed the drapes all the way.

“Who are you?” a woman’s voice asked from behind him.

CHAPTER 41

Josh realized that he had been so focused on the rippers outside that he hadn’t even heard the woman sneak up behind him in the office. He also realized that he hadn’t picked up his shotgun—it was still lying on the floor beside him. He didn’t know if the woman had a weapon pointed at him. She hadn’t said so, but that didn’t mean that she didn’t have one.

Options flashed through Josh’s mind, but he felt that his best bet right now was to raise his hands slightly and appear harmless, try to talk his way out of this. He’d always been good at talking his way out of things. Worst-case scenario, he’d go for his shotgun like an Old West shootout.

“I just needed to get inside,” Josh said with a slight smile, even though he hadn’t turned around to face the woman yet. But maybe she could hear the smile in his voice. “I . . . there were some rippers out there. One was at the door for a minute.”

“Rippers?”

“Yeah. The infected people. What do you call them?”

“Animals. Crazies.”

Josh nodded. “Yeah, that would be a good description, I guess. I heard them called rippers on the news and on the internet.” And Kyle called them rippers.

The woman didn’t say anything.

“You mind if I turn around now?” Josh asked. “You mind if I stand up?”

He heard the woman sigh. “I see your shotgun on the floor in front of you. Neither one of us has any guns.”

So there were only two of them in the house. Where was the other one?

Josh relaxed a little. He could have grabbed his shotgun to gain the upper hand; he could have turned and aimed the weapon at the woman, but there was something in the woman’s voice, an honesty that made her seem harmless. He stood up without grabbing his shotgun and turned around to look at her.

The woman was a little older than Josh, maybe in her mid-thirties, or even late-thirties. He could tell that she’d been pretty once, not a knockout, but attractive in a prim and proper way. But the stress and wear-and-tear of life had caught up with her, especially the stress of these last few days. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail and her dark eyes were wide. She was thin—bony, actually. Maybe she was starving.

“My name’s Josh,” he told her. “Like I said, I just needed to sneak in for a few minutes until the coast is clear.”

The woman nodded. “I’m Debbie. We had to do the same.” She wrung her hands together in front of her, her mouth twitching like she was trying not to break down into tears. “My husband . . . he’s hurt.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s in the living room. I . . . I bandaged his wounds.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

She shook her head slightly, looking down at the floor for a moment. “He got bit by a dog. There are these packs of dogs roaming around now. Feral ones.” She shrugged. “Who can blame them? They were pets once and now they’re hunted by those rippers, as you call them. Turning wild to survive. They don’t trust us anymore.”

Josh had seen a few packs of dogs on his drive into Pittsburgh.

“The wound slowed him down,” Debbie continued. “And then one of those rippers attacked him, cut him with a knife. Cut his leg pretty good. His good leg. Bit him on the shoulder, too. Took a good chunk out.”

Josh winced. He immediately thought of the zombie myths—once a zombie bit you, then you turned into one. It was kind of like being bitten by a werewolf. But even though the rippers weren’t zombies, they were infected with some kind of disease and it wasn’t impossible to believe that the disease had now been transmitted to her husband through that bite.

“What’s your husband’s name?” Josh asked. He wanted to ask how she and her husband had gotten away from the ripper, but he decided he would start with some easier questions first. He didn’t want to sound like he was interrogating her. The woman was trembling; she was scared.

“His name is Brad.”

Josh nodded. Brad and Debbie. She didn’t offer their last names and Josh didn’t ask. Who needed last names anymore?

“I don’t know if I can do much to help,” Josh told her. “I don’t really know anything about first-aid.”

“Oh, he’s going to be okay,” Debbie said, her face brightening with a sudden smile. “He’s hurt and in a lot of pain, but he’s going to live. I know it.”

“I . . . I wish I could help,” Josh heard himself say. He thought of the two bottles of pain killers he had in the outer pocket of his backpack. He had a picture of Brad’s shredded pants leg revealing hamburger flesh underneath, his face red and sweaty as he faded in and out of consciousness from the pain.

You’re not going to offer Brad any pills, are you? his pill voice whispered to him. The pill voice belonged to a shadowy fiend, an imp that hid in the corners of his mind. Sometimes that fiend grasped the ends of strings in his gnarly hands, pulling those strings every time he wanted to control Josh. And the pill imp’s eyes shined in the darkness too, much like the shadowy man Josh had seen in his nightmares.

“Did you find any kind of aspirin?” Josh asked, the last word coming out as a squeak of guilt.

Debbie stared at him with her bulging eyes, her smile slipping away as quickly as it had come. She watched him like she knew he was hiding something. “I gave him what I could find here, but there aren’t any medicines of any kind.”

Josh was going to ask Debbie if she was the one who had torn the office apart, but he didn’t. He listened to the silence in the house, expecting to hear labored breathing coming from the living room, or maybe he would hear Brad calling out to Debbie, wondering where she was.

But something didn’t feel right. Debbie remained in the doorway to the office, just standing there, nervous and twitchy.

“You want me to take a look at Brad?” Josh offered. He wondered if Brad was hiding somewhere else in the house, waiting to jump him, maybe even kill him and take his shotgun and backpack. He was already a little suspicious of their story and how they had gotten away from the rippers, so he needed to be careful here. He needed to be on guard every second because something didn’t feel right.

Debbie took a few seconds to think Josh’s offer over, but then she nodded. Her movements reminded Josh of a small bird. “Yes. I think he’d also like some company.”

“I’m going to get my stuff,” Josh told Debbie, smiling at her. He glanced down at his shotgun and his backpack on the floor. “I need to have my stuff with me. You understand, right?”

Debbie nodded.

Josh pushed his hand through the drapes while still keeping an eye on Debbie, sliding the little plastic lever in place on top of the window to lock it. He didn’t need that curious ripper doubling back from his patrol group to discover that the window was unlocked. Josh picked up his backpack and slipped it on.

Debbie backed out of the doorway into the hall, still watching Josh. She still seemed nervous, impatient to get back to Brad.

As he picked up his shotgun from the floor, Josh expected to hear a cold voice from the darkness say, “That’s far enough,” like some outlaw from an old black and white Western movie. But no one threatened him. He adjusted his backpack, tightening one of the straps just a bit. The pack felt a little cumbersome, but if he needed to make a quick exit, he wanted his pack with him.

No, you’d never leave your pills behind, the pill imp whispered. Those pills that you’ll never share with anyone, not even someone going insane from agony.

Josh tried to ignore the imp’s voice as he approached the doorway. Debbie waited in the hallway for him, ready to guide him to the living room.

That’s all right, Josh thought. I’ll just keep her in my sights in case Brad feels jumpy.

Josh’s heart hammered in his chest, and he could feel the rush of blood in his ears with each rapid heartbeat. His body was a little shaky—a lot like Debbie’s body was—and his palms were beginning to sweat a little.

He followed Debbie down the murky hallway, keeping his eyes on the one open doorway down the hall to his right. As he passed the doorway, he stared at the darkness beyond it, waiting for something to move inside of those shadows.

Debbie was already out in the living room now. She had turned, watching him, waiting for him to catch up to her.

Josh turned towards Debbie, and he realized that he had his shotgun ready to shoot in his hands, his finger resting lightly on the trigger. If Debbie was offended by his paranoia, she didn’t say anything—she just waited patiently in the living room for him.

He felt like a soldier again with the shotgun in his hands, just like he had a few minutes ago in the ditch. He didn’t want to use the shotgun. He didn’t want to kill anyone, but if it came down to him or someone else, he was pretty sure he could pull the trigger.

Marla and Kyle are depending on me. I won’t die today. I won’t let them down again. Not when I’m this close to them.

Debbie, maybe tired of waiting, darted into the living room, out of Josh’s view.

This is it. This is it. This is it.

Josh rushed down the hall and into the living room, his shotgun up and aimed now. He spun around in a slow circle once he was in the living room, looking for Brad or anyone else with a weapon aimed at him.

“Here’s Brad,” Debbie said from the other side of the living room with a smile, pointing down at a couch.

Josh stared at the couch for a long moment as he lowered the shotgun slowly.

CHAPTER 42

“Do you think you can do anything to help him?” Debbie asked. She stood near the couch, her hands clasped together, wringing them like Lady Macbeth. She stared at Josh with hope in her eyes.

Josh looked at the couch. It had a blanket and pillow laid out on it. In front of the couch was a long, low coffee table cluttered with opened cans and empty boxes of food, along with soda cans and water bottles lined up at the end of the couch like toy soldiers. A bottle of vodka was in the middle of the table like a centerpiece, only a little vodka left in the bottle.

Josh hurried forward, walking past Debbie. He entered the kitchen that was just off of the living room. The kitchen was as messy as the rest of the home. All the cabinets were open, and the shelves were mostly empty. There was trash everywhere, and the sink was filled with it. A small table with a set of four wooden chairs was cluttered with more empty boxes and cans.

Dishes, both dirty and clean, were piled up in the plastic dish drainer, with more on the countertops. The door in the kitchen that led out to the wooden deck had a curtain drawn over it. The kitchen smelled like rotting food and garbage.

Josh went back into the living room. There was a set of carpeted steps that led up to the second floor—the only set of stairs in the house. He looked at those steps then back at Debbie.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Where is he?”

Debbie looked confused, even agitated. She pointed at the empty couch with the blankets and pillows. “He’s right there.”

No one was there.

Josh listened for any sounds coming from upstairs. “Is he up there? Go ahead and tell me now.”

Debbie cocked her head slightly like she didn’t understand his question. She looked more nervous than ever. She crouched down next to the couch and laid a hand on the blanket. “It’s okay, Brad. This man’s here to help us.” She looked up at Josh with a smile of embarrassment. “I’m sorry. I forgot your name already. Rude, I know.”

“It’s Josh,” he whispered as he lowered his shotgun again.

“Josh,” she repeated in a low voice, rolling his name off of her tongue with a smile. She looked at the empty sofa. “Josh is here to help us, Brad.” She looked back at Josh. “As soon as Brad is better, we’re going to head south. Find a place where it’s warm. It’s so cold here, and it’s only going to get colder when winter comes.”

Josh nodded in agreement. He still wanted to check upstairs and then check the back rooms, but he was pretty sure now that he wasn’t going to find Brad anywhere else in the house. He was pretty sure that Debbie really believed Brad was lying on the couch. Her mind had snapped. Maybe she had watched Brad die or turn into a ripper, and she hadn’t been able to handle it. Brad might be in some other house now, dead and rotting. Or maybe he’d been eaten. Somehow Debbie had managed to get into this house, inventing a fantasy that she believed. How had she managed to get here without being attacked and eaten by the rippers?

God watches out for children and crazy people. Josh had heard that somewhere before, but he couldn’t remember from where.

Debbie picked up a bowl of what looked like some kind of white creamy soup. She spooned out a little of the coagulated soup, holding it out towards the invisible Brad. She held the spoon there for just a moment, then sighed, setting it back into the bowl. She placed the bowl back down on the coffee table in defeat. “He won’t eat.” She stared at the sofa. “You’re not going to get better unless you eat.” She looked at Josh. “Tell him, would you?”

Josh smiled at Debbie, but it felt like a fake and foreign thing on his face. “She’s right,” he said to the empty couch. “You need to build your strength back up.”

Debbie smiled again, her whole face lighting up. Again, he saw the beautiful woman she’d once been, the happy woman she’d once been. She turned to the couch. “You hear that, Brad? You heard what Josh said.” She frowned and looked back at Josh. “I wish we had some 7-Up. Brad likes 7-Up when he’s sick. 7-Up and soup, that’s the magic formula, isn’t it?”

Josh nodded. He knew he needed to leave this house. Debbie was gone. He could try to convince her that Brad wasn’t there anymore, but he was sure he would lose that argument. Debbie wanted to believe that her husband was still with her, that they still had hope, that eventually they would work their way south when he was feeling better.

How many others had succumbed to madness since everything had collapsed? How many others had snapped as they watched their family members and friends turn into raging animals? How far away was he from a total mental breakdown?

“I’m going to go out for a minute,” Josh told Debbie. He watched her carefully. If she came at him, if she attacked him, he would have no choice but to fight back. He didn’t want to fight a hundred and ten pound woman, but he would have to be ready for it. He kept his voice low and conversational when he spoke to her, smiling at her. Even though Debbie might be seeing hallucinations of her husband, she still might be able to tell when someone was lying to her. She might be able to tell when someone was afraid of her.

“Where are you going?” Debbie was suddenly tense. The bowl of soup (who knew how old it was?) was on the floor in front of her, the spoon stuck into it like it was a mound of white pudding. She seemed ready and determined to catch him in a lie, catch him patronizing her and not willing to believe what was on the couch right in front of her.

Not only did Josh not want to fight Debbie, but he didn’t want her following him when he left the house. Those rippers could be close by, some of them doing house-to-house searches or just hitting houses randomly, looking for humans and pets to eat, looking for rotted food in refrigerators and dry goods in the cabinets, anything that wasn’t in a can. He couldn’t have her following him and yelling at him, alerting any nearby rippers. He needed to keep her calm right now.

“I’m just going out to get some 7-Up,” he told her.

She looked doubtful, yet hopeful at the same time. “You know where some is?”

“Yes. I saw a six-pack of it in a store. It’s not far from here.” He hesitated for a moment, afraid to say too much, afraid she would catch on to his lie at any second. He smiled and shrugged. The shotgun was still clutched in his sweating hands.

“That’s great,” Debbie said, getting to her feet.

Why was she getting up?

“I think he just needs the fizz in the 7-Up,” Debbie said. “You know? I think there’s something . . .” She paused, searching for the right word.

“Soothing?” Josh offered.

“Yes,” she said with a smile. “Yes, there’s something soothing in the fizz of the soda. And medicinal. Magical.”

“I need to hurry,” Josh told her. “There are others scavenging for stuff out there. I wish now I would’ve grabbed that six-pack of 7-Up.”

“You think it’s gone now?” Debbie asked, her face clouding with worry.

“No,” Josh answered quickly. “No, it was hidden under a shelf that fell over. I put the shelf back over it. I’m sure it’s still there.”

Debbie looked doubtful.

“I really think the 7-Up’s going to help Brad,” Josh said. He looked right at the empty sofa with its wrinkled blankets and propped-up pillows. “Fix you right up, buddy.”

Debbie took a step forward.

“You need to stay here with Brad,” Josh said a little too sharply. “He needs you.”

She looked back at the empty sofa.

For just a moment Josh saw the fear on Debbie’s face, like she’d had a moment of clarity, a moment where she wondered where she was and why she was talking to an empty couch.

Josh rooted for her sanity to win, but he also rooted against it. He couldn’t take her with him even if she “snapped out of it.” Her mind could always crack again. She was probably broken inside, irreparable damage done now.

Debbie’s face softened. She sighed. “You’re right,” she whispered, still staring down at the sofa like she knew it was empty now, like she knew that Brad was gone and Josh would be leaving her alone soon. “I’ll stay.”

Josh felt tears stinging his eyes.

She looked at him. “Just hurry back, would you?”

She knows I’m leaving her, just like Brad left her. Right now, she knows.

“I’ll be back as quickly as I can,” Josh said, trying not to choke up, trying to smile. “You just stay here with Brad.”

Debbie nodded. She looked back at the couch and didn’t look at Josh again. That expression of sadness was back again, pulling her pretty face down in a severe frown like all hope was lost now.

Josh couldn’t wait around. He hurried back down the hall to the office. He practically ran to the window and peeked out to make sure there were no rippers around.

The coast was clear.

He pulled the drapes apart, unlocked the window, and opened it. He was leaving the same way he had entered. He knew he was moving too fast, being too loud, too careless. But he felt like he needed to get out of this house as fast as he could before Debbie’s disease of madness infected him.

Maybe she’s turning, he thought. Maybe she’s talking gibberish right now because she’s getting ready to turn.

He knew it wasn’t true, but he wanted to believe it because it helped ease his guilt just a little.

Once he was on the wood deck, he looked around again, listening. He didn’t see any rippers anywhere among the back yards. He didn’t hear anyone walking through the dead leaves.

He wasn’t too far from Marla’s apartment building now, maybe only a few miles away. He was sure he could make it there before dark as long as he didn’t run into any trouble along the way.

A moment later he was darting across the back yard to the cover of the trees. He stopped by a tree trunk and looked back at the two-story house, breathing hard but trying to be quiet. He expected to see Debbie open the kitchen door and come stumbling out onto the wood deck, looking bewildered and calling for him, wondering when he was going to return with that six-pack of 7-Up that he had promised to bring back for Brad. She would call and call for him until the rippers came and tore her apart.

But she didn’t come outside.

Josh adjusted the straps on his backpack again, tightening them a little, and then he moved on.

CHAPTER 43

It was well before dark when Josh reached the street where Marla’s apartment building stood, her building looming across the street in the gray, smoky air.

He hadn’t avoided problems on his way to the apartment building. He’d been lucky as he made his way from house to house and building to building, from back yard to back yard. He’d seen groups of rippers here and there, a few lone ones wandering around. He’d also seen a stray dog, a big one, cautiously roaming the streets. The dog had caught Josh’s scent, lifting up his head, perking his ears. The dog had watched Josh for a moment, but didn’t attack or bark—it just slinked away.

Now that Josh was across the street from the apartment building, he saw a large group of rippers there, at least thirty or forty of them. It looked like a mob of people milling around with no real coordination between them, yet there was some subtle link between them that kept them together in their group.

Were they living in the apartment building? Sleeping in it?

Josh’s heart sank at the thought of it. What were the chances of Marla and Kyle surviving if there were this many rippers around their building?

A white work van was on this side of the street. It had been run up onto the sidewalk and parked there, against what the flow of traffic would have been if there were still enough cars and trucks driving the roads. Josh darted to the rear of the van and prayed that the back doors were unlocked. There were no windows on the sides of the van except for the driver and passenger window. A company name and logo were painted on the side of the van: H&R Electrical, with a cartoon electrician wearing a hardhat, a tool belt, and a big friendly smile right below the company name.

The back doors of the van had two windows, but both of them were blacked out like they had been painted or tinted. Josh tried to be as quiet as he could when he tried the handle on the door. He didn’t see any rippers from this angle, but they could be anywhere watching him right now.

The back door of the van was unlocked. Josh slipped inside and pulled the door shut. It was a newer van, so the hinges didn’t squeal. He pulled slowly on the door until he heard the latch catch, then he pushed the lock button down. He relaxed a little now that he was locked inside.

Metal shelves had been built onto each side of the van’s interior with a narrow aisle down the middle. The shelves had drawers and compartments, all of them crammed full of tools and materials. Electrical cords and rolls of wire hung from hooks. Farther down, towards the front of the van, there were big metal toolboxes between the ends of the shelves and the two front seats.

Josh shed his backpack and brought it and the shotgun with him up to the front seats. He stayed low as he made sure both the driver’s door and the passenger door were locked. The keys were still in the ignition, but they weren’t turned on. Many of the vehicles Josh had come across still had keys in the ignition, and many were still in the “on” position, the vehicles running out of gas days ago, the batteries dying. Whoever had driven this van had turned the motor off before abandoning it.

Maybe it still ran, but he didn’t dare test it right now.

He looked out the passenger window at Marla’s apartment building across the street. It had turned colder through the afternoon, and the air had gotten smokier from the fires that seemed to be getting closer. Dark smoke hung above the city in the distance. Bits of ash rained down everywhere like snowflakes. The haze in the air had given Josh a little cover as he’d made his way through the streets to get to where he was, but the haze also gave the rippers cover.

Marla’s apartment building stood four stories high and was shrouded in the haze now. There was a parking lot in front of it with a few cars and trucks parked and a tangle of wrecked vehicles blocking the exit out onto the street.

Another small band of rippers moved down through the parking lot like sharks on the hunt. Some of the rippers carried weapons: knives, clubs, sticks, and rocks. There were a few children among the rippers, ranging from ages nine to twelve, and they were protected by the group. The younger and leaner rippers stayed at the edges of the group. Their clothes, like most of the other rippers Josh had seen, were tattered and stained. A few of the rippers weren’t even wearing shoes anymore, even though it had to be around thirty-five degrees outside. Isaac had said that the rippers had regressed back to what cavemen used to be, maybe even before cavemen, the most primitive humans, practically animals. He’d said that he believed the disease had shut off the parts of the brain that made us human. Seeing these rippers, Josh believed Isaac was right.

Josh stared up at the second-floor window of Marla’s apartment. All three of the windows were dark. Maybe when night came, there’d be some sign of life from one of those windows, the flicker of a candle or the movement of a shadow.

Marla’s not alive, and neither is Kyle, the pill imp said, that fiend of doubt and fear.

Josh needed to brace himself for the possibility that Marla and Kyle were dead, or that they had turned. And their chances of surviving didn’t look good. But he was going inside that apartment to look. He’d come this far, and he needed to be sure of what had happened to them; he needed to know, or he was afraid he would go as crazy as Debbie was.

He thought of Debbie, wondering if she was still in that house, still talking to her invisible husband. Josh feared that she had come to her senses right before he had left her. He was afraid that when he had entered that house, entered her world, he had broken the spell she had put herself under, disrupting her fantasy just enough for her to see the truth. He prayed that she had slipped back into her fantasy world after he’d left. It was a strange and comforting thought that she would spend the last hours of her life caring for her husband, the two of them making their plans to head south where it would be safe and warm.

Josh needed to eat. Hunger had been gnawing at him for a while, but now he was beginning to feel weak and light-headed. He had planned on eating something after getting inside that house earlier, but then he had met Debbie and “Brad,” and he’d never gotten the chance.

He settled down on the van’s floor between the two metal toolboxes, using a wadded-up Carhartt jacket left behind as a pillow for his back. Judging from the coat, the electrician who owned this truck must have been a pretty big guy. Even if Josh wanted the coat, it would swallow him up. But it made an adequate buffer between his back and the sharp edges of the toolbox.

He ate the rest of the bag of Chex Mix, wanting to finish up all the noisy food while he could. Next, he opened a can of Spaghettios and ate them with a plastic spoon, carefully swiping his finger inside the can to mop up every last bit of the tomato sauce when he was done. He was still hungry and wanted to open another can of food, but he made himself wait. He needed to learn to conserve his food, learn to survive on less.

After he was done eating, he wanted to look out the passenger window again. He could see the night sky through the windshield from where he sat on the floor. The sky had an orange glow reflecting from the clouds, almost like the city lights would have done. From this view of the sky from the windshield, he could almost believe that the sodium vapor streetlights were turned back on, shining their yellowish light onto the streets; he could almost believe that the power had been restored and that the military was coming to save the day. But he knew that the orange glow was the result of the fires that were raging only a few miles away and not from the streetlights.

He fantasized for a moment about the military coming to save him, fighter jets roaring overhead, tanks rumbling down the streets, battalions of soldiers marching. But that wasn’t going to happen. Isaac had been right about that, too. The military had tried, but too many of them had turned for it to stay organized. But maybe there were some areas that had managed to . . .

Can’t think about that. He had to be careful. No fantasizing. Maybe fantasizing was a slippery slope that eventually led to Debbie’s condition. He needed to stay realistic; it was the only way to stay strong.

Even though he wanted to go into Marla’s apartment building so badly, he decided that it was too risky right now to slip across the street. There were too many rippers around. He would try to get some sleep and then sneak over there right before first light when, according to Isaac’s observations, it was the least active time for the rippers. If Marla and Kyle were in that apartment, they could wait a few more hours for him.

But they weren’t in the apartment. He knew that. This wasn’t some kind of rescue mission like he wanted it to be. That was just a fantasy, and he already knew where fantasies led to. This was a mission to make himself feel better, so he could tell himself that he had tried to find them. It was all about making himself feel better and relieving his guilt.

It has always been about making yourself feel better, the pill imp whispered to him.

Was he hearing things now? Would he see the gnarled, dark fairy now, his vision of his addiction coming to life, the personification of his craving for drugs? Would he see the pill imp like Debbie saw Brad lying on the sofa, staring at her with love in his eyes while she nursed him back to health?

Josh thought of his dreams, the ones with the beautiful blond woman in them. And the dreams of the shadowy man with the shining eyes. Were those figments of his imagination? Would he see them as hallucinations soon while he was awake? How close was he to becoming Debbie?

Those thoughts chased Josh as he drifted off to sleep in the aisle between the tools and materials in the back of the van.

CHAPTER 44

Josh woke up when he heard the screams from outside.

For a moment he didn’t know where he was. He looked around him at the darkness, then he saw the barest orange glow from the windshield and passenger window, just enough light to see.

He was in an electrician’s van. He was stretched out on the floor between the shelves of tools. He jumped up even though his body was stiff from the cold, his joints and back feeling like rusty wire. He grabbed his shotgun. Every movement sounded so loud in the dark van, every movement a cacophony of noise. Even his heavy breathing sounded like the rushing of wind from a storm. He forced himself to slow down, to move slower and more carefully. He didn’t want the van to shake from his movements and alert any rippers close by.

The screams outside made Josh think of his sister’s apartment building across the street.

But it wasn’t Marla or Kyle. This was a man’s scream, eerily similar to the man’s screams coming from the intersection in front of Isaac’s home. For a second Josh irrationally thought that the rippers had another man in the street, barely alive, his fingers and toes eaten away, bones broken, tortured and screaming to draw him out of his hiding place. For those few seconds Josh was sure the same group of rippers from Isaac’s small town had followed him here and they were using another person to trick him into revealing himself.

But he wasn’t hiding in an attic right now. He was in a work van. If they knew where he was, they could get to him easily.

Josh stayed low as he crept forward to the front, pulling himself up between the two front seats. He looked out through the passenger window at the street. The ceiling of orange clouds above gave him just enough light to see that four rippers had run a man down in the street. The rippers must have pounced on him, and now they were stabbing at him, sawing off parts of him, shoving pieces of flesh into their mouths and chewing. One of the rippers was sitting on the man’s outstretched arm, hacking off a piece of his forearm with what seemed like a dull knife.

Eventually the man stopped screaming. He was dead. He had to be by now.

Josh looked beyond the horror in the middle of the street, and then at the apartment building on the other side of that street. He studied Marla’s windows, hoping to see a flicker of light or some kind of movement. But there was nothing. She wouldn’t have lit candles or used a flashlight; she was too smart to give their position away.

He didn’t know what time it was. He tried to see the time on his watch, but the orange glow in the cloudy night sky didn’t offer enough light for that and he didn’t want to push the button to illuminate the dial right here between the two front seats. He moved back deeper into the van, sitting back down against the toolbox, using the Carhartt coat as his pillow again. Once he was deep in the shadows of the van, he cupped his hand around the watch and pushed the button, looking at it for only a second. One o’clock a.m.

Josh found his bottle of water he had taken out of his backpack earlier. He took a small sip. He couldn’t remember dreaming anything even though he’d been asleep for a few hours. He was cold. His body stiff but still shivering. He’d never been so cold.

And it’s only going to get colder. That’s what Debbie had said.

He didn’t want to look out through the windows again and see the rippers feasting on the man. He could hear the rippers, their faint grunting noises seeping in through the windows, a few screeches and barks every so often, like two of them were squabbling over a piece of meat.

Josh closed his eyes. He didn’t want to go back to sleep right now. It was late, and it was getting close to that optimal time when many of the rippers might be resting. He didn’t want to miss his chance to get across the street to his sister’s building. He didn’t want to sleep through the morning, and as exhausted as he was right now, he was afraid that might happen.

A moment later he drifted off to sleep without even realizing it, still sitting up against the toolbox with his hand resting on the shotgun.

CHAPTER 45

Josh snapped awake.

It wasn’t quite morning, but it was a little lighter outside the van’s windows, the orange glow lost in the dark grays and blues of pre-dawn. He checked his wristwatch again, cupping his hand over the face as he pushed the button to light it up. Almost six o’clock a.m. now.

Josh’s joints were stiff from sleeping in the cold van, but he felt a little better now that he’d gotten at least five or six hours of sleep. He was hungry and thirsty. He drank a few sips of water and then opened a can of fruit cocktail. He drank the syrup from the can when he was done with the fruit, and then he drank the rest of his water. He tucked the empty can and bottle into one of the cubbyholes on the shelves of tools.

He closed the zippered flap of his backpack, getting it ready. He moved over to the front seats, crawling up in between them so he could look out the passenger window. The smoke was thicker now, the air hazier. The fires were getting closer . . . and bigger. Marla’s apartment building, and the other buildings across the street, were barely visible in the thick fog of smoke. But there was no mistaking what lay in the middle of the street between the van and the apartment building—the pieces that were left of the man the rippers had eaten last night.

At least there were no rippers around, none that he could see, anyway.

They’re always around. Isaac’s words echoed in his mind. They’re always watching.

Josh was ready to go soon, but first he wanted to inspect the van now that he could see a little better—maybe there was something useful he could take. He still had plenty of room in his backpack, especially now since he’d eaten some of the food and drank two bottles of water.

There were a lot of bolts, nuts, screws, washers, wire nuts, and other odds and ends in the little plastic drawers. There were tools on the shelves and in the bigger drawers and cubbyholes. There was no electricity anywhere, so he really didn’t think he was going to find anything useful in an electrician’s work van.

He found a few zip ties and three rolls of electrical tape. He collected those into a small plastic bag he found and stuffed it into his backpack. He also shoved an adjustable razor knife, a hammer, and pry bar inside—breaking and entering tools. He still had the Leatherman tool he’d found at Ken LaRose’s house, so he didn’t want to weigh his backpack down with too many more tools. He tied a coil of strong rope to the outside of his backpack, taping it up with the electrical tape. Now his backpack almost looked like a mountaineer’s backpack, and he nearly chuckled at that. He also found a heavy-duty dust mask and a pair of goggles. Those would help in the hazy air out there.

It was time to go now.

Josh crept to the back of the van and slipped his backpack on, adjusting the straps so they were tight. He grabbed his shotgun in one hand and then unlocked the back door. He pulled on the handle as gently as he could until he heard it unlatch.

Now he needed to move quickly. If there were rippers around, he couldn’t be cautious now—they would start running for him right away. He slipped out of the back of the van, his shotgun up and ready to shoot. He looked around, trying to look in every direction at once, but he didn’t see any rippers in the smoke.

The smoke had a slight chemical smell and taste to it, even through the dust mask. Probably not the best stuff to be breathing in; he was glad he had grabbed the dust mask and goggles. Wasting no time, he ran across the street, trying to be as quiet as he could.

He couldn’t help looking down at the pieces of the man left in the middle of the street as he ran by. Under the torso that ended in stumps and ragged bits of clothing was a huge dark stain that looked like an oil slick in the murky, pre-dawn light.

His sprint across the road was close enough to the pieces of the man that it had disturbed a few of the rats that had crawled out of the man’s eaten-out torso. One of the rats squeaked and chittered as it darted across the street, amazingly quick. In a few hours the buzzards and crows would come to pick at the remaining bits of meat.

Josh got to the parking lot of the apartment building and jumped the low line of hedges, ducking down behind a car. He waited there a moment, looking at the smoke all around him, trying to make out any movement in the grayness.

No one coming that he could see, and he didn’t hear the sound of movement anywhere.

A moment later, Josh ran across the parking lot to the corner of the building, which was hidden in the shadows. He slipped into the alcove where a door led to the wide hallway. It was dark inside, but he could make out a few open doors to the apartments. The hallway was littered with trash. What used to be people’s possessions were strewn everywhere.

Josh hurried up a set of concrete stairs. More trash and clothing covered the steps, but he did his best to avoid them. But the darkness grew thicker the farther he went up the steps. He stopped on a landing that led to the next set of steps, and he was now in complete darkness. He had to move very slowly now, trying to be quiet.

He stopped at the top of the steps to the second floor and waited for a moment, listening, holding his breath. He peeked around the corner of the wall, feeling along the wall with his hands, but he could see nothing but pitch-black darkness. He imagined stumbling into a pack of sleeping rippers laid out along the hallway or inside the doorways to apartments.

A moment later he was moving down the hallway, hugging the wall to his right. Marla’s apartment would be on this side of the hall, three doors down. Not too far.

His foot bumped into a small cardboard box, sending it scraping across the floor. The noise seemed to reverberate down the hall, bouncing back to him. He took another step, trying to feel his way along the wall with his hands, and he tried to feel his way along the floor with his hiking boots. He took another step and his hiking boot crunched down on broken bits of glass or ceramic. Papers rustled along the floor, a piece of plastic. The debris was unavoidable.

He passed the first door to an apartment on this side of the building. The door was open, and he waited there for a moment, listening. No sounds came from inside the apartment. As he darted across the doorway, he expected a cold hand to reach out from the dark and clamp down on his arm. He imagined that he was entering some kind of hive where these creatures were nestled together, waiting until he was too far inside, until he was past the point of no return.

They can’t see you, Josh told himself. They’re not superhuman creatures.

Aren’t they? They seem impervious to the cold. They seem quick and strong.

And they’re getting smarter. That’s what Isaac had said. They’re adapting. Learning.

Hurrying down the hall now, he pushed on. He wasn’t as careful now that he was getting closer to Marla’s apartment door. He couldn’t avoid walking into the debris, so he decided to pick up his pace. He came to the next doorway and touched it, feeling the edges of it. This door was open, too. The edge of the doorway was splintered, like the door had been forced open.

Josh’s heart sank, his stomach cramping. He couldn’t keep hoping that Marla and Kyle were safe. The evidence was too grim now. Her door was the next one down the hallway.

He hugged the wall, moving down the hallway. It was only a little farther.

He froze.

A screech sounded from somewhere downstairs. A ripper was down there, maybe more than one. Maybe they had heard him kick at the debris as he made his way down the hallway. Maybe they had even smelled him—God knew Josh could smell his own stench now.

He wanted to run, but he made himself move slowly down the hall, pushing on through the darkness. He listened as he walked, listening for sounds on the concrete steps, the echo of footsteps hurrying up here.

He reached Marla’s door. It was closed. His heart lifted for a moment, but then he realized that the door was ajar, and his heart sank.

You knew this might happen.

Josh pushed the door open and slipped inside. It was a little lighter inside the apartment because of the windows even though the drapes were drawn. He turned and pushed the door shut, but it wouldn’t latch. Like the other doors, it looked to have been busted open or kicked in. There was a long crack in the middle of the door where the wood had split.

Maybe they made it out. Maybe they got away before the rippers got inside.

Josh dragged a heavy dresser from the wall across the carpet and pushed it in front of the door. He pushed the big couch that Kyle used to sit on to play his video games in front of the dresser to add more weight to his barricade. It wouldn’t keep the rippers out for long.

He stopped, breathing hard as he stared at the furniture piled up in front of the door. He tried to listen for noises out in the hallway, but he couldn’t hear anything. He made himself stand there for another minute, waiting, counting down the seconds. As he waited, he couldn’t help noticing the smell inside the apartment—the now-familiar coppery smell of blood. His eyes teared up as he stood there.

It was getting lighter by the minute. Josh could make out the other pieces of furniture in the living room and kitchen now, but he could also see the destruction. The large flat screen TV had been pulled off the wall and was now on the floor, the table in the dining area and a few of the chairs had been tipped over, one of them smashed to pieces. A lot of the pictures and paintings on the walls had been ripped down.

He walked over to the long bar that separated the living room from the kitchen. All the cabinet doors were open, a few of them pulled off the hinges. The countertops and floors were cluttered with cans of food, broken dishes, garbage, crushed boxes, shattered glass.

Marla’s bedroom was off of the kitchen on one side of the apartment and his and Kyle’s smaller bedrooms were next to each other on the other side. All the doors to the bedrooms were wide open.

Marla and Kyle were gone. Josh knew they were gone because he saw the smears of blood on the carpet, and more smears of blood on the tiled floors in the kitchen. There were streaks of blood on some of the cabinet doors and on the countertops, and what looked like four finger marks of blood on Marla’s open bedroom door; blood on her door—just like he’d seen in his dreams.

CHAPTER 46

Josh cried. He tried to be quiet, but he couldn’t help sobbing as the apartment grew brighter with daylight all around him. Even though the daylight was streaming in around the drapes and curtains, the light still seemed muted because of the haze and cloud-cover outside.

He’d found Marla and Kyle’s stash in her bathroom off of her bedroom. This was the room where they had holed up, retreating as far back as they could. There were a few cans of food in the corner along with bottles of water, some pillows and a blanket. Kyle’s Gameboy was there, but the batteries were probably long dead by now. There were also a few candles and two small flashlights. Marla had hung a black bedspread over the bathroom window so the light wouldn’t be seen from outside. Josh could imagine how scared Kyle must have been staying here in the dark. Along with their meager supplies, there were two kitchen knives and another knife duct taped to the end of a broomstick. He remembered joking with Kyle about using a broomstick to fight the zombies, and he fell to his knees, sobbing. That had been the last conversation he’d had with Kyle. He could imagine Kyle telling Marla to bring the broom in with them to the bathroom, making some kind of joke about it.

He picked up the broomstick with the knife taped to the end of it. There was blood all over the knife blade.

I hope you at least got one of them.

There was more blood in the bathroom, sprays of it along the wall, drag marks on the floor. More blood stained the edge of the bathtub and the shower curtain. The blood was shockingly bright red in the morning light after Josh pulled the black bedspread aside to let the light into the bathroom.

At least their bodies weren’t here. He wasn’t sure if he could have handled that.

He left the bathroom and closed the busted door as far as he could.

If only he wouldn’t have gotten arrested. If only he could have made it back here that first day. Maybe he could have saved them somehow. But he had screwed up again. Just like he always had.

Josh went back out to the living room and collapsed onto the floor and cried. He was probably making too much noise, but he didn’t care anymore. Maybe it would be better if the rippers just came up here and ended it for him.

No, he had a better idea.

He jumped up and ran over to his backpack that he had leaned against one of the tipped-over stools in front of the island between the living room and kitchen. He unzipped the pack and pulled everything out: the extra tools, the extra clothes, the cans of food, bottles of water. And then he found what he’d been looking for—the pint bottles of liquor he had been protecting all this time, the bottles of liquor swaddled in the dish towels. He ripped the tape off and pulled the cloth away, exposing the three bottles. He was amazed that none of them had broken. He had kept them safe.

He opened the bottle of bourbon and sniffed it. He brought the bottle up to his lips and took a long drink. It burned going down his throat, but it also felt so warm in his stomach, so familiar. He drank another swallow, then another. Liquor, that old friend of his, wrapped him in a cocoon of apathy, swaddling him like he had swaddled the three bottles.

*

An hour later Josh was drunk.

“I’m sorry, Marla,” he mumbled. “I’m so sorry, Kyle. I should’ve been here for you. I tried to help, but I . . . I fucked up like I always do.”

He had gone through Kyle’s room while sipping the first bottle. He’d seen Kyle’s Pittsburgh Steelers pennants on the floor, ripped down from the walls, his Steelers bedspread crumpled up at the end of the bed. His bookshelf was tipped over, books all over the floor, along with zombie and monster action figures. Comic books were scattered around, covers torn off, mashed from shoes walking all over them. Josh picked up one of the comic books, this one amazingly undamaged. The Incredible Hulk. He took the comic book back with him to the living room and set it down with the stuff from his backpack in a pile on the floor.

He stumbled into his own bedroom, but there wasn’t anything in there that he wanted. He pocketed a few photographs from some of the broken-framed pictures, but he didn’t want anything else.

He finished the second bottle of liquor while on the floor, and now he opened the third one. Soon he was going to run out of alcohol, and panic was going to set in. He knew Marla didn’t have any in the apartment, not with an ex-alcoholic brother living with her. He thought of searching the other apartments for bottles of liquor. Maybe he could find some that hadn’t been smashed. Or he might find some cans of beer.

Instead of leaving, he unzipped the side pocket of his backpack and pulled out the two bottles of pain pills. He stood up and cleared off a spot on the countertop, wiping the clutter and debris onto the floor. It made a startlingly loud crashing sound, but he didn’t care. He opened the pill bottle and shook out two pills onto the clean area of the countertop. He used the bottom of a thick glass tumbler to crush the pills up into a powder. He found a pack of straws in the silverware drawer. He used a pair of scissors to cut the straw exactly how he liked it. And then he snorted the pills that he had turned into powder.

He stood up straight, sniffing and wiping at his nose, his eyes closed. The pills would kick in soon. With his alcohol-pill combo, he was sure he would be joining Isaac in the hereafter very soon, probably in the next few hours.

Time for another sip of whiskey. He stumbled over to where he had left the bottle beside his backpack and picked it up, taking a long drink. He tried to sit down, but ended up collapsing onto the floor. He almost laughed, but he didn’t.

He was ready to snort some more pills now.

CHAPTER 47

Josh opened his eyes. He was groggy but still alive. He was still in Marla’s apartment. The place was still trashed. There were still smears of blood on the carpet, the tiled floors, the countertops, the cabinets, and Marla’s bedroom door. Marla and Kyle were still gone. He had still failed them.

He got to his feet, stumbling forward, not sure where he was going. He was so light-headed, and he felt sick to his stomach, ready to puke at any second.

“Josh.”

He spun around towards Marla’s bedroom door. The beautiful blond woman stood in front of the door now; she was the one he’d been seeing in his dreams, the one with the angelic glow around her. She was actually here now.

“You found me,” Josh whispered.

“Josh, you’re in danger.”

No, she wasn’t really here. This was just a vision. Had he gone beyond dreams and now he was seeing people who weren’t there? He was turning into Debbie, going insane. Next he would see the imp that pushed the pills on him. But maybe not. Maybe the pill imp had finally won; Josh had succumbed and taken the pills, he had given in to the call of alcohol. No, the imp’s voice was quiet for now, satisfied with his victory. He was hearing the voice of a woman he didn’t even know, some figment of his imagination.

He looked away, towards Kyle’s bedroom, and then he looked back at Marla’s door.

The woman was gone now, the door almost closed all the way.

He stared at Marla’s bedroom door with the bloody fingermarks on it, and the blood crusted around the doorknob, the edge of it splintered from where it had been kicked in. He’d seen the lines of blood on his sister’s door before in his other dreams. He’d seen all of this before.

“Josh,” the woman said from beyond the door. She was inside Marla’s bedroom now. “You need to leave. You need to go south. Go south and find us.”

“You’re not real,” Josh said, slurring his words. “You . . . you come to me, tell me to find you, but you’re not real.”

No answer from the woman in Marla’s bedroom.

“You hear me?” Josh yelled. He knew that he should be quiet. Soon, rippers were going to be up here, pushing that meager barricade of furniture out of the way as they stormed inside the apartment.

There was only silence from the bedroom. The blond woman had stopped talking to him now.

Josh felt a sudden anger burning inside of him. He marched to the bedroom door and pushed it all the way open. The door slammed against the doorstop on the wall. He rushed inside Marla’s bedroom, but the woman wasn’t there. He stared at the unmade bed, the clothes and boxes pulled out of the closet, the drawers from the dresser on the floor, the dark smears of dried blood soaked into the carpet, a wide trail of blood coming from the bathroom.

“Where are you?” Josh asked, spinning around and almost losing his balance.

The bedroom was darker than the living room had been. The drapes were untouched and still drawn across the windows. He looked at the master bathroom; the door was closed almost all the way. Someone was right behind the door, breathing heavily.

The woman?

No, not her. It was someone different.

“Josh,” Marla’s voice called out from behind the bathroom door. “Josh, why didn’t you come back for us?”

This isn’t real. Oh God, don’t let me become like Debbie.

“We waited for you, Josh,” Marla said from behind the bathroom door. “We waited and waited.”

“I’m sorry,” Josh said, but the words came out as a weak whisper, his throat locking up, tears blurring his vision.

“We waited and waited,” Marla said, but her voice had grown deeper and sinister.

It wasn’t Marla behind that door anymore—now it was him, the shadowy man he’d seen in his dreams.

A large hand sheathed in black leather reached through the crack in the door, grabbing the edge of the door and pulling it open slowly.

Josh didn’t want to see him again. He didn’t want to see the man who hid in the shadows, his eyes shining in the dark like pinpoints of light. Josh turned to run, but then he froze. He saw the blond woman by the closet now. She looked terrified. Her dark glasses were gone now and her light blue eyes weren’t focused on him—she was looking at the bathroom, at what was coming out of it. “You have to go out to the living room and wake yourself up,” she told Josh without looking at him.

The dark man was rushing out of the bathroom—Josh could hear him coming. He could imagine the large man flying towards him, his arms wide, ready to envelope him in his darkness, drag him kicking and screaming back into the bathroom, to kill him in the same spot where Marla and Kyle had died. He knew he should run, but he hesitated, staring at the blond woman.

Wake myself up? What’s she talking about?

“You’re dying,” she told him. There were tears in her eyes now, her face crumbling in compassion. “Go out there and wake yourself up.”

Josh bolted out of the bedroom and raced into the living room. He stopped cold when he saw his body on the floor, face down on his stomach, one arm out in front of him, the other one across his back. His body was still . . . so still. His body didn’t even look like it was breathing.

He collapsed down next to his own body, shaking it, grabbing his sweatshirt hoodie and jerking him back and forth, tears flowing now. “Wake up! Wake the fuck up!”

The shadowy man was coming out of the bedroom, his footsteps slow and heavy. No need to hurry now—they had all the time in the world.

CHAPTER 48

Josh’s eyes popped open, and he tried to inhale a breath.

But he couldn’t breathe.

Panic seized him. He lifted his head up and his stomach lurched; his muscles spasmed throughout his body. He opened his mouth and vomited onto the carpet, the puke coming from both his mouth and nose at the same time, an acidic river flowing out of him. Once the vomit was out, he could breathe again. He drew in a greedy breath of air, then choked. He coughed, dry-heaved, and tried to catch his breath again.

He puked some more, mostly just stringy spittle now. But then he could breathe again for a moment. He lay there on his side, too weak to move, his insides rocked with spasms, his throat raw and burning, his muscles trembling. He could smell the pile of puke close to him, and that made him want to throw up again, but he didn’t have anything left inside of him.

He crawled across the floor to his backpack. His extra clothes, tools, and food were scattered all over the floor. He found a bottle of water and opened it with shaking fingers. He took a sip of the water, just a little because he knew it was only going to come right back up again.

And there it was.

Josh spit the water right back up, then dry-heaved uncontrollably for a few minutes, retching silently. His throat was on fire now. His ab muscles clenched again, contorting his body, jolting him with spasms that were like electrical shocks.

After a few minutes, Josh tried some more water, just to rinse his mouth out at first. He spit the water back out and waited for another wave of nausea to pass before drinking another sip of water.

It went on like that for almost an hour, but then he finally got enough water down. He lay there on the carpet, weak and exhausted. He wanted to go back to sleep now, but he was afraid to.

But he must have slept again for quite some time, because when he opened his eyes the apartment was dark. He was afraid of the dark now, not sure if he was awake or asleep and dreaming. He was afraid he would hear the shadowy man breathing right next to him, staring down at him with his shining eyes, two pinpoints of light floating in the darkness.

Josh didn’t see the man’s eyes or hear his breaths.

He drank more water. He would need to find more to drink in Marla’s apartment.

There were noises downstairs, and more noises from outside. There were screeches and yells and whistles from the rippers out there. For a moment Josh thought they were rushing up the stairs and then down the hall, about to break into the apartment. The rippers had finally figured out that he was hiding up here. Or no, they’d known all along that he was up here and they had waited until he had taken the pain pills and the whiskey, waiting until he was incapacitated.

But no . . . the noises were coming from outside. It sounded like people were running. A lot of people. A stampede.

It felt warmer now in the apartment even though it was night. And the smell of smoke was stronger. He could taste the acrid chemical smell on his tongue.

Then he remembered the fires. Were the rippers out there running from the fires?

Josh jumped to his feet, his muscles and joints stiffer than they had ever been, but panic spurred him on. He stumbled over to the living room windows and tore the drapes to the side.

Rippers were running across the street, dozens of them. The low clouds in the sky were orange now even though it was night. Smoke rolled over the street and there were flickering shadows on the building across the street, pinpoints of yellow and orange light reflected back at him from the windows that hadn’t been shattered—the reflection of the fire. The fire had to be right behind this apartment building. Maybe some of the building was already on fire.

Josh didn’t feel like running. He was still weak and his head was thumping. He needed more water and maybe some food. He was queasy and shaky, but adrenaline was now taking over. He hurried back to his backpack on the floor and found his flashlight in the side pocket. He turned it on, not worrying about the rippers seeing him anymore—they were panicking, all of them running from the massive wall of fire that was coming their way. There was no fire department anymore to stop this fire; it would just keep on burning square mile after square mile until the rain put it out or until the fire ran out of things to burn.

He could smell the smoke now, it was choking his lungs. He could feel the heat in the apartment, his skin prickling with beads of sweat. He could actually hear the roar of the fire. He found his last bottle of water on the floor. He opened it and drank the whole thing down; it made him feel a little better. He shoved everything back into his backpack and zipped it up. He was about to leave the bottles of pain pills behind, but at the last second he stuffed them down into the side pocket of the backpack and zipped it shut. He swore to himself that he wasn’t going to take any more, but he still might need them if he got hurt. Or someone else might need them.

There wasn’t a lot of time left, but he searched the kitchen for more drinks, playing his flashlight beam around the clutter and mess. A lot of the canned drinks had been opened and were empty, but he found a few cans of soda that were unopened. He shoved them down into his backpack and zipped it up. He slipped the backpack on, tightening the straps. He put his dust mask and goggles on, grabbed his shotgun. He still had the extra shells in his front pants pocket along with the lighter.

The hallway was filled with smoke, and it was much warmer than the apartment. He heard the crackling of fire across the hall in the other apartments, some of them already on fire now. He kept close to the wall as he hurried towards the stairs, kicking junk and trash out of his way.

Downstairs, the smoke was even worse; he could barely make anything out in the haze. He felt along the wall to the outer doors and rushed outside. The smoke was even worse out there, and it was hard to breathe. At least he had the dust mask on and it helped a little.

Josh ran through the parking lot and then across the street towards the electrician’s van, passing the last bits of the man the rippers had attacked and eaten—now there were only pieces of bones and strips of gristle left, smeared across the pavement on the road like hundreds of feet had run over his remains.

He didn’t see any rippers as he darted across the road; they had all run and were scattered now. He got to the electrician’s van and turned back around to see the tidal wave of flames engulfing Marla’s apartment building. It even looked like Marla’s apartment was on fire now, flames licking out of the broken windows. The fire was moving fast now, feeding on the city as it moved along like some gigantic thunderstorm on the ground.

He ran to the back of the van and opened the back door, slipping inside. He closed the door and locked it. The air was better inside the van, his visibility a little better. He ran down the aisle to the front seats, tearing off his backpack along the way. He laid his shotgun on the passenger seat and plopped down in the driver’s seat. He touched the set of keys in the ignition, caressing them for just a second, praying that the van would start.

After twisting the key, the motor started and the dashboard lights lit up. He turned on the headlights but all he could see was a wall of smoke now. He shifted into drive and turned into the street, driving more by memory now than sight. He drove as straight as he could down the street, veering closer and closer to the sidewalk until he saw a side road at the last second materializing out of the smoke.

He turned onto the side street, gunning the gas and racing away from the fire while trying to keep the van in the middle of the road. He knew there might be other vehicles in the road, so he needed to slow down, he needed to be careful. If he wrecked this van, then he was screwed. All of the rippers were here, all of them running away from the fire like a herd of cattle.

Even two blocks away the visibility was so much better. The van’s headlights stabbed into the darkness, lighting his way down the pitch-black street. There were some rippers along the side of the road, a few of them wandering out into the road. He didn’t want to run into a mob of them. If he did, then he was as good as dead, but there was a very real possibility of seeing thousands of them soon. He kept speeding down the road, maneuvering around any parked cars and trucks at the last second, bumping three or four rippers out of the way.

Josh slowed down to take a left, hoping he was working his way south. Off to his left the sky was beginning to lighten up, so he knew that way was east and now he was heading south. He still had the map in his backpack, but he would take a look at it later when he got the chance. Right now he was only concerned about getting as far away as he could from the fire and the hordes of rippers running away from it.

Head south. That’s what the woman had told him in the dream. Come south and find us. Join us.

And that’s what he was going to do, head south. At least it might be warmer, just like Debbie had told her invisible husband.

The van’s gas tank was nearly full, and the gauges were all looking good. The rippers had thinned out a little the farther away he drove, and the road he was on had widened to four lanes now without too many vehicles clogging it up.

Yes, he would head south, following the crazy hallucinations in his dreams. And maybe he was crazy for doing this, but he was already beginning to feel a little better; he was already beginning to feel some hope.

A thank you:

Thank you so much for reading my book! I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope you’ll check out the rest of the books in this series. Being an author is a dream come true for me, and it only happens because of readers like you. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I love to hear from readers!

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https://www.marklukensbooks.wordpress.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Mark Lukens has been writing since the second grade when his teacher called his parents in for a conference because the ghost story he’d written concerned her a little.

Since then he’s had several stories published and four screenplays optioned by producers in Hollywood. He’s the author of many bestselling books including: Ancient Enemy, Sightings, The Exorcist’s Apprentice, Devil’s Island, and Followed. He’s proud to be a member of the Horror Writers Association.

He grew up in Daytona Beach, Florida. But after many travels and adventures, he settled down near Tampa, Florida with his wonderful wife and son . . . and a stray cat they adopted.

He loves to hear from readers! You can find him on Facebook here:

https://www.facebook.com/Mark-Lukens-Books-670337796318510/

You can find him on Twitter here: https://www.twitter.com/marklukensbooks

You can follow his blog here: www.marklukensbooks.wordpress.com

He can be reached via email at mark@marklukensbooks.com and marklukensbooks@yahoo.com

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